YELLOW PAD: Humanity's Team Philippines Newsletter MAY 2007

"CHARLIE"

Charlie dela Rosa

Cebu

     For some of you who know me, I call god Charlie. Why not? He/she/it (or was it Walsch – here I go again) who was the one who told me/you/us to do so. Call me by any name you want, Jehovah, Allah, or Yahweh. Call me God or energy or, if you like, simply call me “Charlie.”

     Yep! I’ve been calling the old goat Charlie since I unearthed the “gospels according to Walsch” some years back in a popular bookstore. As a backgrounder, I was into the book “Friendship with God” which I found most liberating when this calling-god-Charlie episode happened. Imagine, god as my friend! And it wasn’t I who solicited this friendship, it came from god. God said he wanted me to be his friend. And of all things, I could even call him “Charlie.”

     I found this fascinating at best, since God said (or was it Walsch – here I go again, again) that he and I and everyone else and everything else are one. And because I was called “Charlie” since my childhood, and since god and I are one, and since my self is also god, I might as well call god “Charlie”. Whenever I do this, I get reminded of my oneness with god, because I am Charlie and god is Charlie too, and that Charlie is talking to himself having nobody else in the room but me, Charlie. And here’s the bonus, I get reminded that I am a part or an individuation of God.

     I get reminded that I am a small god. This reminds me of that much used analogy about me being a drop in the big ocean and being THE ocean just the same.

     All of the foregoing is a backgrounder to what I wish to share here with you about spiritual experiences that Sandra’s text message was soliciting. And it all happened while I was in Cebu, the “cradle of Christianity” in the Philippines.

     I lost my job in August 2005, and for nine months I have been asking Charlie why he chose to experience joblessness in my person. “Experience it with somebody else, but not with me, please,” I said. When all of my wife’s jewellery were deposited in the pawnshop, when we were having a short supply of trash bags in the house because we were no longer able to do regular shopping for groceries, when people I thought to be my friends turned out to be mere acquaintances, and when those I never knew were friends surfaced in my life, the break suddenly came in May 2006. Finally, I thought, Charlie is fed up experiencing joblessness. But deep in my heart, I knew I had lessons to be learned from those nine months of financial crisis. For one, my friendship with Charlie deepened. I learned to forgive those “friends” who disappointed me and, most of all, realizations came that I was the creator of all this “mess.” I learned to accept and undo this “miscreation”, and even called it perfect.

     My Cebu experience was a test of the limits of my tolerance, acceptance, humility, self sacrifice, and faith in God. The culture of management in the company that hired me was contrary to everything I learned from experience about people and hotel management.

     Charlie, as always, was there as my support “group”, but only whenever I connected with him. In my aloneness (my family stayed in Manila), I suddenly realized that in my mind Charlie had no face to me at all. I am challenged when it came to visualization and I couldn’t put a face on Charlie! Here was a friend, a god, but my mind refused to visualize him as an old man, or even Jesus, as I regarded the Christ as one of the personifications of the Trinity. And though I have a developing friendship with him, he just couldn’t be Charlie.

     Christmas came and went and by the New Year another pressing problem came up. Some were problems with management but more on the monies we owed someone for our house. We had to pay a large sum by a certain deadline given us and the money will only be had if we were able to surmount a huge government bureaucratic process (in terms of time), which was impossible.

    “This calls for a miracle,” I told Charlie. But then, since you said you have no part in changing the circumstances of my life, more so in influencing people, which will be equivalent to thwarting their free will if you did, I guess I had to do the creation myself. However, if I were you and you were me, and since we’re one, then YOU will be doing the creation with me. Gotcha!

     Since this is a huge undertaking with a very short time frame due to the deadline given to us, I needed a stronger support mechanism to do it. I needed a face for Charlie. At the same time, I needed a miracle.

     And who is the only one in Cebu who is a proven miracle worker? There is no one else but the miraculous, centuries-old image of the Sto. Nino venerated at the Basilica Minore in downtown Cebu City.

     I had lumps in my throat when I visited the image for the first time. There was joy, there was faith, there was trust, and there was confidence in all the faces of the people praying to the image. And above all, there was friendship, friendship with the Sto. Nino! People unashamedly wave goodbye as they leave, throw flying kisses, and were bringing balloons (until the parish priest banned it).

     And here I was, enjoying the logic of Walsch’s “Friendship with God” yet these simple folks were enjoying this friendship even before the book came about, even without reading the book. And even without knowing that they already have an existing friendship with God, in the image of a child.

     Circa 1965. The place: Pasaje Galvan by Leon Guinto street, Malate, Manila. I was still in college. I was sickly. Blessed Martin de Porres of Lima, Peru revealed himself to a certain Mrs. Dulce Juco who was terminally ill. She will become a healer, assisted by the Blessed Martin. She was healed, built a very nice but small makeshift chapel inside their big house at Pasaje Galvan to honour Blessed Martin. He is the patron of the poor, the sick, and the needy. My mother and I became faithful devotees as we felt that we qualified in all three areas where Blessed Martin “specialized” in.

     Circa 1967. The Chapel is a full-blown shrine and Blessed Martin has been canonized as saint. Mystical manifestations of trance healings have been going on since the first apparition to Mrs. Juco. She goes into trance and St. Martin “enters” her body as the healing of the sick goes on. Sometimes it was not St. Martin. It was the Sto. Nino. Mrs Juco plays, rolls on the floor like a child, sings glories to god and to the trinity, and laughs with the faithful. We were all comfortable with the child who tip-toed in the presence of St. Martin.

     We had to have a Sto. Nino image at home, my mother and I agreed. Our statue was ordered and it was the kind that you dressed up, not Cebu’s typical Sto. Nino in red nor that of the Divine Child of Prague. I was so happy. I talked to the statue, I rubbed noses with it (until the paint on the image’s nose wore off), I looked at it eye to eye, which gave me great joy, teased it and, like the faithful folks in Cebu, I didn’t know I had developed a deep friendship with the child, with god.

     In retrospect, I said to myself, here was a friend I’ve known for almost 40 years, left abandoned in my mother’s house in Malate, when I started my own family, and more so when my mother passed away in 1993. And here I was in Cebu, renewing that friendship because of the current crisis I was having, asking for a miracle. I was knocking at the heart of an old friend.

     And then, like a revelation, oh my god, Charlie now has a face! I was so happy. The face of a long time young friend, who was also Charlie, disguised as a child. It now came full circle, a friendship that began 40+ years ago, a face for a “new found” friend in Charlie, the three of us together as ONE.

     This is my story for you. Charlie never left me, never abandoned me for a second. I just could not see. I didn’t even realize it until much later, until after these happy developments, that it was I that was found. I did not find god. He found me and invited me to be his friend because he wanted to – always and all ways. This is the greatest miracle of all.

     The miracle I was asking for came to pass and the person we owned money was paid in full. I am out of the management company, which was the first to get me and I am now with another, but benevolent, company in Cebu. The Sto. Nino image in Malate came to our house in BF Resort two weeks ago and once again occupies an honoured place in our home.

Charlie has a new name: Charlie/Pit for “Pit Senyor, Sto. Nino!” as shouted with joy in the streets of Cebu during the Sinulog Festival in January.