Presence and The Sea

Here's a fun story.

First night here and I'm settling into the guest house.  The attendant is showing me around, and I tell her it's okay, I slept in this very room for three months once.

I am back at the guest house two properties over this time.  There's another one very conveniently right next door, but apparently it wasn't available.  So here I am, just a tad further away, but very familiar and comfortable just the same.  I even know about the quirky toilet and how to make the tank refill when it gets stuck.

A little home away from home.

 As I unpack, there's a small piece of wood lying down on the bottom of one of the shelves of the only small book case in the room.  I pick it up to make room for my things when I realize with a slight shock that -- it's mine!

It's a small plaque given to me from my long time friend Mary Lou to send me off in September of 2015 when I came to stay for three months.  And I haven't stayed in this room since then, since I left in December of that year.  So, a little more than two and a half years.  I left it behind apparently.

I remember missing it at first, but - sorry Mary Lou - it's really not crossed my mind since then.  So what a happy surprise to find it again.

And then there's what it says:

"If I settle on the far side of the sea, 

your right hand will hold me fast."

Psalm 139:9,10 

Bell and Suradet for our visit to Phuket October 2015

I am now called a missionary.  It's what they started calling me already a few years back, and not just Suradet and Yupa but whenever I was out and about at church conferences or meetings and I was being introduced by whomever was leading.  I'm from another place and I'm here to serve Jesus, so by default, that's what I'm called.  

I am very aware that my degree of "missionary" comes nowhere near the sacrificial, life-altering experience of those who have left family and home for decades, settling in their new culture as a resident.  I am here, to be honest, more as a visitor.  My hope is to be able to spend perhaps six weeks in Thailand two times each year, give or take.  Not really "settling" (except as far as this place feels like home).  So, true to the status bestowed on the title "missionary" by my generation's evangelical mindset, I hold this "missionary" thing very lightly, and with great respect for those who have done so much work before me.  

Photo Credit: Dave Driver

Still, I do get the scope of this text in light of what I'm doing here.  How far away I am, I still feel it, even if not in such a disorienting way as the first few times.  For instance, I am writing this from tomorrow for any readers on the other side of the globe.  And that time difference really messed with me the first little while.  Not so much so now.  But still.  It's weird, right?  

 

How surprising it is, like finding a lost treasure perhaps, to be reminded again of the scope of the Presence who both goes with me and is already here when I arrive.   A Creator who stands outside of the very concept of time He created to be fully present today and tomorrow simultaneously.  A Protector to hold us all fast, secure, in the midst of anything anywhere.

And this whole psalm, Psalm 139, is about the scope of God's presence, His intimate knowledge of all things in all places and from a perspective outside of time, all directed in an astonishing focus on the object of all He can offer - you and me - ones He created and designed in the secrets of the womb.  

I am glad I found my plaque.  It makes me spend some time again marinating in the reflections of David as he tried in his own way to grasp some concept of how big was His God alongside the realization of His crazy, personal love.  

Here's to happy surprises, and the surprising scope of God's power and presence, wherever you may find yourself 'settled' this amazing God-filled day.

First Few Days Here

The first thing I notice as I wake up this morning is that it's not raining.  An unusually wet July here in Thailand has meant that I'm not sure I've even seen the sunshine yet, even having been here almost three days already.  But this is anything but gloomy.  What a lush green space I walk along on my way from the guest house to morning worship!  I find myself wishing I could send some of this rain and nourishment back home to parched Ontario!

There are other ways I feel this rich nourishment.  Already in three days I've had the chance to be together with people I love to worship God, simply, beautifully, in a language I'm learning to understand and love more and more.  This is a welcome downpour to my worship-parched soul right now.  I find myself regularly overwhelmed, grateful, calm, just receiving.

We've had fun giving out the packets.  We've played Octopoot.  We've already started our reading program in earnest yesterday morning.  I have had to put a limit on four books for each child for each day.  Otherwise we'd just glut out and read and read and read.  Which is fun, except there's only me this time, and we have to space this out a bit.  Plus, better to learn a language a little bit each day.  Which is me doing Thai as well.

Some happy surprises here this time.  One of our original children (from 2008) who had found Bee's death particularly unsettling, had left for a time to be with his older brother in Bangkok and finish high school there.  Their birth mother's death in March, however, brought them back up north to regroup.  In the end both of them were invited back into this family, the older brother to work in order to now support his brother and maternal grandparents, and the younger one - our very own Fruk - to study music at university.   There's more to the story, but I think it's worthy of a blog unto itself.  For now, that's just a quick update on something that's encouraging my soul in deep and happy ways.   I was so sad when Fruk left.  He is once again the fun-loving, sweet boy I have known these past ten years, except not a boy any more.  It's why we do what we do, folks.

Personally, I am none the worse for wear for my travels and first days settling in.  Sometimes, particularly in January when I'm adjusting to a big climate difference and having just come off a full ministry Christmas work load, I am a tad under the weather for a bit.  But this time, even with starting with a sleep deficit due to the departure time (2 am) on Thursday morning, I feel I have adjusted very quickly. 

All are well here.  Suradet and Yupa are well, and deeply appreciate all that they receive from us, and send back all their prayers and blessings in return. 

As I write I hear our worship band warming up.  Can I just say how amazing it is going to be to worship together this morning?  I am so hungry!  What a good God to bring me here right now! 

I am not preaching this morning, which is just fine by me.  Next Sunday I'm on, and we will share in Communion; another rich anticipation.  But today I get to just do a quick hello from us all - which I will attempt to do all in Thai - and then sit back and enjoy and receive.

Have I ever mentioned how imbalanced this all feels?  We receive so much more than we give.  How is that fair?  Can't out-give God, I guess.

Worship pictures to follow :).  But I thought I'd better post this now.  It's almost the only prolonged period of time I've had to just think and be alone since I got here.  Crazy how random and wonderful this life is.

Blessings and joy to you all.

The Properly Petrified Teacher

Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers,

because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.

James 3:1

“In every class I teach, my ability to connect with my students, and to connect them with the subject, depends less on the methods I use than on the degree to which I know and trust my selfhood

– and am willing to make it available and vulnerable in the service of learning.”

Parker Palmer,  The Courage To Teach

Like yesterday I remember their faces, all eager and expectant as I stand before them with nothing but a Thai Bible I cannot read.   It is my first visit to Hot Springs, and I am learning everything.   If I have a teacher-self, she has abandoned me for the far away safety of Canada to hide with my well-established roles and my love of word-crafting and a well-laid scope and sequence.  But Ahjahn Suradet has unexpectedly asked me to ‘encourage the children’, here at the end of our singing. 

So here I stand, a teacher undone.

Fast-forward.

Of the legion of lessons I am learning in these past months of rigorous reflection, a solid one is this:  stepping away from a role and title provides an important opportunity to reflect on who I am rather than what I do (or have done, as the case may be).  

This has been both deeply affirming and properly petrifying.

Take the teaching/preaching thing for example.

 In these weeks (has it only been weeks?) since leaving my pastoral position I have been student-engrossed in academic readings towards a Christian Education credit required for my degree.   My focus is cross cultural teaching, and I am of course hoping to gain insights that will help me hone these skills so that I can continue to move past that terrifying moment I remember so well, and be more and more effective in my work in Thailand.  

As I read, I resonate.   Parker Palmer in The Courage To Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life, draws me deep into identity.

“As good teachers weave the fabric that joins them with students and subjects, the heart is the loom on which the threads are tied, the tension is held, the shuttle flies, and the fabric is stretched tight.  Small wonder, then, that teaching tugs at the heart, opens the heart, even breaks the heart – and the more one loves teaching, the more heartbreaking it can be.  The courage to teach is the courage to keep one’s heart open in those very moments when the heart is asked to hold more than it is able so that teacher and students and subject can be woven into the fabric of community that learning, and living, require.”  Palmer, 11-12

Yes!  I get this.  The whole “opening the heart” and “breaking the heart” thing.  This whole ‘teaching thing’ seems a part of me somehow.  For one thing, I’ve been doing it forever.  Since I was sixteen and sat around a wooden table with five six year olds in the grade one Sunday School class of my home church in Scarborough.  Through various volunteer positions, both inside and outside the church, our years as a homeschooling family, speaking engagements for workshops and conferences, and of course most intensively as a pastor delivering weekly sermons.  In these later years at Hot Springs, teaching ESL and Bible lessons to the kids daily, and preaching at the church on Sundays has become a regular part of my ministry there.  Somehow teaching something to someone somewhere has been part of my story, part of my heart. 

And right now, in this space of transition, this letting go of many things, I would be honest and say that it’s hard to overstate how acutely I miss the life and energy of the preaching part of what I used to do.  Also, as I prepare both sermons and ESL/Bible lessons for my upcoming trip to Hot Springs, I recognize how much life and energy this gives me. 

 And equally it terrifies me. 

What an audacious thing, really, to believe I have anything at all to offer someone else.  As if.   Like that first moment before the children at Hot Springs, who am I that I might have anything to bring to their understanding, their spiritual formation, their lives?

In another text for this Christian Education credit, Gary Parrett speaks specifically of the unfortunately common tendency in cross cultural teaching situations for Western people to assume a superior attitude toward those they teach, offering a solution.

“We may come to understand our cultural selves better through assuming the roles of active learners, the ones being served by others.  As one who is regular in the position of leader, teacher, minister, servant of others, I have become aware of a tendency to have feelings of condescension toward others.  Certainly, this is at least unconsciously  strengthened by the fact that I am white, male, and American.  To address this – an attitude that I believe to be not only arrogant but plainly sinful – I have sought to be the learner, the one receiving service, instruction, or other forms of grace from another, especially from someone who is unlike me in terms of ethnicity, nationality, gender, life experience, educational background, theological perspective, or in other significant ways.” 

Parrett, 133

It’s been ten years since that first petrified moment.  I am more confident now.  In fact I have two sermons and ten Bible lessons on the miracles of Jesus prepared and ready to humbly offer if needed when I’m there later this month.   But I’m still in some ways terrified. 

And I’m glad for that.

Being properly petrified keeps me properly humble.

I want to learn.

I want to listen.

To God.

To those who teach me and those I teach,

these being one and the same. 

“Teaching engages my soul as much as any work I know.”

Parker Palmer

Sources:

Conde-Frazer, Elizabeth, & S. Steve Kang, and Gary A. Parrett, A Many Coloured Kingdom: Multicultural

                Dynamics for Spiritual Formation, Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004.

Palmer, Parker J. The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life, San Francisco:

 Jossey-Bass, 2017.