YANGPYEONG JOURNAL | WEEK 5

After today, I will only have one more full day here at Yangpyeong as we hit the road to Namhae, Yeosu, and Goheung in the southern part of Korea. While I will continue to journal daily, I will most likely post one final Yangpyeong Journal next Tuesday. Thanks for reading!

May 7, 2022 Entry

This morning was a jewel of a morning. It was a morning like what Thomas Merton called “a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven.” Unlike the sunny and bright days leading up to today, today was supposed to be rainy and cloudy. However, the elusive rain never came, and occasional flakey clouds dotted the otherwise blue eternal sky. The morning was crisp, and the warming sun felt like God’s embrace as if to foretell what we were about to experience.

Led by my wife, we gathered on the deck, which was partially covered and partially open, evenly dividing those who wanted more sun-aided warmth and those who did not. The first exercise we did was simply to “gaze.” This exercise was something my wife learned during her spiritual direction program. Having experienced something profoundly deep, she and I talked about starting with that exercise this morning. The exercise involves pairing up with a partner (randomly selected), sitting in pairs facing each other, and gazing at each other taking turns. One person gazes first while the other may choose to look into the distance or close their eyes. Many choose to close their eyes. You do that for 3 minutes. Then, repeat the process switching roles. We then had each pair debrief their experiences of gazing and being gazed and after a few minutes, we opened the time of sharing. One person who was being gazed had a powerful encounter. He said, “While being gazed, I sensed remarkably that God was gazing me.” As he shared, others gently nodded their heads in agreement. Quiet tears began to roll on many people’s faces.

I was paired up with a young mom with a daughter. As I was gazing into her face and her closed eyes, I heard the distant voice of a girl, and I was not sure if it was her daughter’s. When the voice was heard, the young mom’s head tilted with her eyes closed, and she raised her ear as if to discern whether that was her daughter. The reaction was as instinctive as a mother could be, and I realized that she did not even know she tilted her head to listen. That happened twice. Later, the image I drew up in my mind was the image of God as a tender loving mother, tilting Her head and leaning in to listen whether Her child is calling Her. God’s reaction would be as instinctive as God’s unconditional love for God’s children.

We then segued into another kind of gazing. I asked them now to gaze into the sky, the uninhibited view of it for another 3 minutes. By then, it was the peak morning with wide open blue sky with fast moving playful clouds, orchestrating different shapes and sizes as they moved across the sky as if to tell us a story. Then without a break, I had them to write a sentence or two focusing on self-compassion. “What would you need to hear from your inner self the most right now regarding loving yourself?” was the question. Thus, another round of 3-minute silence. Perhaps because of having gazed into the stunning blue sky, the sentence I heard from God was, “Son, live as free as the sky.” With my eyes closed, I smiled and decided to cherish it by not disclosing it to others. I wanted to keep it more personal and private this time. One more short exercise was for each to examine their tears, as many shed tears, especially the unexpected kind, during the last few days together. Tears not only hold a secret of who one is but also reveal God’s messages to each of our soul. I asked each to examine also in silence for 3 minutes.

I brought everyone’s attention and had us sit in circle again to debrief as a group about the three back-to-back-to-back exercises and what their experiences were like. During the time of sharing, more tears flowed. What God spoke to each person quickly could amount to a collection of precious stones and jewels. God spoke without the shadow of a doubt through gazing into the sky, into each other, and into oneself, all clothed in silence. I realize again that it is a paradoxical truth that God speaks to us in silence and/or when we are silent. God’s presence was revealed to us through self-examination and speaking words of self-compassion to one’s battered and neglected soul. Our natural tears mixed with God’s unmistakable and unmissable presence showcased through what each precious soul captured displayed incredible and diverse array of beauty. All were mesmerized by God’s grace and transforming power.

Then the culminating exercise was for each to tell oneself something akin to “(One’s name), you are okay and I love you.” The Spirit encouraged them to modify and personalize as each saw fit while maintaining group silence in between each statement. It was such a personal and intimate time of confessing self-love while the rest simply sat in silence and agreed. Many confessed the difficulty of saying “I love you” to oneself. Saint Bernard’s wise words of “the love of self for God’s sake” feels wild and unsettling at first, but it is a mature love, going beyond the immature stage of “the love of God for one’s sake.” There was deep and holy silence between each confession and when we were all done, there was a definite sense of celebration of God’s penetrating love and compassion displayed through the spontaneous declarations of self-compassion.

During the jeweled morning, some of the things that were experienced and spoken were nothing short of mystical and contemplative breakthroughs, similar to Thomas Merton’s mystical experience penned below.

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness.

Later, Merton continues the same day’s journal by writing, “There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun,” and “the gate of heaven is everywhere.” After witnessing the Sun shining on us and everyone walking around shining like the sun, I was ready to happily call it a day. After seeing the gate of heaven that is not far but really right around me all the time, I was ready to retire into the night where I could possibly dream of the heaven inside the gate!