This year's birthday wish

During this past week, I celebrated my 61st birthday. It was a quiet celebration, spent simply by feeling very grateful for the blessings of a loving family, kind friends, good health and a comfortable life. As I started to blow my birthday candle, I paused – as I was not quite sure what to wish for.

I’ve celebrated thirty-seven of my 61 birthdays in my adopted country, America, and this particular birthday week has been marred by the tragic loss of lives in Minneapolis, New Orleans, and Dallas. Police shooting civilians, snipers shooting police. Incomprehensible and senseless. This week’s concentration of violence has spurred a national conversation about race in America –again. Some say it’s got nothing to do with race, some say it’s all about gun control, and most say it’s all about race.

I am an immigrant who came to America when I was 24, having grown in a homogenous society in the Philippines. I grew up without any  context of the complications of race in America. My first job was in New York, and I lived in New Jersey, and that’s how I got initiated into the “black-white” world view of America. I worked and became friends with people whose backgrounds I knew nothing about –who were different from me: they looked different, they acted different, and they spoke different. Our friendships were founded on a very simple basis: we liked each other.

I’m probably oversimplifying this view of the world. I did not go through the civil war, and I don’t have relatives who were slaves or slave owners. I do not know what it means to be segregated, and I wasn’t here in the violent 60’s. But I have lived here most of my adult life, birthed and raised our children here, continue to be a law-abiding, tax-paying US citizen, and, I’d like to believe, work hard at making a difference in the world. But, despite my purported age and wisdom, I still don’t know what to make out of this latest wave of senseless killings. I don’t know what to do about it, other than advocate for change; speak and work for access, inclusion and equity in the work place, and, continue to treat everyone I meet with respect and dignity.

Today, I went to church and the priest preached Gandhi’s famous words: “An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind”. Then he asked everyone to join him in praying St. Francis’ prayer for peace:

“Make me a channel of your peace. Where there is hatred let me bring your love.

Where there is injury, your pardon, Lord. And where there’s doubt, true faith in you.

O Master grant that I may never seek

So much to be consoled as to console,

To be understood, as to understand,

To be loved, as to love, with all my soul.

Make me a channel of your peace. Where there’s despair in life, let me bring hope.

Where there is darkness - - only light.

And where there’s sadness every joy.

Make me a channel of your peace. It is in pardoning that we are pardoned In giving of ourselves that we receive, and in dying that we’re born to eternal life. “

This is my birthday wish.