Monday, May 21, 2018

Bunny Abundance

She sits so still this time, as if she wants her picture taken.   Even though this bunny has been in my yard often enough this season that I would like to consider us friends, I still can't really get very close.  She's pretty shy I guess.  But not this day.  This day I talk softly, asking permission, telling her she's so pretty....and brave for letting me step nearer.   I like bunnies.  I try to keep this a bit of a secret from my gardening friends.  They seem to express different sentiments about these backyard guests.  Things I wouldn't want my bunny to hear.  It would be too disturbing.   Admittedly, this is one of the reasons I don't try to have a vegetable garden myself.  But still. 


 Last summer.  There is a strange absence of chipmunks at the cottage.   Not a one comes up on the deck to pay me a visit.  No amount of peanuts for no length of time is adequate to call them from the forest, if they are there at all.  Normally I can have as many as seven or eight vying for my treats.  They are named because most of them have some defining feature, something that can be noticed when they are up close and personal like this, taking peanuts from my hand.  But not last summer.  Last summer I actually have to wait until I am home to make friends with the ones in the backyard.


 I am paid stealthy visits from the geese and the loons though.  Majestic, gliding creatures, silent and vocal in alternating moods.  These I do not feed, or even expect any chance to form a friendship.  They are more distant, and perhaps all the more beautiful and mysterious because of it.




Bunnies and chipmunks and geese and loons.  Seagulls and ducks and beavers and foxes and otters.  Raccoons, skunks, possums.  Countless songbirds.  Large turtles.  Lizards and snakes and bullfrogs.  There is in my life, both city and otherwise, an abundance of animal life to interact with in respectful, appropriate ways.

But I wouldn't think of eating any of them.
It doesn't even occur to me.
Until Suradet asks.

Two squirrels in the yard make a spectacle of their quarrel, chasing and being chased in the grass and around the trunk of a tree in a spiral of contempt.  Suradet, visiting from Thailand for the first time, watches out my back kitchen window and asks me.  "Aroi mia?"  "Are these tasty?"

I've since seen squirrels, skinned and splayed on sticks, for sale at the market.  To eat.  Not here.  There.  There they raise crickets and beetles and meal worms. meant for human consumption and sold by the basket fulls, with large scoops and plastic bags, as if it were the bulk food section of the grocery store.

I've since watched Eak, one of our boys, catch a mouse by hand and roast it over the fire for a bed time snack.

But standing by my window with Suradet those many years ago now, I didn't understand.  Not the question.  And not the paradigm.




Suradet would ask the same question about road kill.  Why doesn't anyone come to get this for dinner?  He seems actually perturbed that a good meal who be left to rot like that.


And I didn't understand.  Not the question.  And not the paradigm.

And then, I'm there, and we're sitting around the circle with the children, and he's telling the children about this strange thing he saw in Canada when he was here.

"In Canada", he explains, "there is so much food, that they let it run free in their backyards."  "In Canada", he explains, "there is so much food that they let it lie on the side of the road to rot."

And the children's eyes are wide, trying to imagine a place where there's that much abundance.

I wish I was making this up.

There's a 'thing' for people who travel to various places, particularly under resourced places, called 'counter-culture shock'.  It's the strangeness one experiences coming home to realize that a radically new perspective has been gained, and one's own culture can never be seen quite the same again.

I have this.  And when I step carefully, gently, reassuringly closer to my bunny friend whom I will not eat, I think of it.  I think of all the food I have, all my life.  Every meal.  Something to eat.  And how there's so much food running loose in my backyard that I have the bizarre luxury of making friends with it.

This can't be guilt.  I have had no control over my birthright, my being Canadian, or even the socio-economic class into which I was born.  So the sense of it isn't an anguishing, crippling thing.  Rather, I have learned to let it motivate me otherwise.  Motivate me to gratitude.  Motivate me to releasing all the abundance of my life to these priceless ones who'll eat anything.

Without pity.
With dignity.
Reciprocally giving and receiving. Cross-culture-shocked into realizing that somehow in all my bunny abundance, there more in this whole big world than I could ever possibly have the capacity to receive. 










Thursday, May 3, 2018

Packing Long Term for a Short Term Missions Trip

I'll begin with a confession.  I'm not a fan of the term "short term missions trip".

There are lots of reasons for this, many of which have been well articulated in books and articles, a sampling of which are included with links here.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzUKZajloJY   An interview with the authors of When Helping Hurts





These and other articles give some sober food for thought worth considering.  But I really do think they are describing something completely different than what Highview has established in our partnership with Hot Springs Church.  Yes, we visit frequently for shorter periods of time than a 'career' missionary would.  This will be true even once I am completely focused on my new role as Missionary In Residence.  I'm not moving to Thailand.

But we've done this differently.  Because we've discovered quite organically, quite by accident truth be told, that nothing about any time spent in a different culture should be 'short term' except maybe how it defines the number of days you're away from home.

I have come to believe that if we pack properly - our hearts not our suitcases - everything about this venture should matter for the long term.  Matter to both ourselves and our hosts.  And matter in ways that are essential to being human.

I certainly do have a list of practical items you're going to want to be sure to have if you visit Thailand. And if you ever want to come, we would all be delighted and would be happy to help you prepare in that way.

But more important would be how we would do a different king of packing.  And toward that end I would offer seven attitudes I believe are essential to bring with us in order to extend the impact of any length of trip into the 'long term', for everyone involved.

1.  Humility

Here's something I have discovered that keeps things in more accurate balance.  The people you are about to encounter in your journey are rich beyond your imagination in ways you desperately need. Often enough - and I was certainly guilty of this my first time out - the emphasis is on what we (that's the white privileged ones) think we're bringing to them (that's the under resourced 'other').  This is so not how it works.  So let's leave behind any sense of entitlement or importance.  Hopefully the experience itself will knock that out of us soon enough.

2.  Curiosity

Step in, be fully engaged, learn and absorb as much as you possibly can.  Stay open to new things.  What does that taste like?  What does this mean?   Why is this woman rubbing her nose against my arm?  (Yes, that could likely come up in Thailand).  By all means stay in contact with friends and family at home.  But put your device away and get curious about the sights, smells, sounds....and the people around you.  What's important to them?  What makes them laugh?  How do they see the world? Let's bring a healthy dose of curiosity so that we can stay alert to all God has in mind as this trip spiritually transforms us. 

3.  Reciprocity

Related but not exactly the same as humility.  We watch for ways our interactions and new relationships have a give and take, a back and forth.  We feel the flow of that and learn its rhythm.  Let's resist the arrogance of thinking we're doing all the giving, and open ourselves to receive as well. After all, all the best relationships have balance.  Normally, we tend to feel safest and most free in relationships or partnerships that capture a sense of equity. 

4.  Ability

Share what you have, for sure.  Everyone of us will have some ability or skill or gifting to bring to the relationship.  We can read to an English learner, play soccer with the children, dig a ditch, build a clinic, teach that Bible lesson, take blood pressures for an afternoon.  And when we do have financial resources to offer, by all means, we do so carefully and appropriately and wisely.  If we pack an attitude that intends to participate fully with whatever abilities we bring, that will, without question, enhance and equip and be genuinely helpful.

5.  Generosity

Here I'm not just talking about gifts or money.  Rather, a hands-open attitude with our spirit.  A generosity of spirit that takes risks emotionally, takes off the masks, and recklessly gives love away.  "To hear the call is to give your life away....is to give your love away." so says Robbie Seay in a favourite worship song at Highview, "Rise".  

6.  Perspicacity

I love this word!  And I love what it means, particularly in packing for a missions trip.  It's about clear thinking, staying sharp, thinking things through.  When we pack perspicacity we have a better chance of asking the essential questions about our interactions.  We're constantly thinking, 'What are the long term implications of this thing I'm about to do?'  'How does the other culture understand these actions?'  'Where can I get more information?'  'Who can I consult?'   While some of this takes us further into the longer term, packing a careful attitude will serve us well even if our time spent is short.

7.  Tenacity

We are definitely going to need this.  Without fail, some parts of the culture and climate and the experience will press us to the edge of ourselves.  The heat.  The food.  The bugs.  The mental stress of constantly hearing a language we don't understand.  Adjusting to an event-oriented way of thinking rather than a time-oriented way of thinking (this one is huge!).  And then there's just living in close quarters with a whole group of people for a segment of time.  What about introverts in a culture with everything is done together?  Sticking with it and staying positive will be a challenge.  Tenacity is definitely something we should bring along.

Packing these seven attitudes will long-term your short-term missions trips in ways that might surprise you.  AND ways that will strengthen and benefit those you have visited.

I believe that as a human race, we are stronger globally if we make honest, incarnational relationships with people different from us.  We are more human.  The planet is a better place.  Politically, we are less inclined to go to war with people we've made a bond with.  Spiritually, we are better able to share Jesus the way Jesus shared Himself, if we think long term.

So I'm not moving to Thailand, but there is nothing short term about our connection.  This has been ten years in the making.  I'm praying for at least ten more.  It's a long term dream I'm dreaming.  Even if it happens in short spurts.

Next visit is in the works for end of July/beginning of August.  Packing already.