Para-normal

I am half-way through East Eats West, by Andrew Lam. In one of the pieces, he mentions “my parents speak to ghosts – ancestors shrine at home- and I, with my fingers on the key board, negotiating the past (Vietnam) and present”.

One’s person sacredness could be viewed as “para-normal” by others.

In a soon-to-be-published book on American religion, entitled American Grace, the author found that Buddhism  the least common among all religions in America.

Survey showed people are least likely to be in favor of seeing a Buddhist temple in their neighborhood (although they know it’s perfectly constitutional).

Ancestral worship, however, is a different thing.

It’s birthday in reverse. Burial day if you will.

To commemorate and not to forget one’s roots.

Of course, one cannot trace back the lineage, and have everyone’s pictures on the altar.

Many people in Vietnam, especially business establishment, place a statue of Fortune God facing out, for good luck.

People in the East are well aware of feng-shui, as well as harmonious living with plants, animals and other people (dead or alive).

The early Catholic missionaries were viewed with suspicion, precisely the way Buddhism is now perceived in the US.

We want to live within the confine of a bell curve. It’s manageable. Robert Frost pens ” fence makes good neighbors”.

But the internet and globalization have  eradicated these fences .

Thomas Friedman opined today in the NYT, about China’s moon shot (electric cars). He has been tireless about globalization and America which needs a wake-up call.

Rightly so.

We cannot go about as if the Saudis will always be Kings, and that Big Mac will always be big.

Global commerce and taste will evolve.

And in this age of Instant Google search, as consumers, we will always do our due diligence.

Where is the free open University, the best recipe, the secret  sauce (which is posted openly on the internet)? Just a click away.

Pastor (in GA), and politician (in Orange County) etc… cannot slip (even on Spanish TV) in this always-on environment.

It’s a bit uncomfortable living in a glass (silicon) house, where “every link  you click, I will be watching “.

Some people enjoy voyeurism, others uphold privacy. Yet we all post it, on facebook (ironically founded on a lonely weekend night,  and originated as an anti-social act i.e. trashing available girls on campus).

Between fast facebook and stodgy LinkedIn, we have the two camps of  professional and social network in check.

Between the ancestral shrine, LinkedIn connections, facebook friends and the Christmas card list, I have a hand full.

And I am glad writers like Andrew Lam help negotiate the two worlds, East and West,  the living and the dead, not unlike Ghost, the movie, in which  Patrick came back via Whoopi’s body.

Then we came full circle with love reincarnated, in an art form (cinema) understood by audience all over the world (Judeo-Christian frame work or not). I hear Unchained Melody and scenes from Ghost, most notably where he messed up her pottery. Ghost might not be real, but Demi’s tears were.  Somehow, love survives death, even the beyond. What’s not normal about that!