JESUS & LENNON: FIRST PHILOSOPHERS

JESUS & LENNON: FIRST PHILOSOPHERS

 

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

 

 

Recalling those high school days

So zestful and slim a boy fumes thoughts

Like they were coming out of my cells

 

Immersed my mental body was

In the thought streams

Of Christ and Lennon

One to bridge with the Divine

The other to link with humanity

 

They who thought me sublime imagining

Of love and compassion for all

Creations of the Almighty

Will live forever within me

 

[Philippines, 29 August 2010]

 

 

REFLECTION

 

Jesus Christ and John Lennon were my first philosophers. Jesus I knew only from cathechism as a child, but that was enough to make me his bhaktha or devotee. As the poem says, Jesus was “to bridge the Divine,” as all Christed Ones are to bhakthas and chelas (disciples). In high school did I first had the opportunity to read the Holy Bible when our copy of the scriptures were brought home to us by my Grandpa who visited the Vatican on a European tour. Being among the Chohans of the Great White Brotherhood, his teachings are among those I regard as must-read-and-practice philosophies to become a free person.

 

John Lennon I came to know first as a child too, as vocalist for Beatles. I learned to play the guitar by summer of my Grade 5, and by Grade 6 I was already playing for the school rondalla or ‘string band’. At home I played Beatles songs as some of my favorites. Then came high school years, 71 through 75, when Lennon went solo. His songs were philosophical, and I simply loved them. As the poem says, he was “the other to link with humanity,” meaning a voice of collective conscience. His song Imagine is the most appreciated, and at times I couldn’t avoid shedding tears singing it, as the imageries of the wars in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and insurgencies in the Philippines screamed the headline news.

 

Lennon was no spiritual master like Jesus, true. He was like any ordinary folk who was asserting his right to make people happy and ring their conscience with messages of love and liberation. But he deserved my respect, and lives forever in me being a part of my formative years.

 

A 3^rd philosopher of my adolescent years was Dr. Jose Rizal, national hero of the Philippines. In my previous writings, I regard Rizal as a ‘guru of nationhood’ like Gandhi, who mentored my forefathers to loving the motherland and gelling themselves into a nation. I encountered his novels in 3^rd year high school, as a required reading, and the rest was history.

 

Ra

 

May 2011