After months and months of on the go, in and out of different cultures, travels to life changing and challenging places, another semester of English teaching finished,and a summer of INTENSE language learning, I finally have a real vacation. It has been a really long time since I ... ... stopped. Creating a space for a stop is so unlike me. Yet if this week shows me anything, creating STOPs needs to become a part of me. This STOP has allowed me to sleep, rest, dream, and enjoy.
I've watched Korean families play! In my three years of living in Korea, I can't say that I've seen much of families playing together. It has been refreshing to see kids be kids and mom's enjoying being kids too! There is something magical about the beach. It brings the kid out of us all. Even me. I've been brough back to the days my family would visit the beach with family friends. And I've been reminded of my days at PNLU when I dreamed of what life might be like.
I watched a Beach Volleyball tournament. The teams from U.S.A. were 1st and 2nd. A little country pride never felt so good. I enjoyed watching sport and found myself in places of great joy. I forgot what that felt like. I'm reminded how much of a sport enthusiast I am. Watching those women playing their sport was for me like "coming home". That is always a nice feeling.The Benedictine Sisters of Busan have been wonderful to me. They have created space at their table for me to dine with them. My language skills are embarrassing yet they still craft ways of engaging with me. They haven' shamed me being something I'm not or for not having a skill I lack. Instead they've welcomed me as I am to share a taste of their life with them. And after the meal they let me free to go and do whatever I want to do. Imagine that, having time to do and go wherever you want! That is a real vacation! And for me that has been reading, and yes, a little bit of Korean studies.
I've been reading a book I'm going to start recommending to everyone who loves theology. It is a book called, "Beyond Foundationalism". It is a hard read but it is bringing me back to the days of Univ. and Seminary where I felt so excited about the theological pursuit. It has reminded me of the Spirit's work in the communities reading of Scripture. I've seen whenever "tradition is dead" tradition isn't really dead! Tradition is embodied human experience. So if we experience tradition with deadness, we are the ones who are dead--not tradition. Ah..there is more but that is for later conversations.
I had a conversation with a sister today who helped me understand Christianity in Korea a little better. Protestants in this nation seem to follow the fundamentalist and foundationalist approaches to theology to the "nth" degree. There is something non-Korean in the fundamentalist mentality that exists in contemporary Christianity in Korea. Koreans are a welcoming people. Yet some strains of protestantism are lacking in welcoming. I learned of a group of Catholics, Buddhists and Anglicans who gather together and who are seeking conversation with each other. They all see the need for inter-Faith dialogue and the need for living together harmoniously. They are creating a space for the other! If there is any group of people ready to engage in the modern-postmodern conversations happening in the west from Korea, I think it would be the Catholic monastics. Not that Korea needs the modern-postmodern conversation. I'm not sure how they would call the conversation needed to engage a changing culture in this day in Korea. Whatever that conversation would be called, I gather the Catholic monastics are already having it! I wish I knew how to engage with them. I think I could learn a lot from them!
The STOP stops soon. Ah..not sure I'm ready to start again!
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