All right, I have no idea how to transliterate Korean and I don't read Hangul script.Greetings, nonetheless, to our first visitor from South Korea!
Alas, my Korean vocabulary is limited to hello, goodbye, and thank you. Still, that worked in the grocery store down the block from the church in Oakland.
I was privileged, through the Asian Commission of the Diocese of California (yes, ACDC is the acronym, though we did not cut any records), to meet Fr. Andrew Shin, who is now the Anglican Bishop of Taejon in South Korea. He is a sweet and loving man. It was great fun watching him and Fr. Gordon Lau teasingly debate Chinese and Korean culture and history. Would that all our cultural and ethnic divides could be recognized and bridged so graciously!
While I could not find much about Bp. Shin online this morning (the Province of Korea has not updated their website in almost a decade), I note that he is a member of the Ekklesia Society, along with much of the Global South. This may well be an expected role he has to play. Nonetheless, I know I have a friend in Korea and this gives me a chance to remember him.
Thinking of Korea also brings to mind the dance performed by a classmate in a course on Contemporary Asian Theology at the Franciscan School for Theology in Berkeley. It was a drum dance serving as a prelude to worship. Stunning. Beautiful. Sacred. I learned of the perduring element of shamanism in Korean culture and its integration into Christian faith and practice. (Perhaps like the influence of the earth-centered Celtic tradition in the West?).
Peace to all the peoples of Korea, North and South. I look forward to the day the country can be reunited.
--the BB
4 comments:
What a nice post. I don't usually look at blogs at the office (haha - I do from home, where my other office is, so yes, that is a sort of lie) but I am between students appointments and needed a break, so I came here first :-).
Off I go. Thanks for the inspiration. Remember our lovely Korean student and his family from CDSP?
Jane, I remember meeting a Korean student at some point over the years but have no idea if it is the one you refer to, nor did I ever meet his family. My time on campus was mostly hit-and-run, meeting with my field ed students or catching a meeting. In the last several years all my classes were at PSR, FST, PLTS, or JSTB.
Our life was certainly enriched by multi-national, interdenominational, and interfaith friendships!
And aren't the rest of you glad you didn't follow all that alphabet soup.
It's great that you are having so many visitors from other countries. when I studied in Japan, one of my roommates was Korean. I could say hello, and thank you then, too, but now.... it's been so long.
It has certainly been fun for me, Diane. I love learning about the world, about people and cultures and history and languages and arts. This "flag-counting" is a lovely excuse to ponder our connectedness
I am very grateful to have been born a citizen of the United States and I remain proud of the ideal of our nation, though very ashamed of our current behavior among the nations of the world. But my first citizenship is that of every other earthling, a citizen of earth, of the world. Within that context I chance to be an American (and fall in many other categories as well).
I suspect there are only two degrees of separation at most, not six.
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