Beth Salerno

The Discomfort of Change

I ended 2008 with a good portion of my life in boxes - again!  This time the move was shorter - less than 500 yards across campus from one former convent building to another.   A new space meant new relationships - a new faculty secretary, new colleagues down the hall.   It also meant new patterns -I walk different paths across campus, I teach in the same building with my office, I have files and chairs in different configurations.  

There is a Chinese saying “Three moves is equal to a fire”.  I always assumed this referred to the amount of stuff that gets discarded with each move, slowly whittling down to the essentials.  I am beginning to wonder if it also means that moves, like fires, provide a chance for regeneration, removing the dead wood and allowing new and luxurious growth.   After eight years in the same office and building, perhaps my routines needed to be shaken up a little (my books definitely needed to be thinned out!)  Walking new routes brings me to new corners of campus - I see the familiar with different eyes. 

That was clearly my experience going to and coming back from Korea.  Taking a year away from campus meant I resigned from all my committees, I gave up my advisees, and I set off to teach courses I had never taught before in a place I did not know.   I expected to grow and change in all that newness.  What I had not fully thought about was how new campus would be when I returned - all new committees, all new advisees, two years of new colleagues and new students to get to know.  At least for one semester I had my old office with its familiar patterns and comforts.  Now that too is changed.

Regeneration may be necessary, but it is not easy.  It requires loss.  I find I miss terribly some pieces of my time in Korea.  Some are obvious, like the free time created by a smaller teaching load.  That free time meant trips to the public baths, cultural events, dinner with students, Korean films.  I miss the daily walk past the women selling vegetables, the two French bakeries, the supermarket on my way home.   Green tea chiffon cake.  Seollantang (beef soup) and date-ginseng tea when I’m sick.  Grilled samgyeopsal (spicy pork) with friends.  But I also miss the openness to change that came with my Korean experience - the excitement of seeing and doing new things all the time.  It is as if, having done “new” for a year, I find it much harder to deal with change here at home. 

So as I write in my new office, I try to re-open myself to the excitement of the new, to the value of seeing things with a different eye.  There is discomfort and loss - and disorientation.  But as with my time in Korea, the rewards, the growth, are worth it.  Or will be when I unpack the last box.

Add comment January 14, 2009

Connections

The following is a true story.  I have only made up some of the facts.

On a late afternoon in 1950, a Benedictine army chaplain stepped off a train in Seoul, South Korea. Or maybe he stepped off the train months before and was working in an army camp.  Four other men stepped off the train, into the army camp.  Perhaps they were wearing black robes with hoods, perhaps not.  They were Benedictines just the same.  The army chaplain asked from where they had come.  “North Korea” they answered, “we have been thrown out.  We were the lucky brothers.  All the fathers were killed.”

The army chaplain called the bishop who called an abbot who called a meeting.  In two years a new monastery was created for these North Korean monks.  They thought they would soon head back.  New monks vowed stability to a place they had never seen.  They still have not been back.  After 50 years, they celebrated what they had accomplished - six dependent houses, 3 retreat centers, 5 hospitals, 30 churches, 2 high schools, 2 middle schools, a retirement village, more than 150 monks, artisan workshops for gold, stained glass and wood, and a major Catholic press. 

But they had not forgotten that chaplain.  In preparation for their celebration, a few monks and nuns came to the U.S. to visit him. They told him he was remembered as an honored founder.  His confreres were shocked.  They had long assumed those good, old stories, so well-told and funny, could not possibly be true!

The chaplain became Abbot Gerald McCarthy of Saint Anselm Abbey.  He died just after those Benedictines visited and vindicated his stories.  I arrived at Saint Anselm College later that fall, but I did not hear the stories until seven years later.   

On a late afternoon in 2008, a teacher stepped off a train in Waegwan, South Korea.  She was met by a man in blue jeans, but he was Benedictine just the same.   She was chasing stories.  I’ll post more of them soon.

Add comment April 16, 2008