Lughnasa and the Herme Moon
Monday gratefuls: Murdoch. That funny guy. Leo, gone home. Luke. Tal. 48 degrees. Clear Sky. Great Sol brightening the Lodgepoles and Black Mountain. Great Sol’s angle already beginning to visibly decline. The harvest season underway. The Midwest. Its farms and farmers. Its humidity. The arid West. Its Mountains. Dogs. All Dogs. Of all time. Angels. Love incarnate. The Sacred. Revelation.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Dogs
One brief shining: A Dog lays her head in your lap, gazes up at you with adoration, follows you on a walk, waits for you at the door when you come home tired from work, tail wagging, eyes filled with you only you and you reach down, pat her, scratch behind her ears, then the world comes into focus.
Realized only yesterday that my travels this year will take me to two divided nations, Israel and Korea. Very different in the origin of the divisions, yes, one xenophobic and the other bemoaned on both sides yet hardened and both societies with strong military presences, the threat of imminent conflict always in the air. I wonder what to look for, how to gauge the impact of the Arab/Israeli conflict on day-to-day life in both Israel and the West Bank. In Korea the division separates a nation into two parts, a Southern and Northern, yet considered one country by all Koreans. How though does the continuing division affect the average Korean? Not my main reason for visiting either place yet a dominant reality in both.
After my conversion in Jerusalem, I will have a strong personal stake in both countries. A Jew considering the life of Israel. And, a father-in-law with a Korean daughter-in-law, my son stationed in Korea for four years. Also, the Jang family, Seoah’s brother, two sisters, nieces and nephews, her mother and father. The deep wounds in both countries have increased significance for me.
Makes me wonder about the soft division (compared to Israel and Korea) that has come to dominate American politics. About its impact on our body politic here. How does a nation fare when large numbers of its citizens disagree on the fundamentals of what it means to be a nation? What is, after all, a nation? Certainly it requires some minimal cohesion among its resident population.
This Wikipedia entry, nation, has a nice precis of what the word has meant and might mean in the future. It’s important to remember that the nation state is a relatively recent invention, most scholars agreeing that the modern nation state arose in the 17th century. I found this quote from the Wiki helpful: “The consensus among scholars is that nations are socially constructed, historically contingent, and organizationally flexible.” My mental ears perked up at the first two terms: socially constructed and historically contingent.
Yes. Israel came into being in 1947, a recent expression of an old homeland, one imposed on an existing territory already occupied by Jews and Arab. Socially constructed as a necessary antidote to the horrors of Hitler’s Germany, yet oh so historically contingent as an increasingly large swath of the diaspora, Palestinians, and progressive Israelis argue it must change its nature as a nation. It is refusing to be organizationally flexible.
Korea though is an ethnic nation divided by modern politics. Both South Korea and North Korea socially constructed by the historical contingencies of big power politics, the Cold War, of the 1950’s. Because of those ties of ethnicity, most Koreans on both sides of the border yearn for unification.
Yet here. Here. The standout phrase. Historically contingent. As in, will not necessarily always exist. The nature of our socially constructed reality? Contested. Is there an organizational structure that can contain both far right and liberal Americans? That is our big question.
