Not The Same As Family

 

 More and more, it seems, my life is measured by spaces of time spent on either side of the globe.   I’m either here or there, Canada or Thailand, Highview or Hot Springs, home or--- home.  And now, one month into this new reality into which I’ve been released , this sense of both/and is getting stronger.

In less than a month now, I’ll be heading for a visit with the spectacular children at Hot Springs and the superheroes who care for them, aka Suradet and Yupa.    By now it goes without saying, this is my ‘other’ family, and after seven months apart I am aching to be with them, for sure.

As Missionary In Residence I am hoping to be able to stay in Thailand twice a year for six weeks at a time.  But not this time.  This visit will be for two weeks only.   Just a timing thing, really, and taking into consideration that I was there already for a month in January. 

But even for fourteen days worth, there’s been a lot to get ready.  I have two sermons prepared, just in case.  Ten stories about the miracles of Jesus, complete with a ‘cup of miracles’ brimming with little story-related trinkets for each child.  I’ll be introducing a new vocabulary list of 100 words to build on the ESL we’ve already done.  There will be another ‘reading club’ complete with prizes.  And of course I’ll be taking along packets and envelopes lovingly prepared by our Sponsors.  (Already I anticipate some luggage challenges, but that seems to be that happy problem that is part of every preparation.)

 

In a bigger way, the focus of this trip will be on addressing the challenge of our current property deeds, and how the lack thereof makes our kids vulnerable to possible displacement by the government.  This is a situation we’ve known about for about 2 years now but are seeking to be more proactive in securing a solution.  There is a strong possibility that I will be able to meet together with Suradet and Yupa, Asia’s Hope National Director Tutu, and John McCollum, Executive Director while I’m there.   Prayers for timing, discernment and solutions are appreciated.

 

But mostly, for this particular visit, I’m just looking forward to being together with them in the gentle, loving community that is Hot Springs.  Home or ---- home.

By necessity I am away from the deeply important-to-me community called Highview right now, taking a hiatus during a transition that just needs this ‘away time’ component.  I am feeling the absence of my peeps in cavernous and uncomfortable ways.  Yet, in all things, God supplies.  Part of what I find so massively abundant in my life is this great lavish profusion of love and family and community that comes to me from so many varied places.  Hot Springs is one of them.   How comforting it will be to sit and receive that love for a bit.  I can only hope that what I have to bring, as meagre as it seems in comparison, might serve to encourage and sustain them too.

When I was there last January, something happened.   I used a phrase they started saying very early in the relationship to describe how they were experiencing the connection.   “Meun gum korpkua”  ‘Same as family’.    I didn’t trust it at first, or maybe just didn’t believe it.  I thought it was just Thai manners.  And maybe even a little bit of the way they would express thanks and respect to someone who is seen as the connection to the practical support we provide.  But gradually, visit by visit, they convinced me they actually mean it.  And then at Bee’s funeral, in that tragic circumstance, there was no question.  I was treated ‘meun gum korpkua’. 

But last time, last January, something happened with that.  Yupa changed it.  “Mai chai” she said, Mai meun gum.  Korpkua townun.”    No. Not ‘same as’.  Just ‘family’. 

Sometimes I am just overwhelmed. 

So yes, I am eager, painfully so as is often the case, to see them again, and worship together, eat together, work together with my family.  Not the same as.  Just as it is. 

Home or --- home. 

Not Another Moment

“No one has to wait another moment to make a difference in the world.”

Anne Frank

Is there something inherent in all of us that desires this;

this thought, this compelling hope that somehow our lives have made a difference?

At funerals we catch a glimpse of it, I think.  No matter who is being ‘laid to rest’ those who knew them want to speak only of the ways this friend, this brother, this mother made a difference in the lives of those around them.

So maybe it is. 

Something we all want.

But I’m wondering, on this strange-for-me Sunday, if sometimes we are discouraged from such a noble desire by the frustrations our self-perception of inadequacy or unimportance presents to us.  We have somehow come to believe that to have an impact we have to be more spectacular than we feel.

I have recently left a role that helped anchor my desire for relevance.  It was a role that had a huge Sunday presence in my life, and so this morning feels strange.  It’s a transition I am finding somewhat disorienting for my psyche, even with all the support and love and blessing I’ve received, and with other things, mostly Thai things, to focus on for the future.  It’s made me even more aware of my own desire, compunction even, to be a difference-maker.  And the question that’s uninvitedly banging around in my head is, “Can I still make an important enough difference without this particular anchor?”

In the midst of the weekend where I was released to new things, I had an encounter with a ‘stranger’ that I find helpful to reflect on now.  Two weeks ago I was marching valiantly through a long list of ‘had-to-be-done-so-it-makes-it-seem-that-much-more-important’, in order to finish off what I would still say were my urgent responsibilities.  One item was a stop at our local Christian bookstore for a marriage certificate, because one of the ‘important’ things I was up to was officiating a wedding.  The sales rep recognized me, and, to my surprise, took the time to thank me for something I said to her thirty-five years ago.  We were at a support group meeting together, and a simple suggestion I made apparently made a huge difference for her colicky baby.  She’s never forgotten me, she says.

Really? 

Here I had been assessing my ministry life, both past and anticipated future, by things way more ‘wow’ I hoped to accomplish.  And yet my simple, fleeting interaction with this mom had been very ‘wow’ to her.  Made a big difference to her.

Anne Frank was a little girl in an impossibly wretched world.  She wrote a diary.  And maybe it is contrary to my point that we now all know her name and she’s famous in her own right.  But from her observation that ‘no one has to wait another moment to make a difference in this world’, I would bet, that even if no one had found the diary, even if no one had published it, even if we all hadn’t been introduced to Anne Frank in school, this young woman would still have made an impact. 

Just by not waiting.

I think to some my work with orphan and at risk children in Thailand may seem more on the spectacular scale than the simple and ordinary.  It’s easy to write about it with a ‘wow’ factor in mind.  Stories of cobras and gigantic spiders and crazy roads and being chased by a wild pig are good for re-telling, for holding a reader’s attention.  And yes, I admit, that being up in a mountain village, or at a Thai wedding, where everything’s strange and exotic is kinda out there for me.

But the truth is that most of the time when I’m actually there, it’s the simple stuff that makes the difference.  Making stumbling attempts at learning the language.  Reading to a child.  Watching the latest song-game they’ve learned.  Comforting them when something’s made them cry.  Or just being there to listen to those who care for them, encourage them, tell them they are my heroes.  Or, one time, taking blood pressures for an afternoon, a task for which I was not trained except for on the spot.  Or picking up garbage after a party held in the village.  Or paying for a pizza lunch for someone who hasn’t had pizza in fifteen years because it’s considered a luxury.  Or visiting a man in hospital with gangrene in both feet, who asks me to pray for him, and I do.

I will, of course, continue to write about the wild and different stuff.  It’s interesting.  Hopefully it’s inspiring.  But it’s not what makes the biggest difference.

And no one has to wait another minute.  Not even on a strange Sunday morning.

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. 

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Helping_Hurts  Wikipedia

https://www.postandcourier.com/news/do-no-harm-the-pros-and-cons-of-short-term/article_17f4cf56-a842-11e6-be97-a7c74edac56a.html  

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/why-you-should-consider-cancelling-your-short-term-mission-trips/  

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.

An Uneasy Certainty

Da and Me around the campfire.

 "I will never leave you, nor forsake you."

God to Joshua (1:6)

Trust-building is a delicate and complex thing.  But however it happens, one element must be in place or the whole thing falls apart.

You just need to keep on showing up.

Children know this.  That's why my 14 month old grandson Jayden cries when Mom goes away.  He's working on building trust, object permanence, and figuring out how the world works when it comes to the people he loves.  When Mom comes back, when his needs are met in age-appropriate, development-appropriate, love-strengthening ways, he feels secure.  And a secure infant is so much more free to take learning risks, absorb nutrients and information, sleep well, and generally grow up to be a more secure adult. 

Thai children know about trust too, except there are a tragic number of them who understand it from the wrong side of bonding.  Every one of our kids at Hot Springs has had at least one, if not both parents go away and never come back.  Death, prison, or simple abandonment - that's what they know.  People you desperately love sometimes don't stick around.  Sometimes they don't show up when they are supposed to.

Da knows this.

She came to Hot Springs at the age of six.  She was shy and sweet and not doing so well in school, as is often the case at first when you are from the mountain and have only known your tribal language (Karen) up until now.   We only really ever get a glimpse, a guess, as to what life is like before coming to Hot Springs.  They come to us skinny and in desperate need of a bath and often lethargic due to malnutrition.  By the time I met Da, she'd been with the family for three months and was just beginning to plump up a bit and come out of her shell.  She was also hungry for the quiet attention of sitting up close on the bench, holding hands, not talking.

I remember one particular nighttime camp fire, the night before I had to leave.  Since most of life is lived outdoors in rural Thailand, campfires are common, and we have a fire pit at the far end of the dining shelter.  It makes for a great place to hang out just before bed, to do homework, roast a frog or a cricket if you can catch one, and ask questions.

Lots of questions were happening that night, because we had with us Boy whose university English, availability and heart to serve had qualified him as a translator for our teams on several occasions.  Usually Boy was employed to translate at morning and evening devotions, or for Sunday sermons.  But on this evening, it was all casual.  And the children, quite on their own, were asking Boy to ask me questions.  Mostly about the magical far away place called Canada.  A lot about snow.  A few about school.  Some about my family. 

And then Da.  Squished up beside me, she directs her question to Boy who reacts with a mild expression of surprise even before he begins to translate.  "Do people ever die in Canda?"  Da wants to know.

I am taken aback.   Does Da really think there's such a place on the planet?  I reply simply, "Yes.  People die in Canada.  Everywhere, at one point, everyone's body dies."

There is silence.   I let it sit.  And then Da again.

"Ajahn Ruth.  Are you ever coming back to us?"

My heart squeezes in my chest.  That happens a lot here.  I turn her face up to mine and look into her too-wise, deep brown eyes and see something too hard for a little girl who's only six.

Aw baby, who died on you, and didn't come back?

I choose my response carefully.  There are no guarantees, ever.  But.

"As long as the Lord gives me strength, I will come back to you."  I say strongly.  Boy translates this.  Then.  "We have a saying in English.  'Wild horses couldn't keep me away.'"  Boy smiles, and then translates, and then explains, and there is a ripple of giggles around the circle.  And Da snuggles up closer.

Yes, honey.  I'll be back. 

If I have any say in it whatsoever, I absolutely will be back.

Again, I am undone in the moment.

Do you wonder why I come here so often?
This is why.

A lovely, secure, preteen Da.

And it's not just Da.  I think that trust took time to build for Suradet and Yupa as well.   Who were these far away white people, and what were they up to, really?  Would they come back?  Would they really, actually, truly care enough to keep on showing up?

That was ten years ago.   No one asks me if I'm coming back any more.  Just when.   Because showing up is how trust is built.  And trust is the foundation of all relationships, especially the ones where you learn from one anothers' hearts how to heal, how to love, and how to be better at being human, together.