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"I stopped making my hair black. See -- it's turning white?" Joon pointed at his salt-and-pepper hair, now more salt than pepper. "I started dyeing my hair because my son's friend asked if I was his grandfather. My son is having trouble fitting into the United States, I wanted to make it easier for him by dyeing my hair black. I don't want his friends wondering why his father is so old. But I am old, my hair is white, and I think it would be better for him to have a father who didn't worry so much about appearances."
 

Joon's wife, Myong-sook, smiled a tight, private smile and squeezed her husband's hand. ^[1]
 

They're such a cool couple, I thought to myself. When I reach that stage in my life, I want to share that level of comfortable warmth with somebody and walk with that kind of calm self-assurance. (And besides, white hair suited Joon well).
 

These feelings of good-will were further warmed by the thermos of insanely strong ginger-and-date tea that Myong-sook had brewed to eradicate my cold. I took another sip, almost wincing in pain as the ginger marched down my throat into my lungs where it worked its cold-kicking magic. (For the curious, here's the recipe: chop up a palm-sized hunk of ginger and dozen dates and toss into a medium saucepan of boiling water. Wait ten minutes, then strain and add honey). ^[2]
 

I met Joon during the retreat center's first meeting for worship. After the period of silent prayer/meditation/centering, neighbors greet one another. I shook hands left, right, and then turned around and held out my hand to the Korean man with graying hair and slightly hollow cheeks. He returned my smile and softly but firmly clamped my hand between both his large hands, smooth over callouses. There was a small pause as he gave me a small nod, and then, with great gravity and gentleness, he shook my hand three times.
 

His handshake and smile were given with the depth and consideration you reserve for your lifetime friends. There was a fleeting moment of deep connection. I just knew that he was one of those rare men who can unconditionally like other people, and without saying a word be friends. ^[3]
 

Throughout the rest of the year, Joon and I always greeted each other with tremendous warmth. We never spoke much. Perhaps it was due to shyness on my part, or perhaps neither of us felt a need to waste words reiterating what we already knew.
 

Joon speaks very slowly, partially out of unfamiliarity with spoken English but largely out of a need to say precisely the right thing. He is usually quiet, but when he speaks, people listen. ^[4]
 

Granted, it takes a while to learn how to listen to Joon. In a class on Quaker writers, Joon's commentary was invariably insightful and referenced a tremendous body of literature, but he delivered his thoughts outside the cadence of normal conversation. He would slowly deliver a sentence and then pause. A long pause. Without a trace of impatience or embarrassment, he searched for the right way to structure his next point. He would refer to notes in front of him, write a word down, smile, and then speak the next sentence.
 

Normally, I have no patience for people who wreck the train of conversation. I want my conversations to flow in a rapid sequence of point-counterpoints. But I learned to accept and enjoy Joon's contributions. It is a rare pleasure to hear somebody speak without a plan and yet think through everything he says, completely un-self-conscious and with great dignity.
 

When we first started our chores at the retreat center, it was suggested, with the slightest hint of humor, that we not think of the chores as an unpleasant obligation but instead as another opportunity for spiritual growth. The program residents went so far as to quote some famous writer describe transforming the mundane task of dishwashing into a great life-affirming exercise. Luxuriate in the sensations that are normally lost when you put your mind on autopilot: the silky sensation of pressing your arms into warm, sudsy water, the pleasure of seeing debris detach from a plate, the detached appreciation of the ebb and flow of dishes in the dirty pile stack.
 

I guess that's all fine and well for washing dishes, but it's much harder to find serenity while washing pots. I guess if ours had been a Catholic retreat community, washing pots would be the contemplative chore reserved for Jesuits. A vast pile of bowls, pots, gigantic cast-iron skillets and pans would accumulate in the course of cooking for sixty-plus people, and it was our job to scrub every bit of crusted, burned cheese or chicken grease from the corner of each pan without breaking anything, bashing ourselves silly, or taking from now until Kingdom Come. The cleaning and disinfecting sinks are crammed into a corner, so you face the complex challenge of reaching into a deep sink and lifting thirty pound iron pots filled with water up two feet to balance on the edge of the sink while you yourself are bouncing on one foot, wedged between a table, each other, and various hanging implements.
 

Each pots-washing team develops is own particular rhythm. My group was fast and furious, taking delight in its carefully structured plan of attack on grease and efficient bowl stacking order. I hacked at dirty spots and skimmed over clean ones. I wielded a wicked piece of steel wool, a mean sponge, and when occasion required it, a brutal pick.
 

My best friend Will shared post-dinner pots-washing duty with Joon. He often joked that, like or not, Joon was forcing this chore to be the heart of Will's daily contemplative practice.
 

"Chuck my man, Joon is slow. Slow, slow, slooooow," Will ranted. "Sometimes he spends five minutes cleaning a pan," and here he pantomimed the precise movements of a man methodically following a pattern that was guaranteed to rub steel wool in every possible direction over every square inch of the pan, "but he really takes pleasure and pride in it, so I can't really say anything. Some days it drives me nuts, some days it's relaxing. Sometimes I'm there for an extra half hour."
 

Towards the end of the year, Joon was asked to share his history and spiritual journey with the community.
 

He prefaced his history by talking briefly about his experience with Christianity. He encountered Christian teachings when he was in his late teens. It was a source of great comfort when his parents, and then several close friends, died. Since then, "I've always tried to keep Jesus Christ with me." He tried being a preacher for a while but found that it didn't suit him because he wanted to encourage individual seeking rather than push a particular dogma. So he entered academia and started teaching at the university.
 

It must have been a heady time to be a teacher. The corruption and militarization of following the Korean war seemed to draw to a close when the despotic president Rhee was ousted by nationwide protest. But power simply shifted into more subtle hands that gradually used the excuses of stability and capital to justify clamping down on potential dissent. Academics, mistrusted for their liberal sympathies and role in student movements, were arrested one by one.
 

Joon and his wife were thrown into prison.
 

The first few years were Joon's hardest. The prison wasn't terrible as such things go -- he had enough food and the guards weren't sadists -- but the mind-crushing isolation, lack of stimulus, and atmosphere of shame wore him down. He missed Myong-sook terribly.
 

He found refuge in contemplation. During the long, quiet mornings he would delve into the spiritual struggles, doubts, and communion that are unique to each person, but accessible to everyone. (He says that he now sometimes finds himself missing the simplicity of prison mornings.) I think he must have developed or discovered the kernel of quiet spiritual dignity that makes him impervious to loneliness, isolation, and mockery.
 

It was not enough for the government to simply imprison academics, it also wanted to rehabilitate the prisoners' minds. They needed to believe the correct pro-military, pro-capitalist, pro-democracy (democracy: the single Democratic Republican party) ideology. The wardens didn't crassly beat the prisoners, but instead appealed to innate desires for dignity, for having an authority you can respect and trust, and for being respected.
 

One day, all the political prisoners were gathered. They were told that those who confessed their crimes of communism and moral corruption would receive better treatment and possible release, and those who refused would be isolated. Along with this offer came the judgement of shame upon men who refused this chance to rehabilitate themselves.
 

Joon wanted to stand with those would not confess to false crimes in this campaign of humiliation, but thinking of his wife, confessed.
 

There's more than one way to take a stand. He proposed that he lead a Bible study group for the unrepentant men. Since the narrow strain of Christianity known to the political establishment encouraged respect for authority and opposed communism, Joon was granted a two-hour weekly meeting.
 

As promised, Joon led the men in Bible study with a strong emphasis on the New Testament. He taught the men that Christ was a poor man who was spat at by the rest of society for taking radical stands on the importance of all individuals, equality and class structure. It is more important for a person to obey personal morals than to follow temporal authority, we are loved, there is a possible personal connection to the divine, and there are causes are worth dying for because our righteousness matters. Joon also touched on equally selective portions of Old Testament scripture; Psalms about enduring injustice, prophets declaiming the wickedness of nations that crush their poor, and above all else, a world-view in which we are responsible for loving one another and loving the god who loves us.
 

In short, Joon didn't preach the God of mainstream religion. He pulled a subversive message of self-empowerment and dignity from the text, and tossed it like a life-line to the prisoners. Their suffering had meaning, they were sane in an insane world of prisons and guards and oppression, and their unrelenting stand mattered. The men, who weren't necessarily Christian, quickly realized what Joon was offered and discussed their imprisonment and isolation with one another in carefully chosen Biblical terms.
 

(This episode is doubly remarkable because Joon, in subverting the text, reinforced his own Christian understanding by grasping at the truly radical and challenging teachings that are ignored in many churches).
 

Joon was keenly aware that he would be executed if anyone even vaguely acquainted with Christianity heard his species of Bible study. When asked about this, Joon just shrugged. "I half-expected them to find out and shoot me each time I went. But I knew it was what I had to do."
 

On the rare occasions when the dozing guard in the corner of the room fell conclusively asleep, Joon dropped all pretenses and quietly gave the men messages, rumors, and reports on the life of the prison.
 

Joon was unexpectedly released after ten years. But his wife was still in prison. He didn't know where she was, whether she was still alive, or anything at all.
 

Eventually, a prisoner who had been in the same prison as Myong Sook contacted him and told him that she was, to the best of her knowledge, still alive. She also told him where in the prison, roughly, she was being held.
 

He and his friends were powerless to do anything. They couldn't send letters, they couldn't just speak to the warden, and they didn't have any powerful political allies.
 

So they sang. Once a week, they gathered on the hill closest to Myong Sook's cell and sang her favorite songs. During the rest of the week, Joon worked to organize student protests and to publicize the gross injustices committed in the name of security and progress.
 

After 13 terrible years of separation, Myong Sook was released. Joon told her that he had sang against hope that she would know he was still there for her. She replied that she had heard the songs and had hoped against hope that they were for her.
 

Our retreat community held a half hour of worship each morning. We met in silence and stayed in silence until someone was moved to speak. I enjoyed the feeling of groundedness that came from meeting for worship, but begrudged its early hour. In my world, contemplation should be restricted to a reasonable timeframe, like between 11am and 8pm. It certainly shouldn't start before the first cup of coffee can kick in.
 

Midway through an especially hazy meeting, Joon stood up and announced, "I just took a nap."
 

My fuzzy attention snapped to focus. This was a peculiar thing to say in worship. You're not supposed to announce that you're asleep while ostensibly praying or meditating; it's one of those embarrassing things that happen but which everyone agrees to tastefully ignore. But Joon had just said this in his typically solid, pondering, unembarrassed manner.
 

"I love taking naps during meeting for worship." He paused. (I loved the way he delivered lines that were both deadpan comedy and also serious). ^[5] "I've not been able to really sleep for the past," he paused, counting, "twenty years. When I was in prison, I had nightmares and was lonely. And then I was an activist and was always busy fighting for important causes, and was too busy to rest. And then I came here, and I can finally relax. There are no more battles to fight, at least not right now. Recently, I felt so peaceful in meeting that I let myself take a nap, and when I woke up I said to myself, 'Joon, now you can finally rest.' Sometimes -- sometimes it's good to just sleep, and sleeping in meeting can be the best sleep."
 

cgroom: Thanks to everyone for their comments on the previous draft. I'm still a newbie at writing character portraits. This hasn't changed very much, really; there's a new intro, various word changes, a few new lines, a few lines removed. I wanted to try out Alecia's idea of making this more fragementary, but will save that for a future draft. For now, I tried to insert myself into this more strongly in a few places. It's not a major rewrite, but I'd love feedback on whether these small change make much of a difference, or if something more drastic is called for to make this a better portrait. j_moody: whoa, baby! chuck's got some mad flow goin' on here! Chuck-- your voice is much clearer in this revision. Excellent job. the changes create a definite velocity in the prose, esp. the new first scene. keep it up, man! samira: Chuck, I think that this is truly amazing. I might try to make parts of it more imagistic in order to give a better emotional sense of Joon. I need to think more about what I mean by that, becasue I don't mean big flowy metaphors or anything, just a bit more texture. Let me think and get back to you. Add comment