A portrait of a girl

Because I want you to see what I see...

"The facts of the present won't sit still for a portrait. They are constantly vibrating, full of clutter and confusion."
-William M. Dixon

She is carefully dressed in the only pair of clothes she ever wears complete with purple sneakers. Her shoulder length, straight, dark hair is pulled back revealing a face so open it makes one's conscience ache. She leans against a dirty tile wall watching a hyperactive four year old bounce around. Her dark eyes flash and deep dimples appear as she grabs the arm of her strange pale friend with poor Tibetan. Her manner is as old as the sea or the mountains, timelessly patient, yet her visage betrays her severe youth. In her elder sister's home, she clicks her tongue as the four year old dips chocolate chip cookies into a glass of coke and though he is an absolute terror she hardly blinks in frustration.

She is small, gentle, and selfless. She poses in her Tibetan dress in such a way that displays her confidence in the beauty of the dress, not herself. She speaks slowly and sweetly, never expecting understanding. Instead, recognizing the limits of her hearer, she repeats even painful statements and tilts her head to the side waiting for recognition.

I made this thermos bag, I think it looks like a flower. It took me a long time. I have lived in Lhasa four years. My parents died four years ago. I like my hometown better. There I am a farmer. I have never gone to school, I work everyday. Work is okay. Am I fat? I only have a few friends here. Here is picture of my father. I don't have one of my mother.

She is causal about everything and is uncomfortable answering when offered anything. Her very breathing expresses her self estimation of undeserving. She struggles to spell her own name in her own language. She hungrily, though discreetly, scarfs a plastic baggy of fried potatoes and throws back sweet tea like it's running out. Her red, swollen, chapped fingers tell tales of hard work in harsh conditions but her face is as fresh as if she has only picked flowers in spring meadows her whole life. She listens with an obvious and surprising eagerness to other friends entering the teahouse, and as the four year old climbs up the walls, she whispers him down.

In a parting apology for total language inadequacy, her honest hug expresses forgiveness and acceptance in a way makes language unnecessary. She grins, clutches the four year old's hand in her nearly raw one, and turns, walking slowly back down the dusty, windswept street.

Her name is Purbu. She is seventeen. She sells junk from a blanket on the corner near our school.

I wish you could know her. I wish I could better.

Wait for it

One time, when He was eating a meal of gristly meat and curried potatoes with them, He put down His spoon and wiped His mouth with the back of His hand, gulped the last, now cool, swallow of sweet milk tea, and gave them this command: wait for the gift my Father promised.

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The 'expect nothing cause that's probably what you're going to get' attitude pays in China. You're still disappointed, but the element of surprise has been eliminated and so you're not going to be ticked off.

Getting nothing won't ruin your day. Instead, getting anything at all... makes it.

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The cement floors are slick where students have sloshed buckets of water over them in vain attempt to alleviate the encroaching dust. The windows are warped and face a broken migrant workers camp and the towering brown mountains. The shy bumbling Chinese man, who only days before asked for advice on making pizza: You need an oven. Okay I buy one. What else? Flour? Oil?, now stammers different news: Our school has cafeteria for teachers did you know? I knew, I also knew that the foreign teachers were not invited. Really? Where? Near your home, I will tell the leaders, you must come to eat... breakfast is best. As my shock settles like the lazy flies on the window ledge, all I can do is gush with gratitude. An act later repeated when an appearance in the bustling teacher's marketplace-esque lounge fills my hands with cups of tea and free notebooks.

He wipes His mouth with the back of His hand...

The bench near the gate feels like bars of ice through my pants as I sit with the school security guard more like grandfather and read him my children's Tibetan book in a faltering voice. His typical radius of ten feet from me demolished with the turn of a page. Off to the side the two new students in the class that I have taught for a year and a half wait shyly. A smile of acknowledgment brings the girls close and pushes the grandfather off the bench and they murmur their impressions of Lhasa, their desire to learn English, and their pleasure at a future lunch of meat momo's with their foreign teacher...

My own lunch a walk up the hill towards the shockingly rustic nunnery teahouse with two other friends. The walls appear to buckle under the weight of grime as I rush to hug a nun whom I've become familiar with despite zero language overlap. Tea is quickly poured, boxes of stale deep fried bread, dried fruit reminiscent of dirty rocks , and rotten cheese appear and are insistently offered, and before my friends and I can order lunch three bowls of gristly meat and curried potatoes over rice appear... a gift from my nun friend who maybe doesn't realize that the greater gift to me is the way she sits too close and holds my hand and allows me to look into her weary, burdened eyes to see the beautiful sweet smiling woman she once was.

He gulps the last, now cool, swallow of sweet milk tea...

Stomach full and a day mostly spent before the return to the school gate. Hands gingerly grasp a thin plastic bag full of the previously offered goodies and nearly forget their task in the surprise appearance of the corner's junk seller, a girl who's smile consistently puts the glaring Lhasa sun to shame. Her seventeen year old never been to school arms give the most familiar hug and we begin to discuss plans to meet and she promises her sister will make tea for us the following day. The breeze blows grit off the street and somehow I am the only one nervous about my lack of language skill.

He gave them this command: wait for the gift my Father promised.

Back at my home I stand on the blue grungy carpet surrounded by the white flaking walls overwhelmed at the gifts from the day and hear in my ear the whisper of His voice saying: you think this is amazing? just wait for the one my Father promised...

Ashes for beauty

The first week of classes is barely halfway over and my fingers are already cracked and bleeding. A dim mirror of the state of my heart.

Miss Kelly, I have other news for you. Dawatashi is dead. Self died. From a tree. No one was at home and we only know yesterday.

Ashes.

A thousand torments from such news. Like being hit by a train, having the breath ripped from every corner of your body, and drowning all at once. On his name card, in order to help me learn names, a hastily scribbled reminder of who he was: Crazy boy always smiling

Ashes.

The students are expressionless. Their culture refuses to accept public displays of grief. But through my own tear marbled eyes pain is obvious. The boys from his dorm room are silent at night there are eight beds Miss Kelly, but one is empty. All they can mutter is the, now increasingly meaningless, Om mane padme hum chant as they ponder the sure fate of their classmate in Tibet when someone self dies it will take 500 lives to be human again. And the only thing in my mind is: He didn't know the Truth... and neither do they.

Ashes. Pile up and are swept away ingraining themselves into your skin.

In the teacher's office polite chatter and news years greetings, sick and bland, get caught in my throat. Do they know? As I share the news with a fellow teacher my heart finds a voice in her bewildered visage and we spend the break between classes in the school cafeteria eating meat pies and consoling each other. Faces to the floor, other teacher's acknowledge the event with only silence.

Ashes.

Ashes shift through my fingers and blow in my face as I raise them up before the One who has promised beauty in exchange for them.

He has sent me... to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and freedom to the prisoners... to comfort all who mourn... to give them a crown of beauty instead of ashes...

And it is with a renewed urgency and desperation, in the face of or because of a broken bleeding heart, for the 79 remaining students, for the 34 new ones, for the 80 returned from their practice teaching, for the thousands of others on this campus and in this city...that I do just that.

Ashes...
Ashes...

Beauty?

The second time...

Today I only left the apartment twice.

The first time was for about fifteen minutes after I realized that the gas for the stove was sputtering to a full stop. I had to walk down the street to find the gas lady (who is conveniently also the rice, oil, and flour lady) so that she could drive her moped to my apartment building and come get the empty can...

The second time was later.

After a day which had mostly been spent resting, cleaning, doing menial unfinished tasks, preparing some food for tomorrow's meeting, reading, waiting for the return of the gas can, and sitting in the sun which chanced to escape through the looming dust clouds and claw through the grimy windows to warm my eager lap.

The second time I left was to grab some dinner with my teammate. We went to a small noodle shop tea house combination, not too far not too close to our school. We were greeted by not one single staff member but a couple of monks in one corner and a grandmother who's body was bent into a permanent ninety degree angle at the waist shuffling around the room. My whole body ached watching her and my spirit could sense the hand of oppression which held her there so we decided to wait only a little while to see if anyone who could cook noodles would show up. I casually regretted the absence of Dawa, the girl who worked there a year ago and had disappeared over the summer.

Within moments the owner/chef/waiter showed up and greeted us with a "tashi deleg" (good wishes) of recognition. We greedily slurped the bowl of noodles, vegetables, and meat that he brought to us. We had no idea what we were getting into.

A mostly covered girl slunk through the door directly to my side. At a glance, I drop my chopsticks and half rise half stammer: Dawa!?!

The song of the next hour can only be sung in fractured Tibetan, smiles, and cups of tea. She paid for our meal, grabbed our arms, marched us less than fifty meters down the street to the room which she had divided in half with a large piece of cardboard. The front half served as a small shop selling drinks and snacks the back half served as her entire existence. Had she been here the whole time? What had she been doing? No chance to find out. She forced plates of candy and raisins on us, she set to the work of making sweet tea, she invited her two friends (one of whom was a bus cashier who insisted that twice she had called my name and twice I hadn't heard her... she makes the second bus cashier that I know by name), and in a room the size of most American bathrooms covered with posters of the most famous idol in Lhasa and Amdo Tibetan singers we chatted... we tried to chat. The only English word that was exchanged the entire time was 'jellybean', but Dawa's Tibetan is slow and accentless and she is patient. She pulled out a picture that I had taken with her a year ago and given her as a gift before going to America last summer. Your face becomes so thin she remarks... and then bursts out laughing when I delcare No no, I have become a pig.

As the sun dipped behind the mountains and began to cast long shadows on the stained street outside we made to leave but not before Dawa insisted we drink another cup of tea and demanded that I come back to visit her tomorrow and often. I stepped out of her room, mind reeling with Tibetan words remembered and used and wished for, and memorized the number spray painted to the tin grating over her home and hugged her, to the astonishment of her neighbors playing snooker two yards away.

That was only the second time I left today. Our Father wastes nothing.

Imagine if I had left a third time?

Presence...

When I was a baby, You held me close.
When I was just a child You showed me the way I should go.
When I'm old and gray You'll never leave me... You're right by my side.

When I was a baby, I was bathed in a plastic bucket like the one I bought for seven yuan yesterday and then filled up with copies of assessment tests to give my students when classes begin next week. When I ran into my boss on campus, he was confused about the copies I think the school should make them and about my new cell phone number this is your third phone I think but he totally got the bucket nice bucket.

I know that You saved me, but I don't know... I don't know, how far You had to reach.

When I was just a child, the first number I memorized was my age and the second was the house phone number. I never dreamed of owning a cell phone. I never dreamed of owning one (or three) in China. But I still had to wait in a line of dirt smelling farmers from the nearby valley to put more money on it. I even had to help a few of them with the automated machine which is all in Chinese, a language neither of us speak. Upon exiting I was greeted by a former student who ushered me into her family's house/nicnac shop where a stool materialized from no where and ice cream on a stick was thrust into my hand. I met her whole family including her dog the stomach has babies and happily took the opportunity to share my new phone number with her, and the two other students I chanced to run into, with hugs and smiles, that day.

I swam in Your deep love, but I don't know... I don't know, how wide and how deep.

When I'm old and gray, I can't imagine that I'll be more careless than I was when I showed up at the stationary store and asked for 85 notebooks for my students without the appropriate amount of cash. Friendship with one of the salesgirls proved advantageous as she forked over 50 yuan to make up for my shortage, and then threw in a few extra notebooks free.
And I can't imagine that I would forget being accepted shortly after around a large square table covered by a stained, striped cloth and littered with thermoses of sweet milk tea, metal bowls of soupy noodles, small dishes of pickled radishes, and English and Tibetan notes. I couldn't be more different than those girls who shared the table with me, but you wouldn't know it from the way I was treated.

I know that You're good too, but I don't know... I don't know, why You're so good to me.

A phone call: Kellyla I'm in Xining, travel is so bad... the train give me headache. I am halfway to Beijing. I call you. I love you. We must be connected.

A handful of package slips: Here are you boxes from America.

A day spent in awe of what the Father can do.

How'm I gonna thank You... when I can't get my arms around You?

Riddle me this...

The ability is even to permeate the root of hair to the hair smallly slightly, from inside arrive the outside to moisten, lock the nourishment composition that tight hair need availably.

so says my shampoo bottle. In English. I think.

But what about the fireworks outside my window all evening? And why is it that the cell phone can do everything except receive text messages all of a sudden? And where are all the 60 watt bulbs in this city hiding?

And what do I do when one of my dearest local friends, who I met by crashing haphazardly into her on a bike a windy day a year ago, and have since been alongside her for all of her firsts (first day out of the nunnery, first time finding a job, first time getting a haircut), and have developed a closeness that counts for true friendship (one of the very few in this city), calls me to say: You are so bad, I try call you for a long time... I'm going to Beijing tomorrow... maybe I will stay forever.

Do I attempt to explain that I lost my cell phone and had almost no way to get her number? Do I immediately take a bus down to the tea house where she is sitting with her luggage and three cousins? Do I accept the huge bag of dried yak meat from her hometown that she has brought for me? Do I go with her to help her pack her suitcase better at her cousin's house? Do I share a bowl of yogurt with her? Do I help her carry the entirety of her personal belongings to her brother's house from which she will leave the following morning? Do I sip another cup of butter tea with her? Do I dash back to my apartment to make her the muffins that she loves from muffin mixes that were sent to me from the states? Do I put together a bag of snacks for her to eat on her three day train ride to another planet? Do I walk back to her brother's house and ring the doorbell to give her one more hug before I, potentially, never see her again? Do I hold back my tears?

Yes... yes to everything, but the last one.

She says: don't cry. Learn more Tibetan.
The truth is I'm confused. I'm confused about the fireworks display haunting what has turned out to be a lonesome heartbreaking day. I'm confused about the cell phone which can do everything except the one thing that I most need it to do. I'm confused about the presence of every wattage of light bulb except 60.

And though I understand every word on my shampoo bottle, I'm confused. I don't understand it at all.

At all.

What I don't deserve

A confession:

What my time in Thailand gave me a chance to do (besides be cheated, sweat, and pet tigers) was to become worn out in such a way that brought me face to face with my own depravity. I found that one cannot be possessed of the Spirit and spend an entire vacation frustrated, impatient, and generally awful and not experience a certain amount of conviction. The letter to Thailand was harsh, but if I had to write one to my own heart... it would be unpostable for its vileness.

So here's a story for you:

Once upon a time there was a worm. The worm was cold. Dirty. Tired of eating and drinking the same things. Tired of living in the same crumbling hole. Tired of digging all day and seeing so little progress, nevermind that the worm was blind. The worm wanted a vacation. The worm dreamed of being renewed so that it could go back to being an even better worm. So the worm went to Thailand.
In Thailand the worm was hot, too hot. Still dirty. The worm got tired of all the Thai noodles and curries and western food day in and day out. The worm went from one hotel to the next, traveled all around the country by train and bus and car looking for a place that wasn't a crumbling hole. The worm, rather than relaxing, spent most of the time planning for the next day. The worm became angry, had no vacation, and quit dreaming.
The truth that the worm couldn't escape was that it was a worm. A worm at home, a worm in Lhasa, and a worm in Thailand.
The truth that the worm had forgotten was that it was a worm that was loved, undeservedly so, by a Holy One. And in that truth the worm could find vacation, the worm could find renewal, the worm could be more than a worm after all.

I am the worm.

Perhaps the reason Thailand was so frustrating for me is that I got what I deserved: discomfort, poor treatment, lack of rest. Because what I surely don't deserve (especially after meeting myself in that ungrateful, unholy state) is the limitless joy that comes from knowing that my name is written in the Book of Life and the realization that I get to live it out in the place where the land rises to catch the airplane out of the sky and among a people who are generous with their whole lives.

I'm not worthy, but I am back in Lhasa.