Each Moment for Blossoming Flowers: New Year Greetings to Friends

- Every moment has been a beautiful moment for blossoming flowers! -


Dear friends,

Happy New Year!
New Year greetings from CK, Seoul!
We are already in the first day of 2008!
I send my warmest greetings to you, to all my dear friends around the world.

William Ellery Channing, a Unitarian theologian and transcendental poet who lived in the 18th century, once said in his new year greetings as follow:
"I will seek elegance rather than luxury, refinement rather than fashion. I will seek to be worthy more than respectable, wealthy and not rich. I will study hard, think quietly, talk gently, and act frankly. I will listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with an open heart. I will bear all things cheerfully, do all things bravely await occasions and hurry never. In a word I will let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious grow up through the common."

As William, I want to be a spiritual person, listening to the words in silence more than words coming out of mouths. I want to come closer to the Light, to be more faithful to the truth, more courageous to do justice, warmer to share solidarity with the Least. I believe all of you also dream of a better life in the sense that William thought two centuries ago.

I am still thinking of the task "to love." Sometimes I am very much confused with the real meaning of love. Yet I could only say that without being equipped with humbleness it is hardly possible to love somebody. So I want to humble my self more lowly. I know how difficult it is. However, as a Christian, I think I am obliged to imitate Jesus. I come to believe that "imitatio christi" should come first prior to building peace and justice for others.

Friedrich Nietzsche said that "No, life has not disappointed me. On the contrary, I find it truer, more desirable and mysterious every year ever since the day when the great liberator came to me: the idea that life could be an experiment of the seeker for knowledge and not a duty, not a calamity, not trickery." I totally agree with Nietzsche. I do also want to think that life itself is not a dutiful burden, rather it is an open system to new experimental understandings. Even though we are not able to deny all the duties that this life requires, we need to find more meaningful realm of life while we are alive rather than satisfaction with the ready made duties that formulated by the forerunners of this life. For this reason, I am very much grateful for my being as a scholar in ethics, living in the full anticipation of new things.

I also believe that we need to be more proactive and positive to the future. Everybody expects to have a better year whenever we welcome a new year. In fact, I think this belief is true. The future is a gift from God which is always coming in the expectation for a better than the past one. Thus, we need to forgive and forget something happened in the past in order to make a room for new things. New year season is a time to clean and vacate for making a room, room for hope. As Ernst Bloch said, hope is for "Novum." "das Novum" is a metaphysical space for newness that will emerge in future. I think our belief in the New Year cannot deceive us. Therefore, I am excited to be alive in this coming new year. I want to enjoy my life at best and make it the most beautiful one, for it is the gift from God.

Dear friends!
We do not know what will happen in the future. Some of us may have painful experiences. Or even we may confront with some body's misfortune. However, I would like to say that all things are "ours." I would like to admit that my mistakes, my misunderstandings, or my failures are all mine. I also recollect the pains inflicted upon me by others. From my experience of being targeted, insulted, and outcasted, I come to know that such things are so bad that they ruin not only victim's life but also vitimisers' lives. One of the basic norms that ethics has taught me is the principle "not to harm others" including "not to harm yourself." So inevitably, what we can do is only to love ourselves as well as others, as much as we can, if possible.

Last year, I spent my days mostly both in Taiwan and Hong Kong for teaching, and traveled to many countries: Manila Philippines, Tainan in Taiwan, Waco in America, Okinawa in Japan, and Shinchen and Beijing in China including Hong Kong. I am planning to visit more Asian countries to get to know the reality of Asia during this coming new year. May God give me more opportunities! On my journey to Asia, I wish I could meet people who are in struggle for peace and justice.

Today I am officially reinstalled to my seminary. Due to unfair misuse of power of my seminary leadership I had to leave my seminary for three years. However I am so much grateful for the period of my absence from the seminary. I was lucky to experience the core of Quaker's life at Pendle Hill, Philadelphia, and to meet so many wonderful people who are sincere coram mundo, coram deo. I got an American brother there, Bob, a Japanese friend, Takashi with whom I came to think more spiritually and globally. My Indian friend, MP who is teaching philosophy in Taiwan, my Hong Kong friend, Lap yan who teaches ethics in the Chinese University of Hong Kong, they and I shared a lot with each other. Particularly Lap Yan was my company and tour guider during the days of my travel to Beijing.

My former students, Chung Hwan at Drew, Ji Young at Yale, Woo Young in Union New York, YuJin in Philippines now at Aubrey, Eung Young in Manila, Peggy in Tainan, Anna in Hong Kong, my teaching assistant at CUHK were the hands of God who gave me happiness and helped me a lot. Now I come to believe that the love of God is greater than our pain. In particular, I am very much grateful to Dr. Weaver, a former Harvard professor, for his warm hospitality has been extended to my son Jihyun who started his graduate study at Harvard two years ago. He has invited my son to his feast table whenever he invites his best friends to his home.

I was blessed to know and befriended with the dean of Pendle Hill, Niyonu and the vice president of Philippine Christian University and the dean of theological seminary, Romy; and the president of Southern Christian University, Mel who was a Christian social ethicist at Union, but recently inaugurated as the president of SCU, Philippines; the vice president of Jang Long University, Tainan, Taiwan, Po Ho; the president of Tainan Theological seminary, Fuya; and the director of the divinity school of Chung Chi College, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Lo Kwang. My Jewish friend, Professor Marc Ellis with whom I visited suffering people in Manila, invited me to his conference on liberation theology. All these leaders of theological education invited me to teach or deliver a lecture for their academic communities. It was so rich and wonderful time for me to meet them and to learn about their desperation and hope for humanity. Their warm hospitality made me feel home in their institutions.

I was blessed to have many students who are not Korean. I remember, the faces of each of my classes, recollecting the moments we shared together, particularly with the classes at Pendle Hill, Union Theologial Seminary in Philippines, Tainan Theological College and Seminary, and the Divinity School of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. When I finished my Ph.D dissertation I thought I will never be a student again. But I realized that I was wrong, for I met so many wonderful teachers, particularly Chris Ravndal at Pendle Hill who taught me how to free myself from all kinds of weird values and norms that had bound me. Sometimes I feel like to visit his study to talk to him as I was privileged at Pendle Hill. At the sanctuary of Pendle Hill we were all radically equal. I really loved the radical peace at Pendle Hill.

Today I visited my parent's grave. My father passed away 9 years ago, and my mother 2 years ago. They were real to me, but no more exist. I begin to think about the distance between being alive and dying. This thought brings me a lot of pressure that my time will be not the same as I had thought. I feel I need more time to be with myself, preparing for the last few steps of my life.

I do bless your life will be guided by the brighter Light and momentum for blossoming beautiful flowers! I put a picture on the head of this posting which I found in a university campus I visited. The sentence in the picture says that "alas I should have loved the moments more enthusiastically! I never knew that each moment I had before was the moment for blossoming a flower!" Yes, each moment of our life should be the best and the most beautiful. I am going to believe in that! Augustine said, "ama et fac quod vis."(love and do what you like!) Prior to make a decision, I want to check myself whether I am in true love. I believe that only actions motivated by true love have power to change.

Stay in love and peace!

January 1, 2008
Seoul, CK