A song in exhaustion.

This is a song for chapped lips and damp, itchy eyes,
A song for weary bones that creak and bodies without rest,
A song for plains of worry where fears fall like rain,
Sung to the Only able to make things new again.

***

Take what pitiful things I have,
Small tokens of my disgrace,
And let me leave them at Your cross,
Meaning found in such a place.

And this exhaustion that surrounds me,
May I shed it like a coat,
And may I enter your sweet rest,
Though storms rage around my boat.

And may Your goodness silence me,
And bring me stillness deep,
And find me close beside your Son,
The true Shepherd for this sheep.

And may I rest upon the lap,
Of Him who bore my pain,
As a bleating lamb would sigh,
Upon a lion's fiery mane.

And let me not forget this place,
Of solace true and fast,
And may my weakness enter in,
And there find peace at last.

such a life begs the question...

Sometimes life is confusing. Other times the only confusing thing is how much sense it somehow makes. 

The man who we bought meat from scratched his bloated stomach with dirty fingernails before he sliced it from a stiff looking slab that had probably been laying on that splintery warped board for far longer than I cared to consider. Next time, I vowed silently, I would close my eyes and pretend like my meat came shrink wrapped from a chilled shelf. Three years of life in Lhasa and I've only been able to turn my nasty meat fears into something largely invisible to the naked eye... they still rage inside.

Less than an hour after that I and two Tibetan colleages and two random Tibetan children, who had knocked on the door and sat in the corner reading books, turned my living room into a meat dumpling fried chicken gossip factory. Flour dusted our foreheads, meat got lodged under our fingernails, chicken marinated in oyster sauce, and the room filled with children's giggles and tales from our various classrooms. As we stuffed and pinched the meat dumplings closed for a second I could have sworn that everything was normal in the world.

The children got rowdy and were ushered away grungy pockets full of candy, we moved into the one person kitchen only to get everything within minutes of being done cooking when the gas ran out. In laughter that made my sides hurt we rocked the empty gas canister back and forth shaking every last exhausted bit out. Finally, we gave up and ate the juicy meat dumplings and mostly done but still finished cooking in the microwave chicken with the satisfaction of people who were convinced that there was nothing foreign in the room.

We ate until we groaned with fullness and I groaned at the thought of too many leftovers. My two colleagues filled me in on all the school happenings and when the time got late they started to tell me a different story... a story of being afraid to use their English, of being intimidated by their foreign teachers, of seeing something different in me, of considering me their first foreign friend.

My insides filled with tears that I had to blink hard to keep inside when they told a story of how they wished I would soon get married and we could all be together with our husbands and children... can we write a letter to the American government asking to let you stay here? they asked with a seriousness that made me miss them though I was sitting right in front of them.

I wouldn't let them go without cutting huge slices of bread that I had made the day before to give to them, insisting that they eat it for breakfast the next morning. They marveled at the bread the way that I had marveled at the dumplings causing another round of laughter and tenderness.

They left and now my meager fridge is filled with dumplings and spice and my heart is filled with a longing to be a better friend to them for longer. And I know that in this lonely desert place I have been given an oasis, in this heart of darkness I've been given lights like the brightness of day, in this life that like a vapor I've been given solidity. And it isn't a mystery where it all comes from, all good gifts come from above.

And I know that my Father is good, but such a life as this one begs the question...  what I don't know, what I can't figure out is why He's so good to me.

The failure transformation.

After living here for nearly three years my tastes have pretty much mutated into an authentic Sichuan girl's and I have come to love with reckless abandon any variety of their pao cai (pickled vegetables). Last night two students from the freshman class came to my house and we made some. It was the first time to attempt such a feat for all three of us. I learned that some pretty strong Chinese liquor is required for success. I thanked the students as they left, wondering what I would do with all the left over liquor, and they giggled saying: don't thank us until you taste it after three of four days. Three or four days of watching our concoction swim around in my little pot... nice.

That's not the story I really want to tell you.

Once upon a time in a land half a world away from her home a girl entered a battle she knew nothing about. She learned how to fight from the fight and she ended up with more scars and bruises than she had skin. She spoke simple words of eternal truth that pierced the darkness and made idols shake, she loved the forgotten youth and punched injustice in the face by always supplying beggars with meals, she clasped the hands of the dying and begged the Spirit for their release loosening their lifelong chains. This fight was not hers and though she bore wounds from it, she had actually not done any of the fighting. Her body was a clay pot, a pitiful trojan horse, for the power of life and truth that resided within her.

One day she made pao cai with some students having no idea what role that little incident might have played in the battle, and they left and she rested. Night fell. The girl washed clothes in her rattley machine. There was a tap tap at the door. The tap tap quickly became an incessant kicking that shook the few pictures on the wall and set the girl's teeth on edge. The kicking continued though it was no time at night for a six year old neighbor to be coming to ask for m&m's and play games. Knowing the kicking would never stop the girl ran to the door as her brain twisted into a headache from the kicking and pushed it open. Right into the little girl, who stopped kicking only because she ended up with a door in her face.


There were two headaches peering at each other in the darkness and the washing machine rattled away. A fight lost, a punch misplaced, a wound inflicted rather than healed and defeat multiplied.

Failure. I should have had more grace for this lost lonley little girl. M&M's do not heal frustration.

This morning I woke up, failure fresh on my pillow, and watched the sunrise and made some tea. The sunrise spoke through the clouds, the haze of dust, the din of continuous construction, it told me of a better story, a life made free from condemnation. The tea spoke too, it told of a life of endless opportunity, a life lived because it isn't my own.

And I found that this failure was really a blessing because it reminded me that I can't do it on my own, have never been able to, and never will. Reminded me that this isn't my battle, that my trust and obey shoes weren't crafted by me, that my love is not something I could have knit together. And I found that this failure had become my freedom to find strength and joy and trust in my Father without any hidrance from myself.

This is a story of how such a failure became embraceable, breaking my own chains, ending my own injustice, piercing my own darkness...

...a story of how failure became freedom.

For there's no other way...

Trust and Obey are my right shoe and my left. I wear them always and they have never worn out or led me astray. Every right step is a step of trust, every left step is a step of obedience... so I walk onto buses, trust obey trust obey, down streets, trust obey trust obey, through markets, trust obey trust obey, around temples, trust obey trust obey... it is my heartbeat, the rhythm of my every day. I have measured nearly this entire city with such steps.

So don't tell me that the turmoil which has taken up residence in my heart is a result of lack of trust. Don't give me that felt board cut-out, molded like a pat of butter on a plastic tray of goopy airline food answer. 

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

I walked down the main road, trust obey, to meet a friend and was given a gift greater than gold when a small beggar girl who I had once had a conversation with recognized me and beamed. I didn't have any small money but I had come equipped with some dried fruit candies which I gladly donated to her small plasic bag. She offered another sweet smile and then quickly shuffled away and I too resumed my direction toward my friend.

She had returned nearly one year since her sudden departure to Beijing and when I saw her walking up the uneven pavement holding her hobbling old mother's chuba clothed elbow I couldn't resist running over to give her a hug like life preservers must feel when in use. One glance at her remarkably Tibetan face caused a flood of memories to rush over me and visions of bike accidents, noodles, tea, nunneries, walks, sour yogurt, laugher, and family swarmed around us like hungry ghosts. I greeted her mother whose milky eyes and thin gray braids reflected a sweetness that a lifetime of idol worship hadn't been able to mar and silently committed my afternoon to them. We shuffled stepped slowly along, trust obey, chattering and blocking up entire alleyways linked arm in arm.

Two chance meetings with other random locals we both knew later, and we ended up in a teahouse drinking that Tibetan salt tea which I have jealously coveted ever since a sip on a two day train ride caused me to have flashbacks to a home I didn't realize was home. We drank and laughed to the amusement of her mother, and ordered another thermos when her monk cousin who has always completed our threesome arrived first as a silhouette in the doorway, and then as a comedian at our small bench drinking tea faster than we could fill the small white bowl before him.

We drank salty tea until the quest for a bathroom became urgent and we stumble ran arm in arm across the street, trust obey, and down an alley and into a restroom that was basically just a trough where the icey wind chapped our behinds and made steam rise from the porcelin floor. By the time we got back her aging mother had to go so she made the trip again and I chatted with the monk who asked me questions about a camera, remarked how sad it was that I would be leaving, and assured me that he would miss me. Really.

We left the teahouse, this time I was her mother's charge and the old Tibetan woman took my hand in such a way that wasn't really holding it so much as warming it and we hobbled slowly slowly, trust... obey, over to meet some other grandmothers and relatives who then escorted my friend away. But not before I was assured of a future meeting with her before she left. I trust obeyed over to a bus stop and the sky went cold.

No sooner had I arrived there than my phone rang and I was off again around the corner to meet another friend waiting to take me to dinner a block away. Pushing through the crowds of bustling shoppers, trust obey, I ended up nearly running right into this second friend. We went to a nearby chicken restaurant to have a favorite dish and watched the beggars file in and out and the sky get heavy. We ate and chatted and it started to snow and I bemoaned my lack of adequate clothing. We parted while great damp flakes settled in our hair and I dashed to catch a bus, trust obey, through the muck of a snow moistened Lhasa.

I arrived back at the slightly musty apartment building at the same time as the head of the personnel department who is my neighbor. The mountain behind our school steamed and glistened in the snow and I climbed the stairs, trust obey, and answered questions about where I had eaten most recently. Back inside the phone rang again and I laughed through a conversation with a former colleague which seemed the perfect way to finish off such a day.

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

So you see, trust and obey, there is no other way, not for me. I have trust obeyed through lunches of riddles told by monks, in homes which are really teahouses where random staff gather to fuss, into restaurants with former students who could now tell me all the gossip of experienced primary school teachers. But I am coming to understand, more and more, that these shoes aren't always worn by those lounging in green pastures beside still waters and this way isn't walked by people who are afraid of confusion and unfamiliar with grief.

Trust and Obey. I wore these shoes to come here before I even knew for certain how they would fit and I will wear them to leave... and I will wear them should I ever have the mingled joy and pain of return for which I secretly hope.

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...