Public Service Announcement: Today is World AIDS Day (1998-2008)
Brick 7 Update - Brick 7 Donations Help Earthquake Victims in Deyang
Although we have already closed the Earthquake Appeal (Brick 7), your donations are still continuing to help numerous victims of the May 12 Earthquake. Your generosity and kindness not only enabled us to help with the relief and rebuilding efforts through Jinde Charities, but also paved the way to help a small community rebuild a very needed water tank. Bricks is also helping another earthquake related project in Sichuan, this time in assisting an organization to build a therapy center for earthquake victims.
In response to the aftermath of 512 earthquake, the Chinese Association of Analytical Psychology (CAAP), together with the associations of psychoanalysis from Guandong, South China Normal University and Fudan University, set up the “The Garden of Heart and Soul” to help the the victims deal with the stress and grief of losing their homes and their loved ones through counseling and therapy. It is not uncommon for victims of natural disasters to experience post traumatic stress syndrome. A number of suicide cases have already been recorded in the earthquake affected areas and in a consolidated response, CAAP sent volunteers to these areas to provide grief counselling and therapy to the victims. CAAP has already set up a number of “Gardens” and aims to do more as it is very clear to them that their work in Sichuan is long term. They have deviced a three year plan to help mobilize and train volunteer counsellors who will be working in the disaster affected areas for the long term.
Dr. Heyong Shen of Fudan University’s Analytical Psychology and Chinese Culture Research Center is one of the project directors. Bricks has agreed to help build a Garden of Heart and Soul in the town of Deyang. The town was close to the epicenter of the quake which destroyed homes and buildings including the Donqi Middle School which took 700 students.
Through your generosity, Deyang will rebuild and hopefully heal from the grief and loss of 512.
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NEWS SPOTLIGHT
World Financial Crisis and China
The Euro Zone and Japan are in a recession, and US economy is following suit. Even though the major players decided to have a consolidated response to the crisis, the current outlook of the world economy still looks grim. Experts were hoping that the safe haven to tide this crisis would be Asia, but the recent events showed that Asian economies are also vulnerable to the effects of the financial crisis. China and India may not sink into recession, but the ripple effect of what is happening in Wall Street and the Euro Markets is clearly being felt. A senior U.N. official warned of the prospect of social unrest in export-driven economies of Asia because of the global financial crisis.
Financial Crisis may worsen poverty in China
a Backgrounder by The Council on Foreign Relations
China says employment situation is critical
AFP
China employment in grim situation
Beijing Review
Top Officials meets rioters as China seeks stability
Reuters
Brick 8 Thanks You!
Bricks participated in the recent Beijing Marathon last October 18. Two runners from Bricks, Aidan Duffy and Joseph Loftus ran the full marathon and half marathon respectively to help purchase 60 orthopedic beds for Senior Home in Xintai, Hebei Province. Bricks thanks all the people who have donated for this project.
Here are some pictures from the Beijing Marathon. Unfortunately, Aidan and Joseph are not in it.
14 Families in Song Shu Village Receive Biogas Digesters
Brick 8’s Song Shu Bio Gas Project has already started with a pilot scheme of 14 biogas digesters, which have been tested and already distributed to 14 families in Song Shu Village, all thanks to the generosity of Brick 8’s donors.
As the coming winter season approaches, the need for a cheaper source of supplementary energy source for heating and cooking increases. Song Shu Parish is planning to build another 40 digesters for 40 families in Song Shu Village. They are hoping to have these digesters distributed before Christmas.
With your help and support, the families of Song Shu Village will have sustainable, efficient and cost effective source of energy.
If you are interested in helping this project, please go this link.
Holy Souls
There was only one person in the Church when I went in to say my prayers for the Holy Souls. I knelt a little way forward of my companion and began reminiscing about my recent dead before actually starting my prayers. My companion’s stage whispered prayers were a mild distraction and I was relieved when she noisily left the church a few minutes later. As the door closed behind her the silent church became mine. The pillars were specially clothed in moody black drapes for the occasion, giving the entire building a somber mood and the empty Church seemed to murmur “remember the dead”, in case I needed reminding of my visit’s purpose. I sank into the bitter sweet recollection of those gone before me, hoping my “Our Father’s and “Hail Mary’s” would move them gently nearer the Paradise that I believe awaits them.
Suddenly the sound of loud footfalls again. I almost resented the intrusion into my recollection. It was the “stage whisperer” returned. Why was my erstwhile companion coming back to fill the gentle silence with her muttered pieties? She seemed to take forever, but it cannot have been more than a few minutes till she upped and noisily left again, much to my relief. I had barely returned once again my sentimental meditations when I was amazed to hear the now familiar sound of shoe on wooden floor, proclaiming the return of the whisperer. Irritated now, I could not work out what was driving this women’s revolving door prayer pattern.
Suddenly, drawing on memories of long forgotten primary school religion classes, I realized she was gaining indulgences for the dead by visiting a church and praying the prescribed prayers. With few churches to visit, she was applying the traditional solution, that is to physically leave the building thus ending that “visit”, reentering the church counts as a new visit, and each new visit resulted in a new indulgence.
Listening with new ears to the remissions of sins being gained, I felt a new sense of solidarity with the “stage whisperer”. We had both come to remember our dead and pray them more speedily through the purification of purgatory into the promised land of Paradise. Listening to her mechanical recitations, I could only marvel, both at our common faith in the efficacy of prayers for the dead and the difference in the ways we choose to express it. Her classic form was recognizable to every generation up to my own and had been persevered by the Chinese Catholics, untouched by the revolution in popular spirituality that took place after the Second Vatican Council. My faith also invited me to visit a church that day, to pray for the repose of those gone before, but without much thought of reduction of days or weeks for those being punished outside time. The differences between us seemed inconsequential at that moment and one felt only solidarity in grief and the consolation of praying for the eternal salvation of those gone before us. Sitting in the empty, almost silent church, one could almost feel purgatorial chains snapping, and souls slipping gratefully in to their allotted places in the Heavenly court.
I would have, at that moment, loved to have prayed with her, but she was on a schedule and I doubt she would have welcomed my mystical solidarity. Instead I continued my sedentary litany, as she conducted her mobile one. In time we both finished and I heard her say loudly in Chinese what I was saying quietly in English. “May the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God, rest in peace Amen”. I wonder whose prayer reached heaven first.
A Stranger in Paradise
As I write it is 7 in the morning, Florida time and yet I am connected emotionally and electronically to a minor drama playing out at 7pm on in Beijing. The confusing time zones, as well as the jet lag, has me all out of kilter. In China, the time differences work to my advantage, giving me a whole day to get things done before it becomes offices open in Europe and America where those things are required. Here the reverse is true and I seem to spend all my time playing catch up. Oh for the day of the quill pen and the associated pace of life.
The beginning of the week finds me slowly adjusting to the rhythms of Southern Florida, which, though superficially so familiar, are actually rather disconcerting. I have felt, ever since landing here on Thursday to that I am in a parallel universe where the familiar has been distorted into a parody of itself, leaving me out of touch with my surroundings. One might imagine that the USA, after China, might be a cake walk, but to my surprise it is not, and more stressful for being familiar and alien at the same time.
Driving, for example, has a surreal quality, which has little to do with being on the wrong side of the road, and all to do with sense that at even the mildest infraction of the highway code, a squad car will appear miraculously in my rear view mirror and a gun carrying policeman will start reading me my Miranda Rights before carrying me off to a chain gang. It is not as if I could avoid driving either. The idea of “popping down to the shops” does not exist and everything is “a ride” away. The roads, at least in this corner of Florida are good and I have yet to hit anything like commuter traffic, but even the sedate 35 mile (or 25 mile in some cases) speed limit gives me no sense of ease. Having been shouted at by an irate (woman) driver for doing less than the permitted speed, the spectre of a gun totting outraged citizen fills one with even more dread than does her uniformed opposite number.
Ordinary social encounters have a stressful edge to them that surprises. There is an expectation of politeness in ordinary exchanges which seems almost intrusive, but is quite sincere. Faced with the pleasantness, is my hesitation to enter into conversation with the complete stranger in the elevator rude or appropriate? At the same time, as a counterpoint to the Pollyanna quality of social exchanges ,in the ordinarily solemn environs of the local bank, I watched a housewife very loudly express her dissatisfaction at the level of service. Used to more reverence in these temples of commerce, I found the experience quite intimidating.
The ubiquity of American popular culture leaves one with a sense of preparedness for the reality which is totally false. While everybody is unreservedly welcoming and hospitable, I cannot shake a sense of being out of place. I watch the lights go on in ordinary homes across Ft. Lauderdale and suddenly realize that I have not wandered onto the studio of an exotic TV show but am a guest in another part of God’s creation. The customs may seem strange but the people here are also his children and to miss that because of the alien quality of the environment would be to miss something essential in a missionary experience. Having negotiated this issue with apparent ease in China, who would have thought that would be in “the States” that I would find the process more challenging. God Bless America.
People
I have been at the edge of AIDS in China since 2003, I know the figures of projected spread and the main sources of infection etc, I can do the “NGO thing” when it comes to AIDS Awareness, but by and large, I rarely meet people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHAs)in person. The organizations I work with have focused on the plight of those who have been infected through blood selling or transfusions (mainly rural farmers at the bottom of China’s economic heap. For the nuns who deliver these services, who are often from farming backgrounds themselves, this work is a “shoe in” and while it has many challenges, fits easily into a traditional approach to “Charitable Works”. It has the added advantage of having no moral issues; these PLWHAs were infected by poverty and are innocent victims in any ordinary meaning of those words. In these days I have been introduced me to another group who are now living with, rather than dying of, HIV AIDS- namely urban gay men.
The situation of these PLWHAs is rather different from those of the poor farming families I have been more aware of up to now. These men are often educated and articulate, needing much less material support or encouragement than their country cousins. But urban sophistication does not go as deep as a superficial encounter might suggest and one finds that their circumstances have their own poignancies.
Many gay men in China are married (since not to marry is virtually impossible) so few are “out of the closet”. Many of those who live a gay lifestyle do so clandestinely, though that is changing for the young. The extra stigma of HIV+ status imposes a second hidden life on top of the first. The pathetic nature of the situation was brought home to me when, visiting a clinic, I watched obviously otherwise assured, self confident men, strip the labels from their tablet boxes, least anyone at home realize that it contained AIDS medication. Rejection by family is not uncommon, freedom to openly acknowledge ones condition in the workplace rare and support groups few. Although superficially urban gay PLWHAs have a better life, emotionally they are as much in need of support as anyone else.
Today I watched two Sisters deliver such support, not in some dramatic ‘do gooder’ kind of way, but just by being there. They had acted as midwives for a support organization and the occasion was to allow the 30 members to express their gratitude. The Sisters were probably, in a country where such things usually matter, the least educated of the group, but it was very obvious that these men appreciated the unconditional acceptance offered them more than any professional support.
Watching the unaffected approach of the Sisters made me aware that these men were not a collection of politically correct acronyms but People made in the image and likeness of God. Rather cold political correctness was not what was asked of me a priest and a baptized Christian, but rather unconditional love for each of them. These Chinese Sisters use a terribly non PC description common in Chinese “infected people” to describe those whose gratitude they were accepting, but despite that, their Faith filled view meant they saw only human beings to be loved. My being with them allowed me to see as they saw and that has made, this week has made all the difference. Thanks be to God.