spotlight on Thailand

Oh dear, protesters in Thailand have shut down Bangkok's International Airport. This drawn out struggle between the anti-government protesters, the government, and the pro-government protesters is becoming ridiculous. It's hard to know what's really happening just reading BBC News and the Bangkok Post and trying to understand the situation as best as I can, but even though I am all for people power, it seems to me that the anti-government protesters' demands might actually decrease democracy in Thailand and especially further marginalize the voices of the rural poor (check out this article, in which the region I grew up in--Isaan--is mentioned!). But I don't know for sure. Your thoughts?

A belated Election Night post!

I've been meaning to blog about election night ever since it happened, but somehow the last few weeks have simply run away with themselves. By this point everyone is probably thankful that the election drama is over and that the media has stopped obsessing with it...and here I go and bring it up again. What can I say?

The reason I want to blog about election night was because I have never experienced anything quite like it. Let me start at the beginning. I voted before I went to work in the morning, and mid-way through the day I became so sick that my boss sent me home. I could barely drive back to my apartment, I felt so sick. So instead of following the tense tallying of votes, I was in bed, trying to sleep. I had finally drifted off, when from deep in a cloud of sleep, I heard a woman screaming. And screaming. And screaming. I'll be honest, it freaked me out to be woken up by that. I live in a low income neighborhood that has its own troubles of violence and domestic abuse, so my first thought was not good. But then I heard all these car horns honking and honking. It took my foggy brain a few moments to comprehend, but then I realized--the election results must be in!! I fumbled down from my bunk bed to peer out the window, and I saw a small group of people collected on the street corner, shouting and jumping, and cars honking exuberantly as they drove by.

I was pretty sure that since my neighborhood is mostly African American, people would not be going this crazy unless Obama had won, but I had to know for sure! And I decided that even though I wasn't feeling well and could look it up on the Internet, this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to participate with my neighbors in whatever was happening. So I got dressed and went outside in front of my house. "What were the results? Did Obama win?" I asked breathlessly. "He won! He won!" exclaimed the young African American woman I'd asked, and before I knew it the two of us were hugging and screaming and I was asking her twice to make sure it was true. I walked down to the street corner with her where a small group of other folks were and they were all smiling and occasionally jumping up and down and dancing. One guy started break dancing right there on the sidewalk. Two girls were dancing in the street. People I'd never met in my life were hugging me. And the car horns were going crazy, thanks to people on the street corners holding up Obama signs and waving them.

It was a weird mix of emotions for me. It was an absolute privilege to be able to participate in this joyfully historic moment, especially for the African American community. People were so gracious to share their joy with me, to hug me and smile at me and talk to me even though we were perfect strangers. It was probably one of the first times in my life when I felt excited, hopeful and proud to be a citizen of this country (sorry, friends, I'm not known for my american patriotism). And yet it felt very awkward to be the only white person standing there most of the time, with the exception of a couple white folks who were there for a few moments. This was compounded by the fact that because I was so sick, my screaming and exuberance were a little limited--everyone else was going crazy and I was counting myself doing good to be standing up--so I definitely felt afraid of looking like the lame white person. But even though inside I felt super awkward, I choose to stay standing on the corner anyway, because being there at all felt like the more courageous (and rewarding) thing to do, instead of retreating back inside my apartment. All in all, it was an amazing experience, and even with all my inner awkwardness, it was so much more worth it than looking up the stats on the Internet!

angry :(

In my dreams last night, I remember saying very distinctly, either to myself or someone else in the dream: "I'm bitter at America and at American Christians."

Then I woke up and thought, woah, what is going on with me that I would say that so clearly in my sleep?

As I was lying there thinking about it, I think that the root of those feelings is hurt. Hurt stored up from all of the times I visited America over my childhood and adolescence and the hurtful things that people would say in sheer ignorance about the country that I'm from or about the people that I love. When you are asked as an elementary schooler in all seriousness if you eat real food or if you ride an elephant to school or live in a grass hut, you start to think that the people asking you those questions are kind of stupid. As a kid, life growing up in Thailand just made sense, it was the way things were, and when I encountered other kids who didn't have any concept of my whole world, I thought their questions were pretty silly. Patience has never been one of my defining virtues!

Of course, moving into college, the hurtful comments became more complex and generalistic. No, I don't think that America is the best country in the world. I've lived in three countries and I can't call any of them the best country in the world. No, I don't think that America is this wonderful Christian nation and every other country is heathan through and through. How can that account for the many other countries where the Christian faith is vibrant and exploding whereas it appears to be shrinking in this country? No, I don't think that every single other person in the world would give their right foot to live in America. Certainly a lot of folks would, but there are also a lot of folks that you could not pay to come live in America. No, I don't think that America is on a mission to keep peace and democracy and civilization alive in the rest of the world (hello? have you looked at our foreign policy??). Most of these things are myths that American culture instructs its children in from the time that they are very young, through the media, the political leaders, parents, and yes, religious leadership. So intellectually I know it is really a question of enculturation, not an entire population's arrogance and lack of sense, but emotionally it's been really painful at points as a missionary kid to navigate through it all. Especially when questioning those myths means people label you "unpatriotic" and they definitely don't mean it as a good thing.

That hurt is probably at the root of all the anger that is stored up in me.
I. am. angry.
It doesn't come out very often, but it's there.

But because I know Jesus, I know that living in anger and irreconciliation is not a good place to be or an acceptable place to stay. Even if I don't want to, I have to learn how to forgive. And I have to have compassion and forgive others' ignorance in the midst of a deep awareness of my own ignorance, brokenness and need for God. And even as I write this, dear readers, I must ask for your patience and forgiveness if anything I've said as I've been trying to understand and process my experience has been hurtful to you. Thanks for sticking with me in the journey.

Right now, my life feels like a house of cards, teetering precariously and barely held together. I feel fragile. And adding one more healing issue to deal with on top of everything else just does not seem manageable. So perhaps this one will keep lurking in the corner to be dealt with another day.

Another Awkward Interaction

On the subject of interactions with homeless folks, a couple weekends ago I was walking in Old Town Pasadena, trying to get through a long list of errands, when an older African American homeless man sitting by the sidewalk called out to me. I stopped reluctantly and he asked me if I might be able to buy him something to eat. I said sure, and he asked for a meal from the food establishment across the street, so I said that I'd go get it and be back. As I walked away, I was thinking to myself, "Dang it, God! If Jesus was here he'd take the food back and sit with that gentleman and talk to him. But I'm busy!" Then the man called out to me, "Do you know the Lord?" "Yes," I said. "Then come back here and talk to me after you get the food." (Shoot!) "Ok," I called back.

So I bought the food and took it back to him and sat down. We actually ended up having a pretty good conversation. He told me about his story of becoming homeless (which I took with a grain of salt, since some folks get good at coming up with stories in order to survive). He told me about how much he hates his father, and I told him that no matter what horrible things people have done to us, if we hang onto hate, it's only going to hurt ourselves, but that forgiveness is really the only way to be released from that.

Unfortunately, towards the end of the conversation, he was insistent on asking me for money. I looked at him and I told him, 'You just finished telling me all about your struggles with drugs and alcohol! Because I care about you, I am not going to give you money.' (being in the serving homelessness business, I also knew about several options in town for folks to find free food, so this gave me more backbone) And I stuck firmly to that, even though he didn't stop asking me. Once he gave up on that, then he wanted me to commit to a day and time when I'd come visit him again. This idea made me kind of uncomfortable, so I wouldn't do that either. He was pretty disappointed by that, but I told him I would try to come by some other time and see him, I just couldn't give him a day and time. And then I left.

As I was reflecting back over our conversation later, I think that good parts of our conversation including spending a lot of time allowing him to be listened to and that it was also good to feel boldly empowered to speak a few morsels of truth into his life. But as I reflected, I felt more and more uncomfortable about him, especially in regard to sex and gender. Even though he's a generation older than me, he kept making comments throughout our conversation that made me very uncomfortable, for instance telling me multiple times how much he likes white women, saying that I would be too much for him in bed--and then trying to reassure me that he wasn't hitting on me!!, saying that he is good in bed, etc. Ewww. I know that he's a man dealing with his own sin and mess, just like the rest of us, but I don't like it when his mess affects me.

So now I feel very stuck. I really don't want to see him or interact with him (actually, I confess I've gone out of my way to avoid the area when I met him last), but I also feel like I should keep my word and at least try to go by and find him at least one time. But definitely not by myself. Any wise thoughts on this one? And anyone want to keep me company if I do go by there again?

Make Sure You Vote Today!

Southern California turns out to vote: with umbrellas and ready to wait

Thankfully the rain had stopped by the time I lined up at my voting place this morning. It took almost an hour from the time I first got to the line and when I was finished. Wow. Never having voted in the early morning before, I was surprised by the wait. In Oregon, I'd always voted by mail.

There's something appealing about gathering with other people from your neighborhood to vote, however. Black, white, Latino, multiracial (sorry, not really many Asians where I live) all coming together to cast their votes for the direction of their society. My neighbor brought along his young son to see how voting works. Voting in person makes it so much more of a communal thing--a "we're all in this together" thing. And that is what makes it worth the wait.

Update to my previous post

**As an update...** In our staff meeting yesterday we debriefed the situation with the man and the old lady who were arguing, and the general conclusion was that the best approach to such a situation would be to stay physically out of the way (so that you don't get hurt), but to still verbally engage the situation and try to de-escalate it, double-teaming it with another staff member so that each person focused on one of the clients. I'm glad that by God's grace, it worked out ok the way that it actually happened and that none of us got hurt, but that us as staff therefore had the chance to talk about what it would be best to do in a similar situation. It still goes against my instinct to stay physically out of the situation, even when the 91 year old woman is the one provoking the disagreement, but I can also kinda see the point that you won't be able to keep the situation under control if you yourself are hurt and out of commission. sigh. Ah well, at least the important thing for now is that everyone is ok.

Arg...Conflict!!

I think that my job at the homeless access center is a crash course in how to deal with conflict--most of it unfortunately conflict with people that I have no previously established relationship/trust with. At the end of last week I had a homeless woman just go off on me about how she felt like we were wasting her time and treating her disrespectfully and nobody cared and that I was giving her attitude. Well, I hadn't been giving her attitude, but when she spoke to me like that I confess that I did respond with some then! In thinking over the situation for the next couple days, I concluded that I want to learn how to respond to people's frustration and anger in a way that lets their emotions roll over me so that I can stay calm and not-angry myself, and to figure out how to respond constructively to the situation. I've decided to work on a new approach. As one of my mentors helped me realize, it seems like one of the very frustrating things about being homeless is that everyone else is always telling you what to do and your own voice and will get lost in the shuffle. So when people express frustration to me this week, I've been trying to start off with simply letting them know that I hear them, and that yes, I see how that must be frustrating, instead of starting off with a "but" argument. We'll see if this helps, or at least if it helps me to stay compassionate and collected instead of angry!

Then today I had a whole different kind of conflict to deal with! Usually I sit at a desk behind a very high counter (about chest high), which is between the lobby and me. This is for safety purposes. A new individual had come in to apply for our services and I'd been working with him on getting the paperwork filled out. Then my supervisor, who happens to be African American, walked by on the way to her office. At this point, the client made some racist comments basically to the effect that he could not be in the same place with African Americans. My coworker informed him that in that case, our shelter was probably not a good fit for him, since a lot of the folks we serve are black (we serve more white homeless folks than any other ethnic group, but African Americans are second). It was definitely an awkward and offensive exchange (we had other clients waiting right there in the lobby who are black!!) and he left.

About fifteen minutes later I happened to be out in the lobby helping a client when he walked back in again to get a phone number for another shelter from us. A tiny white 92 year old homeless woman took one look at him and said, "You again!" Well, he responded with, "You have a problem with that?" and then she walked right up to him and got in his face. I had horrible visions flashing through my mind of what if he pushed her or something and the frail thing fell over and broke something--I just didn't know what was going to happen! I didn't even think about it--I just knew I had to get between them--so I slipped right between the two of them, at the same time asking her to please be quiet and not say anything to him. For a second, standing there right in front of him, I really wished that I was behind that counter! But I was able to deflect his attention off of her and on to me, and to get him to focus on what he was looking for from our agency instead of on his conflict with her. I wanted to get him out of the door as quickly as I could and I was not willing to go out of my way to personally get him into a non-walk-in shelter (since it's bad for us and for the chances of future clients if we give bad referrals) so I did not give him any new phone numbers, just told him to try the walk-in shelter that I'd previously told him about. Solely by the grace of God he chose to leave without doing anything or creating more of a scene. I was the tiniest bit shaken up by it all, but mostly glad that it had turned out ok and that physical conflict had been avoided all around. Sigh. I am NOT a conflict loving person, so this job is definitely stretching me!