Life in the Living Fields

Cambodian Update-

Today I am helping Seila in DP 2 (Diamond Project 2). The lesson is about Isolation and why it happens to us, and how we can wait, persevere and work through it. Seila asked me to give my testimony concerning my isolation just before, during and after my divorce and what God taught me. I shared with 20 DP students what I have shared with no one else, mainly because nobody really ever asked. The DP students asked a lot of very good questions. It is very encouraging to see DP classes going strong in KCham, PP, and K.Thom. They are having some problems with K.Chhnang but these problems can be ameliorated. The drop in center is packed from 3:30 pm to 7:30 pm at night. Even monks come to learn computer and English. The drop in center is right next to the CMA’s monolithic flagship church and remains empty most of the time, except on Sundays for church services.

Yesterday I went to look at some land in Kompong Speau province that would make a perfect camp ground that could be used year round. It is owned by a Korean man who wants to make use of this land. He does not want to sell the land, but let us use it as long as we want it. Other than being ripped to shreds by thorns, wilting under the sweltering heat, and stung by nasty red ants, it was an interesting tour through bush. It reminded much of my tour of duty in the Nam back in ’68.
The Westminster Chapel gang has gone back to the land of free and corporate greed and left me holding the bag in Cambodia. I don’t mind that. I’ve already gone to the dentist to repair two fillings for the cost of $100. Next I will find my Russian doctor to diagnose my stomach problems which I have had since before Thanksgiving.
Tomorrow I will go out to an Island on the Mekong to attend a church service in the church of my friend Mr. Ey Vonn. He really has only one eye so it seems God played a trick on him by giving him the birth name of Ey Vonn. If pronounced the American way, it is Vonn Ey (one eye).

The church is doing better in the Kingdom. His Excellency Heng Cheng, General Secretary of the EFC is helping to bring unity to the various generations in the Khmer Church. Raju Sbagwat is helping bring reconciliation those Christian leaders who have held grudges against each other in the past and is having a lot of success. The EFC KEY is still doing great work training up emerging leaders. Seila is becoming a highly desired teacher and speaker on worldview and how to engage this post-modern generation. He is also a writer on indigenous theology, a poet, musician and owner of former dog, sniper. The latter is his best credential.
I have been asked to speak at Hagar this Monday to the expat and Khmer staff. This will be a first. I am still wondering what to say but I suppose I will come up with something. I am here waiting for a group from First Presbyterian and Calvin to come in with their big guns (105 mm Howitzers). I’m just a little gun with a small pop (an air rifle with a cork in the barrel.

Since I owe the IRS $7300, I might skip the country and stay in Cambodia. I will keep you posted while I am in hiding in Cambodia. As money gets short, I may have to live on duck embryos and crickets.

Amazing Stories from Kompong Thom

Just a short update from the bowels of Cambodia… I have been in my glory eating Cambodia food which I have missed so much. Wow, it is so good. The soup seasoned with Ganja is especially tasty. I’ve finally come home. The language is back, jack. I’m the man again.

Along with Pastor Ralph and a few young adults, I am leading a group of Junior High School students from Westminster Chapel in Bellevue and here we are, way up country, ministering to students in dorms who come from far away in the provinces. We had a great time playing games and doing tie dye t-shirt with them. We also participated in a Diamond Program class here in Kompong Thom (I helped launch this program). After church today we head back to PP where will minister with the EFC KEY and Andong Village.

I can’t say how impressed I am with some of these junior high school kids. Only 15 or 16, these teenagers are grappling with some difficult issues and concepts, ones that we adults suppress all our lives in order not to the abuse and suffering of the impoverished in this world. We work and hoard, and pile up material processions so high we cannot see a hurting world around us. In the last few days, after seeing the Diamond Program students and spending time with the teens of group, I feel hopeful. If we aren’t willing to get it, a remnant of the church will somehow. These teens are at a point where they can choose not become hoarders, consumers and good capitalists who market to know no end. They are not yet trapped in the system.
Last night Pastor Ralph led a debriefing in our room and we listened to what impressed the teens. One teen was impressed how the Diamond Project students (19 of them) were so serious about learning how to become good Christian leaders. No one had to be enticed to come and learn with promises of entertainment- they actually paid to enroll. Another teen girl who had to use the outhouse was sort of shocked that the sink was an open concrete/ tile box with murky water in it. It hit her just how our western reality is really a social construct which doesn’t reflect or include the reality of the rest of the world. Yet another teen saw how Cambodian young people really knew how to have fun and no one stood around trying to be cool. All the Cambodian dorm students participated in the games and activities, no one was excluded. One of our teens commented how awesome the Diamond Program was as they listed to DP students talk about time they spent with their mentors and all the creative field work they were doing. She sort of wished they had such a program back home. Most of them realized that by agreeing to go on this trip, they would be faced with a choice; either to build a life-long ethical response to the poor or to begin building life-long defense mechanisms enabling them to live in denial of a true Christian ethical response while they purse self-actualization, and the building of economic safety nets, maybe even in ways that oppress the poor. I have great hope for the majority of this group. I am glad too, that there will be some adults who can follow up with these young people and help them to continue to process all that emerges from the very unique situation God has placed them in. Pray for them.

Stories from Kompong Thom

Thamor Kohl District Church in Kompong Thom hosted our group today. Chumno, an EFC KEY staff of Kompong Thom translated the announcements. "Please pray that we can find the funding to rebuild our chicken. Our chicken burned down a few months ago." I was aware their kitchen burned down, but no one told me about the chicken burning down. Shouldn't be too hard to raise some funding to buy a new chicken but why aren't they worrying about the kitchen? Doesn't make much sense.

The Westminster teens taught the dorm students in Kompong Thom how to tie-dye t-shirts. It was interesting. I jokingly said to a Cambodian student, when you're finished with that, why don't you tie dye that white dog over there? A few minutes later the Westminster young people were calling me to stop the Cambodian boys from tie-dying the dog. "Brian, why didn't you stop them?" I said, "Well, their pastor was right there, I didn't want to over-ride his authority." Now Thamor Kohl has a white dog with a green racing stripe and few patches of blue. They blame me. What's up with that? By the way, they all wore their tie dyed shirts to church the next day and they looked great! I saw the white dog slinking about the church grounds and he fit right in.

The other night, Nick, one the adult leaders took the “Fertilized Duck Egg Challenge.” This consists of eating a fertilized duck egg which has developed almost into a baby duck in the shell. Has soft bones, a beak, wings, feathers, etc, inside the shell. You open the top of the egg, put a mixture of pepper and lime juice, and then eat the embryo out of the shell with a little spoon. Nick popped a big piece into his month and set there contemplating swallowing it. Pretty soon he began to look a little pale and spewed the contents of his mouth onto his plate. This just delighted those knuckled headed junior high students who were laughing themselves silly we attracted quite a crowd-with them being the noisy Americans they are.

Its a Funny Kind of a Story

Here I am on a looooong flight from Seattle to Taiwan…then on to Cambodia. I’ve been mulling over some thoughts and really couldn’t pull them together into something coherent….not until I gave up and watched a movie. The movie said what I was thinking in many ways and you ought to get out and go see it. It is, A Funny Kind of Story. The story is about a 16 year old boy, who is facing a lot of pressures that young people and all people face, realities of a bad local and global economy, two wars, global warming, pressure to excel at his private school, extra pressure from his dad to get into a summer program for gifted teens with business acumen, and the fact that all of his affluent peers have academics come easy to them, as well as sports, drama, and music, etc. Craig actually has to work extremely hard at all these things to keep up. Craig has been on anti-depressants and goes off them. He finds himself checking into a sanitarium on his block because he feels suicidal, and after getting a tour and seeing his new roommates, he begs the psychiatrist to let him out- he made a mistake and wants to go home. The head shrink takes his admission of feeling suicidal seriously, and tells him he has to stay for a week. Craig is petrified among these people; schizophrenics, an orthodox Jew who burned out on an acid overdosed, an Egyptian man who can’t get of bed, an middle aged African-American woman who flipped out when the Patriot Act was passed, his closest new friend Bobby, a mid-thirties guy who just can’t make it on the outside and a beautiful teenage girl, Noelle. He wants out, he tells the head shrink, because he isn’t like them. Ring any bells?

And, I fear this is what many of us church goers feel when we look outside the four walls of the church. We are okay because we are not like ‘them’ and that attitude is our death sentence. The church is busy dying instead of being born. We need to ask ourselves as individuals, “ are we busy dying or being born?” Christians today have more of a need to be converted than many other groups we pity or point our fingers at, groups that are the target of our ministries.

After a few days in the psych ward Craig’s whole perspective about life is changed as he learns from patients he lives with. He discovers how to express himself in art which relieves him of the great burden of stress he carries. He also learns wisdom from his fellow patients and begins to understand that although they may be screwed up every which way, each one imparts wisdom for living to him. By the end of the week, Craig drops his sense of entitlement and decides to live the life of a normal teen rather than become a victim of the overachiever mindset his dad is imposing on him. Craig plans to do art, go biking, skating, spend time with Noelle who met on the ward, and just live life. He is excited about the prospect of being normal and simplifying.

I see so many Christian parents put academics as a priority over discipleship with their children. They want to make sure their children will enjoy the affluent, safe and ‘risk free’ life which is not what Jesus calls to at all. Jesus calls us to yoke up with his suffering, self-sacrifice, self-denial, simplicity, equality and solidarity with the poor. Damn, what a disservice. How can we as parents discover our error and change our tact before we create bigger Pharisees of children than we have of ourselves? We can only be converted to the truth by becoming the poor, the marginalized, the addicted, the ostracized, and the mentally ill, or experience their reality. We need to build our theology and perspective of life not from our perch in the affluent burbs, but from the margins of society, which is the context and perspective from which Jesus spoke.

By the end of the week Craig is serving the patients and doing things for them that enrich their lives. He decides that volunteering on the ward will be part of his new life. He was born again, and he became a new person because he became one the dregs of society, one of the forgotten, and the experience has changed his life, and he has a new course that will freak out his parents. He was spared from a sentence of being a teenage overachiever in a pragmatic world where all activities were done to put on a college resume in order to get into the best college, to get the best job that makes the most money. Perhaps he would become a great psychiatrist and help those who taught him how to live.

Probably by this time, half of you stopped reading and the other half of you are muttering charges of heresy and ‘let’s burn him at the stake.’ That’s ok, though. I’m just writing from my own experience- no full time job, lost my spouse and former ministry, and other that, I am doing great. The last 3 years of life has been one of conversion by the marginalized and to the marginalized. I owe them my life.

Brian

The Hooch Squad

While on home leave this summer I stayed up late a few nights just writing about various life experiences. Sometimes I forward these articles on to magazines that might be interested. Back in December of ’97, one of my articles appeared in Adirondac Magazine. This most recent December (2000), The Adirondack Explorer published one of the articles I wrote this summer about my life and times at Paul Smith’s College which is in the heart of the Adirondack Mountains. I studied forestry at Paul Smith’s in the late seventies -and loved it.

When The Adirondack Explorer received my article, they requested that I might dig up some photos of my early days at Smitty’s. I found a few and sent them on. Meanwhile, the folks at the ‘Explorer’ had gone to Paul Smith’s and collected a few photos of their own. When my folks sent me the magazine, I was surprised to see one particular photo I had never seen before. It had four students at a ‘Woodsmen’s Meet’, standing against a truck with a sign that said, “Hooch Squad”. I knew two of the students quite well. One was my roommate (center with a beard) for the summer of ‘78 and the other, the one farthest to the left, was the guy whose testimony urged me seriously to consider becoming a follower of Jesus back in early ’79. His name was Mark Coffin.

When I first arrived at PSC, Mark Coffin had a long thick beard and was captain of the Woodsman team. He kind of reminded me of Aqualung but larger and more buffed. He was from somewhere around Boston and grew up as an adopted child. Mark was a serious drinker and a brawler, a pretty rough character all around. I managed to avoid him, not really knowing what he was all about. At the time, I was thinking, ‘safety first’ is the best policy.

As I went into my second year as a forestry student (PSC was only a two-year college at the time) Mark graduated and went to work with a local logging outfit. Meanwhile, through a real revival type situation on the Paul Smith’s campus, some of Mark’s friends had decided to become followers of Jesus. They shared that good news with Mark who didn’t think that it was such great news at the time. For Mark, it meant having a few less drinking buddies.

One a late winter afternoon, somewhere not too far from the Saranac Lake area, Mark was helping the skidder operator slap some chokers around the butts of some remaining felled trees that had been limbed out and ready to go. This was the last hitch of logs for the day to be dragged out to the landing. They were pretty far back in off the main road. It was getting quite cold and their warm breath clouded in the chilly late afternoon air. It was the weekend so everyone wanted to get home early. Mark told the skidder operator, “go ahead and take this hitch out and I’ll walk back. I want to take care of this one hanger.” Earlier while Mark was felling a tree, it’s crown got hung up in another tree, never hitting the ground. He wanted to make sure it was on ground before leaving the area as hunters or hikers might chance by only to have the tree come down on top of them. Mark watched the diesel skidder roar to life, belch out plumes of dense black smoke and disappear around the bend with a thousand feet of timber dragging behind it. Mark fired up his Stihl 0.51. He began to cut a small section out of the butt of tree hoping it would cause the crown to roll off the other tree and come down. The tree did twist, and quite fast but in the wrong direction so that it came down right on Mark’s leg, breaking his femur and pinning him to the ground. He lay there trapped to the ground in a bed of hard packed snow while a flurry of swirling snowflakes landed on his face intermittently. From the angle where he lay, all he could see was the tops of hardwoods, swaying in the Adirondack’s bone chilling winter breeze. In excruciating pain, the only thing other thing his senses were picking up was the sound of the skidder, now about half way out to the log landing. He knew he was dead. He would die within a half-hour from shock or from hypothermia. Both weren’t the worst ways to die, and what better place than in an Adirondack forest, but on the other hand, he was only twenty-one and he wanted to live. For some reason he thought of all his friends and those he would miss the most. He thought of his Christian friends whom he had alienated. At this point, he was ready to deal with the God; the God of whom his friends had said was good news. He talked to God in the pain, in the cold quiet grayness of the waning day and in the isolation. He told God, “If YOU, like my friends say, are great enough to deliver me from death and save me, I will follow your son Jesus for the rest of my life.” How this would work out, he knew not. All of a sudden Mark noticed that there was complete silence in deepening grayness. The sun had set and dark was rapidly encroaching on what traces of light that were left. The dark made the silence deafening but it seemed to carry a message with it. In his delirium, he was trying to think. What is it about this quietness? Then he knew immediately. The skidder had reached the log landing, was parked and shut off. The only thing that occurred to Mark was to shout for help, which was ridiculous because the landing was almost a mile away – but he did anyway. He shouted and shouted until he became hoarse and could shout no more. He lay back to let shock and exposure do its work. What else could he do?

The next thing he knew, the familiar sound of a diesel engine was idling in the background of his senses. It was dark now and his leg was hurting to the point where he’d rather slip back into unconsciousness. Someone had a peavey and was lifting the tree off his leg, shouting at him to try and move. He vaguely recalls the ride back on the skidder which was probably a good thing - a mile over logging trails (not logging roads) in the dark with a broken femur could not be that comfortable.

I heard about the accident and that Mark was in the hospital. Then I saw him hobbling around campus with crutches, after that a cane. The next time I saw him, he was knocking on my door at Gabriel’s campus in late December of 1978. The cane was gone but there was a new addition. There was a large Bible under his arm. For Mark Coffin, this was something new! Mark was making the rounds. He went to every single dorm room on Paul Smith’s College Campus and Gabriel’s Campus (where we second foresters were sent in exile). He even looked up students living off campus. He wanted to tell everyone that Jesus Christ, is indeed good news. It was because of his testimony and his love for God that made me consider my own situation. Not long after that, I committed my life to following Christ as well. How many others were influenced by his life, I am unsure but I would not be surprised if it were more than I thought.

The first I heard from Mark after he left the St. Regis area was in 1984 while I was studying at Word of Life in Schroon Lake. He was working with Youth for Christ in San Jose. I tried to look him up again but lost track of him. I did reach him from Cambodia by email in ’96. I forget how I got hold of his email address. He had left Youth for Christ and was a Youth Minister in a large church Evangelical Free Church in San Jose, CA. I have once again lost track of him for a few years but found out that he is in Montana pastoring a church and hates email.


Brian M. Maher