Innocents’ Day

We are not going for the toddler’s welfare, which is the focus of tomorrow’s Innocents’ Day in the Christian liturgical calendar. For biblical scholars familiar with Matthew and Luke, the first was written for the Jews and the second for the gentiles. Luke bothered to trace Jesus’ lineage to the widely known martyr John the Baptist but did not provide much fanfare in not having a room at the inn; the infant child had to be born in a manger, with only shepherds and angels in attendance.

Matthew was writing to the Jews of the synagogue to prove that Jesus was a fulfillment of the prophetic messianic vision, so he was not only particular about Joseph being a descendant of King David, he also got Magi to visit and trick King Herod by skipping town without due notice. The King then proceeded to have every 2-year-old boy in Bethlehem and surrounding areas killed, ala the Mosaic tradition of Moses surviving the Pharaoh’s edict of a similar genocide in the Exodus story. Not unlike the family of Joseph of old, Jesus’ family also escaped to Egypt and returned only after Herod died.

I bother to point out both of these items in Luke and Matthew just so readers know that we are way beyond the literalism that usually accompanies Bible literacy in our time. The liturgical Innocents’ Day had been observed for the innocent suffering in the world, mostly those of children in war, disasters, and famine.

I focus this reflection on the second group of children, those into second childhood years of which I have suddenly entered. Since formally retiring after Liaoning Province of China that owns and runs the Shenyang Aerospace University implemented its book rule on not having foreign teachers over 65 (China still retains the old life expectancy record that led to women retired at 55 and men at 60, though a revised five-year addition has just been announced since almost a fifth of the population are on superannuation), I realized how much of the stereotype associated with second childhood has already become mine.

First, there are the body symptoms like the jowl that looks like that of the turkey forgiven by the WH on Thanksgiving, and the butt that used to attract approving giggles from the school girls in the elevator when I skintight it in body fitting jeans springtime but is now virtually ignored for its non-existence! The lack of dexterity that keeps dropping things has become only too painfully familiar, and lifting one’s body a foot higher on a stool invariably results in vertigo. Coming along these ways was not our idea of maturing into the soufflé of our years.

If my vaudevillian incoordination is often a source of embarrassment and discomfort, the incredible emotional tolerance for pluriformity and diversity almost lines me up with the bleeding heart liberals. I suppose the extensive travel around many rural villages (the urban centers all look alike) around the world for more than a decade, living in many places by choice, the longest of which was residing on Saipan as a religious and secular teacher, left us with enough elbow room to accommodate virtually everyone. But if the heart has a chamber big enough for the planet and then some, the memory database has become harder to access. My second point, names of persons and places, dates and events have now come to elude us!

Still, as a third, having been impacted by the cognitive overview effect provided by the earthrise photo from Apollo 8 in 1968, our intuitive acceptance of the trustworthiness of life as it is given, and the compassionate leeway we impose on every humanly invented image and metaphor, accepts no bounds.

Wikipedia states it better: The overview effect is a cognitive shift in awareness while viewing the Earth from orbit or from the lunar surface. It refers to the experience of seeing the reality of the Earth in space understood to be a tiny, fragile ball of life, “hanging in the void,” shielded and nourished by a paper-thin atmosphere. National boundaries vanish, the conflicts that divide people become less important, and creating a planetary society with the will to protect this “pale blue dot” becomes both obvious and imperative.

Our primary pedagogical admonition is for students to “pay attention” to their existence with their body senses, emotions, intuitions, cognitions, and decisions. I give it my naughty twist and arrogate to myself the skill of doing the same with “playing attention” to distance myself from the commercial connotation of the previous phrase.

Society’s blame game, with its cause-effect linear thought pattern, lends a susceptibility of the previous generation to charges of benign neglect or senseless cases of willful commissions in the experienced woes of the Earth.

Of course, there is nothing innocent about second childhood. In fact, the universal response among the confident, aware, and self-conscious is usually, “Guilty as charged!” That is, if one still remembers the reality of what one is being charged with!

And this is where life’s grace and compassion is incontrovertible. Not only does it let you know and feel that the past is irretrievably done, and in fact, mostly forgotten; it also wondrously and unconditionally forgives.

Now, if I could only remember where my last thought was…

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