Living Like We Should

Renewal, reformation, being what we are called to be is an ever present desire on the part of many. Seven religious groups Buddhist, Protestants, Catholics and others began the movement for the members to live according to their own groups' teachings: like human beings, like religious people, like government officials, like workers, like fathers, like mothers and so forth.

Doing what we are called  to do by our duties in society, giving an example to society with the hope society will follow. Since over half of the Koreans have a religious affiliation this would make a difference in society. The movement was written  up in the Catholic papers and also in the secular press mentioning a diocese that in a general meeting, 461 priests promised to carry out the proposal, the first group of priests in the country to do so.

*They have  promised to be faithful to their duties as priests.

*To be evangelizers to the best of their ability and live by the Gospel.

* Read the breviary devoutly and be an example of a prayerful life.

* Serve God's people.

*Will work for the unity and fraternal love among the priests of the diocese.

They have promised this in the presence of their communities.

They have also decided to help with a gift of about 1,000 dollars for all the families with a third child, and for any third child 1,000 dollars for high school, and if accepted for college, another 2,000 dollars.

In surveys made to determine the first need for renewal within the church, the answer in first place was  priests' authoritarianism and clericalism. The response of the diocesan priests is an understanding of this reality and an effort to bring about a change. It was a surprise to many to see the response of the diocese  to the movement 'to live like we should'.

Dec. 8th begins the Year of Mercy and the diocese has decided to set up a permanent place for confessions, and next year in May, they will have a day for all all couples with a renewal of the marriage vows.The response of the diocese has already moved another diocese to follow their example  next year.

Cruelty Experienced by Korean Separated Families

Recently, Korea had a three-day  meeting of separated families in the North's Diamond Mountain resort. One of the columnists in  the Peace Weekly writes about the meetings with a great deal of feeling. North and South never signed a peace treaty, so we are dealing with a truce and continuance of conflict. 

One of the elderly Koreans  who is just short of his ninetieth year, after 65 years met his daughter who was only 3 years old when he left his family for war. His wife died 35 years ago and the child he left is now a grandmother of 68. She wanted to hear her father sing, an  accomplished singer in his day. The father was only a father in name to the daughter. She held her father's hand while he sang and cried and never stopped. When the time came to separate there was no promise of a future visit only wishes for good health.
 
After some time, we have resumed the visits of the separated families which begin with tears and end with tears. Meeting family members, not knowing whether they are alive or not, is always a happy moment but shortly ends with the beginning of pain. Joy turns to pain, and we see the cruelty of the situation. Watching the meeting of families on television is filled with great sorrow on the part of the citizens, not difficult to understand the pain of those meeting each other.

Families  have done nothing to merit this separation. Nothing can justify this evil, and cruelty inflicted on so many families. Russia and the United States both looking for hegemony divided the country with the help from both sides: a symbiotic hostile relation that has brought  pain to many. Each side looks only to its own benefits, and forgetting the good of the citizens. We are all accomplices in this evil, he laments; we all sat idly while this was accomplished.

In the last eight years, we have had only four meetings of separated families. We can ask the two governments of the South and North why should this be. The previous 'liberal' government had 16 meetings of separated families. No matter, the reasons given the columnist found this difficult to accept. Those who profess the name conservative should  have a great respect for family and should be working to  decrease the pain that the separated families endure. The age of the separated families continues to increase, and the hope of meeting is left unresolved. 

He hopes the two governments will allow regularly a place where the separated families  can easily meet. He hopes they will think more of the families, instead of their own advantages and disadvantages. He would like the Cardinal of Seoul to use his position as the acting ordinary of Pyongyang, North Korea, to work to overcome the heartburn that so many in both parts of the peninsular have to deal with, and want to see resolved before they die.

Is It Pleasure or Happiness?

Pleasure is the gratification of the senses, fulfilling our desires. The opposite would be pain. Hedonism is the school of thought where pleasure is the highest good.  These are the words that introduce an article in the Kyeongyang magazine, by a Catholic College President, writing about one of the ever-present temptations we face. 

Pleasure's common element is being temporary;  we are gratified, but it soon disappears and we long for something else: 'hedonic adaptation' followed often by addiction.

We hear that modern man is losing his roots, his inner pillars are shaking and she seeks self-preservation in pleasure. One becomes alienated from the self. Young people, no matter how hard they work and save for the future,when obstacles are too many to overcome, the danger of falling into a life of pleasure is present. 

When education is not for the building up of  the human and aimed only towards wordily success, young people will not have the necessary knowledge and virtue to overcome difficulties of life.When the culture and the social order begin to fall apart, and morality becomes muddied, values are confused. 

Happiness that comes from pleasure is located in the body; the fullness of happiness comes from the mental and spiritual.  What do we learn from this distinction between the two? Bodily happiness may start with spice but leaves us with a thirst. It is only the authentic happiness that has God in the equation that will last.

Psalm number four shows us what the spread of the hedonistic culture will mean for those that confront the culture."Men of rank, how long will you be dull of heart? Why do you love what is vain and seek after falsehood? Many say... put gladness into my heart, more than when grain and wine abound."

Searching for pleasure is a temptation for those with a religious belief and a challenge. Will it be this emotion for pleasure that needs repeated changes or will we realize we are weak and repent? This is the way of living as a Christian.

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.