One morning, a few days ago, I came down to the kitchen at 6am to attend to my disgusting feet. This was the only place with a bright light necessary to see clearly which little 'puss ball' I am popping this morning with my pen knife. Sitting at the table is a chap from Korea and he is slurping a panful of soup down like I have never heard anyone slurp before. Slurpy mouthful after slurpy mouthful goes down and inside myself I am having all sorts of deeply irritated thoughts about how disgustingly these people eat- and they wake everyone up at 4 in the morning! Now my dad was in the second world war and fought in Malaysia. He was a kind and loving man and far from a racist apart from the Japanese who he HATED with avengence. I had grown up in a house where deep prejudice against these people was so much the norm that it took me many years to realise I was prejudiced at all. Interestingly enough in Philip Yancey's book 'What's so amazing about Grace' he talks about the Japanese being the only nation that will not apologise for its war crimes and the effect that this has on other nations. Anyway my dad would have struggled with one of his grandchildren studying Japanese at University and I too am uncertain if I want to visit Imy when she goes there for a year- don't these things go deep!
Back to my story- this Korean chap (yes I know that is not Japan, but they have similar eyes!!) is slurping away when I suddenly realise I am treating my infected blisters at the kitchen table. How yuck can you get! Here I am with a great docking plank in my own eye and I am 'inside' picking out the speck in my brothers eye. By the way he was a brother in Christ as I noticed he was reading the Bible. I felt deeply humbled.
2 days later a similar incident happened. Brendan, an american, was a voluntary 'hospitaldero' in Santo Domingo- the whole of The Camino is kept going by volunteers who man the Alburgues, something of which I am interested in doing. Anyway, I got talking to Brendan over a glass of wine and out it all poured of his Irish history and how much his grandmother hated the English, particularly The Royal Family and she would spit on the floor every time anything came on the TV about them. I commented that much spitting must have occured recently then what with the Royal Wedding. He himself had struggled many years to welcome the English at the Alburgue because he had been brought up with daily tales of the 'black and tans' who committed atrocious acts against the Catholic Irish. At this I took his hand, thanked him for being so kind to me and asked if I could apologise on behalf of the English for all the awful things they had done to his country and his family. I said I also knew what it was like to be bought up with a prejudice that was so deep rooted that it takes many years to see. A poignant precious moment passed between us, then we all went out to eat.
Much love, Kate
Smelly feet ...... and the fragrance of Christ (2 Cor 2:14).......
ReplyDeletegot ahead of myself cos read the blog backwards....this it the foot one....
ReplyDeletebtw the queen has just been in ireland for the first time...(first time for british monarchy in 100 years) people are describing it as healing.....i have no idea.....
Mummm.... you really can't do that.
ReplyDelete1) The Korean man was slurping his soup because it's considered polite in East Asia to do so when you are enjoying your meal. He probably doesn't know that it's a bit of a cultural faux pas on the other side of the world, just as I'm sure you'd make such mistakes going to a completely foreign country. And pus, at the table??
2) YOU JUST CAN'T interchange Korean and Japanese in that way. Their relationship is equally as fraught if not more so than of that between the Irish and English. Korea was a colony until 1945, they were treated awfully, and there is so much residual pain there. If you'd made similar remarks about the difference between Irish and English, I doubt you'd have left on such good terms with that man. Not cool.