By Prem Gongaju

I did not know the details of the latest episode of the Abrahamic drama that got played out on the Ohioan highways the other day.

The age of the docile young man on the Abrahamic stage, according to the biblical scholars, was between 18 and 33. But the girl on the Ohioan stage was seven, a mere child compared to the strapping young man of the Hebraic stage.

But, unlike the strapping young man, who willingly followed his father up the mountain carrying the wood for his own sacrifice and obediently submitted to be bound and placed on the altar by his centenarian father, the innocent girl from Ohio was taken by her quadragenerian father against her will from her grandmother’s home.

What scant information we have regarding Oaklynn from Ohio simply established her age: a seven-year-old girl from Ohio. But her dealing when she was faced with her own mortality speaks of her spirit forged in the furnace of fortitude. I applaud her uncanny courage and will to live. She was dragged into the diabolical drama concocted by her father, Charles Anderson, who “told 911 operators he just wanted to talk to her mother, Ashley,” displaying his callous disregard for the safety of his daughter by using her as a bargaining chip.

Girls at her age, especially during the post-Halloween season, tend to dream of the Christmas festivities. Perhaps, if the parents were wont to explaining the meaning behind the crèche, they would hear the story of the birth of baby Jesus in the trough due to the strident hostility of the natives toward a wayfaring couple caught in a dire dilemma.

Charles Dickens says in his novella, Christmas Carol, “For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.”

But Oaklynn found nothing good this time to be a child when she was faced with the looming tragedy of murder-suicide. She used her wits to traverse through the minefield of uncertainty, unaware of the lethal gift her father was to receive any moment from the Magi in police uniform.

Also, girls at Oaklynn’s age, says pediatric therapist Emily Rooker, “can answer both factual and inferential questions more thoroughly. They’re starting to gain an understanding of figurative language, and they’re comprehending that words can have multiple meanings.”

Thrust suddenly on the life-or-death stage, Oaklynn’s “understanding of figurative language” was in full view of the hearing audience; she instinctively deconstructed the notion of heaven, tearing down the metaphorical curtain camouflaging death at the manipulative hands of her father.

It wasn’t the case of “To be, or not to be,” a rhetorical dalliance in the sophisticated tongue of an indecisive Prince of Denmark; it was the primordial pneuma that was empowering and invigorating the still small voice of Oaklynn in her daring choice of life over death: “No! I don’t want to go to heaven today.” If her murder was a prerequisite for her going to heaven, she wanted no part of it.

Oaklynn’s predicament beckons, however remotely, to the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac.

I find the Hebraic story unsettling because of Isaac allowing himself to be bound and placed on top of the firewood, only to be rescued at the last minute by the angel representing the Voice of mercy and reprieve from behind the clouds. On the whole, I find it eerily similar to the staged “mock execution” of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and two of his literary friends at Semyonov Square in Saint Petersburg, which was stopped at the last minute by a pardon from the Tsar of Russia in a “show of mercy.”

But there exists the difference in the ending on the parking-lot stage in Ohio and the Hebraic stage atop the Mount Moriah.

God’s angelic emissary stopped Father Abraham from carrying out the impending filicide, and directed the old man’s attention to the ram caught in the thicket for the burnt offering; whereas the pseudoangelic voice addressing the kidnapper-father belonged to one of the 911 dispatchers: “’Let’s not do anything we can’t undo.’” But the police intervened and shot Charles Alexander dead in front of his daughter, doing things they “can’t undo.” Subsequently, “She was promptly returned to her family, safe and sound.” (Italic mine)

Oaklynn is neither Isaac nor Dostoyevsky. She is every child in the crazy world of human indifference. Poignantly, her breath represents every dying child’s last breath in the rubble of the Israeli bombings in Gaza, in Lebanon, and other places.

Though Oaklynn came from the live-oak garden of humanity, she and her fellow chidlren are not immune to the deforestation by Agent Orange. So, here is my appeal in His tongue: “Suffer little chidlren.” And let us help the Oaklynns of this world make heaven on earth with their mirth and laughter.

Also, I surmise that Heaven trembled when Oaklynn gave an anguished cry: “No! I don’t want to go to heaven today.”

“No! I don’t want to go to heaven today.” The refrain was her gift to the afflicted in this world of human affairs.

-Samapta-