Another brother crossed the bar

                          JOSE V. NERI

                   Born June 19, 1938

                 Died January 10, 2023

               

For man crossing the bar is one imperative nobody in this world escapes from. Still, every time, we give pause to ponder on such passing.  The uniqueness and significance of any one such event reminding us of the ultimate care the Creator showers on each person, down to the pettiness of knowing and keeping in existence each strand of hair he possesses.

In keeping then with such tradition, I mark and set aside time to delve on the life of my brother who just crossed the bar.

In the stillness and quietude of my brother's life,  we can discern many instances when he showed and understood the nobility of life and the filial care we each should have of every other of our kind.

Without noise of words, he showed in his own unobtrusive ways and loud actions that he truly believed these very basic premises, though at times because of our flawed nature, he may have fallen short in his interpretation and in his guidance.

Early in his life he had discovered and nurtured the idea of service to humanity.  In school, he showed not only serious demeanor in his study but also in extra-curricular activities such as serving Mass and teaching catechism to youths in the city.

As no surprise then, right after graduation from high school, Dodong joined the Society of Jesus with a group of his classmates, starting the pursuit of their vocation at the novitiate in Novaliches, Manila.  He stayed there for about 2 years.

As far as we could gather his leaving was a cooperative decision between himself and the society.  It was the common decision that since he did not possess enough of the vocation to pursue it to its end  that rather he would be more fulfilled and suited for some other career in life.

And this he did, and decided instead to pursue the study of medicine, which even then revealed his deep conviction in service to humanity.

From pursuing a vocation tasked with the saving of souls, he would instead choose a profession that would pursue preserving and saving the human body.

The study of medicine was a long and arduous one even for a very passionate and dedicated person like Dodong.  Many challenges stood in his way.  First and foremost was financial, thus most times he had to be a part time medical student taking on employment on the side.

But his sacrifices paid off, finally finishing all studies by 1972. It was the onset of Martial Law in deeply-troubled Philippines, so Dodong decided to travel to the US.  And there he would stay till his retirement, again running through a gauntlet of countless challenges presented not only under the new environment, but even with the very practice of the profession that he had sacrificed for in his old homeland.   But persevering, he overcame them all, practicing pediatrics in the State of Michigan for many years. Then retiring after age caught up with him.  But in all those intervening years enjoying the manifold blessings of his adopted country, he ever missed any opportunity to help and assist  family members who were left behind.

He came back to his homeland almost 5 years ago before his death, registering a life lived to the full measure and more.

Life’s A-wastin’

 Life’s  A-wastin’

Your earthly life is so very short.  So do not waste any of it.

This conscious stream of thought strings along my morning jog.

Keeping company as I negotiate the twists and turns of my rote.

And invariably of the ups and downs of daily living, too.

A casual admonition constantly hammered in our minds.

Most expectedly for those of us in the twilight of our years.

Rivulets of counsel feed the besieging river on the subject.

Perchance we may be off-footed what this beatitude is.

Why seekest thou rest (and pleasure), since thou art born to labor?

We hear a’ Kempis chime in with such serious tone and sense.

.

So, we ask ourselves this itchy question.

How is life then wasted or not wasted?

A Bottled-Up Life

 A Bottled-Up Life

Time was from the constricting walls of adolescence,

when I felt that life was one heavy onus dropped on me.

In which society's demands on life reigned supreme.

That life was one of purpose, and of destiny.

That life stayed within certain acceptable boundaries, 

Bottled up and neatly labeled for good measure.

Acquire actionable knowledge and passable skills,

Sufficient enough to raise and support a healthy family,

to dutifully enlist in civilization's inexorable forward march.

 All artfully designed to fulfill destiny and sustain humanity.

So it came to be for me, to fit snugly as a compliant cog,

in an efficient and ever-whirring machine of grand design.

But routines started to leak out and  break apart.

I ceased working for a living and commenced living for life.

It was then I felt a crying need from a gaping hole within.

The urge to lend to words to life events and inspiring ideas,

 racing through my suddenly awakened mind,

 all loudly vying for time and space.

Taking reins were pesky things that wanted to rule my life.

Of some deterministic obsession about what I ought to do.

Driven to extremes by compulsion hard to shunt aside.

All this I found awaited me like a siren call.

With reluctant gusto, I did what had to be done.

Committed to the written word dimly-lit memories in mind.

Egged on by some  formidable duress within,

coupled with urgency of  life about to be extinguished.

And now having gone out the wringer, I feel completed.

A published book it shall be for posterity and heritage. 

One designed to transcend the limits of temporal life.

And hopefully, worthy enough for those near and dear.

A Perspective: How The Person of Jesus Christ Actually Looked.

To commence to conjure images of the person of Christ after he had ascended,  we first allowed our own individual fertile imagination to roam free, to  festoon and emblazon the resulting images every which way until they became accepted.  This we have done over the centuries, creating differing images to the point of confusion, and even to the point of contention among those who would not accept any other but their own.  Jesus of a hundred faces!  That is what the world of Christianity has created.

This is when stodgy science crept in an attempt to settle the score and to extricate the bones of contention.  So using scientific methods tested and honed through years of studies, it has come out with its own most likely image of Christ, taking into account written data and fossilized figures derived from the same milieu as Christ.

The resultant scientific image of Christ makes Him look just like any Tom, Dick, and Harry, of his own milieu.  Looking very ordinary, insignificant, and maybe mediocre in facial features.  Somebody one can lose easily in any crowd.

Can we accept this as our reverential representation of the Son of the Almighty God, whose very name the ancient Jews could not even assign and/or name, or worse, write down  for fear of displeasing and desecrating Him?

It is ironic but for most significant personages of the ancient world, man has been able to collate enough data, fossil, or representations, to enable him to create passably accurate images of them.  Persons like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, even further down the historical holes, like the Neanderthals or the Cro-Magnons. etc.

But for Jesus Christ who lived only over 2000 years ago, we have not been able to till now. One wonders what is behind this unsaid inhibition or reluctance to define the one "official" image of Christ.

Personally, I take ownership of this novel perspective that I will lay out below, just strictly my own.

Before proceeding I consider this caveat.

Over the years, we have read, though mostly heard, that in his sojourn on earth Christ was seen as visiting other faraway places like those in Asia.  Scanty though the accounts may be still many stand by their own truths about such events.  Though Christ was said to have lived amongst such foreign people one has yet to hear about any physical description of Christ coming from those sources.  Somehow, these people must have sensed Christ as nobody any different from them, allowing him to sit amongst them and expound his doctrines.

Many would counter that such incidents are physically improbable given all the circumstances.  But the staid practice  of Parapsychology, a field of study now  generally accepted by pertinent authorities,  has given us some insights.  It has defined and proved to us the unique concept of bilocation or multilocation, which is power an individual has to be present in more than one location at the same time.  In a real way suspending the constraints of time and physics as we humans have learned to believe.

Any Being possessing or predisposed of having such powers must definitely also have other more subtle powers beyond the purview of natural phenomenon.

Thus, Christ in his earthly life when he appeared not only to crowds but to each individual person must have projected himself in ways that the viewer would find as the incarnate manifestation of someone originating from such mystical sphere.  Christ after all was not only more than human but he was perceived as the Redeemer of the entire human race that had been seeking deliverance from its earthly vicissitudes.  Thus to those who beheld him, he/she saw the human perfection of the Being as materialized in each and every unique individual lens that we possess.  Christ as seen not only in the differing grades of vision we each individually are gifted with, but including and not even limited to the prism that we individually perceive our Redeemer to be.

The anonymity of Jesus to his companions who had known him prior, on the road to Emmaus after the resurrection, in a way prods us to think that Jesus dictated how people would view His Person when they saw him. Or to not recognize him at all which the companions on the road to Emmaus did declare.

Thus, a black person sees Christ as the manifestation of perfection in his blackness.  A Chinese or Japanese for their parts would be to manifest Christ in their unique visions of perfection.  Same with the Middle Eastern.  And we could truly say and declare that those are  the correct images of Christ, as the latter allowed himself to be seen by them.

To the white person then, Christ is how he is typically depicted in books, magazines, calendars, etc., which we now currently witness around us.  And that would be accurate, though as an Asian person with an Asian set of perspectives my representation of Christ is obviously different. 

In the final analysis we can only prognosticate about these things, because Christ still is the Final Arbiter.  And as the limited representation of paper, we cannot fully understand the existence of the pencil.

The Crucifix

 

No iconic pendant for a necklace is as universal and popular as the crucifix, which symbol definitely transcends beyond religious beliefs or revered dogmas of wearers.  We know that because many non-Christians are seen to wear them on their necks or persons as well.

For devout Christians they know and swear to the crucifix as righteous symbol of their Master's supreme act of altruism, unjustly executed in the then prevalent punishment edict of crucifixion under the Roman Empire. A punishment reserved for the most vile of criminals though limited to males, who were brutally nailed to the cross to die a slow excruciating death.

We witness the ubiquitous presence  of the crucifix in most places and as worn in persons, from the most profoundly appropriate to the utterly sacrilegious ones.  From pious members of the clergy of most Christian denominations and their equally religious devotees, to the least holy like members of nefarious organizations, or those considered engaged in unethical activities like adult stars.  What about crooked politicians? Regardless, many display them with obvious pride and aplomb.

We could actually hazard the guess that a prevalent reason for the crucifix' s popularity stems from the cluelessness,  or ignorance, or even utter disregard on the part of the wearers in their understanding the symbolic significance of the crucifix.  Many wear them simply as accepted accessory, rather than for their mystical ramifications as religious symbol. 

Nowadays such  pious regard could be farthest from the consciousness of the wearer. Beyond the fact that it is usually made of precious metal, some embedded with precious stones.  In this rare instance, the extrinsic value is the metal it is made of, with the intrinsic value being its mystical representation, plus the inferred promise of personal salvation from a man hanging on a man-made cross.

History gives us a good peek at this atrocious but well applied savage practice for torts committed by men.  And one doubts that what delineates the civil torts from the criminal deeds during those times was quite cloudy as to assume the facility of classifying one from the other, as dictated by exigencies or expediencies of the times.  In other words, regardless what one's crime was or how one pleaded, the kind of punishment meted out depended largely on the magistrate imposing it.

We  learn that it was the glory-imbued Persians who first used crucifixion as punishment for criminals.  And 300 years later the Romans thought it proper to enshrine it  in their unholy empire as proper punishment for grave crimes, perfecting the process for maximum pain and duration.  To mark the trending ascent to the peak of inhumanity which over the ages man has shown to possess as one distinctive trait in his march to history.

The Romans did so much perfecting it, that modern medicine has detailed in writing  in scholarly but antiseptic fashion  all the racking effects of the process on the human body.  To include  those little tweaks the executioners applied for maximum duration of suffering.  Like when the crucified is about to expire due to suffocation, the guards would insert a small stool under the nailed feet so he could painfully raise his agonized body to allow for some breathing.

The medical prognosis go into painful details about which parts of the anatomy were affected by the process.  The joints on shoulders and elbows became disjointed or dislocated as the dead weight of the body mercilessly imposed.  Muscles were stretched but starved with oxygen  because of the ensuing difficulties in breathing from the lungs.  The ribcage did its best to maintain normal functions but was not able to.  The various chemical and fluid reactions as pain and suffering continued to harass the tiring body.  And many more.

The short medical prognosis of the process of crucifixion and the subsequent death on all the affected parts of the human body is so gross and abominable, it is difficult to read to the end of the short treatise.  More unconscionable is the highlighted part on pain and suffering inflicted on the human body as it struggles to stay alive.  So savage and brutal we are told that a learned sage from that era had written that at times the tongues of those fo crucified were cut so as to prevent them from making those weird and indescribable shouts produced almost unconsciously  Shouts that onlookers found so unbearable and objectionable.  His name is known to many, it is Cicero.

Ironic to note that the adjective,  excruciating, is derived from the otherworldly cries emanating from one in harrowing pain during crucifixion.

At the very least, crucifix wearers ought to be educated about this, if only to generate sorrow and remorse for what the world is leading humanity into. And more importantly, as resolve to right humanity's path away from its collective disregard for the rest.

BTW as disclaimer, as I kid I did have a small crucifix pendant with gold chain that our mother had us wear.  Over time, it started to be well-worn until finally the chain broke.  The pendant was kept somewhere and passed on to our kids  

Unlike these days when gold pieces are made in 14k, during that time most came in 18k, and thus may account for quicker wearing away of the softer metal.  Now, I wear a gold pendant with Chinese characters and has weathered through many years of usage.