[Oe List ...] Fwd: The Resurrected Human OpEd

Thu Apr 5 22:40:45 EDT 2012

Just one more for the season!

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: Fri, Apr 6, 2012 10:38 am
Subject: The Resurrected Human OpEd

Editorial,

I assume we have a Saturday edition.  If not, run it on Monday.  (Have included a Monday rewrite at the end of the piece, should this be the case.)

The Resurrected Human

Friday got uspast the trek of contrition up the Mt. Tapochaos of our imaginings.  Filipinos in the manner of Iberian penitentsand flagellants perform various acts of self-immolation including the actualnailing into a cross, now an annual observance in the Province of Pampanga,with not a few tourists and media folks in avid attendance.

Sabalu Gloria in Chalan Kanoa is a time of quietwaiting, the not too strenuous dusting of the cobwebs of our lives, just a fewsegue spaces to the Qingming (dustingof the gravestones of ancestors) currently being observed in China.  The assumption is that the liturgical journeyof this week has been an intense one of meditation, contemplation, andprayer.  Where the culture of death inIberian Christendom preeminently prevailed and the aura of despair shrouded ourforebodings, the sunrise of Easter's empty tomb come barreling into humanconsciousness as the immeasurable surprise of the mysterious and the awesome.

Easter is morethan prettily arranged tulips and daffodils, roses and irises on a white-lacedcovered mantle.  Nor has it much to dowith over productive bunnies leaving eggs in every bush.  "Incarnation" and"resurrection" as abstracted paradigm image-handles provide bookendsof the human journey in the Christian dispensation.  

Incarnationaffirms unconditionally the meaningfulness of existence even in lowlybirth.  Resurrection celebrates thefreedom to live again, given what naturally seems to be a demonstratedpropensity to want to escape one's situation into all forms of deadlyillusions; the empty tomb gives significance to the willful completion offinite existence when we rise from the living dead even when the terminus is inthe ignominy of a crucifixion!  Many ofus have gotten into the rot of the walking dead that to have the pinch of lifereawaken our consciousness comes as a shocking but liberating event.

However,"Resurrection man" in popular usage has referred to sadistic violencein Ireland in a novel and a movie, a DC comic book superhero, and thewidespread practice of body snatching particularly when cadavers were in demandwith the ascension in science of anatomy as a discipline in the Universities.

We refer to resurrection in this reflection, as afact of nature, and an element of human choice. It should not be confused with reincarnation, the return of one'sessence into a younger body; bodily resurrection is a reality in this side ofthe grave before the worms take over six feet below the ground.  It is the metamorphosis of the butterfly outof the cocoon.  In the medieval ages,bodily resurrection, touted by wishful thinking of a Nile-originating heavenlyother Other World, a pre-Copernican symbol that has outlived its usefulness, isnot dissimilar to the tian (sky) and di (under the earth) fortune telling partsof ancient Chinese cosmology.

Dreaming of "heaven"elsewhere, however, remains an item among "fundamentalist" circles inthe popular piety of the Judeo-Christian-Moslem communions.   That is not what we mean in thisreflection.  We mean 'resurrection' asthe hardheaded insistence that Zion of the promised land is actualgeography.  We do not agree with much ofJewish aggression in Palestine, but we do recognize the right of a people oflive out their chosenness in geography. 

The Christianshad their Ecclesia, the household ofthe Way Life Is, but then turned their chapels and cathedrals, steeples at thecorner of Elm and Main streets, as escapist havens away from the din of common laborand celebrative fest.  Deterioration ofthe Prophet's Mecca and New Jerusalem into the domain of Jihad, and the promise of belly dancing 72 virgins awaiting asuicide bomber in after life adds to the pretensions of the la-la-land natureof paradise. 

We takeresurrection in the same way that we speak of being born-again!  In this life, in the here and now, ithappens.  No need to textually refer toscriptural passages.  Just dive into thedepth of one's life and the truth stares one in the face.

As one Ecclesia divine once opined (don'tremember who or how the insight was worded), "The Christ Word or Happening does not depend on any historicaltradition; it is a process that is part of life itself. There is no content,behavioral or historical or sociological or psychological or religious oreconomic, that is required for the happening to occur. It just happens, andwhen it does, everything is transformed."

I no longertrade in the literary commerce of the "Christ Word", but I am nostranger to the paradigm shifting that occurs in life.  It is my conscious task to point to thatsurprising happening that we have tried to run away from, and affirm theenigmatic consciousness that follows which renders all fidelity to all kinds ofheretofore human construction kits of security and certainty (fame, status,achievements, honors, etcetera) non-operational.  The empty tomb comes as sheer promise tofreely recreate anew.

We print this onSabalu Gloria, if only to defychronology and declare that the happening of transformation is a dailyoccurrence and option in our lives.  

When the sunrises in the morn, may you be a sitting duck of the tornado and tsunami oftransformation, and be a resurrected human in the flower vase of Easter!

*****

(Monday version)

We print this on Good Monday morning of our lives, if only to defy chronology and declare that the happening of transformation is a daily occurrence and option in our lives. 

When the sun rose on Sunday morn, we trust you were sitting ducks of the tornado and tsunami of transformation, and be a resurrected human in the flower vase of Easter!

 Jaime R Vergara

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

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