Contemplating Radical Love – Su Yon Pak

She made her rounds today.

My mother.

She cares for them as she did for many years, a resident alien

nursing in a nursing home

now, she is the resident,

alien.

Stealthily, dementia began to visit her.

She started to forget things,

little by little,

where she put things,

ingredients in our favorite food

where she was.

Like a thief it visited her…

stealing mementos with each visit.

Then, dementia set up house there, rearranging furniture.

And she forgot things boldly,

big chunks at a time,

40 years of immigrant life…

husband of over 50 years…

several decades of shared stories.

Her house proudly swept of memories.

Whose house is this?

Say, tell me, why does its lock fit my key?*

But she remembers that I am her daughter…

no, her sister?

Well, she remembers that I am the one

yes, THAT one.

Zakar! Remember!

The Bible commands;

Remember, that you were slaves in Egypt

the Lord your God redeemed you

from there;

Remember the days of old, consider

the years long past;

ask your mother,

she will inform you;

your elders,

they will tell you.

Remember, I have bore you on eagle’s wings

and brought you to myself.

Remembering—

the sticky “thingness” of love

Sticky web, catching its prey so love can feed and grow

even hard memories,

especially those hard memories.

To love without memories,

to love the morphing self,

like chasing after a chicken in a yard.

Shared memories, the hyphen between mother—daughter,

Broken…

Can daughter exist when mother does not?

Dangling as a participle searching for the subject to modify.

Dangling…

But I love her.

I love her defying the grammar of love,

contemplating radical love.

Contemplating radical love, I enter her world

a world of ghosts, war and ancestors that terrifies me.

With love’s rope tied around my waist, I enter her holy of holies.

The other end of the rope, tethered firmly to this world.

Contemplating radical love, I risk loving

her again,

knowing that I cease to exist, when I leave her room.

Contemplating radical love, I tend daily to my altar because—

I too, forget

that this is how God loves me

radically

chasing after me, like a chicken in a yard.

I ask my mother

about the rounds she made today.

She tells me how busy she is.

I urge her to take a break,

before getting back to work.

We enjoy coffee and donuts,

delighting in each other’s bitter-sweet presence.

Presently.

*from Toni Morrison, Home

How do you experience the kind of love that draws you out of the places where you feel most comfortable and secure and into new spaces where transformation, both personal and communal, can occur? 

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Su Yon Pak is the Senior Director and Associate Professor of Integrative and Field-based Education at Union Theological Seminary. Her life and research passion include: food justice, criminal justice, elderly and spirituality, religious women’s leadership, and integrative education pedagogies.  Dr. Pak’s most recent publications are: “Women Leadership in Asian American Protestant Churches” in Religious Leadership: A Reference Handbook by SAGE Publications; “Coming Home/Coming Out: Reflections of a Queer Family and the Challenge of Eldercare In The Diaspora” in The Journal Of Theology And Sexuality, and “Leadership and the Academy” an article for the Religious Studies News of the American Academy of Religion. Dr. Pak co-authored, “Attentive Teaching in Diverse Communities and Lifelong Faith Formation” in Lifelong Faith, Singing the Lord’s Song in a New Land: Korean American Practices of Faith and Searching for Home in the Bible: Home is the Place Where Our Stories Are Told.  Her other publications include, “I’s Wide Shut: Eyelid Surgery as a Window into the Spirituality of Korean American Adolescent Girls” in The Sacred Selves of Adolescent Girls. She is currently working on a book called, Untangling the Yarn: Meditations on Remembering, Forgetting and In-between Place Called “Home.”