By the River Jordan I hanged out withadults 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. I remember theBishop’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 Jordanon her last pilgrimage. The one pesocontributed to the cost of transport. I was not much of aSunday Bible school devotee, but I knew enough of the role the River Jordanplayed in the life of our childhood hero Jesus of Nazareth. From the Sea of Galilee flowed the river’slife into the Dead Sea, not unlike the story of barefoot Nazarene gettingcrucified in Jerusalem. I never made it toIsrael. I missed it by a couple of weekswhen Israel went into its Six-Day War in 1967. Yhe Star of David decided to fly over Syria’sGolan Heights, the Jordan’s West Bank, and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. I was interested in the Paris of the MiddleEast at the time, Beirut in Lebanon, as summer break destination when I wasstudying in the United States. Reared with the storyof the Philippines casting the vote that got Israel into the United Nations, ina household dominated by stories of Moses, Joshua and Iesu of theJudeo-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 ofPaul. David of less than 3 millionpeople stared the belligerent glare of 120 million Goliaths from Syria, Jordan,Egypt, and Palestine; it was not hard to be politically aligned withIsrael. Supportive of the underdog, I wasalso swayed by Hollywood’s versions of the Holocaust used to justify Israel’sexistence at the expense of Palestinian infidels. It is Holy Week inChristendom, the annual rehearsal of a familiar story of a triumphal march toJerusalem from the Bethany of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus through the tableupsetting 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 theMount of Olives, a night vigil in the garden of Gethsemane, a sound of silenceat Caiaphas’ Sanhedrin and Pilate’s Praetorium, to the ignominious three-hourhanging on the cross in Golgotha, and the eventual burial into Joseph ofArimathea’s tomb, found empty on the third day. The story told more than 19 centuries ago has since been embellishedmany times over so much so that its scriptural metaphors have become the objectof debate in western literalists’ accounts of history. But history does not adrop of water make; story does with tears. The human story relies on metaphors for the infinite mystery, theimmeasurable depth, the endless vastness even of existence’s finitude, whichlead artists to know in their bones, like HH’s heroic Journey to the East where the main character concludes thatcreation is more engaging that the creator, that art is more interesting thanthe artist. How many tears havecome out of a simple issue like water in the River Jordan in recent years? EretzYisrael names the story of Abraham and his progeny known as the area“between Dan and Beersheba”; there was no quarrel with boundaries of the realestate as remembered accounts addressed the culture (souls) rather thanprecision in geography. The told memorysurvived the Babylonians and Assyrians, Persians and Macedonians, Greeks andRomans, Meccans and Ottomans, Semites and Brits. The warrior Ben-Guriondeclared the new State of Eretz Israel in1948. The Jewish State had not restedever since. They mauled the oppositioninto camps; diverted fresh water from the Sea of Galilee to the Negev, and whenSyria and Jordan did the same on the headwaters feeding into the sea ofTiberius, little David unleashed air power and Eretz Israel kept adding more miles to its real estate. It is evidently going after old Solomon’sgeographic boundaries! The water of life,meanwhile, is drying up. There is noshortage of water in the planet with the melting polar caps; it’s the potablewater that is at issue. The US Midwestis a disastrous silent spring as fertilizers and pesticide in the farms headedin fresh water aquifers. The dryingRiver Jordan waters regional conflicts. Benzene and p-xylenerecently come to fore in China. They areby-products in petrochemical plants. Benzene is carcinogenic and p-xylene causes complex neural disorders. They are also favored ingredients in themaking of plastic bottles of beverages we drink and wraps food we microwave. Both are highly flammable; a Guangdongplant exploded not too long ago, eliciting local protests. The city of Lanzhou, Ganzu, has benzene in its drinking water @20 timesacceptable limit, compliments of a petrochemical plant nearby. The sad side of HolyWeek 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 . . ." j'aime la vie pinoypanda2031@aol.com yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!