August 2013 - OE - lists.wedgeblade.net

Your beautiful end notes
by Susan Fertig 25 Aug '13

25 Aug '13

Jaime, did I miss something? Are you terminally ill, or were your string of recent emails simply marking passage from one earthly plane to another, departing Saipan for___? I was deeply touched by each email. Stopped everything to sing, alone at my computer, "At the Center" and felt a wave of love and nostalgia roll over me palpably. Loved your stories about your dad and his wanderings, the accident in Cagayan (though born in Panay I grew up in Mtn Prov of Luzon) leading to a time when he perhaps wished to re-create that scene more definitely. My time in EI and ICA are like those pieces of metal grafted into your dad's very bones-which is more "real" the graft or the raw material? Which is it that hurts when it rains? Which would you give up, the metal or the bone? Hard choice that, if you had to make it. But the one thing I think the Spirit Movement got wrong is the one-dimensional universe. I've not "been" there, but I've "seen" the other side. Not a 2-story structure, but a multi-dimensional reality. The end of the earthly body is not the end. I know beyond a doubt it is the beginning. It is the freedom even Bonhoeffer (and any of us humans) can only see "through the glass darkly." Those who wait on the Lord, Shall renew their strength. They shall mount upon wings, Like eagles! They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint, Help us Lord, Help us Lord, in Thy way. Those who love the suffering world, Shall renew their strength, ''' Those who die on the march, Shall renew their strength, ... Those who live the risen life, Shall renew their strength, ... Not sure if those are the words exactly as we used to sing them, but it's what I sing today. Grace + Peace, Susan Susan Fertig-Dykes (personal email account) And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought . Isaiah 58:11 STOP E-MAIL ADDRESS HARVESTING Protect your family and friends Please use "BCC" when sending to multiple addresses! Please delete E-Mail addresses when forwarding! Please be kind and remove my email address when you forward.

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What Happens If You Give the God Lecture Today?
by Gordon Harper 25 Aug '13

25 Aug '13

Well -- In this case, the poor soul here in Seattle who tried it (no, twas not I) got roundly booed andsome people in his sizable audience tried hard to shut him downbefore he was through it. I'd heard about David Guterson's experience delivering the commencement address this year at his former Seattle high school. Only recently, however, did a friend send me a copy of it to read myself. (You may recognize Guterson's name as the author of the novel, /Snow Falling on Cedars/.) Ifound his talk so deliciously outrageous as a graduation speech that I have to share it. Those who were most outraged and expressed it so vocally were in the parentsand family memberssection; it seems the graduates were at least polite and attentive during it. Its ending is weak (IMHO), and of course there was no following Christ lecture the next morning. Still, if one ever wanted a current rendering of our Friday night event, this might come close -- Gordon

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Salmon: Gone but not forgotten
by William Salmon 25 Aug '13

25 Aug '13

Jaime! Ye helped us awaken to the inner chapel, lighted candles and incense, and massaged us into an awarness that we already are living in the spiritual oasis named RS-I. Unfortunately, we continue to think it is the desert. Now dwell in cool water while sipping the eternal drink of humane existence.Thanks for your guidance. Inner Peace, Bill and Beverly Salmon ----- Original Message ----- From: Jaime R Vergara To: oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net Sent: Sunday, August 25, 2013 6:42 AM Subject: [Oe List ...] Fwd: August 27 from Jaime j'aime la vie Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all, Celebrate! -----Original Message----- From: Jaime Vergara <pinoypanda2031(a)aol.com> To: editor <editor(a)saipantribune.com> Sent: Sat, Aug 24, 2013 5:33 pm Subject: August 27 At the center The poetry sings to the tune of Try to Remember, that famous Tom Jones song in the mid-60s that even got the mellow voices of Nana Mouskouri, Andy Williams, Harry Belafonte, Ed Ames, Roger Williams, the Brothers Four, the Kingston Trio, and the lively beat of Gladys Knight and the Pips on vinyl. Jerry Orbach originally sang it on Broadway’s Fantastiks. When you encounter the light at the center, the final dawn of worlds converging. When life's illumined by light at the center, assured by wisdom's swift emerging. When knowing's ended in light at the center, and life's sacred meaning is in you surging. Then at the center, in blinding encounter you be it. What does it mean to “be it” at the center? As it is in our Oral English in China, “encounter” is our primary pedagogical mode. Now, encounter is not just saying “hello” to friends we meet, or wave at folks on encounters in the street. Encounter has more of the quality of a forceful bump that may occasion a radical shift in consciousness, a reformulating of images, which, in science, is called a paradigm shift. The lyrics of our song were penned by kindred spirits in the 70s. As we unwind into our exit out of this page, we realize that sometimes, prose will have to give way to poetry so readers can hear us sing. There are five directions in the Chinese language: east, west, north, south, and center. Wu fang, the center, qualitatively different from being in the middle, Zhong in Zhongguo (country) and Zhongguoren (people), is more akin to the stillness at the center of being that is our focus this week. It is from this position that one dares take the transcendent lucidity from the heights of Olympus, to the immanent intensity of the depth and profound core of being on this earth. It is the courage to care at the center of the mystery of life itself. As you can tell, we wax poetic on the subject. Now, back to our song. When you encounter the peace at the center where earthly hopes are all transcended. When life's unburdened with peace at the center where worldly cares are all suspended. When you're delivered to peace at the center for mortal foes your hatred's ended. Then at the center, where no problems enter you be it. There’s a lagoon shore bench not too far from the Oleai Center where the FHB is located, and a ledge where planters are placed at Garapan Square, where I spent late afternoons or early evenings humming my song. At the center is in the midst of ordinary existence. When you encounter the joy at the center, your tingling deeps in animation. When you're possessed by the joy at the center, all things received with affirmation. When you are speechless in joy at the center, all moments brim with wild vibration, Then at the center, in wonder filled rapture you be it. At the center, we encounter awe, we become awe-filled, and the experience is awe-some. When you encounter the life at the center, condemned to be a dead man waking, When you are boundless with life at the center, compelled to live on water waltzing, When you are risen to life at the center, a man who is ageless with history walking, Then at the center, while dancing forever you be it. No need to wonder. We are not dying; we are being our encounter, and we are dancing! Jaime Vergara pinoypanda2031(a)aol.com yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2013.0.3392 / Virus Database: 3211/6606 - Release Date: 08/25/13

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Fwd: August 27 from Jaime
by Jaime R Vergara 25 Aug '13

25 Aug '13

j'aime la vie Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all, Celebrate! -----Original Message----- From: Jaime Vergara <pinoypanda2031(a)aol.com> To: editor <editor(a)saipantribune.com> Sent: Sat, Aug 24, 2013 5:33 pm Subject: August 27 At the center The poetry sings to the tune of Try to Remember, that famous Tom Jones song in the mid-60s that evengot the mellow voices of Nana Mouskouri, Andy Williams, Harry Belafonte, EdAmes, Roger Williams, the Brothers Four, the Kingston Trio, and the lively beatof Gladys Knight and the Pips on vinyl. Jerry Orbach originally sang it onBroadway’s Fantastiks. When youencounter the light at thecenter, the final dawn of worldsconverging. When life'sillumined by light at thecenter, assured bywisdom's swift emerging. When knowing'sended in light at thecenter, and life's sacredmeaning is in yousurging. Then at the center, in blindingencounter you be it. What does it mean to “be it” at the center? As it is in our Oral English in China, “encounter” is our primary pedagogicalmode. Now, encounter is not just saying “hello” to friends we meet, or wave at folkson encounters in the street. Encounterhas more of the quality of a forceful bump that may occasion a radical shift inconsciousness, a reformulating of images, which, in science, is called aparadigm shift. The lyrics of our song were penned by kindred spirits in the70s. As we unwind into our exit out ofthis page, we realize that sometimes, prose will have to give way to poetry soreaders can hear us sing. There are five directions in the Chinese language: east, west, north,south, and center. Wu fang, the center, qualitatively different from being in themiddle, Zhong in Zhongguo (country) and Zhongguoren(people), is more akin to the stillness at the center of being that is ourfocus this week. It is from thisposition that one dares take the transcendent lucidity from the heights ofOlympus, to the immanent intensity of the depth and profound core of being onthis earth. It is the courage to care atthe center of the mystery of life itself. As you can tell, we wax poetic on the subject. Now, back to our song. When youencounter the peace at thecenter where earthlyhopes are alltranscended. When life'sunburdened with peace at thecenter where worldlycares are allsuspended. When you'redelivered to peace at thecenter for mortal foes your hatred'sended. Then at thecenter, where no problemsenter you be it. There’s a lagoon shore bench not too far from the Oleai Center wherethe FHB is located, and a ledge where planters are placed at Garapan Square,where I spent late afternoons or early evenings humming my song. At the center is in the midst of ordinaryexistence. When youencounter the joy at thecenter, your tinglingdeeps in animation. When you'repossessed by the joy at thecenter, all thingsreceived withaffirmation. When you arespeechless in joy at thecenter, all moments brim with wildvibration, Then at thecenter, in wonder filledrapture you be it. At the center, we encounter awe, we become awe-filled, and theexperience is awe-some. When youencounter the life at thecenter, condemned to be a dead manwaking, When you areboundless with life at thecenter, compelled to live on waterwaltzing, When you are risen to life at thecenter, a man who isageless with historywalking, Then at thecenter, while dancingforever you be it. No need to wonder. We are notdying; we are being our encounter, and we are dancing! Jaime Vergara pinoypanda2031(a)aol.com yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!

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Fwd: August 30 from Jaime
by Jaime R Vergara 25 Aug '13

25 Aug '13

Last one, folks. Have a good autumn and winter. j'aime la vie Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all, Celebrate! -----Original Message----- From: Jaime Vergara <pinoypanda2031(a)aol.com> To: editor <editor(a)saipantribune.com> Sent: Sat, Aug 24, 2013 5:45 pm Subject: August 30 JayVee, here is the last one. I will excise a lot of emails henceforth, and will concentrate on University responsibilities. Keep this email though, in case you have to get to me, and I to you. Been a pleasure! Jaime End of August Our er lao po, mother twoautistic children who turned 18 and 21 this year, hits the big Six-Oh tomorrow,but since the 31st is a Saturday,this shall be the end of August writing for ST for me. At least, it spares us from meditating again onthe heavy emotional toll that got er laopo with our two kids and I separated by halfway across the planet duringturbulent winds that shafted a marriage eons ago. Karen Ann sings The End of May,one of the songs that students invariably mention in their profile as asong they are familiar with, or would not mind learning. Karen Ann attempts to be down-to-earth to Closeyour eyes and roll a dice Underthe board there's a compromise Ifafter all we only live twice Whichlife's the run road to Paradise. It is still, however, a bit escapist in the “live twice” dream. Unfortunately, the other version by Michael Bubble fares no better: Golden haze,another morning feels like yesterday. End of May, ayear is gone and I still feel this way, When we meetagain, I'll ask you how you're doing And you'll sayfine and ask me how I'm doing And then I'll lieand I'll say, it's just an ordinary day. While The End of May is(are) my students’ song(s), we might let our hair down and pen our own song;call it, The End of August. Nah. That would be too corny. We are on the final installment of our prolonged exit from this page,and bid adieu to the sparkling watersof Saipan (the ocean, not what trickles from aquifers) as well. We dragged luggage to Ada International twoyears ago, and our shadow had not been seen since. I shifted to the exit mode the first of August, and during the wholemonth, our bidding a permanent farewell loomed big on our consciousness. Add August as our personal Autism month andwe can say that we had our mental luggage rack full lately. But our pieces have been focused content-wise, in addition to itscontextual education intent, to earthly issues and current events. Our end of August should not be different. We note the rape of a female photojournalist intern in Mumbai and howit is that the patriarchal arrogance in our society, global and local, stillprevails. There might be a difference indegree but not in kind – in Mumbai and Shanghai, Chicago and Tokyo, Lima andManila, and alas, even Shenyang and Pyongyang. Defensive and condescending malesreign. The Pentagon, bastion of entrenched machismo, reeling from cases ofsexual harassment, will now have to deal with a new issue as erstwhile Bradleyhas become Chelsea Manning. She nowrequires the hormone therapy in jail he was denied while active in the armedforces. With the LGTB community finallygetting the official and legal attention it deserves, a nail on patriarchy’s superciliousconceit (redundancy intentional) is welcomed. This brings us to the hypocrisy revealed on how we treat TexasSenator Ted Cruz’ Canadian citizenship. No surprise here. Our eldestchild was born in Manila but having a U.S. citizen mother, there was no problemregistering her as a naturally born American. Technically, she had dual citizenship. Younger sister was born in Saskatoon, Canada, and when it was time toget a passport that she needed to travel at 1 year old, the Philippine and US onescost three times more than the Canadian. Technically of triple citizenship, she crossed the border with the mapleleaf. Our family entered the US throughHonolulu later. I was asked by INS toappear at the Federal Building in Chicago for bringing in an unidentified alieninto the country. Her passport did notbear any record of parentage, Papa or Mama, and we were duly accused of havinga low regard for the Federal laws of the country. Both my daughters are American citizens, plus. Ted Cruz is, of course, an American, plusTexan, etc. And Obama is Ethiopian! Getit? Our last noticing is with ChannelNewsAsia of Singapore doingspeculative reporting on the Bo Xilai trial in China. We do not mind editorializing but when itparades as news, portrays a kangaroo court, and furthers the image of Beijingas a bunch of scheming Fu Manchus, then something else is going on. We do know that already, Pagan’s future is adone deal in the US strategic policy of containing China (she with a navy thathas one Russian discarded but refurbished bathtub for her lone cruise carrier!) What we can discern is that the politicsof oil that led the CIA (finally fessed up 60 yrs. later) to banish Timemagazine’s 1952 Man-of-the-Year Mohammed Mosaddegh out of Iran has just shiftedinto China’s continental shelf. Mindyou, it is all Obama-the-Ethiopian’s fault! Our picture of our exit sans ceremony is clear. Ed Stephens of this page who we met once inan As Lito bar settles his canvas chair on the lagoon’s shore on his regularThursday relax time after sending off his Friday column. I join him on my stool. He greets me with a lifted English stout, andI respond in kind with my cerveza. Ina non-verbal toast, we nod as if to say: “It’s a good day, and I am happy to behere.” Jaime Vergara pinoypanda2031(a)aol.com yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!

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Fwd: August 29 from Jaime
by Jaime R Vergara 25 Aug '13

25 Aug '13

j'aime la vie Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all, Celebrate! -----Original Message----- From: Jaime Vergara <pinoypanda2031(a)aol.com> To: editor <editor(a)saipantribune.com> Sent: Sat, Aug 24, 2013 5:38 pm Subject: August 29 The End >From the Internet: As I was lying around, pondering the problems of theworld, I realized that at my age I don't really give a rat'sass anymore. … If walking is good for your health, the postmanwould be immortal. … A whale swims all day, only eats fish, drinks water,but is still fat. … A rabbit runs and hops and only lives 15 years,while … A tortoise doesn't run and does mostly nothing, yet it lives for150 years. And you tell me to exercise? I don't think so. Just grant me the senility to forget the people Inever liked, the good fortune to remember the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference. I love the author’sparaphrase of Francis of Assisi at the end. We are coming to the end ofour writing. As one of my soul mates whowent through chemo and now lives the struggle of a cancer survivor says,talking of end things do not come easy. Everyone avoids the subject of death. My theological awakening,when the discipline was still considered the queen of sciences, occurred in the60s when a strapping 18-yr old Pinoy lawyer wannabe chanced on an ecumenicalYouth Assembly at Silliman University in Dumaguete City (an institution startedby Presbyterians in 1901). I bump into characterslike the Nazi-executed martyr Bonheoffer (Freedom), biblical scholar Bultmann(Question of God), theologian Tillich (You are accepted), and the ethicalvisionaries Niebuhr brothers (Church as social pioneer), et al. We consequently teetered to the left. Add the opening of closed doorsand shuttered windows of the musty Basilica by John XXIII, and I found my mindquickly in the expansive quadrangle of the monastic cloister contemplatingmoves not even common to Jesuits. A saillater, from Manila to SF’s golden gate, by Greyhound to the woods of Kentuckyacross the prairie of the Midwest, I quickly entangled myself in the on-goingtheological upheaval at the time, buttressed by a youth revolution and a civil rightsmovement with truncheons and live dogs. Those were heady days to be playing attention toone’s life. A decade later, an elderlycouple, a renowned Princeton University educator and head of Union TheologicalSeminary in New York when the fierce winds of Vatican II were blowing wildly tothe Hudson, and his wife, decided to take on “the freedom of the Holy Spirit” withan intentional overdose of sleeping pills at 75 and 80. Euthanasia was the dreadedterm for the act, espoused as far back as Socrates downing the hemlock, restoredat the cutting edge of a Christology that saw Jesus not as a victim of Romanconnivance to Jewish defensive paroxysm but as a willful act of taking thecross unto one’s entire being. The Van Dusensdecided that the springlike burst of joy at birth and its muted wintry chill ofdeath can no longer be just left to passive resignation in nature. As increasingly a feature of birth, death hadbecome an item of choice. I was liberal but not thatprogressive. Michigan was our vacationState, with friends living in Flint when graffiti was still unseen in neighborhoods,and Muskegon still elicited mirth and mystery from foreign lads like me. There was Jack Kavorkian in Pontiac, bringingsanity to dark corners but later vilified in U.S. media as Dr. Death, sentencedlater to 10 years in prison (served 8) for practicing physician-assistedsuicide. My Dad at 57 rode amotorbike to supervise his assigned territory in Cagayan, a province innorthern Luzon. One late afternoon, inhis desire to get home before sundown, he taxed stamina too far and ran head-onto a bus. Medivac to Manila andsubjected to the wonders of reconstructive surgery, he could not go through anairport security without triggering off the alarm bell and flashing redlights. Steel had been conjoined to hisbones. Retiring early, he joined my brother in Hawaii. Later, in his late 80s, he would pray, “Godtake me,” for the pains that ailed his body. My last visit with him was when he was 92 at a nursing home, still smilingbut lost on figuring out who-the-hell I was. He died at 94 after attempting many times to escape from the home, oftenfound wandering in the middle of the night on the busy highway, perhaps, hopingnever to be found alive again. Unhappily for him, one of his sons is a chaplain withthe Honolulu police department, so he would invariably be escorted in aflashing limo of Aloha’s finest back to the ward. My mother lies in a nursing facility in Honolulu whereshe is assisted to eat at appointed times; she sits and snoozes on her wheelchair awaiting her turn to be guided back to her bed as caregivers are assignedtheir numerous patients. She turns 94 inSeptember. Ending is not something we decide. We would rather have someone else decide itfor us. Most of us would rather be onautomatic ride in the great roller coaster of life. To those who still reside in a two-storyuniverse, as my father did, we allot a lot of decisions on an external power wecall God. Though the terms hara-kiriand seppuku entered ourvocabulary recently, we are not close to contemplating their actualexecution. What we do know is thatsetting endings is a glorious liberating thing. We are bidding adieu to thispage and the island of Saipan. Our 10-4 is not casual. It ends with a dot. Period. Jaime Vergara pinoypanda2031(a)aol.com yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!

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Fwd: August 28 from Jaime
by Jaime R Vergara 25 Aug '13

25 Aug '13

j'aime la vie Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all, Celebrate! -----Original Message----- From: Jaime Vergara <pinoypanda2031(a)aol.com> To: editor <editor(a)saipantribune.com> Sent: Sat, Aug 24, 2013 5:36 pm Subject: August 28 At thecenter tranquil Set to the tune of Shenandoah, aka Across the Wide Missouri, thisother song appeals to a deeper cord than the mellow Try to Remember inyesterday’s musing. We used to residewithin the beltway on the Virginia side so we were always bombarded with newsfrom the Shenandoah Valley. The tuneitself almost became the State song but did not pass muster in the Legislature. It appears that the word “Shenandoah”referred to an Indian Chief, verboten to the Potomac’s gentility. The tune became popular to people of my generation with Jimmy Stewartin the 1965 movie Shenandoah, and the soundtrack of the Cinerama widescreen,How the West was Won! The traditional tune wandered far and wide - a Shenandoah Valley originsegued to a Civil War gray soldier pining for home by the Missouri River. Flatboat men of the river developed a chanty(pronounced shanty), a work song that is echoed down river, like inthe Mississippi’s Showboat familiar to many: "Tote that barge! Lift that bale!Git a little drunk, An' you land in jail... " We will not go into the Missouri pronunciation (Mi-zoor-i-eye to theIllini, and Mi-zoor-uh to Oklahom-uh) since that is not pertinent other than asan interesting aside. I thank colleagues of kindred spirit who penned the following lyrics soI do not have to. Universe, illumination, all unknown, absurd assurance Everywhere is found life's meaning, and I, I am the way at the center tranquil. Those of uswho grew up with the barefoot boy of Nazareth remember Johannine attribution tohis dialogue as having said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The admonition we got was more of the “go anddo likewise” tone, rather than the idolatrous adulation carried in the densemedieval traditions of most Christian denominations. There's no hope, yet all is hopeful, then no cares, there are no problems No enemies no earthly foes, and I, I am the struggle at the center tranquil. In theprologue of Nikos Kazantzakis’ early 1920s SpiritualExercises, it says: “We come from a dark abyss,we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life.” Heady stuff. “As soon as we are born the return begins, atonce the setting forth and the coming back; we die in every moment. Because ofthis many have cried out: The goal of life is death! But as soon as we are bornwe begin the struggle to create, tocompose, to turn matter into life.…” Withthe imagery of the crimson line in an evolutionary ascent, the human spirit pushesthe struggle to turn matter into life Pulsing exhilaration, everything's become a blessing Embraced by joy a dance of rapture, and I, I am the stillness at the center tranquil. Parting wordsin religious rites I grew up with include the passing of peace. “The Peace of God is with you,” is echoedregularly in Christian mass and service of worship. Peace, of course, is the one that “passethunderstanding”! In contemporarypsychological therapy of stress management disciplines is “centering”, called“contemplative prayer” in the monastic tradition. It is the call for stillness to linger in oursouls. Gloriously condemned to die: life is new, a great resurgence Community with all the faithful and I, I am forever at the center tranquil. Kennedy wentfor outer space, where no one had gone before. Obama just launched an inventory on the content of what lies between ourears as today’s frontier of knowledge. Thisis long overdue. I know more about theconstellations as I do the fields of dreams and imaginations in my ownhead. But community is the lastfrontier. Though I am no longer in thebusiness of reforming the structures of oikos,a few dear friends are demonstrating with their own lives what is called Christian Resurgence Circles! Who has thechutzpah to say, I am the way, the struggle, and the stillness! As we have previously commented, we arepredisposed to condemn all forms of self-centeredness as egotistical. This is not, however, about the ego. It is the affirmation of one’ selfhood. And in community, I will be faithful to theend! At the centertranquil is no early evening walk in the park. It trudges the way – before, here, and after. It wrestles the struggle to be comprehensiveand inclusive of all directions including height and depth that is waged in thelifestyle of stillness, the freedom of my soul. Who shall live with me in thatland? It is a showboat,not a slow boat to China, at the center tranquil. Jaime Vergara pinoypanda2031(a)aol.com yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!

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Fwd: Jaime for the last week: August 26
by Jaime R Vergara 25 Aug '13

25 Aug '13

OE folks - I am forwarding my last five submissions for Saipan Tribune this week. Will most likely to off line for six months after. The usual caveat: curious, welcome; not, see you at the bend. j'aime la vie Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all, Celebrate! -----Original Message----- From: Jaime Vergara <pinoypanda2031(a)aol.com> To: editor <editor(a)saipantribune.com> Sent: Sat, Aug 24, 2013 5:31 pm Subject: Jaime for the last week: August 26 Serendipidously, my first class is not till Wednesday so here comes the submission for the final week: Finals It is the first day of classes here at the Shenyang AerospaceUniversity in China. It is my final weekhere on this page. Not bad timing for a transition. I will deal with my academic class first. When I was growing up as a tweener (‘tween childhood and teen), twothings I learned as a necessary skill: how to finger type on a QWERTY SmithCorona that my Dad sent from graduate school, and how to ride a bicycle. The typing took almost daily summer lessonson clunky Underwoods at the local YMCA; the bike riding cost my 2-year oldsister a bloody heel caught in the wheel spokes while I was showing off as sherode the back seat. These were “doing”types of activities but the typing did wonders to the discipline of my “knowing”,and the riding, to my sense of balance. Not bad for a boy at the time. I teach my students a skill, the use of a language tool. They have reached the university learningEnglish the same way they did Math and Science: memorize many things in orderto pass a standard exam. This involvedrote memory of vocabulary and rules of grammar on the assumption that in theprocess, some may manage to learn how to think, or, at least, how to spot thetwo blatantly wrong answers in a multiple choice of four, to improve odds whenthey guess on the remaining two. One of my teaching colleagues, a Chinese Canadian who attended a TarHeel school, once asked when we partnered for a faculty colloquy: “You want usto get them to talk but what would they talk about?” I answered that question with my subsequentclasses by getting my students to talk about something they do not need to reada book about: themselves! I have thus taken it my role to facilitate a process of encounterswhere students discover and articulate who they are and what they intend to doabout it, expressed not in wishful thinking of abstractions, but in thefacticity of real time and in actual anticipation of days to come. In the process, they also encounter theirclassmates, and a crazy (shen jing ping, aka,nut case) teacher who paints withthem verifiable images of China and the world. It is a tall order but doable. We start classes this week with a minimum of 12 lessons per semesteronce a week. Students, if they have to learn, have to learn how to learn ontheir own initiative and motivation. Our foray into what started as a weekly contribution to the Opinionpage of this paper did not come from academic training in either journalism orliterary art and discipline, as it was a discovery that we had opinions onmethods and was ready to write it down on a regular basis. It helped that the late ST publisher JPbecame a friend who kept us focused when we wandered too far from our task, andthe rest is history. As it is in our pedagogy, our task for the last four decades has beenon contextual education. Knowledge isnot a piece of property to be owned. Knowing is rather a process of playing attention to one’s being – senseexperience, emotional state, intellectual cognition, and the free exercise ofthe will to act, and then learn to artfully embody the expressions of all, or eachpart, kinesthetically, audio-visually, and literarily. To borrow computer analogy, every human operates out of the LanguageOS, appropriates its own social language and number application. Chinese learners’ difficulty so far has beenthe haste by which they scamper for Chinese meanings of English terms, thus,remember the Chinese word rather than the English. As any multilingual speaker knows, we keep separatelanguage applications in our minds atop one Language OS. The use of a language as a communication toolis ultimately what is important; listening to the EnglisCh of Singapore, KL, Jakarta,HK, and Shanghai is evidently not very rule compliant. Our pieces, at least in intent, are primarily contextual. They do not directly intend to inform,cajole, encourage, affect readers to sense, feel, think, and do any specificthing, or follow a particular practice. They do provide a canopy, a green house, where readers as independent organismsrespond in their own terms. Some ignoreour prodding and plodding but as has been our expressed caveat to readers:curious, welcome; not, meet you at the bend! We are closing out a decade-long literary scratching, most of itseeing print in this page. Our outputsare time sensitive so we won’t comb through the record and see whether we haveenough to compile a book, and make it to Amazon.com. Our task at contextual education is a lifelong career, a vocationthat has taken many professional forms. Its current incarnation will be in a university setting of studentsawakening to their own potential even as they navigate through a world lookingfavorably at their destiny. China hasfound itself second in the world’s economic heap, fortunately gained through productivityrather than from military might. Whilewe have no illusion that our efforts has any consequence one way or the otherto effect future course, we do think that a few more heads playfully payingattention to their own affairs can only be an asset to any country in theplanet. We are not on a crusade, on a critical mission, nor are we in pursuitof a vision. We are just on our finalsprint, and as Nike succinctly puts it, we just do it! Jaime Vergara pinoypanda2031(a)aol.com yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!

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8/22/13, Spong: The Need for the Christian to Journey Beyond Scripture, Creed and Church
by Ellie Stock 22 Aug '13

22 Aug '13

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR The Need for the Christian to Journey Beyond Scripture, Creed and Church Theology is a rational, deeply human, attempt to explain our experience with God. Theology is, therefore, never primary; it is always secondary to experience. Theological explanations can thus never be eternal. All explanations not only will change, but must change when knowledge grows and by so doing will always invalidate previous conclusions. Theology can never be infallible, unchanging or ultimately real. This, however, is a reality that quite frequently cannot be embraced by religious institutions and religious leaders. This means that there never has been an “inerrant Bible” or an “infallible pope.” The books of the Bible are always human attempts to explain a primary life experience, while every church hierarchy, including the papacy, is engaged in the task of trying to determine ultimate truth in a subjective, culturally relativized world. All scriptures and all theological pronouncements are inevitably time-bound and time-warped. A couple of illustrations might help us to see that no human explanation of any experience can ever be inerrant or infallible. Since the dawn of self-conscious life, we human beings have had the experience of watching the sun rise in the east and set in the west That is a phenomenon well documented all over the world, an objective reality. Look, however, at the various ways that this experience has been explained throughout history. The explanations range from the ancient Egyptians, who interpreted this pattern of the sun to be caused by the Sun God riding a chariot across the sky each day surveying the world, all the way to the modern scientist, who asserts that the phenomenon of the sun’s rising and setting is the result of the planet earth turning on its axis every 24 hours, as it makes its elliptical journey around the sun. These explanations obviously vary widely, but note that the experience itself is identical. In a similar fashion an epileptic seizure is another human phenomenon that has been observed from the dawn of time. In the New Testament an epileptic seizure was explained as having been caused by an invisible, demonic spirit suddenly taking over its victim, shaking him or her violently, hurling the victim to the ground and forcing the victim into an unconscious, trembling state until the spirit finally departed as suddenly as it arrived. Modern medicine, however, explains this same experience as a malfunction of the brain, resulting in a cascade of misfiring electrical impulses, which jump the track, so to speak, and thus create the resulting sense of seizure. The explanations are widely divergent, but once again the experience is identical. It is the constant temptation and the regular pitfall of religious institutions and religious spokespersons to confuse their explanations with the experience itself. The gospels, we need to state clearly, are not the dictated word or words of God, but are rather the time-bound and time-warped explanations of the Jesus experience, couched in the language and understandings of the first century. At the time the New Testament was written, no one knew that women had an egg cell, so the story of Jesus’ birth to a virgin could be used to explain the experience, which was that in Jesus they believed they had encountered something, which human life by itself was not capable of producing. In that time, we need to understand that no one quite understood what happens to the body at death. They could, therefore, reasonably assume that the death process could be reversed, if the reversal occurred within three days, after which the decaying of the body became obvious. When the New Testament was written, no one knew about germs, viruses, tumors or cardiovascular disease and so sickness was interpreted as divine punishment for sins committed. That was why it made sense to treat sickness by offering prayers and sacrifices. If we assume, as fundamentalist Protestants and conservative Roman Catholics still seem to do, that the gospel narratives are in fact literal renditions of what actually happened in time or in history, then religion has become idolatrous. It has invested the perfection of God in something that is in fact a human creation. By literalizing the Bible, religious people have also unknowingly literalized the world view of the first century that assumed that anything that could not be understood by first century minds must be a miracle, explained only by an appeal to the presence of a supernatural power. So the presumably “inerrant” Bible of Protestant fundamentalism and the presumably “infallible” theological doctrines of Roman Catholicism, become nonsensical in the 21st century. A Christianity based on those outdated ideas can never be compelling to 21st century people unless they are willing and able to close their minds to modern knowledge. Biblical inerrancy is therefore not just ignorance, it is a distortion of both truth and humanity. To quote the Bible to oppose equality for women or justice and dignity for homosexual people is to confuse the cultural fears of yesterday with ultimate truth. It is also to be pathetically and profoundly uninformed. What then about the creeds? They are fourth century attempts to codify religious beliefs that had been drawn primarily from the Bible. To insist that creeds are unchanging truth or to make creedal faith the hallmark of Orthodoxy is to state something that is absurd. It is to pretend that a quite limited fourth century, Greek-oriented world view is the same as “the mind of God.” So, when we learn that there is no all-seeing God, who lives above the sky of a three-tiered universe, who is always looking down to record our deeds in the record book of life, by which our eternal destiny will be determined, is not to say that there is no God, but it is to say that truth is always relative. Heaven as a place of reward and hell as a place of punishment have become nonsensical dated ideas. So is a Bible that contains the story of the Tower of Babel, the raining of heavenly bread, called manna, from the sky to feed the starving Hebrew people and the story of Jesus’ ascension into heaven. If the story of Jesus’ ascension literally means that he went up into the sky then we need to embrace the modern reality that Jesus did not get to heaven, he got into orbit or else he escaped the force of gravity and wandered into the infinity of space. Yet, on the basis of those limited, time bound fourth century creeds religious wars have been fought, religious persecution has been carried out, “heretics” have been burned at the stake and “witches” have been hanged to keep alive the myth that human words can capture, in some unchanging form, eternal truth. So often the business of religion has ceased to be the search for truth and has become the activity of mind control. Christians who claim inerrancy for the first century words of the gospels or infallibility for their doctrinal understanding of the fourth century words of the creeds are quite simply delusional people, and in the name of both God and truth, they need to be resisted mightily. Yet the facts of history reveal that Galileo was condemned by the church for suggesting that first century cosmology was inaccurate and Darwin is still being roundly criticized and politically resisted for suggesting that pre-modern biology is simply incorrect. I was both startled and amazed when I read recently a widely reported poll taken in Georgia, which revealed that 73% of the registered Republicans and 53% of registered Democrats in that state still believe literally the creation story in the Bible. This is not a commentary on faith, it is a commentary on how an uninformed faith can impede and distort the educational system of one of the states of this union. To think that an electorate this deeply uninformed can still choose political leaders, who will make laws for this entire nation is frightening! Yet, having now said all of these things, and quite clearly I hope, I still want to tell the world that there is a difference between an experience and the culturally bound explanation of that experience. I still plumb the meaning of the Bible on a daily basis. I still gather in my parish church every Sunday and recite the creed. I do these things joyfully and self-consciously. Am I simply schizophrenic, living simultaneously in two different worlds? Am I being delusional by intention and pretending to participate in rituals in which I do not really believe? No, neither is the case. I am rather a believer, not in a literal Bible, but in the experience to which the words of that Bible point. I am a believer, not in the literal creeds, but in the reality to which those creedal words point. I view the creeds as a love song that my ancestors in faith created to help them process their God experience. I do not mind joining in the singing of their love song. I recognize my kinship with them in the history of my faith’s development over the centuries. The creeds are not for me an imposed girdle into which I have to force my flabby faith. They are not a straitjacket designed to force me to live within the theological boundaries and understandings of fourth century people. They are the dated explanations of an experience that I still believe and acknowledge as real. Yes, let there be no mistake, I am convinced that there is a reality to the experience of God, but I do not interpret this reality as if God is a supernatural being who does miracles. I rather see this reality as a transcendent presence that is beyond human boundaries and that calls me and compels me not to allow those boundaries to bind my humanity into less than it is capable of being. I view God as the Source of life and love, and as the Ground of Being calling me to live, to love and to be. My Christian life is thus a journey for which there is no literal roadmap. I am convinced that if I walk this journey deeply enough and faithfully enough, I will be led beyond all religious forms – beyond scripture, creeds, doctrine and dogma and into the wordless wonder of the true meaning of worship. The Christian Church exists, I believe, to point all of us beyond the boundaries of our own humanity. It is a pity that institutional religion in all its forms does not understand its own message! ~John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Ken Austin from Maroubra, Australia, writes: Question: I heard Bishop Spong speaking recently on Radio Australia about his book on the Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic. The Bishop said he was a Christian, but he also said that he did not believe in the historical interpretation of scripture. He pointed out how “Christians” in history were not acting as God would have it. He said he would like to meet with people of other religions who had “experienced God” in their own faiths and to explain to them his experience of God from the Christian perspective and then to listen to their explanations of their religious experience with a view to getting a dialogue going and not saying “my version of God is right and yours is not.” He said that this is in the interest of having a peaceful world. But how can “religions” or “faiths,” if you like, agree on the nature of God when their doctrines are so opposite (actually Christianity is not a religion, it is about having a relationship with God, through the Savior Jesus, the Christ). Jews, Muslims and Buddhists don’t have this aspect going on at all. But he did not say in this interview that Jesus has said that the only way to the Father (God) is through him, I am the gate, etc. The Bishop also didn’t mention that Jesus came to take away the penalty for sin (which all humans have as part of their natures) and that the thing that separates humankind from God is sin. (God cannot be related to sin in any way and Jesus removes that barrier – other religions don’t do this at all.) Bishop Spong is clearly an intellectual type, who apparently ignores some of the most important parts of scripture in order to promote his own version of God. For what reason or purpose he does this is not clear to me. I hope I can have these questions put to him for an answer. I don’t see how Jesus’ words agree with his, especially about having a holy relationship, through Jesus’ death and resurrection, with the true and living God. Answer: Dear Ken, Thank you for your letter even though it reveals a deeply fundamentalist version of Christianity that lives only in those communities that have not engaged the intellectual revolution of the last 500 years. I associate your viewpoint with that which I encountered constantly when I was in Sydney, which religiously, at least, seems to me to be little more than a hotbed of pre-modern thinking. Perhaps that is why Sydney is known primarily as a secular non-religious city. This was especially true of those who called themselves “Sydney Anglicans,” who were among the most uninformed, the most imperialistic, the most deeply prejudiced and the most ungracious people I have ever met who still call themselves Christians. This was true from the Archbishop on down, excluding only that tiny minority in that archdiocese who secretly communicated to me their embarrassment over what has happened to their church in that beautiful city. If by your question you want to be in dialogue with a different perspective then I am happy to respond. What you call the “historical interpretation of scripture” is shorthand for evangelical fundamentalism. For the past 200 years in the Christian academies of the developed world the literal view of the Bible that you espouse has been shattered. Moses did not write the Torah. It was the product of about 500 years and the merging together of traditions from at least four schools of thought arising in the circumstances of four different periods of Jewish History. Not a word of what are called the “Books of Moses” or the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) was actually written until about 300 years after Moses’ death. Moses thus did not write it down while God dictated the Ten Commandments. There are in fact three versions of the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament and they do not agree with each other. From your perspective we would have to believe that God was confused or perhaps that God did not quite get the commandments right the first time so God kept trying. You appear not to be aware that miracles do not come into the story of Jesus until the 8th decade of the Common Era. The Virgin Birth does not enter the gospel tradition until the 9th decade; neither does the understanding of resurrection as the physical resuscitation of a deceased body. The story of Jesus’ ascension is a 10th decade addition to a growing and developing tradition. The Christian movement did not separate itself completely from the Synagogue and Judaism until 55-60 years after the crucifixion, so the imperialistic idea that only Christians have the truth was a late developing idea when Christians finally achieved institutional and political power. Can you imagine a God so limited that this God would only welcome into the divine presence those who agree with you or other fundamentalists? If Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews and Christians all worship the one True God as I believe we do, since there is ultimately only one God, then no one’s understanding of God can ever be identified with absolute truth. As the apostle Paul once wrote: “We see through a glass darkly.” The claim that no one comes to God but by Jesus is a saying attributed to Jesus only in the Fourth Gospel, a book that did not appear in Christian history until the latter years of the 10th decade, or some 65 – 70 years after the end of Jesus’ earthly life. The earlier gospels portray Jesus as saying those who are not against him are for him and inviting all who are weary and heavily laden to come unto him. The only standard of divine judgment according to Matthew said nothing about proper believing, but spoke only of the ability to see the presence of God in every person including those he called “the least of those who are our brothers and sisters.” The idea that human nature is fallen and that Jesus had to die for our sins is a result, not of some divine revelation, but of literalizing the ancient Jewish creation stories that stressed an original and perfect creation, followed by a fall into sin created by human disobedience, which in turn necessitated a rescue operation that portrays Jesus as being punished for our sins on the cross. This is a 4th century misreading of the ancient Jewish folktales and, if literalized, turn God into a vindictive, punitive monster. They would also turn Jesus into being the prime victim of divine abuse and would turn you and me into guilt-laden Christ killers. Besides that, we now know that these ancient stories are simply not literally true. Modern studies of the origin of our universe tell us that there never was a perfect creation, just an evolving process that went from physical matter, to life, to consciousness and finally to self-consciousness over a period of about 13.8 billion years. Evolution is an established scientific understanding of the origins of life that renders “original sin” as nonsense. If there was no fall into sin, there is no need for a savior, so that way of telling the Christ story is simply a product of an uninformed mentality. All versions of God are the ideas of someone. The idea of God changes dramatically in the Bible itself. It is a long journey from the God who sent plagues into Egypt, ordered the murder of the first born male in every Egyptian household on the night of the Passover and who drowned the Egyptian army in the Red Sea, to the God who enjoins us to love our enemies. I guess what I really want to communicate to you is that true Christianity is vastly different from any one’s idea of Christianity and is certainly different from the type of Christianity that you seem to have experienced and unless you can step away from the narrow and even punitive understanding that you reflect, you will never be able to grow into the fullness of the stature of Christ Jesus, which Paul says is in each of us. I have been all over Australia on many occasions. I assure you there is more to Christianity in that wonderful country than what you appear to know about. My books actually sell on a per capita basis there better than they sell anywhere else in the world. That would not happen unless someone is listening and someone is reading. As a matter of fact in September in Canberra an international gathering of progressive Christians will come together in a conference known as “Common Dreams III.” I commend it to all Australians who want to try to build what I have called “A New Christianity for a New World.” I wish you well. John Shelby Spong Announcements Common Dreams 3 Conference Midwives of Change:Progressives Shaping Religious Communities From: September 19, 2013 to September 22, 2013 Manning Clark Centre, Australian National University Canberra, AUSTRALIA Common Dreams http://www.commondreams.org.au Click here for more information Any questions or concerns, please contact us at support(a)johnshelbyspong.com or 503-236-3545. Copyright © 2013 ProgressiveChristianity.org, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you have a membership at johnshelbyspong.com. Our mailing address is: ProgressiveChristianity.org 708 Broadway Suite 105 Tacoma, WA 98402 Add us to your address book

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This could be you
by Herman Greene 22 Aug '13

22 Aug '13

First, thanks to Jaime for his comment on exchanging more stories. Now, I did receive this email from a colleague. He/she wrote: "I have taken note of your call for stories, etc. which hold who and what we were/are as well as, perhaps, our legacy for future generations." He/she then went on to propose write up a speech he/she had previously given about the order and that it would take some time. I wrote back "Time is something we have." To which he/she responded, "Isn't that what the rich young husbandman said and Bultman wrote 'everyone could see he was a fool.'" Don't let time run out. Herman __________________________________________________ Herman F. Greene 2516 Winningham Road Chapel Hill, NC 27516 919-942-4358 (ph & fax) hfgreenenc(a)gmail.com

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