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<div><font size="2">This group will remember a foundational document written by members of the Order I received as a "Prologomena of the Spirit Movement" eons ago. Some of the phrases I use in this article (without apologies since we never claimed originality for whatever we write!) are lifted out of the beginning section of that piece of literary achievement. </font></div>
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<b style="font-size: small;">Madiba welcomes the world</b><br>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:">It is too early to sing<i> </i>of the wise men who visited the infant
child of Bethlehem in the Christmas story of the season - Gaspar (Sheba),
Melchor (Arabia), and Balthazar (Egypt), but we could not avoid the thought as I
learned that Clinton, Bush, Obama and Jimmy Carter (US), Cameron, Brown, Blair
and John Majors (UK), are descending into South Africa to attend Mandela's
scheduled memorial service. </span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:">The first batch were dignitaries
paying homage to a messianic royal (Matthew and Luke gospels are not meant to
be history), while the second batch consisted of three ex-Presidents and a
sitting top Executive of the only superpower of the world, the United States of
America, joined by the four living Prime Ministers of Britain, and a host of
world leaders and dignitaries around the world confident enough not to have a
local coup in their absence! </span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:">Of the U.S. in the second group,
they came to pay tribute to an ex-felon who was considered a terrorist until
2008, who spent 27 years behind bars, but managed to keep a country from civil
war, and let the world know through his being that the value of one's skin color
is not even that deep compared to compassion and grace.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:">A methodological side trip: the
triune mindset is an occidental Hegelian heritage of thesis, antithesis, and
synthesis. The yin-yang of the <i>taiji</i>
focuses on the center pivot point holding the balance of the whole, while the <i>feng shui's</i> east-west-north-south axis
is made whole by the fifth area, the <i>wu
fang, </i>the center.<i> </i>The essence of oriental balancing center
and harmonizing middle counts a lot. Madiba
straddled the gamut of both methods, plus.<i></i></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:">In the history of South Africa that
came into being through the imperial designs of Europe, it brought India and
China into the picture mixed in to the Bantu underpinnings, the influences of Arabic
North Africa and the Middle East, the dominance of the Teutonic-Slavic mindset,
and the rapacious fingers of corporate capitalism of London-New
York-Tokyo-Singapore, we have the various strands that came into play in the vaunted
Madiba unifying 'magic'.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:">Massive changes racked the previous
century. It went through two upheavals
unprecedented in scope and intensity in the history of humankind. Violent as the two World Wars were, the more
intense disturbance is in the depth of human consciousness itself. Its radicalness matches only the vastness of
its scope. For the human race is
challenged to invent anew what it means to be human. This defines the revolutionary character of
our time. </span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:">Nelson Mandela is preeminently one
of our revolutionaries whose personal existence wrestled with the civilizational
convulsion occurring. Taking the tensions of a material-centered economy and
the political strife of a multi-racial constituency, he resolved in his being
the crisis of human identity and vocation, and transformed the revolutionary
bent on destruction to the authentic old sage of the bush that only had simple
grace and common compassion to share with fellow human beings. He showed in his being a new fabric of
humanness that began a work in progress now operating in many lives around the
world. We number with the window washers
among the servants in that entourage.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:">Many in the world are overwhelmed to
the point of collective trauma, a failure of nerve, expressed in such outbursts
as recently seen in Kiev and Bangkok, and not too long ago, in Syria. Hoping to retain the ennui of the familiar,
many hang on to the illusory comfort of more sophisticated arsenals in home closets,
or more statutes to bar entry of the stranger into the town's square. Many engage in frantic activism pitting groups
against each other for the therapy of little gains and momentary reliefs. </span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:">But the malaise of our time is not
revolution itself; it is the fear-filled refusal to embrace radical change that
maintains human economies based on sustainable survival rather than profit for
the few, that meet needs before obeisance to the altar of hyped wants. Its cousin is the denial that there is such a
malaise at all.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:">There is no escape for individuals
or for humankind. We are all in this
together. That is why a Mandela is such
glaring demonstration of what is possible.
The man had the resource, the reason and the skill to be an instrument
of mass destruction, but instead, he offered the proverbial other cheek to
those who despised what he stood for, and proceeded to construct in a delicate
balancing and unifying manner the structures of care and the services of
compassion that a world in pain sorely needed.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:">That the United States and the UK
deign to send their preeminent leaders to join the world whose Secretary-Generals,
Presidents, Prime Ministers, and reigning monarchs are attending to bid this
old grandpa <i>adieu</i> on his way to his
grave, it may just start the process to forge new patterns of social relations,
to create new symbols of personal meaning, to harness the deeper level of human
consciousness, and to release new tides of creativity into the total human
process.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:">Madiba's life triggered our hope. In there, we'll stay a long while.</span></div>
<br>
<div style="clear:both">Jaime Vergara<br>
<a href="mailto:pinoypanda2031@aol.com">pinoypanda2031@aol.com</a><br>
<div><i>yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!</i></div>
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