Alternative Education for the Whole Person

The education ministry and other interested groups in society acknowledge that with alternative methods of education, fewer would drop out of school. With this in mind, the Daegu Diocese had a seminar on alternative methods of education.
 
“The time in school should be happy; for many it is a time of unhappiness, we need to listen to the children." These were the words of one of the participants in the seminar, reported by the Catholic Times. The money spent on those in school and those not in school is vastly different. We need to show interest in those who do not  find a  place in our public school system. The seminar was working on the curriculum that an alternative system would find appropriate for the dropouts.
 
One of the participants compared the educational systems of Finland and Korea: rated first and second for achievement by the OECD. Both developed countries have methods at the two extremes. Finland does not distinguish between the first and the last, with a non-competitive approach to education, while Korea asks for answers to ordinary problems for competitive entrance exams.

One has to determine whether the school is making  students unable to adapt or are the students the ones not adapting. Students who are not able  to adapt to a strict regime, and want freedom need an  alternative type of education to keep them in school. In Korea in one year, over 50 thousand young people were not in school who should have been in school; many of them will end up as problem teenagers.

Conscious are educators that Korea is different from the past, large numbers of citizens and inhabitants have different cultural backgrounds. Often their facial features and color are different from the Korean students and consequently, meet up with  discrimination, and often ignored, a reason they give up on their studies. We know what it should be but facts show discrimination and drop outs. All students  have to be made to feel they are Korean.

We need an opening to these alternative forms of education, which do not see  students as losers and delinquents. The first full time alternative school was the Gandhi School  authorized by the Ministry of Education in 1997, but it never developed into a system of similar schools.

Alternative schools are not to complement the public schools but to keep the learner at the center with experience, and the student's humanity in mind: understanding the gifts each student has and to work to develop them, customized to the individual. We should be having happier students and persons who understand that education is not  only of the mind.

The Year of Consecrated Life

2015 is the year of the consecrated life. A religious sister writing in View from the Ark in the Catholic Times, reminds us of  the subjects of the consecrated life. In Korea, the word consecrated life has become a  synonym for the religious life, secular institutes and those living a celibate single religious life. After the  Second Vatican Council, we are told the consecrated life is a gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church, and the religious life is one of the many varieties of this consecrated life. Heartbreaking, says sister, is the fact that it is associated only with the religious life.

More lamentable is that many others who have been given this gift do not realize it,  a reason there is little interest in this year of the consecrated life. Moreover, the married couples and those baptized don't reflect on the gift and mission they have been given with baptism and marriage.

She mentions the three kinds of consecrated life: priestly, religious and the married life. All three have baptism as their foundation. All three have their own particular characteristics, and calling to love in their different particular ways. 

This year we put a light on those who have consecrated themselves by the three vows and with great meaning, we just finished the synod on marriage. They are both, said Pope Francis, a calling from God one in the forming of life and the other in evangelizing, both working together. Families have many problems; she quotes Pope Francis: children, quarreling, in-laws and the like, there is the cross but also the resurrection.

She was especially surprised in the words Pope Francis used when speaking about creation when he said God created the family which he called the most beautiful part of creation: he made man and woman and entrusted all to them. He gave the world  into their hands. He didn't just create two people but a family. All that he created in love was handed over to them.

In conclusion she mentions the short prayers, Pope Francis introduced to the couples when saying the Our Father: "give us today our daily love"... To those engaged or married: "teach us how to like  to love each other." Both religious and families are on a journey to the God of love, should we not ask for our daily portion of love?

We Grow in a Family

“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” An article in the diocesan bulletin by a seminary professor, begins with these words from the play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams. The female heroine mentions how those who were family,  were the ones who made life difficult.  She had great trust  in those close to her, but they gave her the  biggest sorrow. The family should have been helpful but instead caused pain. 

In the beginning of Hinayana Buddhism, it was understood that you had to leave family to enter Nirvana. Confucianism was against this way of thinking, and declared  that  persons grew in the family.  

Confucianism considered the desire to achieve enlightenment by leaving the family and working to  free  oneself from every attachment,  only attaches you more. The professor mentions the way society is influencing  families in the  direction of individualism that makes the family an obstacle to personal growth: similar to the thinking of the early Buddhist adherents of Hinayana Buddhism. 

A Confucian scholar Huang, who was attracted to both Taoism and Buddhism became a serious believer and began his period of training in efforts to transcend this world in which he lived. One day after many years of study and discipline, he came out of his cave and sitting in meditation saw a relative  coming towards him, and told his servant to prepare something. He realized that after  many years of discipline, he was no way nearer to transcending this world and stopped his efforts to do so. The bond of affection he had with family members could not be broken with artificial means. 

He returned to Seoul, and meeting a monk who was meditating complained:  What are you doing all day in that position?  What are your eyes glaring at?"  The monk stopped meditating, and began talking. The Confucian scholar  asked about the monk's family, and was told he had a mother living alone.  "Are you able to forget your mother? "Huang asked. "No, I can't  forget my mother," and started to cry. "Love for our parents is from our nature as humans," replied Huang. And he tried to convince the priest to go home and take care of his mother. 

In the conversation with the monk, Huang  realized what he  said was  our earthly reality. We may work to transcend this world, but we will never succeed in overcoming the affection that is there between  parents and children. This is not a fetter that we need to break but a means of maturing, and the basis for our humanity. The meeting of a man and women to start a family is the plan of God in forming society. 

Many of the groups in society can be changed, and even when they break down one can start again, but the family is different; this is a natural grouping that has come from the hands of God. A  person's individual freedom and happiness are not the first things that should come to mind. In developing the family community we grow in maturity, and freedom and happiness will be a by-product of our efforts, and help to build the human family.

Reading Makes A Whole Person

Many are the sounds we hear: rustling of leaves, birds, insects, music, sound of people playing Baduk (Go), and many other sounds but nothing compares "to the sound of a person reading a book". Quoting a poem from the past and the different sounds heard, and at times only seen, a Benedictine  priest writing in With Bible wants us to follow him in this meditation.

People know the joy of walking, and it is not always  to arrive at some point. The walking in itself has meaning and its own end. A wise man once said that  'Road' and 'Way' doesn't have the same meaning; reading is not always used as a tool for knowledge and information, and  'interest' has no limit. 

One of the greatest pleasures in life, for the writer, and for which he is  grateful, is to run across some worthwhile  reading material. "Is it not  a pleasure to study, and to practice what you have learned?" (Confucius)

He brings us back to the days when reading was not done in  silence as we do today but it was voicing each word, and listening with the ear and the whole body. The reading material would often be a sheepskin, a codex, and the scent would enter the nose. The finger would follow the words in the sentence, and the upper part of the body would sway slightly while reading. All the senses were used it was  an action of the whole person and not only of the eyes and the mind. It was work.

This was the way the monks of the past did the Lectio Divina. The East was not  different;  he remembers his grandfather who when writing a letter or reading the newspapers would be voicing very quietly all the words. They were remembering with the muscles of the body and making what they read a part of themselves.

They were also forming a community: relating with  one another in the process. The ability to read and understand was increasing. The monasteries were schools where people were learning to read well. They were making books, and the books were making the person.  Happily we find this  in many places of our present society. 

We have moved from the oral, to the written to the digital culture: from reading  to the seeing where the screen becomes the book. We think that we are in control but the images are working on our feelings, desires and judgments. They produce or transform our desires. Financial cliques and  the mass media make public opinion and  often fabricate it. Where God was thought to be we have the financial logic, politics, education and morality, where the false and true are often interchanged.

We need a reading and thinking citizenry. Not thinking like we live but living like we think. Readers will be counter cultural. In the past with the reading of Scripture, we had the making of prophets; he hopes that we will feel the responsibility of this calling and not leave it to the false prophets of our society.

Church Preparation for the Third Millennium

A recent symposium commemorating the 50th  anniversary of the end of the II Vatican Council was on the  direction the church of Korea should go during this third millennium. Both Catholic papers reported on the event. The keywords were solidarity, scripture and evangelization.

During the introductory speech, a bishop of Seoul mentioned the Church's mission to work for peaceful unification of the North and South. This effort has to be with the young people and the need for concern with the evangelization of China and Asia. 

Our work, said one of the three participants, is to bring life to others: evangelization that is both integral and collaborative and using words different than those used in the past. He also stressed  we have to customize our teaching to a one and one basis both in the confessional and in counseling. We have to study the way the Spirit has been leading us as a Church.

Another participant mentioned how after the Council, there was a new interest in scripture, with  translations  and a growing interest in the  reading of scripture. We saw the fostering of scripture groups, organizations for its study, use of the scriptures in parish teaching. We have a course in the seminaries as a master's degree course approved by Rome, which is preparing teachers of scripture. 

Another  made clear that evangelization is not just increasing the numbers of our Christians but to evangelize the culture, values, and the way we live,  in harmony with Gospel values. 

Korean Catholics have been very passive in their vision for evangelization. In a recent Gallup poll, Catholics  showed a lack of conviction of the four truths  of faith: Existence of God, Incarnation, Trinity and Good and Evil. The  priest feels a lack of knowledge is the  reason  there is so much dissatisfaction with established religion, and people are looking in other directions: new age and 'kispirit training movements' and the like. 

What is necessary is a correct understanding of God and Man, reconciliation with nature, a mature value system,  extending  the community of love, strengthening the image of Catholicism, service to society, and fostering a mission spirit.

Farmers: Saints of Our Society

A priest who is working in the country with a small farming community writes about a recent experience in With Bible. He had just returned  from the city after taking care of a problem with his neck.  Some of the members of the community had returned  from picking wild blue berries in the mountains behind their village. They were attacked by a swarm of ground digger wasps  once they are on the person it is almost  impossible to chase them off even with a towel. The catechist was bitten 50 to 70 times  and the manager about 50 times.

After the attack, the catechist tried to run away and lost his glasses. They were taken to the public health center; the catechist's blood pressure  dropped and was in shock and as white as a sheet. They called the ambulance to take him to the emergency room of a nearby hospital.

The priest went looking for the glasses in the area in which they were picking wild blue berries with his dog but no sign of the glasses, and he was even bitten by one of the wasps on the back of his hand. He received a call from the manager that the catechist's blood pressure had returned to normal, and the body coldness disappeared. If the catechist had died, it would have been the end of his experiment in community living. 

He quickly drove his truck to the hospital, and on the way was  bitten on the ankle by another wasp he had brought along with him in his shoe. He showed the catechist the bite on the hand and easily commiserated with the catechist who had 50 of these bites.

The next day they went to a nearby Catholic church to hear the talk of a Buddhist monk who had graduated from the college seminary. The models he praised were Mother Theresa, Dalai Lama, Pope Francis, and Charles de Foucauld. The theme of the monk's talk was understanding  comes from experience. 

"... My greatest interest is in the spiritual world. Without experience of pain, we will not have  understanding. I did all the Buddhist meditations, but I felt a dryness that did not leave me.

I decided to go to a country that was poor and undergo some of their trials at which time I met the Dalai Lama and Mother Theresa. What kind of life is necessary to experience an opening to the spiritual?  It is not speaking well but giving happiness to others. Mother Theresa is a good example of this life... Another example is the Dalai Lama with whom I spent time. The emptier a person's interior life is the more embellishment in the talk and exterior. We are  in a period, sadly, in which we package up the exterior gorgeously.

I remember talking to Thomas Merton while with the Dalai Lama: one holy man meeting another. Dalai Lama canceled all his appointments for four days. He was fighting for the independence of Tibet, and  Merton was against the Vietnam War. They were both pacifists. Merton was electrocuted in a hotel in Bangkok and there was talk it was an assassination by the American CIA.

Often I get telephone calls from Korea asking me why is life so dry? They all have to do with the loss of meaning. I answered: they should fast for three days. In India, they only have one side dish. In Korea were not happy because we eat too well. Who are the Saints today? It's the farmers."

Both the farmers and the doctors give life to people, but doctors make thousands of dollars and the farmers hundreds. The farmers give life to the doctors and are not understood by our upside-down society. Farmers are saints because they give life to others with their sacrifice.

Catholic Mass And Monotony

How to be motivated by the repetitive in our lives is the subject of an article in Bible & Life. A priest writing in the magazine recounts a senior priest telling him that he enjoys dramas but not watching  a number of different dramas but the same drama over and over-again. This surprised him for once he has seen a movie he has no desire to see it again.

The older priest explained that it was not the story line that interested him but the performers' facial expressions, voice tones, and bodily movements in their role. Whether their words and the way they express them fit the atmosphere in which they were in. This, the older priest said, is what  separates  performers into levels of excellence. He finds this an extremely enjoyable past time. The same word uttered with a person's total energy makes a big difference. 

Yes, that's true! Even though the same words are used, the way they are said can make a great difference; he had no trouble understanding this. With this mind cast, listening and watching, you will not be bored was his own conclusion. 

He quickly  thought  of his saying Mass with only the readings and prayers that change: the ordinary of the Mass stays the same. And for many, this is a reason the Mass becomes tedious. Was this not the reason they have guitar Masses and the like for the young people?

He thought about  his own way of saying Mass and whether his words  are said with the appropriate ardor and sincerity. Does he feel the way Jesus felt on the night that he uttered those word: "This is my body this is my blood?"

Each Mass is a repetition of Jesus' death and resurrection: a rebroadcast. One way of looking at the Mass is to see the monotony which is natural. However, when we remember what it is renewing for us: the love that Jesus is confessing with these words than no matter how many times we hear those words of love we never  tire. "I have set an example for you, so that you will do just what I have done for you" (John 13:15).

However, the priest is not a performer with a phony expression and emotion but is called to live in the way Jesus has shown us and when this is the case,  the  Mass will be real. When the priest is living like  Jesus, the Mass will have the authentic feelings and expressions.

He concludes the article with the thought of St.Therese of Lisieux whose spirituality was to even in  the smallest of acts to do it with the greatest of love. He wants to leave us with her spiritually to do all with great love. This is the way the priest should approach every Mass, and every act and word during the Mass, and should also be the mind of each person who attends Mass.