I have been to Harbin twice and vivid images arise as you write of life, spirituality or confusion thereof in China.<div><br></div><div>Much could be written of the theology of Easter. The story/drama will always mean different things to different people. This much we know. There is no resurrection without the cross.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Herman<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 7:12 PM, Jaime R Vergara <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:svesjaime@aol.com" target="_blank">svesjaime@aol.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><font color="black" size="3" face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><font size="3">FYI</font><br>
<br>
<div style="font-size:16px;clear:both">j'aime la vie
<div style><br>
</div>
<div><i style><font color="#000080"><b>Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all, Celebrate!</b></font></i></div>
</div>
<br>
<br>
<div style="font-family:helvetica,arial"><font>-----Original Message-----</font><br>
<font>From: Jaime R Vergara <<a href="mailto:jrvergarajr2031@aol.com" target="_blank">jrvergarajr2031@aol.com</a>></font><br>
<font>To: jayvee_vallejera <<a href="mailto:jayvee_vallejera@saipantribune.com" target="_blank">jayvee_vallejera@saipantribune.com</a>>; mark_rabago <<a href="mailto:mark_rabago@saipantribune.com" target="_blank">mark_rabago@saipantribune.com</a>>; editor <<a href="mailto:editor@saipantribune.com" target="_blank">editor@saipantribune.com</a>></font><br>
<font>Sent: Thu, Mar 28, 2013 7:03 am</font><br>
<font>Subject: OpEd Good Friday</font><br>
<br>
<div>
<font color="black" face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"><font size="4">GOOD FRIDAY</font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"><font size="4"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"><font size="4">It’s a bleak Holy Week
in Dong Bei. If the Siberian winds are
not howling like midnight on a New England Halloween, the skies are overcast
that hardly a ray of sunlight gets through while the shadow of Batman nooks on
midday’s corner. </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"><font size="4"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"><font size="4">We are not alone. London was a frozen mush early on in the
week, and the Kremlin made it to the tundra without moving an inch. The freeze is expected to lash out through
America’s northeast from Bar Harbor to the Chesapeake Bay.</font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"><font size="4"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"><font size="4">We had a respite of a
sun last Sunday. Young men braved the
elements and bounced the ball on twenty hoops in the courtyard. I was not yet ready to let go of mitt, muff,
and muffler. The dudes dribbled on nearly bared chests in the still frozen air. My instincts paid off. Within two hours Sunday afternoon, while at
the street market, what started as flakes meandering down like pillow puffs
turned quickly into a snowstorm. </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"><font size="4"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"><font size="4">North of us in the
Harbin Winter Festival, the ice sculptures are still intact and its tourist trade
is doing brisk business as the “Moscow of the East” lives off intricate
remnants of its Byzantine past, its central commercial district with its
cobblestones reminiscent of horse drawn carriages of bygone days, converted
into pedestrian traffic, leaving an old world feel to the revelers of
overflowing malt brew on brightly lit ice lanterns.</font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"><font size="4"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"><font size="4">The solemnity of the
Christian Holy Week is, however, hardly evident in post-1949 China of secular
humanism, in spite of the cultural resurgence of its three major philosophies –
Confucianism <i>(ru), </i>Buddhism <i>(shi), </i>and Taoism <i>(dao). </i> Artifacts and sacred
sites have taken in of late considerable market values. The Chinese vaunted aptitude for mathematics
has ¥uan coloration.</font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"><font size="4"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"><font size="4">Today, ours is a quietude
of the soul as years of conditioning in Christian dramaturgy revives images of
Hosanna’s palm fronds to early sunrise religious services singing hymns of joy
on the triumph of the empty tomb.
Protestants, inured to the automatic happy ending of Hollywood celluloid
in the era of Ike, tend to skip the high point of this weeks paradoxically
titled “Good Friday”.</font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"><font size="4"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"><font size="4">Penitent souls and
flagellat</font><font size="3">ing</font><font size="4"> bodies trek </font><font size="3">to </font><font size="4">the top of Mt. Tapuchao this day, as some barren field
in Guagua, Pampanga grossly reenact the Roman crucifixion so vividly portrayed
in Mel Gibson’s overwrought movie, the <i>Passion
of the Christ,</i> turned into a community spectacle in Bavaria’s Oberammergau
as it relives every decade since the 1600s the stations of the cross.</font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"><font size="4"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"><font size="4">In Christian
dramaturgy, the week’s high point is the innocent Jesus willfully allowing the
sword and the lance to let him hang, “for the sins of the many” (in the
guilt-ridden language of Paul). The
Roman Catholic Church drapes its altar black at 3 pm on Friday, and calls the
day “Good”. Rational minds of the
Reformation raise an eyebrow having forsaken the practice of Abraham’s
willingness to sacrifice his son as barbaric, with cynics seeing the practice
no different from fathers sending their sons to war. Still, the modern world has also condemned
the virtue of martyrdom as a mere justification of the Empire oppressing the
outcast, the rebel, and the marginalized.</font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"><font size="4"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"><font size="4">But the English
“Good”, of the same etymology as the word “G-O-D”, derivative of the Teuton’s
“Gott”, is used in the King James translation of the Biblical YHWH, (literally
means, self-evident) the highest good, <i>summum
bonum </i>of Aquinas and Kant.</font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"><font size="4"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"><font size="4">Cut to the chase. Good Friday is an affirmation that life is
good just the way it is, woof, warts and all.
In today’s language, it is a mishmash of cause, chance, and choice. The religious seeks cause in a Supreme deity. The dice-thrower lights incense for good
fortune, fate and destiny. The democratized
human looks at the power of choice. The
diversity and the many combinations of the three mark the current state of our
humanity.</font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"><font size="4"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"><font size="4">Europe, preoccupied
with Time, sought clarity on one’s relationship to yesterday, today, and
tomorrow. It came up with yesterday as
done, irretrievable and finished. It is
“forgiven”. Tomorrow is open. One needs only to decide. Today is in the pulse of “amazing grace”,
unconditionally accepted. Its totality
can be lifted high, like the <i>ostia </i>and
the <i>vino, </i>and celebrated. The Christian’s common meal of the Upper Room
invokes: “this is my body, … this is my blood, that is given for you”. It constitutes the Christian essence of what
has since become the Eucharist. </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"><font size="4"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"><font size="4">East Asia is not as
preoccupied with Time as it is with Space.
The <i>taiji </i>of ancient China has
the <i>yin-yang </i>in the middle surrounded
by 8 trigrams covering all points of the compass. The important words are geographical in
meaning, thus, <i>bei = </i>north and <i>jing = </i>city, gives us Beijing. But there is a fifth cardinal point to the
familiar east, west, north, and south designation. The fifth direction is the <i>wu fang, </i>the Center. It is no accident that Chinese call
themselves <i>Zhongguoren, </i>the people of
the middle realm!</font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"><font size="4"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"><font size="4">Silence at the
tranquil center is the Good Friday of East Asian spirituality. The dynamic stillness in the middle of the <i>taiji </i>is the loci of profound humanity
since discovered in the interfaith exchange of the East and the West. The blackout of Christendom’s Good Friday
echoes in the sounds of silence of meditation and contemplation.</font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"><font size="4"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"><font size="4">My humanness this day
is bowed.</font></span></div>
<br>
<div style="font-size:10pt;clear:both"><a style="font:lighter 10px Verdana,Arial"><img align="absmiddle" border="0"></a> <font color="black" face="arial">j'aime la vie
<div><br>
</div>
<div><i><font color="#ff0000"><b>Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all, </b></font></i><i><font color="#ff0000"><b>Celebrate!</b></font></i></div>
</font></div>
</font>
</div>
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</font><br>_______________________________________________<br>
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<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br>__________________________________________________<div>Herman F. Greene</div><div>2516 Winningham Road</div><div>Chapel Hill, NC 27516</div><div>919-942-4358 (ph & fax)</div>
<div><a href="mailto:hfgreenenc@gmail.com" target="_blank">hfgreenenc@gmail.com</a></div>
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