<font color='black' size='2' face='arial'><font size="2">For the season:</font>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><b>Mary's Child <i>pa ram pum pum pum</i><o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><b> </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Regardless of which culture, the care of babies is
inviolate. One of the lessons of the West
African Ebola epidemic is the utter inability of many to be healthy enough to
withstand the effects of an evolutionary viral occurrence. Eradicating a virus like Ebola is like eliminating
TB and malaria germs, a futile exercise.
What we need is not to stop a virus as it is to get human nutrition and
living standards healthy enough to withstand or live with it. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">A virus enables the evolutionary process to cross-genetic
lines, and in the case of the Ebola, a virus in the wild crosses over through
bats, and perhaps, other means, into the human RNA and DNA. We now know that some humans are more
susceptible than others to the downside effects of the virus. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">So the language of fighting the virus and eliminating it is
a hangover of a mindset that sees what did not fit before to be an enemy to be
banished rather than a new condition to which one learns to adapt. We would do better to focus on adequate
nutrition and hygienic surroundings for everyone!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Yakov ibn Nazareth, Iesu Kristo, and Jesus the Christ to the
contemporary faithful is established on the anchor data of his existence, like
the rest of the human race. He
died. An ignominious death, crucified on
a cross between two thieves in the telling that was so powerful that it pushed
his followers to create a universal story true for all and all time from
Genesis to Apocalypse.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">I was born into a storyteller's household within the
Methodist covenant. A three act drama
began with a prelude of an incarnation from above to earth, then Act I of an
ordinary human, Act II as one called to expend his life to the way life is, YHWH,
a pious reference to life's infinite mystery, and Act III, when the lifestyle
of obedience to YHWH is a costly enterprise unto death, bookended by the
resurrection event that sent him back to heaven, to the bosom of Abraham!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">This was a neat overlay in an older story that saw humanity
disadvantaged at the gate <i>(dejado)</i>,
and thereby, needed to be liberated, like the Israelites when they were slaves
in Egypt, or redeemed from the Zoroastrian eternal battle between good and evil
where humanity always found itself captive of the demon, and/or in our time, saved
from the clutches of one's own depravity, in the classic confession of Paul of
Tarsus to the Romans: <span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:#010F18"> "For what I want to do I do not do, but
what I hate I do."</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">In the name of this Jesus, many stories were created,
including some cross-fertilized elsewhere other than the Levant. The one familiar to me is of the little child,
<i>pa ram pum pum pum,</i> that emerged from
Roman and Byzantium institutions to Zwingli and Calvin, Luther and Wesley of
the Reformation movements, and now, post-Vatican II and contemporary
theologizing enterprises.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">When Thomas Malthus promoted "moral restraint" (a
version of family planning) and calculated that the rate of population increase
was way ahead of agricultural production, it meant as it means to today's IMF that
there is not enough food to go around making survival of the fittest a
necessary ingredient justifying competition through capitalism; some were going
to die anyway in order for others to live.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Wedded to the Christ's salvific role and added to Adam
Smith's advocacy of minimal interference in the law of supply and demand, one
understands Western economy; "democracies" latched on to the <i>Wealth of Nations.</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><i> </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">In a reprise of Band Aid's <i>"Do they know it is Christmas?"</i> by Bob Geldof, originally
performed for the famine of Ethiopia 30 years ago, now for the assistance
efforts in Ebola-challenged nations, Africans are not pleased with the image
not only of white folks coming to the aid of disease-ridden and pest-infested
Africa, but of Christians in predominantly Islamic Africa bringing their
Redeemer to save the unfortunate native Africans (read, Muslims) from their
helplessness. It places the Christians
into an awkward position, with some of ardent and over zealous members ripping
off the <i>Koran </i>in public as part of
their witness and bait for their "crucifixion"!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Obama immigration thrust focuses "on hopes rather than
fears", clearly an ethos promoted in the name of the babe in the manger, which
some sectors in America fail to understand other than the need to conform to
the letter of the law and Boehner takes this to mean following established
procedures other than executive decrees, including the tactic of withholding funds
from White House.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Of the three religions from the Levant, the Jews now insist
on the Hebraic-ness of Eretz Israel; the warriors of the Iraqi-Syrian deserts
are dubbed Islamic. Jefferson made sure
the federation was not going to adopt a state religion, but Eisenhower's
"nation under God" understood itself as Christian, a light on a hill
of exceptionalism.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;mso-pagination:none;
mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i>Shall I play for you<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;mso-pagination:none;
mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i>Pa rum pum pum pum<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;mso-pagination:none;
mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i>On my drum<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><i> </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Methinks Mary's
Child would rather we do not beat the drum anymore. But we can still hum <i>pa ram pum pum pum</i>! Happy
Birthday, O Little One!<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><font size="2">*****</font></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><font size="2">a draft for the Dec. 24 Saipan Tribune </font></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><font size="2">Jaime in China</font></div>
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