An Underwear Story

The laundry is a thing here.

First, with 23 people living under one roof, not a day goes by, rain or shine, that all three machines aren't running.  So it's a thing.  And not just for them, but for the Highview Team.

By that I mean, it's next to impossible to convince Yupa that we should help do our own laundry.  For a gentle Thai lady, she can be so stubborn about this!  It's all part of the culture of service and honour and love, and an erasing of the lines between helper and helped.

The other day, though, I saw a golden opportunity and, when I thought no one was looking, I snuck out to the bamboo pole on which the last load of Highview Team's laundry was drying, and started to bring it in.   This was the underwear load.  Sorry if that's TMI but it's important to the story.

Also important to know is the fact that we are quite aware of the extra domestics required when we're here.  We've been a team of five (now four with Sheldon's earlier departure) and you can just imagine if five people came and stayed at your house for two weeks.  So we do our best to politely work around Thai culture to help lighten the load by clearing our own table, being conscientious about our garbage and recycling, and sneaking out to bring in the laundry when we think we can get away with it.

But no.

Wara intercepted me. 

 
Wara is one of the older girls who help out with the domestics when we have a Team stay.  She saw me taking in the laundry and hurried over with a cry of dismay.  Oh Ahjahn Ruth, mai chai (no)!   But I insisted, thanking her just the same.

Then she asked, "Don't you want me to iron those?"  I paused, confused.  Looking down at the collection of briefs belonging to four different women, I wondered if I had actually heard her correctly.  Iron our underwear?  But she held her hand on an imaginary iron and swiped it back and forth in an ironing motion. 

And then a dawning. 

They iron our underwear?!!

I had known that he took a quick iron to any of our cotton shirts and sometimes our pants if things came out of the machine a little bedragggled.  There's no dryer here to set to "permanent press" and often as not, no breeze to help blow out the wrinkles.  It's not necessary, as far as I'm concerned, and it's always been done 'in secret' so to speak, so I haven't really been able to stop them from doing it.  But I did know about it.  But.....underwear?

I'm dismayed.  Truly.  I tell Wara, no!  Please don't iron our underwear!  She smiles broadly, bends low and wraps her arms around my waist (a way of showing gratitude and honour to someone older) and says repeatedly in English, "Oh thank you, thank you."  She's so happy she has been released from some of her task. 

I come in to distribute our underthings and report my discovery to the Team.  They iron our underwear!!!

The very next moment I see Yupa I express my concern.  There's already so much you do for us.
Please, don't iron our underwear.  It's totally not necessary!

It was Yupa's turn to look confused.  "No-o", she says, in her elongated way.  No underwear gets pressed around here.   

Oh.  So?  What is Wara talking about?

Then it dawns on us both.  She's playing a trick on Ahjahn Ruth!  Yanking my chain!  Yes, that sweet little Wara is playing with me.  And I totally bought it.  We laugh so hard we almost need to do an underwear load again.  Who irons underwear?  Come on!

The thing is, it could have been true.

So that's one thing about this story.
The bazillion ways we are loved here is a very powerful thing.  Much more than a laundry thing.  It's totally a love thing.  And so many of us, having stayed with this family, go home realizing we've been loved at a molecular level, at a practical level, at an 'everything level', in ways we can hardly explain when we try.  Like ironed underwear.

And like play.  Which is the other thing.
Because the truth is I'm not that much fun, just me.  And mostly I'm okay with this, but God knows I need happy, playful people in my life.  So He sent me a whole extra family that includes Wara who makes me imagine a hilarious picture involving underwear and an ironing board.  And who's humour and joy is a testimony to the life she's now living.  And somehow, somehow -- and this is such a mystery to me -- I get to be part of this.

Tomorrow we get on the plane and come back to Canada.  All our underwear is packed and ready to go.  But our hearts, not so much.  Can two weeks really go by this fast?  Yup.

Personally, I'm encouraged by the fact that I'll be here again in just six weeks.  Shortest turn around ever (and I thought two months was quick last time!).  So I'm already preparing for that visit, with Ken and our long time friends Bill and Celine.  Already thinking about being here again. 

Maybe they'll let me help with the laundry eventually.

Hunger for Beauty

Home, back in the city now after a truly satisfying three weeks at my other home on the Freddy Channel.  And internet being rather 'thready' up there (not entirely a bad thing) I thought I'd just post some shots.  Summer Part One, if you will.

Soon I will enter Summer Part Two, heading to Thailand for two and half weeks with a Team who will be visiting our children at the New Family Foundation (Hot Springs).  More pictures there for sure.

Then it will be Summer Part Three, and more photo ops of water and sun and blueberries (at least I'm hoping there'll still be some), and critters and... well you get the picture (pun intended).

Love Steve Bell's song the repeats the phrase "Why do we hunger for beauty?"  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpnOmOyYxu0 The answer, theologically, is that we long for connection with our Creator and are drawn to knowing and being known in the midst of what we see instinctively as beautiful.  My hunger has been fed in so many ways already in just this Summer Part One of the season.

Grateful for all the bounty and beauty of my life.  Amazed that my Creator would invite me into this so intimately.

June Bugs In July

The clumsy buzzing startles against the deep quiet of the night.  I look up from my book towards the screen of the open window on this finally hot night.   Finally. 

A June bug.  First one I’ve heard, either here or back in the city.  This tardy summer has been reluctant to give up its opening rituals; still warm mornings, hot lazy afternoons, evenings that require open windows in order to sleep, and huge, bumbling June bugs, frantic to get to the light. 

I note the buzzing and bumping against the screen and add it to the list of late things.  Blueberries still in blossom when I arrived.  White pines just now releasing their pollen.  Day lilies still at least a week away from opening their colours to the sun.   Forty seven summers by these waters provides a solid base of data against which to compare.  Everything is late this year.  As if something’s off in the timeline.

 So am I.

It was so exciting last year to arrive so early in June.  It’s one of the benefits to the new way of doing life and ministry that began at that time, with its offering of more flexibility to allow for maximizing the cottage season.   This year, not so much.  We really didn’t get to open until mid June.  Then we left again for the city for ten days to celebrate a wedding, but also to catch up on some pressing preparations for other things happening this summer, things like a visit to Thailand, and some preaching assignments here at the cottage, back home at Highview, and also at the church in Thailand.  These, in and of themselves, were not unusual parts of my summer.  It’s just so much prep work has crunched into these later weeks.  Like a summer that’s late.  Something’s off in the timeline.

A shocking loss will do that.  Sort of holds you suspended in an opaque river of time that’s almost congealing, moving downstream in slow motion, unsure of the date and not really caring what day it is anyways.

How long as it been now?  Ten weeks I think.  But the calendar means nothing when it seems like it happened yesterday AND that surely we’ve been in this sluggish, disorientating river for months already, both at the same time.

The thing is, on this hot night with June bugs bumping noisily into the screen of my open window, I haven’t been here long enough (whatever long enough means) to feel what I know about all of this loss yet.  Normally (whatever normally means) I’ve already had some time for solitude and soul-settling way before now, and maybe, if I had, by now I would feel what I know, and know what I feel.  But I don’t.  Not yet.

Because it’s all late or slow or just hasn’t happened yet.  Next week family time will be complete, and I will wrap some quiet around myself and listen more deeply to this story.  But I don’t expect to get to normal any time soon.  Normal is a little ways off yet, a little ways longer down this congealing river of time and grieving and embracing and discovery. 

I note the lateness of the June bug and go back to my book.  His tardy arrival oddly comforts me.    

Just Here. Just Now.

I am suspended in the space of quiet occupation on the part of everyone else in the cottage, when I catch myself ‘listing’ again.  I don’t mean leaning to one side.  I mean that unending mental habit of thinking through to the ‘next thing’ to make sure I’m ready.  What’s next on the list?

By now I’ve checked off so many things.  It was our annual trip into town with the grandkids, complete with a visit to Mind’s Alive on the main street in old downtown for the birthday splurge.  This year’s choices include a 3D Harry Potter puzzle, and some spy equipment, hence the quiet occupation of everyone else.   I should be thinking of supper, but actually it’s just a tad early yet.  All the groceries are put away.  I think we’ll just have sandwiches with some of the new fresh bread we bought.

So I’m here, suspended.  And it occurs to me to pitch the list for now and just be.

The wind over the water, playing in the trees.  The way the breeze dances with my long cotton dress, so colourful in the bright and early evening sun.   The jenny wren on the post cap telling me something very happy and important.   Seagulls calling in conversation with each other, and most likely, I imagine, laying claim to some find of food.  The chipmunk the children have named Gray, come to see if we fetched more peanuts when we were in town (which we did but I’m not bringing them out right this minute). Clouds stretched thin across the blue of sky.  The way the sun feels on my skin. 

In these moments I just am.  A human being, not a human doing.

Not planning ahead.

Not remembering behind.

Just here.
Just now.

There is certainly enough to draw me backwards.  Over the past year.  Over the past seven weeks.  And process I will.  It’s why I keep a journal; to be able to read through the year past and listen to how the Spirit might want to teach me, rebuke me, cheer me, remind me.   But in this moment, right here and right now, I realize that with all the fuss of everything, the past seven weeks in particular, and with arriving at the same time as the children more or less, I haven’t done any of this since arriving to the bay.  This ‘just being’ thing.

And it also occurs to me -- and I’m thanking my journal reflections for this revelation – that the times I would claim to have heard God’s voice the clearest is when I’m like this.  Fully present in this moment, right now.

Beloved author and Christian activist Henri Nouwen liked to speak of “sacred spaces” where the place between humanity and divinity is “thin”.

This is one.

This environment, this place, yes.

But more.

In concert with a state of mindfulness, or presence, of presence, some sacred comes to me.

‘Be still and know that I am God.’ Psalm 46:10

“Receive” I hear now.  And the sunlight dances, giggling, over the water.

Sweet and Sour Grace: One Story, Two Perspectives and a Prayer

The time Jesus answered the question, “Then who can be saved?” with a parable (a relatable story with a kicker punch line that forces a response).  Some musings and ruminations on what's fair and what's real and how one-sided justice can be, from Matthew 20:1-16.

Original, untouched photo, heart-shaped cloud formation summer 2017. RAB

Perspective Sour

Letter to Better Business Bureau, Banks of Jordan Branch

August 10, 31

To Whom It May Concern

I would like to lodge a complaint concerning one Mr. Jacob of Jordan, Landowner and Cultivator of Grapes.

On or about August 3 of this same year, I was hired by said Landowner as a labourer to harvest grapes for the day.  At the beginning of the day, I agreed to the payment of one denarius, which seemed a reasonable rate of pay to both myself and others who were also signed on for this task, at about 6 a.m.

We worked hard, in the hot sun, for the full twelve hours of the expected work day.   As we laboured, several times throughout the day, Mr. Jacob apparently went back to the market to secure more help.  This made sense to us, as it was clear we were not going to get the job done ourselves, as strong and hardworking as we are. 

The last of the crew arrived at the 11^th hour.  Clearly Mr. Jacob was desperate to get his crop in on this day, because the last three to arrive were not what one might call, ‘robust’.  They worked for one hour only, and I must say that they were only there to haul in the bits the rest of us who had been working hard all day didn’t get to.

At the end of the day we were asked to line up for payment, starting with those three who had arrived last, and ending with those of us who’d been working all day. 

It was with great interest (at first) that we noted that those last, 11^th hour workers got paid a full denarius!   Amazing!  A full day’s pay for one hour of work!  Who does that?  Of course, you can see how we would have expected that our wage would be proportionately adjusted.  I mean, that would only be fair, right?

But imagine our dismay, even our righteous indignation, when in our hands was placed the very same amount.  One denarius.  That’s all!

It’s not so much about the money.  We got what we were promised.  It’s the indignity of it all.  We who bore the brunt of the work, laboured in the heat of the day, we who were chosen first for our obvious strength and skill, we were made equal to the riff raff who straggled in under the wire. 

When we complained, Mr. Jacob insisted that he had the right to be generous if he chose. 

I hope you will agree that this kind of ‘generosity’ is completely out of line, and detrimental to both our economy and our society.   We simply cannot have those who do so little, who really are so low, being made out to be equal to folks like me who work hard and have earned every thing we’ve got.

I thank you in advance for your quick investigation into this shocking and offensive matter.

Indignantly,

Rufus Grumbleous

Perspective Sweet

The market is a hot and dirty place.  Everyone’s hands are dirty.  Their feet are dirty, clothes too.  Some people are sick.  You can’t help bumping into each other, and everyone touches everything.

I always feel sorry for the vendors.  They’re just standing there, all listless behind their wares, some of them flicking flies off meat that’s all bare and browned.  And it smells. 

Most of the people here are here to sell, or buy.  A little bit of gossip.  A little bit of business.  Some are beggars, blind or crippled, not able to work. 

But some of us are here to be hired.  We are able bodied most of us, but not “regularly employed”.  We’re called “day labourers” the lowest social group except for slaves.  Truth is, most of us used to be slaves.  Now we’re called ‘freedmen’.  Means we’re free to starve, I think.  It’s a bitter irony.  Now that we’re on our own, we own nothing.  No business, no land, no way to make a living whatsoever. 

Except to stand at the market and wait to be hired.

We all get here early.  The sun is rising.  All of us are hoping to be chosen in the first round, right off the bat, so we can pull in an entire day’s wages.  And some are lucky like that.  And today there’s a Landowner needing help to harvest grapes.  And he’s come around a number of times and hired a few more each time.

And each time I think, maybe this is it.  Maybe today I can go home to my family with something.

But by now the day is almost done.  Some vendors are even starting to pack up.  I know.  You’d think us day labourers would have given up by now.  Gone home.  Clearly we’ve been picked over for the more robust looking in the crowd.  Clearly we’ve been rejected.  All day.

But we’re still here.  There’s only three of us left.

We’re not lazy.  We’re desperate for work.  We are very determined, at least I am, to make a way for myself and my family now, and climb out of this life-sucking poverty, now that I’m no longer a slave.  I have a family at home.  They’re hungry.  Otherwise, I would never have stayed in this hot and dirty, stinking market, enduring the long hours of crushing boredom and the deep sting of rejection all day long.

But here comes that Landowner again.  And he actually needs more workers even now, at this eleventh hour.  And he hires us!  All three of us!  Sa-weet!   Fist bumps all around, as we get in the cart and head to the vineyard.  It's only going to be an hour’s worth of pay, but it's way better than going home empty handed.

And for that hour we work.  Haul in those grapes.  Just for the hour, but it’s worth it to actually be doing something finally!  And now the sun is setting and we have to quit. 

We can see the Landowner talking with the foreman.  Telling the foreman what to pay each of us, no doubt.   We line up at the back of the line, because, after all, we got here last.

But the strangest thing.  The foreman calls us forward.

In fact, we are put in line starting with those of us who got here last, and ending with those who’ve put in the entire day’s work.  That’s the first odd thing.  But it’s nothing to what happens next.

The foreman puts an entire denarius in my hand! In everyone’s hand!  That’s what he pays everyone.  Even those guys who worked all day!

We can’t believe it!  Only worked an hour but got paid for the whole day?  Who does that? 

The all-day guys are mad.  And I can’t blame them.  When they were at the market, the Landowner agreed to pay them the regular day’s wage of one denarius, so they got what they had agreed to.  But when they see that we had been given the full day’s wage for only working one hour, they quite naturally expect they will get more. 

But they don’t.

I know, I know we don’t deserve the full day’s wage.  But what a crazy, wild gift to go home with some bread for my family!!

What a gift!  This is so sweet, in such a bitter world. 

That Landowner.  Who does that?

Sweet and Sour Prayer

God, help me remember my own story, and how badly I am in need of Your grace.

By Your mercy please help me recognize any bitter spirit in me. 

I renounce any and all self-righteousness and superiority I may harbour in my heart towards another human being, who is made in Your image, and equally the object of Your steadfast love.

Amen