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Encounter with the deep stream
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I am afraid of starting to write about Takamori hermitage because trying to do
so means reflecting myself. But Takamori makes it this way. If you bring
distress, your distress will be undressed, if you bring something wicked you
will be confronted with it. Especially you cannot hide anything when you came
into the bottomless silence of its chapel. You will find that God’s light and
dark embrace you harder and harder as you are. That is Takamori’s work.
When Father Oshida Shigeto (Dominican priest) started to live the ascetic a life
without anything, he found out that a circle of people had born. It was when he
was in temporally medical treatment. He used to say “we just were
running away from our ego with our hands stuck into the pocket and with a
whistle in the lips. There was nothing artificial. It was not like “let us
make a community” or “let us start a new religious life”. I was convinced
that the ego must disappear so “God’s hand” will be clearly working.
Takamori began walking its path while we were in dialogue with God’s hand
Probably
what most surprise the new visitor is the beautiful sight of the rice field and
wood studded with thatched roof’s cottages. There is nothing comparable to the
beauty of people working in the same rice field with Father Oshida saying “The
work must sink deeply into one's body”
The
main cottage is lovely. It was constructed by everybody’s effort with old
materials and one can feel it is wonderful space. It is a space of communion.
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Up
on the slope and behind the wooden cross, there is like a Japanese tea
cottage in the middle of a wood. It is the chapel. With its bottomless
silence, pure light and merciful whispers, is the center of Takamori’s
hermitage. Everything is harmonious in it. The window with reeds inserted,
the black luster in the walls from so many years of offering fire, the
straw knitted carpet, the old woven cloth made by the sister, the altar
one- piece board、the Japanese pottery chalice … There is a beauty
shining from an inner light in its harmony. Inside the chapel you will be
overwhelmed by the weight of spiritual fulfillment and freedom. |
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Poverty
will be the second thing surprising the new visitor. There is not
air-conditioner, television, electric pot, nor flush toilet. There is only a
fagot stove for winter in the main cottage. Holding the foot warmer or the hot
water bottle you can warm yourself when you go to sleep. It was the life stile
in the fifties.
Therefore one can feel truly the Nature. One feels in his own skin, as a part of Nature and with time even to realize that he is in the center of existence. People at the hermitage can be terribly busy at work but nobody will become irritated because the breathing is calm and deep.
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The rice taken from Takamori’s rice fields is delicious. Rice farming at 1000 meters highland is very laborious. To raise the little rice plant and protect it from the cold, rice-planting with prayers, being carefully with water level, weeding in the heat, to have it |
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clean from insects, harvesting, threshing, the oblation prayer. We are also cultivated in this effort to take care of having the rice plant growing because our wrongs and distress fall into nature. |
Takamori’s rice fields have the power to absorb them.
We
pray one hour in the morning and one in the evening. As we learned from Father
Oshida, we seat in the Zen way and have Bible reading, the Lord’s prayer and
the Psalms. While seating in the Zen way the chapel is wrapped up with
silence, it sinks into the body and everything became transparent and clear.
Then, united in one breathing we chant psalms. The chant comes from a joined
breath. There, the “myself” disappear, come again to live to go
disappearing. At the same time the breathing of Creation merges. Its moans and
pains becomes a soundless voice that disappears to go disappearing. Father
Oshida used to say, “Prayer is getting on the breathing.” This is
Takamori’s prayer.
At
the back of the chapel there is the memorial wood for war victims．We all made
it raising several logs as monuments. In the center there is a log with the
inscription <lingering, you have not disappear in an infinite sea of tears>.
One log stand for every war’s victims. The Pacific war’s victims, the
victims of the Japanese occupation of Korea, the victims of the Shino-Japanese
war especially the Nanjing’s massacre, victims of the Philippines and
Pacific island’s war. Here is a mourning prayer for all those victims
forgotten by the hidden Japanese conscience in the silence of the statesmen.
But
we cannot define Takamori as spiritualities interchange place or a
Buddhist-Christianity unification place, neither a Christian enculturation
place. Instead we can say that it is a true heart where people in need can find
an answer to his needs, that it is a blessing of shining poverty for people in
penury, that it is a prayer deepen by the strain and joy of farming.
Somebody
can say <Is that really
Christian? > But this question will question him <What Christianity are
you thinking of? There is here a sincere spirit of Christianity and Japan.
Takamori is like the fountain (it is called Koizumi) at the back up the slope,
it is a place where the underground stream of Christianity and Japan spurt up;
it is an unquestionable tributary river of life.
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In these last 30 years, rationalism, systematization, programming and systematic control have spread throughout Japan. It is a miracle that a life of prayer in poverty has being maintained in this country. Prayer and spirituality are born from a life with a vital bet. The hermitage of Takamori is a concrete testimony of it. （I, CH） |
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Encounter with Takamori |
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