What We Will Miss (And Not)

It is our last night in Malaysia and then we time travel tomorrow to regain the day that we lost. I'm not even close to being able to process all we've learned and the ways we have changed, but we did work on a list of things that we will miss and things that we won't miss.

Things we will miss:

Leaf Monkeys

Food stalls with fresh naan and curry

Satay grills

Fresh fruit that we've never seen before

Dim Sum

Afternoon rainstorms with lightning

Hanging out with the kids

The call to prayer (but not the one at 5:30 am)

Taking the bus

Walking the hill

Swimming and playing ping pong

Warm water to swim in

All the sounds of birds, cicadas, and frogs

Our friends

Sunsets

Having a small apartment to clean 

Long Beach food stalls

Haggling at the night market

Talking to the guards

The smell of spices

All the beautiful shades of people

The mix of religions

The shrines set-up in the most random places

Sophia naming all the stray cats and dogs

Celebrating all the holidays for all the religions

Things we will not miss:

The smells of:

Fish paste

Sewer

Cigarette Smoke

Exhaust

Having to remember toilet paper

Several other things around public toilets

Dangerous driving choices

Standing still and sweating

Fear of cutting through the grass and getting bitten by a snake

Stray cats and dogs who seem a bit scary and unpredictable

What an amazing gift for us all! 

Family

One of the reasons we chose to take a sabbatical right now is because Hannah is thirteen. Thirteen seems to be the time where you start establishing what kind of character you will have. There are several adolescents who show up in scripture around this age:
Jesus in the temple at age twelve
Mary the mother of Jesus would most likely have been early teens
Salome who asks for John's head on a silver platter was a young teen
and the girl whom Jesus raises from the dead was twelve

We know how some of these stories turn out and some we can only guess, but they are pivotal years for all.

I just finished Nadia Bolz-Weber's Pastrix and was struck by several insights into our conversation about welcoming, but one quote spoke to these years, "Everyone has their own middle school horror story. It's a trial by fire, and the person we will become can usually be traced back to seventh grade."

The fact that Hannah can start driving the end of this school year is also a huge reality check.

All of the kids are much more confident than when we arrived. They order strange foods from the stalls and pay for them, they can haggle with the best of them (Elijah has actually perfected this fine art), and they are willing to start conversations with strangers. This openness to conversation has been one of my favorite developments to watch. They were playing with a native Malay boy, a girl from India, and a Moroccan Muslim girl in the pool tonight.

In the beginning of our time, they wouldn't have ventured to meet new kids, but now we know how fascinating and fun people can be. It is scary to step out and start conversation, but that openness to relationship and possibility makes life way more interesting.

I feel better going into these years after our little family huddle. We've also started working on defining some of our family values. This is such an important process for churches that it makes sense for families too. Some of the values that we've started to outline:

Being healthy: eating food, drinking water, working out, swimming, playing, sports, sleeping; faith & spirituality, laughter, playing together
Doing our best
Having adventures: going places, trying new things, not being too cautious
No whining  (I didn't even put this - it was the girls)
Caring for community: helping others, inviting and friendly, generous, service & citizenship
Healthy relationships: take responsibility & ask for forgiveness, talk to each other, non-judgmental, don't grab, be a team & work together, tone down reactions, supportive & encouraging, truthful, sharing.

What a blessing and a gift to have this time together.

Swastikas

As we get ready to leave, we have spent some time talking about our first impressions. I remember our first night arriving in Penang. It had been a long bus ride and we were ready for a place that we could call home for a while. I stared out the window hungry for something that felt familiar when we passed the "Red Swastika Society" with a huge swastika on the face.

If you can't have comforting, then slightly disturbing and farcical is second best. We have since encountered swastikas everywhere. There have been multiple history lessons in our home about World War II after the initial shock when Sophie mentioned what a cool symbol it was and wondered if there were earrings. Finally, we looked up what the swastika symbol means and why we keep seeing it in temples and other places.

So it is an ancient symbol that means a lot of important things to Hindus and Buddhists. Here's the best summary that I found:
In Loving Ganesha, Satguru Sivaya Subramaniyaswami, founder of Hinduism Today, explains the significance of the swastika to Hindus: "The swastika's right-angled arms reflect the fact that the path toward our objectives is often not straight, but takes unexpected turns. They denote also the indirect way in which Divinity is reached--through intuition and not by intellect. Symbolically, the swastika's cross is said to represent God and creation. The four bent arms stand for the four human aims, called purushartha: righteousness, dharma; wealth, artha; love, kama; and liberation, moksha. This is a potent emblem of Sanatana Dharma, the eternal truth. It also represents the world wheel, eternally changing around a fixed center, God. The swastika is regarded as a symbol of the muladhara chakra, the center of consciousness at the base of the spine, and in some yoga schools with the manipura chakra at the navel, the center of the microcosmic sun (Surya). Hindus use the swastika to mark the opening pages of account books, thresholds, doors and offerings. No ceremony or sacrifice is considered complete without it, for it is believed to have the power to ward off misfortune and negative forces."

That's actually some pretty interesting symbolism that Tillich and Jung would even appreciate. The swastika is as central to many Eastern religions as the cross is to Christianity.

I can't imagine what it is like to have a symbol that holds so much of one's heart twisted and corrupted with such evil. The swastika is illegal and Germany and I can't imagine folks in the US doing backflips over a building bearing one. Yet, it brings great comfort to millions.

I don't know if a religion can exist without its essential symbols and I don't know if symbols can be reclaimed after they have been corrupted. There are times that it is hard to keep dusting off the cross after folks have stood in its shadow preaching hate and violence. We have to keep proclaiming the symbol as one of infinite love and forgiveness in the face of evil and death.

I'm not sure that I will ever be able to see the thousands of swastikas in some temples without grimacing, but I am thankful to learn about the depth of meaning in the swastika before it was distorted.

Pave Paradise

We are going to stop finding remote areas to wander through. Once a week, we cut through the village filled with tiny streets, kids, animals, beautiful flowers, and unique homes. It's one of our favorite shortcuts because it feels like real and vibrant life.

Last week, when we cut through, we stopped and talked to a man in his yard who told us that developers were in the process of razing the entire village. Hundreds of homes will be leveled and a condominium complex for vacationers will go up. Sure enough, as we walked on, bulldozers had already destroyed five homes.

Today, we were walking on a lovely trail through the jungle filled with monkeys, flowers, and the fresh water supply. We met a group of men at the bottom who told us to appreciate it now because the developer (their boss) was going to plow it under and put up some apartments. It really put a damper on our walk.

I realize that there are great complexities and ironies in life. The fact that we are staying in an apartment building as vacationers is not lost on me (even though I assuage some guilt knowing most of the residents here are full-time).  People have a right to own and develop land. People need places to live, work, and relax. I don't want to stand here wagging my head in someone else's land, but it led to lots of conversations in our family.

How much development is needed? How do we tread lightly and make sure there is enough for everyone? How is Juneau handling the balance between wilderness and development? There aren't easy answers, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I was sad. It just feels like something is being lost that will be greatly missed.

I don't know how you balance it, but watching the oldest jungles in the world collapse under a bulldozer leaves one a bit breathless.

Random Religion

We stepped inside a church for the first time yesterday. It was a Catholic church built in 1845. We stepped in and affirmed our baptisms from the waters held in a 100 year old shell. Then, we got kicked out. I didn't dunk my head or anything, but a fellow came running up the aisle saying, "I lock now" so we left. Sophie and I had a lovely conversation about how good it was to be in the midst of the church even when we get kicked out, but I was slightly disturbed by the "Shazam Jesus" as my friend Whitney called him.

I've worshiped in many churches in Africa where Jesus and we were the only white people. How fascinating to have the incarnational God in the image of a colonial power. I'll have to walk through Shepherd of the Valley to look at Jesus on our walls and see what we are communicating because I don't pay that much attention.

We have spent quite a bit of time in other places of worship. We've been in mosques, temples, and shrines. My favorite experience was in the Burmese Buddhist temple the night they were inducting new monks. Kirt became best buds with one of the monks while we explored. There was a stage with serious music equipment and a fog machine. That wasn't expected. As we have wandered through the different places of worship, it is hard to miss the overarching theme that light conquers darkness.  Other than that, there are lots of major differences.

I sat with a young Muslim girl at a bus stop the other day and she was telling me how much she loved living in Malaysia because they celebrate everyone's holidays. Last weekend was Eid Al-Adha (the Muslim festival of sacrifice to remember Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Ishmael). Next weekend is Diwali, the Hindu festival of light and new year. As Wikipedia says, "The festival spiritually signifies the victory of light over darkness, knowledge over ignorance, good over evil, and hope over despair."  We've been here for the Chinese Moon Cake festival and the Dragon King festival, but I don't think kids got out of school for those.

My young friend talked about going to her friends' houses to celebrate the different days with them and how much she loved that. I think she hit on something as we begin thinking of building bridges with other cultures and religions. We don't have to whitewash everything to a pasty white, but somehow we can remain who we are and receive and offer hospitality. Be a guest and open your home to guests. That's how we get to know and love each other in all our similarities and differences. A fog machine helps too.

Monkey Voiceover

I am going to start a crusade for snow monkeys in Juneau. I'm just not sure that I can continue a joyful life without monkeys. I don't want the scary monkeys who snatched a baby four years ago and dropped her off a roof. Those cause me great concern, but we love watching a family of spectacled leaf monkeys at the beach. The could be the cutest things since Monchichi. They look like they are wearing little glasses and choose leaves over human garbage.

The best aspect of watching these Harry Potter monkeys is coming up with commentary. I'm sure there are researchers out there who can watch monkeys without doing voiceovers, but I'm not sure there are many other people. "Hey Bob, can you get this itch on my butt?" "Hey Louie, you have got to try these leaves!" It's addictive. I love watching the moms and little ones. I've said everything she is thinking when they are hanging off of her while she is trying to do something.

But monkeys probably aren't thinking anything like I imagine (except mom monkeys when her kids are hanging on her - I think that's universal annoyance across the entire animal kingdom). People who study monkeys probably want to slap folks like me who try to make monkeys in my image.

I realized as I was speaking for the monkeys, that I do it for people too. I make way too many assumptions of what people are thinking or I have running dialogues in my head where I guess what he or she would say. That's not helpful.

There are many times as strangers and guests here that we have no choice but to listen, mainly because we have no clue what we are doing. We have to let people tell their stories, give their impressions, offer their help because there aren't enough hours in the day to research all that information on the computer. Ignorance makes me listen. Arrogance leads to the assumptions that we know what others think, feel or would say.

It's still fun to do monkey voices, but I am going to try to let everyone else speak for him or herself.

Blind Spots

Here is an interesting thing about being a relaxed observer in a foreign country - you get to see yourself in a whole new light. It's almost like going to the theater where you can be caught off guard  seeing your blind spots revealed.

I was prepared to see a different perspective on news. We have lived near Canadian media long enough to know that the rest of the world sees us as Americans differently than we see ourselves. I was surprised to see a headline on the TV at one of the restaurants recently read "US bombs Islam." I won't lie - we aren't following the news, but I did need to look it up after that lead-in. An interesting interpretation of what is happening in the Middle East.

But, where I got called out was with our taxi driver. We took a long trip to the orang utan rehab center with a driver. People become relaxed about their prejudices when they think they have a sympathetic audience, especially taxi drivers. He started bashing the Chinese and how they are only out for money, and they clog up the streets, and they should go back home. We mumbled things about how lovely our hostess was, who happened to be Chinese, but I did not want to upset the man who held our lives in his hand in Malaysian traffic.

We got home and I started on a little sermon about how disheartening that was in a land claiming to be a melting pot to hear such blatant discrimination. And here is why you have to love family. Sophie pipes up with a, "Mom, sometimes you sound like that about the Mormons." Smack.

I don't mean to, but she is right. If I am in a safe and somewhat sympathetic setting, I might not be the most affirming person. Eek. And that's what I sound like to my kid. Mea Culpa. Thank you taxi driver for a good smack.