THIS IS HUMANITY. THIS IS JESUS. THIS IS GOD
Ko tou manawa, ko taku manawa.
Kia homai tou manawa mate moku.
Kia hoatu taku manawa ora mou.
Whiti ora! Maranga mai ki runga!
(Shortland MMSS 15:24)
Your heart, my heart.
You give me your dying heart.
Let me give you my living heart.
Cross over to life! Rise up above!
These words keep me going at present.
They are not part of the European Christian Gospels,
but are part of an ancient Maori ritual chant for a person dying..
I think they are at the heart of the Maori (New Zealand) Gospel,
one of the 'innumerable seeds of the Word' (Evangelii Nuntiandi 53) in the Maori religion.
In Maori understanding, to be is to give.
The fullness of mana is the fullness of being, the fullness of giving.
They are Eucharist
.
Jesus is bigger than European Christianity.
Jesus is bigger than any one religion.
Jesus embraces all peoples, all persons.
Jesus is found with the poor. the oppressed, the marginalized,
with the 'non-persons'.
The words of the Maori ritual chant express
what Jesus says to me,
what Jesus says to every person,
what Jesus says to the whole of creation.
They express what is at the heart of being human.
They express the 'being' of Jesus.
They express the 'being' of God.
This Maori ritual chant for the dying first hit me as expressing Jesus' words when I was asking a very good friend, Dan Whata, about its meaning. Dan, who has helped me a lot to understand the riches hidden in the Maori ritual chants, was very seriously ill and dying. That was about four years ago. This chant has taken on an even more personal meaning to me this year (October, 1994) when I was diagnosed as myself dying, with Progressive Bulbar Palsy, a type of Motor Neuron disease also known as ALS.
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