NEW ORLEANS - MY PERSONAL JERUSALEM: A TWO-PART SERIES

Jerusalem has been coming to mind a lot lately. I've been aware of the city all of my life, as most of us have. But Jerusalem as a concept keeps recurring, while taking stock before embarking on the next step of life's adventure.

As we know, most names of people and places originate with some form of meaning. Yerushalem translates from the Hebrew as "a state of both awe and wholeness."

In 1990, I stumbled into Jerusalem for the first time. It's a place near Whanganui, New Zealand, where the poet James K. Baxter aimed to live in closer harmony with the land, and God, by embodying the spiritual values of Catholic faith and Maori culture. The settlement was originally known by its Maori name, Hiruharama, which translates to mean Jerusalem.

Although an esteemed and internationally recognized poet in his day, Baxter chose the route of exploring the many layers of New Zealand life. He wished to grasp and express something more than picture-postcard stereotypes, using a Jungian analysis “ irrigated” by alcohol. The sole aim of James K. Baxter before he died was increasing the emotional climate of New Zealand with just one percent added warmth.

In the same way that David slew Goliath with five smooth stones, Baxter saw five aspects of Maori community life as equipping New Zealand's David for facing the world's Goliath.

These values are :

MANUHIRATANGA - Hospitality to the guest and stranger;

KORERO – The speech that begets understanding;

MATEWA - The night life of the soul;

MAHI – Work undertaken from universal love;

AROHANUI- The love of many.

On the way to Auckland one student vacation, my friend chose to drive through Whanganui instead of taking the main highway north, for the scenery. The only problem was that we seemed to be going through endless winding roads of forest on the way out of Whanganui, with no end in sight. My mate was a Maori, popular basketball coach, and speaker of fluent Japanese. The last I heard of  him was via the newspapers. He'd left the Air Force as a pilot, and with a colleague, had climbed the peaks of one hundred mountains in Japan.

When asked the reason for his success, he replied , “I just don't stress out.”

Sure enough, that was true. Here we were, getting lost, me becoming quietly concerned and him being naturally chilled. He parked the car, and he taught me some basketball dribbling moves before we continued.

I still wasn't sure why he'd invited me to his plush family home in Auckland, when, in truth, we were mild acquaintances, if that. He'd broken up with a long term girlfriend, while I couldn't figure out if being in love with one woman and struggling was better than being compatible and blissed out with another one. So there we were, on a long and winding road.

We drove into a hamlet and the car stopped. The engine simply cut out. What would have happened if the car broke down a mere few miles back? My mate was typically relaxed. A middle-aged male Maori approached us and opened the bonnet.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“ Jerusalem”

“Is this where James K. Baxter lived?”

“Yes. He's buried just up there. You can visit his grave if you want.”

I was amazed and keen yet hesitated all the same.

“Go and see him”, the man urged.

On a hillside directly above us, I saw the rear of a single headstone. I remembered that there are stringent rules for pilgrims, and all visits have to be cleared through the nearby convent.

Yet something uncanny had happened here. A car had literally stopped beneath Baxter's grave. As I walked up, while my friend and the man inspected the car engine, I drank in the natural mysticism of the place.

The sight of a simple white gravestone – marked only with the words “HEMI” ( Maori for James) - struck me as powerful yet humble at the same time. I didn't fully grasp the significance until years later. Until now. My friend came up the hill to inform me that the car was okay. The distributor cap had simply come loose. He took a photo, which I gave to the woman I was in love with, who still had it years later.

Then we drove to Taupo. And onto Auckland.

Nearly two decades later, I was to experience a similar strange mix of being in the right place in the right moment and  outright bewilderment. This occurred when I met Mother Angelica, dubbed the world's most influential Catholic woman, in Alabama.

“You are in the process of facing your Jerusalem”, a priest told me as I contemplated the next step of my journey. It would inevitably involve sharing my life and work - and the work of my mother which I was supporting - with the USA and the rest of the world.

A Personal Jerusalem,  the priest explained, is that stage in every life where the time comes to deny oneself and carry one's cross to do the right thing, even if it's light years away from your comfort zone.

Like a metaphorical Golgotha, enduring persecution on the road to a symbolic Calvary: Dying to self to rise again with a godly sense of deeper love and greater truth.

Rising from that tomb of the past with a new approach, a new perspective- a new life.

My Jerusalem was New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.

 

NEW ORLEANS- MY PERSONAL JERUSALEM: PART TWO

"One of the greatest things you have in life is that no one has the authority to tell you what you want to be. You’re the one who’ll decide what you want to be. Respect yourself and respect the integrity of others as well. The greatest thing you have is your self image, a positive opinion of yourself. You must never let anyone take it from you." -

JAIME ESCALANTE, Educator.

Jaime Escalante is renowned for helping East LA students with little knowledge of basic maths pass an advanced college placement exam. Portrayed as the “Rocky of the Classroom” in the biopic “Stand and Deliver.”

Mathematics was a weak subject for me at school, and ever since, through creative means, I have always wondered if there's a way of presenting the subject through theater, music and live concerts. To this end, one of our Los Angeles music contacts was  Lysa Flores who actually studied at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles, where Escalante introduced his legendary methods.

Lysa was named as a future leader by George magazine and picked by Newsweek as one of 25 Latinos to watch for the New Millennium.

So I discussed my ideas with Lysa, who once performed as a support act for Rage against the Machine and Cypress Hill at a benefit concert for the Union of Farm Workers, founded by Cesar Chavez and supported by Robert F. Kennedy. Another contact, Michele Dominguez Greene, Emmy-nominated as LA Law's Abby Perkins, also expressed interest in the concept. Building on Town Green Music's LA Down Under radio show, which featured both Michele and Lysa, the concept would be worked out with experts and artists from LA and New Zealand.

Once Professor Fernando Fernandez of the Jaime Esacalante Math Program generously provided me with material , a script outline – or “treatment” as they say in Hollywood, was prepared by me.

As I heard that Spanish was becoming the second language of the USA, with Hispanics being the fastest growing ethnic population, I then approached a Central American contact working in New Orleans. She was a sometime television host globally broadcasting Catholic programs to the Spanish speaking world, and the director of Louisiana's largest food, culture and music festival.

In a whirlwind of activity which I am still processing  to this day, I found myself in New Orleans discussing this concept. I accepted the invitation with the proviso that the main priority of the visit must be time spent in Hollywood and LA to follow through the work of my family's flagship and paramount project: Liz Greenwell's film NO CHANCE TO PAINT THE CANVAS. It would be neither fair nor feasible to visit the USA otherwise.

The festival was held in a suburb outside of New Orleans, and was quite pleasant. People were generally friendly. Much as I enjoyed the food stalls of fourteen Latin American countries-and the discovery that the Dominican Republic may have more beautiful women per capita than anywhere else in the world- I could not avoid the mass of placards everywhere exhorting me to re-elect President George W. Bush.

I was, professionally and personally, well and truly in the camp of conservatives, neo-cons and people leaning very much to the right of the political spectrum. There was a pervasive sense of history, mystery and the voodoo, with a lingering shadow of the Central American wars in the 1980's.

Yet my hosts, at another level, showed me the best time anyone could possibly have in New Orleans and the whole Southwest. Preservation Hall, where the finest musicians play to jubilant international audiences, has been untouched since the 1930s. The atmosphere is magic - no microphones, or amps, or PA, just people jamming as they did way back when. Every member of the audience smiling with lit-up faces. I understood better why Fats Domino smiled so much when he played his music.

Taste sensations abounded: Cigars, the gumbo, the alligator po'boy sandwiches. I saw the streets where Elvis walked in King Creole, said to be the movie Elvis most enjoyed filming. One woman loved the house where Gone with the Wind was filmed so much, that in 1940 she had an exact replica built off Saint Charles Avenue, home to the world-famous Streetcar Line.

In a spiritual moment reminiscent of my graveside homage to the New Zealand poet, James K. Baxter, a tour of the world's largest Catholic media network in Alabama- broadcasting to more than 80- 100 million worldwide, led to a brief encounter with its founder, the cloistered  Abbess Mother Angelica. Mother Angelica has been cited as the world's most influential Catholic woman.

Beginning life as Rita Rizzo, a sickly child brought up by a single mother in a crime-ridden Ohio slum, Mother entered the religious life after being cured of a lifelong stomach ailment. Lee Iacocca, the former boss of Chrysler, has called for her to be one day canonized as the patron saint of CEOs. Thomas Monaghan, founder of Dominos Pizzas, rates her as one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time. James Calviezel, during the  filming of his role as Jesus in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, constantly sought her prayers and presence. 

From behind a cloistered grille, Mother Angelica prayed for my host and I, two very different people from very different worlds. Mother Angelica squeezed my hand in silent prayer at the exact moment I prayed for God's perfect will for that encounter.

I later came to feel that James K. Baxter was smiling at the Universal Shades of Jerusalem, from Whanganui, New Zealand, to New Orleans, USA, to that moment of timeless spirituality with Mother Angelica - ends.

Post-Script: Since this article was written in 2008, both Mother Angelica and Jaime Escalante have passed away.

May they rest in peace.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Escalante

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Angelica

https://www.christiantoday.com/article/mother.angelica.worlds.most.influ...

https://nzhistory.govt.nz/people/james-k-baxter