In a column in the Peace Weekly, the writer introduces us to a study that was made in 1932 of 180 nuns who wrote about their spiritual life. 70 years later, psychologists went through the written autobiographies and examined them to see how many times the words: wonderful, happy, moving, joyous, thankful, and the like were used.
Those who were in the top 20 percent in the use of these words, 90% of them lived over the age of 85. The lower 20% who had the least use of these words only 34% lived over 85. There are other issues that are involved in such a study but for those who made the study, it was indicative that positive thinking has an influence on longevity.
Positive
thinking is a healthy way of living, needs little help from science, for
most have an intuitive feeling of its wisdom. She mentions very few are able to keep a strong disposition in a long illness, but words can help someone bear up under the difficulties.
The columnist mentions that we are called Homo Narrans. Over and beyond our thinking, we have the ability to store in our heads and express in story form narratives that are welcomed by others and that fosters communication, a quality society esteems highly. We feel that if we do our best and even keep silent we will have a meeting of hearts, which is not the case. If we don't express ourselves, sincerity will not be conveyed.
No matter, what the past was we should pick out some positive words and express them. However, she mentions that if we are too excessively attached to that positive mind, we will fall into the trap of having a people pleaser complex. When not authentic our attempts to be charitable backfire, for words that do not come from the heart are often empty.
She
goes on to show that this is noticed in her radio work where you hear
only words; insincerity is quickly noticed and you lose
listeners.
We often hear about the glass-is-half-full person and the half-empty person. There is something that is being expressed by these words, and it may be the wise person who sees the entire glass but is not elated or depressed by either half, and accepts it as reality and gives thanks. This is also being positive when we choose to see reality as is and make the most of it.
Parents over 40, in raising children what did they fear the most?
Is it the years of puberty or the times children refused to talk and locked
themselves in their rooms? Also, few are the parents who don't worry about
the use of games.
The number of children overcome with lethargy, and are
lost in their own world and refuse to grow are larger than we think. With these questions an educator, in the Kyeongyang magazine, writes about the place of internet games in our society.
There are many children who
listen to lectures on the internet, but she asks parents, do they ever look
at the monitor? Very often they will be playing some game. To
prevent this from happening parents will do many things such as removing
the bolt on the door.
Movements within society are
trying to stop the use of games from midnight to early morning and the
children are not happy. Some mothers when they see the child using the
computer, their blood pressure increases. Even when the child has done
all the homework, some parents are not happy and want them to return to
the books.
Many things have changed, but for most
parents of children, one thing that has not changed is when the
children are playing computer games they are considered addicted.
We are
all attracted to games. Recently the Dragon Flight game was spreading
like wildfire. Have you heard about it? She reminds us that about 25 %
of the world population enjoys playing games. She asks the parents how
long will they be tied to an obsolete way of thinking? She gives us the
Korean proverb that you don't give up making some food because of the
fear you may find a worm.
We have programs for game
literacy for parents by the education ministry.The fact is that most
children are attracted to games. Rather than say they are addicted and seeing it all negatively, try to make good use of the games for
educational purposes.
In fact, excessive use of games does foster obesity, depression, digital dementia (overuse
of digital technology is resulting in the breakdown of cognitive
abilities) and games that use violence do promote violent actions.
However, she maintains, using the games properly can help a person to succeed in life.
One of the best
results is when persons are absorbed in some pursuit which they enjoy, dopamine is released in the brain, and you feel elated, and memory is enhanced. They also present a
challenge to the person on how to accomplish the task at
hand.
However
the question remains that we don't want the children to just play
games. She agrees, but she wants the parents to know why a child gets
addicted to games. A child with a low estimation of self can find
satisfaction in getting recognized by the results of his gaming.
Children who have difficulty in relating with others also can identify
with the characters of the virtual world they have entered. Children
with stress find the release of stress life giving.
She
tells the parents to get to know the strong points of their children
and help them to find release in other ways. We should be more concerned for the place gaming has in our culture than the danger of addiction to games. Today without knowledge of gaming one
will not be at home in our culture. She concludes, one
can not be just opposed to gaming for it has become a skill of our times.
According to the lunar calendar, today is the Mid-Autumn Festival Day, celebrated in many of the Asian Countries. In Korea, it is called the Harvest Festival (Chuseok), and Great Middle of Autumn Festival (Hangawi). Celebrated on the 15th day of the lunar calendar. We have three red-letter days, which gives many families a chance to spend time with their extended family. Both Korean Catholic Weeklies gave space to the holiday.
Today families remember the past. In the morning, they will have the rites in the home, in which they remember the dead ancestors. The Catholic Church at one time opposed the rites because of the mixture of superstitious elements within the rites, but with the passage of time and the education level of the people changing, the rites were recognized as a civil practice, and encouraged by the Church.
Most citizens continue this practice, but most Protestants do not. The remembrance of the dead is a beautiful practice which Catholicism has incorporated into the liturgy on Chuseok with a short version of the office of the dead during the Mass. Koreans would also go to the graves to cut the grass and beautify the burial sites, during the days preceding or shortly after.
During
this time of the year cities will be empty for families will return to
their hometowns for family reunions, enjoy their time together, and
perform the family rites. Thanksgiving for the new harvest and the bonds of family make it the
Asian Thanksgiving Day.
For many in Korea, they are facing an economic slump which will bring a chillness to the festivities of the holidays. This Sunday is also the last one for the month of the martyrs.
Shortly after the holidays we will have the bishops' synod on the family, and the examination of the problems families face. The extreme individualism and materialism continue to inundate society with deleterious results on the family: not something new but a challenge to the Church.
Korea has one of the highest divorce rates of the member countries in OECD. From an agrarian society where the family bonds were important, we have moved to a society in which the young people have accepted the individualism from the West. The editorial wonders what the Autumn festival will look like in the future when the young become the corner stone of society.
No matter how much society changes family needs to remain at the center. At this time of the year, we need to remind ourselves of this reality. God is with us, and we have to do what is necessary to make the bonds of family stronger in the years ahead.
We hear many words about democracy, begins the column in the Catholic Times, by a priest working in the labor apostolate. For some democracy is too much talk, and only brings division, some see it as a return to a dictatorship, and some find it as no big deal. All living in the same county and with the same system of government, and yet we have this difference of opinion on the same subject.
There are few words that have such a difference of opinion. The way we understand democracy is going to determine very clearly the degree of maturity and level of implementation. Our standard of democracy is going to be different in Germany than in Korea. Generally speaking, we say a democracy is one vote per person, at regular times, for parties that discuss and debate among themselves and the opposition looking for the best way to govern a country, and citizens voting for the party and candidates they prefer. With this understanding of democracy than Korea is a democracy, but this is why we hear the citizens' lives are not improved by this system of government.
Tocqueville the French political thinker, and philosopher said it was not the voting procedure that was important but the conditions in society. The means of voting is not central to a democracy but rather the intelligence, virtue, and culture in which the voting is done. For this reason, the democracy of Germany and the European countries would be different from Korea.
Catholic teaching as found in the compendium of the Social Gospel would say the same. "An authentic democracy is not merely the result of a formal observation of a set of rules but is the fruit of a convinced acceptance of the values that inspire democratic procedures: the dignity of every human person, the respect of human rights, commitment to the common good as the purpose and guiding criterion for political life. If there is no consensus on these values, the deepest meaning of democracy is lost and its stability is compromised" (#407).
Democracy goes beyond the system and procedures and considers the dignity of the person, human rights, and efforts made for the common good. The Second Vatican Council stressed the reason for the existence of a country was for the common good, and we can evaluate the degree in which this is accomplished by the concern for the common people.
Looking at the 10 biggest conglomerates for the last ten years we see that the money in their possession has increased over twofold, and yet the number of the poor that are able to leave their poverty continues to decrease. No matter how hard they work they find it difficult to make ends meet. Korea in the polarization between the 'haves' and 'have nots' is comparable to Mexico, and the number in poverty would be similar to Turkey.
These statistics show that the common good has not always been considered in governing the country. A sign, the columnist concludes, that democracy has not been effective.
Temptations are a part of life. A seminary
professor in the Kyeongyang magazine introduces us to fetishism:
excessive attention or attachment to some object, and for him this makes you a slave of that object. He very astutely uses the word slave in Korean which is made
up of two syllables 'No' and 'Yeh' (noyeh). A slave, according to the
professor, is one who when he should say no says yes.
In this case, you are acknowledging the control over
oneself of something outside, external to oneself, which makes you a
slave. He mentions three reasons for the slavery: attachment to material goods,
sexuality and greed and the antidotes are the evangelical counsels:
poverty, chastity and obedience. God is the ultimate meaning of the
counsels. According to the columnist, the strongest of these is our
attraction to the material, and when this is the object of our worship, it becomes our
fetish.
When Israel left Egypt and were in the
desert, they were fed up with the manna they were receiving daily, and
wanted to return to slavery and a decent meal. They also wanted something that was more
material to express their worship, and made the image of a calf: another throwback to what they possessed when slaves in
Egypt.
We have evolved in our day. We camouflage our
thinking: living well is another way of saying we have money.
Excessive accumulation of material goods is something that we envy and
consuming becomes a virtue. Instead of paying attention to the words of
Jesus and the apostles we go to the early years of the Scripture where
we see the blessings of material goods and possessions, and
forget that "Jesus had no place to lay his head."
Even
tithing is often considered a way of getting more blessings instead of a
way of sharing and becomes an investment in future blessings. We see
this method of thinking in the story of St. Nicholas in his sharing, and
St.Nicholas (Santa Claus) becomes an idol to promote consumption.
"One cause of this situation is found in our relationship with money,
since we calmly accept its dominion over ourselves and our societies.
The current financial crisis can make us overlook the fact that it
originated in a profound human crisis: the denial of the primacy of the
human person! We have created new idols" #55 of Pope Francis in Joy of the Gospel.
From
the beginning of Christianity, there has been no time where wealth has
been exalted like the present. We have become slaves of money. We forget persons are what are important, and that politics, economy, society and culture all exist in our
environment. Doing harm to the environment is not benefiting us in the long run and will come back to harm us in the future. Creation is God's gift to us, and we need to care for it. When material goods do harm to our environment we need to learn how to say "No" when a "No" is our only answer if we want to be free and caretakers of creation.
Many are the signs of a society that is far from healthy. One of the columnists on the education page of the Peace Weekly paints a bleak picture of the kind of persons we find in society. From an early age, we see young people with abnormal mental traits with which they have to struggle. In many, feelings of lethargy in an uneasy society, confusion about identity, extreme lack of self-worth, social awkwardness, selfishness, greed, no concern for the virtues, frequent violence against the body, lack of communication, addicted to the material, and a paralysis in the emotional life.
Some of these traits we see in the adult society in which we live, among our leaders and the famous: maintaining one's image, searching for power, wealth and fame. Many are addicted to drugs, liquor, eating disorders, killing the person they are, with cosmetic surgery, to resemble the stars. We have the government, federations, education and leaders in religion who don't see how our environment makes our life possible, and we remain as children.
Men dream of success, and women for the ideal male hero with whom they can
spend the rest of their lives. Women also dream of the woman hero,
corresponding to men's ambition. We are like people lost in the
wilderness not knowing where to go. We wait for God or some magic being
to save us.
Westernization of our society has introduced us to sexual maturity, independence, individual fulfillment. We have no inkling on how to discover the spirit and the larger world of nature beyond the self. A few centuries ago, we got rid of the vitality in our lives by our traditional rites of passage, and considered our inner life like so many skins that we could throw off. Today we see what this has done to our young people in the culture we have given birth.
A healthy childhood requires roots in nature and family and in much of our culture, we find this missing. The young have become sexual objects. We are failing in the formation of queenly like women, and instead from an early age, we celebrate beauty pageants.
However, if the youth with an understanding of mental and spiritual adventure: remember why they were born, what gifts they have to give to the world, and the sanctity that rests within, they will know the road that is laid out before them. Characteristics of hope and potentiality will do much to integrate the culture with our natural environment and be a beacon to all.
There are many events in which no invitations are received but people
attend. Writing in the
Peace Weekly a columnist mentions a recent event in which lay people
were outside the church in the hot sun, and remained there during a
sudden down pour in which they were soaked, but remained silent and in
place, thankful for the relief. Most of them were elderly.
There
should be no discrimination for those attending the table of the Lord
but at these big events those who are invited are the 'somebodies' in
society. Those who have nothing but their faith find it difficult to
enter the door.
Last year after the visit of the pope
to Korea everybody in the Church were using the words: 'solidarity with
the poor'. These words signify our concern for the poor. We are concerned with the weak outside the church but
we forget the weak, the 'nobodies' within the church.
For
many Christians the threshold of the church is still too high.
When a parishioner comes to the parish office often they are asked:
Where are they from? what parish area, have they talked to the
district leader, have they made an appointment with the priest, are some of the questions by which they are greeted. Those who would like
to have some time in the confessional to speak find it difficult, and
those who are handicapped have to size up the situation every time they
attend Mass.
Why is this the case? The columnist feels the customs have hardened, centered around the clergy and religious. " We have always done it this
way." Group lay leaders accepted this kind of
thinking, which makes it difficult for the ordinary person to be
comfortable within the community.
We have in Luke 6:32,
"If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even
sinners love those who love them." Could it be that those who are no longer coming out to
church found a parish atmosphere which did not permit them to
ask priests, religious and lay leaders to share a little bit of their
love?
Pope Francis makes it a point to accept warmly all those
he meets which is the reason for his popularity. He welcomes all the weak to center stage, and this sincerity is seen which comes from
mercy based on humility, and the reason for his concern for others. With a
little bit of warmth from the priest, a word of greeting, a
handshake, can bring about great change.
At the last
Mass in Korea, Pope Francis was in a sense inviting all those who were
the weak of the country as special guests to the front rows, and our
columnist would like that to be the case in all our Masses. Clergy
need to have this understanding of their pastoral role and have this pastoral discernment when relating with the community.
