[Oe List ...] A child of the bending

[Jaime R Vergara]

The usual caveat: if curious, welcome.  Not, meet you at the next bend.

For unto us
 

By Jaime R. Vergara
Special to the Saipan Tribune 
 
I was surprised when one of the officers of the International Education Center of Shenyang Aerospace University here in China inquired about our religious affiliation. I suppose, she was concerned that we are properly greeted this Christmas season, it being of religious significance to many in the foreign teaching staff.

On display among our staff is evangelical passion, high Catholic dramaturgy, Quaker “simple gifts,” Presbyterian confidence, all quite familiar to us having drank deeply from its wells.  Nipponese colleagues are oblivious to Kyodan oikumene's lording guilt and moralism on life and pleasure; young Calvinist Hanggul capitalists spread bulgogi around while bells jingle in Seoul's luxuriant shopping malls, and an Indo-Aryan descendant of the Persian plateau has esoteric habits from Down-Under, but there is something fresh about the blatant commercialism that attends China's celebration of Christmas.  My quiet sentiment goes with Bolshevik colleague who does not “believe any of that.”  

Whatever luggage one brings to this festive season, the common global denominator these days is the cynics' Christ Ma$$ as a Chamber of Commerce affair rather than a moment of destinal reflection, communal meditation and individual accountability. 

In my life's journey, on Christmas of 1968, the Apollo 8 mission sent photos of the blue planet rising from the pockmarked lunar landscape.  Suddenly, the chorister's For unto Us a Child is Born took on an existential question of identity, vocation and lifestyle.  My communal heritage threaded through the Chanukah story of Moses' leading the exodus from Egypt Pharaoh's bondage, wandered in Sinai, and of the chosen people, only Joshua was allowed to cross the Jordan.  Centuries later, the sentiment will be repeated by those carted out by the Assyrians when they wailed, “how can we sing to Zion by the rivers of Babylon?”   

Followers of the Christos personalized that story with their own Yoshua Ibn Nazareth, who wandered through Palestinian dry hills before confronting the illusory powers of Jerusalem and was granted the ignominious award of a Roman crucifixion. 
That story in Christo Rei post-Constantine spun the Christ-mass story from the nativity scene to the power of the empty tomb, and a sacrificial life vocation against the backdrop of the obedient Magnificat and three eastern potentates' genuflecting meekly in lowly Bethlehem. 
Europe's Medieval period crowned the image of living the-way-life-is (YHWH) into the imperial throne, sending the hero Jesus to glory, and rendering the proletarian Iesu inaccessible to the masses.  The monastics settled in the ministrations of mother Mary while the nuns pined for a sanctified walk with the beloved in the garden alone! 

The story of the Greek's ‘life force’ logos, for all its attendant cultural dressings (sophistry, propaganda, mythology, metaphor, public relation, spin), was singularly clear about its message on human identity, vocation and lifestyle. 

Identity is unequivocal: “From dust you came, to dust you shall return.” The supreme affirmation was firm: “thou art my son (sic) of whom I am well pleased.”  Not unlike the fact of our birth, when Dad's winsome 200 millionth sperm won my life's lottery, and Mom's ovule-lutionary chose me from a myriad of possibilities attest to decisions freely already made from the outset.  We are, in Christ-mass imagery, incarnate.  And how dare we let such identity go to waste! 

Vocation is unmistakable: “This is my body, broken; my blood, spilled out. Take, eat and drink, all of it.”  My brokenness is my wholeness, to be embraced totally, and the spilling of one's being unconditionally expended.  The crucified carpenter of Galilee asked his followers “to go do likewise.”  “No love is greater than this,” the voice of mystery intones, “that one gives his life on behalf of another!”  Vocation is total expenditure, for the other!  Not accumulation of wealth in banks, or assets in Garapan, or acquisition of power in capital hill and the capitol, will sate the human quest for significance and meaning. 

Lifestyle is nothing but sheer freedom. Paul who came after the “first among many brothers (sic)” admonished the Galations: “It is to freedom that we have been called.”  Not authority but authenticity. The lifestyle of free ambiguous choices turns out to be the ecclesia's (church) vision and mission.   

Now, the global communion has transcended the cross and the crescent, the sutra and the chant, the silence and the taiji, the bread and wine, and we have since taken to tutoring Zhongguo students in the lingua franca of the new global order. 

So when I wish one and all a Merry Christmas, one might hang on to the image of the magical manger and the angelic newborn babe in Europe's medieval art, but it is the triune concern of identity, vocation, and lifestyle (my teaching curriculum, I might add), that gnaws at everyone's heart, to which we now call the CNMI's attention. 

So, may this holiday season occasion personal reflections of identity, vocation and lifestyle in the wondrous journey we call “life”.  For unto us, indeed, a child is born! That would be YOU.  (Jesus already led the way.) You do not even have to be a Christian to play.  Your move.

Vergara is a regular contributor to the Saipan Tribune's Opinion Section. 
 




j'aime la vie


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