Thanks to Jack Giles and Paul Schrijnen for the two forwarded articles.  Both moved us for two different reasons.

It is not in the same league (this is not false modesty; our stream-of-consciousness method of writing fits the Asian penchant for indirection without much sensitivity to consistency and logic, often devoid of depth and focus) but being our penultimate contribution to our ending Saipan Tribune OpEd column (online today), I thought I'd add it to the reflection (admittedly anticlimactic since this group already got the final submission).  We did intend it for a particular audience other than this listserv, so, let me take cover on that excuse for its shortcomings.

For the last time, ... see you at the bend!

Innocence
 
It is Innocents' day in Christendom, to commemorate the massacre of newborn males in Bethlehem allegedly ordered by King Herod when the Three Kings failed to stop at the palace after they tracked down the eastern star.  Nice dramatic Middle Eastern touch save that Matthew lifted it out off the Moses story when young males were ordered killed also while the Hebrew exodus leader was yet to suck his thumb in the cradle.
 
The plight of innocents has been a strong undercurrent in liberal causes, ours included, in the phrase "innocent suffering".  MLK Jr. considered unearned suffering as redemptive, giving a non-Baptist twist to the plight of African-American fight and flight from bonded servitude and discrimination into the "oasis of justice" in the Civil Rights struggle.
 
In a world grown interrelated and interlaced, incidences of innocence have grown so intertwined and interconnected to the rest of existence that to claim clean hands on anything jaded has become untenable.  Either in acts of omission or commission, each participates in the fate and destiny of one's life.  Indeed, no person is an island.  Culture already taints us from the hour of conception into human practices hardly considered pure and chaste even before birth.
 
The tutorial center where I volunteer on the weekends had three middle class parents approach our coordinator inquiring if I can tutor their six-year-old "treasured snowflakes" (reference to the 2nd generation "little emperors" in China's one-child policy) in oral English to qualify them to the elite Yi Cai bilingual school on the outskirt of the city.  They even bought apartments in the area so that they can qualify for the residency requirement.
 
The three tots spend their Sunday afternoons from midday to two-chimes-after-sunset, on their parents' schedule and comfort, in one hour-and-a-half session each, wading through basic Math (not arithmetic, mind you), oral, written, and vocabulary lessons in English.  Children who would otherwise be freely at play, or have their imaginations set loose to horizons never treaded before, sit quietly before teachers, to be instructed on quantifiable patterns and the intricacies of an organic foreign language. 
 
Other than the natural rebellion when exceeding the attention span of seven minutes, the bored children participate in their "suffering" as a matter of obedience to parents, as well as partake at an early age, the gleam of the status symbol attached to attending the school of their intention.  They are hardly innocent!
 
Innocence as the lack of guilt, legal or otherwise, is no longer an experienced external reality.  It has moved to the realm of the subjunctive.  It has become a matter of attitude.  
 
Avril Ramona Lavigne, the multi-talented French-Canadian performer, croons her Innocence in our Oral English class:
 
Waking up I see
that everything is OK
The first time in my life
and now it's so great
Slowing down I look around
and I am so amazed
I think about the little things
that make life great
I wouldn't change a thing about it
This is the best feeling.
 
Not that I have anything against the "I'm OK, you're OK" mindset, but it does sound boring, if not delusionary.  This "best feeling" as innocence is my students' familiarity.  We refer to this as the illusion of romantic longing, totally internal and in the realm of a preferred personal perspective, consigned to the universe of moods and sentiments. 
 
Asked what Christmas meant to our first generation China one-child-only denizens who went about their celebrative mood this year, and we get the nebulous "I am together with my family and we are happy" response.
 
Corollary to the stance of innocence is the claim of victimization.  Romney got a trouncing in the polls because he had the temerity to dub 47 percent of the American population as sorry victims of misfortune simply out to leech off the largesse of the more fortunate productive and well-off ones through the distributive justice programs of the Federal government.  He expressed a popular sentiment devoid of lucidity and truth.
 
The Church calls Herod's alleged senseless political executions "holy innocents".  The term is often applied to refugees caught in the crossfire between government goons and their hardly quixotic opponents.  We've known enough fleeing refugees from Vietnam to the Philippines, Chinese beholden to tongs wanting to head for NYC for $30K, Afghans and Iranis heading for Australia, even Yanbians wishing to cross into Korea, the huge undocumented immigrants in the US, and the overstaying visitors in Japan.  The EU had a more enlightened policy on migrants until reactive forces got too wary and anxious.
 
"Innocents" is not be a word I use to describe the destitute sectors of humanity.
 
But the issue of rights falls squarely at the core of our times.  There are issues on economic justice that precedes political ones.  Culture is hardly questioned but it exerts considerable influence on everything that we do.  Gun culture, anyone?  NRA's Wayne La Pierre (Le Prick in French, I was told) boldly asserts that guns are not the problem but the solution to senseless killings.  More armed guards are needed in public places. Thanks, but no, thanks.
 
Manipulative and coercive practices continue to shape our behavior.  We might keep the "feeling" but change the practices.  Mayhap, it is time to redefine innocence.

 j'aime la vie

Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate.  In all, Celebrate!