作者的大弟孙康成到Jim Ziegler 的坟上扫墓

Alta Mesa 墓園的故事

作者：孫康宜

在加州史丹佛大學（Stanford University）校園的附近，有一個清靜而美麗的墓園， 那就是擁有一百多年歷史的Alta Mesa Memorial Park （建於1904 年）。 我們經常去掃墓，因為我父母就葬在那兒。這次我在回東岸的前一天，特别又和家人去了一趟墓園。但主要是為了和那裏的 counselor （參事）James R. Ziegler先生（我們稱他為Jim）會面，想藉此更進一步瞭解該墓園的歷史背景。

“在這裏工作，我每天都能看到生命的奇跡”，Jim 一見我們就微笑地說，“ 讓我特別感動的是，我發現每個人的背後都有一個故事（Everybody got a story）。”

他邊說邊領我們走到一個名為 “Dry Creek Garden” （乾溪園）的地方。 我们在一個長凳上坐定之後，他又繼續說道：“我每天一方面看見了生命的最傷痛處(life in its raw form)， 一方面也感到生命的可貴，因為能在世上多活一天，就是上帝給我們的禮物”。他說這些話時，眼睛透出了溫馨的靈性光芒。

我一時按捺不住內心的好奇，迫不及待地提出了一個問題：

“是什麼原因使你最初決定要在墓園裏工作的?  在這裏你每天都會看見死亡，難道心裏有時不會感到沮喪（depressing）嗎？”

“當然，”Jim 慢條斯理地回答，“如果沒有信仰，一個人在這種工作環境中一定會感到沮喪的。 然而，我的使命正是要幫助別人去體驗並走過那段憂傷(grieving) 的旅程 ……。這是一種感召（calling）， 我覺得非要承擔不可。 我感到很幸運，每天能有機會見證生命， 還能得到工作上的報酬 （get paid）。我知道，這樣的工作不容易做得完美，也不是每個人都能做的。 但我深信，只要本著身為上帝的僕人（servant）的態度, 自己就不必太操心，因為凡事都可以讓上帝去管那後果（result）， 那麽對我也就不難勝任了……” 

“但可不可以請你順便談談你個人的背景，你是什麼時候開始有 37 40556 37 15046 0 0 1952 0 0:00:20 0:00:07 0:00:13 2982這種使命感的？”我忍不住打斷了他的話。

對於這個問題，Jim 顯然感到興趣， 甚至有些激動。於是他告訴我們， 他多年前在西班牙時， 經歷到了一次靈性上的起死回生。  在那之後， 他才開始有一種“感召”。 他原來畢業于Kent State University 的商學系，後來留在母校任職行政官，又獲得教育行政方面的碩士， 可以說事業方面蒸蒸日上。但那次西班牙經驗徹底地改變了他。他感覺自己已成了神的僕人，有一種使命感，開始想要幫助面臨死亡的人， 為他們進行靈性上的輔導工作。後來他在殯儀館裏實地工作了三年， 處理各种喪事。1983 年後他遂轉到Alta Mesa 墓園工作，直到如今。  那天，我一面聽Jim 講述自己的故事，一面想起神學家A. W. Tozer （陶恕）所說過的話。在他的《呼召的奧秘》一文中， 陶恕曾說，被蒙召的過程“好像是開進另一世界的一扇門，我們若從這門進去，便進入另外一個境地。因為從此門進入的新世界是神權的世界，不是人權的世界，人在那世界裏，乃為奴僕，不是為主人。”（見《超然的經歷》，王峙譯 ； 香港：宣道出版社，1986 年版，31 頁。 ） 據我看來，Jim 就是這樣的一位神僕。

《超然的經歷》，王峙譯

但事實上，Jim 強調，他的工作並沒使他遠離人的世界。相反，他比從前更有機會融入人們的實際生活。由於他的工作关系，他得以認識許多不同背景的人， 因而覺得每日都活得很有意義。 有關他的工作和別人的關係，他經常用”grace” （感恩）一個詞來形容。 因為通過別人的故事，他可以更加瞭解自己的人生意義。

Jim 對“人”的普遍興趣使他特別關心其他國家的人。例如，這些年來，通過處理喪事，他發現不少來自中國的基督徒曾經為了他們的宗教信仰付出了極大的犧牲和代價，他們留下的許多動人故事都讓他感到肅然起敬。同時， 他也積極參與過羅馬尼亞的基督教地下工作，先後於1988-1989 年間兩度前往羅馬尼亞，與那兒的基督徒作靈性上的交流。有關羅馬尼亞的“地下”基督徒，他一直對 “他們那種不尋常的靈性” （their amazing spirit）感到佩服——這是因為，這些羅馬尼亞人雖然什麼都沒有，但他們卻樂意付出他們僅有的一切來服務他人。換言之，他們物質上雖然貧窮，精神上卻十分富有。

但多年來的工作經驗却使Jim 深深地悟到：其实世上每個人都有極其“富有”的一面。  因此Jim每天都學到了有關“個人”的精彩故事。其中有幾個故事特別讓他難忘。 例如，幾年前有一位男士到Alta Mesa 墓園來， 說要尋找他舅父的墳墓（那舅父死于1914 年11月）。後來他終於找到了舅父的墳，但發現那墳上並無任何標誌——沒想到， 那墳居然在長達八十五年的期間，一直沒有墓碑。 後來，那人終於在2000 年1 月21月那天正式為他的舅父立碑，並寫上姓名， 還加上一句讓人感動的碑文：“感謝您把我們帶到美國來”（Thanks for bringing us to the USA）。原來，那舅父于十九世紀期間從義大利的西西里島來到了美國，一直住在加州的Mountain View 城裏， 最後經過許多努力，終於把亲戚们都從義大利接了過來 。所以，藉著這個尋墳的插曲，Jim 漸漸認識了一個移民家族的辛酸史。

另外，在一個偶然的機會裏，他從家屬的口中得知，有一位葬在Alta Mesa 墓園的人， 從前曾為電影 “Gold Finger” 設計過影片中所用的那架飛機。 其他还有许多科技界的名人（如David Packard）、運動界的名人（如Herold Ruel , 1896-1963） 、著名作家（如Charles Gilman Smith Norris, 1881-1945）、音樂家 (如Ronald C. “Pigpen” McKernan, 1945-1973)、影視界人物（如Willian Challee, 1904-1989）以及教育界人物（如史丹佛大學校長Ray Lyman Wilbur， 1875-1949 ）等也都有他們個別的精彩故事。尤其讓他感動的是，以建立Hewlett-Packard 電腦公司出名的David Packard （1912-1996）卻為自己的墳墓選擇了最謙卑的紀念方式。 以他那身為富豪的身份，他居然沒有為自己預備一個富麗堂皇而高大的墓碑。所以，今天在Alta Mesa墓園裏，我們只看見David Packard 和妻子 Lucile Salter Packard （1914-1987）的名字頗為低調地出現在地面上的小石碑 （markers）上， 上頭除了兩人的生卒年份之外，沒有刻上任何歌功頌德的文字。

我特別提醒Jim，我說這個有關墓碑形式的問題，可能還牽涉到文化上的因素。例如，傳統中國人大多喜歡採用站立的墓碑， 但那只是表示個人對祖宗的尊敬——因為榮宗耀祖乃是一般中國人孝順的表現。其实Jim早已注意到中國人這種“高立墓碑的願望”（the desire to rise above the ground）。但Jim 說，这并非沒有例外。例如，有一年（在1980年代中期）大約有二十多個中國基督徒到Alta Mesa 買墳地，準備將來要葬在同一個地區，但他們強調， 只要买那橫臥地上的石碑（即所謂 “flat markers” ） ，不要买高高立起的墓碑。據Jim 個人的猜測，這可能是因為這些人想跳出傳統中國習俗的緣故吧。 

然而，在Alta Mesa 墓園裏，不論是平面的石碑或是高立的墓碑都给人一种诗意的感觉， 這也是這個墓園十分特别的地方。比如說，有一位華人在他过世妻子的平面石碑上刻了以下的詩句：I TRUST IN THE LORD AND IN HIS WORD I PUT MY HOPE。 那句詩本來自《詩篇》第130篇第5節：“我等候耶和華，我的心等候/ 我也仰望他的話。”另外， 在一個美國婦人的高立墓碑上則刻有《詩篇》第42篇的開頭章節: “As the deer pants for streams of water so my soul pants for thee O God. My Soul thirsts for God, for the living God” （“神啊，我的心切慕你/ 如鹿切慕溪水/ 我的心渴想神，就是永生神”）。 至於眾所周知的《詩篇》23 篇則不断出現在各种不同形式的墓碑上。

生前Jim Ziegler 经常在新坆区朗诵诗篇121：“我要向山举目……”。

總之，Alta Mesa 墓園到處都有《詩篇》的影子。這也使得Jim 經常把墓園裏幾個不同的地區和聖經裏的《詩篇》章節連在一起思考。例如他說，這墓園裏的許多角落——包括我父母的墓地那兒 （在Hillview Drive 那個方向）——時時都充滿了陽光的普照，所以不論是清晨、中午、或是夕陽的時刻， 當他走在墓園的草地上時，都會很自然地聯想到《詩篇》19篇裏的陽光意象。此外，其他區域也会讓他想起《詩篇》裏的個別篇章——例如第90、121、30、126 等章節。 他自己尤其喜歡《詩篇》第121篇， 每回領家屬到墓園的“新墳區”去掃墓時，總是一面望著遠山，一面朗誦那詩篇的句子: “ I lift up my eyes to the hills/ where does my help come from?/ My help comes from the Lord/ the Maker of heaven and earth” (“我要向山舉目/我的幫助從何而來？/ 我的幫助/從造天地的耶和華而來……”) 。 那天，Jim 又一次為我們朗誦這段詩句，也順便介紹那座面向墓園的遠山。總之，《詩篇》裏的詩句及其相映成趣的自然景色已成了他每天享受的“荒漠甘泉”。 

那天在說再見之前，Jim 特別帶我們去看墓園裏一座名為Faith （信心）的大碑像， 那碑像就在墓園進門不遠的地方。據說，那座名為“信心”的大碑像原來坐落于史丹佛大學的校園中， 但後來學校當局決定不想要了， 最後不知怎的，就流落到了Alta Mesa 墓園。這是一個很有趣的故事。沒想到，連一個碑像的背後也隱藏了这么一個鮮為人知的故事。

走出墓園，我不知不覺自言自語道：這真是一個充滿了故事的墓園。確實，如Jim 所說，每個人都有一個故事。人生的美妙之處就是那一個又一個故事的累積。

（寫於2007 年5 月23日； 載於《宇宙光》， 2007 年十月號）

Cemetery Stories

Kang-i Sun Chang

（translated by Samuel Massie）

Near Stanford University, there is a tranquil cemetery with more than a hundred years of history: Alta Mesa Memorial Park, established in 1904.  My parents are buried there, and we often visit the park to pay our respects.  Once, the day before flying back to the East Coast, I took my family on a special trip to Alta Mesa.  The main point of this particular trip, however, was to meet the cemetery counselor, a man named James R. Ziegler, whom we called Jim.  I hoped to use the opportunity to learn more about the history of the cemetery.

"Working here, I can see miracles of life every single day," Jim said with a smile. "What moves me most is knowing that everybody got a story!"  

As he spoke, Jim led us towards a section of the cemetery called "Dry Creek Garden."  After we had sat down on the long bench, he continued: "Every day I see life in its raw form.  I see how precious life is--'cause to live even one more day on earth is God's gift to us."  As he said these words, his eyes glimmered with warm radiance and vitality.

Unable to resist my curiosity, I asked him a question:

"What made you decide to work in a cemetery in the first place?  Facing death every single day--doesn't it make you depressed sometimes?"

"Of course!" Jim answered casually.  "Without faith, a man would certainly get depressed working in this sort of environment.  But my purpose is to help others experience grief and move past it... it's a kind of calling, and I believe it's mine to carry out.  I feel very lucky!  Every day I get the chance to offer a testament to life, and I get paid for it too!  I know that this job isn't easy to do well, I mean, it's not a job everyone can do.  But I do believe with the bottom of my heart, that as long as I live by the attitude that I'm a servant of God, then nothing bothers me, because God sees that it always works out in the end.  So this isn't hard for me to do..."

"But could I ask you to talk about your own background? When did you start to feel this sense of purpose?" I couldn't help interrupting him.

Jim was clearly interested, even excited by this question.  He told us that many years ago, while he was in Spain, he had experienced a spiritual rebirth.  Only aftewards did he start to feel a kind of "calling."  He had originally graduated from Kent State University with a degree in business.  Afterwards, he had remained at his alma mater as an administrator, earning a master's degree in education administration; his career was beginning to take off.   But the experience in Spain had completely transformed him--he felt that he had been transformed into God's servant, and felt God's calling.  Jim decided that he wanted to help people facing death by providing them with spiritual guidance.  So he spent three years working in a funeral home, performing the varied duties of an undertaker and spiritual counselor.  After 1983, he transferred to Alta Mesa Cemetery, where he has remained ever since.   As I listened to Jim tell his story, I began to recall the words of theologian A. W. Tozer.  In his essay "The Mystery of the Call," Tozer once said that the word “called” as used by Apostle Paul “is like a door opening into another world, and when we enter we shall find ourselves in another world indeed. For the new world into which we pass is the world of God’s sovereign will where the will of man cannot come, or if it comes it is as a dependent and a servant, never as a lord.”  (A. W. Tozer, The Divine Conquest [Uhrichsville, Ohio: Barbour and Company, Inc., 1950], p. 44.) Jim was precisely this kind of servant in my eyes.

True thought this was, Jim stressed that his work had not distanced him from the world of people.  On the contrary, Jim had closer contact with people's real lives than ever before.  Thanks to his job, he was able to meet many people from different backgrounds; as a result, he felt that every day was interesting to live through.  Over and over again, he used the word "grace" to describe his work and its relation to other people, because through the stories of others, he could better understand the meaning of his own life.

Jim's general interest in people caused him to take special interest in people of other countries.  For instance, through his years working as an undertaker, he discovered that many Chinese Christians had paid a great price and made great sacrifices for their religious faith; the moving stories they left behind filled him with deep respect.  At the same time, he had actively supported the work of the underground church in Romania.  Between 1988 and 1989 he traveled to Romania twice for spiritual exchange with local Christians.  Due to the "underground" status of Romanian Christians, he always admired "their amazing spirit," because they still cheerfully gave all they had to serve others, despite having nothing themselves.  That is to say, they were materially poor, but spiritually quite wealthy.

Through many years of experience at the cemetery, Jim reached a deep insight: in reality, every person on earth is blessed with great wealth in some way.  He heard extraordinary personal stories every single day.  But among these stories, a few were particularly unforgettable.  A few years ago, a man arrived at Alta Mesa Cemetery and announced that he was searching for the grave of his great uncle who had died in November 1914.  He found the grave, but it lacked a marker; surprisingly, the grave had never once had a tombstone in its whole 85 years.  Finally, on January 21, 2000, he had a proper tombstone installed with his great uncle's name and a moving inscription underneath: "Thanks for bringing us to the USA."  That great uncle had immigrated from Sicily to America in the 19th century, and settled in Mountain View, CA for the rest of his life.  He eventually succeeded in bringing his family over from Italy, but only after years of backbreaking work.  Through this episode, Jim gradually came to understand the bittersweet stories of immigrants.

Another time, Jim learned through family records that, surprisingly, one man buried in Alta Mesa Cemetery had designed an airplane used in the James Bond movie "Goldfinger.".  The cemetery also held many big names in technology (including David Packard, 1912-1996), famous athletes (including Herold Reult, 1896-1963), authors (including Smith Norris, 1881-1945), musicians (including Ronald C. "Pigpen" McKernan, 1945-1973), movie-makers (including William Challee, 1904-1989), and educators (including Stanford University president Ray Lyman Wilbur, 1875-1949), each of whom had his own remarkable story.  Jim was especially moved that the renowned David Packard, founder of Hewlett-Packard, had chosen a very modest memorial for his grave.  Despite his fame and wealth, Packard had abstained from a towering and splendid gravestone.  On that day visiting Alta Mesa, all we saw of David Packard and his wife Lucile Salter Packard (1914-1987) were two low-key little markers in the ground bearing their names; instead of singing their praises, the markers held only the birth and death dates of the deceased.

I suggested to Jim that variations in gravestone design might have cultural roots.  For instance, the Chinese traditionally use standing gravestones to display their respect for the ancestors, because to honor the ancestors is to show filial piety. In fact, Jim had already noticed this Chinese desire for stand-up graves.  But there were exceptions too.  One year during the mid-1980s, more than 20 Chinese Christians bought up burial spots in Alta Mesa so that they could be buried in the same area, but they had stressed that they preferred the flat markers to tall tombstones.  Jim guessed that they did so to escape from traditional Chinese customs.  

Regardless of the design of the graves, they all have a poetic feel to them; indeed, this is one of the features that makes Alta Mesa so special.  For example, a Chinese-American widower had the following words etched on his wife's tombstone: "I TRUST IN THE LORD AND IN HIS WORD I PUT MY HOPE."  This line comes from Psalm 130, verse 5: "For I trust in Jehovah, my heart trusts him / and in his word I put my hope."  Meanwhile, on the tombstone of one American lady, a line from the opening of Psalm 42 is engraved: "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for thee, O God.  My soul thirsts for God, for the living God."  The universally-known Psalm 23 appears over and over again on all types of grave.

In Alta Mesa Cemetery, the shadows of the Psalms are truly everywhere. They cause Jim to associate particular parts of the cemetery with particular psalms.  As he says, many corners of the cemetery--including the spot where my parents are buried (off Hillview Drive )--are always filled with sunlight; whether morning, noon, or sunset, he naturally thinks of the sunlight in Psalm 19 whenever he walks on the cemetery grass.  Other spots cause Jim to recall other Psalms, including 90, 121, 30, and 128.  Naturally, he especially likes Psalm 121; every time he leads relatives to visit graves in the cemetery's "New Area," he always looks towards the distant mountains and recites these verses: "I lift up my eyes to the hills / where does my help come from? / My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth."  The day we visited, Jim recited the same verses for us as he pointed out the distant mountain.  To JIm, the verses of Psalms and the engaging natural beauty within are like a sweet spring in the desert.

Before we said goodbye, Jim took us aside to see a large statue called "Faith" standing by the cemetery's front gate.  This statue supposedly stood on the Stanford campus once, but after the school authorities decided they no longer wanted it, "Faith" somehow ended up in Alta Mesa Memorial Park.  This too is a remarkable story--in Alta Mesa, even a statue has a story hidden behind it.  

As we left the cemetery, I thought to myself, this cemetery is truly full of stories.  Indeed, as Jim himself said, every single person has a unique story.  The miracle of human life thus lies in the accumulation of these stories, one by one.  

- May 23, 2007

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孙康宜，美国著名华裔汉学家。原籍天津，1944年生于北京，两岁时随家人迁往台湾。1968年移居美国，曾任普林斯顿大学葛斯德东方图书馆馆长。现为耶鲁大学首任Malcolm G.Chance’56 东亚语言文学讲座教授，曾获美国人文学科多种荣誉奖学金。2015年4月当选美国艺术与科学（American Academy of Arts and Sciences）学院院士。2016年被选为台湾中研院院士。

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