[Oe List ...] ST March 21 OpEd

[Sunny Walker]

Jaime,

I love turning a bend and finding you there. Your prose is poetry and
reminds me of Rumi - deep and wise and ordinary and human and godly. I've
not been saving these - will you consider posting to the Repository?

 

Thanks - it's been a VERY long time since Majuro (and your visit to my
obscenely dog-haired couch in Denver - so sorry!) and life continues to the
full.

 

Sunny

 

Sunny Walker 

SunWalker Enterprises

303-587-3017 (cell)

303-671-0704 (home/office)

sunwalker at comcast.net

Aurora, CO

 

No mattter how far you've gone down the wrong road, turn back. ~ Turkish
Proverb

  _____  

From: oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net [mailto:oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf
Of Jaime R Vergara
Sent: Monday, March 19, 2012 8:24 PM
To: oe at wedgeblade.net
Subject: [Oe List ...] ST March 21 OpEd

 

With gratitude to Randy W. for the Rifkin quote. 

 

The usual caveat: curious, welcome; not, see you at the next bend.

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>
Sent: Tue, Mar 20, 2012 10:09 am
Subject: March 21 OpEd

The day my father gasped

 

It was an auspicious year, 1912.  On the 21st day of March a century ago was
born my Dad, from whom I was named and who receded as stately a Senior while
Junior grew in professional wisdom and became a man of his own.  My Mom used
to say that my Dad would rather wear his sons worn clothes than let them
wear his!  Much of his life was a celebration of the present and a hopeful
anticipation of the future.

 

1912 birthed China's first Republic and the formation of the Guomindang, a
long shimmering caesarean delivery by means of a bloody revolution that
festered long after the manifestoes of many combatants were sheathed on
cabinet folders.  The ill-fated Titanic made its maiden voyage.

 

A century before, Napoleon Bonaparte's undefeated French army met Russian
resolute defenses that later led Tchaikovsky to scribble his 1812 Overture,
which our Madison Avenue mind lords did not hesitate to mine for the
world-renown Lone Ranger and the Marlboro Man!  

 

The Philippines finally emerged after the American occupation with a
national identity and its Illustrados quickly merged their pocketbooks with
the imperial designs NYC's captains of commerce and industry, and married
their oligarchic privileges with the shakers and movers of Washington DC.

 

Jaime Sr. was the runt of a brood of 11 children.  He was two years older
than the first of many nieces that followed.  In fact, the family story goes
that as an infant, he was cared for by his eldest sister who had already
been married but seemed to have difficulties conceiving, and her care of my
father apparently got the maternal juices flowing enough to bring forth her
first born.  My Dad's first playmate and later close friend of his family,
was his niece but belonging to his own generation.

 

There is nothing special about recalling father's birth other than our
historical sense of calendar markings.  The use of "gasp" rather than
"birth" is our literary rendering of the moment of birth and death - the
first gasp into life, and the last out of it.  

 

We recall his centennial for what he left deeply embedded in my psyche, that
is, the facticity of one's birth is sufficient for the lifelong celebration
of life, in all its entirety.  This was not a religious belief or a
theological understanding.  It was an indicative daily lived, an intuition
that seemed to inhabit every cell of his flesh and bones, an insight gladly
shared in his teachings, mostly in the form of a pastoral ministry in the
United Methodist Church.  This was no Pollyanna optimism, no was it devoid
of real regrets and deeply felt disappointments.

 

He would have been at home with Jeremy Rifkin's definition of "faith" in his
book The Empathic Civilization:

 

     ...faith (is) the belief that one's life is worth living, and for that
reason alone, it (has) meaning in the larger scheme of things and therefore
(needs) to be lived fully in deep connection with others.

     ...faith...can be purloined and made into a social construct that
exacts obedience, feeds on fear of death, is disembodied in its approach,
and establishes rigid boundaries separating the saved from the damned.
Institutionalized religions, for the most part, do just that. 

 

Having myself taken the journey of perusing the width and breath of the
Judeo-Tradition, I happily landed on its genuine ecumenical side and,
thereby, afforded the chance to appreciate the rest of the world's
religions, its metaphysical evolution when it turned religious metaphors to
become seriously secular, to the wisdom of the scientific revolution that is
the legitimate offspring of the journey of human consciousness itself!

 

My Dad stayed with the religious metaphors of his upbringing, which I
forsook when "open hearts, open minds, open doors" became cynical shibboleth
suited for superficial heart-warming Wesleyan experience but found wanting
in the current realities of my time.

 

Our latest complete family picture of the first generation siblings (with
Mom) was taken on the all-family dinner after Dad's internment, memorable to
me since Dad was interred at the same time I was on my back while four holes
were poked on my belly to deal with an oversupply of gallstones.  More
religious relations were aghast when I characterized that moment as a
tete-a-tete between Dad and I while he was getting the shovel and I, getting
sliced with a scalpel!

 

In my decade-long visits to the CK P.O., I had a nudging acquaintance with a
retired Mr. Blanco who, I believe, is the father of a former government
functionary named John.  The son later went back to active military duty; I
made his acquaintance while engaged in one of Saipan's voluntary social
services.  With Mr. Blanco's blue hatted graying mane and autumn canvas
jacket, we would nod at each other; I did not ask what was on his mind, but
he was surrogate Dad in mine.

 

It has been awhile seen I last glimpsed Mr. Blanco at the P.O.  In a week,
Ching Ming (the dusting of the gravestones) is a time in China when we
remember and honor the beloveds who have gone before.  More than the
"thanks" that profoundly burps from the bowels of my being, for Dad and Mr.
Blanco, I live my life because by their quiet and ordinary living examples,
they managed to convey: You may live likewise!

 

 

 

 

 

  <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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