The Walking Test

We must learn to walk on land in the same way that He walked on water.

Being Part of the Arc of Being Human Might Look Thus...

In the Baemba tribe of South Africa, the place where many believe human beings descended from, they believe that when a person acts unjustly or irresponsibly, he/she is placed in the center of the village, alone and unfettered. All work ceases. Every man, woman, and child in the village gathers in a large circle around the accused. Then each person in the tribe speaks to the accused, one at a time, about all the good things that person has done in their lifetime. All their positive attributes, good deeds, strengths, and kindnesses are recited carefully and at length. The tribal ceremony often lasts for days. At the end, the tribal circle is broken, a joyous celebration takes place, and the person is symbolically and literally welcomed back into the tribe. - retold by Alice Walker

A Question for Pilgrims

If they told you that the ONLY way that you could RETURN home was by singing for one hour without pausing, what would you choose to sing?

This is the invitation of life spiritual.

Refugee Camp News

You don't get Cable News here in the camp. There isn't a t.v. or computer connected to the Internet. Yet, if the collocations of FOX and CNN could help awaken wonder and amazement in the day, it might sound like this.... This just in.......it's raining. We are now getting word that.....it's a beautiful morning. Breaking news......a pig is very, very upset. We have just learned that.......the sound of flowing water is miraculous. A developing story.....shade is such a grace. News alert......what will you do with your wild and precious life? (Mary Oliver) And this bulletin from Rilke..... "Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. Don't let yourself lose me. Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness. Give me your hand."

That Waiting Thing...

The Problem with Haiku by Michael Glaser Of all the things I wish would be, the one that most occurs to me is

The Extraordinary Sounds of an Ordinary Morning - Some Lyrics Without Melody

The day begins at Mae Ra Moe camp with sounds. They all announce the expectancy of light in this way: 3: 30 The gongs at the Buddhist monastery on the hill awaken the three monks to their morning chanting and perhaps awaken the roosters; 4:00 Roosters begin to crow at various distances; 4:30 A neighbor's baby begins to cry of hunger for an early breakfast; 5:00 Footsteps of the students in the college dormitory move with the flicker of their candle on the ceiling, as they begin their morning study; 5:30 The first smell of breakfast - cooking oil, potatoes, noodles, rice, a crackling sound; 6:00 One student, Klepo begins to sing his favorite Karen love songs on the guitar; other days, another student, Bonaface sings lines from Fleetwood Mac's song "Love in Store" that he heard on my ipod; on other days he abandons his endless smile for the seriousness of listening to the Burmese shortwave radio station - what news is there from the land of one's home? 8:00 The cow bell announces that the first period of the high school has begun; 8:45 The first period ends with over 1,200 high school students standing to sing their Karen national anthem, about a place called Kawthoolei, a land of beauty and peace, home; 9:00 My first class begins with the post-high school students; a chicken wanders in followed by a flock of chicks; and then a duck; So a day commences, all along the sweet, quietness of crickets, announcing the night, all things transitory, along with the constant percussion of the rapidly flowing nearby river. Life in community is an amazing symphony of domestication, observation, transformation, transition, meows, quacks, oinks, and whines punctuated by laughter, announcements from the camp director over the loudspeaker ("someone else has gone to Canada to resettle, so their house is open"). Something is happening here. Something is being made here, tying the sounds to light, light to hope; hope to smells, smells to remembrance. Clearly, if we would really listen, we are being brought more towards home.

The Arcs of God

The geometry and architecture of the Kingdom of God is not made of circles, but of arcs. He calls a "we", a community, an arc - a forever open circle, never quite complete, looking for the belonging of someone else to join the group, "tag!" The best reason to go outside of one's room, house, sense of certainty, is to go out to "that neighborhood", that place over another border of one's own complacency and sense of comfort, and sort of play that childhood game, Group Tag. You remember the game - it's where one person is "it" and touches someone else. Then they join hands and move together and touch someone else and the hand joining gets bigger until everyone gets "it" and is "it" and grows on from there. Then, we might "get it".

Life in Mae Ra Moe Refugee Camp

Mae Ra Moe (Mae Ra Ma Luang in Thai) is a refugee camp of 16,000 residents, most who are of Karen ethnicity. The Karen have been persecuted for decades by the Burmese military government, known by residents as the SPDC. Mae Ra Moe opened in 1995 and is the third largest camp of 9 Karen refugee camps. What's life like in a refugee camp? First, you can imagine one of those nights when a storm would blow through your town and knock out the electrical power. Imagine shuffling for a flashlight or that drawer in the kitchen where some candles are hidden. For a moment you might need to rely on those lights in the darkness. But imagine further that, for some reason, the lights never came back on. What would any of us do? And, imagine that no one had an answer as to why the electricity wasn't working after a couple of weeks. I know how I might react: tremendous frustration. The fridge would keep nothing cold. The food would spoil. I'd have to learn to drink everything from the tap of room temperature. Imagine that there wasn't any gas for cooking and you'd find a way to build a fire and cook. And, without a hot water heater working, the showers would be refreshingly, and maybe annoyingly, cold. Imagine you could use your car, but there wouldn't be any gas for SOME REASON either. Maybe only gas generators would be only used to give power to hospitals and left to help bring comfort to the most vulnerable, especially the elderly and the sick. What would we do without our cars, televisions, computers, and phones once the electricity ran out, once the gas and the batteries ran out, once the conveniences we knew so well seemed to run out? I'd like to think that we Americans might react in a similar way that the Karen who live in Mae Ra Moe Camp have reacted. What would happen is that people would come outside. They would open their windows. In the street they would meet and talk and even discover their neighbors. Maybe for the first time, they would discover how to share the bread of vulnerability for the first time, play cards by candlelight, and maybe too someone would start playing a guitar. And there'd be singing. And, if the lights suddenly came on again, what would we remember of our ordeal? What names, what "I-know-who-lives-here" would be indelible on our memories? And, what passover, what seder moment would we, if we did, commemorate for future generations to recall, and announce to the youngest a hundred years later - "you too also went through the desert of freedom for 40 years in one pair of shoes, showered with cold water, and depended on the hospitality of strangers for your daily bread"? What foliage of kindness would we each recall and taste as "if it were yesterday"? And remember how much we are meant to be connected. When God took on flesh, He moved into our neighborhood. - Eugene Robinson