Nothing to Envy ~ Bookshelf No. 3 ~ December 2020

 

This morning while I deep cleaned my dishwasher, rinsing all the awkward components in my sink with the broken faucet, I contemplated two passages from two unique books. I'll be as brief as I can, because the publisher is waiting, and the day must roll on. 

I probably heard about  this book, Nothing to Envy, Ordinary Lives in North Korea, on The Close Reads Podcast. While we read together books and are guided by the best guides about specific books, numbers of other excellent reads surface, stimulating constant research into the virtual and tangible stacks of libraries and bookstores everywhere. I digress. With constant discussion in the US about Communism and Socialistic ideas run amuck, this book jumped out and into my sanitized library hands. I like to pick books that relate, but are perhaps more parallel. Seeing an issue by looking at it from another perspective will shed alot of light where there might be sore spots, blind spots for the reader, the student, the citizen. For when I read passages like the following, I might hear one parallel, while another person, say a person of color in the US might hear another. This passage relates an interview with a defector to South Korea, over a lunch meeting. "I had asked Mi-ran to lunch in order to learn more about North Korea's school system. In the years before her defection, she had worked as a kindergarten teacher in a mining town. In South Korea she was working toward a graduate degree in education. It was a serious conversation, at times grim. The food on our table went uneaten as she described watching her five-and six year old pupils die of starvation. As her students were dying, she was supposed to teach them that they were blessed to be North Korean. Kim Il-sun, who ruled from the time the peninsula was severed at the end of the World War II until his death in 1994 was to be revered as a god, and Kim Jong-il, his son and successor, and the son of a god, a Christ -like figure, Mi-ran had become a harsh critic of the North Korean system of brainwashing." There will be no turning back in this book. Because the details are too vivid to pass by, and they touch on too many thoughts I have in the world in which I live. The local and the world at large. For even in the wealthiest counties in the United States, there are still children who age out of foster care, and there are still Veterans who come home from serving in the military who can't seem to get started. There are still orphans among us, and faucets still break. There are still persons of color who are treated wrongly because of their color, and there are still race-peddlers who prey upon the innocent and brain wash those same Image-bearers to believe they have no seat at any table. 

But this book isn't a 'pick - a - side' book. This story, collection of stories, about former North Koreans makes me think about the human spirit, Divinely created, that can learn to  appreciate a forced opportunity of utter darkness, a slower cadence and rhythm of life, one that the average consumer finds almost impossible to escape.  (And that same soul able to crave excellence and greatness...) Even if the individuals who are granted opportunity to tell their unique story  through this book, don't believe in their own Creator, which remains to be seen, I find passages found in devotion books of Scripture compelling in the parallel. From Grace ForThe Moment, collections by Max Lucado. 

 Take Jesus at His Word ~ When it comes to healing our spiritual condition, we don't have a chance. We might as well be told to pole-vault to the moon. We don't have what it takes to be healed. Our only hope is that God will do for us what he did for the man at Bethesda--that he will step out of the temple and step into our ward of hurt and helplessness. Which is exactly what He has done...I wish we would take Jesus at His word...When He says we're forgiven, let's unload the guilt. When He says we're valuable, let's believe Him... When He says we're provided for, let's stop worrying. God's efforts are strongest when our efforts are useless. 'In all these things we have full victory through God who showed His love for us.' Romans 8:37. 

Even in the midst of beauty and abundance, the voice of doubt will creep up, Screwtape, the evil-one. Fear, doubt, despair... But living in a world of brainwash is like a double dose of satan's lies. I wish we would take Him at His word. The only Source who can supply the answers and the spirit of victory is the Creator Himself. Whether the former North Koreans interviewed know or believe hasn't been revealed to me yet- but they have the revelation of the stars in the sky, as do we all. Last passage and the day must move along...

      "The night sky in North Korea is a sight to behold. It might be the most brilliant in Northeast Asia, the only place spared the coal dust, Gobi Desert sand, and carbon monoxide choking the rest of the continent. In the old days, North Korean factories contributed their share to the cloud cover, but no longer. No artificial lighting competes with the intensity of the stars etched into its sky..... Years later, when I asked the girl about the happiest memories of her life, she told me of those nights." 

 Nothing to Envy - Ordinary Lives in North Korea, by Barbara Demick 

'Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end. 

Ecclesiastes 3:11