Mai Pen Rai

Such a gentle culture, this.

It's almost as if the easy, flowing rolling of the foothills rolls right on down into each Thai soul, green and rich and giving way to whatever swaying the breeze might bring to the day.

It's not a laziness. Even though the heat makes me lazy, these people are certainly industrious enough. Always doing something, perhaps not with the same intensity as Western workaholics, but certainly productive, and efficient to supply for their needs. It's not a fatalism either, at least not for the believing friends we've made here. It's much more about grace and forgiveness and letting small things be small things. In a way, this gentle forgiveness is reflected in a common response phrase - "Mai pen rai" - "Never mind."

It's said in response to "Thank you". We'd say, "your welcome", they say "never mind", and it means "don't sweat it", "that's okay", "no problem" - mai pen rai.

Yupa said it to me when, through Debbie as my interpreter (last October) I expressed a concern that while I was there on my own, with no interpreter, if things got quiet, not to think I was unhappy or upset. That I was okay with the predictable silences that were sure to be part of the language limitations. And Yupa smiled her wide gentle smile and said, "Mai pen rai."

The girls said it to me, just a few days ago, after bringing it to my attention that I had left a fan running in our room. This is obviously not a good thing, probably very much against the "house rules", and they wanted me to know. But almost immediately, even before I could offer my apology, they told me, "Mai pen rai."

Suradat offered this phrase over and over, as we struggled to understand each other. Most often we would achieve the intended communication in one way or another. But sometimes the conversation would end with both of us shrugging our shoulders and smiling a "we're trying but it's not happening kind of smile". And he would say, "Mai pen rai." Or if I couldn't eat something or bumped into someone, or did anything that was not exactly Thai-polite, there was so much grace for me, and for the whole team this time around, the assumption being that we would not purposely offend. There was so much "Mai pen rai" available, and it eased the space between us.

And I think I'm so aware of this because of how much everything can matter to me in such a un-mai pen rai kind of way back home.

I get cut off on the express way and I'm not thinking, "mai pen rai". Someone stands me up for a lunch date, and I'm not thinking, "mai pen rai". Unreturned e-mails, an undone assignment from one of my team members, a forgotten favour left undone sending me out to to the store on an errand I thought I had delegated. Under my breath I am growling, but I'm not growling grace.

Take "mai pen rai" to the next level and it gets even harder. The offer of a gracious response to life's more damaging offenses, the woundings, the neglects, the betrayals. Do I have a spirit of "mai pen rai" then?

I know this is tricky because the journey through such complicated relational territory certainly requires that healthy boundaries be put into place. There is no place in grace for abuse, and no sense that God is in favour of participating in relational patterns that perpetually violate.

Still, it seems to me that the giant cosmic bottom line of it all is that we come to God loaded with desperate debt and no hope of ever buying our way out. We, each one of us, are broken and have offended God by our human proclivity to turn our backs on His offer of unconditional love and chase after other things. We break our our own codes of morality. We lie, we steal, we cheat. We say spiteful, hurtful things. Sometimes we stoop to the lowest of the low and commit unspeakable acts of emotional, psychological and even physical violence.

And in our tragic state, we stumble our way toward God, knowing what we deserve, expecting the worst. And because He sees us through the cross, He says, "Never mind." "Mai pen rai". It's taken care of already, by the sacrifice of My Son and the pervasive Spirit of unthinkable grace that is lovely, and flowing down out of the foothills of heaven onto every soul willing to give way and give over and give in to it.

Tomorrow I will leave this culture of gentle grace and dive headlong into my real life of missed appointments and dreadful crimes. There will continue to be opportunity after opportunity to extend big and little "mai pen rai's" to those in my life. And, I hope, because I need it so, experiences of "mai pen rai" being extended to me.

To ease the space between me and those I love and live with.

To give back out what's been given to me.
Over and abundantly
Like the rains on the mountains
Like the love of orphans
Like the gentle grace of a lovely people
Who are teaching me so much.