JOHN P MARTIN
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For the Unity and Life of Humanity

8/28/2018

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ESSAYS EMANATING FROM MY VISION EXPERIENCE
new!!

CONTENTS
​ONE: 
For the Unity and Life of Humanity
TWO: A NEW HUMANITY THROUGH THE PAROUSIA, AN ESSAY ON MY VISION
THREE: UNTIL YOU COME AGAIN!
FOUR: MY IDENTITY: An Essay on my Identities, Relationships and Roles
INTRODUCTION

 ​            It has seemed appropriate for me to put these several essays together in one format since they really do have a common thread that goes back to my “vision experience” at St. Patrick’s parish church in the town of Mymensingh in April of 1978, when I was living with three other companions in the Bangladesh Unit of the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers. I have described this “vision experience” in great detail in the second essay of this collection. These four essays are the first fruits of a long writing project that will touch on several major themes of my long missionary life. All of my writings and more are available on my website: www.johnthepmartin.com or through contact with me by my email address: johnthep@msn.com.
            During my pilgrimage time in India from 1991 to 1994, I continued a practice from my earlier days in Bangladesh to write something in my journal each day. I thus accumulated a huge amount of personal material that lay in those journals in helter-skelter fashion, that is, just as the impressions, feelings, reflections, dreams, thoughts, etc. came to me. I decided that to make this material useful or readable at all, I would have to organize it better. This I did by marking each paragraph of the journals with a key word. Then I created a folder for each key word and called them “themes”, ending up with about 35 of them. I have transcribed a lot of this material into photocopied or digital formats over the years. I also partially implemented another task of cross-referencing entries from one theme to another, as it seemed fit to do so. A few of these will be seen in these essays.
            This is by way of a partial fulfilment of a dream to discover more connections among the various themes which would dilute the impression of fragmentation by keeping them in separate folders. As I write about what I can learn from this process, I could thus arrive at a more integrated vision of myself in my relationships and in my cosmic environment, hopefully for the benefit of my readers, too. An example of this very phenomenon can be found in “An After Word” at the end of the essay “My Identity”.
            I am proud to have seen my life enriched with the company of such a spiritual giant as Father Bede Griffiths, at whose Shantivanam Ashram in South India I stayed on many occasions, and with the spirit imbedded in the writings of such giants as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Sri Aurobindo Ghose.
            These four essays touch on the themes of “My Vision” and “My Identity”.
            Enjoy!
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Vivekananda Rock, Kanyakumari, India

1993
John P. Martin
Note on August 8, 2018:

During my three years in India from 1991 to 1994, living among a  mostly Hindu population in and near Calcutta, I wrote this for a bulletin that was published in India by Father Albert Nambiaparambil for an interfaith conference, in Kanyakumari, Tamil Nadu, India, about 1993. This is the town at the very southern tip of the South Asian sub-continent and thus a very sacred place for Hindus.
 
            By birth I am son and brother. By culture I am Irish‑American. By faith I am Catholic. By profession I am a missionary with Maryknoll. By role I am a priest.

            In the pilgrimage of my adult life, I have experienced the challenges and the fruits of assimilation of the cultural and religious traditions of Catholic Mexico, Muslim Bangladesh and Hindu India, having spent 20 years overseas in thus answering the call of God in my heart. I have lived with and ministered to the Mexican people in my priestly role. I have tried to be brother and friend among my Muslim brothers and sisters in Bangladesh. I am presently sojourning in India in response to the call of the Spirit Within to taste the fruits of adaptation to the Hindu culture of the Bengali people.

x.

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A New Humanity Through the Parousia

7/18/2018

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AN ESSAY ON MY VISION
John P. Martin


            My very first encounter with the Bengali people took place on the morning of December 7, 1975 in the town of Barisal, Bangladesh. I had just arrived there the night before from Dhaka the capital of the country on a long pleasant river trip on a colonial era rear paddle steamer. It was not a pleasant encounter at all. In fact it was the harshness of that encounter that stuck with me for many years thereafter. The first Bengalis that I met were only men, for women were not used to walking on the streets in this Muslim country. Their leering eyes and loud jeering mouths denoted a level of aggressive behavior towards me that I was just not ready to handle. I don’t know if they meant to be aggressive, but I picked up as aggressivity their response to this lonely white foreigner walking through their midst down the road. They managed to breach my self-protective walls and get inside me and rummage around uninvited. The result was a severe culture shock experience that left me with some dramatic shifts in my personality, as I found myself forced to live more on the feminine than my usual masculine side. Since I was not accustomed nor prepared nor guided in any gradual manner to live this way, one of my usual reactions to such a trauma was to get intimidated and depressed.

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Doing a Triple and Going Home

3/11/2018

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Grave Creek Mound, Moundsville WV
John P. Martin
           
      I have this thing about discovering sacred places and being called to honor them, usually by some meditative circumambulation or breathing. This is a practice that I assimilated from its own native environment and was not taught by anyone during my ten years of living in South Asia. I honor what is at my right side as Indians do, by using the right hand for feeding oneself and such honorable tasks, and leaving the left for self-cleansing and other less honorable tasks. (Don’t you ever pass anything to another person with your left hand! That would be a supreme insult.)  So I will approach any place sacred for others, and by solidarity for me too, and will circumambulate it with my right side facing the sacred place, walking clockwise, to honor the place and the people associated with it, past and present.

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    John Patrick Martin was born of Irish immigrant parents in New York City in 1939, partaking of their Irish culture, proudly. At age twelve his inspiration to become a foreign missionary carried him through 11 years of seminary to ordination in 1966 and a first assignment to Mexico. He dedicated himself to his priestly ministry ​ Learn more...

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​A Transformative Journey Out, Beyond, and Back:
​My Evolving Relationship with Tradition


Author John P. Martin was raised in the New York Irish Catholic culture of Ascension Parish. In his childhood, he was inspired to buck his Tradition that sent him on a transformative journey as a Maryknoll missionary with cross-cultural and inter-religious ramifications, into realms of spiritual growth beyond imagining. And a successful search for his Dad that marked his whole life. And back again to savor the joy of sharing these riches with one and all.
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