Our Lack of Perfection helps us to be a Catalyst

A professor emeritus mentions in the diocesan bulletin that at times she feels  she is being shunned. At which time she becomes depressed and lost in her world. She considers herself to be like Lazarus, referred to in last Sunday's Gospel, being asked to come our of the tomb she finds herself in. The loneliness she feels may come from only a few words of criticism, but they  fill  her with shame that make her want to hide. Though not wanting to come out of her tomb, at the same time she does want to, and she's troubled by the contradiction.

She has been a teacher of chemistry for over half a century. During this time she has taught many and has come to the realization that the subject of chemistry has a lot to teach us. She has  often used the  insights she has gained from  teaching about chemistry to teach her students about life. Chemistry has taught  her to appreciate the teachings of Jesus at a  deeper level and has also helped her to learn  from her own personal  experiences in life.

She has written a book on the lessons she has learned, particularly the lesson she learned from a chemical reaction known as the "homogeneous catalyst," her meditation for the bulletin.

A catalyst, she explains, is like a matchmaker for it is able to fill up the electrons that are missing with the addition of a new substance. It serves to join  substances and then moves on to repeat the procedure. It is precisely this lack of a catalyst, she says, that enables the catalyst to call substances to itself.

The catalyst can't react with  a substance that lacks nothing, it is only when something is missing that the catalyst can function. This is the reason we should not be ashamed of what we lack, she says, for we can positively  accept what we lack with a different understanding of what is missing.  When we seek to hide we are not looking upon what we lack correctly. It is when we are able to accept ourselves as not perfect and others as also lacking in perfection  that we become closer in our relationships and can help one another.

With this kind of understanding, when we find persons who are not able to overcome a feeling of inferiority  and inadequacy, we can extend our hand in the way Jesus did. To help us focus on this reality it is helpful to bring to mind the well-known Serenity Prayer: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference."

 

Need for Resiliency

There are many cases of people giving up on life and not a few because of poverty. A professor in the field of family relations writes in the Kyeongyang magazine about the need for resiliency when families are faced with financial difficulties.

The gross national product of Korea is listed as number 15th in the world. Which means that each person is making about 24,000 dollars a year and yet there are  those who live in poverty, which may get worse, says the professor, because of the widening gap between the economic development of the country and the lagging employment of workers. While the economy has improved dramatically there has been no increase, he says, in those able to find suitable work. They may be employed in temporary jobs but that does not entitle them to benefits from welfare, often cited as a reason for the increased rate of suicides in the country.

There are cases where this is less severe: when the father is induced to retire, while the children are not able to find work and the mother is an irregular worker. But such a family is always living with fear that conditions will worsen. Expenses for school, for rent and living expenses tend to keep them in debt. Poverty, for many families, is their biggest fear, resulting in depression, listlessness,  alcoholism, family squabbles, abandonment of the home, family violence and divorce.

Failing to find  employment, the young also find it difficult to overcome the financial problems that develop by not being employed, often delaying their marriage plans.  And if married economic problems also delay the birth of children and perhaps even eliminates the possibility of having children. Though a natural desire and right, its fulfillment is becoming increasingly difficult, he points out. Unjustly, the social polarization of society has one segment of society  able to give their children all that is necessary for a comfortable and warm family atmosphere, while another segment is faced with economic difficulties that disrupts family life, nurturing insecurity and  all kinds of problems that will be passed on to the children in those families.

 Problems of this kind are not the kind families can solve on their own. The government has to help provide employment, guarantee longer periods of work, increase the number of those  who will benefit by helping them with medical expenses, welfare needs and improving  public education.  Direct policies have to be introduced to help the economic conditions of these families.

What does the family have to do in return? he asks. They have to make  long range plans and work diligently to implement them, concentrating especially on determining their family income, expenses,  assets,  debts and then decide what is to be done. We are approaching  a life span of 90 years, which requires a concrete plan on how to economize.  The professor feels that it is not necessary to spend the money that is now being spent on a child's early education and thinks that expenditure is doing more harm than good. As a first step, he recommends that we stop spending money in this way.

It is necessary, he adds, not to  be mesmerized by the advertising of insurance companies.  In retirement it is not only  money that we need but a friendly  environment and relationships. The family is the first safety net but without a family, one is still able to make a safety net: people in the village, the church, and relating  with others  in the larger society.

And when there is economic difficulty the family can give strength, but at the same time it can be the biggest burden. When that is forgotten and one person is criticized and blamed, the family community dissolves. Many times the economic problems a family has are not internal to the family but caused by forces outside the family. When the family works together there are many things they can do to help alleviate the economic problems.

The professor brings up the word resiliency. When the family works together to solve their problems this is a gift that the family will pass on to future generations, one that will bring happiness to all of them.

World Class Korean Medicine

A surgeon writing in the Seoul diocesan bulletin mentions that a doctor's best years begin when he turns 50. Wisdom, experience and technique all come together at that time, he says. Preparing for an operation, he disinfects his hands, reads the prayer he has tacked on his wall, and all his tenseness disappears. He is now ready, he says, to decide the best way to approach the surgery.

Thoracic surgery is his specialty. He was the one who introduced thoracoscopic surgery to the field 20 years ago and continued to develop the procedure in the following years. In the past it was necessary to make an incision over 20 cm wide and force the ribs apart with instruments. Today only a small cut is made to allow special micro-instruments to enter the body for the endoscopy.

With this procedure less of the skin is cut, resulting in less tissue damage; recuperation is quicker and there is less pain. The procedure is especially helpful for those who have weak constitutions and the elderly.
 
Korean doctors when compared to doctors in other countries have a good reputation in  performing these thoracoscopic surgeries. The reason, the doctor speculates, is that Koreans have been using  chopsticks to eat since childhood, giving them the manual dexterity that a surgeon needs to be successful.  Surgery in Korea, he says, is second to none wherever it is practiced in the world.

Thousands of operations have been performed with this thoracoscopic procedure, and recently there has been a great deal of success using it for cancer of the lungs. When  diagnosed early, the chances of extending life is very good. And one way to prevent lung cancer, the doctor reminds us, is not to smoke or to stop smoking if you do.

Korea began to provide health insurance for its citizens in 1977, which has developed into universal health insurance for all.  The country has good medical schools and a good distribution of doctors. Recently doctors have been against  government plans to allow for-profit hospitals and the introduction of telemedicine ( the remote diagnosis and treatment of patients by means of telecommunications technology). Doctors have been strongly opposed to this plan and have gone on strike to make their feelings known publicly.

There is little doubt,  that Korea is one of the leaders in many fields of  medicine, and that many patients will come to Korea for these procedures because they tend to be less expensive here, and performed with less trouble and greater competency than can be provided in the patients' own country.  

The Omega Point

A  medical doctor introduces himself in his article in the Kyeongyang magazine as having specialized in physiology, the discipline that deals with the principles of life. What we all believe we know about life, the physiologist attempts to explain scientifically, he says. But because of the difficulty of doing this accurately, physiologists have to deal with the constant reminder that they are engaged in trying to solve an ongoing mystery.

We can't define accurately what life is, he says, but we can list its principle characteristics. When he teaches he mentions five or six: reproduction, structure and function, metabolic activity, growth and development, aging, and the ability to interact and adjust to the environment.

Life developed from disorder to order, from a lower form of life to a higher form. Scientists refer to the big bang as the beginning of life as we know it on earth. Scriptures says it all began with the Word. The doctor says that at the beginning of time, there was energy, which developed into atoms, which developed into molecules, which developed into cells and tissues and organs, gradually developing into more complicated matter that filled the earth and the oceans with everything that had existence.

The first elements could reproduce themselves. Before this state, there was the  physicochemical  processes of evolution; after this there was the beginning of simple life that gradually evolved into complicated life forms. The doctor sees the writers of the Old Testament as being led by the Holy Spirit by the way they described the beginning  of life.

The centrality of this evolutionary process is that  nature selected the most suitable in fierce competition, which enabled the adapted life forms to survive and to reproduce. Simply put, since there is a limit to what is available for food, the life forms that had an advantage in finding food over others continued to survive and prosper, and these traits were passed on to future generations. When the traits are modified in the genes and not passed on, the life form disappears. When beneficial  traits are passed on to future generations, those traits enable them to evolve to a higher form of life.

Wild animals do not have an abundance of nourishment.  Therefore, when the living organism  is at the stage of  starving to  death, they are able to assimilate the food that the genes have been metabolically programed to do. What we call  adult diseases often come from metabolic dysfunctions when more calories are taken in than are needed. Humans have in certain areas of the world an abundance of nourishment so that the caloric  intake is more than is needed, becoming fat in most cases. In Korea over one-third of the population are overweight or obese, which fosters disease. The reason, says the doctor, is that our genetic code has not had time to adapt to the way we have been eating during the last 50 years.  
 
One bonus for the evolutionary trip we are on, says the doctor, is the awareness and self-consciousness humans have developed. We have gone beyond just adapting to our environment. By cooperating with others, we have built societies that further our growth as individuals. With the experience of the past and making plans for the future, we have developed as social animals and have become the governors of our world. We are the only life forms, he says, that depend on others to grow to full maturity, both in body and spirit, and are able to show generosity, communicate with one another and cooperate.  Cooperating and mutual understanding is not something organized, among the mammals we closely resemble: the gorillas and chimpanzees.

The doctor stresses that in Korea we have been brainwashed with the Darwinian ideas of the survival of the fittest and natural selection, so we tend to think that the fierceness of our societal competition is natural to our humanity. However, unlike the animal kingdom, we have evolved to cooperate, to understand one another and to share. More than being something we have learned, it comes close, he says, to being innate.  The doctor goes on to say this is precisely the image of God in which we have been made.

Humans are the only ones with enough understanding and self-consciousness, he says, to comprehend that we are on the road to complete and perfect order. With cooperation, mutual understanding and sharing, together with the  Holy Spirit who is  leading us, we are moving closer to God.

Affection in the Life of Refugees

 

A refugee from North Korea explains in a column in the Catholic Times that the transition from the North to the South is difficult for most of them. They have had to overcome many difficulties, she says, even the threat of death. And yet there are  some refugees who want to return to the North, and do.

Life in the South is not easy for the refugee. They have to work hard, and because their speech gives them away as being from the North, they experience prejudice, have low paying jobs and seldom receive the human affection they were accustomed to having in the North. The North also makes it easy to return and gives them a sizable sum of money and a chance to appear on North Korean television.

In her article, she says she misses the love and affection she experienced back home the most. Lacking family ties in the South, this affection is difficult to replace, she says. Since October of last year she was in a place of rest for Korean refugees and says she was able to adapt well to the new conditions, with help from the religious sisters at the center.

She worked  part-time in a restaurant where many would ask, because of her speech, if she was from the North, and also ask about certain Chinese words and their meanings; she would answer that she wasn't Chinese, making it clear, upset though she was, that she was Korean. She remembers the words of one of the religious sisters: "More than money you are learning about people so do all your work zealously and it will not be difficult." Remembering these words has made her work less difficult, she says, knowing that no matter what she does, how well she fits in will depend on how well she responds to the environment.  Personal relationships, just as the sister told her, are extremely important regardless of where you find yourself.

For refugees the biggest difficulty is the language and cultural differences. A friend,  who has been in the country a year longer than she, was working in a beauty parlor and mentioned that  the language and  the culture posed the biggest problem. There were many misunderstandings and friction with those she was working with. This is also the situation for most of the refugees, the writer says, admitting that you can't very easily change habits that have been with you for over 20 years.  This is not only the case with her friend but true of all those who have defected to the South. She mentions how the owner of the restaurant in which she works has often mentioned, laughing, what he considered to be her "bad habits."

Her biggest need, she says, is for affection. Without the affection of parents and friends, she says that settling in the South is a major problem for refugees and that the fear of separation continues to haunt them and makes intimacy with others difficult. As for herself, she says that when she has affection for another and it comes to parting, it is like a needle in her heart, giving her much pain. This is a sad fact, she says, for all those who have left their families to come to the South. 
           

Counseling and Spiritual Direction

Counseling, a topic of great interest in Korea and the focus of a recent article in the Kyeongyang magazine,  discussed the differences  between counseling and spiritual direction, and the benefits of each. Even in Catholicism the interest in counseling has grown so that it's not uncommon for parish bulletins to list locations where these services can be found.

In  counseling, also known as psychotherapy, deeply troubling problems that people find difficult to solve by themselves will often be solved, or at least mitigated, by seeking the help of a counselor. In spiritual direction the aim is to help the Christian to grow in their spirituality; they are both interested in the growth of the client. They are similar in that one person is trying to help another, but both methods have different ways of dealing with the clients.

The basic difference, according to the magazine article, is that in therapy the person is the center; in spiritual direction God is at the center. The motivation of the counselor  and the spiritual director is also different. In therapy the effort is made to solve the problems faced by the client, to enable them to adapt to their daily life while the believer in spiritual direction is trying to find out what the will of God is for them and what is the  spiritual meaning of their lives. They are looking for ways to discern how God exists and becomes present in their daily lives. From the time of the Desert Fathers to the Middle Ages spiritual directors have had exemplary teachers to follow.        

There is  a difference also in the therapeutic counseling received from a Christian therapist. In the past, says the priest-writer, the counselor would avoid getting into the spiritual, but this has changed precisely because the  person is made up of body, mind and soul.

Those who come for spiritual direction, unlike those looking for therapy, are not having difficulty with problems in their lives. This doesn't mean they don't have problems, but they are not there for that reason, but to have a different relationship with God. In spiritual direction the relationship with God is all important; they feel when they do not have that close relationship with God the soul will be sick.

Those who are counseling in spirituality without requisite knowledge of the spiritual life will find it  difficult, for it is not the  area of their concern. The therapist who considers that human  autonomy is the sign of maturity will be working with their  psychological theories; those who have been trained in spirituality go beyond human autonomy, believing that being dependent on God is not a negative, but this can be overlooked by the therapist. Those that have the training in both spirituality and therapy will not be making this mistake.

Many therapists say that people with a good foundation in religious faith are greatly helped to live meaningful lives.  Those with a strong faith life also find it much easier to be helped by therapy than those with weak faith or none at all. Which means that the therapist should take this into account when working with clients with a faith life.

When the therapist takes no account of the person's spiritual life the result will be diminished, and the counseling will frequently be terminated suddenly.  The therapist with a knowledge of spirituality, however, will have an easier time solving problems, regardless of their origin, when he is approached by those with a genuine interest in being helped.   
 

Formulas for Happiness

Where there is a  void there are always those who will try to fill it. Catholic papers and magazines, as well as the secular press, spend a lot of time discussing not only how to achieve happiness, how it is ardently desired, often missing in our lives, and providing formulas for its successful achievement.  The Peace Weekly gives us several formulas that some experts in the field, from England, the United States and Korea, have devised for finding happiness.

The English formula was done by a psychologist and a counselor who came up with the formula: H= P+(5xE) + (3xH).  Happiness equals: Personal characteristics, outlook on life, adaptability and resilience. E stands for Existence and relates to health, financial stability and friendships. H  stands for the higher order of needs: self esteem, expectations, ambition, and the like. According to this formula the person's  personal qualities and E, his situation in life,  will determine his or her degree of happiness. The qualities that follow a person's Existence will be 5 times more influential than the others.  This formula was worked out after interviews with over 1000 persons.

The US formula was conceived by a psychologist in the 1990s. His formula was H=S+C+V.  H  stands for on-going- happiness. S (biological set point)  is the sum of the genetic capacity for happiness: race, sex, disposition, and so forth.  C stands for life conditions: the external conditions of one's life-- money, marriage, health and religion. V stands for  voluntary activities: what a person is able to control with his or her will.

According to this study, when the ultimate goal is rated as 100 percent, the place of  money was 3 percent, provided the person has enough money to take care of their needs for food, clothes and housing. V depends on the will power of the person. When one does not have a goal toward which to concentrate their energy, this energy dries up and there is languor, which easily becomes despondency. Giving a percentage to the different categories: the voluntary gets 40 percent; circumstances get 10 percent and the set point gets 50 percent. Efforts to change our environmental situation  will only help 10 percent of the time. The author of this study says that what is meant by genetic capacity refers to the period before the age of 6. The happiness of this period increases the influence of the genetic capacity.

The Korean formula, devised by a Korean professor, is: H=2.5 E+2.5 R+5 G. The E  stands for the factors concerned with our existence: financial status, society, politics, the cultural  environment, in short, our living  condition. R stand for relationships, the correct raising of children, the harmonious  relationship among family members and with others, and our place in society.  G relates to personal growth, self-esteem, identity, a positive view of life, service to others and religion, among other things. For a Korean, relationships are very important. When happiness is given as 100 percent in this formula, relationships will amount to 25 percent; personal environment, financial condition and external factors will be 25 percent; a person's personal qualities: self -esteem and a positive outlook on life will be 50 percent.

The article concludes by attempting to see the common elements in the three formulas that will nurture this happiness, which turn out to be:  giving ourselves completely to what we are doing, and putting our internal life in order (goals, identity, relationships, and having a positive disposition). Where we live (family, friends, work, leisure) were also determined to be important.  Since these formulas were said to be scientifically determined by the use of well-researched questions and interviews, I wonder what the deductive and traditionally religious understanding of happiness would reveal. Would it confirm or deny some of what these formulas have discovered?