Copied from Ilchi lee’s book Healing Society
My first experience with Ki came when I was five years old in rural South Korea. South Korea in the fifties was not a pleasant place to live, due to the devastation left by the Korean War between 1950 and 1953. Yet, when I close my eyes and think back, the image of my mother, my father, the babbling of the stream, the deafening sounds of the cicadas, and the noise of my friends playing together form a beautiful composite picture that lingers wistfully.
One day, my mother woke me early in the morning, in panic because she had forgotten that her mother-in-law’s birthday was that day. Forgetting your mother-in-law’s birthday was something that just didn’t happen in those days. And my paternal grandmother had a reputation for being a tiger.
It’s a Korean tradition to cook a seaweed and meat broth on someone’s birthday. Prof Ilchi lee writes but we had no meat in our house. Not only was meat rare in those days, but the nearest butcher was over five miles away through rough, mountainous terrain, not to mention the knee-deep snow that covered the trails. Keep reading this blog for more ……
Tags: Ilchi Lee