Imelda the messenger

God really works in mysterious ways, rendering it difficult, if not impossible, to understand his wisdom. We may weave our own interpretation of what God may be trying to say and never put a finger on the truth until it is eventually revealed.

Very often we are struck by the simplicity of God’s truth. We chide ourselves for complicating what, to God, is utterly plain. We dance circles around a situation or problem, not knowing until the end that the path through it is but straight and narrow.

The news in the Philippines the last few days seemed all about its women leaders. Cory Aquino was in hospital with cancer. Gloria Arroyo was in hospital too, to make sure she had no swine flu from her latest foreign trip. And Imelda Marcos threw a lavish birthday party.

Was God trying to tell the Philippines something? Was there something in the confluence of events that drew these three women back on the human stage and there play out scenarios that are at once different but the same?

The circumstances attending the women seemed to reflect their persons. Aquino, ever prayerful, was probably being tested by God. Arroyo, the globe-trotter, was being tested for the (global) pandemic. And Marcos, the imeldific, tested herself if she still had the glitz.

The circles surrounding them were instructive. Aquino still had her usual yellow brigade, plus a thorn among the roses — Joseph Estrada — the pain from whose recent company she doubtless has learned to endure gracefully, if inexplicably.

Arroyo, of course, had her usual coterie of official family, friends and supporters. But they must keep their literal distance. Having them near defeats the purpose of isolation and quarantine. Besides, they already have mostly been together overseas.

And then there is Imelda. No matter what her reputation is, no matter what people say about her, one has to give it to this Waray. She is simply incomparable. Even if you hate her, you end up loving her for simply still being there.

Thus, of these three most influential Filipino women, it is probably through Imelda and her relationship with the Filipino people that God (my own interpretation anyway) wants best to describe our national character and explain why the Philippines is what it is today.

When Aquino talks about God and morality, she sounds like she has a direct line to heaven. When Arroyo talks of politics and economics, she acts as if the world revolves around her. But when Imelda talks of beauty and love, she is simply being a girl.

For all the sins of the Marcoses, both real and imagined, there is an element of straightforwardness that is grudgingly admirable. At the height of their power, the joke was that the most thriving Philippine industry was mining: “That’s mine, that’s mine, that’s mine.”

There were no ifs or buts about it, no hyprocrisy that, in the eventual exposure of sin, leaves a bad taste in the mouth. It may be wrong, but they never hid it, they never pretended it to be otherwise. And that is so unlike some of who you must surely know.

At her birthday party, one of the guests, Bayani Fernando, gifted Madame with a very pretty pair of pink shoes. Imelda gingerly lifted them up for the cameras to focus on, and she blurted, flushing on the cheek like a debutante: “Look, I have a new pair of shoes.”

Even God must have loved her that moment (again, my own interpretation, so go invent yours). At that uniquely Philippine crossroads, God brought together not our men but our women, who we either love or hate the most. What was God saying? My take? Look at Imelda.