ethnodramatology

It clicked when I was in the shower. It was my last year at Northwestern, and I was brainstorming monologue ideas for the Senior Show. That's the kind of thing I do in the shower. Suddenly, bigger ideas began to converge. Theatre. Cultures. Gospel. And it clicked! Ethnodramatology. Culturally contextualized theatre ministry. I promptly threw on a towel and called one of my theatre professors to tell him the good news. I knew what I wanted to do with my life. Well, at least part of it.

Here's how it works. You go to a people group and learn their way of telling stories. Every culture has a story-telling method, and it usually involves action and music. That method is an artistic language. It makes sense to those people. It reaches their hearts. You study those culturally specific drama styles. Those styles then become a powerful tool for communicating with the people about Jesus.

I'm not the only one who has thought of this ministry strategy. At a theatre conference in LA, I met K!mberly Creasman, a Christian artist who ministers through theatre in Singapore (http://spicetolife.blogspot.com/). She connected me with Julisa Rowe, an artist who not only wrote a dissertation on Ethnodramatology, but now lives it out in Nairobi, Kenya (http://www.ethnodrama.com/). I am so very encouraged by the fact that I'm not alone in this passion, and that it actually works! Lives are being changed, the Gospel is being shared, and people are being infused with hope and purpose and truth.

My hope is that I can help catalyze ministry through theatre among the Karen - in Karen style. Most of my tentative job description with Partners at the moment focuses on nursing. And that's just fine. I am passionate about wellness of body too. But as I look forward to a time when I can invest more in theatre ministry, I am both excited and overwhelmed by the possibilities.

Last Sunday, I had the privilege of meeting Joan and Allan Eubank in Chiang Mai. I love them already.  They both simply radiate the presence of the Holy Spirit. They also have a very homey living room and a real acoustic piano! Joan was a rising star Broadway musical actress when she was in her 20's. Then she married Allan and they chose to follow the call of God all the way to an obscure people group in Thailand called the Talakone. The Talakone are a sub-group of the Karen. Yep. Over the course of their 4+ decades in Thailand, they have been involved in all sorts of Kingdom work... including Thai-style theatre ministry! They even have a well-established training ground in Chiang Mai called the Christian Communication Institute. Their plays have toured all over Thailand, and to several other countries as well.

I really love the prospect of being a part of a pioneer ministry, but it can't happen in a vacuum, and I definitely can't do it alone. And by God's grace, there exists this amazing couple who have been doing Ethnodramatology for decades among the Thai, and who also have a heart for the Karen people. What a massive shot in the arm for me! They loaded me up with DVDs and books about their work, and Joan has promised to attempt to navigate the internet so we can stay in touch more easily. I'm excited to learn more about what they've done and how I can apply some of those ideas soon. More than excited. I feel like I'm Joshua and I just met Moses.

time

I have lived in Thailand for 3 months. Nearly. I actually landed on the 17th of August, and today is the 16th of November.

My housemate, Mary, is reading a book with the rather nonspecific title "Ethics." I was curious about whose ethics were contained therein, and on what they were based. Mary and I were flipping through the pages, and we came across this statement:

"Humans invented time."

After a little philosophizing, we came to the conclusion that this is false - that God invented time, and people invented various measurements that attempt to pin it down.

Time is so strange. Trying to comprehend it pulls my mental muscles. I have now lived in Thailand longer than I have lived in Canada, and yet by virtue of the fact that the 5 weeks I spent there were the first 5 weeks of my life, I have Canadian citizenship. It's not cold in Mae Sot at the moment, and all my previous experience tells me that November should be cold, so I am hard pressed to believe that it's truly November. I chose not to begin journaling at age 7 because I figured I had already missed out on capturing most things that would be worth writing. When I was 14, I found myself wishing I had started started at 7, and I determined that I wouldn't make the same mistake twice. The journals I started keeping then are now over half my lifetime away.

We span time with our memories of the past and dreams for the future, and yet we're stuck inside it. It's uncomfortable - like trying to walk around in shoes 5 sizes too small.

C.S. Lewis wrote somewhere that one strong argument for the fact that we are eternal beings is that we don't feel at home in time. It's constantly confounds us because we don't ultimately belong in it. We are fish out of water. We were built for eternity, and our souls know it.

The flesh we walk around in now? Not so much. Though it has some beautiful moments, it ages and breaks down and dies. The time we are given here is so short. A blink. A blip. Infinitesimally minute.

"All flesh is grass, and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever." (1 Peter 1:24) Puts things in perspective. The word of the Lord remains forever. Hallelujah! It is enough just to praise him for that.

But there is more. God has made it possible for us to be where we were built to be: eternity with him. Our flesh may wither, but we "have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God." (1 Peter 1:23) The living and abiding word, personified in Jesus Christ, births us into life that cannot die.

Right now there is a Karen woman from Burma staying with Marci. She has been widowed twice. Both her husbands were killed by the Burma army, leaving her to support her four children alone. She became so sad that she lost her will to live and stopped eating. Without nutrients, her immune system was weakened and she contracted tuberculosis. Her bones are visible through her skin.

All flesh is grass.

So our flesh is grass, but we are born of imperishable seed. Where does that leave us? With a choice, I think. As Gandalf wisely said to Frodo, "All we have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given to us." The bodies we have here wither in time, but before that happens we have the chance to invest in eternity. And the place where time and eternity intersect is now. "Now" is the moving window of opportunity where we have the freedom to make choices.

In that case, what is really worth our time? It makes a great deal of sense to me that everything we do "now" should be for the sake of Jesus, the word of the Lord, who remains forever.

The patient at Marci's house is now being treated for her tuberculosis. We try to encourage her appetite with delicious food. We provide a place to sleep and bathe for her and for the auntie who came along to help. We remind her of the joy of parenthood by loving Marci's children. We take her to the market so she can buy much-needed supplies for her own kids. We listen to her stories. I invite her to teach me new Karen words. And now I am working on translating a song of comfort into Karen for her, based on Matthew 11:28. "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." It is my prayer that she will indeed go to Jesus with her burdens of sickness, sorrow, and sin. For he will give her true rest in every way.

So it goes. We operate in the messy collision of time and eternity, finite and infinite, perishable and imperishable. We are reflections of the incarnation, ambassadors of a paradoxical Kingdom that is both already and not yet.

pitfalls

When the cable guys came to install our house internet service, they asked us to pick a location for the router. We chose a corner of the living room on the first floor. Then, as they began to set up ladders and bring in tools, it occurred to me that there was no outlet on that side of the room. The closest power source was directly on the opposite side of the room - a path that would require the cord to run across the doorway that leads to the rest of the house. Hardly safe or convenient. So I asked the guys (through a translator) to set up the router near the outlet instead, and explained that I didn't want a power cord across the threshold. They assured me there would be no such cord. I asked them to move again, quite sure that there would indeed be a cord problem. Again, they assured me there would be no such cord. I made one last effort, which was similarly refuted, and the router was accordingly installed in the location we initially chose. True to their word, they fed the cable through to the outside of the house using a hole they drilled in the cement wall. No cord across the doorway. I was satisfied with the results, and a bit embarrassed that I had hassled them so much.

The next day, an electrician came to supply the router with power. You guessed it. Not only was there a cord across the doorway, but it was an unsightly black thing that wasn't quite long enough to reach comfortably from one side of the room to the other. Mary made a valiant effort to get it off the floor by hanging it from hooks stuck to the wall by fluorescent multi-colored smiley-face plastic flowers - not exactly subtle, but certainly inventive. Those lasted one night, then they broke and the cord was back on the floor. And there it remained for a month of trampling and tripping.

I will not pretend that I wasn't annoyed by the cable guys' persistent denial of a problem they knew full well would inconvenience us. I don't know why they refused to change locations. But I think I might know why they misled me about the power cord. First of all, they were technically being truthful; they weren't going to install a cord in the offending location. Never mind that someone else would be doing exactly that in a matter of hours. Secondly, they knew that they would not be present when I discovered the arrival of the very thing I was trying to prevent. They didn't mind if I was upset as long as it didn't happen while they were around. As far as they were concerned, they had done their job and their customer was happy. Confrontation avoided. Face saved.

Fine for them, but not fine for me.

Meanwhile, in a different realm of the house, I was trying to figure out what baking pans would fit in my new oven. I found a shop that sold a wide variety of sizes, and I picked out something close to the classic staple 9"x13" that works well with most American recipes. I bought it and brought it home. Sadly, it didn't fit in my little oven. The next day, I was back at the shop. I explained my dilemma to the shopkeeper and asked if I could exchange the big pan for two smaller ones. He nodded in agreement, took the pan back, and gave me the two little pans instead. I figured I could bake in them side by side. I went home and was disappointed to discover that those pans wouldn't fit in the oven simultaneously either. "Ah well," I thought, "I can take them back to the shop if I find something better."

About that time, I went to a friend's garage sale. She sold me a baking pan that was just the right size for my oven. I was delighted. My intention to return the two small pans to the baking shop was settled.

But when I brought the pans back to the shopkeeper and tried to return them, he didn't seem to understand. He does speak English, so I was surprised at his confusion. I kept explaining, and he kept looking irresolute. He fingered the pans slowly, tilted his head, gazed at the shelves. He asked me if I wanted to exchange them for something else. No, I wanted a refund. He asked me if I wanted just one pan instead of two. No, I wanted a refund. Finally, he nodded slowly. He took the pans and gave me my money back. But he didn't make eye contact at all. He was beginning to look positively devastated, and I was beginning to realize that something wasn't right. My reaction was to thank him profusely, compliment his shop, and promise to come back again soon.

I found out later that refunds are not the done thing here. All sales are assumed to be final. Returning something and asking for your money back is an insult to the shopkeeper. It communicates that you as the customer are unsatisfied with the product. The product is closely associated with the shop, which is closely associated with the shopkeeper. My rejection of the pans was like a rejection of the person who sold them to me. No wonder he had looked so disconsolate. I got my refund, but the guy felt terrible.

Fine for me, but not fine for him. Well, sort of fine for me.

Oh, the pitfalls of culture collision! The surface ripples betray depths of difference. How can we span these gaps and navigate these hidden obstacles?

"Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love." (Ephesians 4:2)

Yeah. I think I need to spend some time soaking in God's grace. He is so patient and gentle with me, and to say that he bears with me in love would be an understatement. I do things to offend the culture of his Kingdom everyday, when I'm supposed to be one of its ambassadors. If he can deal graciously with me, then he can enable me deal graciously with the cultural quirks of the people around me. I am praying that they will somehow manage to forgive my inevitable foibles as well.

water

Nenana, my almost-three-year-old friend, often looks up at me and says, "Massum water." I know this translates to "I want some water," and I get her some.

Our bodies are 60% water. We need it to survive. And yet it's possible to take even a necessity for granted.

Until it's gone.

For 3 days last week, we had no running water in our house. We weren't the only ones. The only places in the city that did have water were the ones that had their own wells or tanks. Actually, our house recently got a tank too. It even has a pump. But the pump doesn't have access to electricity, so the water can't make it from the front patio to the house.

We keep water in basins in the bathrooms and kitchens, since this happens not infrequently. It took about 24 hours for us to use up the reserves. Still the pipes were empty.

I never realized before how often and how much we need water! Cooking, cleaning, bathing, flushing the toilet, washing hands, doing laundry. Without water, life is more complicated and stinkier. We had to use hand sanitizer, pile our dirty dishes in the sink, and shower at the office.

Thankfully, we did have plenty of drinking water. We buy that in jugs. But the lack of water for everything else reminded me that it is possible to be without good drinking water as well. Much of the world lives constantly in this dangerous predicament. And how much more acutely it must be felt in places hot enough to triple a person's daily hydration requirement. In fact, as I write this it's 94 degrees and I'm sweating. I just had to get myself a glass of water.

Perhaps it is not surprising that my week has brought some questions to mind.

Is my soul truly as thirsty for God as my body is for water?

The Psalmist says, "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?" (Psalm 42:1-2)

And if I resonate with the Psalmist, do I take Jesus up on his response?

"On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, 'Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink.'" (John 7:37)

And if I drink, am I content with my own satisfaction, or do I share it?

Jesus goes on to say, "'Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.'" (John 7:38)

Think of that! Rivers of living water. From him, through me, to others. And he never runs out.

Yesterday, I joined a truck load of friends for a trip to some waterfalls nearby. What a contrast to the empty pipes at home. I want my life to look like that.

Massum water, Lord Jesus!

stressed

I have a confession to make. I am getting stressed out about food.

I have this irrational fear that when it comes time for a meal, I won't have anything to eat.

At the risk of overanalyzing, I think this is because...

1. If I go to a restaurant, I can't communicate what I want. This is because I usually don't know what the options are since most menus don't have English. Even if I can figure out the options, I don't know how to say which one I want. You might think that a pictorial menu would solve this problem. However, once when I pointed to a soup on menu of this variety, three separate waitresses came to the table to ask me if I was sure I really wanted that dish. I was unmoved, and I later regretted it. It was super spicy and didn't fill me up at all.

2. If I eat at home, I have to think of what I'm going to make, shop for the ingredients, and assemble them successfully. This was often challenging even in my home country on familiar grocery-store and kitchen-utensil territory. Here it is more complicated. Grocery shopping involves a sweaty bike ride, at least two shops and their keepers, identifying foods that are less than self-explanatory, and bumbling through bargaining and purchases with no functional Thai or Burmese language skills. And then I come home to attempt food preparation in my kitchen, which until recently did not include an oven, mixing bowl, seasonings, or plates.

When I accomplish a delicious, inexpensive, healthy meal using either of these methods, I am so relieved. Then I remember that another meal is always on the horizon. And the stress-o-meter starts going up again.

(A caveat - breakfasts are easy, and I usually order lunch at the office on a menu that includes English.)

I was talking with a friend the other day, and I actually said the words, "I am worried about what I will eat." Matthew 6:25-27 flashed through my brain. I was arrested. Jesus has specifically told me not to worry about whether I'm going to eat. I have always had food, so I have brushed past his words, assuming they didn't apply to me. But these verses are not about whether or not I have food to eat; they are about whether or not I have worry in my heart. And I do.

It is marvelous to be thrown on God's mercy, to recognize that I need him in the most elemental way, to rely on him consciously, and to see him provide. My heavenly Father knows my needs. He knows that I need to eat, and that in order to eat in Thailand I really need his help! What an unexpected adventure in trust.

And here is the thing. In spite of my worry, I have not gone without a single meal. I have eaten rather like a queen actually - green papaya salad, banana flower with pasta, tofu cilantro curry, pumpkin lemongrass curry, taco chicken pizza, cinnamon rolls, oreo milkshakes, and plenty of pad thai. I could go on! What a twisted thing it is to doubt the Giver of such lavish gifts. I should be overflowing with gratefulness. And running after his kingdom instead of my next meal.

"So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." (Matt 6:31-33)

the list

I sat down with Mary the other day to make a list. I asked her, "What do we need to buy for our house?" She and Jean and I will be living together for a year. Our house is unfurnished, so we are starting from scratch.

Some things on our cooperative list made sense to both of us: plates, refrigerator, fans.

Other things made less sense. Initially.

I suggested we buy a water pitcher. Mary said, "What for?" I explained. Turns out she is used to using water bottles, and in the end they do work better for cool water because the pitcher doesn't fit in the fridge. We do still use the water pitcher though. It's a handy intermediate for pouring water into glasses since the big water jug is awkward and heavy.

Mary suggested we buy kitchen shoes. I said, "What for?" She explained that it's best to put something on our feet while we cook because of all the grease and water on the floor. I wondered out loud if there needed to be grease and water on the floor. Apparently there does. Now I have kitchen shoes.

I thought we needed a stove. Mary and Jean can manage nicely using just a rice cooker and a plug-in wok. We got a stove anyway, mostly for my sake. But Mary and Jean like it too.

Mary thought we needed big water basins for the bathroom. I didn't understand until I realized that water only comes out of our taps about half the time, so the basins are a very necessary backup supply.

I bought a spatula and a whisk. Mary bought a mortar and pestle. I bought toilet paper. Mary bought dipper buckets with handles.

And so the learning begins.

Here we are having a moving-into-our-house thanksgiving dinner with friends. Mary and Jean are on the left.

tied

It was my second day with L. She is teaching me the Karen language, and as language and culture are inextricable, she is teaching me about Karen culture as well. Friday morning, we bounced along mud-puddled roads on our Mary Poppins bikes to visit a local boarding school. They were celebrating the annual Karen wrist-tying ceremony.

About 1000 people were there, mostly kids, all in Karen traditional clothes. The chairs at one end of the large hall were mostly occupied, but that left about three quarters of the crowd to mill in and out of the 10 side doors during the ceremony - taking pictures and talking and relocating for a better view.

Among the milling mass of people were a few of the dear, rambunctious, affectionate kids who live in tents across the road from the house where I had been staying. They spent some time with me and KS and SS over the last two weeks - coloring, playing with dolls, singing, folding paper cranes. At the ceremony, they recognized me, and it wasn't long before my legs were being hugged by several grinning little friends.

During the ceremonial wrist-tying itself, L translated and explained. Tradition says that the souls of children tend to wander to dark places. Respected elders then call those spirits back to the bodies of the children they belong to. They tie threads around the kids' wrists to keep their spirits bound to their bodies, to their families, to discipline, and to culture. The act of tying somehow includes round bamboo trays full of rice, bananas, and flowers, among other things - all symbolic. If you want to learn more, you can read about the tradition here: http://www.drumpublications.org/wrist.php .

The wrist-tying ceremony is controversial among Karen Christians. Some say it is merely cultural heritage and causes no harm. Others say that because their faith is in Christ alone, it would be wrong even to appear to place trust for the well-being of their children in something like wrist-tying. My conscience was clear in attending the event as an observer, but I had no intention of participating.

After a few minutes, L took me out to the open balcony to meet some of her friends. As we stood and talked, I suddenly felt little hands fumbling with my left wrist. I looked down, and there was one of the neighbor girls, intently wrapping my wrist in red thread. She finished and smiled up at me expectantly. I  gave her a hug and said the only word I know in Burmese, which is the only language she speaks: "Chezu tinbade." Thank you. Thank you for caring about me and showing it in a way you understand.

So much for not participating.

That sweet girl and her friends do get to go to church every week. They come home singing praise songs. I am praying that they hear the truth about Jesus and believe.

That day reminded me to pray another prayer as well. I don't believe in the power of incantations and string bracelets for the security of my soul. But I resonated with the heart of that ceremony - the desire to bind ourselves to what is most important.

Jesus, place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot sweep it away. If one were to give all the wealth of one's house for love, it would be utterly scorned. (SOS 8:6-7)