Author Archives: tokyopurplegirl

Words I don’t know in Japanese

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uragiri

Recently I had a conversation about a lot of things that have happened in my life. The where, when, why and with whom don’t matter, the things we talked about aren’t what really matter. But one of the thoughts that remained with me was a word I heard for the first time that evening. Or probably I should say, the not knowing a word I heard for the first time that evening has remained with me.

The word is uragiri, 裏切り (うらぎり) and means betrayal. You can see a kind of primer of different calligraphic styles at the top of this post. It’s a compound of 裏 (うら, meaning ‘back’ or ‘behind’ ) and 切る (きる, meaning ‘cut’).

I told someone about a relationship I had had a long time ago, a relationship that had been very important in my life, a person whom I had loved very much. It was a long, convoluted story, it was messy and probably not such an unusual situation. I was explaining my part in it, what remained for me, and their reaction was this word, in Japanese. That it had been a betrayal of me, of my trust and my feelings, and I suppose it was, but I had not framed it as that. I suppose by the end of it all I knew what I was dealing with and it was more a matter of scale than the naming of the treachery itself.

My reaction to their reaction was two things:

I thought, hmmm, I have never wanted to roll over and be the victim here, the person who was betrayed, because I knew I had known I was being lied to and I had continued. The scale of it was unknown to me, but the basic dynamic was not. I chose to trust, even when, with hindsight, I can see that it was not the smartest thing to do. I knew better for a long time, I have to admit that. I learned a lot about myself, about other people, and at the time I did not want to, and now I do not want to give another person an acknowledgement of such power in my life. No. I was complicit in this, and I choose to frame it as such.

But at the same time I thought, gosh, I have lived in Japan for over twenty years. I started learning Chinese and Japanese over half (ahem, almost two thirds) of my life ago, and I have never heard this word before. I love learning new words. I find the etymology of words fascinating. Whether it’s the Latin root of an English word or the meaning of the kanji in a Chinese or Japanese compound, I like to know. I like to break it down, look at it from different angles, see how it’s used.

In this instance, though, I didn’t know the word, I had never heard it before, and the not knowing for so long made me happy, grateful. I don’t think it’s a word I use in English, and I didn’t think I could tell you the word in French, Spanish, Latin, Chinese . . . I checked and all the words were new to me, though I think if I had seen the European ones in context I would have been able to take a guess.

What a gift, to not know a word like that, and what a gift, also, to have a conversation which showed me that. And now that I know it?

I won’t be using it any time soon.

Spirit of adoption

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open door

‘For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption.’ Romans 8:15

I was adopted as a baby, and what this means in my life is something I have always thought about. For a number of years I was blessed in Tokyo with a very good friend who is both Christian and was adopted herself, and we often talked about our experiences. I have to say, all of my experiences grouped together fall under the category of ‘a good adoption’, as social workers refer to such things. That doesn’t mean everything has been easy, or always good, but all things considered, ‘a good adoption’.

However, being bloody-minded, something I consider to be a much under-rated virtue, I decided a few years ago that if there was a file somewhere in the system about me then I wanted it. Through social workers in London, where my brother was living at the time, I obtained first my birth certificate, and then, several months later after the perseverance of my social worker paid off, copies of everything in the file that was kept on me in my first year of life. I was quite shocked at the time to feel a real connection to my mother, even though I have never met her, and at this point in my life am not trying to find her. What amazed me the most was the one direct quote from her; it is about the importance of faith to life. Since my parents have never encouraged me in my faith, I was amazed to see her words reaching across all that time to me. It was such a shock that I didn’t know what to do with the information – rather like not having a folder in your computer for a document and needing to create a new one. That is what I had to do, and the information I got from the file, including the quote, ended up in a folder in my mind titled, ‘I am my mother’s daughter’.

And yet – my parents are my parents. No one has ever challenged me – ‘They can’t be your parents, you look nothing like them!’ If you met my parents you would not see anything other than a daughter with her parents. I love them as much as any daughter loves her parents. My brother is my brother (but not biologically). From talking to other people who were adopted I have discovered we share a kind of ‘sheep pig’ quality. (‘The Sheep Pig’ is the title of the book which became the film, Babe, about the piglet raised by sheep which believes itself to be the same as the animals it saw around it.) By that I mean, you identify with who you see around you. You appropriate the things that seem to fit.  I always identified with my mother’s mother, who was Welsh. I have always felt the pull of Celtic things; from what I know of my roots, my mother’s side of the family was Celtic. Music has always been important; my Dad was a church organist, studied music at university and taught me a lot, even though we disagreed as often as we  agreed on many things. Now I have more information I know that my mother also had a lot of music in her life.

What does it mean to be adopted?

Before it was clear who you were going to become, someone loved you, took you into their family, raised you as their own. Never asked questions, and gave you everything they had. And what do you do, as an adopted person? You identify with what you see around you, you make it your own, while remaining true to the person you are.

When water was poured on our heads at baptism, God adopted us. We are now children of God and heirs of God’s world, God’s kingdom.We have been adopted by God and become members of Christ.

Christ was the first, He did the hard work for us. He stood up for the oppressed, the marginalised, the things He saw in society that were unjust. All we need to do is accept the love God has for us, look at the example Christ set for us, and identify with it, appropriate His concerns and stand up with Him. He already did the hard part, He did it before us, He still stands there and all we need to do is stand up with Him and say, ‘Me too’.

Conjunctions

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Humility

We do not presume to come to this your table, merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table. But you are the same Lord whose nature is always to have mercy. Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of your dear Son Jesus Christ and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.

This is the Prayer of Humble Access. Over twenty years ago, I used to attend the morning service of Holy Eucharist at Sheffield Cathedral. It wasn’t something I intentionally started to do, it was simply that there were very few buses into the city in the morning, and the only one that would get me to work on time in fact got me there with quite a lot of time to spare. Rather than sit and drink coffee I didn’t need, I decided to attend the service every morning.

There were never many people there, often only one of the canons, one other woman and me. Every morning we used the Prayer of Humble Access; it found its way into my heart and I loved it as part of the liturgy. Occasionally I hear it used, but it seems these days it isn’t used much.

Last year, I spent a happy Sunday afternoon showing some American visitors round Tokyo. They were both Episcopal priests. Over dinner the conversation somehow turned to the Prayer of Humble Access, and I mentioned my attachment to it. One of them remarked that she felt differently, and knew other women who felt the same; women who had been in abusive or damaging relationships, for whom the statement, ‘We are not worthy . . .’ was painful. I was challenged to account for my positive feelings.

At the time I think I said that I didn’t hear ‘not worthy’ as much as ‘mercy’. I didn’t satisfy myself with that answer, I felt there was something more, and so I thought and prayed about it. Eventually I arrived at an explanation that satisfied me.

From when I was eleven and my brother was nine, my father was an alcoholic (though my mother never admitted that and we never talked about his drinking until many years later). He drank every evening and then became verbally abusive. Many times every evening he would come into the living room, look at us, then close the door again, swearing at us as he did so. This was mainly to check we weren’t about to walk into the dining room where he was going to get another drink. As he closed the door he would say with some venom, f*** off or some other equally hurtful expletive. Evening after evening, my brother and I would look at Mum and she would always reply with, I didn’t hear anything / Just ignore it / Rise above it. This went on for many years. I was never able to ignore it, was never able to understand why she let it happen. I became clinically depressed for two years at university, and everything that I spoke about with my doctor at that time was connected to him or my grandparents. In my twenties I was able to stand up to him and when he swore I looked him in the eye and asked him to not do that because it was hurtful. He never stopped but I had my say.

My grandparents also said things that stayed with me. They often asserted that their love was conditional, and that because I fell short I was a disappointment or had hurt them and therefore love would be withheld on some level. ‘If you really loved us you wouldn’t go to China.’ ‘We’d love you more if you stayed here.’ That kind of thing.I knew that they loved me dearly, but still, their words hurt.

All of the above is not to paint me as some kind of victim, because I don’t feel that way. I feel sad about it, but I came through it, I’m stronger for it, I learnt about psychology and grew in faith and made my peace with it as much as I could.

My point is, the message I got from all of that was, I was not worthy because I was a disappointment; Dad was drinking and in a bad mood so we had to just accept it; adults had these negative feelings or had experiences in their past or something I couldn’t fathom and we had to take it. Lots of connections, conjunctions; and, because, so.

Then I came to the Prayer of Humble Access and again, it told me that I am not worthy. The difference was the conjunction. ‘We are not worthy . . . but . . . ‘ and that is what makes all the difference in the world to me. There is no connection between my unworthiness and what happens next. There’s no so, and or because, it all gets blown apart because of the ‘but’. Because of all the things I was told as I was growing up I have buttons in my head. It’s quite easy to rattle me, to make me feel anxious. I’m ready to believe it must be my fault, that I let someone down in some way.

I keep coming back to the Prayer of Humble Access because it breaks that cycle for me. I am not worthy. But. God doesn’t change, there is always mercy and grace.

That is why I like the Prayer of Humble Access. Everyone has their own experiences, and I know that for other people the word ‘unworthy’ might be just so loaded that there’s no getting round it, but for me it has the opposite effect.