Sheltering Home
At home we begin the process of testing our personal powers, practicing our ability to manipulate the world, to heal and to destroy and to heal again. At home we learn lessons of give and take, balance, creation and destruction, karma, redemption, hope. From home I slam the door in a hurry because I did not allow enough time for rush hour traffic. In home I clean cat litter and make sandwiches. Tiny rituals that help me believe I am in control of something. It is home I rush to at the end of a week, headlights guiding through dusky drizzle, driving along with people returning from hours of output, seeking a few meek hours of restoration before another stretch of the give and take.
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On a Friday night in my sheltering home, world-weary from other peoples’ lives, I settle into movie night, grateful for a cozy room, a film-loving husband, a warm and curled-up dog, and a subscription to Prime Video. Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter…and Spring, written and directed by Ki-duk Kim, ushers me away from life’s toil because of lush Korean scenery and tangible images of sacred ritual. However, as I watch, a twinge of ache throbs in my heart. I am immersed in a familiar human journey of pain, suffering, and renewal.
At the center of the film’s plot, set in the mountains of Korea, in the middle of a tranquil remote lake, floats a serene, solitary Buddhist monastery. This beautiful structure is home to a young apprentice and his master. In Springtime, in the sheltering lodge a growing boy is guided, disciplined, nurtured, apprenticed by an aging master. In this home, he learns to read sutra, he feels the rough floor and soft cushion of prayer, he hears his master’s chants. A reverent statue of the Buddha rests in soft candlelight.
The six-year-old apprentice with a still-baby-round face, rows daily from floating home to shore, in search of healing herbs. He is learning the terrain of his homeland, the life-sustaining balance of his master’s ways. One afternoon, the young apprentice delights in his little-boy tricks of catching fish, frog, and snake. With mischief, he winds each unsuspecting body with twine that is attached to a stone. He watches the fish, the frog, the snake struggle to move forward, giggling with childlike fascination at the physics of the situation, in awe of his own budding sense of power to affect struggle. His wise teacher offers correction the next day in a karmic act: the boy must live a day with a stone tied to his own back, searching for the tormented animals. When he discovers that the stone-bound snake has died, presumably eaten by another animal, the young boy sobs in grief. He has learned in a visceral way his power to take life. The rest of the film uncovers this dilemma of carrying such power within the human heart.
Years pass in this sheltering, floating small monastery. Green fertile summer becomes the season of growing adolescent lust, giving way to the apprentice’s sensual relationship with a young woman. She has come to the monastery, to take shelter, to heal from an illness. In this way, the summer season leads the apprentice away from his home. His desire for the woman takes him into years of world-weary battles with possession, and obsession leading to murder. It now turns autumn. The apprentice returns to the monastery for refuge, blood-stained knife in hand, eyes now deep with dark pain. He will face the consequences of his deeds. The aging master still guides and tends but is unable to save the apprentice from his fate. The sutra, still a holy text, becomes a potent prescription for the young man’s healing. At the directive of his master, the apprentice carves holy words into rough floor with the murderous knife he carried home. Candles offer refining flame. Prayers are heard and recited. Yet for all his oblations, the apprentice cannot escape the hand of justice when law enforcement discovers his refuge. Autumn finally leads to incarceration, imprisonment away from the sheltering home. Years pass.
Winter brings the apprentice home one last time, to learn that the master has died, to accept his adult place in homesteading. He dusts the rough floor, he renews his relationship with sacred space and sacred land. He binds himself to a heavy millstone to do the arduous work of carrying a reverent Buddha statue to the highest mountain. From there he views his home in the center of the lake valley. The apprentice accepts the spiritual disciplines, for the first time as his own, the path that will restore him to balance. In this monastic home, he readies himself for Spring once again, when he becomes the master of another little boy, abandoned by a shame-filled mother. The cycle continues. This floating, serene monastery is the anchor that has held his life.
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I have tied no stones to fish, frogs, snakes this week. And my knives are blood free. I have committed no crimes of passion. But in so many other ways I have participated in the disruption of balance. I drove past yard signs in front of impoverished rural houses, and I murdered a few politicians in my heart. I chose to get stingy with my time, obsessing over bank statements longer than necessary. I wasted a few precious hours that I could have been spent in trusting the Creator. On Friday I ran through a traffic light that was more red than yellow. I was convinced that my agenda was more important than that moment of safety. I snarled in the kitchen at my spouse, unhappy to be inconvenienced by something that now slips my mind. My home has been both refuge from and seat of my imbalanced heart.
Today in my home I take shelter again. I practice the rhythm of the coffee pot, the standing mixer, the cutting board, and I participate in the ritual of feeding. I pause for an hour in the morning and connect with a small congregation of Christians who pray and recite sacred words. COVID measures and internet wonders allow me to participate in this worship service while sitting in my favorite chair that has been loved well by cat claws. I look out of the window at the October yellows and reds peeking through the last of summer green. And this day of ritual reminds me again of the cycles of home. This place where children’s lessons have been learned, animals have been welcomed and loved, fights have been fought, curses have been heaped, forgiveness has been asked, candles have been lit, food has been prepared, prayers have been raised, healing has come, and it has gone away, and it has come again.
