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<DIV>Thank you, Jaime. I grew up in west Texas and had already migrated to
California by Nov. 23, 1963. Fred and I had recently moved into a new home,
built by a contractor who was a member of the John Birch Society. When the news
of the assassination first broke, everyone assumed the assassin was a
right-wing nut. I heard the contractor haranguing his workers next door as they
took their lunch break. "They should find the person who did this and give him a
medal!" His story changed when it turned out the assassin had lived
in the land of dreaded communism.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I was struck, Jaime, by your apology to us "girls" in the third
paragraph. I would love to start a conversation on this list about the Divine
Feminine. With a Catholic background, you probably encountered Her
early on. When I was asked in a class with Starhawk in 1989, and she
asked, "When did you first encounter God as a woman?", the only thing I
could think of was an E.I Academy class in 1970, when we studied a paper
by St. Theresa of Avila. She wrote to nuns in the language that
sounded like the King James version of the Bible. She wasn't speaking of the
Divinity as female, but just the fact that she used the pronouns "she"
and "her" in religious-sounding language sent me into uncontrollable tears.
It was the first time that I felt <STRONG><U>I</U></STRONG> was being
addressed as a full human being, though it took many years for me to work out
why I cried so.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>It seems to me She is coming back in power at this time. Does anyone
else see it?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Blessings on your good work, Jaime,</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Jann McGuire</DIV>
<DIV>D.Min, University of Creation Spirituality, 2002</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>In a message dated 11/16/2013 3:35:43 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
wangzhimu2031@aol.com writes:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px"><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial><FONT
color=black size=2 face=arial><B style="FONT-SIZE: small">JFK 1963</B><BR>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica,arial; COLOR: black; FONT-SIZE: 10pt">
<DIV id=AOLMsgPart_1_1b96d845-2a1f-4a70-bd9d-cbb73bf33d06><FONT color=black
size=2 face=arial>
<DIV class=MsoNormal> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal>It was four years later after President John F. Kennedy
went down by the grassy knoll across the downtown book depository when I first
whiffed a lungful of Big D's arid air. We had taken exception to the
irrelevant type of theological reflection we encountered in the backwoods of
Kentucky in '65, and since we were not inclined to join the denominational
services of religion, I quit perusing Thomas' tome! </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal>Before heading back out to the Orient, however, a friend
in Chicago told me to get in touch with a former Manila missionary who was
then in-charge of students' affairs at a Theology School in Dallas, Texas,
reportedly more open-minded than the warm-hearted but parochial one I had west
of the Appalachia. </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal>Having been lured into the Protestant chapel by the likes
of John A. T. Robinson's invitatory <I>Honest to God, </I>and the fresh winds
of biblical scholarship and practical spirituality offered by theologs (sorry
girls, church patriarchy of the 60s was firmly in place) like the NT scholar
Rudolf Bultmann, the evangelical Dietrich Bonheoffer, the urbane Paul Tillich
and the New England ethicists, the Niebuhr brothers, with collegial welcome
from Vatican II, Hans Kung and the venerable Pierre Tielhard de Chardin, I was
not inclined to master the litany of classical pat answers as I was eagerly
intent in sharpening realistic and authentic life questions. </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal>In the Dallas of '67, I was shocked to find out that JFK
was still one of Dallas' least-favored Presidents; there were some who
actually held Lee Harvey Oswald as some kind of a folk hero! A block
from my dorm was home to the John Birch Society. To their credit, the
members did look like children of the washed and well off, clean-shaven and
neck-tied. My anticolonial third world political orientation was not one
of their favored homebrew. The school, in spite of its laissez fair
scholastic tradition was still a denominational school for pastors of local
congregations, and some drove wearing wide brim hats in pick-ups to the school
yard displaying a rifle rack behind the driver's seat.</DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal>We remember this because November 22 marks the 50th year
of the assassination of JFK in Dallas, an occasion that brought tears to our
innocent teenage eyes while we as a part-time working college student DJ'd and
read news at a local radio station in the Cagayan valley in '63. </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal>Huff Posts recently carried an article with a JFK
hand-written speech that was to be delivered in Austin, Texas on the evening
of the fateful day. The speech's ending, addressed to the Democratic
Party in Texas, went:</DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><I><SPAN
style="COLOR: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia">Neither the fanatics nor
the faint-hearted are needed. And our duty as a Party is not to our
Party alone, but to the nation, and, indeed, to all mankind ... So let us not
be petty when our cause is so great. Let us not quarrel amongst ourselves when
our Nation's future is at stake ... determined that this land we love shall
lead all mankind into new frontiers of peace and abundance.</SPAN></I></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><I><SPAN
style="COLOR: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia"></SPAN></I> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="COLOR: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia">The voice of America's
Camelot was stilled that day before it had the chance to utter those words.
</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="COLOR: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia"></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="COLOR: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia">The Ivy league look of
our Methodist-related school by Central Expressway on Highland Park belied its
vaunted progressive credentials as children of families dripping in crude
drove their V-8 guzzlers on campus from spreads dotted with derricks and
cattle in the range. The studentry showed more frenzy in fraternity and
sorority traditions than the scholastic virtues of academé. Like the
manicured lawns in the surrounding homes, University yards were kept trimmed,
the buildings swept clean, and residences maintained by southern blacks and
Mejico Tejano servants who appeared properly cowed still wearing imaginary
white gloves to do their chores.</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="COLOR: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia"></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="COLOR: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia">It did not take long
before our youthful gait joined the parliament of the street, holding vigil by
the flagpole with a professor prayerfully protesting the war in Vietnam; we
also walked with placards in front of a Washateria near the Hilton that
displayed a sign: "For Whites Only." As a foreign student, a mendicant
monastic in a sea of privilege and wealth, I was tolerated but was socially
kept at a distance.</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="COLOR: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia"></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="COLOR: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia">The world that snuffed
JFK's breathe was alive and well in Lyndon Johnson's wide sprawl of '67 when I
tally-hoed into Highland Park. A decade later, primetime TV chronicled
the lives at Big D's Southfolks. A few years into the series, I gave up
my "JR" nickname when the character J. R. Ewing played by smirk-faced Larry
Hagman became the poster boy for Texas drawl's smarts and
cunning!</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="COLOR: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia"></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="COLOR: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia">JFK's hope for <I>new
frontiers of peace and abundance, </I>in his view, from a nation of immigrants
to one poised to send a human to the moon,<I> </I>continued as the nation's
metaphor to justify military expansion, its arrogance rudely awakened by the
collapse of the twin towers of NYC one fateful day in September. The
shot that felled JFK in Dallas turned into a booming crash in New York with
repercussions haunting corridors of powers that do not tire in spit-polishing
Uncle Sam's uniformed soul. </SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="COLOR: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia"></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="COLOR: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia">Fifty years later, the
nation struggles with its undocumented immigrants. A message we saw on a
young boy's t-shirt would have made JFK smile: <B><I>there are no immigrants
on planet earth! </I></B></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal> </DIV><BR>
<DIV style="CLEAR: both">Jaime Vergara<BR><A
title=mailto:pinoypanda2031@aol.com
href="mailto:pinoypanda2031@aol.com">w</A>angzhimu2031@aol.com<BR>
<DIV><I>yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In
all,
celebrate!</I></DIV></DIV></FONT></DIV></DIV></FONT><BR><BR>_______________________________________________<BR>OE
mailing
list<BR>OE@lists.wedgeblade.net<BR>http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net<BR></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>