Bophal and
I live in a small, humid cave on the half floor of the “House of Peace.” Bophal
doesn’t mind it at all but I tend to suffer from a bit of cabin fever. A third of
the cave is our bedroom, a third serves as a very small kitchen area, and remaining third is Bophal’s office. At night the kitchen and office are converted
into a sleeping area for my adopted daughter Miss Yorean (10), and her friend, Miss
Srey Noich (10). They sleep together like two peas in a pod on the floor. The
two girls knock off about 9:30 pm, and before they doze off, Yorean shouts out
in English: “Good night daddy, have good
dreams.” Srey Noich keeps it short and sweet because she does not know much
English; “Good night, Brian.” Srey
Noich has become part of my life - I see her waking up, going off to school,
and I see her going to sleep. I can feel God’s love for Srey Noich which is so thick, I can
cut it with a knife. When I come home for lunch or from work in the evening,
she is always waiting to hug me or grab my hand to escort me to the stairs
leading to my cave. This is if my daughter Yorean doesn’t get to me first. Anyway,
Srey Noich’s father has decided to have us send her home, and that will make my
cave a less hospitable place for me, and I am left feeling like a piece of my soul
is being ripped out. She will return to Battambang province and live in a small
thatched roofed hut. She will be able to continue her schooling while her dad
ekes out a living farming. Bophal took her in when her father sent her across
the country to live with her aging grandmother who could not properly care for
her.
So, what’s
the point? So what? This is life.
Since my
crash ‘n burn, time spent in the Belly
of the Whale, and my release, I was truly “Born Again” in real sense of the often misused, trivialized, and cliché-sounding biblical metaphor, a great metaphor that was hijacked and domesticated. When I was ‘born again’ the first time in 1979, I burned my Playboys
and rock cassettes. I stopped drinking and carousing and learned church culture
and bible doctrine, but remained largely unconscious and placed my trust in the
system of belief I was taught. Through my recent Belly of the Whale experience,
I have become conscious in so many new ways, ways that I never experienced
before (would need to write a book to explain). Each day, many times a day, I
experience a patch of heaven on earth, and God’s will done on earth as it is in
heaven. I do not have to wait for that “Pie in the Sky,” as I get to take some
rather significant bites of that pie each day on this terrestrial globe. My
relationship of being a father type to Srey Noich and to my adopted daughter
Yorean is an example of that. My heart just floods with love both for them and from them when they grab my hand or rush to greet me. I am more
than conscious of the presence of God in and through that love dynamic. I am
aware of the great change in my soul because in the past, I would have never
been conscious of the gift of such relationships as a vital way to experience
God on a daily basis – especially through children and teenagers. This
consciousness of God’s presence through love in my daily life happens on
different levels with the waiters of the noodle shop where I have my coffee
each morning, the staff at the Dove office, the children in Dove’s drop in
center, kids at House of Peace, the children who play noisily in front of my
house, some young adults in ONYX program and Men’s group, the teenagers at
youth coffee house, and with the Peace Bridges Staff (Dove’s partner). God
energizes and shares his presence and love with me foremost in nature and
through relationships with children/teens/young adults who have tagged unworthy
by society. Being conscious, I was able to find and access God’s greatest resource
to the church, the poor, and the marginalized.
I recently read this in an email devotional I get
by psychologist
John Welwood:
“A
conscious relationship is one that calls forth who you really are. . . . Instead of looking to a
relationship for shelter, we could welcome its power to wake us up in areas of
life where we are asleep and where we avoid naked, direct contact with life.
This approach puts us on a path. It commits us to movement and change,
providing forward direction by showing us where we most need to grow.”
All the relationships I cite above, on one hand, do
indeed call forth who I really am in an affirming way, and on the other hand, different
types of relationships like the ones I have with my son Johnathan, or Jordan,
etc., that also reflect God’s presence, serve as God directly speaking me to as
a wake up call to seek transformation in other areas of my life, areas that I
want to avoid thinking about.
In other words, I have been given a great gift - the
ability to see and be conscious much more than ever before. And only because of this, I have become
thoroughly grateful for all those things I was unable to see as great gifts
throughout my life. My priorities have been turned upside down as God meets me
so blatantly through the lives of traumatized, unwanted and marginalized
children, teens and young adults. I think these are some of the key reasons Jesus
came to earth, to teach us how to see, to help us become conscious, and to
demonstrate to us what is like to be fully human and just how go about getting
that done.
The Mystics and
Desert Fathers identified two ways of really being ‘born again’ (meaning a
total paradigm shift in perspective and practice or totally new ways of
thinking and being). One was through a life crisis such as a great moral
failure, divorce, death of spouse, crash of a career/ business, or a great,
undeniable experience of God’s outpouring of love on an individual. William James concurs with this as well
in his book, The Varieties of Religious Experience.
Richard Rohr in many of his books explains that in mid-life it is
necessary to climb down from the tower of success and achievement to
intentionally focus on the most valuable aspects of life, or the tower is
likely to crash on its own. If you intentionally descend, you learn a new way
of life in the process of descending that brings a life paradigm shift. Those
whose towers crash either learn to practice a new ‘way of life’ that transforms
as you rebuild your life in a new direction, or you choose to build the same
tower and continue on the same upward ascent, only to end up as a bitter old hag or
bitter old coot.
Thomas Merton said; "Too many people when they get to the top of the ladder realize that it is leaning on the wrong wall."
My hope is that I would be able to help wounded people
along on their journey to healing and freedom, which begins with learning a
‘way of life’ that is really transformative – a way of that teaches how we can
love God, self, neighbor and enemy in practical ways.
I recently attended a meeting of 70 or so people, a very
diverse group of people of all ages and sexes - some with Christian
backgrounds, some from other religions, and others with no religious background
at all. All of their towers had crashed
and each person was somewhere on the continuum of rebuilding a whole different
structure with the help of other people in the group. At the end of the meeting
we all made a circle and clasped our hands together and the leader led us in
reciting the Lord’s Prayer in unison. I was moved to tears and felt incredibly
privileged to be a part of a group of people who found a way to do life that
actually works to bring healing, peace and transformation into their lives and
the lives others around them
All I can say is that I am grateful.
Peace for the journey,
Brian
