[Oe List ...] Prayers for Japan

[LAURELCG at aol.com]

Thank you, Jaime, for your Zen Calmness, its compassion, rationality  and 
eloquence. All I can manage in the face of Japan's calamity is,  "Oh, God."
 
With quaking heart,
Jann McGuire
 
In a message dated 3/12/2011 11:58:05 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
svesjaime at aol.com writes:

ZEN CALMNESS
 
Channel NewsAsia out of Singapore, along with CCTV 9 of Beijing, is  
following the unfolding crisis in Japan after the 8.9 Richter scale tremor,  the 
strongest quake ever to shake the nation, and the subsequent tsunami that  
sent ten-meter high waves ten kilometers inland in Honshu, leaving the tarmac  
of the Sendai International Airport under water, a local hospital still  
standing as the only refuge for some 300 persons in an area of total collapsed 
 structures, and ten thousand people from one village still remaining  
unaccounted for.  The predictable aftershocks add damage and discomfort,  but it 
is the threat of the nuclear meltdown of five reactors that is sending  
chills down everyone’s spine.
 
Not unlike humankind’s previous relationship to “flat earth,” which we  
now know to be spherical, and calling the experience of sundown as “sunset”  
when the earth actually turns, we never really consider land mass as 
floating  tectonic plates on magma, but to appreciate how strong the earthquake was 
in  Japan, the whole archipelago moved by a couple of meters and the axis 
of the  planet itself shifted by a few centimeters!
 
Zen Japan is showing a remarkable face of solid calmness.  News  reports 
portray a nation intentionally going through the motions of a  rehearsed drill 
in the midst of the surprising destruction that trails the  wake of this 
disaster.  The vaunted train system, one of the most  sophisticated rails in 
the world that connects Kagoshima in south Kyushu to  Wakkanai of north 
Hokkaido, shut down momentarily, along with its metro  systems, at least, in the 
urban centers of Honshu.  People undaunted,  bought bicycles and pedaled 
home, while some just trudged and walked in the  cold.
 
We had a major life turn to make in 2002, and we took a week retreat late  
January before the cherry blossoms, took the train from Narita to Sapporo in 
 Hokkaido on the eastern corridor through Sendai, and returning on the 
western  route through Akita and Niigata to West Tokyo.  The cultivated and  
manicured countryside was a scene to behold, the tidiness of the trains and  
orderliness of its people, a welcomed respite from the hustle of crowd and  
mass humanity. 

Though signs of juvenile vandalism through  graffiti were evident in metro 
structures, and the surprising sight of  homeless tents on blighted display 
outside the Shinjuku municipal center, the  orderly Japan of our previous 
acquaintance, of nature both physical and  societal disciplined into the level 
of art on terrain and population, was  still very much and unmistakably 
alive!  Majestic Mt. Fuji reigned as  Hokusai’s rowers navigate the towering 
waves off Kanagawa in my sea of  tranquility!
 
It is with deep appreciation that I recall that solitary week almost a  
decade ago, but as I watch today the deluge of painful unraveling that  
characterizes the land of the rising sun, only the sound of silence is  appropriate 
to express our profound sorrow of the innocent suffering  unleashed.
 
A people’s tragedy, however, has awakened humanity’s empathy.   Though its 
economy is one where its GNP far exceeds its GDP, showing barely  any 
economic growth though ascending into international eminence, it has shown  an 
economic arrangement where the concern for humanness matters.   Wrangling in 
the Diet notwithstanding, Japan projected a country with a human  face.
 
Its virtues of simple elegance on cuisine and decor, lifestyle and  
landscape, custom and technology, its thrust towards moderation on all things  in 
its post-WWII demeanor, has endeared it in many parts of the world; though  
it was saddled with the cruel memories of Nanjing, the stigma of a Pearl  
Harbor, it also lived the mushroom cloud brunt of the Little Boy and Fat Man  
over the skies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  In both cities, the suicide  
cliffs of Saipan and Tinian are not unknown.  
 
Japan’s Emperor heeded the winds of change violently exploded on the  
southern skies, and terminated hostilities; the nation took this nuclear  
kamikaze and domesticated it for peaceful use.  Now, the ice and the  fire, the 
heat and the water, Mother Nature’s yin-yang elemental force comes  calling 
again on Nippon’s door again.
 
Presbyter and poet Ellie Stock wrote the following not too long  ago:
What do I call what calls from the deeps,
that pulses through  stars and quickens heart’s beat,
that surges through waves and cleanses  with fire,
emerges from dust and breathes soul’s desire?
What do I name  what mocks human pride,
that bends the tree of life, sustaining being’s  tide?
 
It is with Zen calmness that we join Japan and the rest of the world in  
daring to give a name to that which emerges from the deeps, whether from the  
bowels of the earth, or from the deep abyss of the battered human soul.
 
The world joins that call of the deeps as its  K9s head for Tokyo to locate 
survivors.  There is solidarity afoot in a  world already grieved by the 
Gaddafis and the Tehrar Squares.  But the  ebb and flow of global 
reconciliation fills the air, and I, in my archaic  season of Lent, smell the scent of 
transformation, in faith, hope and  love.  With T.S. Elliot and Zen calmness, 
I sing: 
Quick now,  here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less  than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be  well...




j'aime la vie




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