Pakyaw

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 Protestante used to the genre of happy endings. But there it is in the Gregorian calendar every year: Good Friday!

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. Mande from mandate 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: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”

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 “good” 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!

“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-year-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 evidently lost its previous POW, and though he might have wanted to deliver his lethal signature cuff, the prizefighter settled for points!

The PacMan started cheap. His improvident father abandoned him when he was young. Manny took a boat from Mindanao to Manila to get started in his chosen career. He has been extraordinary in it.

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.

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.

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.

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 20. 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?”

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: “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.

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 1 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!

Jaime Vergara previously taught at SVES in the CNMI. A peripatetic pedagogue, he last taught in China but makes Honolulu, Shenyang, and Saipan home. He can be reached at pinoypanda2031@aol.com.