The Pandesal Seller

I am inspired to write this musing after reading Brother Jun-G’s entry Negosyong Pandesal. To make sense of this post, I encourage you to read first Negosyong Pandesal:

i sense a simple man,
who got used since childhood
with his almost empty hands,
open those while the rest were asleep.
it was economic – the pandesal-selling,
but breaking the dawn with his voice
is analogous to the Psalmist’s desire “to awake the dawn,”
so that pandesal-selling became an opening up
of the spirit to the approaching light.

the discipline of waking up early,
the doggedness to sell,
in other words – the nascent, growing singlemindedness,
the focus on purpose with those globular pandesal,
i assume this is where being singlehearted begins,
and it is a long journey from the mind to the heart,
counting all the detours and the crossroads.

it really makes me wonder,
why the only thing he seems to need to do
is to come back into full circle with pandesal?
i suspect it is less the desire for profit
than the remembrance of those dawn moments,
hard-wired in his brain,
when his spirit braved the dark alleys,
while silently soaring against the darkness of poverty,
or apathy,
or a little more convenience from an extended sleep.

The pandesal, to me becomes sacramental,
nudging him mysteriously to open up
to his light within,
and the sun’s,
and God’s,
while filling up those empty spaces of one’s stomach.
Eucharistic, i assume, in his “pandesal way”.
no wonder the conversation ended,
only to begin,
in the more open,
more silent,
Greater Eucharist.