The "Just Being Here" Thing

Just now I have returned from the meeting room where I have mapped out tonight's half English and half Bible lesson on the white board and set up for my props.  Earlier today I rehearsed with Bell (my interpreter) for tomorrow's sermon.  Both Andrea and Esther have something in mind for what they've been asked to do in the service.  Later tonight, after worship time and the ESL and Bible lessons, I will have a short meeting with Ahjahn Suradet and Yupa about Team Trip finances since today we were able to go exchange our money.

These are just snips of the things we 'do' when we're here, to serve and encourage and support both the children and their parents, as well at Hot Springs Church, through practical tasks and hands on ministry.

But really, that's not so much what it's about.  Actually, maybe it's not at all what it's about.

This wallops me on the way back from the chicken house.

It's Saturday so there is a special kind of happy hanging in the misty air.  I wonder if this isn't light rain at all, but joy shimmering down on us, because the whole place is lush and green with it.  We are walking the sloppy path alongside the newly planted rice crop, being weeded by the older girls under Dtu's knowledgeable guidance.  This is muddy work,  a fact which seems to increase the amusement of the workers who show us their red-brown hands and clumped up shoes as evidence of the fun they are having.

Suradet walks in front of me, and I am at first struck by the beauty of the mountains being cloaked with clouds in front of him.  When I leave Thailand, I always miss the mountains.  And this particular morning these deep white clouds against the dark green backdrop just seem severely and suddenly  magnificent and worthy of my full attention. 

But it's Suradet that captures the moment.  And he's just walking.  And singing.  And it's been longer than I care to count, with more sadness between that I care to think about, since I've heard this.  And the simplicity and depth of that particular joy on this particular day in this particular moment focuses like a lovely laser.  A breath-catcher, it is.  Being here, in this, like this.

Later in the car on the way to exchange our money, Suradet will break a spell of driving silence just to say, "Ahjahn Ruth, thank you so much for coming.  For everyone at Highview."  And then a pause.  "For loving me, like you were my mother."  Perhaps he's having just a moment of being here too.  This just.  Being.  Here.                                                       
                                                       

 

Likely I will always get asked the question about spending the money on the plane tickets.  Wouldn't it be so much better, they say, if we just sent that same amount to the cause?  I get the question.  I really do, but my answer is this.  No.  It wouldn't.  It wouldn't at all.  And I dare you to come and find out why.

Fully present in the moment, just being here, like this.
This is today's wonder.