Vagabond Discipleship, Pt. 3: I am trying to break your heart.

Outreach is a beautiful, lifegiving thing. Not in spite of that fact but contributing to it, there are some moments that bind me. They leave me almost numb with an inner empathetic pain. There are two moments in particular that just got to me, stuck through the night, lingered there, like a sort of tangible object too large and foreign to place or know what to do with. It's easy to read books, memorize statistics, and be able to recite in conversation the cold facts about this beautiful world that seems to have a preference for cruelty and despair. and then the moments happen, where it all becomes real and I find myself shell-shocked, gasping for air, wondering, "Why, God? Why does this have to be this way, and why am I so lucky to have avoided it?"

and then I remember the words that I've muttered to God with a sort of proud nobility: "Lord, teach me everything I need to know, so that I can be a part of the cure." And God shrugged, and said, "Ok. Fair enough. There's no going back, though." and with a naive grin, I pressed on.

The first moment happened one night in the market in Chiang Rai. We finished our shopping; I bought a few trinkets for people back home, but for the most part I just observe at these places - there's a lot you can learn about people in the concrete wilderness where money is king . There's a sort of spiritual queasiness about it all, though, because of what I know about what happens down the alleys in the backs of shops. The lust and suffering that floats into the air is practically sentinent. And then the moment, which was this: I look into a massage parlor and for a small moment my eyes meet with a girl, seemingly about my age. she's dressed in clothes that aren't too revealing, but imply she's there for business. and in that moment I see through her eyes into her soul. And it isn't evil, and it almost seems to not be suffering or joyful or any other sort of human emotion. Just deadness. The human spirit can only take so much slavery, so much pain, before it just gives up, takes it, becomes numb. Like the second it takes to swallow a pill, the moment passed, but like medicine it seemed to shake me in new ways as the night went on.

The next moment happened a few days ago. We went for a walk through one of the villages here in Issan, handing out literature, praying for the sick, playing with children. Those who can speak the dialect would talk to people, but I couldn't aside from greetings. We stopped at a house that drew my attention because of a large sideyard filled with green vegetables. In the courtyard there was a mat, and a young mother was keeping her three daughters occupied while her mom did laundry and her grandmother tilled the garden. It all seemed fairly uneventful, I held the littlest one, who was about a year old, while our sisters talked to the young mother. At one point the mother said something as I passed the baby off to stephanie. As stephanie took the baby, the little one started wailing, and I didn't know if it was the handoff or what the mother said. It was only when we had left and one of our sisters told me what she had said that I was blindsighted: They had been talking about how in the past year her husband had died in an auto accident, and when a couple of pharong came so unexpectedly and seemed so taken by her, she wondered aloud at the idea that I should take her youngest child, in hopes that I could give it a better life than she could. There's really nothing in life that could prepare you for that moment, I don't think, because it's just so humbling, so painful, so real. These aren't statistics in a book, they're people. Lovely, precious people. People that God created.

And this is why we fight, why we give up our own ideas of how to spend our lives and we give up our comfortable western homes and all the money we could be using to have fun, and tell God that we'll give everything; because what we're fighting for is precious.

And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy 
and to walk humbly with your God.

Hey, look at me.

It's the end of a very long day, and tomorrow promises to be another long one as well. We're waking up early and heading out to the rice fields to finish off what's left of the autumn rice harvest at p'Eve's family farm. It's awful timing to be blogging, but I wanted to throw out this idea while it's still fresh in my brain:

I know I've made a few biting and sarcastic remarks about the nature of blogging. and I stand by them, not that I shouldn't be blogging, but what I'm trying to say is that I choose very carefully what I blog about and what I post on the internet. Not because the internet is a bad thing, but with it comes an inherent risk. It's not that this risk is specific to the internet, but I think the basic nature of the internet makes us more vulnerable to them, as we're prone to them anyway. Because the internet is basically like a stage, to stand on and to proclaim things in the hopes that people will hear. The facts of this are made bare especially by social networking and blogs and other social media that exist so people can express themselves. Sometimes someone has something really meaningful to say, but we as a culture and as humanity seem to have fallen into the trap of thinking that it's so important to be heard that it doesn't matter so much what we say. So we loudly and boldly proclaim to any passing IP address that might take gander, "Hey! Look at me!".

Lately it feels like my life is a story, with all the elements needed to be a great one. I'm being purposely vague here, but even just the events of this past weekend were so wonderful and so deep and so personally meaningful to me that I want to sit on a couch for a while and get it all down. I need to write everything at some point, even for my own sake. But I'm not going to do it here. Why not? because we're missing the whole point. The story of this past weekend is a dangerous one to tell in such a venue, and even though I'm cringing to type it, I'm going to so hopefully it'll make sense: The stories make me look awesome. All these things about discipleship that I'm reading about in my bible, I'm doing them. Feeding the unloved, praying over nations, hearing from God, being obedient to him, "loving someone and that being enough to show the gospel". That stuff is happening. but I cringe at the thought of telling it here because our world is filled with the kind of people who say things just in the hopes of having everyone look at them and marvel to themselves about how great that person is. and I'm done with that. That is how I used to be, and I grew tired of it.

There are so many elements of this journey that are so very much out of my control. My finances, my living arrangements, the temperature of the shower, what I'll do tomorrow. And soon the little experiment of "discipleship" that is DTS will be over and I'll feel an almost overpowering social pressure to go home and be normal again, occasionally dropping a line to my nephew that hints at the adventures I had when I was younger but otherwise living like people are supposed to. but here's the thing: I won't.

I won't, because something has changed. Around YWAM there's a phrase that gets thrown around, "Broken for the ordinary." It refers to the fact that when you find yourself being obedient to God, you no longer want to stop, to sell out, to go back to the ordinary christian life of going to church on sunday, earning a salary the other six days of the week, and finding your contentment in your ever-growing pile of stuff. To be an actual disciple of Jesus means to say "screw it, I'm all in." and I mean, "all in", not as a gambling metaphor, but as a gambling term. As a disciple, I'm betting it all on God, and I'm no longer going to protect myself with quotation marks and backup plans. There's an important dichotomy that arises: You're either being obedient, on you're not. And this gets back to my thesis: If I find myself doing good christian things as acts of obedience to God, great. But I could be doing these same things, and if my heart in doing them is "I want other people to hear about it and think highly of me", this is all a lie. If this is our heart, we Christians are just like everyone else, except that our collective taste in music isn't as good. I could be doing all these wonderful things and if I'm doing them as something to tell stories about, I lose. I share some of the stories, but I only really do so because I love to. I'm a story person. But if that's my heart in it, then then things themselves were fake and I've had no adventure; I was merely a tourist doing token good deeds in order to validate himself to people. But that isn't what we're here for.

It's all just words, anyway. You'll read them, and then you'll forget. I'm writing this as a reminder to myself: Your life is for loving God and for loving people, not for impressing someone. It's far more beautiful this way.


At some point when I see your face you'll need to ask me about the story from this weekend. Just tell me that you want to know the symbolism of the golden cross. It's a fine tale, about obedience and kindness and hearing God speak and how normally cross necklaces are stupid and self-promoting, but not always. and I'm not telling it here. That would completely miss the point.

Vagabond Discipleship, Pt. 2 (Too much light to deny.)

Our excursion into the mountains began early Tuesday morning. we loaded up, all ten of us and enough clean clothes and iPod juice to last us a few days, piled into a regular-sized truck. There were five of us in the bed of the truck, sprawled out over the luggage, and as the truck opened up on the highways the siamese air beat at our faces. And there's something about that feeling of the wind flowing past you as the plains turn into hills and the hills turn into mountains that makes one feel poor and free and alive. the mountains soon became towering, and we bought lunch in one of the larger towns in the valley because there were no restaurants where we were going and we wouldn't want to burden our hosts with an unexpected meal. Soon the hills got even higher and even more beautiful, with the view from each ridge growing more fantastic than the one that preceded it as we seemed to take flight in our overloaded truck. Soon the truck slowed, though, as the climb began to push it to its' limits. Then it stopped, next to the second of a long string of thatch-roof cinder-block huts. On the doorframe of this building was written in both English and Thai the phrase "Long live the God." It was the church of a small christian village of the Akha tribe named "sip-song-lang", which is Thai for "twelve houses" (the size of the village when it was named) although the Thai language is not the native tongue of the villagers, who speak the language of the Akha tribe.

After getting settled and introduced to Pastor Asa over a short round of green tea, we once again piled into the van and headed down to the creek. We basked in the pure sunlight and unspoiled nature that had eluded us for so many months in soggy Bangkok as the pastor took us to a low spot of the river and we waded our way up as he showed us how a native would go about catching fish, using a weighted net and thrown into calm spots of the river. We waded in, following him. I thought about it for a second, but quickly gave up the notion of keeping my keens dry and stomped my way in, feeling the cool water hit my feet as the shoes capsized. What are adventure shoes for, anyways? I felt a nudging to take my camera along with me as I waded up the rapids and waist-deep clearings, as though God either had the perfect shot in store for me or he intended to clear the way for a new camera, perhaps one with some decent ISO settings. I made it dry from the waist up, though, and my feeble camera did what it could to capture the magnificent embankments of wildflowers that painted the hillsides as they sloped down into the river. Eventually we made it back to where we had left the truck and headed back to the village, all of us soaked and filled with joy. When we got back we had some time to explore a bit, and as one of my DTS friends gave me a haircut on the back porch overlooking the valley below, the scent of fresh-roasted peanuts and the dinner being prepared for us began to fill the air. On the menu for the evening was rice, my favorite, to be adorned from the communal dishes of pork, greens, garlic greens, and dog. Oh, you wonder about the dog, I know, and I assure you that when cooked by as skilled a cook as our brother Asa it's more palatable than you could desire, a clear favorite over the pork dish.

Soon it was time for us to put on our program and many of the townspeople filled the chapel room. There's a frustration in all of my actual "doings" on outreach, one I will surely talk longer about at some point, that I wish I could be doing more, I wish I could be changing things, and I am powerless. I am humbled by my own words; something I said to my friend Monique a few months ago when describing my first missions experiences, that what it seems God is doing isn't so much using us to change them but that he's using them to change us. That's altogether humbling, for we've been raised to believe that we are the center of the galaxy, the west come to fix the world for everyone else, and we're the ones who seem to be getting fixed of all of our brokenness, and that while we are powerless, God is up to something bigger than we can imagine, and the only way we can be a part of it is if we get taught patience and humility, over and over and over again, to the point that we're small enough to make a difference. Still, there are things we can do, but it begins with that: small. God can't work in us through sweeping incremental changes right now, if ever. Instead he works through us in the smallest acts of love, like little flashes of warm light in a dark world. Too much light to deny.

The boys were whisked away to another modest cinder block building, of one of the congregation's members, and offered mattresses. There's this part of you that breaks when you ponder something like that, because it's never told to you but you know in the room over someone's sleeping without a mattress so your spoiled back can sleep comfortably through the night. It fills me with a love for people in general that snaps all hatred, that someone could even be capable of that, of thinking that my back is more important to them than their own. I don't even know what to say or do to show gratitude except to acknowledge to God that there are things in humanity worth hoping in, and to perhaps to mutter the only Akha phrase I know, "Udu-To-Ma!" (Hello!)

We woke up at 5:30 and once again piled into the truck. I was among the lucky ones to be able to huddle together in the bed of the truck, peering into creation as we climbed higher and higher into the sky as the yellow wildflowers around us began to open to receive the light that slowly began to give a dim to the darkness along the eastern hills. And then the car stopped and as the earth seemed to fill ever full and more brimming with life in order to receive the approaching sun, we climbed up the steep pathways up the mountain and onto a small landing of pasture, and looked down upon creation. Hundreds of mountains greeted us through the clouds below as the sun in all its' splendor made its triumphant rise above the eastern clouds. The millions of yellow wildflowers coating the mountain seemed to imitate the sun as a sort of applause to the coming day and all of Thailand and all of Burma came to life before our eyes. And then, like all of life's triumphant moments, this one passed as well. So it goes. As we made our decent I noted that in life as is in nature, the moments of triumph seem to happen on the mountaintops but the rice is grown in the valleys.

After breakfast everyone went about packing their things, and Pastor Asa brought out a seemingly neverending supply of hot green tea for us to consume. I found myself deep in conversation with the Pastor for the hours that followed. It was a bit of a convoluted process: I would ask a question in English, Isabel would translate it to Thai to pastor Sanguan, and pastor Sanguan would translate to pastor Asa from Thai to Akha. We talked about life in the village, and what life might look like for a child growing up in such a place. I felt equipped for such a conversation, and soon found myself asking questions I could tell he wasn't used to hearing. "Where do the villagers get their water? Is there a method they use to clean it?" "Do the schools here properly equip the children to have a chance to succeed in a university?" "What does an average villager's diet look like?" I'm going to write up my thoughts about this seperately, but what was interesting for the purpose of this narrative was the bond that it seemed to build between me and the pastor. I did care, and through my questions he knew it. And that was life-affirming. When my last question (because we needed to be going) was "how can I be praying for your family) he knew it wasn't me just softballing him some christian pleasantries. I hopped in the bed of the truck and we wished each other well and I knew I would see him again in one way or the other.

And away we went again, across the mountains and the valleys and the paddies and the plains.

We made it to the next Akha village, Ah-hai and we were welcomed by pastor Pa-pon and his wife Oi. On my one and one with Samm, we were walking up to the higher-elevation part of the village and an elderly man got our attention and motioned to us to follow him. we walked through the whole of the town, braving guard dogs and the inevitable gawks and smiles of the villagers, and he took us to the very top of the village, to the temple of a buddhist sect that overlooks the expanse. It was an odd place to have such a discussion, but with a lovely sense of randomness to it all, with the man following us the entire way to see to it that we never got lost and were protected from the dogs, who didn't take to strangers. Most of the the Akha are christian, so I took pictures of all of the thai-language signs in hopes of getting them translated to learn what it is we even saw. We did our same program as the night before. We played and danced with the children.

Last night, along a mountain ridgeline along the Thai-Burmese border, I awoke from my sleep, shivering. The bungalow protected us from the wind, but December had made its way even to Thailand. I looked for the time, and it was around 3:30 in the morning, Indochina time. Unable to sleep, I pulled the blanket off and stepped out off of the bungalow's raised bamboo floor and onto the dirt and into the night. I reached over and fumbled for my glasses, pushed them onto the ridge where my nose meets my forehead and in an instant everything came into focus. The crescent moon that had illuminated half the sky just hours ago was gone, and left behind the entire swath of the milky way galaxy, making it bare, scattering the entire universe with light, too much light to deny. We were hundreds of miles from the nearest city, with its' ever-illuminated streetlamps glowing to rob the universe of its' subtlety, and all of the fires in all of the Akha huts that dotted the mountains were reduced to embers, leaving the night sky bare, showing me everything there is to see as I shivered and slid my hands inside of the arms of my flannel shirt. And I tarried there a shorter time than I cared to, but in that moment I found myself captivated by wonder. A sort of wonder that looks at life, from the largest and most distant stars to the trillions of molecules that link together to form my skin and keep my insides from spilling out onto the cold ground. And it's those sort of moments that make life seem so very much important, because those are the moments in which one feels infinitely small and yet incredibly alive, more so than ever.

there's a part of me that accepts that I don't really have a "home" right now in my life, at least not a physical one. Oh, I have a family, both a normal one that can be diagrammed into a very large tree-looking structure with a series of symbols to represent each person, and a spiritual one scattered across my planet in a way that can only be visualized using these same night stars as a metaphor. I have a room, on a street in a suburb in the middle of America. But it's not my home, really, it's a room that's filled with stuff. Too much of it, and apparently nothing that I can't go without for seasons at a time. At some point when I'm back in that corner of the world I'll probably need to go through it and give much of it away or let other people borrow or else put in boxes. It's all just stuff, really, and even if I can make use of it I'll just be dead in a matter of decades. I was raised, you see, in a culture that implies through its' very shape that having things and titles and money and status is very very important, the stuff of life.

And I too have a title, one perhaps riddled with as much pedantic pretense as the most well-paid of executives who adorn themselves with titles and salaries and such, although my title means something different. I am a vagabond disciple. I have no home, no earthy responsibilities, no salary, none of the ties that seem to entangle everyone else bind me in a way that I couldn't shake off with a little shrug of humility. It's my job not to lead, but to follow another as he leads me deep into the burrows and backstreets and down the dusty paths and across the mountains and valleys and plains and cobblestone streets and across the oceans and rivers, all of which together form a small planet. Some of the inhabitants of this small planet have decided to name it Earth, and I am of the peoples who call it that. And we're all fairly attached to this planet, mostly out of necessity but there's also an element of beauty to it that we're all quite fond of. It seems the more I admire its' better qualities the more I am convinced that there is a God, and the more I look at what we've done with it the more I'm convinced that we need one. And that's what this season of my life is: a time to wander aimfully. There was a part of me that has had to fight (and still does) about the persistent feelings that what I'm doing is selfish, or useless, or counter-productive. To learn, almost for learning's sake but not quite. To have to let go entirely of all of the nagging whispering doubts in my own ear and to trust God as he nudges my heart like an equestrian holding the reins. And I've learned many things, but the most important is this: Being obedient to God when he calls you is not selfish, nor is it foolish. This seems rather straightforward, but part of being a human is to always have a million other thoughts in your mind, both well-meaning and malignant. It's so easy for me to fall into the trap of thinking there's something altogether better or more pleasurable that I could be doing, either to better myself or the world. And yet, God has brought me here. to listen, to learn, to ask questions. And it's most humbling of all to think that that is the answer to everything, is to be asking better questions.

And finally, this morning, I awoke to this. And scarcely else matters in the world, I suppose. There's too much light to deny.

Vagabond Disciple, Pt. 1

this is the first of a series of posts where I lovingly plagiarize excerpts from my own weekly journal (and occasionally Kurt Vonnegut) so that you may spectate on my life. (The internet is a creepy concept, when you think about it.)

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:

the most beautiful thing that's ever happened to anyone ever.

Ok, Fine, you win, internet.

You see, with most of the wonderful and altogether eventful happenings of my life, I usually make a note of it in a journal to save for later. Very rarely does something happen that my first thought is literally "I have to blog about this." And today it happened.

Tomorrow morning we're heading off into the hills for a few days, so laundry is a priority for everyone. our one faucet stall was occupied when I woke up, so I sat my clothes in a bin and decided to go running while I waited. When I got back it was still occupied, this time by the pastor's wife, who had clearly set aside a better part of the morning to doing her own family's laundry. For a split second I showed that inevitable language-barrier-crossing look on one's face that seemed to say, "ohhhhhhh I'll be waiting a while.." So I went to my room and picked up my book, came back and sat down and started reading in hopes that when she finished I would be able to pounce upon the open faucet.

A few minutes pass. She finishes her current tub of soapy clothes, rinses it, and hangs it up to dry. Then she motions to me to seperate the shirts from the other clothes. I do so, and she starts hand-washing my laundry. And I have to admit that it took me a minute to compose myself and begin to pitch in, because that is the most beautiful, humble act of service anyone's ever done to anyone. Seriously, you guys, my dirty underwear is my own business, and she knows full well that I should be expected to clean it. But to her, that was completely beside the point. In the 20 minutes it took for us to scrub at my clothes, She talked in her broken english and I talked in my very broken thai about our families and about thailand and america and other little things about life. In general I've noticed that conversation isn't nearly about what is said as it's about the fact that to each of us, the events and people and places in our lives seem significant and important, and to care about those things in someone else means to care about the person that holds them.


I must admit that lately I've had to do a lot of thinking about why I'm here, and what the point is of me proclaiming myself a disciple when there's a part of me that feels completely incapable of doing so in a way that's actually effective. I do a lot of thinking about the net result of things, that what I'm currently doing isn't leading to grand large-scale sustainable solutions to vast and complex world issues. And in one sweeping gesture I've just been completely humbled of all of that. And it's teaching me to accept the present, to accept the natural frustrations that come about when there are so many barriers of culture and language and finances and uncertainty. Obedience is a hard lesson that I think I still have much work to do about, because part of obedience means I find myself doing things not knowing what it means or where this is going to. And there's growth in that, but the frustration remains. It sounds so cliche to say "God has a plan" because unless I can see it written out before me it's hard to really trust my intuition about God's will. It's what I've been fighting for a few days now, but it seems to be better now because of this one simple act, and what it implies:
While I want to know already the sense in everything that's happening in my life right now, written out in some scroll that only hindsight can bring, I am encouraged to move forward because of the fact that I'm learning so much. Not in sweeping humanity-spanning truths, but in the small wonders of a life made abundant by love. And that's enough for now, because it's the little things that keep happening, like God's way of saying "isn't there just something incredible here, hidden in the souls of humanity? I want you here, and I want you to keep digging at the mystery. What you'll learn is very important, and the love you'll find will change you."

"They found it was more fun doing laundry together, spending time together while they waited (which poor folks have known for a long time)." - Shane Claiborne.

It's my day off, so hopefully I'll scrounge up a few baht and post some excerpts from my journal. We shall see. Anyone who wants to contribute to the internet-cafe-blogging-fund can contact me via my facebook page.

A letter to myself, from the future.

Ok, does anyone here remember Xanga? For those of you who were born before 1987 and after 1992, it was this blog website that people used to use where junior high kids (and other people, who didn't take Xanga up on the offer) would be given blogs for free and not given any real sense of direction about what to write except to say "white what's on your heart!" 

This is fine, in concept, but it becomes problematic when you consider that the heart of the average junior high kid is a torrent of raw emotional gasoline. I myself have one of those up somewhere, and it's maybe the only writing of mine that I'm truly ashamed of. There are papers I've written that I'm not proud of, but that I can at least say "well, I can see how this paper made me grow as a writer." but Xanga was different. Xanga was where you went to when the fellow junior-high-kids in your life hurt you, either real or in your imagination, and you wanted a lonely mountaintop to cry at using words. It was also used for self-promotion, but we use everything for that.

And the thing is, just because we're not in middle school anymore doesn't mean that life suddenly or miraculously less easy; in fact my current problems in life are much bigger than the ones in middle school that seemed so earth-shattering and large. To give a little contextual background to explain where I'm going with this, living life like we're supposed to can be hard. really hard. Whenever it's really necessary, God really encourages me in it, but that doesn't mean that it will ever come naturally or ever be painless. And none of this isn't to say it isn't great; in fact the last week of my life has been filled with elements that are sweet and precious. encouragement from friends, celebrations, endings, beginnings, mountains, bus rides, sunrises, rice-harvests, good friends, flannel weather, and above all the assurance that I'm doing what God called me to do and that whatever pains that come up will soon get caught up in the refiner's fire and leave only the sweeter memories that make it all worth it. But none of that is really helpful at all when you're dealing with the spiritual equivalent of getting kicked in the gut, which will happen from time to time when you're a very imperfect person striving after a perfect God. And when it happens, don't be surprised when you get to the end of it and all of your logic has fallen apart and you see the shards of pride all around you and you were never as humble as you thought you were all along. It's kind of a lovely humility mechanism built into humanity, I think, that we're designed to every once in a while get shattered by our own fallen selves. But that does not change the fact that the junior-high method of dealing with our problems is not healthy and can really hurt the people around us. so I'm proposing a new method, which is to right now write this letter to myself which I can refer back to. It's a work in progress, so bear with it. It's to work sort of like a doctor's prescription, to be prescribed whenever I feel emotionally horrible.

Dear Austin,

first of all, your problems are very small. you don't have a right to expect others to feel as hurt or as bad as you about whatever small problems that you think are big right now. You've gotten this far, so the important thing to concern yourself with isn't how you got to where you are now, but how you're going to get to where you need to be. You have this tendancy to croc-pot your emotions and only come around to dealing with them when you're no longer emotionally stable to be able to, so if you feel horrible, and then a half an hour later you haven't dealt with anything and you still feel horrible, you've gone too far without dealing with your problems. If your problem is with a person, talk to them. If your problem is with God talk to him. At any rate talk to someone, because the way you act when you are alone and angry is the saddest most pathetic thing ever. I know you have your limits, so a good rule of thumb is that if you've listened to 4 angry songs by the mountain goats or watched a season of a television show, or spent 3 hours bottling up your feelings, you've gone too far and you need to stop it and deal with your problems. if it's a person, humble yourself and fix it. if it's where you are in life, change where you are in life or else allow yourself to be content with the season you're in. you're a lot more fun when you're happy, so stop being sad or angry or depressed or lonely or despondent or bored or overcome and deal with your problems so we can move on to the important stuff that you won't just want to forget. Oh, and most important, stay off the internet until this is all over.

Your buddy,

Austin

Sorry I'm not actually talking about my life among the mountains and plains of northern Thailand yet. I'll get to it at some point. It's really hard for me to write about that stuff in this setting because I paid a state university thousands of dollars to beat into my skull the idea that anything I write needs to have a thesis statement. and it's hard to do that when the thesis statement is "hey look, neat!" but I'll think of something better soon.

Hi, Mom.

perceptions, and life abundantly.

Ok, so I’m trying to be as methodical as a I can with this one, and I admit that the structure of it is coming out kind of messy. It’s a blog. you’re not paying me to read it, and I feel no pity for you, dear hypothetical readers.

there are two elements to blogging that are hard for me: the first is that it has to be a very intentional act. it’s hard for me to sit down and simply create something worth reading just because I feel like it. and that’s a poor motivation, to spend a long time writing something poetic and brilliant just because I want to say “hey everyone. I’m alive and am in a position in life that involves internet access.” The second is that blogging is just so vulnerable and arbitrary, like a man who stands on a cliff reading essays so that the universe might hear. lately I’ve written a few really long letters, and there’s something beautiful about writing letters because it’s a message with an intended destination. I’ve been reading from the pastoral letters of the bible lately and there’s something about them that’s just so special, not even because of the truth that the writers are trying to get across but because of the sheer love they have for the recipient that seeps out into every little choice of pronoun. And this isn’t that at all. there’s this element to blogging that seems to be writing to the wind. But I’m going to try this anyway, and with any luck and with god’s grace I will accomplish the literary equivalent of vomiting brilliance all over this document.

So the first thing I need to do is establish my audience. If I’m not writing to the wind, who am I writing to? My audience pretty much consists of people I know, who I don’t have to explain the entire story of how I got to where I am now. I want to tell that story, but it’d take a lot of patient writing that I just don’t have 12 hours to sit down and write out right now. I hope to do it at some point soon, but even if I do it I’m not sure I want to put it here. I don’t think it’s out of a lack of candor that I should approach the internet with a bit of restraint in what I say. It’s the internet. and there’s something to be said for subtlety and careful selection of what’s important. I’m learning that there are a lot of things about me and my life and my choices that I like and that are good, but that I don’t want to choose as some big part of my life, something that I stand for, something I represent. I’m noticing that I hate what the internet is becoming, especially as people are being raised having never gone without it. It seems like the entire world has lost sight of the simple beauty of doing things for the sheer life of it. People do things just so they can make facebook statuses that said they did them, and insist on taking pictures of themselves in any situation because what’s really important about doing anything is to be validated in doing it. It’s not even so much about who you are on the internet, it’s about who you appear to be.

And I am tired of all that. So I try to use the internet differently. To actually communicate, and not promote myself. The problem I’m talking about is actually bigger than the internet, it seems like people of our generation are missing the point of life in general. We think that fulfillment in life is recognition when it’s life itself that’s the blessing. The thing is, my life is really abundant right now. It’s not perfect, there are a lot of things about it that are beautiful and great and there are other things about it that are painful and stressful and transient. however, it’s important to me that whatever it is about life that is important and meaningful to me is what’s truly at the forefront of my decisionmaking. what I’m learning is that life is for living abundantly, so who cares what other people think? This line of thought runs contrary to everything I’ve been trained to care about. How much stuff I have and how well off I am and how much positive attention the masses of people give me seem such small matters when I realize that I only get one life, and validation is so much less important than love.

I guess what I’m trying to get at is this idea that I think we as a culture (and, let’s face it, in the online generation we’re all pretty much one culture at this point) need to scrap what’s been popularly decided as what’s important in life. the two cornerstones are the concepts of notoriety and security. And it’s this notoriety one that I’m focusing on here. I think where it comes from is that we think that if other people affirm us as the people we’d like to be thought of, it somehow magically turns us into that person. And so my old model of doing things was that I’d do something that would make me look kind or good or funny or cool, and the most important thing to me was that other people saw that and inferred those words upon me. So it’d always need to be some big spectacle. and even if I got the recognition I thought I needed it still left me hollow. And all of whatever reputation I built within a group of people would lose its meaning because groups of people themselves have no permanence. Who cares who I was thought of being in high school, or in college? It all is scattered to the wind and the reputation I thought made me valuable is nothing. Who people think I am now will soon mean nothing. So it doesn’t matter who people think I am, what matters is who I actually am.

So who do we actually want to be?
I want to be kind, and thoughtful, and loving, and joyful, and patient, and good, and faithful, and gentle.
I want my life to be filled with adventure and acts of beauty and remarkable kindness.
My primary pursuit isn’t to be thought of as any of these things, I want to actually be them and do them. And if other people don’t notice it’s all the more glory to God that I possess them. It’ll be our little unhidden secret, and when people have the time and patience to discover it, it’ll be like finding buried treasure. And how wonderful would life be if everyone were like this, with every passing stranger possessing within them entire universes of possibilities, hopes, and idiosyncrasies, making every moment an opportunity to explore new uncharted pathways into the mystery it is simply to be alive.

and here I am, spending a sunny november saturday on the internet, orating to no one. Screw it, I’m done. I'm going for a walk. I wonder what new pathways I’ll find. If you want to know how I'm doing, call me, for I miss your voices and faces dearly, friends.