Soundtrack: hit play and start reading. Ambulance, by TV on the Radio, live.
Great song, fantastic arrangement, cool video, really interesting band. They sing with imperative and authority that makes me really enjoy them. Also totally unique: I haven't heard anything like them elsewhere.
As always, the littlest things make me the happiest. It's spring now, and spring is nice (though fall is still my favourite). I'm reading the third draft of my best friend's novel, and it's friggin' good, and I'm doing the third draft revisions on my own novella, as well as the two plays I wrote last year; soon they'll be ready to put into circulation.
Meanwhile, I've said it before, but I love this about Seoul: behind the main street of Jongno, there's a little back-alley network full of little mom and pop restaurants and winding "head-in-there-drunk-and-you'll-never-find-your-way-out" pathways and things.
You get a little alley like this, (above and below) where the average age for the owner/operators of the restaurants is about 59. . . Then take five more steps, point the camera the other way, and this is what you have across the street. What a wonder Seoul can be! (Especially north of the river, where the history goes back longer.)
by the way: I named the the picture above "alleyotherside," which sounds like a great name for the protagonist of a children's book. I love good names. "Alley Otherside" is a winner.
Check the end of the handrail here, above Chunggye Stream in downtown Seoul -- the little stuff you notice out the corner of your eye. . . Get in a little closer. . . I suppose it's good they didn't flick their cigarettes onto the pedestrians walking by below. . . but it's still a little tiresome when so many people use the city as an ashtray. It's just ridiculous how many men smoke in Korea (though women are starting to catch up, as the taboo against women being caught puffing slowly fades).
Anyway, this creative disposal method make me snicker, even if the principle behind it is kind of. . . whatever you call the opposite of civic-minded.
But even when something like that chokes me up, all it takes to cheer me up again. . .
is an olive tomato ciabatta. Sweet Goliath's sandal-goo, those things are great. Wood and Brick (by Gwanghwamun station) serves up the best ciabatta breads I've found in Seoul, though I still haven't found anything to match the focaccia breads or bagels my mom's old boss, Martin served over in Agassiz.
I found these comics, uncredited, on a random website, and liked them. . . but I wish I knew who to blame for their awesomeness. If any of my readers recognizes the style, or can connect me with the source, please let me know! Meanwhile. . . topical. I like these ones. Especially after all my harping on moral authority on this blog in the last year.
from the movie Munich, re: Israel's answering violence with more violence: "We are supposed to be righteous. That's a beautiful thing. And we're losing it. If I lose that, that's everything. That's my soul."
If you don't like the "F" word, don't look at these next two pictures, but they sure made ME laugh out loud.
Actual shop sign I saw in Itaewon (and you know it's me because who else posts such bad quality pictures from his dumb cameraphone?)
His mom probably went out and said "My son's going to an English afterschool academy; maybe I should get him some English-language T-shirts so he'll fit in."
(found this in a collection of random, submitted photos from a "crazy konglish koreans" facebook group.)Look a little closer at this Starbucks "Hey! We do fair trade now, too!" poster: Isn't that guy a dead ringer for a young George W. Bush?I wonder what the story is here: This shop seems empty, it looks like it's been empty for a while.
The volume of ads that have been slid under the door by advertisers implies at least a month since anyone took any kind of care of the shop. . . and there might have been somebody sleeping inside: saw a lump behind a wooden lattice, but didn't want to investigate too closely; being chased by a hobo is not my idea of a good time.
Meanwhile, I'm a happy cat, generally. Send your good wishes and prayers out to Girlfriendoseyo, as she's in a stressful time at work; a slowly souring situation just started quickly souring, and we hope we can make the best of it, but that means she'll be pretty busy for a little while, and poor old Roboseyo will have to gather scraps of time togetheroseyo where he can, until things are back stable again.
Another simple pleasure for this simple mind:
Lindt 70% dark chocolate (milk-free, and therefore non deadlyoseyo for me and my milk allergy) is available at Starbucks (which also serves soy milk, still the only coffee shop to do so in Seoul, and therefore recipient of my dogged loyalty, despite being a global conglomerate and therefore the antichrist, and despite spreading like a virus in downtown Seoul). Get the dark, bitter chocolate for 1500 won, and then a caramel maquillado (maybe with an extra espresso shot if it's too sweet on its own, and soy milk for the allergy, if you're me) for [more than I'd like to admit paying for a single drink of anything less than Guinness, or a Belgian lager], and sip the maquillado while you have a bit of chocolate in your mouth: the bitter rich chocolate gets molten by the hot sweet maquillado and makes a tasty combination. It's like a liquid tootsie roll, with caffeine! Really, how could it get better than that, short of giving you really awesome dreams the night after drinking it, where you can breathe underwater, or fly, or grow into a giant with ninja skills and get back at Jason Moesker for picking on you in grade school!
Sorry. No pictures of my lindt chockillado: tastes just don't translate into pictures. . . though you gotta see how they use image and sound to explain tastes in the pixar movie Ratatouille, my favourite, and possibly the best, movie of 2007 (in my opinion). Couldn't find a clip of that, but I recommend you go see it.
Soundtrack time: hit play and start reading. I'm intentionally choosing religious music outside my own culture for this essay.
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, luminary of Quawwali singing, a form of worship from Sufi Mystic Islam, where they repeat lines praising God until they reach a nearly ecstatic state. If you give it a chance, it's actually quite amazing. Our man Nusrat has an amazing voice; Quawwali singing is a tradition that's been passed down through his family for six hundred years! Even Jeff Buckley paid his respects to him.
There's a babble of voices these days, see, where so much information is coming at us from every direction that it becomes difficult to even look at most of it, much less investigate, inquire, and discern spirits. While wading through such an overload of input, the difference between a voice I attend and a voice I ignore can be razor thin. When competing with so many other voices for people's attention (to say nothing of trust), the voice of faith and spirituality needs every bit of help it can get, and can barely afford any clutter before it starts losing credibility.
There are different ways a voice can gain influence: the threat of violence, the potential for profit, the sheer power or extremity of the rhetoric, the sheer number (or wealth, or might) of the group speaking (a billion Catholics can't be wrong, can they? What if a billion and three Muslims say they are?), the potential to help one/many/the world toward some goal (world peace, environmental sustainability, personal profit, peace of mind), the qualifications and history of the speaker (when the Dalai Lama speaks on human rights, more people listen than when Kim Jong-il does). All these things can increase the volume of one's voice in the babble. Some of them increase the volume at the cost of credibility (like people who use violence to demonstrate their beliefs), while others increase their volume through credibility.
With so many voices out there, the voice for faith must actually be what it claims to be: this is the first step toward legitimate moral authority. Every time religion gets mixed up in politics, or money, every time any religion attacks something it doesn't understand (science and art come to mind) instead of engaging, it loses credibility: we appear stubborn and disingenuous, angling our spiritual claims into political or financial power, to protect our interests, or to suppress ideas that make us uncomfortable. I would never trust a church which had a tithing chart on the wall to shame members into giving the full 10% (as one of my students' mothers' church does): how could I know whether the pastor gave me godly counsel, or just flattered me to maintain his meal ticket? When Korea's new Presidentnames Somang Church deacons to important positions in his government, or George Bush says stuff like this, it makes religion look like a way to get ahead, a card to play for political points, rather than a worthy pursuit of holiness, or an example of the kingdom of heaven on earth. It's at the point, here in Korea, that when church leaders start talking, a lot of people automatically startlooking for the angle. In a country with so many Christians, having a church that often seems more interestedin political influence, publicity, money, outperforming other churches, and inflated membership numbers, over community, integrity, and help for the helpless is an outright tragedy!
Faith gets dragged through the mud when people tack religion onto their agendas in a play for a little extra legitimacy. Religion's credibility and moral authority is in tatters, when it should be the very engine of our claim to legitimacy, and the longer we let all this agenda-poisoned, disingenuous angling pass for religion, the less religion will be able to compete with other influential voices, that are what they say they are.
It's no wonder Dawkins wants to picture religion as a disease in human society, of which humanity is slowly curing itself. Imagining that the aforementioned duplicity will eventually end is a hopeful, cheerful wish for the future indeed! Baby nothing, this bathwater is emitting mustard gas!
So what's to be done, eh?
Well, here's the ten point list for restoring our credibility. Yes, I'm gonna be prescriptive.
1. Head for the front-lines: feed the hungry, clothe the naked, help the sick, visit the prisoner, fight for social justice everywhere. Don't wait for video cameras to show up: just do it. While I don't know enough to speak for the other major religions, the most respected Christians of the last century were Mother Theresa, who fed the hungry, clothed the naked, helped the sick, and visited the prisoner, and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who fought for social justice. Pope John-Paul II and Billy Graham might come next, and both of them may have faced criticism for this and that, but they also both were exactly who they said they were.
2. If we don't understand it, don't talk about it. There are very smart religious people in every field of knowledge, who have well-informed and worthwhile views on everything from Harry Potter to Creation to the moral questions raised by medical technology that can keep a person alive long after they would have died back in the days when religious positions on euthanasia were originally formed. Let's listen to them, and support them, instead of wading in over our heads! If I meet another Christian who says "I haven't read them, but I'm sure the Harry Potter books are all about the occult, so you shouldn’t read them, either," I'm gonna scream. (Also: respect other fields of knowledge for what they do. If I meet another Christian who flatly says, "I'd never see a counselor: I'm a believer!" I'll scream, too.)
3. Stop being satisfied with "well, that's what I believe." Nobody else is satisfied with that answer, so if we want to get beyond, "I guess we'll have to agree to disagree," we'll need to dig up something a little more convincing.
4. Recognize that fundamentalism is not only off-putting, but too inflexible to respond to a quickly-changing world. (See here if you disagree) -- fundamentalism turns faith into a foxhole where we hide, when a framework of belief ought to be a hill on which we stand to get a better view of things. Once faith began repudiating society, rather than working in and with it, we started the long march toward irrelevance.
5. Find a positive definition for who we are and what we believe, instead of a negative one. Instead of focusing on how the others are wrong, or bad, let's create and maintain a positive community, where the communal and spiritual benefits of membership are so obvious that recruiting is unnecessary. Instead of writing hate letters to Richard Dawkins, let's get our butts into the community and help so many people, in such tangible ways, that non-religious people stop nodding their heads in assent with Dawkins, and start exclaiming, "Who is this clown? Has he ever actually met a Christian? Why doesn't he attack groups that deserve to be taken down a notch?"
6. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, help the sick, visit the prisoner, fight for social justice everywhere.
7. Get mad, real mad, and loud, when people use religion and religious language for personal, political, social, or financial gain.
(by the way, if religion must get political, we need to pick our battles better: it is an outrage that the Christian lobby in America is fighting against gay marriage and supporting the war in Iraq, rather than lobbying with every ounce for universal health care in America, help for the poor, and social freedoms everywhere. So what if Christians were called "bleeding heart liberals" when they opposed slavery -- it's better than getting tied in with Bush's oil crusade.)
8. Get mad, real mad, and loud, when people preach hate, murder or fear, while waving religious flags. The world needs to know that we are just as offended as they are by Fred Phelps, and his ilk, and that they are a lunatic fringe, in no way representative of the majority of religious people, who are decent, moral, and helpful, and loving: these people are the straw man I mentioned in part three. Instead, we need to get behind people like the writer of this letter, and represent. If we don't hold the wackos accountable in-house, we'll be grouped with them.
9. Get on the right side in the LGBT (Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgender/Transsexual) debate. Every other time a group was oppressed, disenfranchised, or in need, Christians were on their side offering compassion, love and support, until this one, and it’s hurting us. As my friend Mel said in an e-mail once, "We're on the wrong side on this one." Doesn't "I cried for hours when I heard about that gay teenager who got beaten to death" sound a little closer to the Godly compassion we're told to have than "AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals." (Jerry Falwell) or "[Homosexuals] want to come into churches and disrupt church services and throw blood all around and try to give people AIDS and spit in the face of ministers." (Pat Robertson) Who are these guys and what have they done with my faith?
10. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, help the sick, visit the prisoner, fight for social justice everywhere.
Soundtrack: hit play on Huun Huur Tu, the Tuvan Throat Singers who are like nothing you've EVER heard before.
Yeh.
On Modern Religion's To Do List for finding a way spirituality can jive with the Global Village and the Information Age: Here's where things get harder. We have to do something about these dilemmas; if we bend too far, then we don't really stand for anything, but if we're unwilling to bend, we're irrelevant, because we can't contribute anything to a dialogue if we aren't also listening.
Engage with: art, other religions, humanities and science in a way that doesn't condemn, condescend to, inherently repudiate, or attempt to establish primacy over any of them, and that is more meaningful than simply "agree to disagree." Religion is no longer the core value of society, and the faster we adjust to this, the better off we'll be.
Recognize that the polemical passages in the holy books were written at times when religious groups needed to band together in the face of persecution, or to create a good strong "in-group" feeling that helped them fight off the raiders from the hills, and do not fit in a global village with quickly dissolving borders. It's a new world, where "us" meets "them" every day, such Amish-style segregation or cloistered fear of the "other" no longer washes. Think really carefully about such passages, and how they ARE used vs. how they SHOULD be used, if at all (we've stopped following other parts of the bible; I'm sure it's the same for the Quran). The world will allow us to keep repeating the same "we're right, they're wrong" points. . . but our audience will shrink with each repetition, until religion as we know it will remain only in quaint little pockets, neatly segregated like the Pennsylvanian Amish now, and ignored except as a novelty.
Recognize that the world is very different than it was when the holy books were written and when the organized religions' infrastructures were designed. We must adapt or fade away: an overly rigid top-down model is too cumbersome for the quick shifts of the information age. We need to recognize and empower grass roots movements, and make information freely available. In the age of transparency, being authoritarian and mysterious breeds mistrust instead of a sense of sacred awe.
Think very carefully about the arrogance inherent in any claim to be the "one, true religion," and how often one's religion mostly depends on one's birthplace and family. Think long and hard about what kind of creator would send all Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists, Jews, Christians, Atheists (basically, all Notmygroupians), to hell, basically because they had the misfortune of being born in Saudi Arabia, Thailand, India, China, Israel, America, or France, instead of in Myculturesville. Think long and hard about how the claim God would send every Muslim to hell for the sin of being born in the Middle East or North Africa, makes God look a little arbitrary and capricious, and also kind of reeks of 19th century colonial arrogance. Think about the possibility (and the hope) that God is subtle enough to see beyond a checklist of signifiers ("Baptized? Check. Communion? Check. Sinner’s prayer? Check. Went to church every Sunday? Check. OK, You’re in." "You? Sorry. My name's God, not Allah. You wanted to serve me, but you were reading the wrong book. Tough nuts for you!") and actually read the heart. Think about the parable of the blind men and the elephant.
(a sidenote tangentially related to the previous point:
One final thought about Richard Dawkins and his book:
I must say that I respect Dawkins' integrity in qualifying even the chapter that "has contained the central argument of [his] book" (187), by titling it "Why there Almost Certainly Is No God" (my emphasis) rather than "Why There Is Definitely No God" -- to qualify even the statement he most passionately believes to be true shows an impressive accountability to the other side, to the possibility that he might yet be wrong. One of the things I respect about the scientific method is that scientists always know exactly what it would take to change their mind about a topic: compelling evidence. If faced with that evidence, any self-respecting scientist WOULD change sides.
This might sound like a petty swipe, but I sincerely wish I saw such "I don't think I am, but I still might be wrong" intellectual integrity and humility in more religious debates and inter-faith dialogues; things might go a little more smoothly if we did.
sidenote over.)
Create a framework that is integrated and useful. By integrated I mean NOT saying "Here's the sphere of religion; here's the sphere of art; here's the sphere of science, and never the twain shall meet," but one that acknowledges all aspects of being a human, alive and learning, in the modern world, and finds useful ways that each aspect can enhance and inform the others.
See, I think organized religion can be really good. It can offer people a chance at connection and community; it offers a hope for the future that'll get you through the deep valley, when applied properly and compassionately. It provides a concrete moral compass as well as a community that can be around, ready to help when the things get confusing, or when the feces hit the fan. It can connect people with opportunities to make a difference in others' lives, to help others in concrete ways, and it can inspire them to get involved. These are all good things, and I (unlike Mr. Dawkins) am convinced that despite having been abused, and despite some hiccups of intolerance and ugliness, the world IS better because of religion's influence through history.
Yeah, things look bad right now, and it's time for a splash of cold water and an honest look in the mirror for pastors, priests, imams, rabbis, monks and everyone else who is responsible for saying of religion, "This is what we are." It's time for a calling to account of those who are manipulating religion and the religious for their own ends. It's not too late.
You know, the only time in the Bible that we see Jesus fly into a full-blown rage is when he was cleaning the money-changers and crooks out of the temple: the people who used the name of God for their own personal business made Christ himself see red! When religion has become a lever for financial or political gain to many, let's ask again, "What would Jesus do"? He would have stormed into those bastards' offices and started flipping tables!
To survive this atheist attack, faithful readers, it's time our religious institutions did the same.
Update: My friend tamie is a beautiful human being, in all the important senses of the word, and she writes beautifully about why religion, why going to a church (or a temple, or a mosque) IS a good thing. Don't take it from me; Here's why faith can still be relevant.
So yesterday the air quality was butt, with a chance of awful. But it rained in the evening, effectively rinsing the sky out. And today was flamb-tastic! The sky was blue, the temperature was mild, and everybody and their pet duck walked around the Chunggye Stream at lunch break.
I like the way the sky, and another building, are reflected in the windows of this building. And look at this! Not only is there an "Evil Dead" musical, but it's coming to SEOUL!
Evil Dead's sequel, Army Of Darkness, is the funniest bad movie I've ever seen, and the first two, Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2, are pretty incredible, themselves -- it's a low-budget horror trilogy with such cheesy special effects and goofy catch-phrase lines it's become a cult classic. I'm interested to know how the musical turns out. . . but I wonder how they'll do scenes like this: (warning: bloody. . .but extremely funny. Gotta watch out for those demon-possessed hands.)
soundtrack: hit play and start reading. Scroll down. Please. Seriously -- the images with the song are . . . not related. But "Send Me On My Way" by Rusted Root is one of the best road songs I know, and more appropriate to the tone of the passage I'm posting than another sad song.
Bill (or Will) Kapoun was the English teacher in Seoul who was hospitalized after an apartment fire and later died from his injuries. These words are from the Save Bill Kapoun Facebook group: Bill's sister, Laura posted some of Bill's writings on the site, as a kind of tribute and thank you to those who have (and still are) helping Bill's family. I, and a lot of the other expats in Korea, have gotten kind of involved in this guy's story; he's been on my mind all week.
While the inciting event is a terrible tragedy, it's kind of beautiful to see such an outpouring of concern for a fellow human, and it's really restored my faith in the expat community in Korea, which can sometimes come across as a bunch of privileged (predominantly) whiteys pointing condescending fingers at the flaws in Korea's culture as a way of dealing with culture-shock (all the while getting paid handsomely by the same ones whom we judge and criticize) and then sometimestaking aim ateach other instead, for variety. I'm guilty of it too.
Anyway, seeing this kind of communication reminds me why we're overseas to begin with, and it's a refreshing look at that so, so human search for meaning:
"...The semester before I went to Ireland I had been living the life of a typical frat guy in a typical American college and was dealing with my first serious break-up. Going to Europe was nothing like what I had expected. I thought I was going to be partying and meeting girls all the time. I thought I would be taking the life I had been leading in America to a new level. Instead I started a completely different life. I met almost no girls during those five months, I had almost no friends and I had almost no fun. At the end of that time I started reflecting on my entire life, on my past and on my future and I realized that there were many parts of it that were not at all how I had planned or how I wanted them to be. I saw large chunks of my earthly days completely wasted, unappreciated and unused and it sickened me. I started writing about it. My writing was then immature as was my outlook on my life. I do not claim maturity or ability in either life or writing now, but I see myself going in the right direction in both attempts. When I first started travelling I spent a few days walking around capital cities with a stupid look on my face and a guide book in my hands. Today I spent my morning digging for clams in a mud bank on the Algarvan coast of southern Portugal before spending my morning trying to sell tickets to go dolphin sightseeing. Afterwards I went on a hike to collect almonds, oranges and sage to cook the mussels I collected off the shore (mussels are much easier to find than clams), which I cooked on a hotplate in my rented room which overlooks the bay of a small fishing town. So I have come a long way, as a writer, as a traveler and as a person. Or at least I hope. . . .
"That was life, when I wrote that. I was really living. Despair is life, pain is life. . . . Happiness is life, laughter is life, there are so many kinds of life, but I, like so many of us, did hardly any living, instead I spent most of my time looking forward, always anticipating, one day, yeah, one day, if I just keep waiting, planning, one day, I'll be happy, I'll be living.
". . . In retrospect, we remember, we give credence to our waiting, proof that living life is possible, but if we are truthful to ourselves, we remember, most of those past days were either days we had wished had gone sooner at the time, or were just the beginning of the list of days hoping.
"It wasn't until I started traveling that I realized that not only does life not have to be that way; it isn't meant to be that way. . . . The natural world we spent most of existence alongside, already physically distant becomes emotionally even further when we don't celebrate and enjoy it. . . .I have become a better person by seeing the world; there is much more that I hope to see and experience, but above all, I hope that by sharing my experiences, others will feel compelled to push themselves; and be reborn into a world without limits, where everything is possible and the pursuit of the new and beautiful takes the place of security and seclusion.
"On its most superficial level traveling allows us to see and discover new and beautiful things, on a slightly deeper level it allows us to know more about our neighbors in the rest of the world, which is one of the things America needs the most right now, but at its deepest level the greatest gift of traveling is the personal journey that allows us to see our own likes and dislikes, passions and perversions, history and future, under a completely different light. Only then can we be truly satisfied for; truly, many will shed a tear when we pass from this world, but besides our nearest loved ones, our days on this earth are quickly forgotten. Few will remember us a year later. The things we do, the attainment of the goals we spend so much time striving for, all mean little beyond the here and now. That is why, when I die, all I hope people to say of me is he lived life. The good, the bad, he took it all in, and relished it. Yes, he lived life for life. Which is how we should all live our lives, never letting a precious moment slip by.
You get a little alley like this, (above and below) where the average age for the owner/operators of the restaurants is about 59. . .
Then take five more steps, point the camera the other way, and this is what you have across the street.
What a wonder Seoul can be! (Especially north of the river, where the history goes back longer.)
Get in a little closer. . .
I suppose it's good they didn't flick their cigarettes onto the pedestrians walking by below. . . but it's still a little tiresome when so many people use the city as an ashtray. It's just ridiculous how many men smoke in Korea (though women are starting to catch up, as the taboo against women being caught puffing slowly fades).
is an olive tomato ciabatta. Sweet Goliath's sandal-goo, those things are great. Wood and Brick (by Gwanghwamun station) serves up the best ciabatta breads I've found in Seoul, though I still haven't found anything to match the focaccia breads or bagels my mom's old boss, Martin served over in Agassiz.
from the movie Munich, re: Israel's answering violence with more violence: "We are supposed to be righteous. That's a beautiful thing. And we're losing it. If I lose that, that's everything. That's my soul."
Look a little closer at this Starbucks "Hey! We do fair trade now, too!" poster:
Isn't that guy a dead ringer for a young George W. Bush?
I wonder what the story is here:
The volume of ads that have been slid under the door by advertisers implies at least a month since anyone took any kind of care of the shop. . .
and there might have been somebody sleeping inside: saw a lump behind a wooden lattice, but didn't want to investigate too closely; being chased by a hobo is not my idea of a good time.
