Helps in Fostering Eye Level Communication

Walking the night streets  of Seoul up until a few years ago, women had little  to fear, today even men walking in some of the alleys have need to be concerned.  Writing in the Kyeongyang magazine a professor emeritus feels it is a breakdown of communication, no community. TV, the internet the social network has taken its place, and we have become hermits. The extended family has disappeared, and we are living isolated from others, satisfied to communicate by machines in the privacy of our rooms. And crime, he wants us to ponder, the kind that is even difficult to speak about is one of  the fall-outs from the breakdown  of communication. 

In the West, the individual is center stage while in East Asia, it is the "we" that is important: relationships and community. These are values from our culture. Our relationship and communication are not vertical but horizontal. Plurality, differences, tolerance, embracing, understanding, coexistence, win-win,  concern, these are our cultural  values. The problems that we are facing in society can be seen as this failure in  communication.

Because one has lived longer,  or has a better education,  or has more of this world's goods does  not give them the right to  lead  and  attempt to change things to meet their own expectations. This is not what we mean by communication. This kind of vertical  relationship strictly speaking  is using force and commands   to communicate. What we need is eye level communication not enlightening communication.

The writer introduces us to Cardinal Kim as an example of a communicator for our times. He wanted to be food  and a fool and a vessel for others. In talking to others, he lowered himself to the lowest possible level to initiate his relationship with the other. There are three words that the professor uses to describe the Cardinal's approach to others: food, being a fool and a container. 

In Korean when  a person is beneath taking notice the expression, he or she is our food can be heard. The Cardinal had this idea of being food for others. A container does carry food but also can be a receptacle  for night soil.  When speaking to another if we do not have an authenticity on both sides with  eye level communication where words and  thinking are  the same we will not have heart to heart dialogue. 

Without conversation, it  is impossible  to live. In the family without dialog, we have a rupture. This is true for the teacher and student, priest and Christians,  politicians and people. Without dialogue, it is impossible  for a society to subsist.

 In conclusion, the professor reminds us of the words of the Cardinal not to blame the darkness but to be a light to the world. If we are the first to light the candle, then others will join us one by one until we have thousands doing the same. This will gradually permeate society, and we will be on the way to  realize our dreams.             

Winners and Losers in Society

Increasingly, crimes in recent years are the kind we don't like to talk about, but a psychologist has recently done just that in the Bible & Life magazine. He discusses what he believes is involved in these horrible, indiscriminate killings.

Traditionally, crimes of anger have been understood as the result of a personal  grudge against another, with the intention of keeping the crime as private as possible. However, the crimes the writer brings to our attention are the kind that the perpetrator wants everyone to know about. Since the victims are randomly chosen and the motivation is not clear, it creates a climate of fear throughout society. Those who have studied these cases believe these crimes are motivated by a deep-seated anger directed toward society and the world in general.

Why do some people have so much hate? According to the psychologist, it's because of the recurrent failure and frustration they have experienced in life, perhaps stemming from the importance placed on winning in our competitive society. And it does not involve achieving any one particular goal; winning in whatever competition one is in, it is believed, will determine whether we succeed or fail in life. We also fear to lose because of the embarrassment of not measuring up to expectations, our own and that of others, knowing that everyone close to them will know, and that their chances of having a successful career will be diminished.
 
He tells us that on average, 210 students drop out of school daily, and 41 kill themselves every day. An obvious sign, he says, that something is wrong in society and that steps need to be taken to correct the situation. The way to do this is not going to be easy, and may not be acceptable to those who have the ability to adapt to this unhealthy system. But to label as losers those who can't adapt, he says, is not the proper way of seeing the problem.
 
Those who are able to adapt to the system we have created  are not necessarily the healthy ones, nor are those who have problems with what we have created necessarily the unhealthy ones. Rather, all  should not only strive for good scores but enjoy the pursuit of learning, focusing on the process more than the results of the competition.

In every competitive society there are the so-called winners and losers. Though winners are on top of the competitive ladder, and the losers at the bottom, they do have something in common: both have their eyes on what others are doing to succeed, and on societal expectations. Winning, one feels superior; losing, the other feels inferior. But both fail to understand the nature of true happiness.

The anger that many feel, if not addressed by society, has the possibility of finding an outlet in ways that are not healthy. The situation is not easily dealt with since many often do not know the reason for their explosive anger, which has slowly built up over the years.  And the reason for this, the psychologist says, is that they have accepted the rules of a dysfunctional game.  They are not conscious that they have accepted these so-called rules of life. This perception of reality, received from parents, school, the media, and friends, these rules have become part of who they think they are. Who is responsible for this kind of thinking, unknowingly accepted by many? All of us.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

A Different Way of Feeding the World.

For 40 years, his food each day was only one meal and his transportation only walking. And yet he  lived to be 91. He slept at night on a plank which one day would be at the bottom of his casket. He felt he was one with the universe. The Kyeongyang Catholic magazine gives us some thoughts on  Yu Yeong Mo 1890-1981,  by a professor emeritus, head of a research institute. Yu, also called Taksok, was searching for a way everyone could easily follow in living together in peace. It all depended, he believed, on our habits of eating and reproduction.

Jesus played a prominent role in his life and was an important motivating influence on his thought. Though baptized as a Protestant, he had his own understanding of Christianity. The professor says that if we copied his way of living, the problems of the  21st century would be solved. Even though we may not  agree with Taksok, the professor says he can teach us something worth knowing.

In Korean, the word for 'life' has not only the biological meaning it has in many other languages, but also the metaphysical meaning of the breath of life that comes from God. For Taksok, giving up the biological understanding of eating and reproduction is required if we are to follow God's understanding. The body is born to die, the ego must die for the spirit to live.

The Word of God plays a prominent role in Taksok's thinking,  but skipping over many of his ideas let us focus on one of the most upsetting. For him, whenever we eat, we are participating in a funeral rite. The following explanation sums up his surprising words: the mouth is a tomb since we are putting living remains into our mouth. Though there is of course a difference between animal and plant life, they are all living matter.

For us to eat, he says, other living matter has to die. So everyone of our meals can be considered a funeral for the matter being eaten is or was alive, and is the reason he reduced his meals to one a day. In place of the other two meals typically consumed,  he would say, "I'm eating from the flesh of my body, and offering it up in sacrifice." For Taksok, this was the zenith of prayer.

Rice, for Koreans, is the sacrificial offering. St. Paul said that our bodies are temples of God. Those that understand this have the right understanding of what eating means. What I eat, I'm offering up to God. Without this thinking, according to Taksok, whenever we eat, we are stealing. The act of eating itself is only possible because of God's grace and the abundance of nature and the numberless workers who produce and distribute that abundance to all of us. We should reflect on this, says the professor, every time we eat.

If we were to accept Taksok's intriguing idea that eating is a participation in a funeral and a sacrifice, feeding 7 billion inhabitants of the world would not be such a huge problem. The solution might at least begin by reducing the size of our bodies by less feeding of the body. Tightening the belt surrounding our greed, he says, is the way to accomplish the goal, which would lead naturally to more sharing and serving of others.

Experiencing God

 

Is there a God? A young man writing in the Kyeongyang Magazine has wrestled with this question for some time, and now discusses what effects it has had on his life. It's a question, he says, that is not freely expressed with family and friends. Those who have accepted belief in God are not the one's you go to for help in answering this question. For him, searching for the answer was to remain a secret that was not a secret.

As a child he enjoyed playing in the parish churchyard with his friends. Later, many of his friends moved to the city, and his own family moved to a nearby city that was close enough to his parish church to continue going to Mass. But he did not go because he wanted to; he went because he was forced to go. Gradually, pumped up with his school learning, he had more doubts about what was written in the Scriptures, but through it all he kept asking the same troubling question, Is there a God?

He continued the search for God even though he admitted to not being properly qualified to make the search, and in fact did finally give up the attempt. But he didn't miss Mass even though his mother was the reason for attending. He  enjoyed the sermons and in college was involved in Catholic groups. It was during this time that he came across Fr. Cha's book, which answered the questions of an industrialist concerning God, religion, and humanity. The book helped him find a solution to his quest.

The passage that was especially meaningful to him: "When a question comes to mind with persistent seriousness, one should search for the answer. When even minor problems come to mind, we may have difficulty sleeping. Why are we not more concerned about the serious problems of life, like how and why we got to be here. When faced with these important questions, we often act as if we are looking at a far-off mountain with our hands  behind our back. To have doubts is not the problem, but to have doubts and not search for answers is a serious problem."

Another line from the book that meant a great deal to him: "God is not an existence to be proven but an existence to be experienced." Until he came across that line, he had been trying to understand God with his head and not working to experience him with his whole being. "To go to the writings of the wise is in itself wisdom," he quotes from the book.

Motivated by what he read in Fr. Cha's book, he began reading the Scriptures, philosophy and theology books, and prayed. After many months, he came to a feeling of God's love, which ultimately moved him to enter the seminary. He doesn't know what the future has in store for him, but he no longer fears or worries about it. He lives sustained by hope and peace, because he found God's will for himself.

Abundance of Life

Abundance is a word we hear often during this time of  year. Presently, the farmers are busy with the harvest.The writer on spirituality for the Catholic Times would like to define the world as an example of this all-encompassing abundance. The world is filled with air and with an abundance of fruits and vegetables; the oceans with an abundance of sea-life; the earth with an abundance of various kinds of insects. It's difficult to put a limitation on the variety of life that exists.  Even the grains of ocean sand are all different.

God is giving us the use  of this abundance. All that remains for us to do is to receive the abundance. But many are not in a position to enjoy the abundance. The columnist refers to this inability as stemming from a dysfunctional personal spirit, when looking with the eyes results in not seeing. 
 
We can compare the eyes of our spirituality, he says, to a person who has an eyesight problem. If  a person's sight is bleary, all that is necessary is to be fitted with eyeglasses but there are many who are not interested. Spirituality is like being fitted with eyeglasses that allows one to see more. There are many walking in the dark, not knowing where they are going.

The columnist uses the film The Grey, 2012 as an example of people walking in the dark. There is a plane crash and the survivors go from one horrible situation to one even worse. They are attacked by a pack of wolves, and try to escape from the wolfs; ironically in the last scene the hero of the film ends up in the den of the wolfs and the picture ends. 

Similarly, we often try to escape the difficulties of life, the columnist says, and end up at the very center of the difficulties. If we are not going in the right direction we are not able to rid ourselves of the bridles that fetters us. We have to  take the right road with the  correct values. If we are imprisoned by our egoism, we will not be able to see the big picture.

God in his abundance is always relating with us, and when we  enjoy relating with him, we will have spirituality. When we have awe, reverence and wonder we are able to see God relating with his creation and this will enable us to respond with the virtues, says the columnist, like leaves on the sweet potato vine.

When life is lived in harmony with God's will, we can enjoy the abundance in creation. When we are adventuring in an area we do not know, we can be fearful but what do we fear?  Everything is part of God's creation, even the simple grain of sand. Everything is the product of God's abundance and when I am able to have it enter into my thinking, and make it my own, then we will never go hungry before this abundant table that is our world.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
                                                                                                                                                                                      

Gift for a Dying Mother

"I only have 5 minutes, would it be possible to speak to you?"--words spoken to a pastor by a school teacher on his way to visit his mother in a hospital, and used to introduce the pastor's article in the Catholic Digest. The teacher, an only son, felt his visit to his mother would be his last; she was dying of a liver ailment. Wanting to give his mother a present before she died, he went to the priest to ask for help, although he was not a Catholic nor was his mother.

"Bringing food does not make sense nor buying her clothes, Father. Any word is acceptable, please help me. I want to hear what you have to say and bring that to my mother before she dies."

Seeing the serious attitude of the man, the priest was moved and asked if he had ever gone to a Catholic Church. No was the answer. He then asked him why was he now coming to a Catholic priest for help in giving a present to his mother. He said he was on  the way to the hospital and saw the church with the cross, and thought the minister or priest would probably  be of some help in knowing what to  bring to his mother.

The priest expressed his respect for the teacher in wanting to have something to give his mother before she died, but felt it was unreasonable to be asked to do this in five minutes. We were in our mother's womb, the priest said, for 10 months, at peace, when we had to leave. This was our first separation and probably the reason separation was followed by cries. But the birth was happiness for many.

When we leave this world the same feelings of sadness come, the priest told him, but knowing what is waiting for us, we are happy as we look forward to the beginning of a new life. His words were well-received by the teacher. The priest added that by helping his mother to desire and look forward to this new life, a life of faith and salvation, he would be giving a great present, as well as expressing his filial piety towards his mother.

The priest's words brought a grateful smile to the teacher's face. He said that in all the years he has been teaching never have these words come to mind. The priest took a rosary out of his pocket and gave it to the teacher. He told him there was a parish in the town where the hospital was located and he could contact the sisters and priest there to come to baptize his mother.

A few days later he received a letter from the teacher, thanking him for his advice and telling him that his mother received the gift gratefully and died in peace.

 

A Strange Relationship

He was a member of a gang of hoodlums and yet the friendship he had with a childhood friend continued even after the friend became a priest. They could always speak freely with each other. In his weekly column in the Catholic Times, the columnist recounts what he recently heard about the hoodlum from  a diocesan priest, while having lunch in his rectory.
 
The priest said his friend came to see him to ask his advice about a current problem. He had lent a sizable sum of money to a man over ten years ago who, he now believes, intended to defraud him of the money by going overseas and returning only after the statute of limitations had run out, which it did recently. What the man did not expect on returning to Korea was to be arrested and incarcerated. The priest's friend was notified of the arrest and was  afraid of what he would  do when he met the prisoner, and  came to his priest friend for advice.

The priest told him that since he didn't need the money he should tell the man that he could keep it, but from this day forward he must commit himself to living like a person who is going to meet his Maker. If he refuses, the priest advised him to tell the man that his children or grandchildren would then have to pay the debt.  
 
The friend went to the police station and did exactly what his priest friend recommended. The police all thought he was crazy and laughed at what he said, but the prisoner didn't think it funny.
 
The prisoner had no religious beliefs but when he was told there was no need to repay the loan, he was so relieved that he genuflected before him. The prisoner did have some qualms of conscience for what he had done, and though now free to use the money as he pleased, on hearing the conditions for doing so, he decided he wasn't ready for such a profound personal change. Knowing also that if he did not repay the debt, his children or grandchildren would be made to pay was enough to make him return the money.
 
The priest's friend was not in need of the money, so he gave it all to charity. The bond of friendship between them, though unusual, was strong and sincere despite the very different paths they had taken in life. It was because of the trust they had in each other that convinced the friend to say and do what the priest had suggested, resolving an awkward situation.