Hi all,
I've only minutes before I must leave to the Bangkok airport but wanted to write quickly to say that from this afternoon until July 2nd I will be in Cambodia and thus will most likely not be with you via these letters. I'm meeting a Cambodian friend there who lives and works in my hometown and, from what I know now, which is slight, we will be traveling together while he continues the outreach and leadership training that he began many years ago.
I knew little of Cambodia until a week ago, when on a bus ride to a mountain village I read a series of articles I found online about the country's history over the last thirty years. For those interested, and I recommend the read, you can find those articles here: http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/banyan1.htm
A small preview - After the Khmer Rouge overthrew Lon Nol's regime and took the capital city, Phnom Penh, they issued the following ultimatum decrees, nationwide:
1. Evacuate people from all towns.
2. Abolish all markets.
3. Abolish Lon Nol regime currency, and withhold the revolutionary currency that had been printed.
4. Defrock all Buddhist monks, and put them to work growing rice.
5. Execute all leaders of the Lon Nol regime beginning with the top leaders.
6. Establish high-level cooperatives throughout the country, with communal eating.
7. Expel the entire Vietnamese minority population.
8. Dispatch troops to the borders, particularly the Vietnamese border.
That was just 32 years ago.
I've now to run off, grab a bag of sticky rice, and chart for the airport. I was last night outside the Prime Minister of Thailand's house with thousands of yellow-shirted and bandanna-ed Thai as they continued their nearly month-long protest against the Prime Minister and, from what a savvy businessman who studied at Skidmore College in PA told me as I took my street stall noodles on the bridge, his prostitution of Thailand's resources to foreign investors and resistance to the people's want of democracy and a say in their government. A grand time was had by all.
Until the 2nd,
js
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Friday, June 20, 2008
Bangkok, Burma, and a Golden Crucifix
"Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."
1 Thessalonians 2:16-18
My friends,
On an evening such as this, just writing you feels almost as if I were sitting beside you. I sit, though, in Bangkok, after a nine hour bus ride from the far northwest of Thailand to where I just read via Yahoo news is the happening site of a building two-week protest by Thai citizens outside the headquarters of their Prime Minister. Thailand parades its King on banners as far as the eye can see and curses its Prime Minister on his doostep. So it goes, and perhaps tomorrow morning I'll check the scene.
But this afternoon, an afternoon that dragged into the evening! I hurried bright-eyed off the bus as it came to a still, eager to find my hostel, toss my bags, and look to some sticky rice and hardboiled eggs for dinner, thinking I might wander the neighborhood streets as evening came and retire like usual with my reading before bed. Wander I did, for two hours, though not on my neighborhood streets and not after tossing my bags and sitting for dinner.
I left Mae Sot this morning in style - that is, without knowing where I would go upon arrival in Bangkok, as I forgot to write down the address or memorize directions to the hostel I booked last night. "No problem [in Thai: 'mae pen rai']," I thought. "I'll stumble upon an internet cafe, log simply into my email, write down directions to the hostel and be off."
To end quickly what I now see turning into a multi-paragraphed, digressive story, I ended up in no sight of an internet cafe but being befriended by a young Thai student who works at the Bangkok "Children's Discovery Musuem". She took my by subway to an internet cafe, loaned me her pen several times to write down directions as I sat at the computer, then led me again to the subway and pointed me on my way, gifting me her pen as she left: "I think you will need this other times."
I exited the subway knowing that my hostel, "Madras Hostel", was a short fifteen minute walk from the subway, but not knowing which way to walk. I walked, walked, double-backed and walked farther, and right at two hours after I left the Bangkok bus station, I looked up to see a bright yellow, white, and red glowing "Madras Hostel" sign, and my back almost broke as I went to kiss the ground. The hostess and her five-year old daughter greeted me warmly, and she, taking pity on my soiled brow, upgraded my room from a large ten person dorm to my own room with balcony and A/C, and my back almost broke as I went to kiss the ground. By grace, by grace.
--
But all of this is nothing in light of what I meant to write you last night but got lost in pages of personal emails and hostel bookings. I will start in yesterday morning, though what I really wish to write you of is the evening.
I woke my first morning in Mae Sot with plans to make my way to the Myanmar border, a mere six miles away, thinking I should go in for a one day visa and have a look at the country whose reckless military junta is oppressing the Karen people of whom I wrote you so fondly in my last letter. I rented the silver bike of a college-aged coffee shop owner, whose store I inaugurated with an espresso the afternoon previous, and made straight on the road that led without divergence to the Burmese border. A river separates the two countries - Thailand and Myanmar - and I could see it from a ways back before I got to it.
At the Thai departure I left my bicycle for the day - "Only walking!" - and trodded over the 400 meter "Friendship Bridge." The grandson of a WWII Burmese translator for the British army took me in conversation over the bridge, hoping I'd hire him for a tour guide once stepping foot in his country - I didn't, of course, but on the way over the bridge he mentioned to me 1) that he US was very good because the US is very powerful and 2) that he was especially interested in Israel, because Israel gained their independence in the same year as Burma gained its independence - 1948. This second comment was more interesting to me than the first, and it largely guided my thoughts that afternoon, as I tarried without aim down muddied and potholed dirt avenues and interacted with one too many armed and camouflage-jacketed Burmese army boys for my liking.
I saw that morning and afternoon three or four tinted-windowed and oversize-tired trucks with seven to eight camo-ed boys in the back, holding their rifles pointed to the sky. Right when I stepped into the Burmese Arrival office at Immigration, a whistle blew and the workers inside tossed on their helmets and darted out into the street. A Thai military captain was passing back into Thailand, and just five feet from me the road through the gate was clogged with flashing cameras and armed military men.
I'd nowhere to go that day, no map of the streets, but I did have my Bible and camera in my satchel, and, not being able to think of anywhere more active and interesting, walked along the river's edge that separated Thai from Burmese. Though I'll never admit it, I'm really very mischevious and troublesome in foreign lands, and so, when a wooden gate opened into an area manned by a who-couldn't-be-over-17-years-old Burmese boy and his wooden-butted rifle, I thought I'd try the charm of a foreigner and see if he'd let me pass. He did, kind of - though his hand waved "no", he had a smile on his face, so, donning a smile on my face, I walked on by with a grinning, "O.K.!" I sat, read, and prayed for ten minutes looking over the river before he came by my side and grinned another of his toothless grins with still that wooden-butted rifle on his shoulder. I rose - it then feeling very eerie - and left the riverside, four hours later hopping again on my bicycle and riding back to Mae Sot, "Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."
1 Thessalonians 2:16-18
My friends,
On an evening such as this, just writing you feels almost as if I were sitting beside you. I sit, though, in Bangkok, after a nine hour bus ride from the far northwest of Thailand to where I just read via Yahoo news is the happening site of a building two-week protest by Thai citizens outside the headquarters of their Prime Minister. Thailand parades its King on banners as far as the eye can see and curses its Prime Minister on his doostep. So it goes, and perhaps tomorrow morning I'll check the scene.
But this afternoon, an afternoon that dragged into the evening! I hurried bright-eyed off the bus as it came to a still, eager to find my hostel, toss my bags, and look to some sticky rice and hardboiled eggs for dinner, thinking I might wander the neighborhood streets as evening came and retire like usual with my reading before bed. Wander I did, for two hours, though not on my neighborhood streets and not after tossing my bags and sitting for dinner.
I left Mae Sot this morning in style - that is, without knowing where I would go upon arrival in Bangkok, as I forgot to write down the address or memorize directions to the hostel I booked last night. "No problem [in Thai: 'mae pen rai']," I thought. "I'll stumble upon an internet cafe, log simply into my email, write down directions to the hostel and be off."
To end quickly what I now see turning into a multi-paragraphed, digressive story, I ended up in no sight of an internet cafe but being befriended by a young Thai student who works at the Bangkok "Children's Discovery Musuem". She took my by subway to an internet cafe, loaned me her pen several times to write down directions as I sat at the computer, then led me again to the subway and pointed me on my way, gifting me her pen as she left: "I think you will need this other times."
I exited the subway knowing that my hostel, "Madras Hostel", was a short fifteen minute walk from the subway, but not knowing which way to walk. I walked, walked, double-backed and walked farther, and right at two hours after I left the Bangkok bus station, I looked up to see a bright yellow, white, and red glowing "Madras Hostel" sign, and my back almost broke as I went to kiss the ground. The hostess and her five-year old daughter greeted me warmly, and she, taking pity on my soiled brow, upgraded my room from a large ten person dorm to my own room with balcony and A/C, and my back almost broke as I went to kiss the ground. By grace, by grace.
--
But all of this is nothing in light of what I meant to write you last night but got lost in pages of personal emails and hostel bookings. I will start in yesterday morning, though what I really wish to write you of is the evening.
I woke my first morning in Mae Sot with plans to make my way to the Myanmar border, a mere six miles away, thinking I should go in for a one day visa and have a look at the country whose reckless military junta is oppressing the Karen people of whom I wrote you so fondly in my last letter. I rented the silver bike of a college-aged coffee shop owner, whose store I inaugurated with an espresso the afternoon previous, and made straight on the road that led without divergence to the Burmese border. A river separates the two countries - Thailand and Myanmar - and I could see it from a ways back before I got to it.
At the Thai departure I left my bicycle for the day - "Only walking!" - and trodded over the 400 meter "Friendship Bridge." The grandson of a WWII Burmese translator for the British army took me in conversation over the bridge, hoping I'd hire him for a tour guide once stepping foot in his country - I didn't, of course, but on the way over the bridge he mentioned to me 1) that he US was very good because the US is very powerful and 2) that he was especially interested in Israel, because Israel gained their independence in the same year as Burma gained its independence - 1948. This second comment was more interesting to me than the first, and it largely guided my thoughts that afternoon, as I tarried without aim down muddied and potholed dirt avenues and interacted with one too many armed and camouflage-jacketed Burmese army boys for my liking.
I saw that morning and afternoon three or four tinted-windowed and oversize-tired trucks with seven to eight camo-ed boys in the back, holding their rifles pointed to the sky. Right when I stepped into the Burmese Arrival office at Immigration, a whistle blew and the workers inside tossed on their helmets and darted out into the street. A Thai military captain was passing back into Thailand, and just five feet from me the road through the gate was clogged with flashing cameras and armed military men.
I'd nowhere to go that day, no map of the streets, but I did have my Bible and camera in my satchel, and, not being able to think of anywhere more active and interesting, walked along the river's edge that separated Thai from Burmese. Though I'll never admit it, I'm really very mischevious and troublesome in foreign lands, and so, when a wooden gate opened into an area manned by a who-couldn't-be-over-17-years-old Burmese boy and his wooden-butted rifle, I thought I'd try the charm of a foreigner and see if he'd let me pass. He did, kind of - though his hand waved "no", he had a smile on his face, so, donning a smile on my face, I walked on by with a grinning, "O.K.!" I sat, read, and prayed for ten minutes looking over the river before he came by my side and grinned another of his toothless grins with still that wooden-butted rifle on his shoulder. I rose - it then feeling very eerie - and left the riverside, four hours later hopping again on my bicycle and riding back to Mae Sot, needing to shower before attending the art gallery opening of which I wrote you last time.
The store at which the art show was to be hosted functions as an aid to Karen refugees from Burma, selling the handiwork of Karen women and returning 80% of the profits to the women who weaved the crafts. I visited the store a few hours before the show opened and spoke again with whom I thought to be owner, who, unlike the day before, wore a gold crucifix around her neck.
This made me overjoyed, as right now I am doing little more than reading my Bible and praying all day, and I delight to be led by grace to others who love Him whom I love. But after speaking with her for ten minutes, I discoved the delight to be had was not really mine but hers - and because of this, my delight was all the more!
I told her I had been supporting missionaries and their work in Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos for the past month. She told me that she was Karen and became a Christian in Burma, her homeland - but then she said how much she envied and respected those who could talk about the Bible, because she couldn't do so very well, and that she was often scolded by her sister for not going to church when she had to work on Sundays. And when I left her minutes later, it hit me that I missed just the opportunity for which I live this summer: to encourage those in the faith in whatever way I can. So I hopped again on my silver bicycle, charted to the coffee shop, and minutes later with verses in mind, pen in hand, and espresso sitting to my right, prayed that the words to come in the letter to my friend would not speak with the reason that I used to craft them but would move by the Spirit to give her whatever it was she needed at that time.
To note that God desires obedience and a loving heart more than a person who grumbles but goes to church religiously every Sunday:
"Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the Lord? To obey is better than to sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams" (1 Samuel 15:22).
"The Lord detests the sacrifice of the wicked, but the prayer of the upright pleases him." (Proverbs 15:8)
And Luke 13:10-17, when Jesus one-ups the synagogue ruler and heals on the Sabbath.
--
I handed the letter, three pages torn out of my journal and folder, to her as I left, then bicycled the streets 'til sunset praying she might be uplifted and stand firm in the confidence of knowing Christ.
I'm off now - the moon is full, the night is young, and I read that Bangkok never sleeps: only kidding. I'll sleep, but hopefully not before finishing Isaiah. I had never read it before this morning, but man, it's good. I was reminded yesterday of my great love for Ecclesiastes and was awaken with a new fondness for a new book with this new morning. Things go well.
Now go check out Isaiah 44:6-23. My prayer group read it atop a mountain in Laos, meters from a golden temple, and I keep coming back to it in thought and prayer.
Yours,
js
1 Thessalonians 2:16-18
My friends,
On an evening such as this, just writing you feels almost as if I were sitting beside you. I sit, though, in Bangkok, after a nine hour bus ride from the far northwest of Thailand to where I just read via Yahoo news is the happening site of a building two-week protest by Thai citizens outside the headquarters of their Prime Minister. Thailand parades its King on banners as far as the eye can see and curses its Prime Minister on his doostep. So it goes, and perhaps tomorrow morning I'll check the scene.
But this afternoon, an afternoon that dragged into the evening! I hurried bright-eyed off the bus as it came to a still, eager to find my hostel, toss my bags, and look to some sticky rice and hardboiled eggs for dinner, thinking I might wander the neighborhood streets as evening came and retire like usual with my reading before bed. Wander I did, for two hours, though not on my neighborhood streets and not after tossing my bags and sitting for dinner.
I left Mae Sot this morning in style - that is, without knowing where I would go upon arrival in Bangkok, as I forgot to write down the address or memorize directions to the hostel I booked last night. "No problem [in Thai: 'mae pen rai']," I thought. "I'll stumble upon an internet cafe, log simply into my email, write down directions to the hostel and be off."
To end quickly what I now see turning into a multi-paragraphed, digressive story, I ended up in no sight of an internet cafe but being befriended by a young Thai student who works at the Bangkok "Children's Discovery Musuem". She took my by subway to an internet cafe, loaned me her pen several times to write down directions as I sat at the computer, then led me again to the subway and pointed me on my way, gifting me her pen as she left: "I think you will need this other times."
I exited the subway knowing that my hostel, "Madras Hostel", was a short fifteen minute walk from the subway, but not knowing which way to walk. I walked, walked, double-backed and walked farther, and right at two hours after I left the Bangkok bus station, I looked up to see a bright yellow, white, and red glowing "Madras Hostel" sign, and my back almost broke as I went to kiss the ground. The hostess and her five-year old daughter greeted me warmly, and she, taking pity on my soiled brow, upgraded my room from a large ten person dorm to my own room with balcony and A/C, and my back almost broke as I went to kiss the ground. By grace, by grace.
--
But all of this is nothing in light of what I meant to write you last night but got lost in pages of personal emails and hostel bookings. I will start in yesterday morning, though what I really wish to write you of is the evening.
I woke my first morning in Mae Sot with plans to make my way to the Myanmar border, a mere six miles away, thinking I should go in for a one day visa and have a look at the country whose reckless military junta is oppressing the Karen people of whom I wrote you so fondly in my last letter. I rented the silver bike of a college-aged coffee shop owner, whose store I inaugurated with an espresso the afternoon previous, and made straight on the road that led without divergence to the Burmese border. A river separates the two countries - Thailand and Myanmar - and I could see it from a ways back before I got to it.
At the Thai departure I left my bicycle for the day - "Only walking!" - and trodded over the 400 meter "Friendship Bridge." The grandson of a WWII Burmese translator for the British army took me in conversation over the bridge, hoping I'd hire him for a tour guide once stepping foot in his country - I didn't, of course, but on the way over the bridge he mentioned to me 1) that he US was very good because the US is very powerful and 2) that he was especially interested in Israel, because Israel gained their independence in the same year as Burma gained its independence - 1948. This second comment was more interesting to me than the first, and it largely guided my thoughts that afternoon, as I tarried without aim down muddied and potholed dirt avenues and interacted with one too many armed and camouflage-jacketed Burmese army boys for my liking.
I saw that morning and afternoon three or four tinted-windowed and oversize-tired trucks with seven to eight camo-ed boys in the back, holding their rifles pointed to the sky. Right when I stepped into the Burmese Arrival office at Immigration, a whistle blew and the workers inside tossed on their helmets and darted out into the street. A Thai military captain was passing back into Thailand, and just five feet from me the road through the gate was clogged with flashing cameras and armed military men.
I'd nowhere to go that day, no map of the streets, but I did have my Bible and camera in my satchel, and, not being able to think of anywhere more active and interesting, walked along the river's edge that separated Thai from Burmese. Though I'll never admit it, I'm really very mischevious and troublesome in foreign lands, and so, when a wooden gate opened into an area manned by a who-couldn't-be-over-17-years-old Burmese boy and his wooden-butted rifle, I thought I'd try the charm of a foreigner and see if he'd let me pass. He did, kind of - though his hand waved "no", he had a smile on his face, so, donning a smile on my face, I walked on by with a grinning, "O.K.!" I sat, read, and prayed for ten minutes looking over the river before he came by my side and grinned another of his toothless grins with still that wooden-butted rifle on his shoulder. I rose - it then feeling very eerie - and left the riverside, four hours later hopping again on my bicycle and riding back to Mae Sot, "Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."
1 Thessalonians 2:16-18
My friends,
On an evening such as this, just writing you feels almost as if I were sitting beside you. I sit, though, in Bangkok, after a nine hour bus ride from the far northwest of Thailand to where I just read via Yahoo news is the happening site of a building two-week protest by Thai citizens outside the headquarters of their Prime Minister. Thailand parades its King on banners as far as the eye can see and curses its Prime Minister on his doostep. So it goes, and perhaps tomorrow morning I'll check the scene.
But this afternoon, an afternoon that dragged into the evening! I hurried bright-eyed off the bus as it came to a still, eager to find my hostel, toss my bags, and look to some sticky rice and hardboiled eggs for dinner, thinking I might wander the neighborhood streets as evening came and retire like usual with my reading before bed. Wander I did, for two hours, though not on my neighborhood streets and not after tossing my bags and sitting for dinner.
I left Mae Sot this morning in style - that is, without knowing where I would go upon arrival in Bangkok, as I forgot to write down the address or memorize directions to the hostel I booked last night. "No problem [in Thai: 'mae pen rai']," I thought. "I'll stumble upon an internet cafe, log simply into my email, write down directions to the hostel and be off."
To end quickly what I now see turning into a multi-paragraphed, digressive story, I ended up in no sight of an internet cafe but being befriended by a young Thai student who works at the Bangkok "Children's Discovery Musuem". She took my by subway to an internet cafe, loaned me her pen several times to write down directions as I sat at the computer, then led me again to the subway and pointed me on my way, gifting me her pen as she left: "I think you will need this other times."
I exited the subway knowing that my hostel, "Madras Hostel", was a short fifteen minute walk from the subway, but not knowing which way to walk. I walked, walked, double-backed and walked farther, and right at two hours after I left the Bangkok bus station, I looked up to see a bright yellow, white, and red glowing "Madras Hostel" sign, and my back almost broke as I went to kiss the ground. The hostess and her five-year old daughter greeted me warmly, and she, taking pity on my soiled brow, upgraded my room from a large ten person dorm to my own room with balcony and A/C, and my back almost broke as I went to kiss the ground. By grace, by grace.
--
But all of this is nothing in light of what I meant to write you last night but got lost in pages of personal emails and hostel bookings. I will start in yesterday morning, though what I really wish to write you of is the evening.
I woke my first morning in Mae Sot with plans to make my way to the Myanmar border, a mere six miles away, thinking I should go in for a one day visa and have a look at the country whose reckless military junta is oppressing the Karen people of whom I wrote you so fondly in my last letter. I rented the silver bike of a college-aged coffee shop owner, whose store I inaugurated with an espresso the afternoon previous, and made straight on the road that led without divergence to the Burmese border. A river separates the two countries - Thailand and Myanmar - and I could see it from a ways back before I got to it.
At the Thai departure I left my bicycle for the day - "Only walking!" - and trodded over the 400 meter "Friendship Bridge." The grandson of a WWII Burmese translator for the British army took me in conversation over the bridge, hoping I'd hire him for a tour guide once stepping foot in his country - I didn't, of course, but on the way over the bridge he mentioned to me 1) that he US was very good because the US is very powerful and 2) that he was especially interested in Israel, because Israel gained their independence in the same year as Burma gained its independence - 1948. This second comment was more interesting to me than the first, and it largely guided my thoughts that afternoon, as I tarried without aim down muddied and potholed dirt avenues and interacted with one too many armed and camouflage-jacketed Burmese army boys for my liking.
I saw that morning and afternoon three or four tinted-windowed and oversize-tired trucks with seven to eight camo-ed boys in the back, holding their rifles pointed to the sky. Right when I stepped into the Burmese Arrival office at Immigration, a whistle blew and the workers inside tossed on their helmets and darted out into the street. A Thai military captain was passing back into Thailand, and just five feet from me the road through the gate was clogged with flashing cameras and armed military men.
I'd nowhere to go that day, no map of the streets, but I did have my Bible and camera in my satchel, and, not being able to think of anywhere more active and interesting, walked along the river's edge that separated Thai from Burmese. Though I'll never admit it, I'm really very mischevious and troublesome in foreign lands, and so, when a wooden gate opened into an area manned by a who-couldn't-be-over-17-years-old Burmese boy and his wooden-butted rifle, I thought I'd try the charm of a foreigner and see if he'd let me pass. He did, kind of - though his hand waved "no", he had a smile on his face, so, donning a smile on my face, I walked on by with a grinning, "O.K.!" I sat, read, and prayed for ten minutes looking over the river before he came by my side and grinned another of his toothless grins with still that wooden-butted rifle on his shoulder. I rose - it then feeling very eerie - and left the riverside, four hours later hopping again on my bicycle and riding back to Mae Sot, needing to shower before attending the art gallery opening of which I wrote you last time.
The store at which the art show was to be hosted functions as an aid to Karen refugees from Burma, selling the handiwork of Karen women and returning 80% of the profits to the women who weaved the crafts. I visited the store a few hours before the show opened and spoke again with whom I thought to be owner, who, unlike the day before, wore a gold crucifix around her neck.
This made me overjoyed, as right now I am doing little more than reading my Bible and praying all day, and I delight to be led by grace to others who love Him whom I love. But after speaking with her for ten minutes, I discoved the delight to be had was not really mine but hers - and because of this, my delight was all the more!
I told her I had been supporting missionaries and their work in Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos for the past month. She told me that she was Karen and became a Christian in Burma, her homeland - but then she said how much she envied and respected those who could talk about the Bible, because she couldn't do so very well, and that she was often scolded by her sister for not going to church when she had to work on Sundays. And when I left her minutes later, it hit me that I missed just the opportunity for which I live this summer: to encourage those in the faith in whatever way I can. So I hopped again on my silver bicycle, charted to the coffee shop, and minutes later with verses in mind, pen in hand, and espresso sitting to my right, prayed that the words to come in the letter to my friend would not speak with the reason that I used to craft them but would move by the Spirit to give her whatever it was she needed at that time.
To note that God desires obedience and a loving heart more than a person who grumbles but goes to church religiously every Sunday:
"Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the Lord? To obey is better than to sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams" (1 Samuel 15:22).
"The Lord detests the sacrifice of the wicked, but the prayer of the upright pleases him." (Proverbs 15:8)
And Luke 13:10-17, when Jesus one-ups the synagogue ruler and heals on the Sabbath.
--
I handed the letter, three pages torn out of my journal and folder, to her as I left, then bicycled the streets 'til sunset praying she might be uplifted and stand firm in the confidence of knowing Christ.
I'm off now - the moon is full, the night is young, and I read that Bangkok never sleeps: only kidding. I'll sleep, but hopefully not before finishing Isaiah. I had never read it before this morning, but man, it's good. I was reminded yesterday of my great love for Ecclesiastes and was awaken with a new fondness for a new book with this new morning. Things go well.
Now go check out Isaiah 44:6-23. My prayer group read it atop a mountain in Laos, meters from a golden temple, and I keep coming back to it in thought and prayer.
Yours,
js
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Two Psalms and the Karen
"Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
who have set their hearts on pilgrimage."
Psalm 84:5
I woke with a start this morning, as I woke last morning and the morning before, my body not able to sleep past six hours on the night. My watch read 6:40 a.m., one of my bus options for the day was due to leave at 7:00, so by 6:50 I had left my key with the grey haired fellow at reception and set course for the bus station, scanning the sidewalks for a boiled egg vendor so as not to start the six hour bus trek down the Thai - Myanmar without my day's keep.
The bus - not a bus at all, really, but a truck converted into a taxi with benches running the length of its bed - waited near a monk and the green-shirted driver, who welcomed me kindly and told me that we weren't due to leave until 8:00. I slung my knapsack - not a knapsack at all, really, but the term is more rustic and of a wanderer, I think, than "backpack" - on the rear seat, so I could once we left city limits easily hop up and hang off the rail on the roof a la garbage man, and trod to the morning market for breakfast.
Breakfast, a mug of peanut milk and six or so fried peanut-sized dough balls, came and went at a Muslim family's food stall, and soon after we - the orange-robed monk, green-shirted driver, and I - were off in route to the border town from where I now write you, Mae Sot, Thailand. The monk was duly granted the front seat in the cabin, and I was quickly standing and hanging off the rails, a real sore sight amid the jungle background of our route - but I hadn't much of a better choice, as before we departed the town we loaded a motorbike into the bed of the truck, into what would be the leg room of ten or so migrant farmers and village peasants as they boarded on and boarded off during our full morning and early afternoon's journey.
I was full of joy the moment I woke today - perhaps due to knowing I would for half the day be hanging off the back of a converted pickup truck-taxi as it snaked over mountains and aside rivers that separate Thailand and Myanmar; perhaps due to my now being in the Psalms of King David on my summer's commission of reading the Bible from page 1 to (my edition) page 964 (at Psalm 107, I'm now on page 474); perhaps due to, after finishing St. John of the Cross's "Dark Night of the Soul" yesterday, I'm now with an anonymous Russian peasant's "The Way of a Pilgrim", which I'll write more of soon - but more likely due to, ever since coming back from the ten-day prayer journey through Vietnam and Laos, I've been blessed to feel convicted and find joy in prayer and keeping mindful of the glory of God in nearly every - or, I try for nearly every - moment of my days, whether that manifests in praying for the Karen refugees who ride beside me or really trying to get in tune with what my Russian peasant's book calls "knowledge of the speech of created things" but is more accurately described as the sighing of all creation to glorify God and unite with Him.
"Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be
glad;
let the sea resound, andall that is in it;
let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them.
Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy;
they will sing before the Lord, for he comes,
he comes to judge the earth." Psalm 96: 11-13
So often we think, "Alas! if I don't praise God, the rocks might sing of his magnifence, and how awful that would be!" when instead we might think of joining in the singing of all creation that ascribes to the Lord the glory due His name. The Psalms are full of such references, and my Russian peasant, as well as Miguel Unamuno, seem to think similarly.
But this is not at all what I planned to write you this evening. I could write you all evening - yes, gladly - but I've dinner soon to fetch and pushups too to do before bed, keeping on the schedule of my comrades in Chiang Mai. So on with it.
After farmers and villagers came and went, nearly four and a half hours into the journey and during one of the times when I alone was in the back of the truck, a camouflage-jacketed middle-aged Thai man jumped on with his fatigued-green knapsack (knapsack! not backpack!) at one of the many police checkpoints, designed, I witnessed later, to ensure those traveling are registered Thai citizens or visa-ed travelers and not escapees from forested Myanmar. He wore a U.S. Marines jacket and spoke a fair bit of English, enough to let me onto his now ten year's mission and occupation.
Since 1997, he has served as 2nd Lieutenant in the Karen National Union, a type of vigilante armed force to protect the Karen people, against whom the Burmese government has for the last fighty-eight years waged a ruthless attempt at genocide. He spoke five words very well - "kill you", "Burma", "Thailand", and "border"- and through these was able to communicate that his position is to patrol the border, along which I had been traveling for the last four and a half hours, and, if a situation so arises, shoot at the Burmese junta and defend Karen refugees.
The Karen (pronounced "Cah-ren", not like the English name "Care-ren") are the people with whom I have lived almost a week of my time this summer in a village outside of Chiang Mai. I've taught them English, gave my testimony to them, led them in prayer, and daily when living with them was uplifted with their rising voices in worship, which each night where I stayed would start at sunset and last until 9:00 PM, a call in the mountains to recognize the glory of our King. They gifted me a cloth shoulder bag which I cherish, and are, if I may so generalize, both the most joyous and tragic southeastern Asian people group of those of which I've been informed or with whom I've come into contact this summer. Most of the Karen now living in Thailand fled at one point from the Burmese government and crossed into Thailand as refugees with naught but a pair of secondhand rubber flipflops and probably a cloth shoulder bag like the one I carry daily and now sits on the desk aside my Bible and this computer. They've a special pull on my heart, and I pray for them daily. Like early Israel, they are a nation dispossesed and on the run, and, like early Israel, my prayers are that God moves among them in very real and concrete ways - dreams, visions, prophets - so to show His sovereignty and give their lives hope and purpose.
My 2nd Lieutenant friend jumped off at the Karen refugee camp outside of Mae Sot, a sprawling cliffside valley community of, I estimate, nearly three thousand thatched huts and one or two elephants. Before entering and exiting the stretch of road that spans the refugee camp, armed Thai guards stopped our truck and checked the identification cards of those they thought suspicious. As we were exiting, they asked for the papers of a dark-skinned and raggedly-clothed grey-haired man, who neither spoke much of the language in which the guards addressed him nor had any papers. They took him off the truck, and away we went.
What are you to do when born into a country that doesn't want you?
These are the fatherless, those without cloaks or shelter, of our time.
I arrived in Mae Sot, only six kilometers from the Myanmar border, at half past two. Stumbled onto a store called Borderline in the early evening, which sells the handwoven goods of Burmese and Karen refugees and returns the profits to the villages who crafted the knapsacks, coin pouches, blankets, cloth coasters. Whom I took for the owner invited me to the opening of "an exhibition of prints by Burmese and Scottish children" tomorrow night in the upstair's art gallery, titled "Looking East, Looking West." I will go there at 6:00 PM and will go now to find something from a street stall for dinner.
With the love that is in Christ,
js
who have set their hearts on pilgrimage."
Psalm 84:5
I woke with a start this morning, as I woke last morning and the morning before, my body not able to sleep past six hours on the night. My watch read 6:40 a.m., one of my bus options for the day was due to leave at 7:00, so by 6:50 I had left my key with the grey haired fellow at reception and set course for the bus station, scanning the sidewalks for a boiled egg vendor so as not to start the six hour bus trek down the Thai - Myanmar without my day's keep.
The bus - not a bus at all, really, but a truck converted into a taxi with benches running the length of its bed - waited near a monk and the green-shirted driver, who welcomed me kindly and told me that we weren't due to leave until 8:00. I slung my knapsack - not a knapsack at all, really, but the term is more rustic and of a wanderer, I think, than "backpack" - on the rear seat, so I could once we left city limits easily hop up and hang off the rail on the roof a la garbage man, and trod to the morning market for breakfast.
Breakfast, a mug of peanut milk and six or so fried peanut-sized dough balls, came and went at a Muslim family's food stall, and soon after we - the orange-robed monk, green-shirted driver, and I - were off in route to the border town from where I now write you, Mae Sot, Thailand. The monk was duly granted the front seat in the cabin, and I was quickly standing and hanging off the rails, a real sore sight amid the jungle background of our route - but I hadn't much of a better choice, as before we departed the town we loaded a motorbike into the bed of the truck, into what would be the leg room of ten or so migrant farmers and village peasants as they boarded on and boarded off during our full morning and early afternoon's journey.
I was full of joy the moment I woke today - perhaps due to knowing I would for half the day be hanging off the back of a converted pickup truck-taxi as it snaked over mountains and aside rivers that separate Thailand and Myanmar; perhaps due to my now being in the Psalms of King David on my summer's commission of reading the Bible from page 1 to (my edition) page 964 (at Psalm 107, I'm now on page 474); perhaps due to, after finishing St. John of the Cross's "Dark Night of the Soul" yesterday, I'm now with an anonymous Russian peasant's "The Way of a Pilgrim", which I'll write more of soon - but more likely due to, ever since coming back from the ten-day prayer journey through Vietnam and Laos, I've been blessed to feel convicted and find joy in prayer and keeping mindful of the glory of God in nearly every - or, I try for nearly every - moment of my days, whether that manifests in praying for the Karen refugees who ride beside me or really trying to get in tune with what my Russian peasant's book calls "knowledge of the speech of created things" but is more accurately described as the sighing of all creation to glorify God and unite with Him.
"Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be
glad;
let the sea resound, andall that is in it;
let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them.
Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy;
they will sing before the Lord, for he comes,
he comes to judge the earth." Psalm 96: 11-13
So often we think, "Alas! if I don't praise God, the rocks might sing of his magnifence, and how awful that would be!" when instead we might think of joining in the singing of all creation that ascribes to the Lord the glory due His name. The Psalms are full of such references, and my Russian peasant, as well as Miguel Unamuno, seem to think similarly.
But this is not at all what I planned to write you this evening. I could write you all evening - yes, gladly - but I've dinner soon to fetch and pushups too to do before bed, keeping on the schedule of my comrades in Chiang Mai. So on with it.
After farmers and villagers came and went, nearly four and a half hours into the journey and during one of the times when I alone was in the back of the truck, a camouflage-jacketed middle-aged Thai man jumped on with his fatigued-green knapsack (knapsack! not backpack!) at one of the many police checkpoints, designed, I witnessed later, to ensure those traveling are registered Thai citizens or visa-ed travelers and not escapees from forested Myanmar. He wore a U.S. Marines jacket and spoke a fair bit of English, enough to let me onto his now ten year's mission and occupation.
Since 1997, he has served as 2nd Lieutenant in the Karen National Union, a type of vigilante armed force to protect the Karen people, against whom the Burmese government has for the last fighty-eight years waged a ruthless attempt at genocide. He spoke five words very well - "kill you", "Burma", "Thailand", and "border"- and through these was able to communicate that his position is to patrol the border, along which I had been traveling for the last four and a half hours, and, if a situation so arises, shoot at the Burmese junta and defend Karen refugees.
The Karen (pronounced "Cah-ren", not like the English name "Care-ren") are the people with whom I have lived almost a week of my time this summer in a village outside of Chiang Mai. I've taught them English, gave my testimony to them, led them in prayer, and daily when living with them was uplifted with their rising voices in worship, which each night where I stayed would start at sunset and last until 9:00 PM, a call in the mountains to recognize the glory of our King. They gifted me a cloth shoulder bag which I cherish, and are, if I may so generalize, both the most joyous and tragic southeastern Asian people group of those of which I've been informed or with whom I've come into contact this summer. Most of the Karen now living in Thailand fled at one point from the Burmese government and crossed into Thailand as refugees with naught but a pair of secondhand rubber flipflops and probably a cloth shoulder bag like the one I carry daily and now sits on the desk aside my Bible and this computer. They've a special pull on my heart, and I pray for them daily. Like early Israel, they are a nation dispossesed and on the run, and, like early Israel, my prayers are that God moves among them in very real and concrete ways - dreams, visions, prophets - so to show His sovereignty and give their lives hope and purpose.
My 2nd Lieutenant friend jumped off at the Karen refugee camp outside of Mae Sot, a sprawling cliffside valley community of, I estimate, nearly three thousand thatched huts and one or two elephants. Before entering and exiting the stretch of road that spans the refugee camp, armed Thai guards stopped our truck and checked the identification cards of those they thought suspicious. As we were exiting, they asked for the papers of a dark-skinned and raggedly-clothed grey-haired man, who neither spoke much of the language in which the guards addressed him nor had any papers. They took him off the truck, and away we went.
What are you to do when born into a country that doesn't want you?
These are the fatherless, those without cloaks or shelter, of our time.
I arrived in Mae Sot, only six kilometers from the Myanmar border, at half past two. Stumbled onto a store called Borderline in the early evening, which sells the handwoven goods of Burmese and Karen refugees and returns the profits to the villages who crafted the knapsacks, coin pouches, blankets, cloth coasters. Whom I took for the owner invited me to the opening of "an exhibition of prints by Burmese and Scottish children" tomorrow night in the upstair's art gallery, titled "Looking East, Looking West." I will go there at 6:00 PM and will go now to find something from a street stall for dinner.
With the love that is in Christ,
js
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Farewell Chiang Mai, Final Weeks, and Mass
Evening friends. As has been the plague of our summer, I've alltogether too much to say and neither have plotted my points nor asked the Thai girl who mans this Internet cafe if, once these two young kids leave me alone in the rows of computers, I'll be kicked out or allowed to stay. A quick aside - if Chinese Internet cafes were the back alleyways that mothers warned their children not to walk at night (and they very well are, hazy with cigarette smoke), Thai Internet cafes would be the manicured public squares in front of civic centers or community buildings. They're not so bad.
Two quick things: my health has returned, and my passport holds a Chinese visa.
This morning I left the city where I was based in the times between village excursions and the prayer journey to Vietnam and Laos on a five hour bus ride to very near the Myanmar border. I didn't expect or plan to make friends this summer, expecting rather that I would be frequently on the move and often with book in hand, but, in one of the small twists God made to my plans, I was blessed to find two wiser-than-I and weathered fellows in Chiang Mai with whom I passed more than a few nights on downtown motorbikes and in discusson of a Christian's peacemaker responsibility during times of immediate and life-threatening violence (which isn't so far of a reality in lands very near), mainstream Christianity's seeming surrender to what most men think is inescapable lust, and how to frame Christianity to fit an Eastern mind and ethos - usually all over a game of cards and a tub of glaringly artificial strawberry plastic "icecream". We've adopted as a group the routine of one "red bull" of an Alaskan's pushup and situp program and just did our final set together last night aside the baby crib of the five-month old boy of one theologically and home church-minded of a Floridan. I said goodbye to both of them this morning, after I sat and they prayed over me and my time past and to-come in Asia this summer. I left with and in a real sense of peace, which carried me to where I now write you and still wraps around me tight. We should all sit and pray for eachother - intentionally, specifically, and in the spirit - more often!
Now it is 9:46 PM on the 17th of June, and as of 9:16 PM I have booked my final airplane ticket to carry me to and from across Asia and very soon across a few oceans in route to what I read on drudgereport.com is a flooded Midwestern USA. What follows below is my planned itinerary up to a much anticipated flight from Hong Kong on July 9th.
18 / 6 - 22 / 6: Snake down the Myanmar border in route to Bangkok, from where I will fly on...
22 / 6: to Pnom Penh, Cambodia, to meet and work with a Cambodian friend and his family until...
2 / 7: when I will return to Bangkok from Pnom Penh, only to catch a flight on...
3 / 7: to Shenzhen, China, in route to Hong Kong from where I will fly on...
9 / 7: to Pittsburgh, PA to spend a week with my best friend Mr. David Kita before flying on...
18 / 7: to Denver, CO to meet my hometown church for Youth Quake, a week-long camping retreat in the Colorado mountains, before then joining their caravan back to Oklahoma on the 26th of July.
Thus all dates are set, and all flights are booked, and now before fleeing to bed I've to tell you quickly of the Catholic Mass I went to this evening.
As my bus from Chiang Mai pulled into town, I noticed a stark-white Catholic Church that I then, after tossing my bags in a trucker's stop of a hotel room for the night, spent the rest of the afternoon trying to relocate. I managed across it about 5:00 PM. After praying in front of the outside altar and what I suppose is a relic, I found the front office door unlocked and, kicking off my sandals at the door, met Mr. "Teh-phil", which means, he told me after this evening's Mass, "lover of God" in a language I do not know. Born in a nearby village and ordained as a priest six years ago, he was quick to ask me if I was Catholic and what I thought of 1. Hillary 2. Obama and 3. McCain, followed by an invitation to join him, a Thai Catholic priest, and his friend for an afternoon's football (soccer) match. Wanting to read and dine, I declined, but said maybe I would see him at Mass.
And I did. Two "sisters" (nuns), a man and his wife who attend to the priests' quarters and tidy the church, and I kneeled on the wooden floor while my friend, "Teh-phil", assisted the elder priest in adminstering the Mass. I read through the Psalms of King David and prayed, but afterward the two priests and I stood cackling on the church's doorstep as the younger priest fumbled with English phrases and idioms. Before I left, he made sure to entreat, "If you see me again, do not remember me!", meaning, of course, that I shouldn't forget his name or face if we meet again. A few more quick comments about the U.S.'s running presidential race and the King of Thailand, and I was back to the sidewalks.
Now the two kids have been gone for the last ten minutes and I've finished the complimentary hot chocolate the Thai girl brought to my computer. I expect she has sat trying to muster up the English and courage to suggest I might get out here, and I'm going to try to leave before she goes through with it.
All best,
js
Two quick things: my health has returned, and my passport holds a Chinese visa.
This morning I left the city where I was based in the times between village excursions and the prayer journey to Vietnam and Laos on a five hour bus ride to very near the Myanmar border. I didn't expect or plan to make friends this summer, expecting rather that I would be frequently on the move and often with book in hand, but, in one of the small twists God made to my plans, I was blessed to find two wiser-than-I and weathered fellows in Chiang Mai with whom I passed more than a few nights on downtown motorbikes and in discusson of a Christian's peacemaker responsibility during times of immediate and life-threatening violence (which isn't so far of a reality in lands very near), mainstream Christianity's seeming surrender to what most men think is inescapable lust, and how to frame Christianity to fit an Eastern mind and ethos - usually all over a game of cards and a tub of glaringly artificial strawberry plastic "icecream". We've adopted as a group the routine of one "red bull" of an Alaskan's pushup and situp program and just did our final set together last night aside the baby crib of the five-month old boy of one theologically and home church-minded of a Floridan. I said goodbye to both of them this morning, after I sat and they prayed over me and my time past and to-come in Asia this summer. I left with and in a real sense of peace, which carried me to where I now write you and still wraps around me tight. We should all sit and pray for eachother - intentionally, specifically, and in the spirit - more often!
Now it is 9:46 PM on the 17th of June, and as of 9:16 PM I have booked my final airplane ticket to carry me to and from across Asia and very soon across a few oceans in route to what I read on drudgereport.com is a flooded Midwestern USA. What follows below is my planned itinerary up to a much anticipated flight from Hong Kong on July 9th.
18 / 6 - 22 / 6: Snake down the Myanmar border in route to Bangkok, from where I will fly on...
22 / 6: to Pnom Penh, Cambodia, to meet and work with a Cambodian friend and his family until...
2 / 7: when I will return to Bangkok from Pnom Penh, only to catch a flight on...
3 / 7: to Shenzhen, China, in route to Hong Kong from where I will fly on...
9 / 7: to Pittsburgh, PA to spend a week with my best friend Mr. David Kita before flying on...
18 / 7: to Denver, CO to meet my hometown church for Youth Quake, a week-long camping retreat in the Colorado mountains, before then joining their caravan back to Oklahoma on the 26th of July.
Thus all dates are set, and all flights are booked, and now before fleeing to bed I've to tell you quickly of the Catholic Mass I went to this evening.
As my bus from Chiang Mai pulled into town, I noticed a stark-white Catholic Church that I then, after tossing my bags in a trucker's stop of a hotel room for the night, spent the rest of the afternoon trying to relocate. I managed across it about 5:00 PM. After praying in front of the outside altar and what I suppose is a relic, I found the front office door unlocked and, kicking off my sandals at the door, met Mr. "Teh-phil", which means, he told me after this evening's Mass, "lover of God" in a language I do not know. Born in a nearby village and ordained as a priest six years ago, he was quick to ask me if I was Catholic and what I thought of 1. Hillary 2. Obama and 3. McCain, followed by an invitation to join him, a Thai Catholic priest, and his friend for an afternoon's football (soccer) match. Wanting to read and dine, I declined, but said maybe I would see him at Mass.
And I did. Two "sisters" (nuns), a man and his wife who attend to the priests' quarters and tidy the church, and I kneeled on the wooden floor while my friend, "Teh-phil", assisted the elder priest in adminstering the Mass. I read through the Psalms of King David and prayed, but afterward the two priests and I stood cackling on the church's doorstep as the younger priest fumbled with English phrases and idioms. Before I left, he made sure to entreat, "If you see me again, do not remember me!", meaning, of course, that I shouldn't forget his name or face if we meet again. A few more quick comments about the U.S.'s running presidential race and the King of Thailand, and I was back to the sidewalks.
Now the two kids have been gone for the last ten minutes and I've finished the complimentary hot chocolate the Thai girl brought to my computer. I expect she has sat trying to muster up the English and courage to suggest I might get out here, and I'm going to try to leave before she goes through with it.
All best,
js
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Vietnam, Laos, and Thank God, God Doesn't Make Sense
Good evening to you in the West and morning in the East. I've since returning at midnight on Sunday from Vietnam and Laos been engaged in somewhat defeating battles with the Chinese Embassy and a one-two allergy and fever combo, but mercies renew every morning, so with this morning I look to success on both fronts. Winning the first battle will require a sly bit of imitation, and the second a few more Thai allergy pills and healing prayers. Both are on their way.
I've two weeks of prayer journeying to write you, forty minutes until I must go to the Embassy, and six hours until I board a bus to a mountain village. Onward.
If I didn't explain it thoroughly enough in my last letter (and I know I did not), the concept of prayer journeying is, in an advertised pre-packaged slogan, as follows: praying on sight with insight, which means that by traveling to locations and interacting with the local people, your prayers are better able to avoid pre-packaged prayer slogans and become more specific and engaged with the community around you. Thus instead of praying that God move among a Tai people group while on your knees before your thick-mattressed bed, you pray for the Tai woman who just walked past you carrying a week's load of firewood on her back as you tarry down the potholed dirt road of her village.
And in full confession, I admit the concept of the trip was something foreign to me when I set out on it. In my latest kick of Christianity, heavily influenced by Catholic theology and a last semester's twenty-page research paper on asceticism, I had somewhat unknowingly repositioned the God of my youth as distant, impersonal, and forever separate in the full splendor of his "omni-s". And this perception of God is not without benefits - the impersonal, the rational conception of God lends very well to writing analytical papers on the nature of His character. Once you define Him as a categorized variable, you then can rearrange your formula however you like and observe the "divine" results. It was something new to me, coming from a non-denominational, evangelical "tradition", and it largely energized my decision to throw away this prayer-before-bed and Sunday morning Christianity and seek something else, as well as spend my summer abroad in Asia seeking Him - for that I am thankful, but I am more thankful for the friends here I have met and the experiences I have had that have guided me out of that theological abyss.
One of those experiences was the prayer journey, during which our sole purpose and aim of every day was to plead to God on behalf of the people around us for their well-being and salvation. Plead to God? Plead to Him who is outside of time and thus immutable and thus never changes His mind and can we even say He has a mind? My perception of Him had to change quickly - rather, it had to be realigned quickly, and it was so after reflecting on passages from the Old Testament (Abraham groaning for the sparing of Sodom and Gomorrah comes to mind - "What if only ten can be found there?" Gen. 18:16-33).
This was paired in effect with my current reading of Miguel Unamuno's Tragic Sense of Life, which aims partly to show that God is great not because he reasons better than anyone else ever but because He is, yes, all-powerful, but also very much irrational and thus in-touch with our core being, which yearns for life after death though our reasoning mind always jumps in to say how foolish and weak that wish is. And so it dawned on me that, ever since tiring or maturing out of the "Repent and Be Saved!" Christianity and becoming bored with Sunday mornings, I had measured up the Bible and its teachings against other philosophies and religions to see which made the most sense or was, really, the smartest. It was always troublesome for me when the Bible seemed intellectually simple - I wanted something with which I could wrestle, like Jacob at the riverside (Gen. 32:22-31), not something that sounded the same every Sunday and always came to the same conclusion, that you had to "rely on Jesus", whatever that meant.
But this trip and my reading made me realize that it isn't because Christ's teachings and the Bible make the most sense that I profess my faith (and, moreover, that this shouldn't be the reason), but that I do so because the God I worship is the One, true and living. There's no way around that. What is real is real, and what isn't, well, is made of stone and wood and set up in the Buddhist temples around town (2 Kings 19:14-19).
And with that I must leave you to hop a motorbike quickly to the Chinese Consulate. For those further interested, ask me come July about any of the thoughts above or how I felt God on the trip, because I've much to share. Or, for those of you that like traveling stories, ask about the 7-hour bus rides across Vietnam's unpaved and washed-out mountain roads, or the Vietnamese kids who ran circles around my friend and me in an evening's soccer match.
A super quick scenery sum-up:
1. Vietnamese nature is, next to idyllic English countryside and the Galicean lands of northwest Spain, the prettiest I've seen. But it feels so much like commie China.
2. Laos is overly relaxed, threatened by major deforestation, and almost as friendly as Thailand.
Peace and love,
js
I've two weeks of prayer journeying to write you, forty minutes until I must go to the Embassy, and six hours until I board a bus to a mountain village. Onward.
If I didn't explain it thoroughly enough in my last letter (and I know I did not), the concept of prayer journeying is, in an advertised pre-packaged slogan, as follows: praying on sight with insight, which means that by traveling to locations and interacting with the local people, your prayers are better able to avoid pre-packaged prayer slogans and become more specific and engaged with the community around you. Thus instead of praying that God move among a Tai people group while on your knees before your thick-mattressed bed, you pray for the Tai woman who just walked past you carrying a week's load of firewood on her back as you tarry down the potholed dirt road of her village.
And in full confession, I admit the concept of the trip was something foreign to me when I set out on it. In my latest kick of Christianity, heavily influenced by Catholic theology and a last semester's twenty-page research paper on asceticism, I had somewhat unknowingly repositioned the God of my youth as distant, impersonal, and forever separate in the full splendor of his "omni-s". And this perception of God is not without benefits - the impersonal, the rational conception of God lends very well to writing analytical papers on the nature of His character. Once you define Him as a categorized variable, you then can rearrange your formula however you like and observe the "divine" results. It was something new to me, coming from a non-denominational, evangelical "tradition", and it largely energized my decision to throw away this prayer-before-bed and Sunday morning Christianity and seek something else, as well as spend my summer abroad in Asia seeking Him - for that I am thankful, but I am more thankful for the friends here I have met and the experiences I have had that have guided me out of that theological abyss.
One of those experiences was the prayer journey, during which our sole purpose and aim of every day was to plead to God on behalf of the people around us for their well-being and salvation. Plead to God? Plead to Him who is outside of time and thus immutable and thus never changes His mind and can we even say He has a mind? My perception of Him had to change quickly - rather, it had to be realigned quickly, and it was so after reflecting on passages from the Old Testament (Abraham groaning for the sparing of Sodom and Gomorrah comes to mind - "What if only ten can be found there?" Gen. 18:16-33).
This was paired in effect with my current reading of Miguel Unamuno's Tragic Sense of Life, which aims partly to show that God is great not because he reasons better than anyone else ever but because He is, yes, all-powerful, but also very much irrational and thus in-touch with our core being, which yearns for life after death though our reasoning mind always jumps in to say how foolish and weak that wish is. And so it dawned on me that, ever since tiring or maturing out of the "Repent and Be Saved!" Christianity and becoming bored with Sunday mornings, I had measured up the Bible and its teachings against other philosophies and religions to see which made the most sense or was, really, the smartest. It was always troublesome for me when the Bible seemed intellectually simple - I wanted something with which I could wrestle, like Jacob at the riverside (Gen. 32:22-31), not something that sounded the same every Sunday and always came to the same conclusion, that you had to "rely on Jesus", whatever that meant.
But this trip and my reading made me realize that it isn't because Christ's teachings and the Bible make the most sense that I profess my faith (and, moreover, that this shouldn't be the reason), but that I do so because the God I worship is the One, true and living. There's no way around that. What is real is real, and what isn't, well, is made of stone and wood and set up in the Buddhist temples around town (2 Kings 19:14-19).
And with that I must leave you to hop a motorbike quickly to the Chinese Consulate. For those further interested, ask me come July about any of the thoughts above or how I felt God on the trip, because I've much to share. Or, for those of you that like traveling stories, ask about the 7-hour bus rides across Vietnam's unpaved and washed-out mountain roads, or the Vietnamese kids who ran circles around my friend and me in an evening's soccer match.
A super quick scenery sum-up:
1. Vietnamese nature is, next to idyllic English countryside and the Galicean lands of northwest Spain, the prettiest I've seen. But it feels so much like commie China.
2. Laos is overly relaxed, threatened by major deforestation, and almost as friendly as Thailand.
Peace and love,
js
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