Companions on the Way. Dear reader, you may have noticed that this essay is essentially about my life-journey, too. Allow me then a few lines about the significant influences that have shaped my Christian convictions and the alternative reading of the ‘Our Father’ of my childhood.

With me in my life-journey are co-travelers.^[4] They are persons who have influenced my person and mission either in their writings or ways of life or both. It is also important to consider that I have taken a route where my significant contact or immersion with the poor who struggle to transform human affairs into humane and just ones, and my assimilation of their written as well as unwritten expressions of wisdom have been precious courses I took from and still continue to learn in the ‘University of Life.’ Life itself, I believe, is still learning par excellence so long as the student is willing to listen well to life’s best professor, God himself, who, of course, speaks through persons and events.

Now that we have mapped out the panorama of our journey, we move on to unveil the alternative reading of the ‘Our Father’ of my childhood.