Asian Souvenirs

I'm home!

Well friends, I brought two significant things back with me from India this time: Malaria and a job. I suppose I didn't "officially" obtain these things until a few days after returning to the States. Both happened in Toledo, Ohio, where I will be moving to in a little over a month. But they did originate in Asia.

Here's the story:

One fine morning back in Kazakhstan I opened my email to find a message from Mike Fortune, pastor of the Toledo First Seventh-day Adventist Church. He had somehow got ahold of my resume and wanted to interview me for a youth/children's pastor position at Toledo First. I was stunned. I had been actively looking for a place in church ministry since I got back from Europe last fall, but I had all but given up on finding a post. I was signed up and ready to go to Regent College in Vancouver, B.C., having accepted the possibility that perhaps I'd misunderstood God's plans for me, or that perhaps those plans had changed. I was even starting to get excited about the prospects of going back to school and living close by my family and friends. Toledo hit me like a slap in the face, and for the rest of my time in Asia I really struggled through the decision-making process. Here I discovered a lesson about the importance of living lightly, spontaneously: As James says, to qualify my plans with "if the Lord wills it, I will do such and such." I hate living with uncertainty, and so when a plan seems tentative I always try to solidify alternate ones (like possitively-for-sure going to Regent because waiting for a job in ministry was taking so long). Several months ago I felt the Spirit telling me to "quit playing guessing games" about my future, that God would yet surprise me if I could just learn to be content with uncertainty. Well, "SURPRISE!!"

From Kazakhstan I flew back to Delhi and trained directly to Kolkata. Oh, it was glorious. It was so, so good. I saw old friends and made new ones. I revisited the sites of my most precious human memories. Some, I found, had been demolished or were soon to be demolished (the Salvation Army and Farhan hotels have BOTH been condemned, and for India that's saying a LOT about their conditions). So I had to make a new temporary home, this time at Hotel Paragon (still on Sudder Street, though). I think that's where I got chomped on by the blood-sucking, parasite-infested anapholes mosquito that gave me Malaria. The required incubation period seems about right.

After Kolkata I took a little pilgrimage back to Darjeeling, in the foothills of the Himalayas. I stayed in a little cabin on a rolling tea garden where I wrote, sipped tea, and ate steamed momos non-stop for a whole week. It was grand.

I had two very exciting and unexpected train adventures after that. The first took me to Guwahati, the capital of Assam in the far northeast. I have become slightly over-confident in my travels, it's true. I know Indian Railways like the back of my hand. Well, this "knowledge" was my undoing on my trip back from Darjeeling. I first took a jeep down the mountain to New Jalpaiguri, where my train to Sealdah (Kolkata) was to board. I arrived at platform 5 (where my train was scheduled to leave from) just before 8:00 (my scheduled departure time), and nonchalantly climbed on board the train there that said "Sealdah" on the outside. I found my bunk and settled in for the night, trying to ignore the gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach that something was not quite right. The next morning when I woke up I discovered that the train I was on had actually originated in Sealdah and was going the exact opposite direction (Guwahati). Ha! I laughed my head off after the initial shock. I was also a little pleased with myself. Tourists are not able to purchase tickets to the northeast without special permits that are sometimes difficult to obtain, and here I had snuck on board without a ticket at all! I enjoyed my morning in Guwahati, but thankfully was able to find a cheap flight back to Kolkata so I could keep my appointments in Kolkata and Varanasi. It's too bad I didn't have more time to spend illegally in Assam. :)

From Kolkata I trained back to Varanasi to run some errands and to say farewell to the Sharmas (Lala, Vibha, Vinayak, and Vinit). Vinayak insisted on putting henna on my hands, and I simply couldn't tell him No. I was a little chagrined at the thought of turning up in Toledo for my interview the following week with red tatoos all over my palms, but what could I do? I don't think anyone would have been able to resist Vinayak's cute, earnest little face.

Now here is my second train adventure:

I had a reserved 2nd class ticket leaving for Delhi in the afternoon that day, but I was having such a lovely time with the Sharmas that I decided to forgo my seat and travel on a general, unreserved ticket later that night. I have never, not once, traveled 1st class AC on Indian Railways (I'm a cheap backpacker snob, what can I say?) And though I have wanted to for some time, until August 18th I had also never traveled overnight on a general ticket. I always had too much stuff to carry with me, and I feared it would walk away unnoticed in such a dense crowd of people. But on August 18th I did it, and HOLY COW was it ever an experience!

I have often traveled general class for short distances before, and each time the coaches have been incredibly crowded. But always I have at least been able to find a small corner to crouch down in. But this time I was traveling on the Shiv Ganga "Superfast Express," one of Indian Railway's most popular (and hence, populous) routes. It is a wonder that I was even able to push myself physically inside the train compartment and that I was not crushed to death. Indeed, there was one point in the night where I very nearly almost passed out because I could not inhale properly due to the crushing pressure on my lungs (thankfully I didn't have a wounding fall, because all the other tightly packed bodies held me up straight). I stood for hours that night, on one foot because there wasn't space on the floor for two. Finally we worked out an arrangement so that we could sit down in shifts during the wee hours of the morning. When my turn came I had to sit on the laps of two people. I had two little boys sprawled out over me, a man sleeping on each shoulder, and several sets of legs pinching mine in uncomfortably on all sides. It was almost more agreeable to stand! There have been cases of train passengers arriving dead from suffocation at their final destinations in India. Now I understand why. I can honestly say that I feared for my life at certain points during that trip.

So those were my two great train adventures, and what adventures they were! I spent one more night in Delhi after that before having a visit with Cherry and Varinder and a last momo meal. (Mmm.... Momos...) Varinder is a beautiful Sikh friend who shared with me about how communal meals are taken at Sikh Gurdwaras. I want to learn more about this, because it seemed to me very much like how the New Testament church must have taken meals together ("sharing everything"). At Gurdwaras the rich, the poor, the famous, and the ordinary, all share together in a simple common meal (eating together is considered very intimate in eastern culture). It is an act of unity and celebration, as Varin explained it to me, a place where hierarchical structures and status symbols are left outside. I liked that very much. I wonder what such a meal-sharing time would look like in a western-style church setting?

On August 20th I flew to Seattle and grabbed some fresh clothes before flying back east the next day for my interview. I was met by Shawn Flack, Toledo First church member and tech/sound-system extraordinaire. He and his fabulous wife Mindy put me up for the weekend and ended up looking after me in ways I'm sure they never imagined they would beforehand! Steve and Kendra Bills were also terrific people with whom I ate my first state-side caesar salad in months. That first Friday at lunch I felt like I was going to pass out, but I attributed my body aches to exhaustion and took a heavy dose of ibuprofen before heading early to bed. All day Saturday and through my interview I felt like I had a terrible flu, but I refused to admit that something was wrong. Finally on Sunday morning Mindy and Steve (both being medical people) insisted on taking me to ER after a night of pretty intense fever and chills. Sure enough, I had Malaria. I was diagnosed with P. Falciparum, the deadliest and most drug-resistant kind. You can guess I was a fascinating case study for med students at the University of Toledo Medical Center!

The Malarone they gave me didn't seem to do the healing trick, and Tuesday morning found me back in ER at the insistence of Toledo's infectious disease specialists. They drew more blood and determined that I actually did not have P. Falciparum, but rather the milder, recurring kind. (Great.) I also had a UTI. Two Indian doctors (whom I was relieved to see) pumped me full of enough Bactrim and Mefloquine to kill a legion of rats I'm sure, and then sent me home with a 14-day Primaquine prescription. In Africa I took 250 mgs of Mefloquine per week as a Malaria preventative, and it made me dizzy for the whole trip. You can't imagine what I looked like staggering through the airport after swallowing 1000 mgs of Mefloquine in one DAY! People must have thought I was drunk.

Well, I'm back on my feet now. It took almost two weeks, but I'd say I'm up to 90%. Now for a little more about the job:

Amazingly, the good people at Toledo First offered me the position (in spite of my hennad hands, wrinkled clothes, travel-weathered hair, and tropical disease-- whoever said you had to look good for an interview?) I was extremely impressed by the Toledo First community. They were obviously a very committed group of people, with a mind for community outreach and practical spirituality. I loved the questions they asked me in my interview, things like, "What two things, if we said them now, would make you not want to come and work with us?" This post is getting ridiculously long, so I won't drag it out further with more details about the interview. But my impression was that the Toledo First church is the sort of community anyone would would be proud to belong to. They struck me as creative, fresh, fearless, and ready and willing to try new things. They were supportive, warm, and joy-filled. These days we hear so many stories of sedentary congregations unwilling to change, unable to love, and bound by quarrels of the past. I did not sense this spirit at Toledo First-- not in the least. They are a people with vision.

I did not accept the position the night of the interview, because my head was just swimming with Malaria. I wanted some clarity before I said yes. But now I have said yes. And I'm glad. I still cannot believe that after everything that's happened this year, God is finally fulfilling the purpose for which (I believe) I came back from Europe. I will arrive in Toledo mid October-- exactly a year after I began this odyssey of love and joy and fragile (shockingly resilient) reawakened Christian confidence. What a year of beauty I have had-- beautiful wandering, healing, hoping, hurting-- beautiful belonging. I cannot adequately express my gratitude for the gifts I've been given these last twelve months, even in spite of the sad times that have come to my family. Yes, I'm glad.

So that's all for now, friends. Below is a You Tube promo for the first event I'll be in Toledo for at the end of October ("Tent City"). You'll need to pause the music on My Playlist to the right of this entry before you hit start. It is VERY cool.

Jealousy in the Spiritual Life

For the last few days I have been experiencing a strange emotion. Its a Kolkata feeling. Its jealousy.

I was barely in my teens when I had my first very vivid encounter with the presence of God. It is something I can't and won't try describing here, for it is enough to say that I had it. The fire lasted a year and a half, a time about which I fear I cannot share lest I impinge on the sacred (this is probably in my head, but it is how I feel).

December 14, 1998 began a new period in my spiritual journey-- an eight month stint of intense darkness, feelings of separation, and soul agonizing doubt. I emerged from that experience during the summer of '99 and have spent every minute of my life since trying to make sense of both spiritual poles: presence and absence, friend and enemy, belief and unbelief. Intellectually I continued to struggle with my committed Christian stance for many years, and as time went on it seemed that doubt would never let me love as freely as I once had. After all, the Person I once loved had become a Mystery. How do you love Mystery?

After learning of Mother Teresa's spiritual darkness during my third year in college, I set out for Kolkata to explore this thing further. Actually, I went for three reasons: The first was to learn how to lose myself (still in progress). The second was to explore the concept of community for Christian believers (I was an Adventist. I wondered what it meant to share my Christian identity with Catholics and other Protestants. Also, I wondered what kind of community I could share with unbelievers, Hindus, seculars, and others.) I made some progress in this department, but I still have a ways to go.

My third and most personal reason for going to Kolkata had to do with Mother Teresa's question, my question, and the question of so many others: Is God truly present in this world? Why do we experience absence? I was on a quest for joy, above all. I ached for intimacy with God.

Reflecting back I am certain that Kolkata was indeed a time of intimacy. But it had such a radically different face from my early experience that it felt like desolation. I longed for God with everything in me, but he seemed only distant, even dead.

Then to my amazement, he showed up. He came in power-- with love and grace and all the riches of consolation. But he didn't come for me. Instead he swept into my Kolkata reality and fell on my friend. That's right, my friend.

They were like two young lovers, God and Marie. And I? I felt like the old wife standing by-- no longer cared for, worn and unwanted. Marie's awakening was the most moving conversion I ever witnessed in my life (besides my own), and I watched it with wonder and awe. I was so honestly happy for her.

And so, so jealous.

Now journeying past Kolkata I can say that a fresh well has also sprung up in my spiritual life (a story for another blog). But there have recently been some painful knocks to my connected happiness, especially as I've grown more deeply towards my first Kolkata objective (forgetting self). For years I thought I was special, having once experienced the Living God. But as I have gradually embraced my humanity and deflated in my own eyes, I've discovered that many believers have had such experiences. In fact, most "born again" believers speak wistfully about their first spiritual awakening. This makes me mad!! How do I know mine was not any different from theirs? More frightening than that is the question, "why does it bother me so much to think that others have also 'known' God?" (Why do I want to be God's "only one"?) The truth is that I still want to be special. I'm mourning the death of my pride.

I can really thank Tony Campolo and his contribution to "The God of Intimacy and Action" for bringing this problem to my attention. In the first section of the book he really brings mysticism down to earth for those of us who would prefer to keep it up in the clouds (for the elite). He says mystical experiences are available to all believers. He even categorizes them into "types of mystical experiences" (new insights, I-Thou relationships, times of heightened awareness, conversion experiences, and breakthrough experiences). Reality is alive with God's presence, and we are the variables who tap in or out. I am a variable, and I am too often out. I am not God or the wife of God (no, not a nun indeed!) I am so wretchedly ordinary and spiritually poor that I can hardly stand it.

I want to be all! I want to pray like Mother Teresa, "Let me love you like you have never been loved before!" I want to speak "face to face" with God, intimately, permanently, forever. But when I said "here I am" to God's call, he sent me to the most mundane place. He sent me to restless activity, endless listening, housework, uncertainty, impermanence, loneliness. This does not feel spiritual at all.

Campolo and his co-author (Mary Albert Darling) claim that it is possible to live in a state of constant intimacy with God. If the path I'm on will take me there, then may I never stray. MT's words are so beautiful (though of course I have never suffered like she did): "When You asked to imprint Your passion on my heart, is this the answer? If this brings You glory, if You get a drop of joy from this, if souls are brought to You, if my suffering satiates Your Thirst-- here I am, Lord. With joy I accept all to the end of life and I will smile at Your Hidden Face-- always."

I do still have one question, however. In her discussion on Mother Teresa's "dark night," Carol Zaleski discusses all the forms of darkness and "not knowing" that have taken place down through the centuries of Christendom. Then she ends by quoting John Chapman of the Downside (Benedictine) Abbey. In 1923 he concluded that "In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries most pious souls seem to have gone through a period in which they felt sure that God had reprobated them... This doesn't seem to happen nowadays. But the corresponding trial of our contemporaries seems to be the feeling of not having any faith; not temptations against any particular article, but a mere feeling that religion is not true."

This comment was particularly striking for me when I first read it, and here's why: I always felt that if I could just believe, then I would find a way to plunge fully into God. I would experience him inquenchably, in radical ways. But doubt was always the thing holding me back, the insurmountable obstacle keeping me from my first spiritual inhibition. We moderns continue to struggle with materialist worldviews, even after we have intellectually rejected (or enlarged) them. We are in endless dialogue with new information, new thoughts and ideas that challenge our religious convictions. For me, at least, these interruptions have always made it difficult to experience peace, joy, and intimacy with God. So my question is, how does a modern person in the grip of doubt enter into a "mystical relationship" with God?

If I ever did settle down on a holy hill I'm sure I could do it. I would have a little garden, a field of wild flowers, and a great blue sky. No one would tell me that the world outside was moving or changing. No one would remind me of the slums of Kolkata or New York. But that is not where I have been called. I cannot live in bliss while others die in pain. After his happiness at success was marred by seeing an old friend's failure, Fredrick Beuchner observed that "none of us can truly have joy until all of us can." Perhaps that is true. Perhaps, even, "none of us can experience pure intimacy with God until all of us can." I wonder if I'll be jealous on that Day too, or if my deep joy will write over it. I think it will. Love shares, after all. It is only the lonely heart that hoards and lashes out in envy.

John McLarty once told me that a pastor's job is to keep a foot in two worlds-- the world of doubt and the world of faith. He or she then becomes the perfect evangelist: a bridge to belief. I hope I can be that in some small way, even if it makes me jealous of those who find faith through my doubt.