Posted by panch from ? (64.79.4.3) on Thursday, May 16, 2002 at 8:33AM :
In Reply to: something to humor you posted by a friend from bgp04072465bgs.derbrh01.mi.comcast.net (68.40.245.181) on Wednesday, May 15, 2002 at 3:42PM :
I think I know who you are. If I am right...I was a friend of yours too. The saddest part of all is how we were all set against each other by a person who is no friend to any of us...who has the best cars, clothes and friends money can buy.
We didn't have those things. We are poor in comparison, I know I am now...and Jeff might be too if he had anything more than a scholarship and a part time job and an old car that might get seized. But we did have friendship, friendship that stood in the way of ambition and a murderous determination to buy or ruin anything that stood in the way of that path to the top of nothing...nothing worth the price it took to get there.
No hard feelings. Hatred destroys the person feeling it first of all.
On my way walking here I pass an Assyrian Chaldean Church every day. They have a grotto by the front door with a life-size statue of the Virgin Mary...a few cherubs and flowers...the usual pagan shrine. A couple of days ago an Assyrian man was kneeling in front of the Virgin (I used to have to beg too) lost in prayer...head bowed, hands clasped together...like any prisoner waiting to have his head chopped off.
It was a holy, a reverential sight...I suppose. It made me furious, disgusted and bemused all at the same time...that many conflicting emotions can have only one outcome...I tripped over a tree root. Being helped to my feet by a passing stranger (I'm pretty spry considering I'm 75), I thought how appropriate that the one thing we have been taught to do would be pleasing and provide the least "trouble" to any common executioner. On our knees indeed.
We've been there too long...and it hasn't done us much good as far as I can see. Those of us who've gone to our final reward are probably standing upright for the first time in their lives...one can only hope. I would like to stand up while here on earth.
I don't appreciate being driven to my knees for sport...for the satisfaction it gives someone to think they have that kind of clout. I especially don't like watching my three children forced to stoop as well...while the children of others hold their heads up and swim in the backyard pool.
Call me a not very good Assyrian for refusing to go down "politely"...for making "trouble" when my own people come to ruin me...I'm funny that way.
When all of this is over, let's get together and apologize to each other. Lord knows I make mistakes...I would try to never turn my back on a friend for whatever reason...to teach that to my children too...but I'm hardly blameless. I was determined too...determined that nothing anyone did would make me compromise the quality and the whole purpose behind the work I was doing. There was no point in trying to give our children reason to feel pride in themselves by first being humiliated in order to do it.
Assyrians forgive and forget too.
-- panch
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