Abe V Rotor
While poems do not drive a lesson like hitting a nail on the head, so to speak, they provide a mellowing effect, especially to us adults, to accept lessons in life. Such is the commonality of the poems of Sister Macarius, Sister Mamerta Rocero and Sister Paat, who are respected literary figures of the local SPC congregation. Their poems have a deep message to the reader in the ways of respecting and loving God. They often begin with reverence for life.
“All you peoples, clap your hands and sing,
The God of Creation has done wonderful deeds
And the earth is full of His handiworks
All for you and me.”
We picture God as detached, way above the level of man. Great writers in the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Dumas and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow can attest to that. More so with Michelangelo as shown in his mural, Creation. And yet we believe that man is the image of God. The anthropocentric view is that man was created in the likeness of God, and that he is the custodian of His creation. How lucky is man indeed to be the center of God’s attention! In Sr. Macarius Child of the Kingdom, she starts with a question, “Are you a child of the Kingdom? Then she proceeded to answer the question herself.
“Even with a sense of wonder
Holding a cup full of surprises,
Reading out to share with others
The joy of His abiding presence
Nurturing within your being
The hope of eternal life.”
We may not know the places and boundaries of eternity and kingdom. They are too far out there for us to grasp and believe, much more to understand. Yet we have learned to accept them, grew up with them, abstract as they are, in the name of faith and doctrine. They are there laid upon the path we all travel. At its end lies our salvation, which is as abstract as eternity and kingdom.
Our modern world has become skeptical about abstract things. It is moving away from rituals of faith to rituals of entertainment. Action demands reason. Imagination cannot be left unquestioning. Even science remote from technology is theory. Religions too, continue to evolve, breaking away from the moorings of tradition and dogma. Mystery and faith are no longer the perfect partners as they did for centuries. And the world has become more vigilant against conquerors using religion for their greed, sharing the bounties of conquest with it. And religion that keeps the colonial master in power, sitting beside the throne.
Just like Christianity replaced the long revered Aztec sun god, and the gods and goddesses of Mt. Olympus that survived Roman rule but vanishing with its fall, we ask ourselves today, “Will Vatican finally lose its global power and vast wealth? Will cultism create an exodus away from the church?” And now come the cybergods, riding on satellites and the internet and entering our living rooms at any time without knocking on our doors. And here is a hydra of corporate cultures, a kind of religion itself.
Continued...
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