Discovering 中 (zhōng)

I'd encourage anyone to read the Givenses' God Who Weeps. It portrays a "friendly" God and does so from a wonderfully broad range of sources. It could probably be just as well titled "The God who is our friend."

I have no real idea or certainty whether the Givenses are right in their portrayal of God. But it's "truth that works" and leads to more good. Which in turn, I believe, leads me to more "godliness."

My only slight critique of the book is that the world doesn't extend much further east than Athens and Jerusalem. The book seems to be setting out to show that the distilled wisdom of the world is found in Mormonism. But they dip only into the wisdom of the west and near east. I'd have enjoyed a little of the wisdom of the countries further round to the right of the map; especially as I was reading the book while on holiday in Thailand.

Of course Asia is in our East; "over there" and out of sight and mind for many. It's naturally not the case if you're looking at an older map of the world made by China, in which case the Americas are in the far east. The Chinese for 'China' is 中国(zhōng guó), meaning "middle: 中," "country: 国"

"Zhōng": (中) is one of my favourite Chinese characters. A simple symbol to remind me that wherever "I" stand, the rest of the world extends in every direction from me. My petulant teenage self was right: the world really does revolve around me. Just as it does for each single 7 billion of us. The fusion of Daoism and Confucianism in Chinese philosophy understands the important balance of "I" and "we." I've heard it called "individualistic collectivism."

We are always at the middle (中) of our own experience. Anything that falls outside of the mental/physical space around "I" is meaningless. It might as well not exist because, for the individual, it does not. 

Elder Uchtdorf put it far more eloquently:

"There is a sublime truth behind the idea that we are always in the middle. If we look at our location on a map, we are tempted to say we are at a beginning. But if we look more closely, wherever we are is simply in the middle of a larger place.

As it is with space, so it is with time. We may feel we are at the beginning or end of our lives, but when we look at where we are against the backdrop of eternity—when we realize that our spirit has existed for time beyond our capacity to measure and, because of the perfect sacrifice and Atonement of Jesus Christ, that our soul will exist for an eternity to come—we can recognize that we are truly in the middle.

Being always in the middle means that the game is never over, hope is never lost, defeat is never final. For no matter where we are or what our circumstances, an eternity of beginnings and an eternity of endings stretch out before us.

We are always in the middle."

http://www.lds.org/liahona/2012/07/always-in-the-middle?lang=eng

中