Lughnasa and the Korea Moon
Sunday gratefuls: Osan Air Base. A hike in the Mountains with my son, Seoah, and Murdoch. Meeting several ajuma (old women) who found Murdoch fascinating. A new TV. The dense population of Songtan and most of Korea. Buses. Taxis. Maglev trains. Subways. Cars. Motorcycles. Some bicycles. Many roads built for foot traffic or Horse/Ox powered carts. Jon’s yahrzeit. Kate, always Kate.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Seoul today
One brief shining: Murdoch lying down on a brick walkway, passersby eyeing him, smiling, some pulling further away, one ajuma with a visor and a bamboo fan stopping, saying how noble he was, aristocratic, better than a human being since he would never betray.
Happening again. Jimmy Buffet dead at 76. Bill Richardson at 75. Not people I followed in any way other than seeing their names often but familiar nonetheless. A singer and a diplomat/fixer. Dead at my age. Reminders that each generation fades away, one former celebrity at a time, one notorious person at a time (yes, even Trump will die), one friend and family member at a time.
This thing we call life has its turn with us, with our Dogs and Whales and Paramecium, even the Bristle Cone Pines and the Joshua Trees, Mosquitoes and Mayflies. Even Mountains and Streams. Then leaves.
But, not Water. No. Water moves from liquid to ice to steam, rises and condenses and falls. Returns to the World Ocean and leaves again on Jet Stream driven Winds to Rain on the just and the unjust. There is a measure of immortality in Water.
Korea and Japan, Peninsula and Islands, are Land forms defined by Water. Risen above the depths of the World Ocean yet surrounded by it, influenced by its moods and its weather. So different from the Landlocked Rocky Mountains in which I live or the interior Midwest in which I lived for most of life.
There the Great Lakes, for example, were Water forms defined by the Land that surrounds them. Those Lakes first filled with Water from the receding Glaciers of the last Ice Age. Rivers like the Minnesota and the Mississippi. Smaller Lakes dotting the northern part of the State and even within the city limits of the Twin Cities.
One of Water’s other mysteries keeping the Lakes liquid. Water floats in its Ice form. If it didn’t, Ice would sink to the bottom of the Lakes and form cold basins with occasional melted Ice at the very top. No wonder Taoism finds in Water a metaphor for how chi, the energy of life, flows through the whole World.
In the mussar class I take at CBE we’re exploring metaphors for what has been identified with the word God. Learning how the metaphors we choose define what we imagine that word to mean, or better, what it could mean.
What if the call of the natural world, as Art Green, author of Radical Judaism defines the sacred (my interpretation of his work), could be heard and felt in the flow of a Mountain Stream or the evaporation of Water from the World Ocean or in the pelting of Rain on a roof, onto a newly sown Field? Or in the glass of Water I just finished, replenishing my body’s supply?
What if then we could say that we share in Water’s immortality? In its ability to wear away the hard, move around obstacles, change into different forms, give life to the thirsty? I can follow that understanding of the sacred.
