<font color='black' size='2' face='arial'><b style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px;">Pakyaw</b><br>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">I have no intention of
being disrespectful. Today is a solemn
day in Christendom. It holds a very
profound understanding of human existence in that it named the ultimate humiliation
of Christendom’s mystical hero Jesus in the recalled day of the crucifixion as
“Good Friday”. I never understood the
goodness in this day as a Pollyannaish <i>Protestante
</i>used to the genre of happy endings.
But there it is in the Gregorian calendar every year: Good Friday!</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">Yesterday was Maundy
Thursday, in the royal practice of England it is the day that the sovereign
finds him/herself mandated to distribute money to the realm, most particularly to
those in need. <i>Mande </i>from <i>mandate </i>is
also the source for the word “commandment”, and in the retelling of the Holy
Week story, this is when a “new commandment” was given, to wit: </span><i><span style="font-family:">"A new command I give you: Love one
another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”</span></i></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; color: rgb(2, 15, 24); vertical-align: baseline;">Jesus was a Jew and was addressed as a rabbi in the
synagogue. The old commandment of loving
YHWH (That which is Is/I am who I am) with all of one’s heart and soul would
have been understood not in the theistic notion of today as it is loving “the
way life is” with one’s all. Thus,
loving one’s neighbor is not about being nice and amiable to others but to love
one another “as I have loved you.”
That’s what Friday is </span><span style="color: rgb(2, 15, 24); vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="4">"</font></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; color: rgb(2, 15, 24); vertical-align: baseline;">good</span><span style="color: rgb(2, 15, 24); vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="4">"</font></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; color: rgb(2, 15, 24); vertical-align: baseline;"> about, loving life and one’s neighbor just
the way they are, even if one has to decide to give one’s all, like the
Nazarene carpenter did in deciding to pay for his choice of confronting the
powers-that-be as “hypocrites and snakes”, unto death!</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px;"><span style="font-family:">“Pakyaw” in our title is wholesale price, also, cheap
basement level value, in Filipino. It is
pronounced the same way as Manny Pacquiao’s name, the name of a Philippine Congressman,
the 35-yr old guy known globally as the PacMan and X-man among pugilists. He just won his last fight this week against Timothy
Bradley, Jr. who took his Welterweight division title in a decision
previously. The world of boxing sports
also saw a KO boxer evolve into a savvy one as the punch of his noted left jab
had</span><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> evidently lost its previous
POW, and though he might have wanted to deliver his lethal signature cuff, the
prizefighter settled for points!</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">The PacMan started
cheap. His improvident father abandoned him
when he was young. Mannty took a boat
from Mindanao to Manila to get started in his chosen career. He has been
extraordinary in it. </span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">In my childhood
playground in Aparri, Cagayan, I was not a party to the hysteria that preceded
and followed boxing events. I grew up to
disdain any form of fighting, a lasting influence of my almost pacifist pastor
father who, true to his Lord, would not hesitate to let truth speak to power,
but would not wish them actual physical harm.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">I lost my cool
once. George was an Amerasian I played
with, a WWII souvenir from a GI who might have wandered from barracks, a full
foot taller than I but he decided to needle me one day while I was losing at a
rubber band game in the sand (Aparri is nothing but a sandbar at the mouth of
the Cagayan River). Frustrated and fed
up, I grabbed one of his arms, twisted my body so I got his arm over my
shoulder and gave him a classic jujitsu hip throw. He landed on his back and broke an arm. </span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">I never showed up in
the playground again, but each time I met George in town, as we tended to avoid
each other and walk on separate sides of the road, I noted a grudging smile on
his face as if to say, “there’s the runt that reminded me I was no superman,”
and I, in my thoughts, was determined never again to act from the base of
anger.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4">Boxing encourages anger and rage, and though I was a crack shot with the Enfield at ROTC, I had
not handled a gun since I was twenty. I
developed a low threshold for pain on others.
Still, it came as an oxymoron to read of Pacquaio as a gentleman boxer; he was known to walk over to the guy he just knocked out, and asked with a
tone of authenticity, “Are you OK?”</font></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px;"><span style="font-family:">Robertson Work is an old colleague in Hong Kong
and Jamaica when we were both pilgrims in a corporate Journey to the
Center. He took his passion to the
United Nations where he retired and this March, gave a presentation on the
“Four Faces of War and Peace” at Oklahoma City U. He said:<b> “</b></span><span style="font-family:">Violent, harmful systems are manifestations of collective greed,
fear, anger, hatred or pride including exorbitant wealth accumulation,
militarism, armed conflict, maintaining armed forces, the armaments industry,
nuclear proliferation, capital punishment, the extraction/selling/burning of
fossil fuels, plutocracy, and systemic poverty, injustice and inequality.” He was describing the current state of our human
psychophysical economy, our society. </span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px;"><span style="font-family:">Good Friday is a reminder that what Rob Work
describes is exactly the way life is in my time that I am called to love,
specifically all the neighbors in it, and that includes the one percent in the
American economy that seem to have a stranglehold on the ownership papers of
this planet. Of course, they will be
wise not to test my jujitsu moves!</span></div>
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