Yesterday I went to the Sea-Parting festival in Jindo, a small seaside town about an hour and a half bus ride away from Gwangju. The Sea Parting festival is for the most part exactly what it sounds like--once a year, the sea parts, Moses-like, revealing a 150 foot wide, oyster laden path along the coast. Hundreds of people come to see the "miracle", walk the path, and collect all the oysters/other edible sea creatures they can find.
What they don't tell you about festivals in the pamphlets, however, (because everyone already expects it, I guess) is the amount of intoxicated old Korean people you will see. It's a lot tamer than, say, 20 somethings at Austin City Limits, but the Ajummas and Ajussis can throw it back, man. And they do. At every stop on the Festival path were the less-than-intimidating Korean policeman with their high-water pants and plastic batons, whose sole purpose it seemed was to deal with the intoxicated elderly heckling various performances. I saw middle aged and more than middle aged men and women being physically removed from the stage areas of each show we saw.
Granted, it was a festival. And these people work incredibly hard...they are entitled to a little time to cut loose and let go.... or escape, rather. However I noticed that most of these disorderly drunk were also of the indigent variety--dirty nails, bad teeth, not your average well-kempt Korean.
And then it happened.
My friends Kezia and Jack and I were sitting under an outdoor tent, enjoying Korean seafood pancakes (pajun) and beer when an intoxicated, elderly indigent sat down beside Kezia. He was quite alone, in every sense of the word, and literally frothing at the mouth with copious amounts of white, mucus-y spittle. His eyes were wide and he seemed intent on conversation. I don't know if this man was homeless or not, or if he had any family at the festival (I doubt it), but he spied an empty seat with three young foreigners, and wanted to join in, possibly to see if we would buy him a beer, but also possibly just to sit under a tent and have a conversation like everyone else. Like "normal" people.
Despite our repeated attempts to assure him we did not understand his rapid Korean, he spoke to us avidly, asking us questions and I'm sure, making jokes. However the one heartbreaking thing that kept punctuating his words was the only English expression he knew-- "I am sorry". Which he repeated over and over and over again. We caused a small scene, as the tent proprietors came over several times to try to remove the source of the awkwardness, but he was tenacious. He wanted to stay, he wanted to talk. Throughout the ten or so minutes he was at our table, I met eyes with several other Korean patrons who smiled at me, embarrassed and apologetically. Even though this was not my first experience with a homeless drunk person, I was embarrassed....but not because I was near him, or embarrassed of him.
I was embarrassed by myself. I was embarrassed because his white mouth was grossing me out and I just wanted to eat my seafood pancake and be left alone.
Everything in his eyes was saying Look, look, look, look, look at me. Look me in the eyes. Listen to me. That is all I want. Just listen to me, try to talk to me, don't be embarrassed by me. But he wasn't too drunk to know he was an embarrassment. His chorus of "I am sorry" communicated that well enough.
Escapism. He couldn't escape his loneliness with Soju, and I can't escape mine, either.
Richard Rohr, in his book "Everything Belongs" has one section entitled "Liminality and Transformation". He makes a distinction between liminal (threshold) experiences that bring about real change and liminoid experiences, accepting a false comfort in an attempt at finding a real remedy. Liminal space, he says, induces a type of inner crisis to help us make a needed transition. Not over, around, or beside but THROUGH. Through pain, through grief, through despair, through the dark dark places of life. To feel and know and suffer and then be reborn. Again, and again and again, over and over and over, be born again.
And finally to find real Love and real Grace on the other side of it. Simone Weil said, "It is grace that forms the void inside of us and it is grace alone that can fill the void."
Did I mention yesterday was Easter? Rohr said
"When we see the image of God where we don't want to see the image of God, then we see with eyes not our own. Prayer reconnects us with inherent value. Everything becomes priceless if it is sacred. And everything is sacred if the world is a temple. The purpose of prayer and religious seeking is to see the truth about reality, is to see what is. And at the bottom of what is is always goodness. The foundation is always love.
I don't know that I have touched it yet. At some moments, God had parted the veil and it's tasted very good. It's tasted like the real. Enlightenment is to see and touch the big mystery. The big pattern. The Big Real. Jesus called it the kingdom of God; Buddha called it enlightenment. Philosophers might call it Truth. Most of us just call it love. There's no answer, no problem solving, simply awareness. You cannot not live in the presence of God. You are totally surrounded by God. You cannot earn this God. You cannot prove yourself worthy of this God. Feeling God's presence is simply a matter of awareness. Or enjoying the now. Deepening one's presence. I am able to see the divine image in myself, in you, and eventually in all things. And finally seeing is one.
Jesus pushes seeing to the social edge. Can you see the image of Christ in the least of your brothers and sisters? If the world is a temple, everything is sacred. One God, one world, one truth, one suffering and one love. All we can do is participate."
