Between Heaven and Earth
I was all set to enroll in the ME program at AIM after September 2004. I wanted to learn formal structures and processes of running a business, after almost 30 years of managing the bank by intuition and common sense. For several years, I was already feeling the frustration of being clear about what I wanted to get done and fumbling around with the process of how to get it done. The ME course seemed the answer to my prayers.
On the day I dropped by the ACE office to inquire about the ME, I espied a brochure describing the MESODEV program. Aside from the fact that the course was being offered for a fixed rate of P300,000 (vs. the ME that was being priced according to size of the business, where I would fall in the highest/most expensive category!), there was something in its description that struck a chord in me. I imagined myself genuinely interested in, if not already on the track of becoming, a social entrepreneur.
Certainly, we had always stated that our mandate as a rural bank was to serve as a catalyst in countryside development – so wasn’t that social entrepreneurship? Even just the fact of being conscious of it all the time, enunciating it in our vision-mission statements, choosing to lend only for productive enterprises and not consumer items, opting for microfinance above salary loans?
So it was that I applied for and was accepted in the MESODEV program. But on our first session of the section, when Prof. Dacanay was asking us about the to describe the logic of our business, our primary market and as I was listening to my other sectionmates talk about their NGO environments, I began to feel restless and a bit out of place. When Fidel, another rural banker, finally presented and the professor kept pressing him to go further, deeper in his analysis of the description of what seemed to me a fairly simple description of the function of a rural credit institution, when she began talking about looking into changing the industry in relation to certain problems encountered by a set of borrowers, I felt dismayed. Frankly, I thought that was going a bit too far from what the original mandate of a rural bank was. We were supposed to make credit accessible to our rural constituents, not go about meddling in industry (other than rural banking or even financial intermediation) conditions, in the name of serving our clients in a fuller, more comprehensive way. I thought then that I might have made a mistake, misunderstood, what MESODEV was all about. And that perhaps, I should ask to transfer sections, even if it meant augmenting the tuition fee that was "subsidized" because it was lower than what I might have had to pay in I were in the regular ME.
So when we were asked to do the Serendipity Walk with a problem question at the back of our minds, I thought of the dilemna "ME or MESODEV? What did I really want to pursue?"
For days, I tried to follow the instructions to the letter – relax, meditate, put the question at the back of your mind, and go about doing other things. The "aha!" was supposed to just pop out of nowhere. One, two days…and still no "aha!" I read the book on Creative Intuition and again, tried the different strategies described in the chapters. I drank half a glass of water before sleeping – to try and remember if I would dream, what the dream was all about. I forgot to drink the second half immediately after waking up! I thought that maybe, that was why I could not remember any dream that would help me discern the answer.
The week-end passed and still no "aha!". I was beginning to entertain the thought of just sitting down to find the answer in a logical fashion. Or being honest enough to admit, when the time came, that no "aha!" had really happened. But the dilemna was real and I did want an answer to come my way, however else it would come.
Then several things happened. I received an email from a friend of an interview of Luigino Bruni, an economist that was one of those translating the experience of Economy of Communion into an economic paradigm. I forwarded the email to a cousin who was in New York and interested both in evangelical matters as well as in concrete manifestations of the Gospel applied in daily life, especially business life. I had shared the general principles of EoC* with her and it was a common point of interest.
Wednesday afternoon, as I was hearing Mass and praying for an answer to my dilemna, I gazed at the figure of Jesus on the cross. The thought came to me that He was both God and Man. I wanted to be a good, efficient, exemplary business person and be an agent for change at the same time. At that moment, both the ME and MESODEV had its attractions for those two facets of interest. It would have been easier to feel totally at home with just one of them, instead of feeling the tension between two seemingly opposing directions. I felt like I was straddling in the middle of both streams – and not wanting to give up one or the other.
The figure of Jesus on the cross was a figure of suffering. Surely He was suffering not just physically but also for the fact that there was tension between these two realities of His Being? At that moment, He seemed hung between heaven and earth. Did He want me to follow Him in this manner – of being in the world but not of the world, feeling the challenge and excitement of the business game but constantly being nagged by an inner voice about who my real customers were and needing to pull back, examine, re-think, re-do everything that was already familiar and which, in fact, I had set out to be better in?
I knew then that I would, at least for now, continue down the MESODEV path and not quit at the first instance of discomfort. At the very least, I should listen, read and know more about the true meaning of social entrepreneurship before deciding that it probably was not what I had in mind in enrolling for my masters at AIM. And if the tension was there, well, Jesus, Man-God, had suffered before me. And was I not to be His follower? Did I not, in fact, promise to see His face in every suffering, external or internal, and in this manner, accept,love and go beyond said suffering?
The following morning, before rushing of to school, I opened emails again and there was a reply from my New York-based cousin, reacting to the article I had sent her, and saying some friends of hers from her days in govt. service, were wanting to link up with those of us who were pursuing our businesses according to the Gospel values of stewardship, according to the EoC. Further, she had a suggestion (several, in fact) of possible points to consider in going beyond lending to micro-entrepreneurs and into other interventions such as intervening in transport and distribution of products of borrowers to ensure better prices for them, etc. Was this the "aha!" I was waiting for? Or mere coincidence, a confluence of events at a particular time?
In any case, it was the closest thing I had as an answer to the question put at the back of my mind. Whatever else it is, it will have to do for now.
On the day I dropped by the ACE office to inquire about the ME, I espied a brochure describing the MESODEV program. Aside from the fact that the course was being offered for a fixed rate of P300,000 (vs. the ME that was being priced according to size of the business, where I would fall in the highest/most expensive category!), there was something in its description that struck a chord in me. I imagined myself genuinely interested in, if not already on the track of becoming, a social entrepreneur.
Certainly, we had always stated that our mandate as a rural bank was to serve as a catalyst in countryside development – so wasn’t that social entrepreneurship? Even just the fact of being conscious of it all the time, enunciating it in our vision-mission statements, choosing to lend only for productive enterprises and not consumer items, opting for microfinance above salary loans?
So it was that I applied for and was accepted in the MESODEV program. But on our first session of the section, when Prof. Dacanay was asking us about the to describe the logic of our business, our primary market and as I was listening to my other sectionmates talk about their NGO environments, I began to feel restless and a bit out of place. When Fidel, another rural banker, finally presented and the professor kept pressing him to go further, deeper in his analysis of the description of what seemed to me a fairly simple description of the function of a rural credit institution, when she began talking about looking into changing the industry in relation to certain problems encountered by a set of borrowers, I felt dismayed. Frankly, I thought that was going a bit too far from what the original mandate of a rural bank was. We were supposed to make credit accessible to our rural constituents, not go about meddling in industry (other than rural banking or even financial intermediation) conditions, in the name of serving our clients in a fuller, more comprehensive way. I thought then that I might have made a mistake, misunderstood, what MESODEV was all about. And that perhaps, I should ask to transfer sections, even if it meant augmenting the tuition fee that was "subsidized" because it was lower than what I might have had to pay in I were in the regular ME.
So when we were asked to do the Serendipity Walk with a problem question at the back of our minds, I thought of the dilemna "ME or MESODEV? What did I really want to pursue?"
For days, I tried to follow the instructions to the letter – relax, meditate, put the question at the back of your mind, and go about doing other things. The "aha!" was supposed to just pop out of nowhere. One, two days…and still no "aha!" I read the book on Creative Intuition and again, tried the different strategies described in the chapters. I drank half a glass of water before sleeping – to try and remember if I would dream, what the dream was all about. I forgot to drink the second half immediately after waking up! I thought that maybe, that was why I could not remember any dream that would help me discern the answer.
The week-end passed and still no "aha!". I was beginning to entertain the thought of just sitting down to find the answer in a logical fashion. Or being honest enough to admit, when the time came, that no "aha!" had really happened. But the dilemna was real and I did want an answer to come my way, however else it would come.
Then several things happened. I received an email from a friend of an interview of Luigino Bruni, an economist that was one of those translating the experience of Economy of Communion into an economic paradigm. I forwarded the email to a cousin who was in New York and interested both in evangelical matters as well as in concrete manifestations of the Gospel applied in daily life, especially business life. I had shared the general principles of EoC* with her and it was a common point of interest.
Wednesday afternoon, as I was hearing Mass and praying for an answer to my dilemna, I gazed at the figure of Jesus on the cross. The thought came to me that He was both God and Man. I wanted to be a good, efficient, exemplary business person and be an agent for change at the same time. At that moment, both the ME and MESODEV had its attractions for those two facets of interest. It would have been easier to feel totally at home with just one of them, instead of feeling the tension between two seemingly opposing directions. I felt like I was straddling in the middle of both streams – and not wanting to give up one or the other.
The figure of Jesus on the cross was a figure of suffering. Surely He was suffering not just physically but also for the fact that there was tension between these two realities of His Being? At that moment, He seemed hung between heaven and earth. Did He want me to follow Him in this manner – of being in the world but not of the world, feeling the challenge and excitement of the business game but constantly being nagged by an inner voice about who my real customers were and needing to pull back, examine, re-think, re-do everything that was already familiar and which, in fact, I had set out to be better in?
I knew then that I would, at least for now, continue down the MESODEV path and not quit at the first instance of discomfort. At the very least, I should listen, read and know more about the true meaning of social entrepreneurship before deciding that it probably was not what I had in mind in enrolling for my masters at AIM. And if the tension was there, well, Jesus, Man-God, had suffered before me. And was I not to be His follower? Did I not, in fact, promise to see His face in every suffering, external or internal, and in this manner, accept,love and go beyond said suffering?
The following morning, before rushing of to school, I opened emails again and there was a reply from my New York-based cousin, reacting to the article I had sent her, and saying some friends of hers from her days in govt. service, were wanting to link up with those of us who were pursuing our businesses according to the Gospel values of stewardship, according to the EoC. Further, she had a suggestion (several, in fact) of possible points to consider in going beyond lending to micro-entrepreneurs and into other interventions such as intervening in transport and distribution of products of borrowers to ensure better prices for them, etc. Was this the "aha!" I was waiting for? Or mere coincidence, a confluence of events at a particular time?
In any case, it was the closest thing I had as an answer to the question put at the back of my mind. Whatever else it is, it will have to do for now.
posted by Fair Lady at 8:32 AM
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