Here is love.

Love is dreaming of a colleague's participation in the wedding feast of the Lamb and waking up to a morning, quite despite the blustery ice cold mountain wind, that remained radiant with sunbeams of hope.

Love is giving a classroom full of students a chance to correct a quiz that was collectively failed miserably, and noticing with a surprising tenderness and joy that a significant number of them had dimples.

Love is fighting an internal boxing match against all the fear and rage and loss and selfishness inside of you to plan pizza parties and ask the right questions all the while steadying yourself to give and welcome and wave at students who shout your name from third floor windows.

Love is letting your heart weep over students who bear histories of poverty and abuse while at the same time mustering up the courage to genuinely thank them for erasing the board and coach them through the snarls of English pronunciation.

Love is having lunch with a Korean sister, whose heart uncannily mirrors your own in a way that is like a breath of life you've been gasping for, and sharing the lessons we've learned from the hand of our Father that can only be explained by experience in this valley of death while our eyes water over and our voices shake.

Love is drinking a thermos of sweet tea washed down with a bowl of soupy noodles followed up with a thermos of butter tea all the while memorizing the twinkles and lines that appear on a dear friend's face when she insists that after I leave her only hope for the time until I must return is that it would pass quickly.

Love is knowing there's nothing in your bag that the wide-eyed, dusty-haired beggar child with the crusty nose, bloated belly, and thin legs could want and allowing him to take out anything he can find anyway.

Love is bending close to the grandmother who had been edging towards you at the bus stop and allowing yourself to become her cane as she mutters at you in a dialect you can't really make out and helping her onto the bus as though she were your own.

Love is being followed into your home by the multiplying numbers of neighborhood children and making them wait in line with tiny cupped hands that you can fill with m&m's from a jar, which like the widow's oil, never seems to empty.

Love is splitting an orange with a student who talks too quickly and making him look in your eyes to see the undiluted confidence in him and his future success as you allow both his excitement and yours to become a palpable presence in the room and the air tingles with expectation as the days towards graduation draw near.

Love is living in a place that consistently alarms and abuses you, a place that you can confess in truth and ample experience to being absolutely awful, a place whose pain has become an intimate throbbing wound of your own... and yet choosing to allow every moment that passes to draw you deeper into it, absorbing the richness of blessing that can only be found when the green pastures and still waters seem like a figment of a dream, and cursing the very ticking of the clock that counts down to your departure which you hold so dear.

Love is here... and it's complicated. 

Speak a better word...

Your blood speaks a better word than all the empty claims heard upon the earth... 

...And of empty claims this earth has many. 

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

A Chinese colleage and I decided to make good use of our holiday and his car and picked a valley I'd never been to and drove up it.

We drove up past the outskirts of the city where the used furniture lots populated the street like a giant hand playing jenga with bed frames and tables. We drove up past where the road became one lane and the homes were decorated with hand pressed circular yak dung patties. We drove up past where the peach trees blossomed pink next to slim trickling brooks. We drove up past where the buses stopped and the paved road ended. We drove up past where monasteries and temples lay forgotten in the mountain cracks like so much garbage littering the land. We drove up past the villages where baby sheep and yak became our main obstacles and the jeep rolled backwards a little bit. Up past caves like the remnants of a kingdom, up past rocks with clumsily painted buddhas, up past construction crews setting up power lines. Up, up, up.

As we drove it became essential for me to learn the Chinese words for shepherd, peace, and refreshment. As the jeep bumped over the meandering mountain roads and the air thinned out and the dust left us gritty I took to beginning stories with: once upon a time in an ancient land called Israel. As the jagged rocks pierced the now blue, now cottony sky honest answers flowed from my dry lips and my cracked fingers traced out meanings where language failed.

Three times he stopped the car, stared at me in silence while the orange dust settled and the mountain peaks peered down, grabbed my elbow and said tell me more. So I did.


What color are the Shepherd's eyes? he asked. Black like yours I answered.

We were forced to turn the car downwards only by gravity and a violent little stream gushing from some unseen place washing out the road entirely. Some chapped construction crews leaned on their shovels and tilted their blue hats back with their all knuckle hands. Until that moment I had thought we would end up in the sky.

As the car bumped and skidded back down the mountain I told him about a wedding banquet of unimaginable glory. If I believe that both the Shepherd and Buddha are equal can I come to the banquet? he asked. No, I answered sadly, because if you believe that... then you don't know the Shepherd. A pause. Then teach me well, he demanded, I want to sit next to you at the banquet.

We drove down, down past a tiny village girl carrying a metal pipe, down past a yak with a face like a panda, down past where the buses lined up and the road became paved. Down, down, down... back into this black valley of a city that breaks my heart and ignores my stories, stories of a Shepherd.

And as we parted, I thanked my colleague for letting me speak a better word than all the empty claims heard upon this earth for the first time with such freedom and at such length in three long years. Because those stories, those words, are indeed life. Life to all who hear them and, as I can personally testify to after today, for all who have the joy of speaking them. 

Oh soul, consider the ravens...

Just look at that raven... I know I've never seen it with a bag of seed tilling up the soil and planting crops. I'm pretty sure it doesn't even know what a sickle is nor could it use one if it did. And I've never seen a raven counting up what it's got left in it's storeroom, because I've never seen a raven's storeroom. They don't have barns. They don't have anything to put in barns. They're just ravens. 

Yet our Father feeds them. 

The wind shook the loose window panes. We sipped thick tea and her eyes watered over. A deaf mentally disabled man made inhuman noises and bowed before the TV. A twisted cat lept up and started padding the wooden bench. We shook the still warm bag of fried potatoes in order to spread the spice around. And she began...

My mother and father told me to go to the temple and I wouldn't they became angry and said I wasn't respectful, forgot who I was...


My young brother hates who I believe and always tells me that I should stop, and never do this anymore...


My friend smokes and drinks and I told her it wasn't good for her body and she told me that if I stop believing and  become Tibetan again maybe she would stop drinking...


My older brother became angry when we told him about who we believe and said it's only a story how can you believe a story?....

The pressures and lies advanced on every side cackling like victors, the room became darker and a waitress turned on a bare swinging bulb overhead. She put her chopsticks down, unable to eat any more now slightly congealed meat dumplings, and took up rubbing her hands together and blinking back tears.

It took me a long silent moment pregnant with grief to respond.

And the only response I had was a story. It was a story about a little bird, so small. About how that bird had no way to protect itself, no way to make it's own food, no way to survive in the thin air all alone... but our Father loved that so small bird. Loved it so much that it was always safe before Him, always provided for, always near Him. That small bird was free to go on being a bird with reckless abandon because the Father cared for it so. And aren't you worth much more than the birds? I asked her.

Isn't she?

We left the tea house arm in arm and walked home under a watchful night sky crowded with stars and were enveloped by the scent of peach tree blossoms obscured by the dark. 

Conviction was waiting for me like a cup of hot water and a moment of silence when I arrived back to the apartment. If I can trust our merciful Commander of Hosts to protect and embolden this small sister of mine against all the forces of evil that have raged against her people and culture for centuries then why do I lack enough faith to walk in confidence towards a blurry unfocused future for myself by His hand?

The ravens do it, and they lack nothing... am I not worth much more than the birds?

Oh soul, on behalf of my sisters and myself... consider the ravens...

Twilight Zone theme music...

Do do do do, do do do do, do do do do...

-Kelly, Mr. Huang wants you to have a dinner with his friends... do you know him?
-Nope.
-Yes you do, he's short.
-Oh yes, him, sure I know. When's the dinner?
-Tonight. Are you okay?
-I'm okay.

Do do do do, do do do do, do do do do...

I stood at the school gate chatting with some students about the topic of choice: dinner. The wind blew cold off the snow dusted mountains and I checked my watch. A gray Buick minivan pulled up and the side door slid open. Kelly, get in. So I did.

The owner and driver of the minivan was indeed a short Chinese man with a dimple in his left cheek whose name turned out to be Mr. Huang. Mr. Huang from Jiangsu province. Mr. Huang whose Believing son was studying in America. Mr. Huang the vice president of our school. I didn't know it as the minivan swerved and screeched down the road making even the taxi drivers nervous, but I would know a lot more about Mr. Huang by the time the night was over.

As we were ushered into a restaurant famous because the waiters all wore Mao outfits and random bits of plastic fruit hung from the ceiling, I was informed by the nearly ecstatic Mr. Huang that since I would soon be leaving it was important for us to have a dinner together. One look into the room, steamy from mushroom hot pot bowls and crowded with about twenty people I didn't know, I was sure the dinner was not in my honor. So I did what any foreign girl whose been in China for nearly three years would do: took up the role of banquet decoration with finesse. 

The food sat idle and strong Chinese liquor was downed as the table of Chinese men I would later discover were all provincial leaders of some sort made comments about my professional use of chopsticks, the way that sunshine escaped from me, how perfect my spice consumption was, my respectful countenance... and when the man sitting next to me proclaimed to my translator that I was like an angel I knew I had successfully completed my role as foreign face giver to the, now slightly drunk though still beaming, Mr. Huang.

Before I had taken three sips of my favorite sweet rice porridge Mr. Huang announced that dinner was over, though how he came to that conclusion was a mystery to me since it seemed like most people had done little aside from smoke and there was enough food left untouched on the table to feed a moderately sized village. Nonetheless, the entire dinner party made our exit, politely leaving the kadas given to us by the singing waitresses on the chairs. Ten minutes later the sun set, casting golden shadows over the sluggish Lhasa river and we arrived at the largest Karaoke club I'd ever seen.

The multicolored lights in a web pattern on the outside of the building blinked in time with the Twilight Zone's theme song and the now euphoric Mr. Huang guided us all inside to a room decorated with gaudy chandeliers, cream colored columns, renessiance-esque life sized paintings of mostly naked buxom women, and glass tables supported by golden cherubs. We ordered glasses of rose tea, which unfortunately didn't come with ear plugs, and by the time we had settled into the sage colored couches everyone had gone completely silly.

Songs were added to an on screen playlist by the various leaders we had dined with but the first up was 'Xiao Fang', an 80's Chinese love song of the highest order, and the only one I could sing any part of. Suffice it to say that a rousing duet remix with Mr. Huang and the night had only begun. At least four songs were sung/ attempted in honor of 'foreign friends', I stumble giggled through a slow dance with Mr. Huang who later insisted I sing Lionel Richies version of 'Say you Say me' which I had never heard until that moment, and didn't find out that 'One love' by the pop group Blue was an option until after the party had ended, about two and a half music blaring head pounding culturally confusing hours later.

The next time the minivan door slid open it was under a starry sky at the entrance to our school and I could have sworn that the shadowy trees were humming do do do do, do do do do, do do do do...

And as if life in general could make less sense I got on a bus this afternoon and sat next to a very creased Tibetan grandmother wearing a belt with a prominently placed wicked looking little knife hanging from it who stared at me until she got up the nerve to shake my hand with a spontaneous vigor I did not see coming and gave me the Chinese equivalent of an icey pop as she hobbled off the bus. How could she have known how much I love those things?

And just a moment ago I got a text from a student that contained a rather cryptic message reading:  "wu wu can you help? me please" to which I didn't respond, not having the faintest idea how one could respond to that.

Do do do do, do do do do, do do do do... Twilight zone theme music couldn't be more appropriate... except that the zone is for real.

A plea on behalf of others...

For all of the visually imparied girls whose only assistance they can offer to their ailing grandmothers is a gentle massage...

For all the teachers and staff who have to tout party lines and wear masks and avoid intimacy...

For all the tiny girls whose parents dissappear on an evening leaving them out in the cold and dark until after ten at night when in desperation they come banging on the only door that will open to them, a foreigners...

For all the nuns who can't leave... 

For all the beggar children who go about disheveled and thin, discarded by the world, with piercingly honest requests for only bread and a place to wash their filth scarred hands...

For all the students with drunken, abusive parents and horror stories hidden behind shy smiles...

For all the aging janitors who have a tendency to lean from exhaustion into those who dare to stop and chat with them...

For all of the students who ache with a desire to be known and safe that they cannot name but is plainly revealed in their furtive glances and cryptic remarks about loneliness and fatigue...

For all the vegetable sellers with swollen, pussy hands and permanently twisted fingernails that visibly tingle with pain...

For all of the monks who can't explain...

For all of the young women with explosive husbands who refuse to give them even a second thought as they rage about divorce and leave them to shed violently silent tears during a break between classes...

For all the victims of change...

For all the prisoners of idols...

For all the slaves of fear...

I offer you, Holy of Holies, this modest plea... come save.

Even now my witness is in heaven, my advocate is on high. My intercessor is my friend as I pour out my tears to the Holy One.

A conversation with the Wind

The wind is angry tonight. It pounds its fists against the nonchalant concrete of the building and bullies the frail windows till they shudder and start. You can hear its anger as it rips though the prayer flags on the buildings near by and you can see it as it throws masses of dirt and garbage in every direction. It screams its rage and obscures the valley with its fuss.

What are you so angry about, Wind?

Sometimes I wonder if the classroom itself seems grayer because the students are so colorful and dear to me. They have changed a lot in three years, my students, yet somehow, noting their sly way of photographing me with their cell phone cameras, not at all. A recent conversation in which a student reminisced about a lesson on clothing I had taught my first term in Lhasa had me laughing until tears formed in my eyes which stayed there and I had to blink away when I realized that our time together had been memorable for her too.  Maybe they, not really changing at all, have just allowed me to behold their openness... a passerby who only sees a bud would hardly recognize the same petals in full bloom... I rubbed my icy chalk covered hands together, and thought about the best time to dispose of the homemade barley beer candy I'd been given fistfuls of by the same grinning students only moments ago.

From my adoring reverie during the mid class break, I was beckoned out into the familiar dullness of the hallway by the newly returned, bearing gifts of kangaroo printed wallets and kangaroo jerky, Mr. Wu. Your students will not have class for at least one month he intoned and the new teacher will not come until maybe mid April... he handed me a crumpled half sheet of paper... so you will teach her classes, starting next week. I nodded, not even phased by the sheer randomness of life any longer. No problem, I replied, to his visible relief.

But when I returned to the classroom it was with a mixture of deflation and a vague sense of some far greater plan unfolding with the painful slowness of all things oxygen deprived. More time that I had longed to have with these my students had been stolen from me... but it was being given to others. I finished up our week of review, which seemed now like a week made valuable just because I had been among them rather than anything I had taught, and set about planning for totally different classes.

The schedule that now requires my temporary fulfillment has only one class of students that I know, having taught them for the past year, and two classes that are completely unknown to me. Though confused by the presence of more than eighty unfamiliar students in my last semester in Lhasa, gratitude for getting one last chance to be among the other class that I have come to know and love pretty much overwhelmed me.

This afternoon I was met at the gate while the sun hid behind a thick cloak of clouds by a few of those students. Quintessentially Chinese, they asked if I had eaten and offered me their newly purchased bananas which I declined. We chatted for a minute more and I mentioned, with utter sincerity,  how happy I was that I could see them in class tomorrow. One slim girl squinted with effort and asked beseechingly Ms. Kelly, will you now be our teacher forever? Though everything in me wanted to respond affirmatively, I knew I needed to explain the temporary nature of the schedule. After doing which, I couldn't tell if it was the sky or only their faces that darkened.

Wind, maybe I understand your fury. Something, perhaps everything, smacks of injustice so deep that even the snot running down my neighbor's daughter's nose as she merrily draws pictures of me while we sit entertaining each other in my apartment can't help but display it. And, Wind, you can throw tantrums that steal clothes from the backs of beggar children and rip our fingers and faces to cracked shreds, and pound and howl until we wince with your pain, but know this Wind... all your raging will not change it.

There is only One Righteous Judge that I know.

He gives and He takes away. He gives classes and schedules and He takes them away and gives other ones. And everything He gives is good. And everything He takes away is for good.

I understand your anger, Wind, but I needn't join you... I'm a little too caught up in grace.

Folly's Ferris Wheel

Just when I feel like I'm starting to understand things around here it's like life moons me and runs away laughing...

...and all of my best guesses about what's going on are so far off the mark it's like I showed up at target practice with a monopoly game instead of a bow. 

And I realize that I've somehow gained admittance to this amusement park for the hilariously ridiculous... Today's ride: Folly's Ferris Wheel. 

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

The classroom full of students back from a semesters worth of practice teaching and two month holiday were all lined up ready to get on. They had come to the first day of class prepared with maybe a dozen sheets of paper and about three pens between the forty of them. I couldn't help but grin along with their innocent faces of dismay and their blundering attempts to remember what the meaning of school was along with where they had left all of their materials. On an assessment test a student wrote: He is skart. Folly gleefully collected tickets.

A break between classes was just enough time for my dear beggar friends to catch sight of me and shout out 'Hello hello how are you?' as though my name was 'Hello'. We went shopping for some snacks and I asked them about their family before meeting two colleages for a lunch of fried lettuce and the Sichuan equivalent of fatback. I found the thrill of the upward swing of the ferris wheel too compelling to take the nap that I wanted before my afternoon class. At the break a teacher from the neighboring classroom came over and sniffed me, asking me about my scent brand. The only thing I could smell was burnt oil from lunch. Folly, waving at us from below, had let my colleage into the same bench with me on today's ride.

After class I was dragged through the ferocious wind and freezing weather over to where the entire staff of Lhasa Teacher's College was planting very large, bare looking sticks they called trees. Nearing its climax, the ferris wheel swung wildly in the breeze. The leaders passed out shovels and shouted orders. I was given a tree that made me feel dangerous and my face chapped from the cold. Teachers pushed the great gusts of dusty wind around the mutant trees lying in shallow holes. We laughed, ate and bathed in the dirt, and two shovel fulls and a dozen pictures later I proclaimed my exhaustion and cold and headed in, begging a teacher just arriving to plant a tree in my honor. From the height of her great wheel, we could hear Folly's contagious laughter echo as she turned it. We, teased into amusement ourselves, caught our breath at its downward swing.

I returned a veritable dust monkey just in time to receive a bag of stale breads and hard cheese from a student who I insisted joing me for dinner. Over a bowl of noodles like the Tibetan cure for cold we made grand plans for things we must do together in this our last semester. We sipped tea and discussed Losar traditions, we leaned back into wooden benches covered with stained towels and she described her month long hospital stay, we zipped our jackets and pulled back the heavy door blanket to make our way back to campus. I saw the shadow of Folly urging guests off of her ride to make way for the legions of others crowding to get on.

A quick stop at a couple of colleagues' apartments not far from my own and our ferris wheel bench neared the ground. We laughed breathlessly at pictures from the afternoon's tree plant on a computer and talked about how filtly we were from it. I looked the impatient Folly imploringly in the eye and asked gently, hopefully, won't you let me go around just once more...

She, errupting into laughter, of course consented... You are a forienger in Lhasa, your ticket never expires... she merrily explained.