[Oe List ...] Reformatted "Journey Rap: Occupy Lent" with spelling correction

Mon Apr 2 02:47:07 EDT 2012

We gleefully (though in proper Holy Week demeanor!) recycled Ellie's rap in the Monday OpEd.

Here's Tuesdays, a familiar story and retelling in this listserv, which we delight in retelling in whichever which way available, in our ESL.  Sending it out to this crowd with the usual caveat: curious, welcome; not, see you at the next bend.

Each One Cares forTwo

Two coins on one basket mark Yoshua Ibn Nazareth's lastvisit to Jerusalem by Mark of the first NT Gospel account, two generationslater.  The first marker is the poor figtree that gets cursed for not bearing fruit, and the second, the indignationover the moneychangers in the Temple for living off financial instruments atthe expense of those who really labor to earn their dinarii and shekels.  Making profit out of the exchange ofcurrencies is what financial institutions do, creating illusory phantom wealth,but nevertheless, exercising actual power and influence!

The conservative impulse to condemn unproductivity ofindividuals, not so much because it is suicidal not to care for one's self asthat it puts the onus of social responsibility to create social nets to save"laziness" and "failure" in the hands of the wealthy onesand publicly mandated societal institutions, has just passed the House in itsintent to privatize Medicare and Medicaid, among others.  Deeply ingrained is a deep distrust over thegenuine accountability of public structures, a repulsive presumption but heldwidely and regrettably, with seemingly good reasons.  

The so-called economic liberalization adheres to themythology of the 'invisible hand' of the market that guides well the destiniesof social capital if left unfettered by regulatory interference.  The Chicago boys have shown evangelical sealin promoting this gospel, and its short-term effect lauded in the streets ofSantiago under Pinochet is much heralded amongst economic theorists.

Bill Clinton, a popular and high-approval rating 42nd USPresident, noted for his first political campaign with the slogan "the economy, stupid,"proceeded upon assumption of office to leave the financial giants and the stockmarket alone to its devices, leaving the accountants' ledger with surplus afterhe left office, but alas, most of it, illusory that did not hold water whensquandered by the younger Bush's wars of adventure.

Holy Week in Christendom is a time of meditation (learningfrom memory and recall), contemplation (being radically and affirmativelypresent to the present), and prayer (actively wedging one's being in thereformulation of the future, by the GoG, but over my dead body, as it were).  Our time sure requires a lot of praying, notof the kind where we sit in the comfort of cushioned dagans but in the liturgical sense of throwing one's body in thebarbwires of history.

One of my teaching colleagues in the US eastern seaboardpromotes a program that invites each reading learner to teach two.  As a pedagogical tool, learning a subject isbest accomplished when taught, so learners seek not only a learning partner butanother object of pedagogy as well. Learning is thus reinforced, at least, three times!

We borrow this image in our prayerful stance this Holy Weekfor what happens in the practical import of "each one care fortwo."  In China with the urbansingle child policy, we witnessed two parents doting on one "littleemperor", and the society is now awakening to the rapid greying of itspopulation into senior citizens' wards, so the scramble is on at thegovernmental level for an adequate response to an unprecedented phenomenon, andthe unusual increase of cases of parents taking their children to court forfilial neglect!

This is beyond the usual injunction of "loving oneanother".  It is an invitation foreveryone to consciously and freely decide to be a support structure of twoother beings, whether it be physically, emotionally, mentally orinstitutionally.

We foist this picture particularly among those who considerthemselves followers of one who dared confront the powers-that-be in his time.The medieval interpretation of that act tended to be a substitutionary one, ofthe innocent liege lord taking the place of a convicted 'sinner' deprived ofthe empires' feast until properly "saved", with all the romanticismand sentimentality in the telling.  

The ancient one is really about an ordinary guy who ineffect said to his enrobed contemporaries and peers in Jerusalem, "You arewaiting for the Messiah, an Elijah to deliver you from the rule of theRomans.  Well, I have good news foryou.  No one is coming, and I who tellyou that truth is the only Messiah you will ever get.  So, you want to get well?  Roll up your sleeves, pick up your life andwalk!"  Those with the faith to see, saw the truth, let Yoshua aka Yohoshua& Iesu earn the appellation of KristoRai. 

Unfortunately, in the retelling of the Passion of the Christstory, like Mel Gibson's movie and the Oberammergau Passion Play, it is stuckin the medieval retelling and ecclesiastical orthodoxy requires faithfulness tothe old form rather than the function.

Back to the fig tree and the moneychangers, or, if we weregiven liberty to restate, the entitled perennially dependent on the dole, onthe one hand, or the rapacious usurer and speculative investor, on the other,are properly condemned options.  Caringfor two, beyond the self-centered replacement of one's self, is an offeredoption, a rather very Christian one, if we may add, and that's the caring-for-twopath, and my invitation to others this way this week.

Let us meditate.  Letus contemplate. Let us earnestly pray!

j'aime la vie

-----Original Message-----
From: Ellie Stock <elliestock at aol.com>
To: jpc2025 <jpc2025 at triad.rr.com>; jsanders <jsanders at bconnex.net>; dshahn31 <dshahn31 at gmail.com>; SVESjaime <SVESjaime at aol.com>
Sent: Wed, Mar 28, 2012 5:22 am
Subject: Reformatted "Journey Rap: Occupy Lent" with spelling correction

Hi folks,

I'm resending "Journey Rap: Occupy Lent" (attached), reformatted and with a spelling correction.  

Ellie

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