good life

Three years ago, my family started sending care packages to kids through the Free Burma Rangers. They have a program called the "Good Life Club" - kind of like a portable Vacation Bible School that FBR teams put on for villagers all over Burma.

John 10:10 says this: "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full."

That's the point of the GLC: building up instead of tearing down, fullness instead of emptiness, life instead of death.

Two years ago, sitting the floor of a kitchen during a taco party in Chiang Mai, I got to talk about GLC with Hosanna, one of FBR's finest. She helps run the program. After her descriptions of the songs and games, plays and stories, I sincerely hoped I could join in someday.

Last month, I crossed paths with Hosanna in the jungle. Low and behold, she and Karen were in the midst of GLC practices with a Karen FBR team. They invited me into the process. And so it was that I got to direct a remount of "Mosquito Versus Man," the same play I helped put together two years ago at a training in Thailand. I also taught them the Mosquito Song that went with with the play.

It was so much fun. The team was willing to jump in and try anything. They learned the whole play-and-song package in two practices. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I could communicate effectively in a combination of Karen language and exaggerated mime. And though I didn't get to be a part of the actual GLC program they put on a few days later with the mosquito components I helped them prepare, I trust that it went well.

Life is good!

jungle medicine

Two AM, and I am pulled toward consciousness by a muffled "1, 2, 3," followed by the rachety hum of the generator. An X-ray. I slide out of my sleeping bag and into the action of the makeshift living-room-turned-emergency-department.

This is the Jungle School of Medicine Kawthoolei at its finest. We may be in the middle of the jungle in the middle of the night, but we're certainly not at a loss. I say "we." I am here as an observer. I have come to see this remarkable thing - a school of medicine tucked into an obscure valley in Karen State, training medics to serve a people in desperate need of good medical care. This is good work. For a week, I've looked over shoulders and walked the rhythm of life here, and I am impressed with what I've seen. Then the plan was for my group to leave the school early this morning and hike all day to reach another village. Sometimes plans change.

The generator groans as the X-ray takes another image. Our patient is a stoic young man who I am told was shot in a hunting accident a few hours ago. He smiles, Mercutio-like, and says his Good Mornings. The wounds are small, but they promise to be enough. Bits of the bullet managed to pierce his abdomen and his chest cavity. He is in enormous abdominal pain, and he's starting to have trouble breathing. His X-ray shows a hemothorax. It's only a matter of time before he'll drown in his own blood. Unless we do something. So much for being an observer.

Dr. Mitch sends the nurse-midwife and me to the Inpatient Department so we can start antibiotics and set everything up for a chest tube insertion. My mind flashes back five years to when I was a nursing student and saw this procedure performed on a little girl. I try to remember details. What did they use? How did it work? I poke around in the mercifully well-labeled supply room and pull out bits and pieces - things Dr. Mitch mentioned or that occur to me as potentially useful: a pleuravac, chest tube and scalpel, sterile gloves, gauze and betadine, tegaderm. The other nurse and I put the pleuravac together like a piece of do-it-yourself furniture, reading the instructions (once we locate the bit in English) and following them step by step. Then we hook the thing up to a car battery that had been charged during the day by solar power. It works. Score.

Minutes later, we're all standing around the patient, as ready as we know how to be. We pray. We methodically talk through what we're about to do. And away we go. There I am, still in my pajamas, serving up the sterile field with lidocaine and instruments and suture. Headlamps focus on the operation site. A gush of blood issues from the pleural cavity as the scalpel does its work. Tubes, ties, suction, and soon the internal blood reservoir is draining into the pleuravac. Gauze and tape, and we're done. Placement confirmed, patient stable.

We don't have the facilities to address the man's acute abdomen, so we know we need to send him to a hospital at least a day's walk away. An extremely fit Free Burma Ranger team is available minutes later, ready and willing to carry the guy where he needs to go. We set up a small substitute drain connection with a one-way valve and send him on his way. It is probably the most miserable journey of his life, but he is alive to take it.

A week later, I find out that our patient is doing well. He made it to the hospital, they took care of him in ICU for a few days, and he is on the road to recovery. The doctors there are impressed with the care he got before he arrived. So am I.

It's amazing, really. Generator, solar power, X-ray, chest tube equipment, a medical team, a transport team - everything and everyone necessary to save this man's life, strategically placed in the outback of southeast Asia. And all of it is part of a bigger picture - a vision to multiply this ability through education. And that vision is part of something bigger yet - a mission to bring help, hope, and love to those who suffer here. The big stuff isn't just talk or wishful thinking; it is manifest in this man's story, and in the stories of so many others. I am giddy with praise for it. Truly, our God is great and is doing marvelous things.

life and death

"I died today, and I have been born into a new life in Jesus Christ."

These were the words of my friend, TDW, minutes after she was baptized this morning. True, but really very shocking. Becoming a true follower of Christ means nothing short of dying to sin and being brought to life by the power of God.

"We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life." (Romans 6:4)

That's radical. It's life and death. Death to life.

At our Wednesday Bible study at work, we were asked the question, "How would you explain 'eternal life' to someone who's never heard of it before?"

My friend Kelli said something like this: "Here on earth, everything is moving toward death. In heaven, everything is moving toward life." That made sense to me. Things fall apart here. The law of entropy is at work because the prince of this world has been given some power for a time. But in Jesus, everything is moving toward life. He creates. And when the fullness of his Kingdom comes, glory will pile upon glory like diamonds in a hall of mirrors. All things will be made new. And then, as John Donne wrote in his poem, "Death, thou shalt die."

There is a lot of dying going on in this world - so much that is decaying and breaking and going terribly wrong. But, thanks be to God, this is not the end of the story.

"Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this." (Isaiah 9:7)

Hallelujah! Endless increase of all that is in Jesus - of all that is life! Amen.

That increase starts when we accept the gift of life made possible by Jesus' death. It can begin in us here. It began in TDW today. And it began in my housemate, Mary, a few weeks ago. I praise God for my sisters in Christ, born into eternal life!

"And we who, with unveiled faces, all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit." (2 Corinthians 3:18)

the sound of music

I love music so much.

I can't listen to music while I'm doing something else that requires concentration. I will get distracted and sing along. Even if it's just instrumental. Ask my brother.

I am told that when I was being potty trained at age 2, I would spend lots of extra time on the porcelain throne in the little tile echo chamber, singing my little heart out. Call it an early appreciation for good acoustics.

When I'm in a parking lot and a car alarm goes off somewhere, my first impulse is to make up a song that includes the monotone beeping as a complimentary part of a more complex melody.

If I, or anyone in my presence, mentions a word, phrase, or even idea that reminds me of a song, I will sing it - sometimes without realizing I'm doing so.

In musicals, it is often said, the characters break out in song when what they have to say is too important to be left merely to the powers of speech. I think this is perfectly natural. Life therefore should be a musical. Mine is.

I've always had music around me. And I've always been given opportunities to make music of my own. Instruments, choirs, concerts. Singing prayers at meals and bedtime. Musicals. Lessons. Caroling. Worship teams. Composition.

Yes, there is also music in Thailand. But not nearly as accessible to me, and not nearly as much to my taste.

I have heard some extremely painful performances here, live and on recording. Thai is a nasal, tonal language containing sounds strikingly similar to the vocalizations of suffering felines. And they love loud speakers here. Really loud speakers.

Pianos are my favorite instrument, and they are hard to come by in Mae Sot. Most electric keyboards have (far) less than 88 keys, and I am a bit of a piano snob; I want the whole instrument to be present, if at all possible. Acoustic pianos have about as much luck staying in tune here as they would have if you dunked them in a hot tub for a few months out of the year.

There are no choirs I can join, no performances of "The Messiah" to see at Christmas, no instruments in my house - unless you count my voice, which I do employ at a frequency and volume that might explain the neighbors' knowing smiles when I pass them in the street.

All this to say - I miss music. I've been surviving on low rations, and I'm feeling it. I suppose since I've never really been forced to reduce my musical intake, I haven't noticed how important it really is to me.

And, as if in response to my relative deprivation, my heart has recently been very much blessed "with the sound of music."

At Christmas, I was given not one, not two, but twelve albums of music that I'm thoroughly enjoying. That's right. Twelve.

I got to see a musical performance of the Christmas story at Mae La camp - quite well done.

I heard a spontaneous, solo classical rendering of "Oh Holy Night" when I was in Chiang Mai.

One afternoon, I got to play Allan and Joan's real acoustic piano, which was, incidentally, in very good tune.

I was invited to spend three hours singing Christmas carols with a bunch of delightful folks in the festively lit garden of a friend.

When my parents were at Oma's house, I sang "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" with the three of them over Skype. There was a bit of a delay, but I could definitely live with that.

I was over at some friends' house on Christmas Eve helping set up their elaborate Nativity scene, and a whole gang of Karen kiddies came to the house caroling.

There is a full length electric keyboard in the home of one of the families in Mae Sot that works at Partners with me. I got to play that keyboard during our time of worship at Home Church last Sunday. And I was joined at the last minute by two other musicians - one on guitar and one on box-drum. An impromptu band! Everyone in the room seemed to worship with great passion. I certainly was. That might be my favorite thing to do - right up there with swimming in waterfalls. I was so thrilled for the rest of the day that I couldn't help riding my bike home twice as fast as I normally do.

That same family has asked me to give one of their daughters piano lessons. I can hardly wait.

Aaaaand they have offered to let me use their keyboard for four months while they're back in the US on furlough this summer. I'm pretty sure I jumped and cheered.

"Therefore I will praise you, Lord, among the nations;
I will SING the praises of your name!"
Psalm 18:49

okra, toilet paper, and a pageant

Some random experiences from the last little while...

A few weeks ago, I bought some vegetables, including okra, with the intention of making a stir-fry curry dish. The next day, I discovered said vegetables on the stove, concocted into a soup by one of my lovely housemates. I tried some. It was odd. First of all, okra should never be boiled. It becomes positively mucoid. Second of all, okra should never be sweet. It just doesn't work. I bravely slurped away regardless. When the creator of the soup found me eating it, she made a face indicating that her opinion of the stuff coincided with mine. Turns out that some of our many recent house guests had refilled one of the Thai spicy salt containers with what they of course assumed was spicy salt. They were wrong. They had got hold of my baking supplies, more specifically my brown sugar. Mary was not aware of this unintentional blunder when she began cooking a few days later. The result was painfully sweet okra soup. Interestingly, while she seemed averse to the fact that it was sweet, she was not bothered by its blatant sliminess. We threw the rest away. Eventually.

Most people from Thailand and Burma do not use toilet paper. Let me re-phrase. They don't use toilet paper for its intended purpose. They do use it as a rolled, segmentable serviette during meals. But in the bathroom, they prefer to use water. Only water. Sometimes from a handled dipper bucket, sometimes from a conveniently-located spray hose. The two bathrooms in our house are each blessed with the spray hose variety, an easy reach from the toilet. I don't use them. Let me re-phrase. I don't use them for their intended purpose. I do use those hoses to power-wash the bathroom floor and walls from time to time. Ever since we got a water pump for the house, our water pressure is first-rate. And the little spray hoses only have two settings: off and full blast. Water comes out of those nozzles at a speed that would rival a Delta Sonic car wash. Yet, I've noticed that the toilet paper in the bathrooms still remains almost untouched. I can only imagine the alternative experience.

Mary and I went to a fashion show at a Karen school around the corner a few days ago. The first two hours were predictable but not uninteresting. Pairs of high school students were dressed in traditional Karen clothing from ten different Karen State regions. Each guy/girl combo would take turns stepping up to the microphone and explaining the symbolism and significance of their apparel. Then came part two of the program. It was a complete surprise, at least to me. You might even say shock. With much fanfare, the MC announced that we were about to witness a pageant: Miss IDP. Now, IDP stands for "Internally Displaced Person," a status normally associated with brutal attacks and death-defying escapes. Not exactly congruous with a beauty pageant. I wasn't sure what to expect. Pretty soon, the louder speakers started blaring Smash Mouth's "Allstar," and the contestants paraded onto the well-lit stage: ten uncommonly shapely youth flaunting about in trendy western style dresses. The MC put them through all kinds of entertaining trials: model walking, "Simon Says" type physical antics, and then live interviews. By then, if there was any doubt as to the identity of the contestants, it was completely dispelled by their cracking falsetto voices and masculine laughter. "Internally Displaced" indeed! We left around eleven, and they were still going strong. Over all, I was rather encouraged by the proof that these young Karen were holding onto their traditional roots but were also willing to be ridiculous. In both cases they were uninhibited, which gave me hope for future theatrical adventures alongside the Karen.

deliver us

"Oh come, oh come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear."

They didn't get it. Israel expected a revolutionary leader who would free them from the Roman Empire. They expected an army, a battle, a crown. They got Jesus, and they tried to make him fit their expectations.


"Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?" (Matthew 11:3)


He was definitely the one. But he had a much better Kingdom to inaugurate - counterintuitive, eternal, borderless. They just didn't get it.

Neither do I.

"The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it." (John 1:5)

This year more than ever before, I resonate with the longing for concrete political freedom from an oppressive regime. I have prayed for that kind of deliverance for the Karen, the Kachin, the Rohingya - for all the ethnic groups in Burma who have been suffering man-made disasters for the past six decades.

"Turn Lord, and deliver [them]. Save [them] because of your unfailing love." (Psalm 6:4)

Turn, Lord, and save the minority ethnic groups from the violence of the government, the army, and each other.

I believe that is a good prayer that reflects the heart of a righteous God.

But I am beginning to wonder if I've got my kingdoms mixed up. Who really needs saving, and from what?

"She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins." (Matthew 1:21)

Not "he will save his people from the Roman Empire." Not "he will save the ethnic minorities from the Burma Army."

He will save his people from their sins. Ah. Thanks for the reminder.

And isn't that infinitely better news?

The apostle Paul wrote a letter to the Romans about the saving grace of God through the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ - to the Romans, the citizens of the oppressive regime!

"All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus." (Romans 3:23-24)

God wasn't in the business of saving the Israelites from the Romans. He was all about saving people from their sins.

There it is.

"Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." (1 Timothy 1:15)

That is huge! And that profound truth should reorient my prayers.

"Oh come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan's tyranny
From depths of hell thy people save
And give them victory o'er the grave."

Lord, may your Kingdom come in Burma. May the rule of Jesus Christ take over the hearts and actions of all the people there, not excluding the government and the army. Rescue all the peoples there from the destructive oppression of sin!

Never have I been so aware of the need for a Savior. Never have I been so grateful for Christmas.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, oh Israel...
...and Rome, and Burma, and the world!

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.