As with all good beginnings, I suppose, it had to start with the inevitable procession of endings. Last one-on-one with Caleb, last lecture, last weekday lunch cooked by P'Get, last small group. The moments that were the hardest were the special moments with members of the other outreach team, knowing that the element that had founded our friendship would soon come to a close. And it's weird, how in those moments you come to really know what it meant all along, now that you don't have it there anymore to take for granted. Saying goodbye to Austin M. was the hardest, and I will miss our daily dialogues in thick Saskatchewan accents. So it goes, I suppose, in this as is with life. We had a "love-feast" on friday night, a hours-long dinner at Phil and Cindy Porter's house in which we ate actual mexican food and said all of the things we love about each other. (Why don't people do this all the time?) Nothing that was said or done that weekend was really all that important, it only gave greater significance to the months that preceded it.
And soon it too was gone, and the unwavering flow of God, Fate and the siamese wind that had brought me to bangkok began brushing us north to Chiang Rai. The bus drove all night across all of Thailand. While we were still in the northern skirts of Bangkok, stuck in an endless jam of traffic, we could see the standstill life-turned-upside-down that this year's floods had caused. Sections of raised highway had been turned into makeshift cities filled with tents and cars and people and stray dogs.
I sat next to steph, and we found out that doing so would assign us as logistical "buddies" for the weeks to come. She borrowed a few of my Tylenol PMs, and before things wound down for the long stretches of dark highway she went through the most wonderful loopy phase of hilariousness that perhaps only painkillers and emotional fatigue can bring. (Steph on painkillers is REALLY hilarious, even more so than normal. Shawn, if you're reading this, take note.) The attendant brought us water cups, the kind with a plastic lid that keeps it from spilling everywhere, but they forgot to pack straws. So it goes. Soon the traffic stopped and the night got dark and the road stretched on and took us far into the northern hills. We arrived in Chiang Rai at 10 in the morning. it was the pastor's day off, so we went about a fairly slow day of getting settled before going to Chiang Rai's famous market bazaar. (A trend I'm noticing is that every Thai city has a "famous" market to spend money at.)
There was a strange element of transition in the first few days. Life on outreach is slower than I'm now used to, both in the sense that there's less structure and also that there's less planned in general. Lots of time to do as I please. For me there's an element of frustration in that, because I'm a westerner who effectively speaks no Thai, and it's been a growing experience to have to come to the point of saying "Ok, God. I don't see your plan in all this, and I don't know why I'm here, and I feel like I'm completely ineffective and something of a consumer. But in the end, I trust you. I know that someday it will all make sense, but right now it just doesn't. I have a theory and a counter-theory, but no synthesis." And for all I know, that thought is enough. It'll have to work for a time. Getting to that point might be the whole reason I'm here. I don't know, but it's a hard thing to surrender this idea that I'm supposed to be able to constantly see the fruit of what I do. God seems to be implying that I'm still building for something that I'll be able to see later. I've been reading through the gospels again and it's something of a comfort to me that Jesus seems to insist over and over on choosing as disciples really incompetent and broken people, who will "get it" one minute and question everything the next.
On our second day we went on a prayer walk. We went to three places; the first was Wat Rong Khun. It's a buddhist temple that's currently in the process of being built, but already a visually striking piece of cultural art. It's filled with allegory; everything about it is white and glassy and ornate and the temple itself is a metaphor for the Buddhist conceptualization of the "narrow path to heaven." It was weird, and there was a sort of spiritual crookedness to the whole thing. Inside of the actual temple room there was a room-spanning mural, with Buddha on one side representing heaven and a large face of a dragon on the side representing earth and hell. On the face of the dragon were countless depictions of cultural references from the past decade: 9-11, oil, wars, superheroes and comic book charachters, movie references, celebrities who had died. There was an irony in it for me that a temple would contain depictions of things that are normally idolized more implicitly.
The second place we went to was a statue of one of the great northern kings of the past. The king is greatly revered, and the place is used as a shrine; many people of the city come to make merit with the king, burning incense and offering food. There were christians there, praying and reading scripture aloud as a means of spiritual warfare and evangelism. It was clear to us that this place was where the real battle for souls takes place; not hid away in the corners of temples but in the city center, not for territory but for the very hearts of the people.
Our final place was on a mountain overlooking the whole city and the pastures that surround it. On the mountaintop is a buddhist temple more ornate and glittery than any other I've seen. God seemed to be teaching me something through this comparison: "Look at man, at his feeble attempts at beauty. They try so hard. Everything is symmetrical and intricate and shiny, and much has been sacrificed in time and in resources to make it. Now look out into the beauty of creation. The mountains and rivers, the vast pastures, men and the wild coexisting. The world is vast, and yet the details are carved down to the tiniest detail: the kernels of rice ripening at the ends of each stalk, the lines on faces, and the way the mountains grow lighter in color as they sprawl out into the distance. All of this God has done effortlessly, through the writing of the laws that give earth substance: Biology, geology, physics, mathematics. And yet, look at these humans. they try to depend on themselves. They create beauty to call their own, like wind captured in a jar. And yet, see how their patterns are made plain in comparison to the majesty of God's creation."
At the end of that day we sat in on a small group that our pastor and his wife lead. All of the members are young thai women, so I felt more than a bit out of place in it all. The next day we went to pray and minister to patients in the ward of a local hospital. We were partnering with a local church and with the christian chaplain of the hospital. One mental note I made was that he mentioned that they had 1 MRI scanner, which was the only MRI for all of Chiang Rai. (200k people) We split into groups to pray over people; I went with a few of the older thai christians from the church. I couldn't understand them or the patients, so I followed their lead. This worked pretty well, except that they were taking turns being the one to pray aloud, and it soon became my turn. I was caught off-guard, and muttered a broken, inarticulate, short prayer. I found myself frustrated by that. I found comfort in the fact that, aside from nobody being able to understand me anyway, that God doesn't seem to care so much about our articulation as he does about our hearts. He doesn't need us to be perfect, he needs us to be willing. and at any rate, I'm new to a lot of this, newer and greener than I'd ever care to admit.
We did sports ministry at a local post-secondary school (something of a mix between a high school and a junior college.) It was communication-based ministry, so I was inherently frustrated. It's humbling being a person of words, made mute by language. I'm having to develop a new attitude, and new strategies for servanthood. Smile a lot, love a lot, pray a lot. show patience in everything. That's it. That's all I have to go on.
We spent wednesday night at Art's grandfather's funeral. He died late sunday night while we were on the bus. Art's family has been hit hard this moth, and I especially feel hurt for him and his brother and especially his father, a man who's lost his wife and his father in a span of three weeks. Art's family tree is losing leaves, and I wish I had better words to express empathy to him at his pain. God has done so much in him, and his life gives me hope. That funerals are a long affair, 5 days long. The wednesday night service was the third night, and was one of the more casual evenings of the service. We arrived early and helped set up, and shared a meal with his family. The night's proceedings included a sermon and a song in Thai by us. It was really thrown together, and the musical acts that followed blew us out of the water. God gives grace to the humble, and we must have a lot of grace coming our way at the rate we find ourselves humbled.
On thursday for lunch we celebrated American Thanksgiving. I pitched in with some of the western ingredients I had left over from my flood stockpile and what my mom had sent me. our main dish was spaghetti with velveeta-rotel sauce (a real thanksgiving staple, I know. I don't care, it's the most delicious thing ever). We broke out a few chocolate bars as well. For some it was the first time they had ever had cheese; a barren world made alive for the first time. The event brought my secret stash of chocolate down to six bars. (we have six women on our team and we're out here for more than a month. do the math, kids, and prepare accordingly. Be prepared, the motto of a true scout.)
We returned friday morning for the final day of the funeral; it was a more serious day and included the actual procession in which the casket is hand-carried from the open-air sanctuary to the cemetery in the back of the church. I brought my journal this time, which helped fill gaps and keep me occupied for long parts of all-thai proceedings. I was never told that we were expected to sing, so I was caught off-guard when we were pulled up onto the stage. I had about 15 seconds of mental prep before singing. Thank heaven, we had chosen an english song, "above all powers." The ultimate rule of vagabond discipleship seems to be "always be ready to roll with it. Life is your adventure." When they brought the casket to the gravesite, they brought out all the sympathy wreaths that had been donated and they broke them apart, giving each person a flower to pile on to the already flower-adorned casket. Us farong didn't have any idea what was going on or being said, but we were able to maneuver nicely by following others' leads and sawatdee'ing every single person.
When we got back from the funeral on friday, I had a really regrettable 26 hour stretch that I'm still kind of ashamed of. Something small happened that hurt my feelings, and it's like there was this click in my head that chose to be really really hurt and offended. It's like this whole other wounded side of me came out that I thought was gone. Instead of dealing with the problem, I bottled it up, and took it out by going on long walks where I was essentially whining at God for all the uncertainty in my life. The next morning I woke up holding all the anger and hurt, and took it out by closing myself off from people I care about a lot. The sock-puppet problems I created for myself were built up by my long inner monologues, and prevented me from showing any expression of joy, goodness, kindness or care. It was really gross, and I still feel pretty bad thinking about it. and then, I actually dealt with it with the people. and all of these problems that I had built up for myself fell apart, leaving me feeling foolish, realizing that it was all really nothing. Things got better quickly, like a weight lifted, a demon gone.
Sunday started off with morning service. we did one of our plays and the girls did their thai dance. Ribka gave her testimony, and so did one of the men from the church, a man who had a developmental disability who came to trust God when he had no food and god used people to provide for him. We did the same stuff in a service that night at the junior college, and then shared a meal with the pastor and his family and the young women who are in the small group we attended on tuesday night.
And that brings us to today, which I have spent blogging and doing laundry. Read my previous post about the laundry, I could combine the posts but I don't feel like it, we'll cross that bridge when this becomes a sprawling, un-concise and meandering book that doesn't seem to have any thesis at all.
Other random pictures for good measure:
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