Popcorn and deep fried cicada promises

The streets were blanketed in oozing mud slid down from the mountain during the last night's rainstorm of surprising ferocity. Shop keepers were digging out their front steps, mud hunks were flying from careless shovels, and the already tremulous buses sputter slid through it all. I occupied the front seat of one, thankful I hadn't attempted a bike ride this morning.

Slippery steps up to my student's sister's single room tidier than I had ever seen it. I was greeted by a steaming cup of sweet milk tea and a bashful student blinking behind thick glasses. She spent the next hour describing at curious, though exciting, length about each of her teachers and her recent classroom experiences of note. I finally remembered the plastic bag brought through the mud containing some very precious Books which her sister had asked for but I had been unable to give at the time. Her words of gratitude for the small bag were echoed by own gratitude to the One whose timing is always right.

He is not a man who lies, or a son of man who changes His mind. Does He speak and not act, or promise and not fulfill?

A heavily cologne scented jeep and a very interesting Chinese colleague and I arrived at a hotel restaurant with scant parking just in time for a birthday party of a Chinese girl who I've only met once but who insisted I join them. Uncomfortably formal chairs occupied by total strangers dotted an overly large table that was already filling up with the typical odd combination of Chinese dishes that adorn random events like jewels in a crown. Most difficult to swallow: a delightful dish of popcorn and deep fried cicadas. Happy Birthday.

The man immediately to my right, shocked into a dull stupor at the assertion that I don't drink alcohol, decided instead to regale me with his flashy new cell phone. One of the applications: a digital copy of the Book in Chinese. He admitted to reading it occasionally, though his expression upon hearing that I read it every day foreshadowed a more investigative future approach and made even the crispy cicadas and awkward birthday singing go down smoothly.

... and you know with all your heart and all your soul that none of the good promises He made to you has failed. Everything was fulfilled for you...

Later, as I sat on a cushion in a dark room and drank bitter tea across from a table cut out of a tree, my stomach gurgled but I begged my interesting colleague to tell me a story anyway. He spoke of always being different, of always feeling that there was something inside of him that wasn't the same even when he was small. He talked of light meeting light and how some people are like radios and if you are on the same station music comes out. I swished the tea in my mouth and silently asked my Father to become the right station for this man.

Therefore, while the promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear so that none of you should miss it.

Tired of being the object of intense scrutiny of the man scratching his nose less than a foot from me, I insisted we just buy the books and leave the small charmingly disorganized shop. We ended up in a nondescript tea house that we always end up in where another friend proceeded to tell a story of his latest mishap with such vigor that sweet milk tea ended up all over his pants, my shoes, and the floor. His hometown dialect being so far removed from the Lhasa vernacular resulted in the amusing situation in which I chatted with the tea house owner about how messy the boy was while he struggled to understand. He gave me a pen, and promised another tea, and we left with the road wide for future opportunities of conversations of more eternal value.

He does not delay His promise as some understand delay, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.

The sky was black to the east as storm clouds tickled the mountains and I perched on a slightly warped bus seat. I stared through the grubby window as the mucky street still thick with mud rolled by. The nomad baby squealed in the seat beside me and the bus driver turned up the static riddled tune wishfully advising: a better day when night belongs to dawn, you gotta be strong... a better day will come. I glanced up. There, so faint I squinted and squirmed to see it better, there nearly concealed by a patch of cloud, there, surely there... a rainbow. The first I've ever seen in Lhasa.

I rejoice over Your promise like one who finds vast treasure.

Like one who finds deep fried cicadas in their popcorn bowl. :)

Prince of Peace come quickly

The teahouse we wanted to go to was closed.

We went to an old stand by instead.

We sat at the same table in the same corner of the upstairs room we always sit in.

We ordered the same food.

It came.

*****************************************************

I didn't recognize her because she came up the stairs too quickly and too quickly began to beat and get beaten by another girl. Screams were heard and hair fell to the floor in clumps. When the blood began to run I felt myself get dizzy. We couldn't leave because we were trapped in our same corner. The fighting escalated, blood spattered the walls and pooled on the floor, two men bounded up the narrow stairs to join the fray.
I didn't recognize her because her face was covered in pouring blood and she was dodging tables being thrown and getting kicked in the stomach. The sound of body meeting body and bones crunching and slaps and stools hitting faces made my stomach swim and my eyes drip with tears. We stood shaking in our same corner, food long forgotten, the narrow stairs too far away.
I didn't recognize her until other people arrived and made a get away path for us to the stairs and she turned her bloody, deep red face and stained clothing to me and said, "Oh Ms. Kelly, don't be afraid."

I nearly fainted. My student.

*****************************************************

We clasped shaky hands as we stumbled out of the teahouse.

We were nearly hug tackled by the beggar children outside.

We turned our pale faces and sick hearts to each other.

We went to my house.

We drank a sip of water.

I prayed: Prince of Peace... come quickly.

Little ones

Your Father in heaven is not willing for any of these little ones to be lost.

Tashi

Her short dusty hair painfully snarled around colored rubber bands and her chin barely high enough to reach the wobbly teahouse table top, she stretched one tiny dirt encrusted hand up to us. Her dark eyes shifted around the room as she mumbled her broken requests for money and her slim lip quivered under the oncoming flood of snot. Her vacant face was nearly obscured by the shred of tissue passed to her as she tilted her head upward and blew into it. A sodden tissue removed and a grubby face reappeared. She swayed, almost sat, pulled herself up to the edge of the table before trotting wearily back out the door. Her stained pink jacket disappeared into the blinding Lhasa daylight and left a stained pink shadow where she had stood.

Gamachuni

The oblong pale pink bundle was completely covered when it landed in my lap. A thin paisley printed scarf lifted revealed the newest Tibetan baby I had ever beheld. Face round and pale like a bowl of butter tea and features so tiny they might have not been there at all. Only face and blanket... perhaps only face. Pink mouth open and gasping for breath in this place of scant air with little help from a nose so small it may have only been painted on. Eyes only slits barely able to open squinting dark eyes rolling around. No sound save for breathing. No dimples save the two seen by a doting father alone.

Juktsa

Tousled dark hair peeping over the rim of a huge metallic garbage container. His name called out created a scramble amid scraps of food, bits of paper, and flies. His torn plastic backpack hung nearly empty and his sweaty stained fist clutched the entire days earnings of small notes as he lept over the sticky smelly rim. His laughter betrayed his embarrassment as he rubbed his free hand on his formerly red and white sweater vest only barely concealing the thinness of his small frame. His stomach forced him to sheepishly ask for bread and his dark flashing eyes could not seem to make contact with those of the bread giver who politely looked away as she hands the warm bag to him. His ages unwashed face grinned widely in appreciation and he scampered off in a cloud of filth to eat.

Cipando

A pale yellow green speck of dirt seen at a distance on a gray street. Her face literally lit up in recognition of the pale stranger and she dashed through small puddles of dank street water to receive an equally pleased greeting. Her stiff short hair makes her gender a guessing game for the untrained eye, but her smile of sudden comfort and safety as my hand blackens from rubbing her back bathed the senses in young sweet femininity. Her small sun and filth darkened hand is only big enough to clasp one of my fingers and together we walked over to the fried bread stall nearby. She stood close and leaned backwards against my leg, her round head only arriving at knee level, and watched the bread fried just for her. She stared in unrestrained disbelief as if by looking away it might disappear. The warm sack of bread hugged to her body and she refused to say good bye.

My Father in heaven isn't willing for any of these to be lost, and neither am I.

Scheherazade had her thousand tales...

And I had my thousand text messages.

They were all a slight variation of a familiar theme: Happy Teacher's Day teacher.
The winner of the most surprisingly redneck award going to: teacher: what are you doing now? we are drinking beer in a tent.

But after several years of teacher's days, along with a variety of random other Asian holidays, there are enough tales to make even Scheherazade green with envy. Well, who needs years? After even one....

Tales of students who come to your home on an evening only to thank you profusely an in an uncannily non-linear way for changing their hearts. After I know you my everything becomes change. I am not the same anymore. Even my mother says this.

Tales of classes spent explaining America in the 1960's to a group of Chinese and Tibetan kids who struggle with words like 'shadow'. It was a difficult and complicated time, similar to here now.

Tales of tea house owners who laugh too loudly and slap you on the shoulder and are pleased as punch that they can communicate with foreigners. What? Welcome welcome welcome you back.

Tales of school banquets where the real festivity lies in watching your colleagues reel from too much alcohol in too short of a time and your school leader spill wine all over himself only to not notice. Kelly I'm so drunk.

Tales of drunk officials not even joking about marriage proposals for his one son and I, insistent despite my obvious discomfort. Don't you want to be a part of my family?

Tales of young Chinese volunteer teachers all alone and experiencing the same suffering of being different in a different place. I will try to make the best of it, but I miss my friends and family.

The Shah would never sleep again....

Nga sheagimeh

The little Tibetan boy with impish features and two adorable dimples squealed as he tipped over the wobbly table and pulled the towel off the otherwise bare wooden bench. His hair brushed neatly to the side only served as an ironic touch to his otherwise carefree demeanor. He chattered and could not stand still and giggled as he played a violent hide and go seek and breathlessly chirped "nga sheagimeh, nga sheagimeh" when threatened by impatient others in the tea house.

Nga sheagimeh.

Maybe it was the dusty boxes in hand, or the lights left on, or the piles of work left to do, but when the door to my apartment slammed shut behind me immediately my heart sank. My keys were on the other side of that locked door. So was my cell phone. So were all of my afternoon plans.

Nga sheagimeh.

It was pouring down rain when I, wearing only house slippers, ran ashamedly down the filthy concrete steps to pound on my friend's apartment door. After a quick phone call to the person who had the spare keys, who also happened to be in another city until later that evening, I found out that my friend was a friend indeed. We cracked walnuts in the door frame, ate grapes, looked at pictures of her daughter, ate dinner together, waited, and bemoaned my fate until the man with the keys arrived... five hours later.

Nga sheagimeh.

And so I don't know what the next day holds, I can't be sure of its happenings, it could bring elation, it could bring despair, it could bring another potential disaster turned opportunity. Nevertheless, I join in chorus with the rascally Tibetan boy and sing: Nga sheagimeh.

I am not afraid.

The fifth day...

On the fifth day of my third year in Lhasa my eyes beheld the work of the Holy, and I nearly didn't believe them.

The same tea house I've been to a hundred times, the same worn rickety wooden benches, the same dented thermoses of sticky sweet tea, the same plate of gristly meat and soft potatoes, the same mutant stains on the same bowed ceiling, the same leaky cup of spice sharing room with the same splintery chopsticks on the same peeling wooden table, the same nonchalant waitress serving the same crazy grandfather, and my dear wide-eyed friend wiping her lips.

Lips which astounded me with advice such as 'Your buddha Yesu will give you what you need, never worry.'

And then continued to astound me by retelling the good news to me, bit by bit, recollected from a movie she had watched with tears streaming down her face this past summer. It was good news, made better somehow by the fact that she was the one telling me. She doesn't believe in His uniqueness... yet. But Him, well she loves Him.

A dingy teahouse transformed into a place where light abounds. A barren relationship transformed into a place where seeds can grow.

In another familiar teahouse later that same day I coughed and my eyes burned through the cigarette smoke of the rowdy boys at the next table, even the peach wielding monkey on a nearby poster cringed. When the boys crowded out and the haze lifted I was left peering over soupy bowls of noodles into the deep brown eyes and long black braid of a student who I have come to love deeply and the image of her thin frame prostrating before an idol still belongs to my nightmares. In the middle of a conversation about magazine articles she had read that summer I chanced to bring up a little book I had read, which compared her master and mine. In eagerness, she asked to borrow it and, in a flow of emotion I barely had time to process, she outlined the birth and development of her desire to learn more about the One I serve. I want to study about Him, Ms. Kelly. Of course.

A cigarette smoke filled hole transformed into a sanctuary. A nightmare transformed into a miracle.

And on this fifth day of my third year in Lhasa I retired to my indefinitely packed suitcases in my temporary housing in my altogether stressful and discouraging situation and rested in amazement at the work of the Holy my eyes had seen and quite nearly didn't believe.

A bench and a Name

A wooden bench which boasted only the meager comfort of a think colorfully covered pad of foam nestled in the back corner of a tea house became the site of miracles when three filthy beggar children marched through the door. They know me. They know that I have written their names down, bought them countless bottles of milk, tickled them, held them, and always have time for them. They call me the 'hello hello' one.

Therefore, the bench wasn't surprised when the three little dirty ones wrestled to share it with me. My student, occupying the opposite bench, wasn't either. The oldest boy with grubby hands and stiffened hair told story after story, emptying his heart then his pockets to show and tell us all he had in a rush that belied the thought that he may never get such a captive audience again. My student translated where my Tibetan failed. The second girl sat placidly in my lap, obviously too exhausted to make a peep and nearly nodding off as I rubbed the back of her stained yellow sweater. The smalled girl giggled and pushed between our legs under the table and the bench sighed with expectancy.

The bench wasn't surprised but I was when the oldest boy admitted he was hungry and my student jumped up and went with him outside to buy some bread for the three of them. My student who had no money to speak of and barely enough to feed himself with. When he returned with the bread it was alarming and heart breaking to watch the two little girls so hungry that I had to peel the paper wrapping off of the bread so that they wouldn't eat that as well. Within three minutes all of the bread was gone.

When the children skip dragged themselves out of the door a little while later I heard the bench moan in their absence and I looked at my student and told him about a name.

A name of One who always let the children come to him. A name of One who not only gave bread but was bread. A name that evokes power and love and sacrifice. My student, both shocked and shy that I would compare his actions to such a name, glanced at me bashfully and whispered 'I know' in such a way that made me confident of how much more he desired to know.

A bench left unsurprised and dirty. A student left to commune with a name. A name left to resound throughout the land. A teacher left to praise. Praise praise praise.