The underground railroad

I learned some truly horrible things today.

One of my colleagues invited our whole team to spend their lunch hour watching Seoul Train - a documentary about refugees from North Korea. I think everyone came to watch.

The film largely focuses on a man known as the Korean Schindler - a hero running an underground railroad smuggling people out of North Korea. The penalty for defecting is death.

The situation for millions of people in North Korea is desperate. Famine has killed an estimated 2 million - over 10% of the population. Food aid is redirected by the government. Many citizens are kept in forced labour camps. Men, women, children.

Many citizens try and escape to China. The Chinese government hunt them down and return them.

The film shows the fate of several refugee families, who escape, protest and are captured. Their fate is unknown, but likely prison or death.

How can humans treat other humans like this? How? And how can other humans, societies, stand by and watch?

At the end of the film, no-one really said a word. How we each reacted to it was unreal. It was shocking. Someone had had the forethought to place a box of tissues at the front of the room. They were needed.

I left the room reeling - realising how lucky I am.

More information about these terrible atrocities can be found at www.seoultrain.com

Have a look - and realise how lucky you are too.

If it doesn't make any sense...

My last 4 blogs are a series - starting with, "The Spirit(s) of Christmas" - so if anyone is reading this (& if you are in any way wondering what I'm babbling about), please go back and start there.

Ta :)

The Spirit of Christmas Future – Christmas Presence

So I plan to change my present – with presence. I will buy gifts for people, it’s still nice and there might be some things that they really do need, but…

I’m going to show people more love. The most precious commodity we own is our time and love is a present that can be given freely. I’m going to show people more care and attention. I’m going to give my presence. I’m going to listen to people more and find out what their needs are. I’m also going to step outside the close friends and family I usually give to and give to some people who are in far greater need than I am. I’m going to be present in their lives if they want. But I’m not going to rush from place to place this year, quality not quantity.

And love is a gift that can keep on giving - I’m not going to stop once the trees and the fairy lights come down – I’m going to keep it going – and next Christmas, it’ll be another opportunity to celebrate why.

If anyone wants to give me a gift, show someone else some love. I don’t believe that you have to be a Christian or indeed subscribe to any other religion to do that. Show someone else that you care, a little bit more than you’ve done before. Maybe even show some love to someone you don’t know

And if you see a cheerleader that needs saving… well you never know!

The Sprit of Christmas Present – God’s Present

In the words of Radio 1 DJ Vernon Kay, “Jesus is the reason for the season” (thanks for that one Paulie).

(Aside from our own creation) God’s greatest gift to Man was Jesus and His sacrificial death on the cross that atones for our innate Sin – making us right with Him by settling our account. What a gift – and by Grace. God freely gave us the present of His Son’s presence. “For God so loved the world that he sent His only Son”. (John 3:16) “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)

Christmas present. Christ’s mass-ive present. Or Christ’s present to the mass-es. We don’t know when Christ was born, so Christianity hijacked a Pagan festival. Why not? We celebrate our own and each other’s birthdays, so why not Jesus’? It’s a great way to celebrate who Jesus was, what He did and what He still does today.

Theologians and learned religious men can complicate things all they like, but Jesus’ message is simple and incredible. “Love your neighbour as yourself” (Luke 10:27). It’s an easy theme to see here – love, love, love (The Beatles remind us too – “ All you need is love”). Jesus really shared this gift too – not just with neighbours, close friends, family and those people that he knew and liked, but with the poor, the needy, the sinners of this world – those that REALLY need(ed) it.

This is the true spirit of giving and the true spirit of Christmas that we should celebrate. Freely given, the gift of love.

The Sprit of Christmas Past – Christmas Presents

I love getting presents at Christmas, I love giving presents at Christmas. Giving presents has been the zenith of the festive period for me. Even outside of all the partying, the decorations, time off work and the Christmas cheer – the surprise and delight on the faces of my friends and family on Christmas Day is what its been all about. I want to show my nearest and dearest that I love them and they want to show me that too. And its not just the presents – I want to see everybody, have a drink or a meal with them. Have fun, share festive cheer! Have a very merry Christmas!!

The trouble is, it’s just so stressful. I never know what to buy, I worry that I won’t have enough money, I don’t think that my gifts will be up to scratch, so I feel I need to spend more money. I feel bad if I don’t see everybody I know and share with them some kind of celebration that ‘its Christmas’.

It shouldn’t be hard, buying a present in a shop is easy. Just walk up to the shelves, take what you want to the till and hand over your paycheck. And do it again, and again and again, for every person that you want to make happy on Christmas morning. Happy, smiling faces and a happy, smiling bank manager. This year in the UK we’ll spend an estimated £53 billion over the Christmas period – sure that’s including all the food, drink, travel etc, but that’s a lot of money on presents. If that translated into happiness it would be truly AMAZING.

Yet it doesn’t. For one, I don’t really enjoy shopping for presents. Fighting the rest of the hordes for space in the aisles, being slowly roasted by the halogen bulbs put there to make everything bright and shiny makes me feel ill, and the only reason I do it is in hope that what I spend my money on will make the receivers happy. I truly believed that by buying people things, they would become happier. I’m not ruling it out, I think that many of my gifts have been genuinely loved and used but I look at the number of surprise gifts I’ve bought for Rach (and others), that have been used only once, if at all. The same is true in reverse. I’m asked for list of things that I’d like and I struggle to write them. I’m very lucky, I have everything I need and most things I want. So I write list of things I might like, that fit into a budget that I think might be appropriate! Aaargh!!!

The spirit of giving has always been there but now the boundless giving of material presents seems wrong. It feels a bit hollow, lazy and thoughtless and the happiness the gifts bring rarely seem to last into the New Year. So what am I supposed to do instead?

The Spirit(s) of Christmas

I feel a bit like Ebeneezer Scrooge. The Spirits of Christmas, Scrooge’s Ghosts, have recently visited me, and given me a new understanding of what Christmas Spirit really is. As a result, what I think about what Christmas really means and what I do at Christmas is changing.

I’ve always held mixed feelings about what I do at Christmas – the season of goodwill and being all things to all men always ends up causing stress, discomfort and unhappiness. The exact opposite of what I feel Christmas is supposed to be about.

There are so many things that I want to do, like buying presents or spending time with everyone I know. I’ve always felt that this was what Christmas is, that these things will make me, and those I love, happier over the festive period. I try to do so much that I end up tying myself in knots – like Marley’s chains.

This year I feel different, I’ve had my eyes opened. This is what the Spirits of Christmas have shown me this year.