[Oe List ...] Fwd: Tuesday OpEd from Jaime

[Nancy Lanphear]

Thank you Jaime.

Love,

Nancy

On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 2:51 AM, Jaime R Vergara <svesjaime at aol.com> wrote:

> This was on the Tuesday edition of the ST, for those who might be
> interested.
>
> j'aime la vie
>
>  *Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In
> all, Celebrate!*
>
>
>  *A candle for Janice*
> * *
> American Janice of our acquaintance formerly taught in the Philippines,
> then married a Filipino who worked for Eastman Kodak in Rochester, New
> York.  They acted as guardians (an organizational and functional category)
> to a social movemental force I was an active member of in the 70s and the
> first half of the 80s, operating out of Chicago, Illinois.  We performed as
> a global servant (word used intentionally rather than the neutral
> “service”) force in human (economic, political, and social) community
> development.
>
> The group labored under a high intensity of social engagement for almost
> three decades, then organizational inertia and entropy set in, but the
> group had enough selfhood that when it realized its meeting its own body
> needs replaced its passion for its mission, it intentionally dissipated out
> of being with the same lucidity as it did in its own analysis of the rise
> and decline of other organizations that preceded it.  It was called Order:
> Ecumenical, for those of us who thought it was revolutionary to be *oikumene
> *when others were parochial in their religious orientations.
>
> Of course, being ecumenical grew old and irrelevant so fast that it is
> just as well the group disbanded.
>
> I’ve used the word “intentional” in two paragraphs now.  A global network
> of "those who care" (nebulous but real) intentionally remained in touch
> while each expended one’s self in one’s own burst of light – into “a
> thousand light”, in elder George Bush’s imagery.  The group’s program arm
> was actually referred to by the GOP of Orange County in US congressional
> record as “communist”, so the group’s dissipation into numerous lights in
> essentially GOP terminology, is more descriptive rather than ideological.
>
> Janice and I exchange messages in a common listserv we are a part of once
> in a while, on the state of our being as well as our vocation.  Slightly
> older than I am, she has just joined a few of my colleagues in bouts with
> chemotherapy.  As has become customary in the last three years, I light a
> candle on my ledge to lift up the facticity of those in my circle of
> acquaintances continuing to be treasured and celebrative presence on the
> planet even in the midst of battling the onerous challenge of cancerous
> cells.
>
> I lit a candle for the late Ruth Tighe of Saipan, the honored maven of
> local commentators, until she gloriously downed her last swig of Scotch.
> She once commented that I eulogized her exit too early.  She outlasted her
> Doctor’s prognosis a few years longer.  She once bought me lunch at a new
> health food restaurant, driving to the place with her oxygen tank in tow.  In
> her retinue, imminent death had no dominion.
>
> Our current five now includes Janice of New York joining four others from
> Seattle, Maui, Sydney, and Saipan.  Specific as to who the candles
> represent, taken as a whole, they manifest our relationship to those
> considered by society to be “differently-abled” (including the "
> handicapped").  Being father to two autistic children, the act of
> regularly lighting candles are personally of deep significance.
>
> Janice’s forte is music and the arts, and a colleague offered for her the
> lyrics to Cris Williamson’s *Song of the Soul,* metaphors of the heart in
> a song.  It turns out to be a song sung by an intentional community out of
> Seattle that was a result of my group’s thousand light bursting.  Part of
> the lyrics are:**
>
> *Love of my life I am crying*
> *I am not dying, I am dancing*
> *Dancing along in the madness*
> *There is no sadness*
> *Only the song of the soul*
>
> Chorus:
> *And we'll sing this song*
> *Why don't you sing along*
> *Then we can sing for a long, long time*
> *Why don't you sing this song*
> *Then we can sing along*
> *Then we can sing for a long, long time*
> * *
> For those who follow our reflections, they would not be surprised to see
> us latch into Williamson’s imagery (which, we gather, may have been derived
> from a Walt Whitman poem).  *I am not dying, I am dancing, *fits the
> sentiment of one of our candle persons who went through chemo for nine
> months and is prone to say, “why are folks afraid to talk about dying?”
> That, and a small dynamo we know down Sydney way two-steps us to the
> great dance that is life!
>
> As a former Methodist clergy, one could say that we have had our share of
> sending off personages into the great unknown.  While grief is a legitimate
> response to the reality of death, I used to conduct funeral services not
> for the dead but for the living.  I did not hesitate to remind my audiences
> that the reason we grieve is not primarily for the departed as that the
> parting reminds us too vividly of our mortality.  It is the affirmation of
> our finitude that is celebrated in the completion of a life!
>
> The song for Janice is also a song for all our lives.
>
>
>  j'aime la vie
>
>  *Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate.  In
> all, **Celebrate!*
>
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>
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