<font color='black' size='3' face='Times New Roman, Times, serif'><font size="3">The following is in today's ST opinion page.</font>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><b>Ash Wednesday</b></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Many of our friends and colleagues among the faithful in Christendom today shall be sporting a symbol of the cross on their foreheads made with ashes. The Torah line was an objective statement to <i>Remember that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return </i>in the familiar King James rendition. Christian Churches then added the admonition to <i>Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel.</i></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; ">It is Ash Wednesday in the Christian liturgy, forty-six days before Easter, starting a forty-day fast culminating on Palm Sunday morning that </span><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="4">remembers</font><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; "> the triumphal entry into Jerusalem during Holy Week. The palm fronds to welcome the donkey-riding messiah are kept and burnt into ashes to be used for the next Ash Wednesday to mark the crosses on the faithful’s foreheads</span><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="4">, they who understand the life journey from baptism, confirmation, covenant, crucifixion, resurrection, and </font><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="4">ascension</font><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">.</font></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; ">Fast</span><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="4">,</font><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; "> to the unfamiliar</span><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="4">,</font><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; "> is a period of reflection, meditation, contemplation, (prayer in Christian liturgy) understood by my secular friends as moments of profound silence, of detachment and distancing from the immediate, an assumption of the cloak of transcendence in perspective, and intense quiet engagement of full consciousness, the <i>elan </i>of the immanent human spirit that clears the cobwebs of the soul!</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">We may want to skip the poetry, but Saipan is abuzz with the House’s impeachment proceedings. We are reminded of T. S. Elliot’s much-quoted <i>Hollow Men </i>that begins:</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><i>We are the hollow men</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><i>We are the stuffed men</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><i>Leaning together</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><i>Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!</i></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; ">Devoid of moralism, we are in accord with the acts of the Legislature. The mandate of voters in the last election was instructive, and Uncle Ben did look like a <i>stuffed man </i>(my judgment) but there is a feel of shallowness about his indictment from men and women o</span><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="4">f</font><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; "> a sector that has shown itself through the years to be too self-serving </span><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="4">to merit serious consideration</font><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; ">.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; ">The Senate hearing might just end with our paraphrased </span><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="4">T.S. </font><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; ">Elliott:</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><i>This is the way the proceedings end</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><i>Not with a bang but a whimper.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><i> </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; ">We tend to be sympathetic to Benigno Aquino, not only for his critical place in the Chamoru/Carolinian divide, but also personally for his cervical stenosis since we also suffer from cervical spondylosis! </span><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="4">Not to forget the wisdom of marrying Pinay Josie! </font><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">We are, however, on record of being on the other end of the</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">political </font><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">spectrum. T.S. Elliot</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">, after he</font><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"> joined the Anglican Church, penned his </font><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; ">Ash Wednesday </i><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">poem</font><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; "></i><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">ending</font><font size="4"><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">:</font><font face="Times New Roman"></font></font></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><i>Because I know that time is always time</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><i>And place is always and only place</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><i>And what is actual is actual only for one time</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><i>And only for one place</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><i>I rejoice that things are as they are and</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><i>I renounce the blessed face</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><i>And renounce the voice</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><i>Because I cannot hope to turn again</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><i>Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><i>Upon which to rejoice.</i></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">It is, perhaps, appropriate that this hiatus from productive legislation is happening in the season of Lent. The Legislature and the CNMI are busy constructing something upon which to rejoice!</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Rejoice is a Shrove/Fat Tuesday state of being, the day before Ash Wednesday to be picked up again on Palm Sunday. The Mardigras in New Orleans and the Carnival in Rio are bangs before the whimper! Our rejoicing this week came from the Vatican. </div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Pope Benedict XVI had not been one of our favorite Pontiffs. Erstwhile Cardinal Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, longtime Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith (1981-2005) before his election to the papacy, in our Methodist and reformation view, had been a reactionary cleric who negated Vatican II advances. But he redeems himself in our eyes in acknowledging his inability to function to meet the demands of his office by virtue of health and age, and decided to do something about it. He resigned effective the end of the month. We rejoice.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">No longer a practicing communicant even in universal Christendom, with a foot long ago in the scientific, urban, and secular world of eco-democracy, I have no claim on relevance nor integrity to speak for or even within the Christian communion, though we were once ordained in its priesthood. However, the universality of its gospel, <i>neither Jew nor gentile,</i> allows us in freedom and responsibility to engage in the continuing conversation over the efficacy of its powerful symbols like Ash Wednesday.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">From dust we came and to dust we shall return, indeed! S/he who is without sin cast the first stone.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Mt. Carmel High School’s distinguished alumnus and alleged Catholic faithful Ben Fitial might consider the discourse in this season of Lent, might heed the season’s dramaturgical pronouncement, and act accordingly.</div>
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<div style="font-size: 16px; clear: both; ">j'aime la vie
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<div><i style="background-color: white; "><font color="#000080"><b>Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all, Celebrate!</b></font></i></div>
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