Lovely Little Things

A Love List:

1. A periodic herd of goats that roams the front of the house. 

2. The sheer density of living here.  It is an endless maze of small paths and streets between homes where I can bike and walk through with endless curiosity.  

3.  Walking down the street and a pedi-cab driver I may have met once, if ever, yells out my name.

4. Little kids will, like all Indonesians, shake your hand when you met and when you depart.  For little kids, they bring your hand to their lips and give it a little kiss.  I'm not the kind of person to say this, but that most be one of the cutest things.

5. Teaching kids to play kick the can in a dense maze like village.  Hands down, I had more fun then the kids.  

6.  The conversations I have at stop lights on my bike.  Sometimes people know my name and things about my life like where I am usually going, and I have no idea who they are.  

7. Sometimes things here can look a lot like home...for example a mall or KFC.  However, driving one night and seeing people doing construction by candle light made me realize things are still a lot different.

8. Seeing 3 guys on the top of 25 ft high scaffolding rolling down a busy road.  

9.  My habitual task of buying juice sirsat (soursop in English).  All I do is show up at the juice stand and say the amount of juice I want, they already know the type. The going rate is 25 cents for a big glass of bliss.

10.  Just a warning my sense of socially acceptable space between myself and you when I get back is going to be awful.  If there is a line of people, you have some body part in contact with the person in front and behind you.  Nearly the same thing goes for traffic.    

11. Within the first 5 questions, it is guaranteed that I will be asked by a stranger if I have a girlfriend and if I am looking for one here.  

12. Cockroach killing time in the bathroom.  Best time: 10-11pm. 

13. Dropping words from the Javanese language (as opposed to Indonesian) in conversation to make instant friends.

14. Laughing.  My supervising pastor has one of those contagious laughs. 

15. Three favorite foods.  

Rice/Tofu and Peanut Sauce 

Rice/ Buffalo kebabs and Peanut Sauce 

Rice/ Vegetables/Tofu/ and Peanut Sauce.

Get the theme?

16. Having lots of friends here from families to elderly people, to kids, to pastors to youth.  Then being able to text them and make a plan to meet, talk or play together.

17.  The beach is an hour from my home.  

18. I took the drivers seat of the pedi-cab and drove around a bunch a kids.  No damages....at least physically.  The kids possibly were damaged as they have declined every offer since the first pedi-cab adventure. 

 19. I found a chameleon!  And some kids taught me that the tail functions as a leash when you play with it.  The game is:  avoid it's sporadic lunges.  

20.  Going to the Indonesian island of.......Sumatra.  Right now.  Bye!  

Introspection: Anger and Humility

Six kids and me acting like one around a bowl with a fish and a mirror.  One thing that the kids would do was to put a mirror in front of the Beta fish.  The Beta would become irritated, annoyed, frazzled and eventually angry.  It is angry at what it perceives as another.  In some ways its so difficult to watch the Beta fish.  

You wish to just tell it, “hey, that is you, stop being angry at the face thinking its another one. Your angry at yourself."  

For the fish to realize this….it would be awkward, awakening and agonizing.   Now hold onto this story.  I will come back to it. 

I have had a hard time describing my experience with church and faith.  Like I told my mom the other day, the key to read my blog is to “read” what is not written.  You may have noticed a void.  The void is the specifics about my actual church itself.  It’s a rather complex and, at times, difficult topic that is more suited to a conversation over tea.

One of the closest analogies I can come to about my experience with general life and church here is this. 

For those of you who know the East Hastings area of Vancouver, this will be at lot easier.  Basically, in downtown Vancouver you find posh, affluent life of the downtown.  Then you can walk a couple blocks and enter a world of poverty, drugs, and prostitution.  In a matter of blocks this happens.  It’s a shocking, scary and alarming walk—a walk that you rather forget--but really it is rather unforgettable.  

Now imagine, having a church right in between the posh part and the destitute part of Vancouver.  Say, a church in that block right before Hastings.  And this church draws people from both parts of Vancouver--the rich and the poor.  It has the very very richest people of Vancouver along with those whom are poorest.  They all gather in the same place for singing, hearing God's Word and fellowship. 

One of the choices of the rich looks like this.  You could come to church, do your thing, and leave or you could come to church and be changed and change both Hastings and your world.  The rich have made this church a massive building filled with the latest technology and finest furnishings. Going to church here could be the most comfortable thing ever.     

In this church, sitting next to the poor, against all assumptions that it would change the rich, shows little signs that it does.  The poor are expected to be there, it just the way things are.  Sure, some food and money is given to them.  In fact, some people far away are paying lots to help the poor here.  The poor mothers, stay poor, there is no way out for them.  In short, helping the poor is nothing more than an expected task of the church—it is just protocol.  Some people can not feed there kids well. 

Some people have no toilets.

Some people can not send there kids to school.  

But you can ignore this all, just show up in your SUV, hang out with your cliché, and then head home and live life behind your gated home or your strolling in the mall.  It actually is very possible for you to not be change even if you share the same pew or street with those whom hope to met life's needs, but struggle greatly to do so.  

There is of course another reaction to attending a church like this--suspended between the rich and poor.  The reaction is one of working towards empowering lives and seeing the call to bring justice as a central act of worship.  There are glimpses of this in certain people and at certain times, but as for the church community as a whole, this course of action seems to be the path much less taken.  

A then there is me.  Being apart of this church like I have this year, could also be something that—well, let’s see—wrecks and changes you.  It inflicts damage on your faith.  At times, you doubt the church.  You are troubled by the people that fill it with disregard for empowering the poor and lack of intentional interactions with  Muslims to know each other more deeply.  You lose trust in passionate sermons preaching shalom when the actions that follow are faint.  It looks to you like a race to the top of the economic ladder.  A flight to capitalism and all that it can bring.  It looks like a big jack-pot, some win and other lose—it’s the game.  There is no real way out for the losers, the winners work hard and it some sense have earned it—the losers just need to follow course.

Not a day goes by that I do not stare into this abyss between rich and poor and the abyss between God's Kingdom call and what happens.  Staring into tears me apart.  It’s ugly, lonely and damaging to the soul.  When the church looks like this it makes me not want to be a pastor.  Something is deeply not the way its supposed to be.  It is an awful sight. It can feel devoid of a God of compassion and intimacy.  The church feels like an institution, concerned with money and power.  

Now remember that story about the kids, me and the Beta fish.  Remember what the fish is actually angry at?

I think the part that hurts the most is how I have realized that the "face" that I get angry at, is actually me.  It's actually myself.  The names, attitudes, hearts, priorities, actions and words of those whom fill the church and make me want to leave it are, when it comes down do it, a lot like me.  It's an awful and awesome discovery all at the same time.  It's being angry and then realizing that the one you are angry at is actually your reflection. It's realizing that I am the Pharisee in in the Parable in Luke 18:9-14 who boasts and is angered by the tax collector, only to realize that the tax collector was a reflection of himself.       

It is one thing to go a place where all live relatively the same economically. 

         Live in the affluent part of your city, that makes faith easier.  

         Live in a place where poverty is ubiquitous, it will often make faith harder.

But,

        Live in a place where affluence and poverty tangle, it makes you angry, then introspective.  

Like the Pharisee, I also find the path to humbly look introspectively at the "face" that is the end of pride and condemnation one of struggle and denial.  Denial that at the end of my frustration is really myself.  Faith is humility.  Faith then becomes anguish.  I am moving past denial and trying to bear the cross of humility in terms of my experience in Indonesia.  It is process.  And it is slow.  But Jesus has me convinced that it is worth it.   

Missions as "one beggar telling another beggar..."

One beggar telling another beggar where to find food.
Have you ever thought of that as describing missions or evangelism or interfaith dialogue?


Probably not.  I never did.
But now I do a little bit more.
Here is why? 


Before coming to Indonesia, I had never meaningfully meet and conversed with a Muslim. How that has changed!


One such occasion was earlier this month when I had the honor of joining an interfaith dialogue.  An interfaith dialogue is basically where 2 or more religious groups come and understand what makes each other "tick".  By understanding each so much happens.  Stereotypes end. Common ground is found. Friendships are formed.  Action on poverty and peace is taken together.


This time around, dialoguing with a group of  Muslims took a different direction.  The place that this dialogue ended up is not the goal of dialogue, neither is it a common occurrence.  But it can happen when the Spirit moves and doors are opened.      


The group that I, along with some others, engaged with, was not your ordinary group of Muslims.  They were ordinary Muslims in the sense that they were caring and warm people.  But they were not ordinary in what they believed and in how they practiced it.


They described themselves as "followers of Isa."  Isa is the Arabic word for Jesus.  They no longer attend a mosque, nor do the Muslim daily prayers.  Rather they gather on Friday night for worship.  


They believe that Jesus as God and Savior.  However, they do not know about the crucifixion and resurrection.  


They only read the Koran and the Jesus they depict is entirely from the Koran.  They have not read the Bible, but claim that the Jesus of the Bible and the Koran are the same--so there is no need to read the Bible.  


Why are they doing this?


1. Most likely they would become followers of the Biblical Jesus and go to church if it was not for the alienation that they would experience from their community if they did this.  There is a huge gap between a mosque/muslim culture and the church.  There needs to be a gap in belief and some practice, but the gap between the is often unnecessarily large. I really do not blame them for not wanting to join church in Indonesia, its forms of worship are just so different than a Muslim's forms of worship.  The Gospel is concerned about content and meaning, not the forms of worship.   


2. Every person, culture and religion have some of Light's shining in them, none of them are complete darkness.  God's Light shines everywhere on earth, nothing is left untouched by it. This is the same for the Koran.  I have learned so much from Muslims about this, especially this group I meet with recently.  There is so much to talk about with Muslims because there is so much in common with Christians.


Take this for example, Muslims and Christians share the Torah.  Both Muslims and Christians therefore agree on two central things:  "Love God" and "love your neighbor."  A few years ago over 100 muslims leaders wrote this to you and me.


They wrote this to us "rather than engaging in polemic, the signatories [ global muslim leaders] have adopted the traditional and mainstream Islamic position of respecting the Christian scripture and calling Christians to be more, not less, faithful to it."  That is amazing!


Signs abound within the Koran that provoke questions to which the Gospel is the answer.  
What the Muslims I met taught me was this:
I do not posses the Truth.  I can never claim that.  


What I can claim is to know where the Truth is.  I can point to Jesus and say "there."  


Muslims do not point to Jesus and say "there", that is Truth.  They point to a book and say "there", that is Truth.  But their book, the Koran, gives clues that Jesus is Lord and could lead a Muslim to embrace Jesus as Truth, at which they would deny the Koran as the Truth.  


The Muslims taught me the Truth that is shown in God's Light or His Presence shining in and through the world is beyond something I will every understand fully.  Beyond something that I can posses.  Beyond something I can claim.  


Rather I am pointed by my Muslims friends to find God's Light shining in all the world.  Not limited to one religion, or a certain people.  


It is like a am a beggar alongside my Muslim friends who are beggars, and we are telling each other where to find food.  
Therefore, I have learned that evangelism, missions and interfaith dialogue, done right, is as much witness as it is discovery.  


As I discovered that God was revealing himself to these Muslims and pointing them towards Jesus, I along with a few other Christians were also able to witness by pointing to Jesus. 
I have a video of that. 


I took a video of a prayer and then the Bibles that we offered this group.  Please remember while watching this that this is not a "day in the life of Jason", neither is the way we are going about it imposing or coercive.  Rather the hours that preceded this footage were respectful discovery and witness for both the Muslims and Christians.  The man who is praying is David Shenk an author, professor and practitioner of interfaith dialogue that was visiting Indonesia.

And a picture for those still using dial-up internet.  This picture is with a number of Muslims we meet along with some of the Christians.

What a peculiar sight!

Pedaling her vintage rusty red bicycle she eyes looked ahead down the street, the street she bikes to and fro every day.  She biked ahead of me, sometimes beside me, but never behind me.  I didn’t know where I was going, what I was doing or how I was going to get there.  This was once again, like every day here, an invitation to open my clenched fist—clenching control. This was another invitation to release—to relinquish.

I always wonder what a peculiar sight this must be for others.  I, a white North American Christian biking along a busy commuter route 5 kilometers to a village.  Beside me, Ibu Supri, who works making cigarettes at one of the many prolific cigarette factories here.  It is the type of job that makes a couple dollars a day.  Her husband passed away a few years ago in a vehicle accident.  She has a daughter, Eva, who is 10 years old.  Unlike most Indonesian’s, she doesn’t have a motorbike, so she bikes everywhere including back and forth to school, work and the mosque with here daughter.  

We enter the village and stop by for something to eat at a “restaurant”.  She orders cooked vegetables with rice.  I order chicken with rice.  Often for me, eating the food in villages and those whom are materially poor is not easy.   This “restaurant” was no different.  While eating my chicken, a cat jumped off the dirt floor, hopped up onto the counter and starting snacking on the food in the frying pan, which was in the kitchen.  Many things do not faze me any more. An ant in my orange juice is normal and sand in my rice is to be expected.  But this—yes—it fazed me all right!  However, I calmly mentioned to the cook, “hey, there is a cat eating there.”  To which the cook, glanced over and waved her hand at the cat. The cat left and the women did nothing to the frying pan.  The chicken became a little harder to get down after that!

We paid for the food.  Well, Ibu Supri paid for both of us.  But wait, why didn’t I pay?  I could have at least paid for myself, and surely for her as well.  Isn’t that what we always do when we are among the poor?  Whether it is in the inner city ministry or in our support for relief and development around the world, we give and they, the poor, receive.  They are the recipients of our love. But how often are you the recipient of the love of the poor? 

By her choosing where we would eat and allowing her to pay for me, she was able to enact her dignity.  A relationship between the “white rich guy” and the “poor”, so often described as “superior” was overturned to allow the blossoming of her dignity.  Although the poor paying for my food has happened so many times already, there is still something uncomfortable about it.  A discomfort because losing my control and superiority in the lives of the poor means that my fear of what may happen not just physically, but spiritually to myself is unknown.  As Henri Nouwen writes, “when you dare to let go and surrender one of those many fears, your hand relaxes and your palms spread out in a gesture of receiving.”  Only then, am I able to receive love.

To open my arms in a gesture of receiving it requires that I confess that I am limited, dependent and sinful—that my attempts to love the poor sometimes snuff out their humanity. And those actions themselves also hurt me.  As Nouwen put it “a person only becomes a person when he is capable of standing open to all the gifts which are prepared for him.”  When I play god in the lives of the poor—that becomes my poverty—a far more stubborn poverty than those who are materially poor. I remember Luke 21 when Jesus said “this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”  My poverty was exposed, and her riches shone, when I accepted the gift of Ibu Supri—her presence, food, her decision making.  For “when someone accepts a gift, he admits another one into his world and is ready to give him a place in his own being.” It gets uncomfortable.

Ibu Supri and I continued to her home.  It was one of the most basic homes I have seen—the floor was dirt.  We sat with some neighbors, talk for a while.  And then like most conversations I have here, conversation topics run out and there is silence.  In this case, I was silent while others spoke.  The discomfort that I often feel vanished among the palm trees swaying in the wind and ducks waddling around.  Somewhere in some village in Central Java, I was still. 

“The promise of silence is that new life can be born. It is this silence, which is the silence of peace and prayer, because you are brought back to the other who is leading you.  In this silence you lose the feeling of being compulsive and you find yourself a person who can be himself along with other things and other people. Then you realize that you can do many things, but it isn’t necessary.  It is the silence of the “poor in spirit”, when you learn to see your life in its proper perspectives.”  (Nouwen)

For me, that perspective that is formed is staggering and beautiful.  It is that,  

“the corporate nature of the salvation that God purposes is necessary part of the divine purpose of salvation according to the biblical view that no one could receive it as a direct revelation from above, but only through the neighbor opening, only as part of an action in which one open’s door and invites one’s neighbor to come on in.” Therefore, “I am never permitted to think of my own salvation apart from that of God’s whole family and God’s whole world.” (Newbigin)

This has changed the way I live.  I don’t quite fully understand it.  I never will.  But moments where I am sitting with Ibu Supri, I begin to understand it a little bit more.

That to release my clenched fist means to relinquish power and pride.

That to receive with my palms open means that I am the bruised and naked man, not the Good Samaritan.   

That to accept with my arms wide open means that I realize that I need the ‘other’—for without them I am not whole.

When my hands release, palms open and arms accept Ibu Supri, I am reminded of the cross.  Where Jesus had his palms open and arms out knowing that I could not love like that.  What a peculiar sight.   

That enables me to be able to release my fist, open my palms and spread my arms wide open so that peculiar sights like Ibu Supri biking along side happen more often.  It seems that it is a way of life.  And when I live life releasing, receiving and accepting, then it seems a lot like praying.  And then I suspect that to pray is to live.