A Year Of Haiku (XXXIX): Moonleaves

The concealed moon

of Autumn watches cloud-wisps

and leaves slowly pass.

2025 Cambodia And Vietnam: The Venerable Thich Quảng Đức Monument

 In A.D. 1963 Thich Quảng Đức, a buddhist monk (A.D. 1897-1963) engaged in an act of self immolation to protest the Southern Vietnamese government's perceived treatment of Buddhists (President Ngô Đình Diệm was Catholic).  

It is hard for me to comment on this without "taking sides" one way or the other.  I can only direct you to the Wikipdia Article (here) which discusses the incident as well as having photos, some of which are the most famous of the war (even I remembered having seen them).

His last words read as follows:

" Before closing my eyes and moving towards the vision of the Buddha, I respectfully plead to President Ngô Đình Diệm to take a mind of compassion towards the people of the nation and implement religious equality to maintain the strength of the homeland eternally. I call the venerables, reverends, members of the sangha and the lay Buddhists to organize in solidarity to make sacrifices to protect Buddhism."

This monument is built at the intersection of the event.  

Indirectly (at least), this incident led to the fall of the Diệm regime.  

The car in which he drove is still kept at a temple which we will visit later.

As an interesting note, below are attached the rules of the park.  Worth blowing up and reading them.

2025 Cambodia And Vietnam: A Lunch In Saigon

As part of our pre-group tour day in Saigon, we went to  lunch.

The location was on the second story of a building; this is sort of thing I imagine would be in this part of the world.

Vietnamese Iced Tea.  A lot like Thai Iced Tea:  Heavily sweetened with the addition of some form of condensed milk.

The main dish:  Shrimp....

Flambe!

Vietnamese lettuce wraps, a make your own sort of taco with lettuce as the wrapper:

Just a painting I liked:

On Planning For Retirement

 This past week we had our semi-annual check-in with The Financial Folks.

The Financial Folks are someone that came to us some years ago via The Outdoorsman.  Even though they have never been in the state we have lived in, they have been solid advisors and performers over the years - so much so that now other members of our immediate family - Na Clann and my mother-in-law - have accounts with them as well.

My not very sophisticated question for them this time was "How likely is retirement in 4 years give or take?"

The answer was "Pretty likely".

That includes a standard set of provisos, of course: assumes working up to then, paying for a bridge for health care (or finding a "fun" job to cover some expenses), no wild purchases after retirement (there goes my Lamborghini plan....), and relatively honest budget numbers that are accurate.

But yes, they replied, given all that it seems pretty likely.

I cannot tell you what a happy moment this was.

Yes, I understand that it is some years away.  Yes, I understand that I cannot see the future and a great many things can happen between here and there.  Yes, I understand that I control almost none of that.

But still - just to have a feasible goal that can be real instead of the endless routine of getting up without any sense that there is a finish line - that is amazing.

There is still a lot of planning to do between now and then of course, things like "Where do we want to end up finally?" and dialing our spending in more completely and educating myself on health care options (which sounds dry, but it matters) and financial rules about money after retirement and taxes strategies.  None of these are subjects I take a great deal of pleasure in.

But having a date to fix my eyes on?  That, it seems, is priceless.

A Year Of Kindness (XXXI): Holding My Tongue

I was reminded this week - multiple times - that a form of kindness is simply holding one's tongue.

There are several different situations that this applies to, apparently. Some of them are deeply held beliefs by an individual.  Some of them are ideas which are clearly wrong (but not "End of the world" wrong).  Some of them are simply people being what they are.

What made it more complicated this week was the fact that I am not sleeping well and therefore am tired.

It is surprising to me how much this one aspect of my physical being influences my entire outlook. My temper is shorter (even I have a temper).  My patience is thinner.  My grace is is reduced.

And my kindness is put to the test.

The question I have to ask myself is in those moments?  "Is it worth it?"

Is the relationship worth the disruption?  Is the "bad idea" something that truly has to be stopped right now or can it be discussed?  Am I thinking (or being) unkind about things that people cannot change?

Maybe more d*mning, "If Christ was here, what would He say?"

In most of these situations, my kindness is needed.  My words, maybe not so much.

In those moments, I have to remind myself that sometimes kindness is not necessarily saying or dong anything.  Sometimes it is simply holding my tongue.

Passing Through Our Hands

(Source)

When I was in high school, my world (beyond school) largely consisted of band, drama, role-playing games, and video games.

I spent hours reading through books and modules of the early days of role-playing games:  Dungeons and Dragons, Traveller, Gamma World, Car Wars.  I played, with a best friend or small group, as we adventured through worlds that did not exist in our minds.

The same with video games as well - these were the days before home computers, so the only place to play was at the local arcade, pizza parlor, or bowling alley.  I pumped quarters in.  If we went to the bookstore in The Big City, I would find the magazines that had "50 ways to score high in Defender" or "Galaga:  Unlocked!".  

Meanwhile in the background, band and drama filled the passing of the year.  When I was not studying, I was practicing or rehearsing.  When I was not practicing or rehearsing, I was reading or playing.

And then, of course, high school ended.

As it turns out, role-playing games and video games had a pretty limited application in the post-high school world.  Yes, I continued to play for awhile, but the increased demands of college and then work pushed such things away.  Drama fell by the wayside, driven by the fact that being a big fish in a small pond is not the same thing as being a small fish in a big pond.  Only music stuck with me in some form or fashion through the years - along with a nostalgic love of 1st Edition Gamma World materials, which I keep lovingly on my shelf.

My life - or much of what I had prepared for - simply did not matter.

---

It is easy enough to look back on our late teens or high school or even college and sniff at what we spent our time on, realizing that it was really not preparing us for the life we actually lived.  But the reality is that this situation continues unabated in the modern world.

If anything, I wonder if the modern world has exacerbated the situation.

Americans, among other things, have often been known for the fact that they seem to believe they can do anything. In some ways that is undoubtedly a legacy from our founding and the fact that for many, they came from hard circumstances or from elsewhere and made a life for themselves.  But just like fruit hanging on a tree too long, the idea seems to have gone to rot.

We have moved from the era of "I can do (or be) anything I want" to "I do (or be) anything I want".  My interests, my passions, shaping the world around myself and my wants and desires has become paramount.

An easy place to see this is in the growth of college programs, where we now have majors that cover literally every possible outcome in the world. Which is fine, I suppose.  But many of those bright eyed students (including me, at one time) never asked the question "And what am I going to do when I get out of school?"  

We prepare for the life that we imagine, but have no true influence over. 

---

Arguably the modern world is more busy and active than ever.  If one wanted to, one could be engaged in inputs and activities every hour of the day one was alive, every day of the week, every week of the month, every month of the year.  And those inputs are exciting:  visually stimulating, sounding amazing, mind engaging, fulfilling every desire we might have to be engaged or educated or entertained.

And yet this is a life which is in some means artificial.

We spend so much time in a world "out there" or preparing for things that do not truly matter that we forget that the life we do control - the one that matters - goes on quietly in the background.  

The life we control is generally not glamourous.  It is often not exciting.  It consists mainly of the things we do day to day, the interactions we have with others, the daily religious observances and prayers, the small chores and preparations and other tasks that seem completely "boring" or uninteresting.  And yet arguably it is in the moments that we are truly living our lives, truly grasping the hours instead of letting them slip through our fingers.  Because these things are the true things that impact us in meaningful and deep ways, ways that make us ourselves.

I cannot grasp the life that has slipped through my hands already.  But I can at least make the amount remaining mean something, instead of wafting off into a future that never was going to be.

Book Review: Facing East

I first became acquainted with the name Frederic Mathewes-Green through the writings of Rod Dreher, who referenced her as a gentle voice describing conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy, a journey which he himself has made.  I filed it away in my "That might be a book I want to look into in the future" and promptly went along my way - for some years.

The issue reappeared more recently, as I go through one of my periodic religious peregrinations.  I have a number of books on Orthodoxy - Kallistos Ware's books The Orthodox Church and The Orthodox Way are enjoyable and highly readable (his essays, which constitute two current volumes but are starting to roll out in a collection again, are also highly enjoyable) but they are a 10,000 foot overview of the Orthodox Church.  Mathewes-Green's book, as I suddenly re-discovered it on Thriftbooks, was billed as "A Pilgrim's journey into the Mysteries of Orthodoxy" - and at a discounted price, it was worth a try.

What a genuinely pleasant surprise I was in for.

Facing East is a book of many different layers.  It is the description of the liturgical year of an Orthodox congregation as viewed by a member of that congregation. It is a history of the authoress' journey from non-believing free-spirited "Hippie" with her husband to a belief in God and their religious journey to Orthodoxy.  It is a story of a start up congregation. It is a view into the interactions of a small community of people living out The Word in the world.

If that sounds like a lot to pack into 240-pages, that is because it is. And that is because Mathewes-Green is a excellent writer.  The stories - vignettes really - are focused around the seasons of the Orthodox church: Preparing for Lent, Lent, Holy Week, Pascha (Easter for us Western Christians), Pentecost, Nativity and Theophony, and back to Preparing for Lent.  Within each of these major seasons a series of stories are packed in.

We meet the congregation of Holy Cross Orthodox Mission of Cantonville, Maryland.  Mathewes-Green gives the members of the church descriptions and names that make them real: Musical David, Hardworking Jeannie, Basil of the loud voice, Carolyn the Icon painter.  We watch them through the year as they deal with the struggle of making do in a rented space (familiar to anyone that has been involved in a church startup). Mathewes-Green is a member of the choir, so we we get an insight into how Byzantine chant works.  We get a view into Mathewes-Green's family as well, her older daughter and two younger sons.

We also learn a lot about the Orthodox church and believes - not from a formally religious person, but someone that seems to be able to clearly describe things from a layperson's view.

Like Rod Dreher, Mathewes-Green never tries to argue the reader into Orthodoxy. She simply presents it as it is, as she sees it.  Her love of the Orthodox Church clearly comes through the way she speaks and the way she writes of the church and its mysteries.

The best part?  She is a very good writer.  I devoured this book, making it a part of my early morning reading.  I was sorry when we reached the end (beginning) of the Liturgical year.

The book was originally written in 1995.  Mathewes-Green wrote a post-script and then - for the 10th anniversary edition - gave a 10 year update.  It was a nice closure to the book, to find out what happened to these characters that I had met and become - in a way - friends with over the Liturgical year  - they did end up finding their own space, for example, and the Mathewes-Green family went from three children to three wedded children to 5 grandhildren in 2006 (and apparently 15 now). 

The book was so good that I cheerfully ordered the follow-up, At The Corner of East and Now, which documents the continued adventures as they move into a new space.

Bottom line:  Highly recommended, both for the comment and writing style. What a joy it is to find a book that both educates and is well written.