Changing our attitudes as a Christmas gift!

Today is Christmas Eve and a time for kids to ponder, whether they were naughty or nice… of course in reference to the coming of Santa Claus. This is my 21st Christmas column and we’ve always shared with our readers our Christmas thoughts, focusing on what we learned from the Bible and our Catholic Catechism that Christmas is about love… the love of God our Father to his creation, the human race, where in John 3:16 we recall the very words of our Lord Jesus Christ when he said, “For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son so that whoever believes in him would not perish, but shall have everlasting life.”

To kids, they may try to be nice so Santa won’t be sore at them, but for us adults, we should think of Christmas as God’s way of allowing us to enter into a sacred or divine union with Jesus, through the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, after all, in John 6:35, Jesus said, “Amen, Amen I say unto you, unless you eat the body and drink the blood of the Son of Man, you shall have no life in you. If you eat my body and drink my blood, you shall have eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day.”

Yes, the God who gave us the Universe and created us, sent his only begotten Son Jesus to save us from our sinfulness or man’s inhumanity to man. Yet God in all his wisdom knew that his Son Jesus would be sacrificed and lifted up on the cross to show us the depth of his love. Yet we live in a reality that God is so distant and faraway from us. This is due to the fact that many Catholics are so ignorant of Scripture. In case you have forgotten St. Jerome once quipped, “Ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ!”

Tomorrow is Christmas Day and by now we’re all but finished with our Christmas shopping and it is the time for gift-giving. I’m sure most of us would give something that we can buy in a store or a shopping mall. But there is something that we can give that doesn’t cost us money and it would be appreciated not only by its recipients, but looked upon with favor by God.

Let me tell you what it is. Last week, persons with disabilities (PWDs) asked the Regional Development Council (RDC-7) to equalize opportunities by urging local government units, national agencies and the business sector to follow B.P. no.144 better known as the Accessibility Law, which is based on international standards. This appeal was made by our friend Ms. Geraldine Ruiz who informed the RDC that the Philippines are a signatory to the convention on International Accessibility.

Ms. Ruiz pointed out that today, the population of PWD in this country has reached 8.86 million, which is about 10% of our country’s population. 80 percent of PWDs live in poverty and 98 percent of children with disabilities do not get any formal education. The reason for that as Ms. Ruiz pointed out is, “No equal opportunities to education, employment, information, independent living and other rights because of an inaccessible environment, transportation and the negative attitude of society.” Now aren’t we all part of this society that has a negative attitude to persons with disabilities? Don’t you think that giving PWD’s a positive attitude would be a great Christmas present to these disadvantaged sector? It wouldn’t cost you any money if you changed your attitude towards this disadvantaged sector.

But wait! But don’t we already have the Accessibility Law? Yes we do and it is celebrating its 25th year of non-implementation! When my sister Adela Kono went to Japan in 1989 when she trained with JICA on the accessibility, Japan was already highly-accessible to disabled persons despite the fact that they didn’t have any laws on accessibility. Her trainors were even amazed that the Philippines were very much ahead of Japan in having an accessibility law. Yet the reality today is we are zero on implementing our laws!

I was with my sister in Japan three weeks ago and I personally witnessed how disabled friendly are Japanese cities. Their sidewalks are lined for blind persons who use a walking stick; they have a depression along the pedestrian crosswalk for people with wheelchairs. In the Narita International Airport terminal, they even have a special escalator that stops for wheelchairs, although they still need to be more disabled friendly on their tourist buses. This is due to the Japanese attitude towards disabled persons.

Let me point out that ramps or toilet facilities for disable persons can also be of good use for the elderly and pregnant women. So it is a matter of changing our attitudes towards this sector, rather than obeying the minimum requirements of the accessibility law. So it is my Christmas wish that we Cebuanos as a society change our attitudes towards PWDs after all it would not cost us anything to change our outlook. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once quipped, “It is one of the most beautiful compensations in life…that no one can sincerely help another without helping himself.”