Proudly serving Ba'al Perazim

In 2nd Samuel it is recorded that David had such a resounding victory
over the Philistine forces that they abandoned their idols. David, in
rapture of He who ordained such a flood-like success, named the place
Ba'al Perazim.

Ba'al Perazim: the literal Hebrew meaning is "Owner of Breakings Through".

An alternate translation is "The One Bursts Out".
And that's exactly what He does.

Last semester I taught four classes. It was alarming to see
relationships built on less than two dozen shared words, to watch as the
Spirit stretched across vast communicative gaps to meet students at
their aches and their joys. It was a blessing, it was an encouragement,
it was grace in action. It was three of the four classes.

Last semester I watched tortured and helpless as one of my classes went
into steady decline, which resulted in eight students failing and more
than a few awkwardly jagged relationships. I began this semester with
such a battle still on my hands. The past two classes with them was a
fight for their attention, motivation, and obedience. I left each period
with my insides in knots and mouthfuls of petitions. The forces that I
am up against in that class seem far more than I can understand or
possibly face.

But maybe I had simply forgotten Ba'al Perazim, the owner of breakings
through.

This morning I walked out of the school gate to do some errands for the
day, my mind certainly a scrolling list of things I needed to buy and
time I had in which to do it, when I found myself, much to my inner
trembling, walking right into a group of girls from that class. Within a
moment I had been handed a pop sickle and was being asked in Tibetan if
I had time to go drink tea. Now? Yes, now Ms. Kelly.

Ba'al Perazim: He bursts out.

And this coming from students who had deliberately not attended my class
for the bulk of last semester, students who had failed, who had been
caught cheating on their exams, students who were listless at best in
class. So in a hazy moment of decision I agree to go... and spend the
next hour and half looking at pictures on cell phones of family members,
drinking syrupy sweet milk tea, chatting about summer, about holidays,
about anything they can come up with, using a strange but not unusual
combination of Tibetan and English to express mundane things as well as
hint at the more important.

Then the thermos ran dry and we stood up to leave...

Ba'al Perazim: He bursts out.

As we step stumble out the door into the blazing sunlight these
students, students who I had only in my wildest dreams ever had positive
contact with, the apex of relationship being a brief verbal exchange,
begin to urge insistently... next time Ms. Kelly, if you have free time
Ms. Kelly, Ms. Kelly please have tea with us again.

Amazing. I'm thinking about renaming the street.

May He continue to be honored as the owner of all breakings through and
have the opportunity to burst out in such a way that these girls, like
the Philistines of David's time, abandon their idols.

Memorable... or just strange?

In the highly unusual drizzle of a Lhasa afternoon I greet my friend in
a frenzy of tangled umbrellas and lowered self esteem when the first
comments out of her mouth are, "oh you look so /healthy/, maybe you eat
too much American food".

Students, friends, random passersby, all of Asia... I did not gain
weight this summer. Jenda, O-nea ribe, really. If I'm fat now, I was fat
before.

Never mind... on through the crowds the slick slippery of stone that
rarely sees rain, the damp push of clockwise motion. Gingerly step past
the beggars stooped on the stairs and push aside a curtain to a highly
recommended tea house, the best chow mein in Lhasa... though I beg to
differ. Nothing remarkable about this small room. In fact, everything
smacked of normalcy (the current definition of which may be more
illuminating than intended) with the multi-patterned benches, small boy
swinging singing in and out of the door, containers of chili paste
scattered on sticky tables, a Jackie Chan comedy blaring away on a TV
wedged in the corner, strangers sitting as close as relatives waiting
for bowls of noodles to come one by one out of the greasy kitchen.

Believe it or not, normalcy reigned.

Until the curtain door flapped open and a young Tibetan man took a
nearby seat. At a glance I knew that I knew this boy, so familiar his
face, but nothing in me could remember where I might have known him
from. As I politely avoided his stares and focused on the pictures my
friend was showing me my mind searched through ever crevice of memory,
every English Corner meeting attended, every student's relative's house
visited, every awkward conversation avoided or messily engaged in... all
the searching, sweeping away of memories cobwebs... nothing. A massive,
unsettling blank.

Finally, in an effort to put to rest what normal people simply ignore, I
lean over the table to the young man and said in slow precise English,
"Excuse me, do I know you?"

A quick "Ting bu dong" (Chinese for: I don't understand) and I was
baffled. My friend thought this was hilarious and I beg her to ask the
man where I know him from in a language that he can understand. She
obliges from amusement and hear this story, which unfolded in Chinese,
Tibetan, and English:

He did know me. We had been on the same bus one morning to Gaynden
monastery. He remembered that I was with Tibetan girls. And then the
storm of that day came back to me like a hurricane... that was the day
when my students got sick on the bus ride up there, the day that they
had bowed before everything that shone, the day that we had been
harassed by a loud group of men in a tea house desperate to take a
picture with me, the day that we had stopped at some nondescript temple
for more prostrating opportunity... and sure enough in the midst of all
of that, this boy had in fact been there... his face floating in and out
of all of my memories of that day.

His name is Jia Tso, he graduated from Tibet Medical College last year,
he is from a Tibetan area of Sichuan province, he thinks I am too young
to be a teacher, he wonders why most foreigners are so ugly but I am so
beautiful. For all I know he is still sitting in the tea house where we
left him drinking coke through a straw shortly after the conversation
took that turn.

The drizzle had cleared and in the cool damp I couldn't help but marvel
at a city where in a forgotten alley tea house one can run into a man
from a very random bus trip to a monastery. AND BE REMEMBERED. A face
so familiar. Am I becoming part of this city? Or am I memorable only
because I am so strange? Is strange what it means to be here?

Speaking of strange: less than ten minutes after the forgotten memory
encounter, I chanced to find a five kuai note laying on the ground. Do
not fear friends, it was promptly spent on a thermos of tea as I enjoyed
the rest of the afternoon with a different friend who has selflessly
made it her mission to teach me Tibetan. Again, normalcy, as loaded as
that word is, reigned.

The slow tide of familiar...

Back in Lhasa, my first 24 hours:

The man with cotton shorts pulled up over his belly with t-shirt tucked
in. The bus driver who passes everyone in the turn lane by driving into
oncoming traffic. The way entire streets shut down for some runners to
go through. The bag of mixed fruit forced on me by the grocery store
family. A heaping plate of noodles. The self resentment at still not
being able to speak Chinese or Tibetan with any fluency. The long low
damp clouds of the morning. The schedule of only 80 students rather than
my expected 160. The relief in a dear friends voice whom I get to see
for the first time in a month. The smiles around the office as I make my
first entry of the year. The long yellowed fingernails of the bus
cashier. The labored breaths of my first restless night. The dizziness
induced from a mere two story climb up some stairs. The lurking feeling
that something has changed and the inability to describe what that is.
The slip stumble out of bed to the cold realization that I am indeed
back. Loneliness. That smell that I spent all summer trying to forget.

24 hours of another life like a tidal wave upon the shores of my summer.

Yet in the high tide of foreignness I am blessed by the recognition of
the familiar. I have seen those laugh lines before. I know that this
ride costs two kuai. I can bargain for that new kettle with dexterity. I
have blinked hard in this sunlight more than once. That it all is still
strange to me is indeed true, that it is unexpected... not true any more.

The slow soft lapping of the familiar granting peace and rest on shores
of the totally unknown. The sands have shifted, but the ebb and flow
remains.

Ten days and counting...

I have been here before...

Ten.
Arrival complete with culture shocks like ripples through my soul. Everything familiar embroidered with confusion, the cobwebs of foreignness cling to the corners of everything that was my world for twenty-three years. Is that an entire isle of different breakfast cereals? Yes friend, this is America.

Nine.
The jitters of over-stimulation: too many things to listen to, hear, read, watch, understand, evidenced in the tell-tale sign of shaky hands.

Eight.
Tensions unwinding like so many balls of yarn on the floor and the massage of time with friends willing to get their hands into my stringy mess though I am only unraveling.

Seven.
Long forgotten acceptance found over tables in public spaces with heads bowed. Joy spills from lips which have ached to share His work from the past year. His smile, His warmth, His pride, His understanding, His provision found in the faces and company of dear friends.

Six.
Fellowship in the fullness of the depth it was intended. Courage in a note, a hug, a tear. The cross standing in the gap of the past year's brokenness and pain: a splintered reminder of what lay behind... and what lies before.

Five.
A tearing. The happy world of return fades imperceptibly into the mad scramble of depart. The lists begin and the frenzy of purchasing items in anticipation of the long year ahead is underway.

Four.
Insomnia reigns supreme. The fog of sleepless nights interrupted only by this dream of Lhasa: me in Tibetan dress pulling back all manner of curtains, tying them up, ripping them off, a mad attempt to let light in.

Three.
Turkey, mashed potatoes, butter beans, yorkshire puds, cranberry sauce, broccoli and cheese, sprouts, cabbage, corn on the cob, stuffing, and a pecan pie. A pseudo thanksgiving? No. This is the real deal, the one they celebrate in November will be the imposter due to my absence.

Two.
The strain of zippers on overstuffed bags, the heartache in invitations declined, the anxious double checking of flight details...

One.
I'm not ready. But I wasn't ready the last time either.

My only request, my most desperate plea: may He be glorified in me.

I'm BACK?

America is unique worldwide: it is amazingly diverse in terms of people, landscape, and food, it is wretchedly over airconditioned, it is the height of convinence and accessibility, it boasts an enormity of television programs as well as near constant entertainment in a myriad of forms, and even though most citizens don't realize it, wealth and luxery is the air we breathe. North Carolina is unique amongst states: it is every imaginable shade and texture of green, sweet tea flows like rivers from every restaurant and home, and the local accents are like a massage for the China accustomed ears.

So I'm back.

How do I describe the delight of sinking my teeth into anything with refried beans? To what can I compare the freedom of driving over near deserted roads winding through pastures and forests? Is there anything more liberating than the realization that the clothes in the stores might actually fit you? What about the thrill of options you can read at the grocery store?

But I'm forth.

Somewhere in the midst of the glee of being immersed back into a culture that swallows me up like a wave of jelloesque familiarity there are the inner rumblings of the all too understood and disected storm clouds of foreignness. I fit here but I'm differet. It's easy for me but I'm haunted by idleness. I have lived a life based on the reliability of the spiritual due to the unfaithful material yet find myself in the pulsating deception that the material seems convincingly stable. I have changed through a year long refinement process but to all appearances, nothing here has.

Back... and forth...
Comfort... and discomfort...

Back, and forth.
Backandforth.

In a few short weeks it will be back to China so maybe I'll just soak America, the parts that have been redeemed, in while I can. Is it even possible to overdose on the company of dear friends and burritos?

I'm back and I'm forth.

Korea in a very few pics

The rain in Spain is very plain...

But in Seoul it's torrential.

I had forgotten what real rain was... this place has gotten more rain in an hour than Lhasa does in a year.

Ode to Seoul Rain:
It is
absolutely flooding.
Am I swimming or
walking down the street?
Great sheets of
water.
This city must be located under a
heavenly faucet which someone has just left on all day.
Where is the ark?
Forging
great rivers equipped only with an umbrella.
Rainy day in Seoul.

My first thoughts on rain was gratitude which quickly turned into discomfort, not because my pants were instantly soaked up to the knees but because of the excess. It's just too much water, it's more than what this city needs, it's a waste.

The image that came to mind as I splashed between subways and wandered damply around the Seoul History Muesum was one of an angry child being told that he has to wash the car and instead of doing it methodically and carefully, thus actually cleaning it, in a vain fit of rage just throwing dozens of buckets of water all over it. If the Father wants to wash this city from its whoring to consumerism then this much rain is a show of desperation, isn't it?

Then this damp thought swam to the surface: As the rain which comes down from heaven and does not return to it without watering the earth so My word goes out from My mouth, it will not return to me empty but will achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

This rain is not the frivolity of some cranky school child, it is the profusion of a heavenly Father who has opened His arms in grace and pours it out, in the same overwhelming quanities as this rain, over the earth achieving the very purpose for which He sent it.

Who am I to question such excess?

Instead allow me to join in the spiritual water fight with this: You heavens above rain down righteousness, let the clouds shower it down. Let the earth open wide, let salvation spring up...

My pants will never be dry again.