Praying with hands joined together 두 손 모아 기도하며

                                                          

I am currently attending a one-month course for missionaries-to-be. Early in March, I will leave for Singapore where only five Pauline sisters are living together.

As I prepare to leave, so many warm-hearted people come to my mind. I sincerely appreciate their generosity and compassion.

Looking back, I feel I am not worthy to be a missionary. Nevertheless, looking forward, I strongly feel the most merciful Lord is giving me every good chance to prepare myself to be his apostle.

So I can say to the Lord, "Here I am to do your will!“

With heartfelt gratitude, I pray with hands joined together while hoping to be his faithful, happy, joyful, and cheerful daughter witnessing his love. I always feel my mother and sisters and brothers are constantly praying for me. I feel their love beyond space and time.

Long ago, our ancestors who believed in Shamanism prayed a lot for the health, wealth, and success of their families. Many of them put a water bowl on the terrace where soy sauce crocks are placed and rubbed their palms to pray sincerely with a sense of urgency.

Buddhists also pray very hard. On the way to Mt. Taebaek in December last year, I met two elderly women from Busan who visit the temple near the mountain once a month.

It is a long trip but the women looked happy to come and pray. I asked them for whom they pray, and they said they are praying always for the health of their children. The snowy weather doesn't prevent their pious devotion.

Protestants also get up very early in the morning to pray. They often cry from the bottom of their hearts and confess their inner desires and longings. All denominations do the same.

Of course, Catholics are no exception. We also pray a lot. Several years ago when I joined a charismatic prayer meeting, I vividly felt people's tears and shouts expressing their pain and hope.

Many people want to be healed and freed from hurt, restraint, negative thoughts, and gloomy experiences. Prayer is revealed and concrete in our real and vivid situations. Biblical figures such as Abraham, Moses, Joseph, Eliah, David, Solomon, and Job simply told the situation as it was before asking a favor or giving thanks to God.

While praying with hands joined together, we undergo a spiritual journey to the interior. All of us are in the movement of a metaphorical journey of the self because almost everybody, whether well-known or not, big or small, rich or poor, pursues the self to discover their true self.

We are instinctively and essentially inclined to search for the ultimate reality. On the way to that absolute reality, we go through three ways of self-discovery such as self-awareness (related to departure in a mythic way by Joseph Campbell, the ego in a psychic way by Carl G. Jung, and awakening in a mystic way by Evelyn Underhill), self-exploration (related to initiation, shadow, and purification/ illumination/ the dark night of the soul), and self-realization (related to the return, the self, and the intuitive life), while praying very hard and hoping to be better in various forms.

All these steps or processes are a must to go through to be a whole person, being unified and harmonious. So we are constantly coming and going through the stages of self-awareness, self-exploration, and self-realization. As far as we live, this process will be continued.

 https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/opinion/2022/10/162_129999.html?utm_source=RD

The Korea Times/ Thoughts of the Times/ Feb 5, 2013