[Oe List ...] Fwd: Good Friday

[Herman Greene]

Thanks Jaime

 

  _____  

From: oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net [mailto:oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf
Of Jaime R Vergara
Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2012 1:28 AM
To: oe at wedgeblade.net
Subject: [Oe List ...] Fwd: Good Friday

 

We took the whole week off.

j'aime la vie

 

-----Original Message-----
From: jrvergarajr2031 <jrvergarajr2031 at aol.com>
To: editor <editor at saipantribune.com>; Mark_Rabago
<Mark_Rabago at saipantribune.com>; jayvee_vallejera
<jayvee_vallejera at saipantribune.com>
Cc: NAFAUM <NAFAUM at Yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wed, Apr 4, 2012 1:19 pm
Subject: Good Friday

Forgive. 

 

The Culture of Death

 

The Passover feast is a commemoration of the liberation of the Jewish people
from their enslavement in the quarries of Egypt.  Save for the Babylonian
captivity, the enslavement was by default, almost like bonded servitude
experienced by many contract workers around the world.  Contracted service
is a quantifiably monetized value, assessing labor for its marketability,
not its intrinsic human worth.

 

The New Testament witness has Paul testifying that "sin abounds, but grace
abounds much more."  The history of Christendom missed that crucial
testimony.  Much of Christianity leaves a trail of warring factions in the
ravages of war.  As late as Georgie Bush's Presidency and his retinue of
Armageddon warriors mapping foreign and defense policies, we heard
articulated the justification of the preemptive offense as a military
strategy.  Most recently, we heard the Obama administration tick off the
conditions when it was justifiable to 'salvage' an American!

 

All these in the name of security, which has become our God!  It is no
comfort to haul the pacific Jesus of the anti-war movement.  Jesus did not
shy away from recognizing the ways of violence when he told followers that
his message divides kin from the same household.  As with the poor, violence
will always be with us.  The facticity is not the contradiction; designation
of cause, and the accountability of blame, is.  

 

The culture of death was enshrined when Augustine traced human depravity to
genesis in the garden by Mesopotamia.  The theistic creator of the Universe
condemned but sustained human degradation itself.  Such force had to be
appeased, and the theology of salvation was not too far behind.  Jesus was
the substitutionary son in the Abrahamic tradition, save the older story
spared the child.  In the Golgotha story, the child is sacrificed as
befitting the requirements of a vengeful sovereign. 

 

Ah, but the images we hold in our imagination determines the texture and
direction of our behavior.  We miss out on the true nature of education when
we insists on students passing tests of memorized data rather than wringing
them through the rigors of self-consciously confronting the images they live
by.

 

The "hoodie" in the Martin Trayvon case has since come to fore as an example
of our delving in the devil of the details rather than confronting the
import of the image in the big picture.  Gerardo made the mistake of airing
advice to parents not to let their kids be off with their hoodies (a popular
hooded sweat shirt).  Even the White House promo on hoodies got withdrawn
after the Florida incident, yet no one seems ready to confront the climate
of fear has shrouded our living arrangements as evidenced in our gated
neighborhoods.  The volunteer watchman gunman Zimmerman himself admitted
that it was already dark and it was raining, so Martin had his hood up.  

 

America sadly has become the biggest importer of the culture of death in our
time.  Our self-story has been that we were dragged kicking into the two
World Wars.  Not so, our historians now note.  The Civil War was conducted
with wide-open eyes.  Our track record on non-European immigrants is not a
rosy one.  Our duplicity from the Maine at the Havana harbor, and on to the
Gulf of Tonkin resolution is now a matter of record, and the forgiving
Filipinos mired in their theistic fatalism have all but forgotten Dewey's
betrayal at Manila Bay (but now claim an unofficial seat around American
hearths as the 51st State of the Union).

 

We hesitate to use the word "forgiveness" to apply to a case in a culture
where revenge is all but sanctioned.  But I heard the word used in China's
CCTV9 lexicon, its English news station, in the recent account of Zhang
Yanwei, mother of Zhang Meng, her 25-yr old son who 6 years ago was
senselessly stabbed eight times by a gang of eight young man until he bled
to death.  A dispute arose over a girl the young Zhang was walking home.

 

To lose a child in a one-child society can be the most tragic thing to
happen to a mother.  Yanwei kept a journal of her "conversations" with her
son while the case was on trial.  The verdict was the death penalty to be
implemented immediately for the primary crime perpetrator and life sentences
to the remaining seven.  The family of the convicts appealed, sent a feeler
to Yanwei for a conference of reconciliation, a procedure allowed in the
Chinese judicial system that affects verdicts.  

 

Zhang Yanwei's "conversations" with her son led her to realize that her son
was the "forgiving" kind.  She consented to a verdict of suspended
implementation of the death penalty.  The news focused on the lifting of a
heavy burden off Yanwei's shoulders as her kin were adamant in following the
vengeful dictates of their hearts, while hers in honor of her son went the
path less traveled.

 

The Gospel accounts on Jesus' Friday have Mark and Matthew crying the
Psalmist's anguish, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani!  Luke offered words of
forgiveness, and John, chronologically the last to be written, affirmed
Jesus' finitude and the almost Islamic abject surrender of the completed
life.

 

It is the reality of forgiveness that is the antidote to the culture of
death.  Once a divine prerogative, it is now a human choice.  Alas, Jesus
still remains crucified.

 

  <http://presence.mail.aol.com/mailsig/?sn=jrvergarajr2031>  Jaime R
Vergara 

 

All of yesterday, thanks; all of tomorrow, yes; all of today, let it be!

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