Innocence, displacement, war, and Hudea the 4-year who broke and keeps breaking my heart.

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES. 4 APRIL 2015. BLACK SATURDAY. N2.
Innocence, displacement, war, and Hudea the 4-year who broke and keeps breaking my heart. 

I HAVE SEEN her picture more than a week ago. 

I do not know how to make to of her innocence, and I prayed to God in the silence of my heart that would that this child see the light of day in the border of Syria and Turkey, she becomes the voice of peace, heals others, and announce the gospel of justice as the basis of human and social order, not the quest for profit and more profit as is the gospel coming from Manhattan, London, Vatican, and all the stock exchanges all over the world preys upon the sweat, labor, and dignity of all working class peoples all over the world. 

Anyone who does not understand this must slap themselves. 

And on Black Saturday, those people must slap themselves until they realize that they have been hoodwinked into believing that all is well in the world.

It is not. 

In December 2014, Osman Sagirli, a Turkish photojournalist snapped this picture of Hudea, the innocent, four-year old Syrian refugee taking temporary refuge in a camp in Atmeh, a place close to Turkey. 

Hudea thought that Osman's telephoto lens of a camera, those protruding apparatus of better and more professional photojournalists, was a protruding barrel of a high powered rifle (or its equivalent) and so she raised her arms in surrender. 

It was one of those automatic, almost-kneejerk reactions of children who have seen a lot of things that they are not supposed to see, like war, like evacuation, like the constant report of guns of all kinds from capitalist countries counting their monies from profits of arms production and arms sale. 

I cried seing Hudea's picture. 

You must too. 

Here is the account of Osman on this, from his lips. "I was using a telephoto lens, and she thought it was a weapon. İ realised she was terrified after I took it, and looked at the picture, because she bit her lips and raised her hands. Normally kids run away, hide their faces or smile when they see a camera. You know there are displaced people in the camps. It makes more sense to see what they have suffered not through adults, but through children. It is the children who reflect the feelings with their innocence."

Now, now: let us weep for all the Hudeas of the world. 

HON/

A Friday that is good and great, pious and profuse with tears.

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES. 3 APRIL 2015. N2.
A Friday that is good and great, pious and profuse with tears. 

THERE is this question posed by a great theoretician of Catholic and, yes (let us extend the dialogue) Christian practices. 

For all those who are not in the know, there could be two kinds of Catholicity: 

(1) The mainline Catholic that includes the Holy Roman Catholic Church, but is not the only one, because, one, we have to account the Armenian Church, the Greek Othodox, the Russian, and so on across (but not) the line. The trouble is that the HRCC became a tool of the imperial dreams of someone else, thus, this trouble between empire and faith, colonization and salvation, and oppression and liberation. Are these one and the same banana? 

(2) The 'schismatic' and breakaway groups that continue to test the HRCC. Think of those who have been excommunicated like Boff, and now, the current bishops like Faure challenging the aims of the Vatican Council II, and wanted, for all intents and purposes, to go back to the pre-Vatican Council II practices, ideas, throught, and way of administering the spirit of men, women, and children. 

Luther, centuries ago, comes to mind here, when he posted those theses on the wall of a church, and there declared that faith is not supposed to be sold to the highest bidder. 

And the Church of England? Ah, that is another question. 

Now comes the question raised by our dear Tony Igcalinos: what about this theology of 'Good Friday' becoming 'OK Friday' and not that 'eight sense' of 'good' in the English language nor the 'Kar' sense of the Germanic 'care and concern' of 'sorrowful Friday'?

Indeed, there is so much to do in this new area of inquiry we call 'theolinguistics' (or whatever its formulation will be in the years ahead). 

All told, this theolinguistics is one that is going to make things clear for us by looking into the roots of all these received terms, received concepts, received ideas, and received terminologies so that if these are wrong we: 

(1) can correct them, and 

(2) can offer an alternative theolinguistic term. 

This last one should be more liberating, or so we hope. 

And more honest, or so we hope. 

Not bad for a faith that continues to seek its soul, whether on Good Friday, on Okey Friday, or on Sorrowing Friday, the veil of lamentation ('manto', this, for the Ilokano) included so we can await for the 'lauya' day (that is Ilokano too!), when the soup smells so darn good.