For those who dislike reflection, I cannot guarantee that you will like any of this post. However, I have added numbered sections so that you do not have to read too much of it. Simply read sections I and II. You could skip ahead and read IV, although I wouldn't recommend it. Do not, under any circumstances, read section III. This is even more important to remember if you also dislike poetry.
I.
While I was staying with Donna and Chris Rice, the MCC reps in Chuncheon, I picked up the habit of having devotions every morning. I don't know whether or not the challenges I faced with all the newness that was a part of my first week in Korea helped me to thoughtlessly absorb this habit from Donna, who practiced it every morning. In any case, although I have never done before, I now find myself starting my fourth week here with this habit.
It is a new thing for me to give myself time everyday to renew my mind, and then to be able to actively test my reflection through the day, as Paul writes about to the Romans, in order to discern and pursue what is "good and acceptable and perfect." I think it is a great virtue of this Christian community that the way they live gives me the opportunity both to hard work and to have times of prayerful reflection of this kind.
II.
In my last post, I mentioned working in the chicken barns. Every morning, Dante and I have helped with feeding the chickens, as well as collecting and getting the eggs ready to be shipped to Dandelion's customers. I find this regular routine very enjoyable.
One of the first mornings that we did this, I noticed something about it that was unfamiliar to me. The people in charge of the farm did not shut off certain -- what might be called -- ordinary, emotional responses to their work, that I was used to shutting off. Let me explain.
One of our first days here, Dante and I found five or so dead chickens outside the barn. They had been killed by an unidentified wild animal. Perhaps a cat. I thought it was unfortunate, but didn't dwell on it. I found it unusual how Jinha, who is in charge of the chicken barns, looked shocked and saddened when we showed him the chickens that had been killed. I wouldn't expect this response working for a chicken farm back home.
I had a similar experience when I was cutting weeds, which is another one of my tasks here. I absentmindedly had cut some purple wild flowers while working on eliminating the weeds and grass beside the road. I had assumed that they were just another weed, but when Dr. Kim, the headmaster here, saw what I was doing, he told me not to cut those ones. The reason, I think, was that he liked the way they looked.
III.
In both cases, I would not simply say that a cultural difference was at play. Yes, this is true enough. However, even though I think in the culture where I grew up we would not respond the same way in these situations, I would still say that, in both cases, good, ordinary emotions, even as my own culture understands them, were displayed.
The traditions that are a part of my culture express the goodness of compassion for nonhuman creatures and sadness at the loss of beauty. In my high school lit class, I read Robert Burns express compassion for a "wee, sleeket, cowran" mouse, whose house he had accidentally turned over as he plowed. He calls to the fleeing mouse:
Thou need na start awa sae hasty, You do not need to run away so hastily
Wi’ bickerin brattle! little scurrying noise
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee I would not chase you
Wi’ murd’ring pattle! plow
And, lamenting his destruction of a beautiful flower, Burns writes:
Wee, modest, crimson-tippèd flow'r,
Thou's met me in an evil hour;
For I maun crush amang the stoure I crushed among the flying dust
Thy slender stem:
To spare thee now is past my pow'r,
Thou bonie gem.
These are, I think, good, ordinary emotions to feel for animal and plant life that we work with. And these poems show how they are not simply part of Dandelion culture, but a treasured part of the best of Western culture as well.
While tree planting, my colleagues and I would sometimes quietly express how we wished the forest were better taken care of (by whom?), or lament the fact that we could not spend more time simply appreciating the beauty around us (who could allow us to do that?). When it came down to it, of course, we would forget such thoughts and all plant as fast as we could with no particular higher goal in mind.
I know some people will simply scoff at the idea of feeling love and appreciation for nature as a part of work life. But that is neither here nor there. The question is whether there is a good reason for overturning these ordinary human emotions in our work life.
I am part of a culture that has tended to put our work lives into a box which can be put in a corner away from emotions, like compassion or sadness at the loss of beauty, which fill other parts of our lives. But what justifies this way of thinking?
I will state my view. I think that we keep our work life in this box because it is convenient. We do not have a good reason. We simply do not want to worry about things like these at work. After all, we have other things to think about; it is already hard enough to make a living.
When it comes right down to it, however, this is a form of moral heedlessness. Back home, I did not have a good reason to shut off my capacity for compassion and beauty at work. I simply did it because I wanted to make money and did not want the inconvenience of attending to life I was hurting or beauty I was destroying.
IV.
As I was fundraising, I had the idea that I really needed to make sure I worked hard and got stuff done when I was at the Dandelion Community. Only in this way could I justify accepting all the money that friends, family and church members had given me. I still think this, and am happy for all the opportunities I have here to sweat and carry heavy things around.
However, I now know better that this is not enough.
It is not enough only to do things for the community. I am here to live well as a Christian disciple among other disciples. So, I am learning not only to work hard, but to share meals; to spend full day after full day with friends, until our quirks, our struggles and our weaknesses cannot help but rise to the surface, and then to continue to be with each other as friends; and, yes, to reflect, to renew my mind, in order to test and find what, in boxes that I thought I had safely closed off to such things, is good, acceptable and perfect.
It is not enough only to do things for the community. I am here to live well as a Christian disciple among other disciples. So, I am learning not only to work hard, but to share meals; to spend full day after full day with friends, until our quirks, our struggles and our weaknesses cannot help but rise to the surface, and then to continue to be with each other as friends; and, yes, to reflect, to renew my mind, in order to test and find what, in boxes that I thought I had safely closed off to such things, is good, acceptable and perfect.
