I was walking my dog a few weeks ago and happened upon about 6 Korean women under a big striped canopy on the corner.
They looked like they were selling something.
Two of them approached me and asked me if I wanted some coffee. I politely decline but asked them what they were selling...and then it happened? Imagine in slow motion, lips moving, smile formatted to show exactly eight and a half front teeth. Eyes skewed with her head to the side, she asked me, "Do you know Holy Mother?"
She was one of those chosen people, that heard something that sounded true and she dedicated her life to it.
A few different points of identification are at work here. I live in Korea so...
1. The adoption of the English language means the adaptation of culture and the perpetuation of its disingenuous habits, including the proselytization of religious beliefs.
2. The long overdue women's rights revolution in Korea is taking a more scenic route through a spiritual gender revolution.
As much I like to think of myself as progressive, I can't really get with this whole religious fanaticism that goes on in Korea. I don't understand how there are elements of their cultural habits (like grounded toilets and phlegm regurgitation) that seem to stick and others (like age old Confucian tradition) that is getting thrown out with the bath water with the Americanization of Korea. Values are crazy...and maybe I think too much, but I truly believe that dogmatic beliefs and occults that people gravitate to in the circumstances that are created in dry-ass Korea are reactionary. They are reactionary to the need and the fear that life is not what we think it is and in moments of randomness and spiritual irrelevance, we need to feel important. We need to feel valuable.
Nuts.
I say stand still.
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