A Blessing on Your Life Overseas

I’ve walked through darkness this year. In the lowest moments, a friend sent me blessings every day. I started reading John O’Donohue’s To Bless the Space Between Us. I am now sending blessings to someone I love dearly, to walk with her through her own dark days. My brother is getting married to a woman I adore, so I wrote them a marriage blessing.

I don’t believe in writer’s block (refuse the concept!) but I did struggle this month with brain fog. I have all kinds of excuses, but instead of listing them, I’ll tell you what I decided.

I decided we need blessing. We need to insist on it, to wrestle with God until he gives it to us, to turn to one another and offer it. We need to speak blessing, not rage. We need to receive blessing when it comes to us from unexpected places. We need to discover, anew, all it can mean to live as a blessing among the nations.

And so, I bless you, expatriate, and your life overseas.

I tried to write my own blessing but alas, brain fog. Or #blamethecancer? So I’m borrowing from other, wiser people.

From To Bless the Space Between Us, by John O’Donohue

When you travel, you find yourself

Alone in a different way,

More attentive now

To the self you bring along,

Your more subtle eye watching

You abroad; and how what meets you

Touches that part of the heart

That lies low at home.

 

Welcoming Blessing, by Jan Richardson

When you are lost
in your own life.

When the landscape
you have known
falls away.

When your familiar path
becomes foreign
and you find yourself
a stranger
in the story you had held
most dear.

Then let yourself
be lost.
Let yourself leave
for a place
whose contours
you do not already know,
whose cadences
you have not learned
by heart.
Let yourself land
on a threshold
that mirrors the mystery
of your own
bewildered soul.

It will come
as a surprise,
what arrives
to welcome you
through the door,
making a place for you
at the table
and calling you
by your name.

Let what comes,
come.

 

From Mary Oliver, Evidence: Poems

“Sometimes I need
only to stand
wherever I am
to be blessed.”

 

The Journey, by Rumi

Come, seek,

for seeking is the foundation of fortune:
every success depends upon focusing the heart.
Unconcerned with the business of the world,
keep saying with all your soul, “Ku, ku,” like the dove…

Even though you’re not equipped,
keep searching…

Whoever you see engaged in search,
become her friend and cast your head in front of her,
for choosing to be a neighbor of seekers,
you become one yourself…

Day and night you are a traveler in a ship.
You are under the protection of a life-giving spirit…

Step aboard the ship and set sail,
like the soul going towards the soul’s Beloved.
Without hands or feet, travel toward Timelessness
just as spirits flee from non-existence.

…By God, don’t linger
in any spiritual benefit you have gained,
but yearn for more like one suffering from illness
whose thirst for water is never quenched…

Leave the seat of honor behind:
the Journey is your seat of honor.

 

May you be blessed this season, wherever you are and in whatever combination of lightness and darkness you find yourself.

A Holy Disturbance

This was written several years ago, two nights before I left the country I had called home for nearly 20 years.

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I texted her You want to go for a walk? It had been a day of defrosting and sorting while the rain poured cleaning out the air. Still full from lunch, I wanted to walk before doing yet another round of dishes.

Sure. Let me finish bathing the kids and hubster will put them down. (That’s not really how she talks, that’s an Amy translation.)

And so we walked into the cool of the night, headed first for the local park (pictures at that link from a morning walk in the spring). It’s alive at night! Turns out there is a “dancing with big ribbons” club. Who knew?! Maybe I can bring that back to America. Maybe not.

We exited the park onto a street that’s under massive construction and has become a bit of a migrant village alive with village activities. A man getting his hair cut under a single light. Stores spread on blankets. Food vendors selling freshly cut fruit.

This picture obviously wasn't taken at night. Picture a single slight bulb hanging above, same guy, same chair.

This picture obviously wasn’t taken at night. Picture a single slight bulb hanging above, same guy, same chair.

Years ago, to the left of this picture, a massive four lane bridge was built going over a canal. On either side of the bridge small hutong/alley neighborhoods existed. But that bridge meant that the City had other plans and come one day, those alley communities would be replaced. Both sides now look like the background of this picture. But every night, that abandoned bridge becomes a local community setting with vendors and restaurants and snake oil.

On nearly my last night, my heart broke afresh.

Going up the stairs to the “bridge” we heard a loudspeaker and if you’ve been in China, thought nothing of it. Loudspeakers are a dime a dozen. But there were flashing lights and a ginormous crowd gathered around. This, this in a country where you need a permit to gather in public spaces, was not a dime a dozen.

In a poignant juxtaposition as the tall buildings of Beijing lit up in the background, we had stumbled onto a countryside superstitious blessing ceremony. We joined the crowd standing on tippy toe to see  — at the far end, the truck that acted as stage and sound system with flashing lights, there were two statutes that one of the “sponsors” kowtowed to and then the announcer said for anyone to come forward and for only 20 kuai (about $3.25) you too could be blessed and given a golden chain.

Where was I? What was happening? Were there plants in the audience? Is this what the shaddy medicine men of the wild west did, but with a Chinese twist?

Too many people went forward for them to be plants. Too many longed for blessing — to be touched by something holy, something that would heal them, bring them fortune– for the desires to be fake.

We were in the presence of raw longing.

It was disturbing.

To see people with so little gave so much to something so empty.

The organizers had drawn a line around the perimeter and asked us, the crowd, to step back outside the line. Only two of us did, you can guess who. The crowd couldn’t help but to press in, to see others blessed, to see if a miracle was going to happen.

I thought of other crowds and of the One who had compassion on those gathered and longed to bless them. Blessed are the poor in spirit and the meek and those who mourn. On he went saying “I see you, I know your condition and the longing of your heart and I want to bless you.” Really bless you, not with a gold chain necklace that looked like carnival fare, but with blessings that will last.

We turned and walked away, sobered again by the remembrance that though great, great changes have come, too many hearts that long for blessing, are listening to charlatans. “How can I leave?” I asked. But I will, and it will be OK, because the work here has never been about me or about foreigners, the work here is the Good Shepherd’s and he loves his sheep. He does.

But every now and then, the Good Shepherd lifts the curtain, allowing us a behind-the-scene-glance of the fields yet to be harvested and reminds us — the harvest is great, keep praying, keep investing, there are are still too many who long for blessing.

Will you join me afresh in praying for China? My dishes still need doing and I hadn’t planned on writing today. But I am disturbed in the best, most holy way.

Have you seen something similar to what we did that night?

Participating in the religious ceremonies of other faith traditions: To do, not to do, or how to do?

When I first moved to Laos with my husband Mike, I tagged along on one of his work trips out to a rural village where Mike’s organization had recently helped set up a gravity-fed water system. During this trip, Mike and the staff (and, by extension, me) were the guests of honor in the village we were visiting. This meant enduring some long speeches and eating a lot of food I didn’t particularly want to eat. It also meant that we had the privilege of peering briefly into lives very different from our own, and that the humbling mantle of the village’s blessing was bestowed upon us. For in between breakfast and lunch, the village held a bai si.

The bai si (or su kwan) is a blessing ceremony indigenous to Southeast Asia, and it is performed on many special occasions – marriages, births, housewarmings, when someone becomes a monk, recovers from illness, or at the beginning or end of big journeys. As far as rituals go, it’s pretty versatile.

Su kwan means “calling of the soul”, and the purpose of the ceremony is to bind the personal spirits, the kwan, to the person. Many people in Laos believe that the human being is a union of 32 organs, and that each organ has their own kwan to watch over and protect them. Collectively, these spirits are believed to constitute a person’s spiritual essence or “vital breath”.

The problem with the kwan? Well they tend to wander, you see. Sometimes they stray quite a way from your body, and this is not at all what you want. It throws things out of balance. It makes you sick. You don’t want your kwan out roaming the world, you want as many of them as possible at home where they belong, watching over you.

So, periodically, it’s a good idea to call your kwan back. This is what the bai si ceremony does – it calls your spirits to return home, secures them in place, and re-establishes equilibrium. The ceremony, a communal event, is a way of expressing goodwill, good luck, and good health to those being honored. This was how the village was choosing to commemorate the official handover of this new water system.

Bai si tableWe sat on the floor in a circle around a low table that was decorated with flowers and candles and laden with plates of meat and offal, packets of chips, and the Chinese version of Twinkies. Long, white, cotton strings were draped over the stalks of flowers.

After everyone was gathered, the Mor Pone (the soul caller, the most senior elder in the community) began to chant, calling the lost souls of those gathered to come back to their bodies and asking them nicely to bring health and happiness with them while they were at it. As he finished chanting, we, the honored guests, were presented first with the plates of meat.

Under pressure I made a very, very bad choice and picked up a piece of offal. I’m pretty sure I heard some of my kwan snicker. Just between us, I’m not sure that all of my kwan always have my best interests at heart, no matter what Laotians would have me believe.

After we’d snacked on offal and Twinkies, the soul caller approached Mike and me. Kneeling in front of us, murmuring blessings, he tied strings to our wrists to bind our spirits to our bodies. Other community members followed suit. By the time the ceremony was finished I had so many strings around my wrists that my kwan had resigned themselves to not going anywhere for quite a while.

Bai si blessing 4

Now, a word about the ceremonies and rituals of different faith traditions.

I feel a little as if I’m in a minefield here. I’m well aware that some of my friends and acquaintances may be troubled that I participated in what they would call an animist ritual. Others will be troubled that anyone would be troubled.

More than a decade ago, during a trip to Thailand, a younger me was troubled by a similar ceremony that I participated in there. The world was more black and white to me then, and in that world a good Christian didn’t allow people to chant over them in a language they didn’t understand and tie strings to their wrists. After all, who knew what footholds that could give the devil in my life? And what on earth would Jesus say?

I’m not mocking my younger self (though it’s awfully tempting sometimes). She was sincere in her beliefs and her concerns, and she may have had some valid points. But I am not her anymore and the world looks different to me now.

Now I can come to the bai si with more peace, as a guest and as a learner. I am still not entirely comfortable with people chanting over me in a language I do not understand during a ceremony that is not of my own faith tradition. However, I am far less worried about the possibility that, simply by being present, I may be delivering myself irrevocably unto the dark side.

Bai si blessing 2For I looked into the eyes of those who approached me with strings in hand that day and I was profoundly humbled by the warmth and gentle goodwill I saw. I live a life more privileged than many of them could imagine, yet they were delighted at this chance to bless me. The elders of this community – those who have earned their years and their wisdom the hard way – knotted the strings with reverence and tenderness. Their sincerity in wishing us well was unmistakable.

I’m still not entirely sure what Jesus would say about this. The stories of the gospels suggest that he wasn’t too keen on things like commerce in the temple courts, meat sacrificed to idols, spirit-worship, superstition based in fear, and religious rituals undertaken for show. But they also suggest that he had a knack for discerning attitude and intention, and that these two things counted for an awful lot in his sight.

I suppose it’s possible that Jesus might tell me, “Lisa, it’s not super wise to make a habit of participating in ceremonies that you do not really understand. There are powerful spiritual forces for good and for bad out there, and you should not lightly trespass upon these realms.”

But I think it’s also possible that Jesus might smile a little and say something along the lines of, “I know and love your kwan, and they could do with a good calling now and again for they are a wilful and unruly lot. And, look, try your best to eat the offal that has been presented to you today in the spirit of happy gratitude, because that is the loving thing to do.”

Someday, I hope I have the chance to ask him.

How do you navigate invitations to participate in the religious ceremonies of other faith traditions?

Lisa McKayauthor, psychologist, sojourner in Laos

Blog: www.lisamckaywriting.com      Books: Love At The Speed Of Email and My Hands Came Away Red