It was January 9, 2011... when I've had this jeepney ride with my mom. We were heading halfway to our destination when a middle-aged guy came riding inside the public vehicle. He's wearing an ordinary black shirt paired up with a dirty-looking maong short. He got tunnels in his both ears including some piercings in his face. Most of all, the one that caught my attention and all the passengers in the jeepney as well was that the man wasn't wearing any footwear, not even a single pair of slippers. Aside from the fact that his feet was totally dirty and muddy. I suppose that everyone who saw him that day will think that he's insane. The only thing that convinced me that he's not nuts was when he paid for his fare. He knows his destination as well as his change for his fare and he speaks simple but clear and normal too. He's going into somewhere far while he knew that he's barefooted. He's also not ashamed on his looks. And I'm surprised when I saw that he's carrying a rosary in his pocket as he pulled out his money. So the story goes...
I suddenly remember the man that I saw that day who's barefooted and who looks like a drug addict and got those body piercings on him. He is a devotee of the Black Nazarene! And his faith obviously doesn't reflect on his outside appearance. It made me think and smile somehow that faith in God should really start and come from within and not on the external looks.
