We are all called to serve

Dear Editor,

Look at the word Fai Feau. 

It literally means to do a chore or to serve. In that case we’re all fai feaus. 

We don’t need to be ordained at Malua to take out the rubbish or sweep the floor because that is what a faifeau does.

We don’t need to be able to repeat the sermon on the Mount or be able to classify levels of purgatory. We don’t have to psychoanalyze Judas or turn Solomon’s life into a Hollywood production. 

We don’t need a doctorate of trifling trinity to be loving to our neighbors. We just do our feau on earth as best as we can. Some of us just sweep floors or put flowers up on the alter to beautify the temple. 

Some of us nurture our children with compassion and patience. 

Is that a boring faifeau? Some faifeaus are best at pontificating the depths of hell as opposed to the vastness of heaven. Some of us forgot the meaning of faifeau.

The meaning of the faifeau has been drowned by it’s entitlement to tell a flock of people what to do. Simply the word faifeau means to serve or to do a chore. 

Even Jesus bowed down to wash the feet of his disciples as an act of humility and serving others. A faifeau like Jesus is what the whole doctrine of Christianity means to be Christ like. 

Of course, I don’t recall reading about Jesus getting a paycheck for his gospel. I don’t recall him getting taxed for every leper he healed but maybe Mathew knows because he was the tax collector. Really? 

That Jesus worked for free and he could even make food appear out of thin air. Why? He was a faifeau.

He was also a teacher or what the jews refer to as a rabbi. To call Jesus the faiaoga could be true but as Samoans we might prefer to look at him as the eptiome of a faifeau. 

Work for free, heal, die, bypass discomposure, rebuke the Pharisees out of the temple,  teach and feed a bunch of losers that couldn’t get their own food. What do you have when you strip away the religious context of the word faifeau? All of us boys and girls at home that obeyed our parents when they said “e alu fai le feau.”

 

Mikaele 

Samoa Observer

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