Subversive: means there is a ‘verse’ under the ground. Maybe it’s a holy-water pipe connecting us all, one to another. The love of which He gave us is like the ‘groundwater’, or even those systems of divinely-given knowledge that have used groundwater for good, and invented PVC pipe, cement tunnels, storm drains. His love is all around us, undercurrents, flowing to the tap, not to be hoarded or boarded or sold, but given away. Here in Mae Ra Moe, the Thai government forbids any permanent plumbing systems. So, alongside of trails are blue lines of PVC pipe, connecting water to houses, to hoses, for all to see.
What is love but to “give oneself away” or one’s pig? A man passed by the Guest House. I had never seen him before. I waved. He came in and shook my hand. He asked if I could eat breakfast with his family the next morning. He said, If you can come, I will kill my pig for you.”
The joy of living in a house made of bamboo is that you can feel the presence of every human step made. When someone walks, the floor shakes, coffee spills from a cup, papers fall off of a table. How are souls called to be made like this too?
At any moment, during the school day, if the goats on the hills above the classrooms get too close, the sound of their bells will convince some students that class has ended for the day.
My computer keyboard was broken. The two keys that did not work were “g” and “h”. The spell check didn’t catch these. I had to later look for them:
Wit (with)
Tanks (tanks)
In Genesis, God’s name was a breathing out, an aspirated “h” sound. He renamed Abram, Abraham, and Sarai became Sarah. And “sin also needed a “g” in forgiveness. It might be a reminder to “sing”.
When you find a regret for a commitment of soul and life, you can 1) stare at it, let regret haunt you become the only cup available for tea or coffee or a list of what you would ‘rather be doing’; or 2) wrap the regret up as a Christmas present. Place it under a tree of expectation, and when something extraordinary is born, you can unwrap it and see the splendor that regret became.
Two weeks before their semester examinations, the students at the refugee camp are given packets of candles.
We must work to live in a world where pronouns still exist, but matter much less than verbs do. There is too much tribalism in the world, leftover from a time of isolation, of real fear of the other, a “we” versus “they”. Now the world becomes smaller. An invitation to not simply redefine what it means to be “we”, but learn to live, give, work, grow, move – to rediscover verbs and let them live through us.
Soe Na Gei, one of the students who cooks for me in the Guest House, can easily navigate his way around the refugee camp at night. One evening, I followed him at a good distance, under a clear, moonless sky. He walked quickly over the forest path. I lost him. It was as if he were guided simply by the light of the stars. Maybe there are sources of light, faint, but strong enough to guide those who have learned to depend on them through winding forest trails and uncertainties. Here, it is easy to look up at the stars. It is, too, a place to discover that that the stars look down on us, and in their beacon and fixedness, help us move.
From Elizabeth Marshall Thomas’ book The Harmless People, she writes about the San Bushman’s concept of a soul as a now: “The moment of birth is when the child acquires a power, or an essence, over which he has no control, although he can make use of it. It will last him all of his life. It is a supernatural essence called the ‘now’…..Now is intangible, mystic, and diffuse, and Bushmen themselves do not fully understand its workings. They do not know how or why a now changes the weather, only that it does. They watch the changes carefully, though, and by observing have discovered the limits of their own nows.”
Yesterday, my classes were cancelled because the students had “Landmine Education Training”.
To empathize, to “put oneself in another’s shoes” is impossible. There are too many real barriers to understanding despite the intentions of real empathy. But to put oneself in “the socks” of another? That is really possible, and a goal.
To see air. To live in God’s socks – to live in a world in which my perceptions don’t matter, only God’s And we might know them, live within them, and find them. Like the air we breathe.
When you sleep on a bamboo floor, even if you wear earplugs, you will feel people speaking.
Perhaps it is easier to feel guilty than to feel helpless. And yet the latter is often our true task. First, to know that one does not control what is going on. Can we, should we, ever know the guilt of assuming we are in control?
For my teaching two hours each week at the Teacher Preparation Course (T.P.C.), I am paid graciously in bananas.
From Henri Nouwen: “the spiritual life is not about mastering something (even perhaps “earning” a Master’s Degree), but about being mastered by the Spirit. Surrender has always been so much more familiar and a container than achievement could ever assume to be.
A lift – On Living, by Nazim Hikmet:
“The earth will grow cold,
a star among stars and one of the smallest –
a gilded note on the blue velvet, I mean,
I mean this, our great earth
This earth, will grow cold one day,
Not like a heap of ice or a dead cloud even,
But like an empty walnut it will roll along
In pitch-black space…
You must grieve for this right now
You have to feel this sorrow now,
For the world must be loved this much
If you are going to say, “I lived”.
