in zorba the greek * nikos kazantzakis gives us the wonderful image of life as “the full catastrophe”. although i think in that moment, he was speaking more marriage, kids, a house, i think it's more universal than that. even without those particular tornadoes, the winds of life will rock us no matter where we are. we all have our full catastrophes. zorba's way is to dance in the gale of the full catastrophe.... to celebrate life, to laugh with it and at himself, even in the face of personal failure and defeat. in doing so, he is never weighed down for long, never ultimately defeated either by the world or by his own considerable folly. of course, zorba himself must have been quite a catastrophe for his wife and kids and the others in his path. a loving and outrageous and wonderful one, but a catastrophe nonetheless. what i appreciate about that phrase is that it captures the human spirit's capacity to smile into the winds that blow us about, to come to terms with life's howling difficulties and find within them space for growth and grace. and i love the imperative to dance through the full catastrophe.(note to self: another mantra! use it.)
it has been a full catastrophe of a weekend so far and it's not even saturday night yet. people will be coming over in a few hours to eat cheese and drink wine and smile at life. i've just made hummus. and the early pattern of the tree branches against the early evening sky out my window is like dripping laughter. spent both last night and this morning in the company of wonderful women friends. well, and an italian football team and a room full of outrageous, whimsical hats (not at the same time). but those are stories for another time. in other miraculous news, my partners learned how to use emoticons. and a newly engaged friend is happily glowing in the joy and challenges of it all. so many gorgeous winds blowing!
in this quiet eye of the storm, i find myself wanting to stay very still and listen to my thoughts. almost like listening to my breath in meditation.** it has been an overwhelming week. with the winds of life's wonder and terror whirling about. as ever.
one of the more unfortunate winds that has been forcefully blowing through beijing these days is the continued suppression of public interest lawyers. i had lunch on friday with some of the leaders of china's women's rights movements and the founders of a women's legal aid organisation. i am humbled by how much they have accomplished. their uncompromising commitment to justice, their tenacity, their thoughtful approach to their work, and their playful spirits. their centre was at beijing university (beida) since it was established fourteen years ago. but earlier this week, the university told them they could only stay at beida if they stopped doing cases. they could continue to do research, but, as the centre's founder pointed out, their entire purpose was bringing cases. you can hardly champion women's legal rights much outside the courtroom. and, as i said to her, what they presented you was not an option. they had no choice but to go. this was devastating news to me. it was clearly the government directing beida to silence them. the organisation had no choice but to disassociate from beida and is now considering other options for registration. being associated with a university gives legal public interest organisations such as this one the political cover necessary to enable them to work. by being cast out, it's a clear signal from the government that it does not welcome their cases. and there are myriad obstacles to registering as an NGO in china. luckily, they have a law firm as part of their centre with independent registration so they can continue to work on their cases even as they try to resolve how to move ahead. their cases are vital to trying to push the legal charade of china's legal system towards justice, legitimacy and rule of law.
they recently tried to get involved in a horrific case here in beijing. a 20-year-old rural woman from anhui province came to beijing as a petitioner under china's system allowing individuals to petition the government for wrongs and express grievances. sadly, many of beijing's petitioners end up being detained and imprisoned in "black jails" where they are often abused, tortured, and intimidated into silence before they are trucked back home. (the chinese government official denies that they exist, but they are well-documented. a recent human rights watch report on china's abusive black jails: http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2009/11/12/alleyway-hell-0.) another tactic (and the experience of a woman represented by the centre in a separate case) is for the authorities to declare petitioners mentally ill, imprison them in psychiatric hospitals institutions and heavily medicate them. (see a friend's excellent report on this here: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/video/share.html?s=news01s3066qb75.)
this particular young woman's fate was even worse. she was raped by the guards in the black jail. others were in the room at the time (there are a large number of petitioner-prisoners per room and genders are mixed), but they were too afraid of being beaten to do anything to stop it or even scream. someone in the prison reported the story via sms and soon the black jail and soon the place was swarmed by NGO representatives and reporters. the guards tried to clean up the blood and destroy the evidence and sealed the room. the young woman was returned to her village in anhui and told not to petition again. she has decided to bring a lawsuit against her attacker(s). the women i was lunching with had tried to become involved in her case, but she was only permitted to have a government-appointed attorney. they were furious because that attorney said nothing at all during the initial court proceeding they had just attended. and they also learned that the local government was offering large sums of money to the young woman's uneducated parents to buy her silence. the case will go forward, but it already such a perversion of justice.***
but, as we considered the current situation for public interest lawyering over lunch, we concluded that there is no justice in china. it was a heavy meal, and not just because of all the delicious dofu. i was really just so distraught to hear about this group's being booted from beida. i tried to provide some lightness by joking "who needs public justice when there's such good food in china?" only my work wife laughed. sarcasm in general and my jokes in particular don't translate particularly well. i am aware of this, but resist ceasing my amusing commentary in chinese. even if it is only amusing to me. it's all part of the full catastrophe.
this feels a very heavy place to conclude. but our capacity for both for goodness and disgrace, compassion and despair are all whirling in the gales of the full catastrophe. and to dance through it is to know them all.
*this was also the name of my first cat - zorba the greek. although i apparently couldn't quite pronounce "greek" so ended up calling him "zorba the geek". in the end, he was "zorbie". he was a great companion and an old soul. i am sure we will meet again in other lifetimes.
**confession: i am not skilled at meditation. in fact, i can't really do it. so i feel a bit guilty about even writing that sentence lest it give a false impression. but i aspire to meditate. or do so in the abstract. but actually sitting myself down and doing it is really beyond my abilities at this point.
***although today's news reminds us that the chinese haven't entirely cornered the market on the perversion of justice. apparently doing cartwheels is evidence of murder in italy these days: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/05/world/europe/05italy.html?ref=global-home; http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/amanda-knox-revisited/?scp=2&sq=amanda%20knox&st=cse. and principles of open government and accountability are quietly being strangled the states: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/05/opinion/05sat2.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
Showing posts with label goodness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label goodness. Show all posts
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Friday, November 20, 2009
finding space(s) for faith
yesterday one my colleagues asked me what i thought of obama's visit to china. after expressing my disappointment, i asked what her impressions were. she said that she hadn't paid much attention to the particulars of what the leaders of the G2 said, but she was struck by her personal experiences as a christian leading up to his arrival. she is a member of one of beijing's many "home churches". these are unregistered congregations that seek to worshio free from government interference or control. as she explained, they don't want to be registered and her small church in fact recently broke off from a larger unregistered home church so as to be less visible and therefore have greater space for their faith. faith is something that the party fears. they fear antyhing that can threaten or usurp their absolute authority. but faith is especially dangerous because it can lead to expansive thinking and spiritual awareness that can completely overwhelm the party's soulless, corporatist, nationalistic dogma and reveal it for the empty rhetoric and thinly veiled means of maintaining power that it is.
members of beijing's home churches were closely watched for two weeks prior to obama's visit. people were followed (especially pastors and church leaders), their communications monitored, and church meeting places were closed. one sunday prior to obama's arrival, the larger home church my colleague had originally been a member of was prevented from holding services in their normal location because the police had barricaded the building and informed them that they were not permitted to worship there. the congregation gathered in a nearby park instead. it was bitterly cold and snowing (thanks also to government interference, although the weather modification office was operating independently of the public security church suppression task force*). my colleague described to me how they held services in the falling snow, with the police observing them nearby. i found it so moving, and so symbolic somehow.
symbolic in the sense that faith is at once greater than the snow and the snow itself. and it is certainly stronger than the watchful public security. there occasionally rises chatter about the current struggle for the 'soul' of china. the ccp has had an iron efficient vise-grip on the country's spirit for so long. and although some say economic growth required some loosening, i think of it more as just a strategic shift. rather than clap down directly, the party carefully crafted a steel net to contain her people - allowing enough from for corporatism and greed, but controlling information and thought sufficiently to secure their power. faith slips through that net, though.
the conversation with my colleague inevitably turned to the falungong. no conversation about religous freedom in china is complete without at lease some mention of this most curious collection of spiritual practitioners. i confessed that i find some of their beliefs quite strange, but said that doesn't make them a cult. the chinese government's brutal response to this group demonstrates their fear of faith. or at least faith that involves worship of anything other than china, getting rich, and the communist party.
my colleague wondered why she hadn't heard mention of obama bringing up the suppression of christians or religious freedom. i suggested that it would be part of february's us-china human rights dialogue as it has been in past dialogues. she noted without surpirse that the suppression of beijing's home churches in advance of the president's visit was not reported in the local press. i assured her that it received some foreign coverage. i also told her that the pastor who leads the home church alliance was detained in advance of the visit. she didn't believe that though. maybe faith can only provide so much perspective. :).
faith is most miraculous and, much to the ccp's dismay, cannot easily be contained. and yet, in our pathetic way, we are always trying to conain it or measure it or squeeze it into a frame of reference we can readily understand. i found myself thinking about this morning as i read an article about competitive yoga tournaments and a movement to have yoga added as an olympic sport. (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/fashion/19fitness.html?pagewanted=1) the promoters acknowledge that the competitions only judge the physical aspect of yoga, not spirituality. indeed, how to you measure inner growth, wholeness, goodness? while running this morning, i was thinking about those subjects and whether i am able to cultivate the same sense of spaciousness through running as i can through asana. once again i resolved to practice daily. though i yearn for a teacher (and thus far have had no luck finding one in beijing), that is not an excuse.
there are always ready excuses to avoiding true spiritual growth. but doing so i believe eventually comes back to haunt you. i hope that one day the ccp learns this lesson the hard way.
*the former (weather modification office) is real, the latter (public security church suppression task force) is a term i made up but it very well may exist!
members of beijing's home churches were closely watched for two weeks prior to obama's visit. people were followed (especially pastors and church leaders), their communications monitored, and church meeting places were closed. one sunday prior to obama's arrival, the larger home church my colleague had originally been a member of was prevented from holding services in their normal location because the police had barricaded the building and informed them that they were not permitted to worship there. the congregation gathered in a nearby park instead. it was bitterly cold and snowing (thanks also to government interference, although the weather modification office was operating independently of the public security church suppression task force*). my colleague described to me how they held services in the falling snow, with the police observing them nearby. i found it so moving, and so symbolic somehow.
symbolic in the sense that faith is at once greater than the snow and the snow itself. and it is certainly stronger than the watchful public security. there occasionally rises chatter about the current struggle for the 'soul' of china. the ccp has had an iron efficient vise-grip on the country's spirit for so long. and although some say economic growth required some loosening, i think of it more as just a strategic shift. rather than clap down directly, the party carefully crafted a steel net to contain her people - allowing enough from for corporatism and greed, but controlling information and thought sufficiently to secure their power. faith slips through that net, though.
the conversation with my colleague inevitably turned to the falungong. no conversation about religous freedom in china is complete without at lease some mention of this most curious collection of spiritual practitioners. i confessed that i find some of their beliefs quite strange, but said that doesn't make them a cult. the chinese government's brutal response to this group demonstrates their fear of faith. or at least faith that involves worship of anything other than china, getting rich, and the communist party.
my colleague wondered why she hadn't heard mention of obama bringing up the suppression of christians or religious freedom. i suggested that it would be part of february's us-china human rights dialogue as it has been in past dialogues. she noted without surpirse that the suppression of beijing's home churches in advance of the president's visit was not reported in the local press. i assured her that it received some foreign coverage. i also told her that the pastor who leads the home church alliance was detained in advance of the visit. she didn't believe that though. maybe faith can only provide so much perspective. :).
faith is most miraculous and, much to the ccp's dismay, cannot easily be contained. and yet, in our pathetic way, we are always trying to conain it or measure it or squeeze it into a frame of reference we can readily understand. i found myself thinking about this morning as i read an article about competitive yoga tournaments and a movement to have yoga added as an olympic sport. (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/fashion/19fitness.html?pagewanted=1) the promoters acknowledge that the competitions only judge the physical aspect of yoga, not spirituality. indeed, how to you measure inner growth, wholeness, goodness? while running this morning, i was thinking about those subjects and whether i am able to cultivate the same sense of spaciousness through running as i can through asana. once again i resolved to practice daily. though i yearn for a teacher (and thus far have had no luck finding one in beijing), that is not an excuse.
there are always ready excuses to avoiding true spiritual growth. but doing so i believe eventually comes back to haunt you. i hope that one day the ccp learns this lesson the hard way.
*the former (weather modification office) is real, the latter (public security church suppression task force) is a term i made up but it very well may exist!
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
still point
i have been feeling lately as though i am at an invisible precipice of some kind. not in the sense of being in peril, but in the sense that i suspect my life will look dramatically different in the not so distant future in ways that i cannot at this time foresee or fathom. i sometimes see myself wandering amid the clouds at some very high cliff somewhere. a sense of being at this overhang has been especially prevalent in dreams of late, but this feeling also comes over me as i'm walking down the street or waiting in line at the airport. i don't know what the change will be, and whether it will be positive or negative or some combination thereof. (though of course it is always a combination thereof and being a wide-eyed optimist at heart, i can only think things will only get better. they always do.)
i only recently acknowledged this feeling over being on the verge of something, although i suppose i have been writing quite a bit about wanting to move ahead and look back at my present self with a contented, compassionate smile or to receive a letter from my future self. i even tried to write that letter. [bad blogger confession: i haven't expended the time or energy to determine how to link back to other posts / thoughts, otherwise i would do so now. mea culpa.] incidentally, the desire to fast forward has nothing to do with the brave new world of us-china relations on human rights obama and hu have just ushered in that i wrote about earlier. and it is not an expression of discontent in the present.
to the contrary, i am feeling very calm with where i am at the moment. in spite of some of the large question marks in my life at the moment. [although perhaps there is only one, rather pressing, most important question mark.] i am contented with observing and watching how things unfold, loving and giving as best i can. (it's the only way to live!) and i am not afraid of these impending changes i am imagining once i leap off my invisible precipice and into the clouds. i am quite sure that the clouds will catch me. or rather that i will catch myself. or have no need to be caught.
most of us spend a great deal of our time stressing out about changes. (i have been guilty of this myself. probably for many lifetimes.) the curious aspect of that is that change is our only constant. impermanence our only permanence. accepting that, and letting go. not grasping is the deepest lesson i have learned. and one that i often need to re-teach myself. it is so easy to get caught up in grasping! and once you are caught up in it, it is nearly impossible to realize that your hold on something is much more tenuous when you are grasping it. as you as you loosen your fingers, it can slip away. whereas if you don't grasp, but keep an open palm, you can securely hold something resting on the palm of your hand.
my ba recently sent me a 'glimpse of the day' that recalls this concept:
Although we have been made to believe that if we let go we will end up with nothing, life itself reveals again and again the opposite: that letting go is the path to real freedom.
Just as when the waves lash at the shore, the rocks suffer no damage but are sculpted and eroded into beautiful shapes, so our characters can be molded and our rough edges worn smooth by changes. Through weathering changes, we can learn how to develop a gentle but unshakable composure. Our confidence in ourselves grows, and becomes so much greater that goodness and compassion begin naturally to radiate out from us and bring joy to others.
That goodness is what survives death, a fundamental goodness that is in each and every one of us. The whole of our life is a teaching of how to uncover that strong goodness, and a training toward realizing it.
****
ok, so that thought takes it a step further than i did here. but i'm not enlightened yet. i suppose i will just have to be patient and see where this imaginary leap will lead me. (or whether in fact it is all my own melodrama and there are no great changes on the horizon.) i do like the idea of realizing our fundamental goodness as our life's teaching. no matter what happens, i hope that i will progress further along that path. for not, i am going to stay calm while i am at this still point.
i only recently acknowledged this feeling over being on the verge of something, although i suppose i have been writing quite a bit about wanting to move ahead and look back at my present self with a contented, compassionate smile or to receive a letter from my future self. i even tried to write that letter. [bad blogger confession: i haven't expended the time or energy to determine how to link back to other posts / thoughts, otherwise i would do so now. mea culpa.] incidentally, the desire to fast forward has nothing to do with the brave new world of us-china relations on human rights obama and hu have just ushered in that i wrote about earlier. and it is not an expression of discontent in the present.
to the contrary, i am feeling very calm with where i am at the moment. in spite of some of the large question marks in my life at the moment. [although perhaps there is only one, rather pressing, most important question mark.] i am contented with observing and watching how things unfold, loving and giving as best i can. (it's the only way to live!) and i am not afraid of these impending changes i am imagining once i leap off my invisible precipice and into the clouds. i am quite sure that the clouds will catch me. or rather that i will catch myself. or have no need to be caught.
most of us spend a great deal of our time stressing out about changes. (i have been guilty of this myself. probably for many lifetimes.) the curious aspect of that is that change is our only constant. impermanence our only permanence. accepting that, and letting go. not grasping is the deepest lesson i have learned. and one that i often need to re-teach myself. it is so easy to get caught up in grasping! and once you are caught up in it, it is nearly impossible to realize that your hold on something is much more tenuous when you are grasping it. as you as you loosen your fingers, it can slip away. whereas if you don't grasp, but keep an open palm, you can securely hold something resting on the palm of your hand.
my ba recently sent me a 'glimpse of the day' that recalls this concept:
Although we have been made to believe that if we let go we will end up with nothing, life itself reveals again and again the opposite: that letting go is the path to real freedom.
Just as when the waves lash at the shore, the rocks suffer no damage but are sculpted and eroded into beautiful shapes, so our characters can be molded and our rough edges worn smooth by changes. Through weathering changes, we can learn how to develop a gentle but unshakable composure. Our confidence in ourselves grows, and becomes so much greater that goodness and compassion begin naturally to radiate out from us and bring joy to others.
That goodness is what survives death, a fundamental goodness that is in each and every one of us. The whole of our life is a teaching of how to uncover that strong goodness, and a training toward realizing it.
****
ok, so that thought takes it a step further than i did here. but i'm not enlightened yet. i suppose i will just have to be patient and see where this imaginary leap will lead me. (or whether in fact it is all my own melodrama and there are no great changes on the horizon.) i do like the idea of realizing our fundamental goodness as our life's teaching. no matter what happens, i hope that i will progress further along that path. for not, i am going to stay calm while i am at this still point.
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