Lessons from a departed sister

On July 9 I got one of those phone calls from overseas we always fear: My sister Maggie, a member of the Sisters of Charity, was very sick. The next day my wife Alice and I were on that long flight across the dark Pacific with plenty of time for somber self-centered thinking. Irish pessimism told me Maggie was dead, though we didn’t know for sure. I was alone now, I realized. All the others I grew up with—brothers, Maggie, parents, cousins—all were gone. If there was no one left to talk to about those days, would the memories themselves pass away? I also realized I had lost the best sister any man ever had.

I learned many things in the days after Maggie’s death. I had, for example, a small glimpse of God’s care of his aged followers; I learned of incidents in our family history that may have influenced what I have wound up doing in life: I recalled special memories of Maggie here in the Philippines, when we visited the Mangyan in their village outside Calapan, Mindoro. And I realized once again that the kindnesses we show people remain in their memories long after all other memories of us have faded.

At my sister’s funeral Mass about 200 Sisters of Charity attended. Nearly all are retired. The youngest nuns are in their 50s; only 10 percent of the nuns can put in a full day’s work. As an institution, the Sisters of Charity of New York are comparable to a retired person close to God after long years of loyal service. During the Mass I watched the older nuns prepare the ciboria and other vessels for Holy Communion. They were like sisters (small “s”) in their mother’s kitchen preparing a meal. They were so at ease, so at home there at the altar, so close to one another that God, who is mother and father, was clearly among them, chatting with them and helping shoulder to shoulder. God has a special love for the poor, the Church teaches. He has an equally special love for the old people who have served Him loyally all their lives. I was very happy Maggie was with the Sisters.

Cousins told me our great grandfather was evicted by England in the 1800s from the small farm he had outside Cork City, Ireland. The Murphys walked into the city without land or money and became what we now call “urban poor.” I’ve often wondered how I wound up in life working with urban poor people in Manila, especially those in danger of eviction. The apple doesn’t fall very far from the branch.

I remembered the day we went with Maggie to visit the Mangyan outside Calapan. We knew the Holy Spirit nuns who worked there, especially Sisters Magdalena and Victricia. The Mangyan gathered after dinner to greet the visitors. They sang and danced and told stories of their past. When Maggie’s turn came, she talked about the people of New York City and their tall buildings, crowded and noisy streets, and subways. She described how people went underground in the morning to get a train to work and came up at the end of the day. As she talked we noticed the people were troubled.

Much later Sister Victricia told me the Mangyan understood that New Yorkers lived underground like snakes and other wild animals. They felt so sorry for New Yorkers that every Sunday they prayed for them at Mass. Politicians like Mayor Michael Bloomberg may take credit for the progress that city has made in recent years, but maybe it was really due to the prayers of the Mangyan people.

In dealing with the illnesses of old people, Maggie, like most doctors and nurses, had her own bag of tricks. Kindness and street smarts are needed. In the last conversation we had by phone only a week before the fateful July 9 call, she told me about Henry, 87, who was a regular patient at her clinic for old people in Richmond University Medical Center, Staten Island  (the old St. Vincent’s Hospital). Henry complained of fits of sneezing. My sister examined him but could find nothing wrong. She did notice that every time he touched his chest, he started sneezing. She finished the examination, then told him in a very serious tone of voice:

 “Henry, you must not touch your chest ever again. Can you do that?”

“Yes, Sister.”

“Promise me now, you won’t touch your chest.”

“Yes, Sister.”

He returned a few months later. The sneezing had stopped and he said he had never again touched his chest.

All the people I talked with about Maggie—patients, colleagues, fellow sisters, friends and relatives—mentioned her unfailing kindness. The people we most admire in life are those who show kindness to all.

Meanwhile in the United States, columnist Charles M. Blow wrote in the New York Times (Aug. 10) of signs that Americans are becoming a people without pity or kindness. A cross section of Americans was asked, “What factor was most responsible for the continuing poverty in the country?” The respondents were given a list of possible causes. The cause singled out by most people interviewed was: “Too much welfare prevents initiative.”

To these people, poverty wasn’t due to a lack of education or of opportunities to work. Instead, they made the victims the guilty party. The poor are guilty because they are poor. The same results might be found here if such a test were administered. The Philippines cannot compete with other powerful countries if it relies solely on the skills of the capitalist world. It can compete and find its own appropriate mix of capitalism and culture if it remains a country of kindness and pity. Each people must moderate capitalism in their own way.

One more anecdote. My sister attended a community organization meeting in Lucena, Quezon, in 1982. One morning, instead of attending the sessions, Maggie, Fr. Tom Steinbugler and myself went to a nearby beach to swim. Suddenly there was a cry of shock and pain from Tom. He was bent over in the water. We got him up on shore and saw he had been bitten or stung by a jellyfish across his stomach. He had a hard time breathing.

My sister told him to bend over and breathe deeply. She told me later she didn’t know what to do. Tom later told me he feared he might die, and might have to go to confession to me. I thought we should urinate on the wound, but no man can pee on his own stomach, and I knew he’d rather die than have me pee on him. There was all this confusion, and then a woman from a fisherman’s shack farther up the beach came running with the traditional cure, vinegar. We put some on the red ugly wound and soon the crisis was over. The woman had seen our problems and knew right away what to do.

We were three very well educated persons there, but none of us knew what every adult and child in that area must know—that vinegar is the cure for a jellyfish sting. They also knew it was foolish to go in the water in the jellyfish season.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates (urbanpoorassociates@ymail.com).

A hill on the Mohawk River

Commentary

By: Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer


Hundreds of gravestones in neat white rows cover the crest of a hill overlooking the Mohawk River in upstate New York. It may appear to be a military cemetery—the kind the United States leaves behind in all the countries in which it has fought—but the men buried here were not soldiers. They were nonviolent, peace-loving, and, it must be admitted, only a few looked very much like warriors.

The hill overlooking the Mohawk once held Iroquois villages where French Jesuits arrived by canoe in the 17th century to evangelize the Indians. The Jesuits had little success, though one young woman, Kateri Tekakwitha, will soon be canonized. The Indians tortured and killed some of the missionaries, including St. Isaac Joques.

Centuries later, the missionaries gained control of the land where the Indian villages had stood and built a shrine in honor of the French Jesuits. They named it Auriesville. The bones of the laymen working with the Jesuits and killed along with them have never been recovered. These lie somewhere on that hill or in the valleys around it, along with the bones of the Indian chiefs, the few converts the missionaries had made, the young warriors dead in the ceaseless intertribal wars, the Indian mothers and children, some of whom died of diseases brought by the Jesuits and other white men. Along with them are the remains of 500 or so New York Province Jesuits who have died since the 1970s and lie in the neat white rows.

They are all there in the sunshine with the trees, summer clouds, flowers and songbirds. Sadly, there are no traces left of the Indians.

My brother Ned is one of the men lying there, one of the most recent Jesuits to be buried. We came to visit and say our prayers. Then I walked back and forth through the long rows of gravestones, reading each of them; I knew those buried there almost as well as my brother did.

They were all types of men—some were missionaries sent to the Caroline and Marshall Islands and the Philippines; others were parish priests, superiors, authors, scientists, and teachers. There were men who ran labor schools, greeted guests in the novitiate, ran world-famous aquariums, men who campaigned for peace and others who campaigned against pornography. Sometimes other Jesuits didn’t appreciate a man’s work. Peace work was criticized by some of them. Some Jesuits were well-known, others were not. Many were quite eccentric: The Jesuits give their members so much freedom, it is the rare man who doesn’t end up somewhat free-spirited.

I looked up from time to time as I walked through the long rows and realized: This is beautiful country. There are lakes, mountains and a forest bulging with pine, elm and maple. There are deer, hawks, and small furry animals none of us could identify. There are dark blue rivers and farm land sweeping down to the river banks.

I think the Jesuits are content to be there together in that earth with the tiny wild daisies that grow among the graves and the songbirds that sit atop them.

When we were young my brother never dreamed he would end up on that hill. I don’t think he would have imagined being anything but a Latin-Greek professor. He worked eventually with Fr. Dan Berrigan in the peace movement and then he set up with friends a soup kitchen that has grown into a very effective social center for poor people in the Bronx. On his tombstone—if the Jesuits allowed brief summaries of people’s lives on their tombstones—might be the words: “He tried to make peace. He fed the hungry.”

We walked away with peace in our hearts, leaving the French Jesuits, the Iroquois and the more recent dead to God’s warm and calming care.

The last stanza of “Amazing Grace” could have been written about the Jesuits of Auriesville and the Indians of the Mohawk River: “When we’ve been there ten thousand years/ Bright shining as the sun/ We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise/ Than when we’d first begun.”

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. Please send your feedback to upa@pldtdsl.net.

Death—one or one thousand

Commentary
By: Denis Murphy
12:56 am | Tuesday, January 31st, 2012

Last week I went to the wake of a young man and later to Cagayan de Oro where 1,000 people are dead. There are bitter lessons in both tragedies. However, whether it is one or a thousand, death is more sorrowful among the poor.

Can the loss of an only son, for example, be felt more deeply in a poor home than in the home of wealthy family? It seems it can. A poor woman who lost her only son, a boy of 15 after a severe asthmatic attack, asked God, “Was I not a good mother and so you took away my only son?” This near pagan cry of pain will be heard in urban poor areas, among sugar worker families and among tribal people, but probably not in Forbes Park. There, people will have been fortunate enough to go to Catholic schools and understand that God doesn’t punish children for the sins of the parents. This is clear in Scripture from the time of the Prophet Ezekiel.

The poor lack money and decent houses and many lack knowledge of the Lord’s ineffable love and mercy. The poor can be poor in ways we rarely consider. I don’t mean to say there are better Christians in Forbes Park, only better informed Christians.

We went to Kasiglahan Village I, a relocation site for families removed from the Pasig River in 2000, to condole with Vangie Pangilinan who lost her only son. The families there live in long rows of sturdy one-story houses that seem ready made for the wakes of the poor. Simply push all the furniture toward the rear of the house, put up the white divider the funeral parlor provides and arrange the coffin and candles.

There is a picture of the boy over the coffin. He is a good-looking young man with the smokey eyes often seen in actors and singers.

“What will you do now, Vangie?” a friend asks. She laughs sadly. “I will go to more meetings.”

She has been a dynamic leader of the people for 12 years or more. In fact, she is one of the 10 most effective and brave leaders of the urban poor in all of Metro Manila. Whatever the people of Kasiglahan have by way of schools and water and other services are due to the hard work of Vangie and the other members of the people’s organization. It is rueful humor that makes believe meetings will take the place of her son.

There is little anyone can do for Vangie, so the women of the relocation area and the women with me don’t try. They simply sit with her and let her talk. We are all too dependent on those we love.

 A few days later my wife, Alice, and I were in Cagayan de Oro in meetings at the archbishop’s house among government, Church and civilian agencies. More than 1,000 people are dead, Archbishop Antonio Ledesma told us. At least 8,000 families are homeless. Everything seems to be in competent hands, everything from easing the trauma in children caused by the horrible experience they had in the dark, rushing waters of the river to finding 80 hectares of land for relocation and the funds for housing.

It is the poor in their shanties who have suffered the most. They are the families in the many emergency relocation centers and they are the ones who will be relocated far from their work. The rich have resources they can fall back on. They have relatives who will take them into their homes.

There has been a remarkable surge of generosity from the people of the city and people from all islands of the country and nearly every country in the world. It is heartwarming, but the somber thought soon occurs that this money and land that are offered could have been made available a year ago, long before the December floods. The problems of people living in other flood-prone areas could also be well on the way to solution by now. The resources exist. A good beginning to such a program might be a call from our bishops and other religious leaders to the persons who own the land or control its use to make it available now, so we can avert the death of thousands and the homelessness of thousands of others. If we begin now, we can look into alternative suggestions. Maybe it’s possible to rebuild homes in the flood-prone areas in flood-proof ways, for example.

From a bridge just outside the city we could see upstream on the Cagayan de Oro River to where there had once been a village at a bend in the river. The storm waters that night had rushed around the bend and, mounting the bank of the river, had swept the village away in a matter of seconds, like a man brushes dishes and food off a table with one angry sweep of his arm.

We went with Archbishop Ledesma to look at possible sites for a relocation project to be organized and funded by the Church. High up in Lumbia, we looked at land on a hillside overlooking endless hills and valleys. The breeze blew soft and warm across our faces. We had to listen deeply for any sound. Finally we heard the hum of the far-off city. We had the smell of planted fields, wild flowers and weeds. I hope the children who live on that spot someday will breathe the same air and silences.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates.

A Well-Known Housing Right Advocate Died

NEWS RELEASE
June 1, 2011

Teodoro “Ted” Añana, a well-known housing right advocate and one of the founders of Urban Poor Associates (UPA), died on May 29 in the Philippine Lung Center, Quezon City. He suffered for several years from emphysema and other lung problems.

Ted served 40 years of his life in organizing the urban poor in the Philippines and Asia to attain land tenure, housing and basic services including jobs, health and education.

Denis Murphy, executive director of UPA said, “When he began working with the poor, there were no statistics about eviction and very few people were interested in studying the phenomenon. With Ted’s hard work he made evictions and demolitions a major issue in the country. Since 1992, a total of 600 stories about evictions were published by the Manila dailies through the work of Ted Añana and others at UPA.”

Also Ted with other UPA members helped educate 300,000 families about their housing rights, and assisted 510 communities in eviction crises. He is the main author of “What To Do If There Is A Demolition.” Some 10,000 copies of this pamphlet were printed over the year.

Somsook Boonyabancha, Secretary General of Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR) said in a statement, “It is very sad to learn that Ted has passed away. He has been one of the key persons in the region working actively as a regional coordinator managing ACHR’s Regional Eviction Watch program for so many years. He fought for the housing rights of the poor and searched for ways to solve the problems of the poor. He got the attention and assistance from the government and larger development organizations with his patience and persistent manner.”

Ted is survived by his wife Connie, three sons and a daughter, Margarita.

Urban poor groups and NGOs will hold a vigil on the first day of Ted’s wake and the mass will be officiated by the running priest, Fr. Robert Reyes. At the vigil people groups will symbolize Ted’s dream of decent houses for the poor.

The 3-day wake will start on June 2, Thursday, 10 AM at Timothy Chapel, St. Peter Memorial Chapel, Tandang Sora, Quezon City. -30-

Ted's Photo Slideshow:





Below are recorded excerpts of past interviews with Ted Añana on a radio program called "Karitas at Maralita" (hosted by Jing Manipulanzona)-produced by Urban Poor Associates which upholds housing rights. The radio program airs every Saturday, 1:30PM to 2:30PM on Veritas 846.

2006, January -part 1 of 2


2006, January -part 2 of 2


2007, July 28 -reaction to Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's SONA (at 1:47)



2007, September 29 -with international guests, excerpt 1 of 2 (at 01:05)


2007, September 29 -with international guests, excerpt 2 of 2 (at 07:44)


2008, March 4 -on World Habitat Day, excerpt 1 of 4 (at 09:35)


2008, March 4 -on World Habitat Day, excerpt 2 of 4 (at 11:28)


2008, March 4 -on World Habitat Day, excerpt 3 of 4 (at 03:10)


2008, March 4 -on World Habitat Day, excerpt 4 of 4 (0:00)


2011, January 29 interview


2011, March 3 -on proposed anti-squatting law



*To watch the video footage/photos of Teodoro Añana's funeral, click here.