Some compelling statistics on North Korea:
24,000,000
North Koreans
1,000,000 – 3,000,000
Starved in the mid-1990s
300,000
Refugees in hiding in China
250,000
Imprisoned in concentration camps.
70%-90%
Women refugees in China trafficked in the sex trade
40%
Of North Korean people urgently in need of food assistance
15-30%
North Korea’s GDP used to support the military even during famine
15,000
NK refugees resettled in South Korea
93
NK refugees resettled in the U.S.
13/93
Refugees resettled through LiNK in the U.S.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Thursday, October 29, 2009
A really good post...
Turning Toward Intimacy
October 24th, 2009
By Kayla McClurg
Over 1 million children under 18 will experience divorce this year. Even when it’s handled with love and care for the children involved, the divorce of their parents is a traumatic and life-altering event. Perhaps less stressful than living with two parents who can’t get along, but stressful nonetheless. Throughout our lives we are faced with situations that are painful and in which we feel overwhelmed and powerless. Sometimes we are left by someone we love. Sometimes we are the one who leaves. Sometimes we are neglected or abused, and sometimes we are the one who neglects or abuses another. We live out our childhood losses again and again. Jesus had his own “issues,” you know he did. Small towns talk, and the story is, maybe he’s not even Joseph’s son. I mean, it doesn’t take much detective work to count up the months between marriage and birth … I’m just sayin’….
Jesus understands what we’re going through; he loves us regardless; AND he is no fool. He sees how we use each other and blame each other and hide out from each other, using our starting stories as an excuse. And he keeps calling us to another way. Not a way based on legal systems or social customs, not a way based on denial or casting blame; but a way based on the lofty ideals of down-to-earth love. So whether he was talking to adults about divorce or blessing the children of parents who might be together but were probably struggling as much as any others, he kept reminding whoever would listen to stop going the direction they were going and to turn toward what matters most.
To repent is to turn—and so is to bless, to turn toward instead of away. In Hindu tradition, when meeting or departing, one turns toward the other, bows, hands together at the heart chakra, and says, “Namaste,” which means “I bow to you.” Bowing isn’t the same as, “I give in to you.” Or, “I give up; you can have things your way.” Rather, it is a recognition of the spark of the divine in you. It is bowing to that part of you that, regardless of how we might be at odds, regardless of how differently we see the same thing, regardless of how much you annoy me, reminds me that we are connected. [“The Spirit in me greets the Spirit in you.”]
“To bless” means that when the relationship is breaking down, we choose to believe in the possibility that, actually, deeper connection might be “breaking through.” And so we make a commitment to turn toward one another at the most difficult junctures, not away. When you hurt your spouse or your close friend, or have been deeply hurt by them, when you have been failed by the community of people who have promised to journey, together with you, as members of something bigger than all of you, and in your hurt you turn away—and that might be the right response initially—at some point, turn back. See the ones who have hurt you for the struggling humans they are. Turn toward each other, instead of away.
When you’re not the one hurting, but others are, turn toward that hurt. Go to the Festival Center when Jubilee Jobs has its next orientation—or wherever hurting people gather in your part of the world—and look into people’s eyes and see what hopelessness & hope look like up against each other. Don’t be afraid or angry or resistant to the person begging on the street. Turn toward her instead of away. When children are frightened by the fighting in their home, or other things that are out of their control, turn toward those children, not away. Powerlessness comes because we turn away from each other; empowerment comes when we turn toward each other and toward the God in each other.
This sounds like a lovely exercise until you try it on a daily basis. As humans we yearn for closeness, but don’t know how and are scared to confess even that little bit of self-revealing information. Isn’t it interesting that we are capable of doing all kinds of daring things—visit someone in prison or join a protest where we might get arrested ourselves or swim out into a lake to help get someone to shore or simply face the daily grind of being a responsible person in the world—but we can’t imagine looking someone in the eyes and saying, “I would like to know you and to be known by you, but I’m afraid because I don’t know how.” Our yearning for intimacy is matched by our fear of it … and our fear of admitting our fear.
For many of us the fear goes back to childhood where we never received the blessing we needed from family and the wider community. Did we have a circle of love where we were blessed as Jesus blessed the children, or did we feel more often in the way, scolded for taking up too much space and time? When we went to school, we weren’t taught intimacy like we were taught to read or do math or even like we were taught to share and be polite. Intimacy is caught more than taught. It’s a way of being that is nurtured in simple gestures. I remember a moment when my kindergarten teacher created space for intimacy simply by looking me in the eyes one cold day as she tied my hat on my head. She said, “I think I’ll tie the bow over to the side today because that’s how my little girl likes to wear her bow.” That’s all it took for me to feel the closeness of being as dear to her as her own daughter.
This is what we were created for—small tender gestures, gentle moments of being seen and known and, as they say, loved anyway. And yet we are as clumsy as toddlers who are just learning to walk. We stumble all over each other trying to figure out how to do it. It’s been called the “dance of intimacy” but should dancing cause this many bruises, this many hurt feelings? Rarely are we able to be honest and say we don’t know how but we want to try to learn how to be open and honest and loving … and so we just lumber along, smashing into each other’s feelings and opinions until, exhausted, we conclude that indeed we ARE NOT able to do it, this dance called healthy relationship. We decide the best thing for this turtle to do is to pull in and live inside the shell. Make a cozy little nest there. Permanently.
And maybe that will work out for you; maybe you’re one of the few who can do life alone, but I for one am not. I might not know how to let you get close to me, but I know it’s what I’m made for. And I choose to believe in One who says it’s never too late to be on this path … because it’s really the only path. Not to constantly relive the past and cast blame on those who have hurt us and didn’t teach us well how to open our hearts, but to live NOW as beginners, each moment like children just starting out.
October 24th, 2009
By Kayla McClurg
Over 1 million children under 18 will experience divorce this year. Even when it’s handled with love and care for the children involved, the divorce of their parents is a traumatic and life-altering event. Perhaps less stressful than living with two parents who can’t get along, but stressful nonetheless. Throughout our lives we are faced with situations that are painful and in which we feel overwhelmed and powerless. Sometimes we are left by someone we love. Sometimes we are the one who leaves. Sometimes we are neglected or abused, and sometimes we are the one who neglects or abuses another. We live out our childhood losses again and again. Jesus had his own “issues,” you know he did. Small towns talk, and the story is, maybe he’s not even Joseph’s son. I mean, it doesn’t take much detective work to count up the months between marriage and birth … I’m just sayin’….
Jesus understands what we’re going through; he loves us regardless; AND he is no fool. He sees how we use each other and blame each other and hide out from each other, using our starting stories as an excuse. And he keeps calling us to another way. Not a way based on legal systems or social customs, not a way based on denial or casting blame; but a way based on the lofty ideals of down-to-earth love. So whether he was talking to adults about divorce or blessing the children of parents who might be together but were probably struggling as much as any others, he kept reminding whoever would listen to stop going the direction they were going and to turn toward what matters most.
To repent is to turn—and so is to bless, to turn toward instead of away. In Hindu tradition, when meeting or departing, one turns toward the other, bows, hands together at the heart chakra, and says, “Namaste,” which means “I bow to you.” Bowing isn’t the same as, “I give in to you.” Or, “I give up; you can have things your way.” Rather, it is a recognition of the spark of the divine in you. It is bowing to that part of you that, regardless of how we might be at odds, regardless of how differently we see the same thing, regardless of how much you annoy me, reminds me that we are connected. [“The Spirit in me greets the Spirit in you.”]
“To bless” means that when the relationship is breaking down, we choose to believe in the possibility that, actually, deeper connection might be “breaking through.” And so we make a commitment to turn toward one another at the most difficult junctures, not away. When you hurt your spouse or your close friend, or have been deeply hurt by them, when you have been failed by the community of people who have promised to journey, together with you, as members of something bigger than all of you, and in your hurt you turn away—and that might be the right response initially—at some point, turn back. See the ones who have hurt you for the struggling humans they are. Turn toward each other, instead of away.
When you’re not the one hurting, but others are, turn toward that hurt. Go to the Festival Center when Jubilee Jobs has its next orientation—or wherever hurting people gather in your part of the world—and look into people’s eyes and see what hopelessness & hope look like up against each other. Don’t be afraid or angry or resistant to the person begging on the street. Turn toward her instead of away. When children are frightened by the fighting in their home, or other things that are out of their control, turn toward those children, not away. Powerlessness comes because we turn away from each other; empowerment comes when we turn toward each other and toward the God in each other.
This sounds like a lovely exercise until you try it on a daily basis. As humans we yearn for closeness, but don’t know how and are scared to confess even that little bit of self-revealing information. Isn’t it interesting that we are capable of doing all kinds of daring things—visit someone in prison or join a protest where we might get arrested ourselves or swim out into a lake to help get someone to shore or simply face the daily grind of being a responsible person in the world—but we can’t imagine looking someone in the eyes and saying, “I would like to know you and to be known by you, but I’m afraid because I don’t know how.” Our yearning for intimacy is matched by our fear of it … and our fear of admitting our fear.
For many of us the fear goes back to childhood where we never received the blessing we needed from family and the wider community. Did we have a circle of love where we were blessed as Jesus blessed the children, or did we feel more often in the way, scolded for taking up too much space and time? When we went to school, we weren’t taught intimacy like we were taught to read or do math or even like we were taught to share and be polite. Intimacy is caught more than taught. It’s a way of being that is nurtured in simple gestures. I remember a moment when my kindergarten teacher created space for intimacy simply by looking me in the eyes one cold day as she tied my hat on my head. She said, “I think I’ll tie the bow over to the side today because that’s how my little girl likes to wear her bow.” That’s all it took for me to feel the closeness of being as dear to her as her own daughter.
This is what we were created for—small tender gestures, gentle moments of being seen and known and, as they say, loved anyway. And yet we are as clumsy as toddlers who are just learning to walk. We stumble all over each other trying to figure out how to do it. It’s been called the “dance of intimacy” but should dancing cause this many bruises, this many hurt feelings? Rarely are we able to be honest and say we don’t know how but we want to try to learn how to be open and honest and loving … and so we just lumber along, smashing into each other’s feelings and opinions until, exhausted, we conclude that indeed we ARE NOT able to do it, this dance called healthy relationship. We decide the best thing for this turtle to do is to pull in and live inside the shell. Make a cozy little nest there. Permanently.
And maybe that will work out for you; maybe you’re one of the few who can do life alone, but I for one am not. I might not know how to let you get close to me, but I know it’s what I’m made for. And I choose to believe in One who says it’s never too late to be on this path … because it’s really the only path. Not to constantly relive the past and cast blame on those who have hurt us and didn’t teach us well how to open our hearts, but to live NOW as beginners, each moment like children just starting out.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
On Not Being the Center of the Universe
I remember an old, old Peanuts cartoon. Charlie Brown is watching Lucy and another girl from afar. He approaches them: “You girls were talking about me, weren’t you!” he says accusingly. “No we weren’t,” the girls say with a smug expression. Charlie Brown reverts to his earlier distant position, and waits a bit, only to return once again and ask: “How come you girls never talk about me?”
A basic human presumption seems to be that we are, each of us, the Center of the Universe…. The Chinese call their land The Middle Kingdom. World maps in the U.S. have, guess which country, at the center? Not the same country as maps sold in, say, France.
Years ago I read a study of students and professors. The study asked students how much time they spent thinking about the professors (not much), and how much time they thought the professors spent thinking about them (a lot, the students figured). The professors, asked the same questions, said they didn’t in fact spend much time thinking about the students, but they were sure that the students, of course, spent lots of time thinking about them. Wrong again. Center of the Universe all over the place.
On a more cosmic scale, it was only recently in history that we could as a species countenance the idea that the universe might not revolve around planet Earth…. Some of us—some a bit more than others—escape from the tyranny of self, but only just a little bit. We get angry, resentful and afraid—basically because people don’t behave the way we would like them to. After all, aren’t we the center of the universe?
Of course, we most assuredly are not. All those would-be subjects of ours aren’t paying us homage—basically they’re just not that into us…. But there are two great causes for optimism in this observation. First, since most of humanity doesn’t really concern itself with us, we are quite free of the bondage of others’ opinions. Our slavery is of our own creation. We hold our own keys to freedom.
Second, once we see that others have the same uni-centric disease that we do, we can lighten up a bit and reach out over the 50-50 line for a touch of human contact. Yul Bryner once said, “We come into this world alone, and we leave it alone; and if someone offers you kindness along the way, you don’t spit on it.” Bryner’s is the minimalist version. The maximalist version is that if you touch someone, you help to free them from their own self-obsessed bondage. By reaching outside yourself, you initially delight them; but quickly that turns to teaching by example. You show that it can be done, and you role-model the benefits of doing so.
If you live in the space that says you’re the center of the universe, people’s orbits tend to fly away from you. But if you reject that belief, then people are attracted to you; oddly, you become (directionally) the center of much more. They trust you….
You are not the center of the universe. What a blessing. Go pay attention to someone else.
~Charles H. Green
Charles H. Green is founder and CEO of Trusted Advisor Associates. This piece is excerpted from the Trust Matters blog found here.
A basic human presumption seems to be that we are, each of us, the Center of the Universe…. The Chinese call their land The Middle Kingdom. World maps in the U.S. have, guess which country, at the center? Not the same country as maps sold in, say, France.
Years ago I read a study of students and professors. The study asked students how much time they spent thinking about the professors (not much), and how much time they thought the professors spent thinking about them (a lot, the students figured). The professors, asked the same questions, said they didn’t in fact spend much time thinking about the students, but they were sure that the students, of course, spent lots of time thinking about them. Wrong again. Center of the Universe all over the place.
On a more cosmic scale, it was only recently in history that we could as a species countenance the idea that the universe might not revolve around planet Earth…. Some of us—some a bit more than others—escape from the tyranny of self, but only just a little bit. We get angry, resentful and afraid—basically because people don’t behave the way we would like them to. After all, aren’t we the center of the universe?
Of course, we most assuredly are not. All those would-be subjects of ours aren’t paying us homage—basically they’re just not that into us…. But there are two great causes for optimism in this observation. First, since most of humanity doesn’t really concern itself with us, we are quite free of the bondage of others’ opinions. Our slavery is of our own creation. We hold our own keys to freedom.
Second, once we see that others have the same uni-centric disease that we do, we can lighten up a bit and reach out over the 50-50 line for a touch of human contact. Yul Bryner once said, “We come into this world alone, and we leave it alone; and if someone offers you kindness along the way, you don’t spit on it.” Bryner’s is the minimalist version. The maximalist version is that if you touch someone, you help to free them from their own self-obsessed bondage. By reaching outside yourself, you initially delight them; but quickly that turns to teaching by example. You show that it can be done, and you role-model the benefits of doing so.
If you live in the space that says you’re the center of the universe, people’s orbits tend to fly away from you. But if you reject that belief, then people are attracted to you; oddly, you become (directionally) the center of much more. They trust you….
You are not the center of the universe. What a blessing. Go pay attention to someone else.
~Charles H. Green
Charles H. Green is founder and CEO of Trusted Advisor Associates. This piece is excerpted from the Trust Matters blog found here.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
changes
it's been about two months since graduation. i literally went into some kind of a hibernation mode where i slept for three weeks straight. that was definitely a first for me (not something i would like to do again), but i think my body was screaming for some kind of a rest.
Monday, June 1, 2009
thoughts post-graduation
now that I have graduated, there are endeavors, hobbies and "projects" that i've been indefinitely putting off (e.g. reading good books, journalling, creative writing, enjoying the outdoors and spending time or hanging out with friends) which i now have time for. but there are also things like paying bills and going through the stack of mail on my desk, getting a haircut, finding a sublet for the summer, applying for jobs and writing thank you notes that scream for my attention. only if there were three or four of me!
Friday, May 29, 2009
"Tonight I Can Write"
By Pablo Neruda
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, "The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance."
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.
By Pablo Neruda
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, "The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance."
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer
WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick; 5
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
~ Walt Whitman
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick; 5
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
~ Walt Whitman
Monday, January 5, 2009
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Tis 2009...
Gustav Klimt
"The Kiss (c. 1907)"
"Silhouette II"
"Musique"
"The Mother and Child Detail from the Three Ages of Woman (c. 1905)"
"The Tree of Life Frieze (c. 1909)"
"The Kiss (c. 1907)"
"Silhouette II"
"Musique"
"The Mother and Child Detail from the Three Ages of Woman (c. 1905)"
"The Tree of Life Frieze (c. 1909)"
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