the first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. as was the man of dust, so also are those who are of dust, & as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, let us also bear the image of the man of heaven. I Corinthians 15.47-49
dear friends,
i hope that this letter finds each of you entering into a time of Peace and Celebration as we come together to recognize the Passion of Christ – His Triumphal Entry, His crucifixion, and His resurrection. we were able to celebrate Palm Sunday this morning with palm branches taken from the trees just outside the Sacred Heart chapel and i was able to enter into a time of contemplation on an afternoon walk marked by our entry into the season of 100°f days. i am thankful for the timing of this season as it has provided us with an opportunity to reflect on the epic nature of the pending holiday. it seems a very fitting celebration and conclusion to what has been the most emotionally draining, physically exhausting, mentally straining, and generally busy month since we arrived. it is difficult to comprehend the depth of all of our experiences and how Christ has been present throughout, speaking through the glimpses, and for the first time in my life, speaking to my heart with clear messages of Truth.
i am thankful that even with the formal entry into Hot Season the city has not yet succumbed to the beast of humidity and the air is not yet so dirty to warrant face masks as a necessity. i am thankful because that means that i am still free to roam the city and witness it’s daily rituals. it is in these moments, that i seem to see chiang mai in portrait-form, with these images returning to my mind at the most unexpected times. just this afternoon i passed a burmese worker taking a short break in the shade from her job of hauling cement blocks off of an old side-walk and hauling in different cement blocks to build a new one. she was sitting on the remains of path, straw hat shading her face, 5 baht flip-flops, long-sleeves and pants even in the heat to shield herself from the dark marks of a life as a menial laborer, and a scarf around her face to keep out the dust – looking hopefully at her recently bought lottery ticket. a ticket which cost her 1/5 of her days salary. i know the type of place this women lives in (referred to as ‘slums’ even in thai) and i know the types of exploitation they are vulnerable to become victims of. the contrast of her image is difficult to walk away from – what system can allow an entire people group to be relegated to a caste of laborers, trash collectors, or human recycling machines, yet has the audacity to place lottery ticket salesmen next to the clean water vendor selling cool drinks on their one break per each 12-hour shift? in america i know there is a lot being said about the Audacity of Hope – but this seems more like an example of the exploitation of hope. even now i as i reflect on seeing this woman, and hundreds of others just like her each day, i am struck by the depth of the brokenness of the system, the complexity, and in turn, the ease at which we all keep walking past it. i guess i have succumbed to the realization that this brokenness, the injustices of the world, cannot be avoided and i have begun to welcome its confrontations and the way that it continually challenges my thoughts, my actions, and my beliefs in the Truths of Love and Peace.
today i was very excited to celebrate Palm Sunday at the Sacred Heart Cathedral, only a 5-minutes-walk from our house. kelly and i have been reading through the Book of Common Prayer this year and trying our best to keep up with the liturgical year. for the first time in my life, i feel ready to embrace the immensity of the Cross and to be overwhelmed by the reality of Christ’s sacrifice – i feel ready, not to understand it, but to be awed by it. so it is with this heart that i went to the english-speaking service – ready to take in the beauty of the Catholic religion, excited to celebrate the entry of Christ and mourn my part in His surrender. as i was sitting in the pew, surrounded by the undeniable smell of old people (because it is mostly old foreigners that attend this church), i couldn’t help but notice that some of these old people looked oddly familiar. after a careful assessment, three of the men that were there were all men i had seen doing outreach in the red-light district. i must admit, this made me very uncomfortable… there are many aspects of my life that i do not separate from “work” – because “work” is building a community dedicated to Truth, which does not bode well for a lot of separation – but Church? i faced a definite inner dilemma. upon further observation, i realized that two of the men were there with their wives or girlfriends, and crying but undeniably cute babies. it was a living example of the picturesque ending that every lady i have met is secretly or openly waiting for. the rich farang sweeping in and saving them, falling in love, and living happily ever after (in expensive clothes with a cute ½ farang baby as accessories). i found myself sort of frustrated at these people for seeming to disprove everything i have been trying to tell my friends here – that this fairy tale doesn’t exist. and then i remembered my friend rose, a woman who has lived through multiple versions of hell on earth. after four years in prostitution in bangkok’s famous pat-pong district she met an american, married him, and moved away to her fairy-tale ending in (where else?) las vegas. she was there for three years suffering physical abuse from her husband who also doubled as her pimp. she was forced to work as a prostitute on the las vegas strip, daily experiencing the destruction of her dream. after one particularly brutal encounter, she was hospitalized and deported back to chiang mai, where i met her last year. shortly before i arrived this year, rose met a british man who loves her in the most volatile, obsessive, and desperate way. she has shown me his text messages of desperation and control. but to rose, this man is a heaven that can only be understood in context of her experience in hell. he has since moved to chiang mai, moved in with rose, and they are anxiously awaiting their first baby and the paperwork to be married.
sitting in the church pew today i was reminded again of the complexity, the depth, the totality of the brokenness. one cannot easily identify the innocent victims and the guilty party. each individual is marked by the guilt of the wrongs committed against themselves and against others, and each holds the scars of their victimization. and to a larger extent we all face our surrender to a system which allows for these injustices to take place. it is so human to desire simplicity, clarity, and solutions – but i have been struck by how impossible this really is to find. when driven to desiring clarity amidst the confusion we can all feel the desire for Love and Peace within rise within ourselves, crying out for its Soure - Love in it’s purest form: complex, tragic and beautiful. we are driven to the Cross. it is in remaining in perpetual communion with the Source that we are able to be a people of Love – to bear the image of the man of Heaven – living amidst the man of dust within ourselves and within our brothers and sisters. it is with these eyes that we are able to see the God in the most broken and truly say to them on Sabbath, the traditional, “Peace be with you.” i began church today feeling very uncomfortable by the presence of men who represent to me a source of fear, but i was humbled to realize that the power of the Cross, the power of Love and Peace, the power of the Source is enough to bring clarity and Truth to the brokenness of even this human depravity.
it is now Holy Saturday as i finish this e-mail. i have no idea where the last week went (well i do have an idea – it was spent getting our new building ready for our grand opening, driving 4 ½ hours to Myanmar and 4 ½ hours back on some beautiful mountain roads incomplete and dusty as they are, after draining but productive meetings across the border, and consistently having days where you realize that a lot of ‘life’ was just shoved into a short time and it might be smart to try to marinate a bit on it before moving on), but i am hoping that you will all be forgiving in the lateness of my Palm Sunday update.
i feel like the only way to end this e-mail is to convey to you the most moving of all Truths that i have been pondering for quite some time, and only recently was able to admit to myself, to God, and to my amazing mom. my journey up until this point, has been walked with the safety net of an earlier deal i had made with God upon first giving this whole experience (“the Thailand experiment”) a chance. i had spent my entire teenage years as a very angry closet agnostic turned calculating atheist afraid to admit it to anyone but to myself and a god that i no longer believed in. this time of separation from God took place in a time where i was appalled by the Church, appalled by the actions done in Christ’s name, and appalled by a god who i could no longer equate with the Truths of Love and Peace, but instead had been replaced by judgment, hypocrisy, and arrogance. however, throughout this long separation God was present and it is only now that i have begun to thank Him for the ways that He was teaching me, speaking to me, and guiding me through that difficult time in my life. that time of chosen isolation held a huge impact on my reluctant conversion and acceptance of Christ. i must admit that God and i had a frank discussion about this new dedication to Him, which included my admittance that in my journey to seek the Source of Love and Peace i had ended up at His feet and if i was at all committed to Truth i must give Him a fresh chance. however, i said the moment that it seemed like His demands deviated from the course of Love and Peace (the only things which i could accept as True) i was going to politely bail on the whole deal. i came to Thailand in the name of this Love and Peace, but with the tempered expectation that maybe God wouldn’t come through in a situation of such brokenness. i thought Thailand was a phase in my life – a time that some would refer to as a phase in life necessary to get out the radical idealist and that others would refer to as a time to depress the new Christian right out of me. i too swung between the two pendulums upon first arriving here last year.
i got off the plane expecting full well to go home to America having disproved the ability to actually apply the radical demands of Christ – having found that the lifestyle, the passion, and the commitment to His Love and Peace was simply impossible or worse, a mirage that would be shattered by reality. but over the course of the past few months i have finally been able to admit to myself and identify that somewhere along this journey i stopped thinking of Thailand in terms of a detour into some necessary experimentation. somehow, the face of the Christ that i met here, the face of Love, Peace, and Truth in the midst of brokenness, tragedy, complexity, was able to transform my short-sighted selfishness into a transformation of my life. now, it feels as if each day is overflowing with glimpses of Him – and He is someone who i will spend the rest of my life trying to understand and know better and ultimately, walk more faithfully in perpetual communion with Him.
this new mindset, hope, and dedication has consumed (in the best way possible) everything that i am a part of here. the brokenness, the complexity, the totality, does not demands a simple solution or a program, but a lifestyle. it demands a people committed to creating a new community, a community based on Love in all of its tragic and beautiful expressions. it demands a community dedicated to this Truth in the midst of brokenness. only a community dedicated to expressing the complexity of Love can meet a world broken in so many intricate ways. i have realized that i stopped thinking of my time here as an attempt to find the right formula for ‘saving women from lives in prostitution’ and instead found myself in a community dedicated to engaging the brokenness in ourselves and in others, and living boldly within the Truth of the Cross in the face of one of humanity’s more creative expressions of our depravity. we work with a target population that represents merely 3% of the total women victimized by the commercial sex industry in Thailand. this does not diminish the volume of women we meet each night, but only sheds a light on the sheer number of women who are currently working in an industry which brings in 14% of the G.N.I. of Thailand and also services 97% of the adult male population within the country. statistics like these do not welcome simple solutions, and the complexity of the systematic brokenness represented here is something shared by each nation, culture, and people-group around the world.
when faced with honest assessments like these we do have choices in regards to how we react. we can revert back to the safety of our ignorance and continue living within our more comfortable but isolated sphere of unreality, or we can choose to engage our own guilt in the perpetuation of the system, confront our own individual brokenness, and find redemption and restoration in the Truth of Christ’s Love. it is in that spirit that we are able to step boldly towards the goal of living each day as a restored and transformed individual – having found the ability to be at Peace within ourselves, with God, with our fellow man of dust, and to live with freedom, bearing the image of the man of heaven. it is at this juncture that i try to live each day of my life here, hopefully looking to Christ to give me eyes that can see Him in the most difficult situations, and to see His grace in the most broken. over the course of my time living here i have met the Christ i had avoided for a large portion of my life, where i became dedicated to His Truths, and where i also saw a man that oswald chambers rightly refers to as: a Leader Who is very strange… (who had to) fathom every sin and every sorrow man could experience. When we see Him in this aspect we do not know Him, we do not recognize Him. it is only this Christ that has enabled me to begin to see the power of His Truths in the most broken of individuals, in the most difficult situations, and to see His Love in the most complex systems of depravation that we live amidst. this Christ is no longer, and hasn’t been for quite some time now, a theory i want to test out, but an opportunity to see the world with eyes unafraid of the truth, as ugly and terrifying as reality can sometimes be.
i can’t express to you how freeing the past seven months of my life have been. it is exciting to engage in this new journey with the community of brothers and sisters that God so faithfully has provided me. it feels like everyday is overflowing with opportunities to better know the One we seek. and each added glimpse holds a profound impact on the way i hope to live in this state of perpetual communion with Him, a constant seeking of the Source of Love and Peace. it is challenging and stretching to seek God in this way and to look with eyes unafraid of the truth. for the first time i am beginning to feel a sense of Peace within myself and my own brokenness, and a sense of direction, not because i know the road to my destination, but because i am at peace with my guide.
i want to thank each of you for the unique role you have played in my journey thus far. thank you for being Jesus to me during my times of arrogance, selfishness, and separation from Him. i will always pray with joy because of our partnership in the gospel. you have each been pillars of patience, wisdom, and guidance throughout and we thank you for your support of “k.r. and b.q. in Thailand.”
being that it almost easter as i finally finish this, i can at least say: Peace be with you as we all celebrate the most amazing expression of the complexity, beauty, and selflessness of Love.
in this Peace and in this Love,
b.q.
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