Louise's Seoul

Let's go to church together!

This weekend was as expected given that I spent Saturday with Songsu's eccentric (in a good way) family. Songsu's brother is still yellow with Meningitis but is insisting he gets married in November anyway. As a result we all took a trip to downtown Incheon to kit out Songsu, Yongsu and Father in suits for the wedding. After refusing several times I eventually allowed Father to buy me a new skirt, and he would have bought me a handbag too had I not refused flat-out. Afterwards we went to dinner at a kalbi chip where myself and Mother shared a bottle of soju. It was during a pleasant conversation that Mother released the bomb that I had been waiting for her drop for a number of weeks...the subject of CHURCH.

Mother's dream: the whole family together under the holy roof of her local catholic church. A very touchy subject since has been persuading her family almost every weekend for a number of years for them to join her, and everytime Father and the boys refuse. An avid Christian and church-goer she involves herself as much as she can in anything church-related, including being a girl-scout leader, and playing the piano in Church on a sunday. This woman lives and breathes everything that is CHURCH.

Which is fine, except when you are the girlfriend/potential wife of the eldest son, and a non-believer, and she almost begs you to travel 2 1/2 hours on the train from time to time to join her. My explanation of believing in God but not believing in Church did not go down very well. Nor did the idea of having God in my heart whenever I am surrounded by nature and so forth. As the look of deepest disappointment clouded her face I decided to zip it and not dig this particularly dangerous hole any deeper.

As soon as I stopped digging my hole, finding the situation amusing Father started digging his: " I have a bible in my car...where I go God comes with me!" which Mother luckily ignored at the time but maybe he was sent directly to the dog house upon arriving home.

This incident led me to suggest to Songsu that perhaps the family should go, just one time to make her dream to come true, though Songsu thinks that if we do it once she will insist even more. Afterall her efforts and generousity towards me I felt guilty about refusing, but I do not want to lie to her. I hope she will come to understand...

posted by Louise @ 6:23 pm