How to smell like a temple:

The short answer: walk down the street.

This month is Tibetan Sacadawa. The month where anything good you do earns one million times the normal merit, and anything bad earns one million times the normal demerit. The month where people avoid eating meat because killing an animal causes too much demerit. The month where the incense fires are lit round the clock and smoke blots out the sky. The month where most people are dizzy for all the circles they've walked clockwise around some building. The month where they celebrate the birth, death, and buddhahood of buddha himself.

The slightly longer answer: agree to go with some friends to the Jokhang Temple the day before the most auspicious day of the month.

The Jokhang Temple is perhaps the most important temple in all of Tibet because of the buddha statue that it houses given from the Chinese wife of their most famous king. Year round it gets pilgrims from all stretches of the Tibetan peopled world. On the day that I went, half the population of Lhasa also decided to go.

The outer courtyard was deceptively quiet, because once past the gate it was a buzz of motion and activity. Masses of people, pushing, edging, chanting, even prostrating their way around the temple up to the main altar. Monks shoving the filthy hoards through the lines, endless pouring of butter into the lamps lighting the musty darkness, the choking sting of incense, the grabbing of anything that might steady one on the butter slick floor. Room after room of idols.

Enter one white girl into such throb of humanity, squeezing between the devoted and a pillar decorated with human teeth.

Dodging the blessing of one monk, only to be offered a kada by another, only to be handed a bag contaning some barley that had been offered to the buddha statue, only to refuse all of the above to the sincere bafflement of everyone present. Small children cling to mother's skirts as a drowing person in a flood. Wrinkled clawed hands reach out for help up from the floor after a few crowded prostrations. The six syllabal chant becoming the metronome of life within as even the temple walls seem to thump in its rythym.

A distinct metalic rattling of chains sends chills like blades of ice through ones bones. My imagination? No. Surrounding every door to every room of idols are literal chains, curtians of heavy iron chains.

He brought them out of darkness and gloom and broke their chains apart.

And yet they remain in darkness and gloom surrounded by chains.
I'm still washing the smell out of my hair.

The wheels on the bus go round and round...

The buses in Lhasa have got to be unique worldwide.

They are typically beige or royal blue rudimentary affairs with sliding windows and seats for maybe a dozen passengers but often contain far more squeezed into every crevice. Each one is decorated with pictures of protector deities and tinsel (popular year round in Asia) and blares some mildly desirable Tibetan pop tunes. There are two bus staff: one a sweaty and disgruntled driver and the other a bored school child who opens the door, shouts the name of the destination out the window at wary passerby, and collects the requisite two kuai per passenger. Basically if you can spray paint some numbers on a bus and drive on the known (but not necessarily posted) routes then you too can be in business.

I have come to know and love the buses, particularly after having cracked the code on how to stop them: mutter a “di gik carona” and point your lips at the desired spot. So I have stopped really being intrigued by them.

Until today friends. I get on the fairly deserted bus as usual. I silently berate myself for picking the first empty seat (empty because it was in the blazing sun). I notice with mild interest that the music on this bus happens to be in English, rare but, unfortunately, totally unsavory. The school age girl collecting money puts two and two together and realizes that a.) this music is in English, and b) this girl (me)speaks English and so begins to chatter on to me in loud and clear Tibetan (a blessing for any language learner) because even though she can recognize English she can’t speak a word.

Somehow she knew that I was a teacher at the Teacher’s College and a few exchanges later comes to know the extent of my Tibetan language understanding: not much. Yet somehow as we near the school she begins to insist something to the effect of: go around another time. I was confused and before I knew it I was sitting between her and the driver she was jumping off to buy me a bottle of water and for the next hour I rode with them the entire bus route.

I got to yell the destination out the window at passerby. I got to laugh at the children who would get on and turn the place into a jungle gym. I got to shake my head viscously at the other suicidal drivers and mutter ‘nyoombarisha!’(crazy). I got to sing along to Chinese, Tibetan, and yes even English pop songs with the driver. I got to wave and taunt other bus drivers as we passed them in the street. I got to talk to this girl about the weather, her job, her family, and where she was from. I got to exchange my phone number with my first total non English speaker. I got to ride for free.

When the second time to get off came around I almost missed it… because they didn’t want to let me off. I had to meh meh (no no) and guchi guchi (please please) until they laughed so hard the driver couldn’t help but stop.

So long story short, this afternoon I lived the dream people. I was part of the bus driving world, and, let me just tell you, the bus riding world will never be the same.

That last post is not the final word, nor the whole picture...

That last post contained a lot of garbage and I cannot leave it as it stands. Reality, but filthy nonetheless. It's not the complete picture.

The truth is I can see grace and redemption in the midst of all those shards of life, I'm just having a hard time keeping my eyes on it. I really do need a break.

But allow me to share what He has allowed me to see:
-An administrator who opens his home and family to us after a whole year of distant awkwardness. Over bowls of homemade noodles and jokes about wearing slippers to the classroom the bolted doors come flying open.

-A chance to have a revealing conversation with some colleagues about the feelings of hopelessness and lack of purpose that overwhelm their lives. Sometimes just listening speaks more than anything audible ever could.

-A classroom full of students who couldn't have seemed less interested in me last semester suddenly requesting that I carve out time to teach them to cook pizza, go for walks, visit their homes, eat meals of dumplings and fish with. I haven't changed but their hearts obviously have.

-Sitting in an obscure tea house which has a high probability of never before serving a foreigner with a local friend who claims that it's her favorite. Sipping tea in the dank cool of an old Tibetan house as all manner of humanity shuffles through the doors to eat noodles is the best way to learn about someones life.

-Feeling the squeeze of my dear nun friend's hand who literally has to beg past official barriers to come visit me as she tells me that I am her best friend. May she find security in the only One who is able to offer it.

-The near instantaneous friendship of myself and the receptionist at the airline ticket office who within an hour of our meeting had invited me to a picnic with her friends. In those moments I marvel at the speed with which He occasionally chooses to work.

So exhausted, defeated, pitifully inadequate I indeed am... but hopeless I am not.

These are a few of the most frustrating things:

Much unlike Fraulein Maria's raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens... far from it in fact:

For the past few days I have been physically resisting the urge to scream, scream at this place, at this culture, at my students, at my computer, at random people in the street.

Some things are trivial, some things are heartbreaking, some things are rude. I want to scream at them all for exhausting me, defeating me, and making me feel farther and farther from the One whom I know of nothing that can separate me from His love.

For example:
-Text messages that say "are you free now?" (no being the near constant responding message, is anyone ever really free right now?) followed by text messages that clearly demonstrate frustration with me. How am I supposed meet those demands?

-The girl wearing jeans and a matted t-shirt using wooden flip flops to prostrate herself across the grimy intersection through traffic in hopes to gain a surplus of merit. Will she ever know freedom?

-The fact that I cannot buy an international airline ticket online myself (though I've spent days trying), nor can I go to the local ticket office (for two hours) and buy it because they only issue tickets to Chongching. Why does it look possible when it's really not?

-Offering to cook a big American dinner for some colleagues only to have half of them show up late or not at all as I stare in dismay at what will amount to more leftovers than I can eat and too many dishes to wash in the sink. What is the point of working so hard?

-Getting dragged to nearly outside of town to go meet some friend of a friend only to be basically ignored and then told I can take my own taxi back. Is my time not valuable to anyone but me?

-The thirty minutes to an hour that it takes for my email page to open. What am I supposed to be learning through this?

-The girl who never comes to class showing up late (interrupting my class) and then bursting into tears halfway through proclaiming that she's sick and needs to leave (again interrupting my class). How can I match such insolence with grace?

-The fact that the only English phrase that I hear that is grammatically correct all semester is a shouted "I want to f*** you" and all the other like attention (totally unprovoked) that I get while trying to be a normal person and simply live in this city. Will they ever realize the total devaluation of a human being that such attention produces?

-That the fish (and basically any other meat that people cook in this place) is full of bones, one of which I think I swallowed a few hours ago. Is it possible for a person to live having swallowed a fish bone?

-That smell. What on earth is it?

It is hard for me to adequately describe the feeling that the combination of these things produces. Unease, tension, anger, worthlessness, truly woeful inadequacy, a horrid mixture of all of the afore mentioned.

Grace is a certainty, redemption is reality... but all I'm asking for is a break.

Enter the dancing yaks...

Last night I had the truly illuminating experience of going to see the "Tibetan Opera" with two Chinese friends.

Now I love performances of any kind, particularly musicals, the love of which harkens back to high school where I played three instruments in the pit band. This, however, was unlike anything I have ever seen. It was neither Tibetan nor an opera, and after much thought I have only come up with one way to describe it: If a circus, the Nutcracker suite, and a Tibetan Buddhist monastery had a collision and a Chinese man, with access to LCD screens and fog machines, caught it on tape it would have been as close to the same effect as what I saw last night as anything I can imagine.

And it was illuminating, not because of the green lasers or the shimmering representations of balletic gods, not because of the prayer wheel wielding tap dancers or the candle stick bearing contortionists, but because of the conversation that I had with my Chinese friends after the drummers, dancing yaks, acrobatic lotus', and array of Tibetan garb clad actors had all taken their bows.

To me, everything about the performance was Chinese. I've never seen a Tibetan twist their body into the pretzels that those Chinese performers were capable of. I've never known any Tibetan to dance around to a remix of their traditional songs with a butter churn. I've heard plenty of mumbled incantations and chilling monastery horns but I've never seen them accompanied by absurdly ornamented women and children mouthing words that they no doubt can't actually speak. I've seen many Tibetan minorities but never come in contact with so many Chinese dancers in braided wigs.

To my Chinese friends, this performance was the height of Tibetan culture. Didn't I notice the yaks? Had I never seen the drums or butter lamps at the temples? How do I explain all of the strange clothes... if it wasn't, in fact, Tibetan?

The truth is this: what I saw last night was Tibetan culture Chineseified to the max. For the first time I was watching what the best assumptions from the Chinese are for their Tibetan neighbors. It was illuminating... it was strange. No wonder things are complicated here.

Needless to say, I'll never be able to watch another performance sans dancing yaks and be satisfied ever again.

Grease stained clothes: Ganden Monastery

My earliest memories of Ganden will forever be marked by the tangka painter's muppetesque hello's, time spent in the kitchen watching one man shovel enough potatoes for three hundred monks into a pot while slurping fresh butter tea, and my monk friend's very tangible frustration over the fact that I couldn't escape the cold chills and looming atmosphere of evil residue from the first temple we had been in.

During that trip it was butter tea spilled from a shaky hand which stained my clothes.

This time accompanied by five sweet students (one of whom was severely car sick during the hour of switchbacks up the mountain to the monastery) different sensations come to mind. The sweaty buttery smell of the pilgrim bus as the sun rose that morning, the meanderings through rooms and temples that I remain unconvinced of their public access, the snack of squishy meat product and dried instant noodles during our hike on the kora and easily the most impressive view of Tibet to be found with such relative ease, the embarrassment caused by being the only foreigner in a tea house full of rowdy men, the sting of incense smoke, and the absurd inclination to lift my students from their prostrate posture before an endless army of golden statues.

And there was this scene: After a whole day of watching my students giving money and offering kadas and bowing and mumbling through some memorized spell before literally thousands of statues, pictures, chortens, books, and anything else that was in a case... we enter into yet another tiny stinky room totally consumed by a two story statue of someone/thing. I offer to hold their bags as my students throw their bodies to the floor and one girl looks at me and says, "Ms. Kelly, you should pray." My gentle response was, "Oh, I do pray, but not to this one (gesturing to the gold monstrosity before us) I do not believe in this..." Before I had a chance to offer any further explanation another student pulled herself up from the floor to nudge the first girl, "oh yes Ms. Kelly, we know that you believe in Yesu."

Because the truth is, if these girls know even that much then they know more truth about what I believe than anything of what we did that day. Of the thousands of things that they bowed before and offered money to these girls knew the names and meaning of maybe half a dozen, in every temple the only thing that they knew was what they were told by some monk trimming butter lamps or cleaning his ears, they followed obediently all of the rituals that they have no doubt been drilled in from birth but not a single one of them conveyed any knowledge of meaning, if there had been any meaning to begin with.

Picture a loaded bus stopping at some minuscule monastery in the middle of nowhere on the way back from Ganden. Picture the entirety of its passengers looking in confusion at the sign on the door. Picture them shrugging their shoulders and dutifully getting in line to march clockwise through a few rooms of the same gold statues and stinky butter lamps as they had just left, bowing and offering any remaining mao to something that ten seconds before they had not even known existed. Picture my students joining in. Picture me wanting to vomit from the sheer meaninglessness of it all.

During this trip it was sha momo juice squirting in unpredictable directions which stained my clothes.

When you stop asking "why?"

A text message at 7pm one evening and about ten minutes later a student shows up at my door. Apparently all she wanted to do was chat, about our families, about the weather, about food, about hobbies. Something more urgent never came up. She left as quickly as she came in order not to be late for the evening study hall the students are required to attend.

A canceled lunch appointment makes for a potentially very low key tomorrow, until the realization strikes several hours later that my lunch appointment was wrong to begin with when my dear nun friend sends a message proclaiming that tomorrow is her only day off kitchen duty, and thus our only chance to get together.

A knock at my classroom door by my Chinese supervisor leaves me with another camera man taking more pictures of me teaching. Perhaps it was my willingness to be the school mascot yet again that made the following conversation with him possible: “Kelly I hope that you have no travel plans for the dragon boat holiday because then your dream can come true, and I will cook noodles for you and Jenn.”

One afternoon spent helping a middle school daughter of a colleague practice English by basically just meeting and having a conversation with her, sharing one of my coveted Snickers Nutcrackers, and lending the book “My Teacher is an Alien” (I knew there was a reason I brought that bad boy all the way from America) gets me an invitation to join her and her family for some Tibetan Opera, whatever that is.

Why do these things happen and what is their purpose? I have long stopped asking because I know that the answer rests safe with Him.