GoKILILIGo: A xin yi (heart-full) strategy

Gee KILILI was the original title for this reflection but it sounded too presumptuously familiar and personal in the relational sense, and in the politics of a confined island governance where “who you know” defines who you are, we do not wish to give the impression that we are cozying up into the winter overcoat of our DC rep.

We would rather be identified with the current political movement that seem more attuned not so much to the logic nor clarity of their minds but more to the fullness and warmth in their hearts. Xin yi, among Chinese friends, is about being of “one heart” where collegiality is cemented by trust rather than the magnitude of one’s promises and patronage.

Obama impresses me as one among a growing cabal of servant leaders who first marches to his heartbeat before anything else. That heart beats the cadence of justice and mercy, service and, yes, love. Now, that love part is a rather quaint notion since the word has been overused and abused through the years, but precisely when seen as a “heart” word makes it abundantly clear that we refer here to the life force itself that makes one’s existence go round. We have a few in our island who are livening up our body politic, and I would like to think that Kilili is numbered into this rank.

That Kilili would highlight in his three-sentence introductory paragraph in the congressional record the promise “to work for better education for his constituents” endears him to this “old man” of a teacher. To be sure, education, to the cynical, is the foundation of everyone’s political platform, as innocuous and American as claiming that one is for mom and apple pie. But having served with Kilili in the NMI Humanities Council briefly, in my estimation, there is authenticity in the man’s actuations. The immediate opening to the portals of his office through cyberspace instituted as a first step to welcome participation from the electorate is a promising step.

As to his office, vivacious Pete A. welcomed a colleague and I from the Immanuel United Methodist Church of Saipan five years ago to the CNMI northwest DC Marianas House when we delivered a copy of the resolution passed by California-Pacific Methodists supporting the Commonwealth’s petition for an official delegate to the United States Congress. The resolution made it all the way to the global General Conference of the religious body, was forwarded to its Commission on Church and Society office on 100 Maryland Ave. just behind Congress, and delivered to some 60 congressional delegates who were members of the Methodist fellowship.

Of course, resolutions of this nature are more symbolic than legally compelling but the resolution was an added item to the then growing sentiment to have a Marianas delegate become officially a part of the non-voting delegate pool from the territories, American Samoa in 1981 being the last addition to the federal clan. Mentioning it here is more as a “feel good” luxury rather than a claim that the resolution had any direct effect to the Labor Act that finally instituted the office.

Aside from the fact that our Rep’s name onomatopoeically resembles a tickle of a certain body part in the Pinoy anatomy and lexicon, Kilili did receive the endorsement of organized workers on Saipan, whose many members are loquaciously Pinoy, during the year’s historic delegate selection. Kilili turns 54 the day before the Obama Citizens’ era gets sworn in. Obama’s campaign was marked by his call to service, which also has become an annual feature of MLK Jr.’s “a day on, not a day off” holiday. In fact, citizens across the nation are not just attending the swearing-in ceremony this week, they are swearing in themselves as well.

I am reminded of the anecdote about the late Pope John XXIII who would, when confronted by a relevant issue, remind himself to let the Pope know about it in the morning, “until I wake up and realize that I am the Pope!” Citizen’s this Monday are swearing themselves into a new level of commitment in the lifestyle of justice and mercy, service and love.

Huff Post writes: “Barack Obama is not the only one being inaugurated on January 20th. We all are…. that’s not just because Obama has promised to make a call to service “a central cause” of his presidency. It’s because this moment in history demands that we stop waiting on others—especially others living in Washington D.C.—to solve the problems and right the wrongs of our times. Now, more than ever, we must mine the most underutilized resource available to us: ourselves.” As has been eloquently stated elsewhere: We need a common purpose, not a common enemy. We have within ourselves the capacity to meet our own requirements.

For one who carries personal scars from having followed the dictates of the heart in one’s journey, it may surprise some that I would advocate following the yearning of one’s heart in the political arena. This is not about cheap sentimentality. It is more in the nature of living one’s life by following one’s bliss. It is taking one’s life, unique and unrepeatable, and injecting it passionately into the annals of human history. It is living and loving one’s vocation as also one’s identity, forsaking the current practice of securing the economics of making a living separate from the art and discipline of living a life! The mind discriminates, defines and confines; the heart embraces, entices and celebrates unceasingly! Go with your heart. The xin yi strategy is the way of the heart, and its path is a robust throbbing of the spin and harmony of the yin-yang.

Holly Kennedy (Hilary Swank) in the movie P.S. I Love You, addresses her departed lover: Dear Gerry, you said you wanted me to fall in love again, and maybe one day I will. But there are all kinds of love out there. This is my one and only life, and it’s a great and terrible and short and endless thing, and none of us come out of it alive. … Losing a mate and finding a new one to love is an awesome thing, but more awesome is the commitment of “my one and only life, … a great and terrible and short and endless thing.”

Spirituality among the deeply secular-religious have always known that eternity is a quality of existence rather than longevity after one has become fodder for worms six feet below the ground. Love as a quality of eternity happens, is accepted, recognized and celebrated before the eulogy.

And that is what is exciting about Kilili in Washington as Obama gathers a dysfunctional government, a fractured populace and a collapsed economy into the music of the spheres: “Our world in transition, old forms torn apart, creates a new vision, demands a new heart.” There will be a lot of prayers in the hearts of many on inauguration day, like this understated one from a friend who wrote: “I pray for good surprises and not too many disappointments.” The first half carries the full weight of my support for Kilili. Let’s GoKILILIGo!