Attention a la marché

The title was the French sign on the bus in Canada for “watch your step.” Not too familiar with French terms, I rely on Wiki to get me around as long as words are printed in the Roman alphabet. I could “guess” on Greek and Cyrillic but Sanskrit gets me nowhere.

Well, Red Deer in Alberta was a midway stop on our way to Edmonton so I assumed we would do the same on the way down. I was in what’s known as an “express bus” that does not stop where there are no passengers alighting, and after we passed all the exit signs for Red Deer in the highway, I decided we were not stopping. I paid the washroom at the back of the bus a visit rather than wait for the next pit stop. We ended up on the straight four-hour warm airstream heading south.

It was FIFA World Cup finals. The bus was WiFi-equipped so six laptops were set on streaming coverage. Not having a subscription to a network that offered the service, I relied on BBC’s kick-by-kick literary coverage. By the time we got to the end of the line, the score still remained 0-0 going into overtime, Germany v. Argentina.

The best photo on cyberspace I saw was that of Popes Benedict and Francis, with the balloon above Benedict’s head bearing an image of the German flag, and Francis, that of Argentina’s. There was no contest in the “prayer” department, and I do not think either prelate had anything to do with the outcome of the World Cup.

The Germans were most probably of the Reformation whose progenitors now hardly cross the shadows of a spire. The faithful Argentines finger their rosary beads still, all Catholics of Pope Francis’ flocks vintage post-Vatican II, a cultural hangover! An Aleman’s kick on overtime took home the trophy and their South American counterparts singing Don’t Cry for me Argentina.

Symbols. Some beach goers got a surprise last weekend. It appeared that a group trying to demythologize old “swastika” of the indelible Nazi connection and regain its original meaning flew the symbol among beach goers over Coney Island in NYC. It is true that the swastika previously had a long history of usage long forgotten and quietly maintained in many religious traditions. Its ascension to the German Nazi’s use, when Hitler came to prominence that is associated with the horrors of the Holocaust genocide, is an insurmountable lump to overcome.

Were we defensive, we can say the same of the Christian cross in the numerous attempts of crusaders to capture Jerusalem from infidels, or when the sword and the cross went with the conquistadores in efforts to Christianize and dominate the natives of the Americas. This is not meant to diminish the swastika’s effect among the Jewish folks but it does beg the question of how long a symbol’s use, abuse, and misuse to be measured, and which ones are we to march out the exit door?

Let’s be clear that the Aryan supremacy claim of Nazis was the Jewish and is Israel’s enemy, not the swastika. In fact, if Israel behaves even in what it considers as act of defense but goes around exterminating Palestinians for geographical sovereignty and illusions, Israel is no better than its former German prosecutors. Unfortunately, with what the Jewish settlers have done with the Palestinians for two generations, and the current reign of terror on Gaza as a punitive response to the desperation of Hamas militants, it is no longer a question of right or wrong; the only thing that counts is the casualty count. Right now, the score that includes non-combatant children and women is more than 800 for the Palestinians, less than 40 for Israel.

Syria, Palestine, Ukraine, Sudan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria are nation-states in current internal conflicts. China has Tibetans (Xizang) faithful to the exiled Dalai Lama in India to contend with, and the Islamic Uighurs of Xinjiang are following their Turkic cousins in Central Asia to martyrdom with assurances of 72 houri (virgins) in Jannah (paradise) waiting for mujahideen felled in jihad. Similar methods are used in Tunisia and Libya, Egypt and Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Buddhists’ self-immolation tactic is also on the rise. A United Methodist Church colleague in Texas, whose son lived with us in Saskatoon in the late ’70s, doused himself with gasoline and set himself in flames to remind his denomination that it does not walk its talk on race issues, and needs to tend its policies on the LGBT crowd if it were to be a real people of “open hearts, open minds, open doors.”

Another colleague tells of an experience coming down a mountain slope with other mountain climbers and realized that the snow was moving with them. They were in an avalanche and managed to shelter in time in a crevasse while the avalanche plunged 5,000 feet down the slope.

Watching your step seems to be too cautionary an advice to give in our time of rapid change and enormous challenges. That it came to me at a time of radical change and transformation sitting on a bus makes the task personally and socially critical and doubly urgent. Attention a la marche, I will.