ears to hear

There’s a Be Good Tanya’s song that says the littlest birds sing the prettiest songs.

I think I have to agree.

Some co-workers and I were locked out of the office one morning this week, and waiting for a key: sitting on the curb chatting, eating watermelon, flicking away ants, sweating, feeling a bit guilty and wondering when the boss would show up…

when suddenly we heard such a beautiful song! Pat was the first to spot its source, pointing and laughing and exclaiming – “veLy sa-mall!!!”

Sure enough, a tiny bird was perched up there and singing so hard its throat was throbbing. Imagine something the size of a hummingbird come to rest on a power line, and barely able to balance for the joy inside. Imagine the strength of its song, as clear and undiluted as the blue sky behind it.

(These imaginations are true, I promise, even though some other things are true, too -- ungrounded electrical lines and nasty Bangkok smog! But I’ve never yet seen a bird electrocuted and the rain here lately makes morning air gentle, and yes, even a good clear blue…)

I am delighted when the same bird visits the tamarind tree outside my balcony window, or flits through the trees which are ripening bananas not far from the front step, or stops a moment in the stand of bamboo piled up with all the broken bottles we should be recycling.

There's a part of me that wants to run out and buy a "Birds of Southeast Asia" book so I can name that bird for myself, capture the brilliance of that morning memory, file it away somewhere special.

But Jesus says things like "you never know where the spirit's coming from, or where it's going..." (cf. John 3:8), and so there's this other part of me that's content to let that shining song stay up there with its tiny bearer, somewhere in the yet-wild Bangkok blue...

Naa

There’s a cool breeze sweeping through the narrow walkways that wind around these ramshackle homes in the slums. This breeze lifts the heavy smell of the canals and refreshes both the home-dwellers and their laundry, which is hung out to dry on twine lines.

28-year-old Naa and her 6-month-old son, Beam, are enjoying the fresh air. Two of her nephews ride their bikes around in a small concrete courtyard, and another little neighbor girl runs from shrub to shrub naming all the brightly-colored flowers that gracefully persist in these surroundings.

Tomorrow in church, Naa will dedicate Beam to God. He’s a tiny, bright-eyed miracle, born premature but fighting through to life. Even last night, he cried for hours with a fever. But Naa, too, is a fighter. In spite of her own poor health since the delivery, she maintains a healthy routine for her family.

Every night before bed, she and her 6-year-old daughter, Bua, pray together: Bua prays that Beam will grow up to be a good brother, and Naa laughs and prays that Bua, too, will be a good sister. Already Bua is an enthusiastic student who loves to go to church.

Hope Cards is a crucial link in all this – providing supplementary money to help send Bua to school, to buy milk for Beam; and most importantly, providing the hope that keeps Naa faithfully worshipping God, despite strong resistance from her husband, who works in a night club. They came from rural Thailand with high hopes for a good secure life in Bangkok, the city of so many poor young couples’ dreams, but Naa is thankful to have found her security in God.

“We make these cards with all our hearts,” she says, “and if you buy one, you won’t be disappointed!”

Bee

Bee’s shy smile is beautiful, and lights up the dim interior of the wood-frame room she rents in one of Bangkok’s slums. She is gracious, quick to offer the only cushion in the room to a guest. We sit on a patched and sagging lino floor above a smelly canal.

This is home for Bee, her two youngest children, and the man she calls husband, who neglected her as ‘minor wife’ for years before returning to her care. He is wasting away under a green mosquito net, weak and lethargic from diabetes or something worse. But this is family, this is home, and Bee is determined to do what she can to provide. Her mother gave her some rice last time she visited her other children in a small up-country city, and today some neighbors shared their morning-glory greens, pumpkin, and eggs. She carefully rations the sweetened condensed milk she waters down to put in her nearly-4-year-old daughter’s bottle.

All these things help, but Bee is most thankful for the work she has, and proudly points out the makeshift table – a small board resting on a bucket – where she creates her Hope Cards. When asked which one is her favorite to make, she says, “I like them all! I’d just like more!” At present, Hope Cards only has enough orders to give Bee about twenty cards to make per week. She loves her work so much that she usually finishes those twenty cards in one afternoon.

Her desire for her children is simple: a good education, so they won’t have to start working in the city at twelve years old, like she did. Hope Cards might seem like a drop in that bucket she overturns to craft the saa-paper cards, but the hope is so important, and it’s breaking through… “I want to change,” says Bee. “I want to give my life to this.”

hi's and lo's

umm... so by request i'm posting a recent email here. i hope to make some introductions, soon, so you can all meet some of the people i'm living and working with!

and: post-script to "rice of life": last week in church we did communion with, you guessed it, bowls of rice!

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

Many things have made me laugh in the last week, and some things have made me cry, too. I'll start with the funny stuff...

-signs posted in the first class lounge bathroom in beijing, reading something like:

SINK PLANK TOILET STOOL
WALL FACE URINE POND
LOOKING GLASS

USE YELLOW CLOTH USE RED CLOTH

...so, when in need of a handy cloth, don't grab the red one!

-the amazing service i had flying first class, including the last leg of the flight when i got 2 personal attendants to serve me caviar etc. i actually felt pretty weird...

-thai taxi drivers, and their jokes, e.g. an elderly driver dolefully saying, "ah, but my wife... she is my truly master..." (meaning she wears the pants in the marriage, i guess!)

-the fact that there are kwaai, yes, that means water buffalo, grazing not far from my posh suburban apartment.

-coworker Pat and i nearly falling off her rickety old motorbike going over a speed bump!

-saying yes to a lumpy-looking "sauce" for my noodle soup and realizing that it was blood when my server dumped it in and it "cooked" into clumps.


i've been a strange combination of overwhelmingly busy with adjusting to the office work at Project LIFE, and achingly lonely when i go home to my apartment -- it's a wonderful place; i've just never lived alone before. however, i can see already that these two things (the busyness and the quiet) will probably end up being a good balance.

Congratulations and bless you if you've made it, reading this far!

onward...

sarah

rice of life

every sunday, we eat bread -- to remind us that god is as close & necessary as chewing & swallowing.

in thailand, where i'm going in a couple days, it's rice:
when you want to go eat, you say, bai gin kaow, which means, let's eat rice.

and what have any of us ever done to deserve the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe? it's so darned human to think we get what we deserve; to think we can coast along on our plenty of good intentions, doing the best we can, and things will balance out. in thailand, this happens to fit into the buddhist system of pun (merit).

but what have any of us ever done to deserve what we get?

oh christ, be as close & necessary to us there, too...

i can't help thinking of all the dear thai friends who have shared their rice with me, some even giving me bags of good farm grain to smuggle back to canada when i return!

oh lord, be as generous to them as they are to me.

shine 

holy spirit 

beachsquint 

still nearly wordless

i am so excited to have a blog!
but so exhausted, at the moment, by all the technical details.

can we say country girl?... sigh

to stave off the wordlessness, i tried to share an image or two, but the pictures uploaded instead as blank canvases of tv snow.

static static static

my brother's watching hockey and the sportcaster's a poet: adjectives like "fresh, sticky" (ice). there goes the foghorn, here come the cheers; the game's over.

god bless us, every one