The trumpet of God

It’s not generally known that Interior and Local Governments Secretary Ronnie Puno and Narciso "Jun" Santiago, the husband of Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago, are bosom buddies when it comes to cockfighting. Santiago heads a major cockfighting organization, comprising well-heeled cockers who collectively bet millions in a single tupada or pintakasi.

To paraphrase a famous short story by our STAR Columnist (and former Education Secretary) Alejandro "Anding" Roces, every dedicated aficionado of this sport gets up every morning, and the first thing he does is stroke his cock.

Cocks play a prominent role in history, even in the Bible story.

It’s said that Jesus asked his leading Apostle Simon (later Peter) during the Last Supper whether Simon was truly devoted to Him. In reply, Simon vowed that he would forever be faithful to Our Lord. Hearing this, Jesus sadly remarked that before the night was over, Simon would deny Him three times – in short thrice "before the cock crowed."

Indeed, when Jesus was arrested later that night by soldiers in the Garden of Gethsemane, his Apostles scattered in panic. Among the most fearful was Simon (Peter) – thus, he panicked even more when a serving woman approached him and said she recalled, Simon had frequently been seen among the followers of The Nazarene. Simon – trembling – said: "I know him not!"

There is a Church called the "Cock’s Crow Church" on that spot to commemorate Simon’s denial of Christ. In fact when Simon-Peter realized he had, as Christ had predicted, denied knowing Him three times before the rooster crowed heralding the dawn, he fled the scene weeping bitter tears of shame and regret.

In any event, let’s leave that flashback to the past and return to more modern times. A few days ago, Jun Santiago celebrated his birthday in the Mindanao Room of the EDSA Shangri-La Hotel, with his close friend DILG Secretary Ronnie Puno among the most prominent guests. Miriam had reportedly insisted President GMA should attend – which she did.

Among those invited (literally summoned) to the feast were Philippine National Police Director General Arturo C. Lomibao and PNP Deputy Director General Oscar Calderon. Police Chief Lomibao is due to retire on July 5, his next birthday, but many people, including this writer, believe he ought to be extended for at least one, even better, two years. GMA is said to be inclined to extend General Lomibao’s tenure, but she is getting much pressure from Puno’s group who are doggedly trying to fast track a take-over of the PNP Chief’s position by their favorite, Deputy Calderon.

They aren’t even willing to wait for Lomibao’s "retirement day," are pressing La Presidenta to junk Lomibao earlier than July – giving him, as a sop, the Directorship of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI).

Why the rush to install their bata, General Calderon? Is there a "mission" they have in mind for him?

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Interviewed yesterday by ABS-CBN talk show host and newscaster Korina Sanchez, Chairman Ben Abalos Sr. of the Commission on Elections stated that former Supreme Court Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr., had submitted six names to the President for Appointment to the Comelec as part of the package of reforms he had drawn up for the poll body.

From these names, Abalos said, should be taken the three persons needed to fill the three existing vacancies in the Comelec.

One of the vacant slots was, of course, created when Commissioner Manuel Barcelona was not re-appointed by the President after he had been bypassed by the Commission on Appointments. The other two were vacancies left by the retirement of Commissioners Rufino Javier and Mehol Sadain last February.

Don’t you think it significant, however, that Justice Davide had recommended six names, not just three? This indicates that Davide wants to replace the entire Comelec crew, not just fill those three vacancies created by the exodus of Barcelona, Javier and Sadain. In sum, the three other recommendees are for the replacement of Chairman Abalos himself and the other two remaining Commissioners.

Surely, if the poll body is to present a new, credible face to the electorate, its membership must be composed of new, credible faces. Even the New Testament has a term for it. Old wine, the gospel says, is not poured into a new barrel lest the container burst, nor the new wine in the casket ruined by being mixed with the sour old wine.

Davide obviously intended to propose that a new Comelec oversee the coming 2007 elections. How can the coming mid-term elections be credible if the same Comelec which supervised the 2004 elections, questioned for alleged "cheating", will be the body counting and canvassing the ballots?

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In June 1983, this writer drove down from Hanover (the proud old Hanseatic city) to a small town named Celle, some 41 kilometers away. In those days, Celle had only 75,000 inhabitants who lived in simplicity in 16th and 17th century half-timbered houses (exactly like those Saxon houses and picturesque taverns and pubs you find across the Channel in the English countryside).

To get to Celle, my driver and I had to leave the Hamburg-Hanover Autobahn and resort to a narrow but well-asphalted country road. Who knows where Celle is? For one thing, God knows.

Why is this? Because in those days, the little town of Celle had what the Germans call a Turm Blaser. Everyday (in 1983, mind you), Sunday to Saturday, a 76-year old layman named Walter Milter climbed 234 steps all the way to the top of the tower of the Lutheran Stadtkirche (city church) in the heart of town to blow his trumpet. Milter’s trumpet call, even though he had once served in the German Wehrmacht during World War II, was not a call to arms, but a call to God. Day in and day out, rain or shine (or snow), aging Walter Milter made his pilgrimage twice a day.

He climbed those stairs to the tower at 6:30 a.m. every morning and at 6 p.m. – Angelus Time – every evening. Over the town would float the sweet, dulcet tones of his brass trumpet. The tune was always some religious hymn.

You could almost set your watch by Milter’s trumpet. But I had to say "almost" since in 1980 the painfully precise Walter suffered a heart attack, a coronary infarct. So he would be five to ten minutes "late" at times.

The doctor had warned Milter that he should stop climbing those 234 steps twice daily. Relax! his doctor warned. Walter evenly replied that if he should die, he would prefer to die in his tower – playing music for the Lord!

One misty and rainy dawn that June I went jogging around the old town determined to "ambush" Walter Milter when he descended from his tower. The clear and wonderful notes of his trumpet came right on the dot at 6:30 in the morning. It was Market Day and already the Schuhstrasse and the Brandplatz were abustle with vendors setting up their wares – instant gardens of green jars and technicolored flowers from petunias, begonias, chrysanthemums, to roses, tulips, pansies and violets, giant and juicy red strawberries (from Israel), Chiquita bananas from Panama, "Texas Star" oranges from the USA, green, yellow and red apples, Holland lemons, lettuce, carrots, artichokes, farm-fresh eggs at 26 pfennig apiece, highland potatoes and simple kartoffelen, pure honey from the local hives and jars of bee pollen (whatever for) – and, since May is asparagus time, tall stacks of bundled spargel at prices ranging from six to 13.50 Deutschemarks a kilogram.

Rolling vans were noisily parking, setting up mobile butcher-shops, and pungent-smelling cheese stalls on wheels.

The number 5, 6, and 9 buses were either parked or rumbling off on their appointed routes. The bus stop was at the foot of the church tower. The bored, waiting drivers in their blue-grey uniforms were scanning tabloids like the "Bild Zeitung" for the latest scandals, or thumbing through movie magazines.

Nobody looked up. No one seemed to listen. Walter’s trumpet was, to Celle’s citizens, as inevitable and ever-present as death and taxes. Imbedded in their subconscious. Truly, the philosopher Peter Altenberg once said: "God thinks within geniuses, dreams within poets, and sleeps within the rest of us."

And yet, with certainty, God listened to Walter Milter. I encountered him as he emerged from the side-door of the church – an erect six-footer, vigorous-looking in his dark blue captain’s cap, blue topcoat, swinging his trumpet in its scuffed brown-leather case. I accosted him. He spoke no English and so our stilted conversation was conducted in my halting German. How long had he been climbing his tower? Forty-five years, he answered. He is a shy, taciturn man. How long do you plan to go on doing this? "As long as I can," he soberly replied. Then he picked up his ration of bottled milk from a nearby doorstep, tucked it into a blue nylon bag, formally bent his head and waved goodbye, and turned a corner out of sight.

Milter, friends later informed me, was not a church elder or sexton subsidized by the church. He was a beamter, a civil servant, employed at city hall. Possibly he received a small stipend of "gratitude" from the church. His gesture was really a tribute to the Lord.

Even when he was serving in German Wehrmact, the army, during World War II, he would come home on leave as often as he could to blow his trumpet. This musical prayer must have worked. God protected Celle. Not a building was blasted by the American and RAF bombers which, in the final months of the war, with Hitler’s legions in full retreat, were darkening the skies with their bombs or brightening the night sky with their deadly flares. Thus Celle remains one of the best-preserved dream towns of Europe.

The only major casualty was the local military barracks and ammunition factory on the outskirts of town. This was because the German army instructed the town electrician and contractor who worked in the factory to blow it up before the Allied forces reached Celle. When the Yanks, the British and the Dutch marched in, they needed a barracks complex for themselves. Somebody pointed out that the electrical engineer who had demolished the compound had, in his possession, the original architectural plans for the old group of buildings. So, the Allies commandeered the same fellow to rebuild what he had just blasted to smithereens. They paid him well for the job. And he did it to everybody’s satisfaction.

I lost track of Walter Milter and his wonderful trumpet after that brief 1983 pilgrimage to Celle – but I’m certain that he continues to play his trumpet for God. If he’s done with his early stint, his bugle blows its golden tones in the chorus of Heaven.

God bless you, Walter, for having shown us the pathway to God’s heart in this Vale of Sorrows, uplifting our hearts with the power of your music – and your indomitable faith!

"Gott mit uns," God is with us, the Germans used to say in times of war. Thanks to men like Milter, God surely was even more gloriously with them, in the time of peace.