Going Home Manometer Report!

By now, it's relatively well-known knowledge that I will be returning stateside in a matter of weeks. My 14 months in Thailand is coming to an end two weeks from today. My dream of being a missionary, of living overseas in another culture, is accomplished. My time in the "Kindergarten of Love" at Heart's Home Paul VI here in Bangkok is coming to a close.

My goodbye with Yaai Lek, a dear friend from the neighborhood. 

Living in Thailand has been one of the most beautiful, annoying, inspiring, and contradictory experiences of my life. I am in awe of the tradition, the reverence, the openness of life-- and at the same time find myself stupefied by some systems of Thai thought. These feelings are so intertwined with my experience of daily life and of friendships with the Thais, I find it impossible to separate most times.

Far from American efficiency.

Reverence to the Spirits

Now, my point here is not to articulate my experience of mission... As I'm preparing to move home, I am answering the common question "How are you?", which translates to other versions of "How does it feel to be going home? Are you ready? Are you so excited? Will you miss Thailand? Aren't you happy to go back home?"

I'd be lying to say I'm not happy to go home, but I'd also be lying to say I won't miss this community, this mission, this culture. It is no secret that my anticipation to return home is strongly tied to seeing a certain someone in Kansas City. ;)

Until a week ago, I was completely stoked-- only thinking of all the great things in America and feeling annoyed by anything from traffic to pollution to the stench on the streets-- all of the things I had noticed, but tried to accept with respect and openness to the Thai people and to this mission.

Yes, in Thailand, they sweep the grass and when it's hot-- you wear MORE, not less, clothing. 

Quality control lapse? Or...someone with a sense of humor for bad translations making a buck. 

Then-- I saw a picture of my boyfriend at dinner with his friends. And I didn't know he even knew some of those people! I realized: Wow, it has been TWO YEARS since I left Kansas City. Amanda had a baby. Linda is married. I was at Meg's wedding before I left, but never saw her married.  My sister finished college and is getting married in 2 months. My nephews are walking and talking. My youth group kiddos--some are finished with high school. Friends I never knew were dating are getting married, and my Mom has turned into a dancing queen!

Everyone has been living life where they are. Everyone of us in the last couple years has changed, has learned, has had opinions challenged--which is normal! But being gone so long, I'm a bit anxious about stepping back into my circles, into my own culture. I think I'll have to step gingerly at first...  I'm not sure how I will act-- what will be my posture in my homeland now that I've been gone? How will I see my own culture?

This realization has tainted my joy with a bit of trepidation... I never anticipated an experience of reverse culture shock for me. In my head, I'm not "able-to-be-shocked".  I started learning how to transition my mind and body to different cultures of "home" at the same time I started to read and write. I adapt. I make do, make things work.

Then, I realized in a conversation with a family member, as this person spoke, and I listened:
Uh... I have totally a different experience and way of looking at this matter. Maybe I always did, but now it's definitely clearer after this time of distance, looking at the bigger world around me.

The beautiful part of living abroad is learning about cultures, history, languages, customs, and basic systems that are unique! Living abroad allows one to encounter completely different worldviews-- and challenges one's own. I have been a student (and hope to always be a student)-- and when I come home, it will be a little different.

Traditional Etiquette is respected, even on the SkyTrain.

I have new opinions and new knowledge(new to me, maybe not to everyone else)-- about poverty, prayer, God, religion, reverence, government, politics, international relations, world history, fidelity, prostitution and child exploitation, child care, family roles and relationships, etiquette, how to cook food, and I even learned to speak more French while in Thailand!

Cool way to give your tithing to the temple!

Is it clear already or not what drinking alcohol means to Buddhists? ...Hmm... 

I cannot easily share, cannot easily speak in only a few words. It's quite honestly always been a struggle. Now in particular, how do I answer questions about my mission? What parts will I share? What parts will remain, marinating in my soul, taking years to digest?
...I don't know...

I'm posting this to all of you who will see me and talk to me as I come home-- I'm asking for a little patience and understanding with me-- for I know I need to offer the same (and if I don't, you have permission to smack me).

Real Missionary Gurus

He was at a prayer meeting when someone asked, 

"How many of you believe that when you die you will go straight to Heaven?"

He was one of the two or three people in the room to raise his hand.

He says of this,

"I did not raise my hand because I believe I am better than others, or more holy. 

I raised my hand because I believe with all my heart in the mercy of God."

A missionary priest here in Thailand for over 60 years, Father Jaquemin has been the spiritual guide for Heart’s Home Bangkok since the beginning. Every Monday, for the past 20 years, he has been meeting with our house of volunteers to guide us, share about the culture, how to live the compassion, and to offer mass for us. 

This past fall, he left for France to have heart surgery for 2 months. At 90 years old, he had his aortic valve replaced and also had a stint inserted. Before leaving, he said he will come back--he will die in Thailand: his home.He left us with a smile, saying he was not scared at all--”If it is time, it’s time.” After the surgery, he was staying in the hospital, when he told the doctor: "Let me go now. I need to go home. Thailand has hospitals." 

The doctor finally acquiesced and Fr. Jaquemin returned to us before Christmas! I cannot help but look at this man who has given his life to the Thai people, and to Jesus Christ without my eyes filling with tears of love and respect. He is the most humble man I know, full of joy and love and wisdom.

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Erika, Marie, Fr. Jaquemin, Thuy, and Natalie

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The heart of God is in Him--visible on his face as he smiles. The humility of his vocation, the sacrifice of his life is all present on  the altar as a gift of himself to God during the Sacrifice of the Mass. Each time I see him, each time he celebrates mass for our community, I cannot help but feel the presence of God, undeniably present in this man who has given his life to share that: God is Love.

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Many of you have been telling me what a hard decision it is be here, what a sacrifice. I have had a hard time comprehending what you all mean. It didn’t seem so difficult a decision to take, nor did it seem I was missing much. 
After almost one year here... Yea, I’m missing a lot! It takes time to recognize the challenges--especially as they come more frequently as time passes. 


But here’s the real lesson: 


observing those who really sacrifice their lives.

      There is something that I see in the eyes of the ones who have been here so long... Sister Joan from Australia lives down the street from us, here for 17 years already. Sister Joan is in her early 70s, and lives alone in a house in the slum just down the road. 


Her mission is entirely to help children to stay in school. As she was a teacher in Australia, she has contacts with her past students and annually returns home to appeal for funding. She speaks enough Thai, and reads a fair bit to communicate. 
She has helped numerous children to continue in school when their parents reach the point of being unable to afford the fees, books, uniforms, shoes, transportation, and food costs. We see her around at mass and in the neighborhood. Because of her, a lot of the children we know are able to stay in school.

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Laure, Katie, Marie, Eva, Thuy, Sister Joan and Erika (in May 2011)

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I never saw this life as a sacrifice until I saw it in the eyes of these "long timers". They have truly left their cultures, languages, families and friends. In a sense, there is a deep vacancy in their lives as we may see it.

I look at these two missionaries: What is it that makes them choose this life? Living so far from their homes for so long?! I chose it just for a short time--and whatever hardships I encounter, I know that I will go home in the end! 

The life of a foreigner: we will ALWAYS be a foreigner in this land. 
We will never understand another culture, their traditions, their way of thinking. 
I will never speak Thai like a native. 
There is no “Eureka” moment where it all comes together. 


There must be an immense love, a deep motivation that is beyond human strength to keep someone here, so deeply immersed in the culture and life of the Thais, 
or of any other culture, any other people.  
I can comprehend only a shred of what it means to sacrifice
--it IS a sacrifice--
one’s life to be here. 


It is not easy by any means and I don’t think I could ever choose it fully with my own will.

Why take a rest?

Once a week I  leave the slum to take a day of rest—I usually am welcomed by friends who live in homes with more amenities and conveniences that I even have at home in the US. In the morning, I leave the slum with my overnight bag, and realize: My friends do not have a break from this life. They don’t have a “rest”. They don’t take a break from the fecal matter and refuse on the streets. They don’t “get away” from this. 

Talking to one 17 year old friend—she doesn’t have any safe place outside of her Mom’s shack on the tracks.  She doesn’t have any positive role model. No friend to offer consolation or hope. Not even one who will listen. When she and her Mom don't get along, she gets mad, as teenagers do, but in a rage that she describes as "It's me, but it's not me." Her Mom tells her to just go sell her body. Our friend comes to us with her body racking in sobs--she doesn't ever want to do that! Especially not with her memories of being raped and abused. We offer her to come to our house, take a shower, put on clean clothes and rest. She is scared her brother will send his friends to take her home where he will beat her.

This life is violent. It is not just that the streets stick and are trashed—some are actually quite lovely. It’s not that the houses are shacks—some are newly redone. Sometimes I walk home forgetting that this is a “slum”. But the violence in the families, often hidden behind the front door—I hear it in the language of the children. It is in the voices and actions of mothers and fathers. It is visible in bruises and scarred skin from wounds or needles. It is deeply hidden in the sad and angry, disconnected look of the eyes. Brokenness. Loss of any self-worth. A sense of despair. It seeps in. 

I can deal with cold showers, squat toilets, and eating rice every day. I get used to the smells and the ugliness. I learn how to hiss the cats away from my window.

Just one day when I really enter the life of a friend—I see her fragility. I see this violence of life for the first time. I cannot imagine being a teenager already so hardened, so lost, and so alone.

Why take a day of rest? I know this isn’t my life forever. I’m not even going to really “solve” or “cure” problems.  But to regain a sense of vision—to digest these realities. To see again, with new eyes, the poverty, the despair. To regain my own hope, my own sense of self. Without a rest, I get accustomed to the poverty and can remove myself from it. Every time I leave, I find myself returning to enter the poverty with a new depth. It’s good to be reminded that the world is bigger. That I am small.

"Jesus Loves Me"

Cradle-Catholic

I grew up reading the picture Bible and going to church on Sundays. I scorned the 'watered down theology' of "Jesus Loves Me" and I focused in studying correct teaching. 

(granted that coloring pictures of a happy Jesus and

 looking at candles at Sunday school doesn't quite nourish a hungry soul), 

My experience of "church", of faith, has always been with Jesus. I spend my time in prayer and study of faith often wanting to know the details, the semantics, the "right" theology. There is an immense amount of theology in this world--there are those in the Church that we say are "liberal" and "conservative"... What we often miss is how the "Church" doesn't really fall into a category (especially one which we think of in political terms). I am quite a perfectionist and also sort of a linguist--I get really into semantics. If someone says something, I may find better words to fit. If I don't understand something, it's often because the words seem to say something else as I think of the literal meaning versus the modern/cultural/contextual meaning...

The part I missed is the foundation of any teaching. I missed it because it is something we have to have eyes open to see. We must experience it to really know it.

 What is it that I have missed?

In Gregory Boyle's book, "Tattoos on the Heart", he shares his experiences as a Catholic priest in Los Angeles, at Dolores Mission--the poorest parish in the widest gang area of the country. He founded Homeboy Ministries, an outreach that hires and trains homies for jobs. 
The biggest outreach: to Love. 
Yes, to Love the drug-addicted-tattooed-hardened-by-life gang members... probably the most well known hardened group of sinners we could label in our society.

"'Behold the One beholding you and smiling.' It is precisely because we have such an overactive disapproval gland ourselves that we tend to create God in our own image. It is truly hard for us to see the truth that disapproval does not seem to be part of God's DNA. God is just too busy loving us to have any time left for disappointment...." 

(Tattoos on the Heart, p 28).

Now that's something I never thought of! God is never disappointed? 

He made me for way more than what I live, for more beauty, more dignity, more happiness--and I fail to live it... But He is there, "beholding me and smiling"?!... Just loving me? 
When I mess up, I almost expect something like a heated meeting in the principal's office, or an icy silence to communicate disappointment, or the constant resurfacing of my failure--to be reminded all the time that I suck. 

..."Homies seem to live in the zip code of the eternally disappointing, and need a change of address. To this end, one hopes (against all human inclination) to model not the "one false move" God but the "no matter whatness" of God. You seek to imitate the kind of God you believe in, where disappointment is, well, Greek to Him. You strive to live in the black spiritual that says, "God looks beyond our fault and sees our need." (Tattoos on the Heart, p 52)

I suppose this is why we can say that God is too busy loving us to be disappointed--

He looks beyond our fault and sees our need. 

When we fall we don't need someone to stand with their arms folded 

and look at us on the ground--

we don't need the one to stare at us, making us feel guilty for failing--

The old fable of the North Wind and the Son--

The North Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger, when a traveller came along wrapped in a warm cloak. They agreed that the first one to succeed in making the traveller take off his cloak should be stronger than the other. Then the North Wind blew as hard as he could, but the more he blew, the closer did the traveller fold his cloak around him, and at last the North Wind gave up the attempt. Then the Sun shined out warmly, and immediately the traveller took off his cloak. And so the North Wind was obliged to confess that the Sun was the stronger of the two.

We need the One who will "Love us" off the ground. 

We need the same Father who welcomes his son home after 

spending allllll his inheritance on gambling and fun.

We need the one who loves us pass all understanding. 

Does Jesus Love Me? 

I can say: Yea. He does.
I experience the love of God in my life. My eyes are newly opened--to the love I am given immeasurably every day--
the eyes, the gestures, the words of each encounter with each person I meet. 


...And marinating in this new perspective of who my God is, and how He loves me...

I know it is far more honest for me to live my life well in return for an immense Love that I don't deserve, than out of fear or shame that compels me to "earn" my way to Eternal Life.  


...I know that I am called to love you too.