[Vnbiz] A Reflection on Christmas

[Hong-Phong_Pho at ita.doc.gov]

Dear anh Hoanh,
Thanks for your inspiring Christmas message.  I share your beliefs.
I would like add some thoughts to your discuss of  poverty/wealth to help 
clarify my own thinking on the subject.
Here, Buddha's middle way works very well.
 When referring to rich and poor, it is important to differentiate  and 
specify if it's material and/or spiritual.
Abject material poverty is no good, neither is excessive wealth that takes 
away too much from others.
Extreme material poverty has very little to recommend itself, and it is 
extremely difficult for a very wealthy man to see the World in a balanced 
way.  But in between the two extremes, where most of us find ourselves, I 
have generally found an inverse relationship between material and 
spiritual wealth/poverty.
The clearest evidence of this can be observed when one is visiting places 
in the World as a traveler (not necessarily true for a tourist).  It is 
almost always those with less who are more hospitable and willing to help. 
 They who have very little seem to be more generous toward strangers, 
especially strangers in need.  Test it out the next time you are away from 
home, among people you don't know.
The Christmas story appear to recognize this "principle" as well.  As 
returning refugees, Mary and Joseph didn't have the resources to pay for 
accomodation in their own ancestral town and was offered shelter in a 
"barn", something like a "chuong heo" in the Vietnamese context.  The 
first people to visits were poor shepherds.  Only three "kings" who were 
"wisemen" were able to find Jesus with special guidance by following the 
eastern star, a special sign.
The story is indeed the greatest ever told, and we are about to retell it 
for the 2006th time.
Merry Christmas everyone.  HPP



"Tran Dinh Hoanh" <tdhoanh at gmail.com> 
Sent by: vnbiz-bounces at mail.saigon.com
12/17/2006 09:50 PM
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[Vnbiz] A Reflection on Christmas






[ Vietnam Business Forum ]

Dear CACC,
 
Christmas is only a week a way.  This is my favorite season of the year. I 
grew up within the Christmas tradition of stars, lights, colors, music, 
rock cave, manager, Christmas tree, midnight mass, reveillon and, in later 
years, Christmas parties.  And peace and love. "Glory to God on high, 
peace on earth for man of good will."  Woman too :-) 
 
These are all wonderful, but let me share with you some personal feeling. 
Christmas is the birthday of Jesus and he is my model. There are many 
people I admire, among them Siddartha and Jesus.  But I identify myself 
with Jesus more. Siddarthat is too calm, too cool, too controlled for me. 
Jesus, on the other hand, is intensely passionate, intensely loving, and 
he is willing to be nailed for his teaching of love.  That is the kind of 
guy I love to follow. 
 
So now that his birthday is coming, I think a bit about how significant 
the birth of one of the greatest teachers of mankind is. I realize that 
Jesus family was poor and that he was born poor and that the first people 
who were informed of his birth were the poor shepherds in the field. That, 
by itself, is very significant.  If you tell me, "Hoanh, I used to pick up 
garbage to find things to recycle when I was in primary school," that 
would be a very significant fact to me and you would immediately stand out 
in my heart.  But if we put into the Jesus story a little religious 
element--that Jesus is the Son of God as the Christian says or the prophet 
of God as the Muslim says--then the point about the poor becomes one 
hundred times more significant--that the Son of God has chosen to come 
down on earth among the poor. 
 
I don't believe in being poor.  I think poverty is a bad thing.  I think 
prosperity is a good thing.  I believe that God, our loving father, would 
prefer us to be rich rather than poor.  I believe that being prosperous in 
business is a very good way to help the poor (have job). I do not believe 
in poverty. I believe that poverty is a very good ground to breed diseases 
and crimes.   I think poverty should be wiped out of the face of the 
earth. 
 
But the fact remains that there are so many poor people in the world. That 
may be due to human stupidity, i.e., our inability to have a more equal 
world, or our greed, i.e., people with power are not willing to share 
their riches.  Whatever the reason is, the fact remains the same:  There 
are too many poor people around us. 
 
So in the Christmas reason, shouldn't we take a minute to think about the 
poor?  Just think about them.  Being poor is never a nice thing, but 
shouldn't we "come down" among the poor once in awhile, so that our heart 
will steer us into doing business, doing politics, doing economics, doing 
education in a way that may benefit some of the poor out there?  Then 
maybe some day God will no longer see the need to send a daughter down to 
get our attention about the poor. 
 
Let's try to be rich while not forgettng our poor.
 
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
 
Hoanh
 
-- 
Tran Dinh Hoanh, LLB, JD
Attorney of Law
Washington DC _______________________________________________
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