{"id":5831,"date":"2010-12-10T15:41:41","date_gmt":"2010-12-10T21:41:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/2010\/12\/10\/liu-xiaobo-and-the-cross\/"},"modified":"2016-11-10T21:06:51","modified_gmt":"2016-11-11T03:06:51","slug":"liu-xiaobo-and-the-cross","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/2010\/12\/10\/liu-xiaobo-and-the-cross\/","title":{"rendered":"Liu Xiaobo and the Cross"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today the 2010 Nobel Prizes were given, and the prize for peace awarded to Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese poet and literary critic now serving an eleven-year prison sentence in the People\u2019s Republic of China for his pro-democracy activities.<\/p>\n

Xiaobo is not a Christian (at least I could not find any evidence that he is). What to make, therefore, of several Christian references in an extract from one of his poems reprinted on the op-ed page of the New York Times, \u201cExperiencing Death\u201d?<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/12\/09\/opinion\/09liu.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss<\/a><\/p>\n

He speaks of fleeing the era of Christ\u2019s birth, of being unable to face the \u201cblinding vision on the cross\u201d:<\/p>\n

Faraway place
\nI\u2019ve exiled my life to
\nthis place without sun
\nto flee the era of Christ\u2019s birth
\nI cannot face the blinding vision on the cross
\nFrom a wisp of smoke to a little heap of ash
\nI\u2019ve drained the drink of the martyrs, sense spring\u2019s
\nabout to break into the brocade-brilliance of myriad flowers<\/p>\n

Then later, he speaks of not experiencing death again once having died; this strikes me as an allusion to Romans 6:<\/p>\n

Even if I know
\ndeath\u2019s a mysterious unknown
\nbeing alive, there\u2019s no way to experience death
\nand once dead
\ncannot experience death again
\nyet I\u2019m still
\nhovering within death
\na hovering in drowning
\nCountless nights behind iron-barred windows
\nand the graves beneath starlight
\nhave exposed my nightmares<\/p>\n

I cannot pretend to understand the inwardness of Chinese poetry. But Xiaobo\u2019s words did arrest me and raise a question. We speak so easily and frequently of life and death in our Christian prayer and liturgy. Do we domesticate it? The poet\u2019s vision, the outsider\u2019s insight, the word from prison\u2014spoken by a non-believer\u2014may help believers to regain a sense of the awful power of the story we often tell so glibly.<\/p>\n

The \u201cblinding vision on the cross\u201d speaks of a reality that cannot be domesticated, and still presents humanity with decisive choices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some thoughts on Christian references in the poem “Experiencing Death” by Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[275,187],"tags":[602,590,591],"class_list":["post-5831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funeralsburial","category-social-justice","tag-liu-xiaobo","tag-poetry","tag-the-cross"],"yoast_head":"\nLiu Xiaobo and the Cross - Home<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/2010\/12\/10\/liu-xiaobo-and-the-cross\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Liu Xiaobo and the Cross - 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