孝顺 (xiàoshùn) / window panes in a Korean church
I never grew up with God.
Growing up in China, there wasn't much emphasis on religion. Apparently imperialism and the Monroe Doctrine did not reach the Middle Kingdom as effectively as other parts of Asia. But now, at least once a year, l attend church with my husband’s family near Boston.
My mother-in-law, father-in-law, my husband, his sister, his brother, and me — the six of us crab-walk along the pews, clumsily shuffling to our seats, trying our best to prevent coats and clothes from rustling too loudly in the solemnity of the space. In succession, we bow and wave to familiar faces before we sit down, facing Jesus framed by six beautiful silver arches.
And the sermon begins. In Korean.
If you’ve read earlier essays, then you know I’m Chinese. I don’t speak a lick of Korean. And since I did not grow up religious, I don’t understand a thing during these sermons, linguistically or ritualistically.
And so, to pass the time, I count things.
In the past six years of dating and marrying my husband, I’ve counted almost everything in this high, drafty church with its high, lofty ceilings. The people attending, the pictures hanging on the walls (fourteen in total, for the fourteen stations of Christ), the pews, the rafters on the ceilings, the window panes on this church.
Seven hundred and sixty window panes in total.
When I run out of things to count, I try my hardest not to fidget. To scratch my nose. To glance at my watch and check the time. I know only minutes have gone by, anyways. Sometimes I try to listen to the Korean, ears perking up when I hear a term I recognize.
I can barely see my husband and his siblings out of the corner of my eyes. Since they also speak very little Korean, I imagine they are thinking the exact same things.
When I feel like I can't bear it any longer — when I feel the restless urge to just run up and down the pew, imagining the look of the bewildered priest — or when I want to scroll the phone burning a hole in my pocket, those are the moments I glance down the row of our pew.
At their mother. My mother-in-law. Our Umma.
I see her, eyes closed, head bowed in prayer. She does not need to count anything in this church.
“God is what saved her,” my husband told me, a long time ago. She was a first generation immigrant who raised three kids alone in a foreign country essentially, away from family, community, and her own language, while her husband, my husband’s father, worked.
God is who helped her through troubled times, God is someone she speaks to every day, in prayer and in meditation. God has a seat at our dining table and a presence that is always acknowledged when we are together.
I remember how important God is to her. Why we are here in this high, drafty church with its high, lofty ceilings.
And my desire to fidget calms. My eyes shift away from the window panes, the lofty ceilings, the pews, and realign back to the six silver arches and the priest, as he continues to speak in a language I cannot possibly understand.
His siblings and I don’t talk about the church visits much — with each other or other people. We simply know it’s something we do anytime we visit home. It’s expected, like brushing our teeth or washing our hands.
It’s all for Umma.
“For” is a bit forced really — it implies obligation. She’s never forced us to go. We simply all pile into the car when it’s time.
There is a Chinese phrase that describes what we are doing here, as her daughters and sons. Another one of those beautiful phrases impossible to translate because it carries deep, cultural significance, and philosophy.
It is this phrase 孝顺 (xiào shùn).
孝 (xiào): filial piety or obedience
顺 (shùn): to obey; to follow; to arrange; to make reasonable; along; favorable
The basic English translation is “filial piety,” which always makes me cringe. It sounds so academic and pretentious to me in English. It is anything but that.
It’s the most casual, humble, down to earth, miniscule “thing” there is. 孝顺 (xiào shùn) means to reciprocate the care and love our parents have given to us. To honor and respect the sacrifices they’ve made to help us thrive.
孝顺 (xiào shùn) is the little things we do for the people we love. The little things we do to make them happy, sometimes at the expense of our own comfort.
It is a beautiful term with beautiful meaning. Like 仁 (rén), it is a fundamental virtue in Confucian philosophy and Chinese culture.
The character 孝 (xiào) is made up of an upper and a lower part. The upper part comes from the character lao (老, lǎo), which means ‘old’. The second part is the character 子 (pinyin: zi), which means ‘son’. 孝 (xiào) visually represents an elder being carried by a son.
顺 (shùn) on the other hand, is the simplified version of the original, traditional character 順, also pronounced the same way. The “川” on the left represents river, like flowing water along a current. The “頁” on the right indicates head, and originally referred to someone who bowed his or her head in compliance. Hence, the idea of following along — to flow, with head bowed in deference.
When these characters form 孝顺 (xiào shùn), what I see is the flow of respect carried down from generation to generation, that we carry with us by honoring and taking care of the older generations. What I see really, is love.
And doing things for others, in the name of love.
And when you look closely around you, you see it exists in so many ways:
I hear it in my friend as she extends her arm for her blind mother to hook her hand in the crook of her arm; the way she mutters directions in a low voice that only her mother can hear, to respect her mother’s remaining independence. The way she guides her mother’s walking stick into her mother's outstretched hand, almost like a silent dance. Each move, choreographed and anticipated by the next.
I taste it in the food my friend and I help make for her sick mother, offering her a menu of choices that she painstakingly creates in the kitchen — she who runs her own business with barely enough time to cook for herself, spends hours in the kitchen preparing foods for her mother that can help her recover faster from surgery, when the hospital food makes her mother more sick.
And I feel it when I'm in this church.
This is our silent love for Umma. This Confucian value that is at the center of everything we do.
I look over at my husband and his siblings, now including his brother’s girlfriend that also does not speak Korean — their eyes straight ahead, posture straight as an arrow. This chosen family of mine. And I am washed over by a feeling of such pride and affection.
他们好孝顺啊. "They are so filially pious."
It does not carry any of the beauty of the Chinese meaning, not to mention it sounds like such an awkward English phrase to say to someone.
To this day, I've never told the fellow “kids” this phrase that I think of every time we shuffle clumsily along the church pews — I never know how to put it into words without feeling shy.
Through the sermons, in between counting of the arches, the rafters, the window panes, I’ll stop and think of how to express the love I feel when we all sit here, together.
But no English translation could ever convey this type of love. It is a quiet type of love, there are no grand gestures or loud declarations here.
I love that they love their mother this way, silently, in a Korean church, perhaps counting each of the window panes too.
That’s beautiful. I can see the parallels in family values. Thank you so much for sharing!
This was so beautiful to read, thank you for sharing and for the language lesson. One of the 10 Commandments in the Biblical Old Testament is to honor your mother and father. I believe 孝顺 is what God meant by that.