Being kind

I heard Aung Sun Suu Kyi speaking recently in Oslo as she accepted the Nobel peace prize.  She spoke of how important other people's kindness was to her and how every act of kindness helped to sustain her over the years.  So now I find myself naturally praising others for their kindness to me, especially with mum and dad's death. 

As Aung Sun Suu Kyi says:
"Even the briefest touch of kindness can lighten a heavy heart.  Kindness can change the lives of people."

I apply this to my ministry with urban refugees.  Today I help one desperate case and feel that I have shown some kindness.  Then I receive a call from Caritas Thailand offices asking for advice about helping a Pakistani family here fleeing persecution back home and appearing with a letter from their parish priest.  I then think should one be more likely to receive help because they are Catholic and have a letter from their priest as the .  Is this being kind?  Then, later again, another Pakistani family, looking desperate, comes to my door at BRC asking for money for the rent.  I don't have the money and it is not good policy just to hand money straight over just on request.  Is this being kind? 

Yes, being kind is important but I can't just respond to people's needs as they request.  It is beyond me and my level of resources.  I also have to think of the good of the wider urban refugee community and assess how best to use the available resources, respecting them and not acting to have them become dependent in their need.  I have no answers as I face difficult dilemmas but I hold to Aung Sun Suu Kyi's principle that kindness is a central and good virtue that sustains us.  .

Buddhist Holidays

2nd and 3rd August of this week are Buddhist holidays. 

Thursday is Asanabucha Day which commemorates Buddha's first sermon to his first disciples. 
Then Friday is the first day of Buddhist Lent which goes for three months and coincides with rainy season. 

Traditionally, during Lent, young men take the opportunity to become monks for a time.  This seems to be a part of every male's life, that they take on being a monk for a short time.  It strikes me that this tradition has a three-fold purpose.
1) It forms a rite of initiation.
2) It is part of one's upbringing.
3) It fulfills a family obligation. 
While you are a monk, you are full-on monk.  There is no sense of just being part-time or being younger.  It is that you are a monk like all the other monks. 

Maybe we could learn something from this in the west.

Slainte!

Slainte! is the Irish toast that dad would always make on having a guinness.  It was my toast to mum and dad at the end of my eulogy for them during their funeral back home in Brisbane on Tuesday.  God speed!  Be with God!  What more could one want? 

Yes, mum and dad died within four days of each other - mum on 15th July and dad on 19th July - and I went home for the funeral.  While there, my mate said that I was not so reliable these days on my blog and I thought - how true! So today is my first day back in Bangkok and this is something I have to do first day. 

I just want to share part of what I said about mum and dad.  Here goes. 

"The Great Depression of the 1930s affected them deeply.  Dad would talk of how they used their last 100 pounds to go into business and from there they just worked hard and so they worked hard all their lives.  A basic philosophy of their life came out of this experience.  Dad explained that they worked so hard not just to make money but to make sure that their family enjoyed what they missed out on due to a lack of money - a good education -and to see that their family never went without like they did.  ....  

Basically whether the son or daughter, the brother or sister, the uncle or aunt, the cousin, the husband or wife, the father or mother, the grandparent or the great grandparent, dad and mum were ever faithful and loyal, living their lives with their own sense of integrity, reaching out to all in their world, loving and protecting them as best they could.  ...  They were great models of simple faith well lived.  .... 

What primarily matters in life is who we are.  It is not really measured by achievements, honors, wealth, status or prestige.  I would name as a central part of mum and dad's legacy for me that they were proud to just be and live who they were - Australian and Catholic with a family to care for and a community to contribute to.  That was simply it!" 

From now, I must be more faithful to my blog as obviously it does have something worthwhile to say and share.