<font color='black' size='2' face='arial'><b style="font-size: 18px; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">By the River Jordan</b><br>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px;"><b> </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">I hanged out with
adults in Church gatherings. My father,
a Methodist Pastor had a co-Ilocano gentleman Bishop who was “family”. His wife gathered the women while the men
(women ordination came later) went about their business. I tagged along mother.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">I remember the
Bishop’s wife with a luggage full of vials she sold to her audience at one peso
(fifty US cents at the time) per bottle.
It was free to the borderline-poor ministers’ wives! The water content was scooped from the River Jordan
on her last pilgrimage. The one peso
contributed to the cost of transport.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">I was not much of a
Sunday Bible school devotee, but I knew enough of the role the River Jordan
played in the life of our childhood hero Jesus of Nazareth. From the Sea of Galilee flowed the river’s
life into the Dead Sea, not unlike the story of barefoot Nazarene getting
crucified in Jerusalem.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">I never made it to
Israel. I missed it by a couple of weeks
when Israel went into its Six-Day War in 1967. Yhe Star of David decided to fly over Syria’s
Golan Heights, the Jordan’s West Bank, and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. I was interested in the Paris of the Middle
East at the time, Beirut in Lebanon, as summer break destination when I was
studying in the United States.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">Reared with the story
of the Philippines casting the vote that got Israel into the United Nations, in
a household dominated by stories of Moses, Joshua and Iesu of the
Judeo-Christian tradition, I did not mind retaking Jericho in the West Bank,
and mounting guns on the Golan Heights, sights set on the Damascus road of
Paul. David of less than 3 million
people stared the belligerent glare of 120 million Goliaths from Syria, Jordan,
Egypt, and Palestine; it was not hard to be politically aligned with
Israel. Supportive of the underdog, I was
also swayed by Hollywood’s versions of the Holocaust used to justify Israel’s
existence at the expense of Palestinian infidels.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">It is Holy Week in
Christendom, the annual rehearsal of a familiar story of a triumphal march to
Jerusalem from the Bethany of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus through the table
upsetting of money changers at the temple, to his calling the powers-that-be
“hypocrites and snakes”, and on to the shedding of a tear for Jerusalem at the
Mount of Olives, a night vigil in the garden of Gethsemane, a sound of silence
at Caiaphas’ Sanhedrin and Pilate’s Praetorium, to the ignominious three-hour
hanging on the cross in Golgotha, and the eventual burial into Joseph of
Arimathea’s tomb, found empty on the third day.
The story told more than 19 centuries ago has since been embellished
many times over so much so that its scriptural metaphors have become the object
of debate in western literalists’ accounts of history.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">But history does not a
drop of water make; story does with tears.
The human story relies on metaphors for the infinite mystery, the
immeasurable depth, the endless vastness even of existence’s finitude, which
lead artists to know in their bones, like HH’s heroic <i>Journey to the East</i> where the main character concludes that
creation is more engaging that the creator, that art is more interesting than
the artist.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">How many tears have
come out of a simple issue like water in the River Jordan in recent years? <i>Eretz
Yisrael </i>names the story of Abraham and his progeny known as the area
“between Dan and Beersheba”; there was no quarrel with boundaries of the real
estate as remembered accounts addressed the culture (souls) rather than
precision in geography. The told memory
survived the Babylonians and Assyrians, Persians and Macedonians, Greeks and
Romans, Meccans and Ottomans, Semites and Brits. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">The warrior Ben-Gurion
declared the new State of <i>Eretz Israel </i>in
1948. The Jewish State had not rested
ever since. They mauled the opposition
into camps; diverted fresh water from the Sea of Galilee to the Negev, and when
Syria and Jordan did the same on the headwaters feeding into the sea of
Tiberius, little David unleashed air power and <i>Eretz Israel </i>kept adding more miles to its real estate. It is evidently going after old Solomon’s
geographic boundaries!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">The water of life,
meanwhile, is drying up. There is no
shortage of water in the planet with the melting polar caps; it’s the potable
water that is at issue. The US Midwest
is a disastrous silent spring as fertilizers and pesticide in the farms headed
in fresh water aquifers. The drying
River Jordan waters regional conflicts.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4">Benzene and p-xylene
recently come to fore in China. They are
by-products in petrochemical plants.
Benzene is carcinogenic and p-xylene causes complex neural disorders. They are also favored ingredients in the
making of plastic bottles of beverages we drink and wraps food we microwave. Both are highly flammable; a Guangdong
plant exploded not too long ago, eliciting local protests.
The city of Lanzhou, Ganzu, has benzene in its drinking water @20 times
acceptable limit, compliments of a petrochemical plant nearby.</font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4">The sad side of Holy
Week has become contemporaneous as the water of life riles the economic,
political, and cultural shades of our lives. "This is my blood, poured out for you . . ."</font></span></div>
<br>
<div style="font-size: 18px; clear: both;"><i>j'aime la vie</i><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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