I first knew Noli Enriquez as a neophyte. In the turbulent 1967 when I applied to become an Upsilonian in my sophomore year and shortly after my trip back from China which was at the height of its Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, he was a member of Gari Tiongco's Fellowship Council. He was a humble brod, not known to boast and at times almost reticent, preferring to enjoy the conversations that went on around him. He was a good listener by all accounts. But when he spoke, his face was animated, and he spoke with much intelligence and insight. As officer, I had the impression that Noli measured every word he spoke, as if he rehearsed what to say beforehand so that its import and impact would be that more dynamic and effective. Perhaps, it was this kind of measured speech he made before the brods when he persuaded them to accept me as applicant during my presentation. You see, there were brods who thought I was a commie plant, some red agent commissioned to infiltrate the greatest fraternity in the world and learn its secrets. My Chinatown haircut didn't help of course, and my recent trip to China where I was invited to observe the hail of propaganda about the alleged success of their cultural revolution certainly brought suspicion, not to mention my very Chinese surname. Noli had learned that there was a move to reject my application. I am grateful that there was Noli who stood up for me, believed in me and in my potentials.
Predictably, as we each went our own way meeting Dstiny where we were sent, we lost contact after graduation. I got glimpses of him from other brods, stories really – secondhand accounts of his sightings. He was in Japan. He was in Canada. He became a successful entrepreneur. And like any red-blooded Upsilonian, he had his army of female admirers. As for his being an entrepreneur, it was no surprise to me. In U.P., his creative leadership potential was very evident, and it was my hope that he would pursue more studies in UP, take up law perhaps, and become a Most Illustrious Fellow of the fraternity. While I might not be entirely accurate, I believe he chartered planes, organized tours, and managed travel packages and found favour in Lady Fortune's eyes. I am told he led a life of leisure, finding time to pluck the plums out of the tree of life, see the world, and perhaps pour out the occasional stream of measured wisdom and simply bask in the joy of listening to brothers telling much. Because he was witty, he enjoyed the wits and banters of the brods.
I saw him again at the Otso-otso reunion in Toronto. Aside from gaining a few pounds, he was the same old Noli, with that same cheerful glint in his eyes, with that same humble willingness to listen to others speak, even if they were merely Mon Abad’s non-sequiturs, or Angelo Castro’s aesthetic evaluation of Canadian women, or the mocked sound and fury of his fellow travellers pitching editorials at the quality or pretensions thereof, of Canadian wines. Bottom-line, he was a gentleman and a good company.
We will miss him, our fellow Noli Enriquez, a tried and true Upsilonian. But like all Upsilonians who went before us, we will see him again when we are united for that Great Banquet in the Hereafter, when we toast each other to say, “We’re Upsilonians. For this title we proudly bear. Through tears and laughter, we are one everytime, everywhere.”
And the years, and even the mortal separation, will not break us, because we had heard each other. When I see you, Brother, in the Sun, I shall tell you much.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Monday, June 15, 2009
The end of Koinos
Saturday marked the end of our Koinos 101 course. Those of us who persevered were handed our Certificates in Christian Foundations. It was fun while it lasted, this once-a-month encounter with theologians giving the ‘amateurs’ some perspective on theological thoughts. Each now bears the weight of knowledge back into the existential challenges of our congregations, wondering how we can use what we learned. I leave with my wallet a little bit lighter. It was difficult to restrain Stella from buying the pile of books, which were hard to come by in ordinary circumstances - scholarly books being what they are sometimes find the indignity of being ignored in your café-latte ambience of your Chapters and Barnes and Noble. While I am still catching up with the reading and lament my wife’s exhuberant purchases, I could not disagree with her: they are great treasures. I took the added burden of paying a bit more to earn credits towards a Masters degree. This required me to submit five book reports, do 750 pages of readings, and a final integrative essay in addition to attending the seminars. My final essay entitled Perichoretic Phronēsis: The Role of Theology in Church Life ended up at 38 pages with 2 pages of bibliography. “It might seem presumptuous of me to title my essay with the words, Perichoretic Phronēsis, as if I fully knew what the words meant. I am using the words in the humility of someone who has the joy of learning at the feet of trained theologians, and in their simplest meaning,” I began. Taken together, perichoretic phronēsis means the abiding reciprocal practical wisdom of theology in the service of the church. If there is one single lesson I took out of this course, it is this idea from Jonathan Wilson, “To address the church’s failure to critically examine its own faithfulness, theology is a prophetic call to return to the foundations of ministry in the biblical narrative and historic witness of the church. It seems we who are the church do not have a clear sense of what it is that we are to do as the church or why we do those things as the church.”
The course ended with a seminar with Miriam Adeney, Regent College Professor of Anthropology and Missions who gave us some perspectives on World Christianity. Her Theology of Culture speaks to my need to understand that not all aspects of culture are wicked, that the idea of imago deo exists in the goodness and wisdom of all culture, but we must also oppose the idolatry and exploitation of cultures.
The course ended with a seminar with Miriam Adeney, Regent College Professor of Anthropology and Missions who gave us some perspectives on World Christianity. Her Theology of Culture speaks to my need to understand that not all aspects of culture are wicked, that the idea of imago deo exists in the goodness and wisdom of all culture, but we must also oppose the idolatry and exploitation of cultures.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
True Son of Heaven
I finished reading a book called True Son of Heaven in which the author talked about how Jesus actually fulfilled the Chinese culture. The book, while sparse in some aspects, especially about the richness and complexity of being a Chinese, was a good primer about the 'inscrutable' Chinese mind. In my review, I made the following interesting observation:
In Chapter Eleven, “Spooks, Bandits, and Power Saws,” Marshall talks about the significance of walls (and by corollary, doors) to the Chinese, noting that “Every Chinese defines who he is by which doors he sees from within and which from without. (p. 153).” As a member of a Chinese church (with its overly protective wall over its ‘lingua franca” – in my case, the Fujian dialect), I appreciate this wall mentality all so well, when more often than not, our board of elders and deacons deal with church matters the way the Qing mandarins would deal with state affairs – “What the ordinary members don’t know is good for their spiritual well-being.” It seems that transparency is a concept totally alien to most Chinese, Christians or not). The power of walls is even evoked in the West when we use the term, “Chinese Walls” to describe a need-to-know system of confidentiality and disclosure. The Great Wall is more than a great monument to a tyrant’s paranoia; China sees this as the defence of the civilized against the savage; and there is, with the Chinese’ bitter experiences of nomadic raiders like the horde of Genghis Khan and more recently, the Europeans’ humiliation of China during the Opium War, a reminder of foreigners as the savages. The wall, in the Chinese psyche, becomes its solid emblem of xenophobia. Although I agree with Marshall’s assessment that China is now changing and the unreasoning fear of outsiders is subsiding, my own personal experience in Beijing during the Great Cultural Revolution in 1967 indicates that outsiders are still not quite welcome and certainly not to be trusted with information about Chinese events. At the park, together with my Filipino student group which had been invited by a government-regulated Shanghai youth organization to enjoy the sights of China’s “flourishing” of a “Hundred flowers bloom and a thousand thoughts contend, (their slogan for the Cultural Revolution),” I inadvertently walked into ZhongNanHai Park across from Tiananmen Square, where we were rudely confronted by a group of angry, screaming red guards. What we thought was a short walk to burn off our sumptuous dinner turned into an accidental incursion into a “study camp” where the red guards were doing some forceful lectio divina of Mao’s little red book, a collection of his quotations (more like his revolutionary aphorisms), perhaps with the re-education in mind of some bourgeois-revisionists whose dunce caps marked the nature of their disgraced status. Through my somewhat broken Mandarin, I succeeded in convincing them that we were friends (‘peng-you”) of the great proletarian society and that we did not hear anything nor see anything (sometimes the monkey’s “no see, no hear, no talk” works), but not after we were pushed around a bit. Back at the hotel, someone commented how we were seen immediately as outsiders. Perhaps, I replied, still somewhat unnerved, my Beatles t-shirt with Ringo Starr in his mop-head hairdo, might have given us away? In 1967, almost all Chinese wore those drab olive Maoist uniforms. 1984 came early in China. The next day, at BeiDa (Beijing University), I recognized a few of the red guards I encountered the night before. This time, after one of our members made his rousing speech about how the Filipino proletariats were united with the Chinese people in the overthrow of imperialists and capitalists, these same red guards came over and hugged me like a long lost cadre.
In Chapter Eleven, “Spooks, Bandits, and Power Saws,” Marshall talks about the significance of walls (and by corollary, doors) to the Chinese, noting that “Every Chinese defines who he is by which doors he sees from within and which from without. (p. 153).” As a member of a Chinese church (with its overly protective wall over its ‘lingua franca” – in my case, the Fujian dialect), I appreciate this wall mentality all so well, when more often than not, our board of elders and deacons deal with church matters the way the Qing mandarins would deal with state affairs – “What the ordinary members don’t know is good for their spiritual well-being.” It seems that transparency is a concept totally alien to most Chinese, Christians or not). The power of walls is even evoked in the West when we use the term, “Chinese Walls” to describe a need-to-know system of confidentiality and disclosure. The Great Wall is more than a great monument to a tyrant’s paranoia; China sees this as the defence of the civilized against the savage; and there is, with the Chinese’ bitter experiences of nomadic raiders like the horde of Genghis Khan and more recently, the Europeans’ humiliation of China during the Opium War, a reminder of foreigners as the savages. The wall, in the Chinese psyche, becomes its solid emblem of xenophobia. Although I agree with Marshall’s assessment that China is now changing and the unreasoning fear of outsiders is subsiding, my own personal experience in Beijing during the Great Cultural Revolution in 1967 indicates that outsiders are still not quite welcome and certainly not to be trusted with information about Chinese events. At the park, together with my Filipino student group which had been invited by a government-regulated Shanghai youth organization to enjoy the sights of China’s “flourishing” of a “Hundred flowers bloom and a thousand thoughts contend, (their slogan for the Cultural Revolution),” I inadvertently walked into ZhongNanHai Park across from Tiananmen Square, where we were rudely confronted by a group of angry, screaming red guards. What we thought was a short walk to burn off our sumptuous dinner turned into an accidental incursion into a “study camp” where the red guards were doing some forceful lectio divina of Mao’s little red book, a collection of his quotations (more like his revolutionary aphorisms), perhaps with the re-education in mind of some bourgeois-revisionists whose dunce caps marked the nature of their disgraced status. Through my somewhat broken Mandarin, I succeeded in convincing them that we were friends (‘peng-you”) of the great proletarian society and that we did not hear anything nor see anything (sometimes the monkey’s “no see, no hear, no talk” works), but not after we were pushed around a bit. Back at the hotel, someone commented how we were seen immediately as outsiders. Perhaps, I replied, still somewhat unnerved, my Beatles t-shirt with Ringo Starr in his mop-head hairdo, might have given us away? In 1967, almost all Chinese wore those drab olive Maoist uniforms. 1984 came early in China. The next day, at BeiDa (Beijing University), I recognized a few of the red guards I encountered the night before. This time, after one of our members made his rousing speech about how the Filipino proletariats were united with the Chinese people in the overthrow of imperialists and capitalists, these same red guards came over and hugged me like a long lost cadre.
Monday, February 23, 2009
A Hospitable Trek
During the first weekend of February, a few of my batchmates in the Upsilon Sigma Phi made a joyous trek to visit a brother who is suffering from prostate cancer. When they finally assembled, there were a total of 40 brothers, from different batches, and Sigma Deltans wishing the visited brod a hearty hello. The brod who lives in Las Vegas had been undergoing chemotherapy for his cancer and was moved to tears by the well-wishers. A DVD was shown in which other Upsilonians in the Philippines unable to come gave their greetings to our ailing brod. I unfortunately had not been able to go, and regretted not having the chance to tell my brother face to face about how much I care for him and of my constant prayers to ask God’s mercy for him. The batchmates, a total of about five together with our ‘Tatang’ who was the Most Illustrious Fellow when we were initiated into the fraternity in UP Diliman, stayed over-night at the brod’s place, camped out in their sleeping bags, re-enacting the last anxious night before their ‘finals.’ With the short email narration from a batchmate who was there, I too relived that fearful night knowing that the next day we would face the trial of our young years, when we were shown the rites and secrets of what it meant to be Upsilonians.
To my ailing batchmate, we sent our collective encouragement, “Hold on, when there is nothing in you except the will which says to them, ‘Hold on!’” right out of Rudyard Kipling’s poem If which we had all committed to memory during the barrage of neophytes’ suffering we all experienced in 1967.
I am sure there were continuous exchanges of stories and anecdotes, told in the laughters and tears of those who shared a life committed to the ideals of brotherhood. “When I meet you in the sun, Brother, I shall tell you much” never had been as truthful as when we all participate in our narratives which make strong construal of our selves as tried and true Upsilonians. Sometimes, I wonder if we were a dying breed, that last school of “salmon” swimming against the currents to reach some unknown destination, where we fiercely hanged on to our archaic value of brotherhood and camaraderie. While we seem to be overwhelmed by the tide of postmodern scepticism and fragmentation, there is yet an indifference on our part as to how strong the opposition is to our ideals, surrendering to the simple fact of our almost fanatical stance to acknowledge each other as brothers, raising our collective cry against loneliness, stronger than we are as a brother to another brother. We sing, “One case of beer for the all of us. We thank the Lord above there ain’t no more of us… for we are members of the Upsilon Sigma Phi…”
To my ailing batchmate, we sent our collective encouragement, “Hold on, when there is nothing in you except the will which says to them, ‘Hold on!’” right out of Rudyard Kipling’s poem If which we had all committed to memory during the barrage of neophytes’ suffering we all experienced in 1967.
I am sure there were continuous exchanges of stories and anecdotes, told in the laughters and tears of those who shared a life committed to the ideals of brotherhood. “When I meet you in the sun, Brother, I shall tell you much” never had been as truthful as when we all participate in our narratives which make strong construal of our selves as tried and true Upsilonians. Sometimes, I wonder if we were a dying breed, that last school of “salmon” swimming against the currents to reach some unknown destination, where we fiercely hanged on to our archaic value of brotherhood and camaraderie. While we seem to be overwhelmed by the tide of postmodern scepticism and fragmentation, there is yet an indifference on our part as to how strong the opposition is to our ideals, surrendering to the simple fact of our almost fanatical stance to acknowledge each other as brothers, raising our collective cry against loneliness, stronger than we are as a brother to another brother. We sing, “One case of beer for the all of us. We thank the Lord above there ain’t no more of us… for we are members of the Upsilon Sigma Phi…”
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
The battle continues
I’m so sadly reminded the other day that the tug of war between the modernists and the postmodernists continues. Even within the church, conflict arises between these two cultural groups. Unfortunately, pastors themselves are the product of their own culture; while being mostly unaware of how culture has impacted them, our spiritual leaders invariably fall back on their cultural leanings on how to do church. Christian ethicist Jonathan R. Wilson wrote, “Culture is to human as water is to fish. Someone has said, “If you want to know about water, don’t ask the fish.” Similarly we humans are oblivious to the culture that shapes our lives.”
Since the seventeenth century, Reason, which is viewed as a universal personal embodiment, replaced religion as a guide to truth. Largely a response to the devastating wars of religion in Europe, reason was adopted as a means of acquiring peace. Set free from the chains of superstition, religion and all other external authorities, people established themselves as individuals capable of being self-governed by their own autonomy. Through reason, man became the center of the universe and can subdue everything through the powers of the Enlightenment. Postmodernity, on the other hand, is the current reaction to modernity, calling into question all the beliefs and practices of modernity. Reason is not some universal property but something constructed by different cultures in different ways. “Reason” extended into the arena of conflict becomes as much a source of violence as religion. Truth, that natural offspring of reason, is viewed as multi-cultural and varied; in other words, there are many truths, each acceptable depending on the lens one uses. Cultures, not individuals, are the real source of authority. Far from conquering or subduing nature, man is being subdued by nature. Moreover, postmodernists have turned faith into a matter of feeling rather than knowledge.
Yet, modernist illusions run strong. “When we present the gospel as a means to greater control of our lives… when we plot the survival of the church… when we think that church is something to “manage”… when we market the church,” according to J R Wilson, we fall into the modernist illusion.
While I do not profess to know the answer to this cultural clash within the church, perhaps the focus should not be in the gospel’s ability to replace but to transform…
Since the seventeenth century, Reason, which is viewed as a universal personal embodiment, replaced religion as a guide to truth. Largely a response to the devastating wars of religion in Europe, reason was adopted as a means of acquiring peace. Set free from the chains of superstition, religion and all other external authorities, people established themselves as individuals capable of being self-governed by their own autonomy. Through reason, man became the center of the universe and can subdue everything through the powers of the Enlightenment. Postmodernity, on the other hand, is the current reaction to modernity, calling into question all the beliefs and practices of modernity. Reason is not some universal property but something constructed by different cultures in different ways. “Reason” extended into the arena of conflict becomes as much a source of violence as religion. Truth, that natural offspring of reason, is viewed as multi-cultural and varied; in other words, there are many truths, each acceptable depending on the lens one uses. Cultures, not individuals, are the real source of authority. Far from conquering or subduing nature, man is being subdued by nature. Moreover, postmodernists have turned faith into a matter of feeling rather than knowledge.
Yet, modernist illusions run strong. “When we present the gospel as a means to greater control of our lives… when we plot the survival of the church… when we think that church is something to “manage”… when we market the church,” according to J R Wilson, we fall into the modernist illusion.
While I do not profess to know the answer to this cultural clash within the church, perhaps the focus should not be in the gospel’s ability to replace but to transform…
Friday, November 28, 2008
The Stillness of a Brooding Soul
The year, tossed about by turmoil and the changing seasons of the heart, is on its last leg, like the rickety, murmuring steamboat approaching shore after a journey down the inscrutable stretch of an impulsive river. Just as a man is cloistered in year-end thoughts, so he must enter the stillness of his brooding soul. “And the stillness of life does not in the least resemble a peace. It is a stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention,” Joseph Conrad’s words (from Heart of Darkness) reverberate in the hollow clasp of his mind. Soon the implacable force moves him into the birth of a new year, with renewed hopes and perfect intentions, with a curiosity of impulses, motives, capabilities, and weaknesses forming the pondering props of a fresh play – and this year he promises to do all the things he sets out to do, unless he is frustrated once more by the excuse of his inexorable physical necessity.
But for now, a Marley’s ghost rattles the exasperating chains of flashing scenes, the what-could-have-been’s: the kindness that he could have shown to strangers or otherwise, the grace he could have granted to those weaker than himself by not judging them, the words of encouragement that he could have spoken to his own children and friends, the courage he could have demonstrated by speaking for the broken and the dispossessed, and the work that he could have done for the Gospel that sits unattended, cobwebbed and unlived. Of course, the mind’s defence is only too eloquent in justifying the many escape routes he has taken instead. “I am tired.” “I have too much to handle.” “I’m not qualified.” “I have given enough.” “Someone better will come along to do the job.” Rebellion has many faces; outright defiance is just one of them; the others are: compliance (“OK, if I have to I will,” but underneath it he is still a rebel), impotence (“I am unable to do it because I don’t have the power” – a kind of false humility), and negligence (“Oh, I forgot.”). He is the new Simon of Cyrene (Lk 23:26) who refuses, although politely, to carry the cross; he is on his way to the country and his burden is many. He just doesn’t remember that carrying each other’s cross is to fulfill the law of Christ (Gal 6:2). The tragedy is not that he cannot see but that he chooses blindness deliberately, with the brutality of a farmer who only sows weed. He probably thinks nothing of Nelson Algren’s verity, “… the court jester got laughs simply by sniffing the troubled air, implying that the stink of the herring begins in its head. In times like our own, it isn’t surprising to find men and women crowding the night clubs in hope of seeing someone sniff the air. In such times, clowns become witnesses.”
His mind is a sepulchre in the blind whiteness of fog, of memories decayed and imprecise, which play back now and then – actions and deeds, the perfect Kodak moments of the paperback hero dispensing tender mercies along life’s path. Joy, sorrow, fear, valour, rage and desire provide the bewildering luminance of his career, effecting the final illusion that everything is coming up roses. There is no shame in this type of prevarication; after all no one is hurt. Principles are less than chaff in the wind. Today, he is just brooding and soon the tabula rasa that is his mind will greet him with the new year bell. He is ready to board the steamboat bound for next year’s river, and his right to passage, merely this: that he has lived through last year.
At year-end, we gather our thoughts, sort them in the warmth of our mind’s barn, probe them, and make our obligatory resolutions. Next year it must be better. Next year, we must put our name down for this cause or other. Next year, we must help with this or that committee. Next year.
And that man with the sepulchral mind, who is he anyhow? I sometimes think he is me…
(first written, December 1995)
But for now, a Marley’s ghost rattles the exasperating chains of flashing scenes, the what-could-have-been’s: the kindness that he could have shown to strangers or otherwise, the grace he could have granted to those weaker than himself by not judging them, the words of encouragement that he could have spoken to his own children and friends, the courage he could have demonstrated by speaking for the broken and the dispossessed, and the work that he could have done for the Gospel that sits unattended, cobwebbed and unlived. Of course, the mind’s defence is only too eloquent in justifying the many escape routes he has taken instead. “I am tired.” “I have too much to handle.” “I’m not qualified.” “I have given enough.” “Someone better will come along to do the job.” Rebellion has many faces; outright defiance is just one of them; the others are: compliance (“OK, if I have to I will,” but underneath it he is still a rebel), impotence (“I am unable to do it because I don’t have the power” – a kind of false humility), and negligence (“Oh, I forgot.”). He is the new Simon of Cyrene (Lk 23:26) who refuses, although politely, to carry the cross; he is on his way to the country and his burden is many. He just doesn’t remember that carrying each other’s cross is to fulfill the law of Christ (Gal 6:2). The tragedy is not that he cannot see but that he chooses blindness deliberately, with the brutality of a farmer who only sows weed. He probably thinks nothing of Nelson Algren’s verity, “… the court jester got laughs simply by sniffing the troubled air, implying that the stink of the herring begins in its head. In times like our own, it isn’t surprising to find men and women crowding the night clubs in hope of seeing someone sniff the air. In such times, clowns become witnesses.”
His mind is a sepulchre in the blind whiteness of fog, of memories decayed and imprecise, which play back now and then – actions and deeds, the perfect Kodak moments of the paperback hero dispensing tender mercies along life’s path. Joy, sorrow, fear, valour, rage and desire provide the bewildering luminance of his career, effecting the final illusion that everything is coming up roses. There is no shame in this type of prevarication; after all no one is hurt. Principles are less than chaff in the wind. Today, he is just brooding and soon the tabula rasa that is his mind will greet him with the new year bell. He is ready to board the steamboat bound for next year’s river, and his right to passage, merely this: that he has lived through last year.
At year-end, we gather our thoughts, sort them in the warmth of our mind’s barn, probe them, and make our obligatory resolutions. Next year it must be better. Next year, we must put our name down for this cause or other. Next year, we must help with this or that committee. Next year.
And that man with the sepulchral mind, who is he anyhow? I sometimes think he is me…
(first written, December 1995)
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
The Grassy Knoll
This time of the year (November), we are reminded once again by a barrage of articles, documentaries, and op-eds of that fateful 1963 day in Dallas, Texas when John F. Kennedy was fatally wounded. Re-examinations of events, places and personalities sure enough surfaced to jolt us once again into our communal mourning. Did Harvey Lee Oswald act alone? Was there only a single bullet or three bullets? What was Jack Ruby’s connection with Oswald? Was there someone else, dubbed the Umbrella Man, on the grassy knoll that fired another shot? Was there a right-wing conspiracy that plotted the President’s death?
Once again, we are watching the presidential motorcade winding down Dealey Plaza through Abraham Zapruder’s Bell and Howell lens. Not surprisingly, we are still shaken by the minute but unmistakable red mist before President Kennedy’s head jerked back and the First Lady in her elegant raspberry-colored pillbox hat and coat crawled onto the back of the top-down Lincoln Continental to reach for the Secret Service agent moving towards her. A narrated tour of the various locations inevitably ensues. We visit the messy 6th floor of the Texas Book Depository where we are shown the bolt-action assassination rifle and the window from which a clear view of Elm Street was evident. We proceed to the Parkland Hospital Trauma room where JFK was pronounced dead. We listen to the interviews of Lee Harvey Oswald who still looks so mild and composed, and to my untrained eye, could stand in for the singer Bobby Darin’s younger brother. We see Oswald snaking through policemen and reporters when we hear the single pistol shot that ends his life. We then join the sombre horse drawn caisson bearing Kennedy’s casket along Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol Rotunda. We hear the sounds of muffled drums and the clacking of horses’ hooves. This is the state funeral that is forever seared into our collective consciousness.
I remember hearing the news over the car radio as I was being driven to my Manila high school. Like everyone else I talked to that day, we did not think that JFK was really dead, and that the news report was some sick joke perhaps emanating from Russia at the behest of Khrushchev who hated JFK for the Cuban Missile Crisis stand-off, to demoralize us all. That night, I finally believed that it was true after watching Walter Cronkite announce his death. There was a strange certainty and finality to Cronkite’s calm reading of the news flash. The world seemed a little more unfriendly and dangerous that night. I looked for reassurance. I stared out the window and the lone voice of a balut vendor only exacerbated the agonizing sense of alienation I felt.
I am returning to the Grassy Knoll from which I could see the motorcade and perhaps the larger implication of JFK’s death. Somehow, over the years, the Grassy Knoll has become a vantage point for me to see the larger picture of his death. It seemed distrust of government began with his murder and now paranoia over US government cover-up and conspiracy is reaffirmed crisis after crisis. As Kennedy represented the coda of freedom and civil rights, and an almost chivalric quest for world peace that only true democracy can produce, Oswald’s bullet shattered forever the visage of the modern Camelot where the knights of liberalism and truth stood ready to save the world. Finally, the once invincible American style of leadership was seen as fully mortal and finite. I am sure there are more social and political fall-out from his untimely death. As I watched the parade of TV commentators talking about the assassination, I sensed an air of collective guilt hovering silently, but no one dared address this specter.
As with millions of people, I am still baffled by the entire tragedy except for the certainty of the reprising lyrics from Camelot:
Yes, Camelot, my boy!
Where once it never rained till after sundown,
By eight a.m. the morning fog had flown...
Don't let it be forgot
That once there was a spot
For one brief shining moment that was known
As Camelot.
Once again, we are watching the presidential motorcade winding down Dealey Plaza through Abraham Zapruder’s Bell and Howell lens. Not surprisingly, we are still shaken by the minute but unmistakable red mist before President Kennedy’s head jerked back and the First Lady in her elegant raspberry-colored pillbox hat and coat crawled onto the back of the top-down Lincoln Continental to reach for the Secret Service agent moving towards her. A narrated tour of the various locations inevitably ensues. We visit the messy 6th floor of the Texas Book Depository where we are shown the bolt-action assassination rifle and the window from which a clear view of Elm Street was evident. We proceed to the Parkland Hospital Trauma room where JFK was pronounced dead. We listen to the interviews of Lee Harvey Oswald who still looks so mild and composed, and to my untrained eye, could stand in for the singer Bobby Darin’s younger brother. We see Oswald snaking through policemen and reporters when we hear the single pistol shot that ends his life. We then join the sombre horse drawn caisson bearing Kennedy’s casket along Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol Rotunda. We hear the sounds of muffled drums and the clacking of horses’ hooves. This is the state funeral that is forever seared into our collective consciousness.
I remember hearing the news over the car radio as I was being driven to my Manila high school. Like everyone else I talked to that day, we did not think that JFK was really dead, and that the news report was some sick joke perhaps emanating from Russia at the behest of Khrushchev who hated JFK for the Cuban Missile Crisis stand-off, to demoralize us all. That night, I finally believed that it was true after watching Walter Cronkite announce his death. There was a strange certainty and finality to Cronkite’s calm reading of the news flash. The world seemed a little more unfriendly and dangerous that night. I looked for reassurance. I stared out the window and the lone voice of a balut vendor only exacerbated the agonizing sense of alienation I felt.
I am returning to the Grassy Knoll from which I could see the motorcade and perhaps the larger implication of JFK’s death. Somehow, over the years, the Grassy Knoll has become a vantage point for me to see the larger picture of his death. It seemed distrust of government began with his murder and now paranoia over US government cover-up and conspiracy is reaffirmed crisis after crisis. As Kennedy represented the coda of freedom and civil rights, and an almost chivalric quest for world peace that only true democracy can produce, Oswald’s bullet shattered forever the visage of the modern Camelot where the knights of liberalism and truth stood ready to save the world. Finally, the once invincible American style of leadership was seen as fully mortal and finite. I am sure there are more social and political fall-out from his untimely death. As I watched the parade of TV commentators talking about the assassination, I sensed an air of collective guilt hovering silently, but no one dared address this specter.
As with millions of people, I am still baffled by the entire tragedy except for the certainty of the reprising lyrics from Camelot:
Yes, Camelot, my boy!
Where once it never rained till after sundown,
By eight a.m. the morning fog had flown...
Don't let it be forgot
That once there was a spot
For one brief shining moment that was known
As Camelot.
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