BACK TO FRONT
A salutation for Jose Rizal
'Whoever does not sometimes give full consent, and a joyous consent, to the dreadfulness of life, can never possess the utterable richness and power of existence'.
Rainer Maria Rilke
As if Rainer Maria Rilke and John Keats
were alive in these challenging times of economic
gloom, spinning their web of negative capability.
Holding us in a protective balm against the sentimental
manufactured culture and our greed for consumerism
in a throw-away nonsense society.
These are the days when we must face the 'waking
dream' and wake to the world of human frailty
and stop hiding behind the hem of Christianity.
I am not out to offend or blaspheme anyone
because I know we all need spirituality and a god-
like existence. Let's fill the cathedrals with music, art and poetry.
Christianity was a great cloak against evil in
the Middle Ages, but there is something flawed
about worshipping a man in a dress floating
around in mobile when there are people
struggling to get the mobility of a wheelchair
and access to get them to the street corner.
Let's bail out Christianity and save it anymore
sex scandals or holy war embarrassments, going
against the grain of society, we can't have
the spirituality of today clashes with the
spirituality of humanity tomorrow.
I apologize if anyone is offended by these comments
but as Tom Waits said in the song 'Get Down of the Cross',
we need the wood to build an infrastructure that creates
a path of access that helps people who were not building
them and us judgmental society in a dog-eat-dog
world.
'It is a flaw in happiness, to see beyond our bourn-it forces us in
summer skies to mourn, it spoils the singing of the
nightingale'.
John Keats
In 2005, I had a stroke that almost killed me; I spent
a year in hospital on my back waiting for someone's
help after my exhausting days in rehab therapy. I met
a very caring girl on the Internet, after months of Yahooing
by computer, I decided to go to the Philippines and meet her.
After speaking to my son, I decided to find a little happiness
after that rough year of waking from a stroke/coma on the brink
of death, good food, and the warmth of a good, caring woman
was just the ticket I needed.
Playing the journey back and forth in my head, arranging
my friend to take me to the airport and my girl to pick me
up on the other side, I went for it. I lived with my girl, and her
family and embraced their Philippine lifestyle so
different from ours.
I never felt a difference in language
or skin tone. After a time, I thought they were family. I loved their
caring attitude and even embraced their Christian way.
Every day, I had a massage and walked between two bamboo
poles on the balcony.
I loved their caring attitude so much that I decided to
stay and get married. They took me to Fort Santiago, where
Jose Rizal was imprisoned and shot by firing squad and also to
traditional cabins by the seaside and under a trained therapist's
care, I was buried waist-deep in therapeutical sands.
After those days of near-death experience, it felt like I was in
heaven, I took potions and herbal remedies, I swam in natural
springs thinking one day I would walk, I even tried to embrace
their Christian ways, any light at the end of any tunnel was
a good light.
One day, we went to a beautiful cathedral; on the way in, I
noticed it was decorated with colourful stations of the cross and
biblical scenes, I saw every statue was covered by glass cages
like a gaming machine, and you had to put money in to light a
candle that dropped like a jackpot.
I couldn't help but think that the church had some sort of monopoly
on suffering, and we were paying for the right to grieve. The mass
began, and I sat there beside my future wife. And I asked what was
happening; the massive doors were closed, and the poor people and
beggars were locked outside; shouldn't it be the other
way around, I thought.
Shouldn't all the well-dressed people be out and the poor people in.
I began to feel that hypocrisy rises in me, that the church had got
it all back to front. Wasn't the church formed to help needy people,
I felt violated and exploited. I wanted to go up in my wheelchair and
tear the robes from the upper-class priest and throw the challis
out the door, but I sat through the charade.
The doors were opened again after communion; I asked the girl
and all her family for their change, thinking I would put on
the collection, but I asked to leave and was pushed out among
the beggars and thieves, homeless and limbless people.
Created by their corruption and hypocrisy, took all the money
I had notes and all and threw it into the air and went home
disgusted never again to set foot in these hypocritical temples.
I Told my girl I would never be part of organized religions back to
frontness.
JOSE RIZAL died for this hypocrisy, and the beautiful poor
people of this beautiful land were raped and plundered. I decided
to leave this corrupt state; I couldn't live in this corruption.
My marriage has now been annulled because British immigration
said she couldn't come here to look after me because I am disabled
and can't work to support the manageress of a company.
British law states you can't use a D.L.A. living allowance to get some-
one into the country with more hypocrisy. Ireland is a church, but
no one tells me what to do. So much for Jose Rizal being a hero
of the people. He lived and died by firing squad, and the church
and state gripped the people.
All my life, I have had to live under this christ-hypocrisy that has raped
and pillaged this land, I have since been told that I'll never walk or
talk properly, and the paralyzed side of my body has got no better.
I might only have one hand, but I've got my poems and essays
and paintings of spiritual energy, and I feel alive, do you?
Now I know what Jose Rizal died for; I salute you. Let's stop this
hypocrisy before it stops us. I miss the wonderful, caring people.
