How to Live with Beauty and Strength

I had an interesting discussion with my globally nomadic teacher friends. We talked about tenderness and strength. We discussed how they aren’t mutually exclusive, even though we might initially think so, but rather complimentary values which walk hand in hand. There’s a difference between strong and hard. There’s a line between resilient and apathetic. There’s an ocean between courage and foolishness.

The balance between tenderness and strength is a difficult one for the global nomad and even more so for the global nomad peacebuilder. You set your heart on justice. You love justice. You can mark a path towards institutionalizing justice and ending things like gender-based violence, one-party politics, child prostitution, gentrification, or forced land evictions. I'm hardly the only person working in Southeast Asia who hates injustice. But at the end of the day, is this a sustainable way to live?

There are moments when I consciously acknowledge that I can’t spend every day hating the Lexus’ four-wheel drives which exemplify indulgence wealth in Cambodia. I know myself—I know other global nomads well —and we will fizzle out drowning in our righteous anger over the injustices. Instead, we have to find small ways to restore our souls. We have to find beauty and find ways to remind ourselves that we cannot invest and die on every hill of injustice we encounter. We often forget and must often rediscover that peace begins in our own hearts. And can a heart filled with hate truly transform anyone or anything? Will that transformation even be with it?

And so, at the end of the day, I need my friends who give my solace and encourage me to be myself, I need my journal, I need my art projects and my occasionally complex baking projects, I need to dance to hip-hop when no one is looking, I need my cooking shows, and I need to leave Phnom Penh once in a while and see trees. These are the beauties that compliment my frustrations, the reminders that even while injustice is a dominant byproduct of evil, we are not its slave.

Somewhere in the balance of tenderness and strength, confrontation and boundary-pushing, justice and mercy, truth and grace…that’s where we all live.  

How to Bring Hope to Easter

Easter 2011 arrived. As the biggest holiday on the Christian calendar and celebrated by billions around the world (it's own globalist phenomenon), I felt obligated to write something deep and profound, if only to draw a full circle on my Lenten and Good Friday musings. But I felt nothing. There are no words for Easter.

But thinking back over the journey of Lent. Lent begin when I was struggling to understand my life here. Lent was a period of silence as we reflect on the tragedy of death and grief and loss. Lent became my period of grief for social ills in Cambodia. But as Lent progressed, pieces began falling into place for me. I began finding those little things which restore the soul and bring me joy. As time progressed to Lent, I was blessed to see droplets of hope, rainstorms, smiling faces, expanding joys and challenges in work, and the development of special friendships, and the tears of the saints.

This Easter, I find myself and my new independently global nomadic self, reflecting on one thing, the most important thing, the one most important thing which changes our lives forever. 

We are loved. 

As someone who aimlessly wanders through life and finds myself in strange places, I need this knowledge. As one of many people who feel personally responsible to remedy social issues wherever I am, I need this knowledge. There are mountains and valleys, and there are dark periods which end with the restoration of our very souls. Easter is all the more sweet because of Lent. 

How Good Friday and Earth Day Collide

A devotional I presented on 22 April, Earth Day and Good Friday

Today is a collision of two contradictions. Today marks the death of Christ which is also a beginning. Today also marks a date designed for remembrance, education, and recommitting to honor what God bestowed upon us, the gift of our planet earth. It seems an appropriate time to note a passage in Revelation 21 where John recounts his vision encounter with God.

“And He who sits on the throne said, "Behold, I am making all things new...these words are faithful and true....I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost. He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son.

Today represents the end, the end of the Old Testament, the end of a sacrificial system, the end of a covenant made centuries ago on Mount Sinai. But individuals living on that day didn't know that. Instead, they saw a cruel and perhaps unnecessary death of a revolutionary who never actually launched his revolution. Today, was a day when everyone lost all hope. Today was a horrible demonstration of oppressive death practices instituted by an oppressive and foreign occupier. The native religious establishment demanded the occupying political forces maintain the delicate status quo. They tricked the occupiers into believing this revolutionary was a threat to the occupiers, when in fact he was a threat to their religious hold on society. Did anyone truly understand what was happening that day? Did anyone know that this was the hardest step in the process of “making all things new?” Or did they only see the barbaric death of an unfinished and perplexing revolutionary? What emotions ran through the minds of speculators over 2000 years ago? Hopelessness. Despair. Frustration. Anger.

It seems awkward to draw parallels between the Death of Christ and a 1970s date set aside to celebrate planet earth. Yet aren’t they both dates to remind us of imperfection and sorrow? Aren’t they both some sort of call to action? Aren’t both dates indirect reminders what something needs to be made new? The church and even wider society is opening their eyes to the destruction of the earth around us. We’ve been given a gift of home and habitat, and yet we treat one of our most precious gifts like one of those nasty cheap disposable plastic bags that fill gutters, trees, landfills and make wonderfully toxic fires.

Today is just one reminder of many that we can no longer afford to be irresponsible. We can no longer live a lifestyle that doesn’t acknowledge our finite resources. We are being forced to look beyond our lifespans and plan for a responsible future. We are living in an era of challenging Good Fridays as we watch the earth’s beauty and resources slip away. We’re being asked to look ahead to an era of Sundays where this exploitation and irresponsibility has ended. We’re learning we can take part in a growing counterculture movement that emphasize simplicity over indulgence. We are able to take part in the reconciliation of land, of preserving beauty, of taking responsibility for our actions individually and corporately, of living at peace with God and creation. Today is a reminder that we have a hard road ahead of us.

But what do we do on days like today? On Good Friday we can only see death, destruction, shattered hopes and dreams, our own depraved brokenness. On Good Friday, we acknowledge that we are absolutely nothing. On Good Friday we shamefully admit that we exist in unbelievable broken world so unjust that it intentionally kills divinity when divinity comes to redeem us. On Good Friday, we look at the heaps of garbage, the polluted rivers, the soaring gas prices and know we’re living unsustainably.

On a date such as today, we have the opportunity to hold the paradox of life and death, and endings and beginnings in reverence while acknowledging that we live in a broken world. Yet we believe One who promised "to make all things new" in our hearts and in the earth He created. In this year of revolutions and uprisings, we acknowledges the price of being counter-cultural, living an unpopular faith which demands the impossible of us, to love our neighbor.

The revolution seems dead on Good Friday. Yet we have the gift of hindsight and we know how the story ends. We know that our faith was made new and we know that this perplexing death provided us with reconcilation. It’s Friday, but on Sunday, we learn that when divinity crafts a global revolution, it transcends death, transcends our depravity and is unspeakably hopeful.

“And He who sits on the throne said, "Behold, I am making all things new...these words are faithful and true....I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost. He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son.”

How Simplicity Challenges

I was reflecting on simplicity the other day. I used to think I lived a fairly simple life. I grew up overseas and consumerism is just so much more difficult. Sometimes spending money was actually difficult. I lived the average lifestyle of the overseas dwelling global nomad which, is all knew, and is what I love.

And then, I mysteriously ended up in the Mennonite world and shockingly found myself employed by a Mennonite organization. We live simply because Jesus lived simply. We live simply out of solidarity with the poor who make up a majority of the global population. We live simply out of respect for the finite number of natural resources in the world. We live simply because we're not "of the world" and want our values to be different, to value family and relationships over possessions. Of course, many Mennonites are more then financially stable so there's some disagreement about exactly what you're suppose to do with your wealth, beside the obvious, which is to conceal it.

Considering I'm barely one step up from a poor college student, my struggles are few. Yet I'd like to live simply for the above reasons. I bike because it makes me happy. I have a small closet because I don't need a big one. I live in a small flat because it's just me. I want to see people before I see what they own. I already have to overcompensate for my white skin, my education, and my nationality, networks and connections which already set me apart.

But there's a fine line between stinginess and simplicity. There's also a fine line between choosing simplicity and being told to live simply. I will admit, I am forced into simplicity. In theory I choose this period of my life, but when you job is structurally connected to your personal life, it changes the entire dynamic. Is forced simplicity actually simplicity? How much does attitude have to do with it? Can we turned forced simplicity into authentic simplicity? I don't know yet.

This I do know, that simplicity is only beautiful when you choose to embrace it. As global nomads who see the the extremes of excess and poverty, we should know firsthand what's appropriate and necessary. We swing on the pendulum of thankfulness for unexpected joys and frustration over unexpected abnormalities. Yet we take on a little simplicity ourselves implicitly. I would be proud if it became a virtue us global nomads were associated with. Sometimes we need to be reminded of this. It's a choice. And if for some reason I'm wrong and it's not, the associated attitude will always be.

How to Lose At Settled

Once upon a time, I had an identity crisis. All through uni I battled inferiority. I met people who lived in the same town or same state their entire lives and I felt I was never as good as them. They had a home, their families lived in accessible locations, they had social networks geographically convenient, they went to the same high school all four years, and at the end of the day, they could go home and all their stuff would be there. I felt like an experience-rich homeless wanderer, reeking of insecurity.

It took me a while, but I accepted my wandering past and present. It's an inconvenient truth but nothing is really worth agonizing your life away over. No amount of upsetting thoughts or angry feelings were going to right the obvious. I have seen the world and that's nothing to be ashamed of.

And then came the post-college idea of being settled. Apparently people after uni are suppose to think about being settled. I have no idea what this means. What is settled? Who's idea was that? Yes marriage and children and mortgage and stability are all very nice but when does that stage of life really arrive, and why am I obligated to arrive there right now? When I look into the crystal ball of my future, I see...an MA...good times with my family...my road bike...oh wait, that's it.

I don't have a comprehensive position on settlement. Obviously I'm not but what bothers me is comparing ourselves against each other rather then using the objective scale of, "you live your life and find joy, and I'll live mine and find joy." Settled becomes a game. Who gets engaged or married first, who get the best job or title first, who gets an SUV (or "green car") first, who owns property first, who has kids first... Yet each person is so different and unique. Therefore creating a uniform "settled" is illogical. There's something to be said about making responsible choices and not bungee jumping and playing video games everyday. But each one of our lives is so full of different opportunities and passions. This demands varying life choices.

If being settled involves playing the settled game, well I can't play. I'm a nomad, and living nomadically brings me joy. If I live to be around 80, I've got 3/4ths to go. Does anyone have any idea of how much poverty can be alleviated in that period, or how many ecosystems and natural resources will be destroyed, how many needless wars and conflict will occur in 60 years? I can't fix the world but because I care, I might spend decades working on pieces of problems. If that involves traveling the earth and living out opportunities and passions, I should then.

I'll always value plugging deep into a community for decades and wish I had that. But I won't feel inferior for choosing mobility. I'm a Gen Y Millennial. We like iPhones. We move a lot. We want our jobs to be fulfilling. We postpone traditional life stages. We crave to be authentic and different. And the economic downturn overturned any opportunity for us to be "settled," in the classic sense.

Maybe I say all of this to comfort myself. We're not all called to be nomads. We're not all good at being nomads. Not all of us have the courage to be nomads. Not all of us had nomadic opportunities dropped in our laps. But if that's your gift, if that's what you're good at, if it's what you'd love, you're crazy not to use it. If I have to be settled at all, I'm settled in the comfortable knowledge that I am valued, and that won't change even if I move everyday for the next 60 years.

How to Wish...

When I was in uni, one of my favorite professors showed a Pussycat Dolls music video in class, "When I Grow Up." I believe his justification was that his infant daughter would only sleep to pop music, or something of that nature.

It was a social theory class and so we discussed the theory behind the song. Be careful what you wish you. You want to be famous but is it worth it to give up namelessness? The song encourages people to not reach higher; be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. So say the Dolls. So says conventional wisdom. Don't wish for everything you think you want, you might not actually want it! It might turn out to haunt you later! Status quo is good, status quo is manageable, status quo is a pussycat doll.

For some reason, memories of this experience have come back recently. Sometimes what I want isn't always what's best for me. Sometimes I obviously don't know what I want. It's ironic. At the same time, I don't think what I wish for has any effect on reality. It might predescribe behavior or influence decisions but it's not exactly the determining factor.

What do I wish for? Aside from fitting back into my skinny jeans, I wish for justice and fairness in relationships. I wish for democracy where everyone has a voice. I wish for peace where people don't have to live in fear. I wish for funding for our amazing peace partners! I hope I just might get it.