[Oe List ...] OE Digest, Vol 47, Issue 7

[Lynda Cock via OE]

Great tribute and reflection.  Thank you!  Lynda

From:  "OE at lists.wedgeblade.net" <OE at lists.wedgeblade.net>
Reply-To:  Jaime Vergara <wangzhimu2031 at aol.com>
Date:  Wednesday, February 10, 2016 at 6:51 PM
To:  "OE at lists.wedgeblade.net" <OE at lists.wedgeblade.net>,
<oe-request at lists.wedgeblade.net>
Subject:  Re: [Oe List ...] OE Digest, Vol 47, Issue 7

Second draft (with a little edit of the first) on the Gordon piece.  Final
copy will be on the Tuesday, Feb 16 edition of the Saipan Tribune, for those
interested:

Gordon
 
The name in our title is that of Gordon Harper, a friend in his 80s who died
February 8.  Diagnosed with leukemia last September, he expected to end his
existence within a year.  He lasted four months.
 
This reflection is not about the historical particulars of Gordon, spacetime
occupied and roles played.  Nor how he affected other people, including his
supportive wife Roxanna who stayed in the background.  As a facilitator, he
worked with groups to corporately articulate their vision, identify
contradictions, offer proposals, and decide on a course of action after a
consensus.
 
I remember him '77 as a staff member in the Maliwada Human Development
Training Institute (HDTI) to trigger a movement in India of new communities,
Nava Gram Prayas.   In the plateau of Maharashtra outside of Aurangabad
where the relics of history are carved in the Ellora and Ajanta caves, I
journeyed to learn of their construct only to find out that whatever they
had on their plates emerged collegially from heads butting against each
other around a table, and that conceptually, I was pedagogically familiar
with it. 
 
As a group, we took the four-year BA program and make it accessible to those
who thought they did not have the brain to handle it, nor the resources to
pay for the chance.  This was Gordon's brainchild, a course called
University 13; yup, a 13-week construct.  A movement waited to be triggered
in India, and we had a generic construct ready to be filled with local flesh
and blood.  The construct got transformed into the HDTI. In the same
fashion, I wanted to go to the Philippines, and "just do it".
 
I did, on Mactan Island among in Sudtonggan village, with the Dick and Linda
Alton family and resident staff.  Gordon and other colleagues facilitated an
HDP, a Human Development Project on the new globality for participants.
Success in numerical achievement, or awards from the Rotary Club, or
recognition from the Chamber of Commerce, was no longer our agenda.  From
Maliwada, as far as career went, I no longer had any.  I learned to just go
do whatever I knew needed to be done, to ignore the judgment, critique, and
expectation of society and history, but work in and through them.
 
We called it HDTS, a school targeting 24 villages in Mactan, built a
training school in Sudtonggan and invited villages around Langub HDP north
of Davao City in Mindanao, by a geo-thermal plant in Camarines Sur, and oil
drilling in Palawan.
 
I told time by watching Gordon mix his 5-pm gin-and-tonic, smelling the waft
of his pipe as he lit up in the afternoon.  A Baptist minister, I never
understood how he could get away with his habits (I was an ordained
Methodist cleric) until I realized that not all Baptists were created equal!
Nor Methodists for that matter! Gordon was a pedagogue par excellence.  I
sat under the smell of his cherry-flavored smokes.  He kept his gin-tonic
routine to himself, not encouraging others to join him.
 
Since Gordon announced his leukemia, I've reflected more about the facticity
of aging now that I've passed 70.  I've turned into a "clutch", dropping
things easily, and finding it difficult to get back up again.  The leg
calves cramp at night, and I go to the restroom several times before
sunrise.  Brain cells freezes on recall.
 
I taught SVES six graders mid-2000s; it is embarrassing to recognize faces
of former students but could not remember names.  Many now staff offices in
the Community College where I go these days to see if I can teach a few
courses for the next term; I am invariably greeted by a familiar but older
face behind a desk smiling like it was only yesterday when they showed up in
my class.
 
I get into the car to drive to the store, and when I get there, I forgot
what it was that I drove there for.  More disconcerting is to connect to the
Internet and do not remember what email I needed to send.  I am busy at my
dwelling everyday, with many indications of things that got started but not
accomplish any at the end of the day.
 
I picture Gordon (and many among my peers getting on with age) nodding his
head on all of these, raising a twitch-like lift on one side of his mouth,
finger his goatee without letting on that he probably went through this part
of aging in the last ten years.  Like Gandhi, he had playfulness about him
on life's serious matters.
 
We won't go into "eternity" as I do not think Gordon publicly delve into
that much.  One of my students last year asked, "Are you an atheist?" after
my spiel on the here-and-now; another responded: "You've not been listening.
He just wants everyone to know he is totally responsible for the 86 years of
his existence."
 
I imagine how Gordon spent his last moments.  He grimaced at the terminus,
welcomed the friend.  The end cometh, it says.  Gordon lived his life. The
review of its fullness is finished, outrospection done, he introspects.
With a beatific smile plastered on his face, he dies his death.  As the old
metaphor exuded:  Glory, Hallelujah, praise be!

wangzhimu2031
earthrise consciousness, a gift; earthbound commitment, my choice
yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate! in all,
celebrate!




-----Original Message-----
From: via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
To: oe <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
Sent: Thu, Feb 11, 2016 4:44 am
Subject: OE Digest, Vol 47, Issue 7

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