I miss direction most

I remember being traumatized by images of WWII’s concentration camps in elementary school. I literally felt my innocence burning away as my face would tingle with discomfort and rage. I’ve lost that physical reaction against human cruelty and have, in some ways, grown accustomed to the existence of hunger, violence, and overt injustice. Imbalance. I wish I still felt that utter horror at the concept, but I do not. All I have is some intellectual or spiritual aversion to the current reality. Maybe that’s enough. Rather than slowly watch that flutter away as well, maybe I can choose to engage.

I have started applying for jobs again. I am restless. Maybe it’s discontentment. Is it healthy?

Children endure horrific abuse daily. I have seen the rows upon rows of filing cabinets documenting the discovered cases of abuse. I have also seen children taken from the care of their families because the definition of neglect is nearly inseparable from the definition of poverty. People in my city are hungry. I have seen the anger of people who show up to food lines and leave unsatisfied. It’s real, and it’s close, and it only seems to get worse. (Cue Music)

Sometimes I think social work holds no answers to these problems. And as a social worker, I have felt myself becoming cynical trying to create change amidst competition, manipulation, aggression and other coping mechanisms that originated in people, communities, and organizations from some line of injustice or imbalance that seems to me inescapably cyclical. Which might be why I cannot see my friend community’s desire to farm land and live relatively isolated from the world as anything but escapism. I want that. I want to walk away from the cities and the islands of rural towns and find a place to hide. I want to tend to the land and my own spirit; the things I can more easily control.

But

I feel as though, at some point, despite the hurt and rage and nonsense of humanity, you have to be willing to say, “Ok, I’ll be part of this world”. Not only because it’s an illusion to assume you are not, but also because, in engaging, I have also seen the hope. I have seen strength and trust and empowerment and self-discovery and balance. It is much like the food line: I resonate with the feeling of being fed but unsatisfied. It's a frustration to hope. But watching the slow unraveling of a very complicated knot, you sometimes witness it break open in a burst of freedom. And it is freedom for us all.

"Although the world is full of suffering,

it is also full of the overcoming of it."

-Helen Keller

Two loves

I had another revealing dream.

I dreamt I was lying in bed, walking my eyes over the curves of the sheets.

Then I realized...this was not my bed, but my hometown.

And I knew it intimately.

I knew it completely. Every rise and fall, every veer and surge in the land.

I loved it, because it comforted me, sustained me, and possessed me,

and I it.

As I came to see the details,

the molehills of humanity in the hollows of this hallowed ground,

I began walking the streets of my city

as though they were the halls of my high school. I knew

everyone I passed.

I felt great warmth for each of them. And I worried, with them,

over their concerns. Health, financial, familial, what have you.

But despite our daily worries, there was security in our amity

and goodwill.

We were connected, and stronger for it.

Then an idea turned everything grey,

stuck somewhere between black and white.

I put my hands in my pockets and continued to walk the streets,

a little more bent, biting my lip as I chewed over the idea

The full potential of my two loves could not be reached together.

Travel Bug

In honor of my restless heart: a flashback from our time in Thailand

Sawatdi kha phuan gap khrop-khrua (Greetings friends and family!)

As you can tell by this impressive introduction, language is coming along, though slowly. Thai is fascinating to learn. After trying to learn Spanish, I appreciate that there are no verb tenses! And the sentence structure is simple comparatively- in fact it sounds a bit like cookie monster when you directly translate. "I hungry. We go cafeteria?" What makes the language difficult is the tones. ( ^ ) falling tone, ( / ) high tone, etc. One word can have seven very different meanings mostly dependent on tone! For example, the word MAA = come, dog, horse, brew, ghost. Rot MAA = carriage. MAA Nang = bench. Kaa MAA = Pectoral fin. But I have a good method- I just always assume that when I hear "maa" people are talking about pectoral fins. It serves me well."măi mai mái mâi" translates as "Does new wood burn well?" Glay is the word for both near and far. Figure that one out. And to make it all a little more exciting, several common every-day words (like "noodle") are spelled the same, pronounced the same- yet if you only raise or lower the tone they turn to vulgar or offensive words. Luckily all the Thai people we have met show an abundance of grace and a fantastic ability to read the context clues. So when Keith orders "penis" soup, they laugh a bit but know he means "noodles' (both "kwai"). Luckily I have less grace, and so you all get to hear that story!

The other night I met Keith's host family from three years ago when he was a student in Thailand. I was very nervous! Maybe because Keith's real family is so fabulous that any nervousness I had from meeting them ended in an anticlimax. This visit was the first experience I had with a Thai person's interpretation of "just a little spicy". As Keith held a conversation for over an hour in Thai, I concentrated all my energy in trying to control my nose drippings. I was sweating and tearing and burning in my ears, and the only Thai I could contribute was an ironic "very delicious". We told our hosts we had to return home at eight that evening. Which, of course, meant that by eight we went over to visit Grandma next door. Which means you need to visit with Grandpa, but he was in the hospital. So off to the hospital we all went. On the way our hosts decided to buy a hamster.

Learning about and from Buddhism is a fantastic aspect of studying here. I've been reading Living Buddha Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh- it helps me recognize the connections between our two faiths; their 'interconectedness'. In the afternoon we have a culture class that explains different aspects of Buddhism. We all have to listen closely to the quiet voice of our lecturer- an eighty plus year old Thai man who speaks his wisdom through stories and suggestions and gentle questions. On the topic of impermanence, he sits with his hands folded, his back hunched, and his slow calm voice just close enough to the mic to hear, 'if you met my mother 90 years ago, you would not say, "hello Professor Wan'. I was not yet a thought. And if you saw my mother with an infant 86 years ago, you would not say 'Professor Wan, why are you crying so much' because I was not yet Professor Wan. And yet again, when you return to Thailand in ten years, you can visit a Temple and see my remains, but you can not say to them 'you are awful lazy these days Professor', because Professor Wan will be no more. Mr. Earth came to me a while ago and said 'you've had this body on loan from me for too long Professor'. But I pleaded with Mr. Earth saying, 'please give me just a few more years so that I can meditate and work for good'. And Mr. Earth thought and said 'for this means you can keep your body a while longer, but I will need some parts back' and so I returned to the Earth my hair and my teeth. But there isn't much of that left" He spoke so softly, so slowly, that we thought with the end of each sentence he may in fact be dead. And thus he calls from us a moment of meditation on impermanence and selflessness. This is how he teaches us about Buddhism. The time he has spent in reflection allows him the humility and peace to speak of religion and immortality with grace, calm, and a sly humor.

We had a fantastic weekend at a Forest Temple learning to meditate. They stressed mindfulness- to sit quietly and observe your breathing, your sitting, your hearing, and to bring it all to mindlessness. We all stood quietly as Monk Gabe chanted "staaaaanding, staaaanding. Know that right now you are standing. Intending to walk. Right goes thus. Left goes thus. Right goes thus. Left goes thus. Last step, right goes thus. Intending to turn. Tuuuuurning. Tuuuuurning. Tuuuuurning. Tuuuuurning. Now you are staaaaanding. Staaaaaaanding." I felt I could turn round about eight times in the amount of time I was to turn a half circle. Slowing our pace is extremely difficult. Letting go of practicality and productivity is difficult. 35 minutes of staaaaaaaanding is difficult. But it really brings you to a better place.

.

The weekend was a nice retreat. The mountain air was refreshing. A monk took Keith by the elbow and showed him their quarters and meditation paths and explained his personal commitment to the monastic life. I was busy feeding catfish. Swarms of whiskered beasts flopped over one another to consume in whatever quantity of breadcrumbs their large mouths and mediocre aim allowed. Clearly more interesting than Enlightenment or whatever Keith gleaned from the morning.

Meanwhile, Keith has been honing in on his skill to convince people to do really stupid things. He is like a predator seeking out easy prey! (In this case, students who are highly competitive, impressionable, or gullible.) One student is particularly vulnerable to his cunning, and has thus far (1) eaten nine bananas in five minutes before going to a village without plumbing (2) eaten a very large spoonful of Thai chilies-in the same village (3) ran up and down 332 steep stairs in a temple (4) hopped on his right foot up 320 stairs at another temple and (Keith's pride and joy), (5) fed a swarm of catfish a piece of bread from his mouth while hanging upside down on a bridge. This must be the same flair Keith used to woo me.

And with all that fantastic insight, we say our farewells! Keep well!