[Oe List ...] For ST's Good Friday

[wangzhimu2031 at aol.com]

Pakyaw


 
I have no intention ofbeing disrespectful.  Today is a solemnday in Christendom.  It holds a veryprofound understanding of human existence in that it named the ultimate humiliationof Christendom’s mystical hero Jesus in the recalled day of the crucifixion as“Good Friday”.  I never understood thegoodness in this day as a Pollyannaish Protestanteused to the genre of happy endings. But there it is in the Gregorian calendar every year: Good Friday!
 
Yesterday was MaundyThursday, in the royal practice of England it is the day that the sovereignfinds him/herself mandated to distribute money to the realm, most particularly tothose in need.  Mande from mandate isalso the source for the word “commandment”, and in the retelling of the HolyWeek story, this is when a “new commandment” was given, to wit: "A new command I give you: Love oneanother. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”
 
Jesus was a Jew and was addressed as a rabbi in thesynagogue.  The old commandment of lovingYHWH (That which is Is/I am who I am) with all of one’s heart and soul wouldhave been understood not in the theistic notion of today as it is loving “theway life is” with one’s all.  Thus,loving one’s neighbor is not about being nice and amiable to others but to loveone another “as I have loved you.” That’s what Friday is "good" about, loving life and one’s neighbor justthe way they are, even if one has to decide to give one’s all, like theNazarene carpenter did in deciding to pay for his choice of confronting thepowers-that-be as “hypocrites and snakes”, unto death!
 
“Pakyaw” in our title is wholesale price, also, cheapbasement level value, in Filipino.  It ispronounced the same way as Manny Pacquiao’s name, the name of a Philippine Congressman,the 35-yr old guy known globally as the PacMan and X-man among pugilists.  He just won his last fight this week against TimothyBradley, Jr. who took his Welterweight division title in a decisionpreviously.  The world of boxing sportsalso saw a KO boxer evolve into a savvy one as the punch of his noted left jabhad evidently lost its previousPOW, and though he might have wanted to deliver his lethal signature cuff, theprizefighter settled for points!
 
The PacMan startedcheap.  His improvident father abandoned himwhen he was young.  Mannty took a boatfrom Mindanao to Manila to get started in his chosen career. He has beenextraordinary in it.   
 
In my childhoodplayground in Aparri, Cagayan, I was not a party to the hysteria that precededand followed boxing events.  I grew up todisdain any form of fighting, a lasting influence of my almost pacifist pastorfather who, true to his Lord, would not hesitate to let truth speak to power,but would not wish them actual physical harm.
 
I lost my coolonce.  George was an Amerasian I playedwith, a WWII souvenir from a GI who might have wandered from barracks, a fullfoot taller than I but he decided to needle me one day while I was losing at arubber band game in the sand (Aparri is nothing but a sandbar at the mouth ofthe Cagayan River).  Frustrated and fedup, I grabbed one of his arms, twisted my body so I got his arm over myshoulder and gave him a classic jujitsu hip throw.  He landed on his back and broke an arm.  
 
I never showed up inthe playground again, but each time I met George in town, as we tended to avoideach other and walk on separate sides of the road, I noted a grudging smile onhis face as if to say, “there’s the runt that reminded me I was no superman,”and I, in my thoughts, was determined never again to act from the base ofanger.
 
Boxing encourages anger and rage, and though I was a crack shot with the Enfield at ROTC, I hadnot handled a gun since I was twenty.  Ideveloped a low threshold for pain on others. Still, it came as an oxymoron to read of Pacquaio as a gentleman boxer; he was known to walk over to the guy he just knocked out, and asked with atone of authenticity, “Are you OK?”
 
Robertson Work is an old colleague in Hong Kongand Jamaica when we were both pilgrims in a corporate Journey to theCenter.  He took his passion to theUnited Nations where he retired and this March, gave a presentation on the“Four Faces of War and Peace” at Oklahoma City U.  He said:  “Violent, harmful systems are manifestations of collective greed,fear, anger, hatred or pride including exorbitant wealth accumulation,militarism, armed conflict, maintaining armed forces, the armaments industry,nuclear proliferation, capital punishment, the extraction/selling/burning offossil fuels, plutocracy, and systemic poverty, injustice and inequality.”  He was describing the current state of our humanpsychophysical economy, our society. 
 
Good Friday is a reminder that what Rob Workdescribes is exactly the way life is in my time that I am called to love,specifically all the neighbors in it, and that includes the one percent in theAmerican economy that seem to have a stranglehold on the ownership papers ofthis planet.  Of course, they will bewise not to test my jujitsu moves!
 
 




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