Anniversaries

Last October saw my being in Bangkok for 10 years.  I did not realize it then but this has meant many other anniversaries to follow.  In January, I had been with Caritas Thailand 10 years. This September, I will have been living in my apartment for ten years.  So the list goes on.

It all makes me think about life and its many momentous dates. One could spend ten years in one place and waste their life.  I see it.  There are guys living here who spend their days sitting at the same table each day with the same ones, just talking and drinking beer.  After ten years of that, I wonder how you would look back at life.  Maybe you have solved the world's problems.  I don't know.

I look at my ten years and think only now have I really found a place and a voice here.  It has taken this long to get to know some of the Thai clergy and become friendly with them.  It has taken this long to be established and recognized in my pastoral and leadership roles in Caritas.  It has taken this long to establish my pastoral feet in a community at the cathedral.  It all takes time and then the real work begins.  It has taken this long to build up my name and confidence in a foreign land.  I still continue to question so much of what I experience here and many mysteries do remain even after ten years of here but these ten years mean that the questions and mysteries do not chase me away but sit with me and make me think and challenge me about life and humanity and me.

Ten years is a long time in one place for me but it is like I just got here.  Anniversaries do matter as they remind me of the journey of where I have come from and where I am now.  So the journey continues.

Transformation

On the first day back at work after Songkran, which is Thai New Year, Monsignor told us at mass that the Thai word Songkran means transformation. 

For ten years, I have experienced at two levels the annual water festival which falls on 13, 14, 15 April.  There is the lovely water blessing of one's seniors and elders, wishing them well and thanking them for their care and leadership.  Then there is the other which is the mass pandemonium on the streets when everyone lets forth with throwing water at everybody.  The latter is real with three days of outdoor water sports for all - no choice. 

Until this week, I have never thought of this time of mass venting as a moment of personal transformation in one's life, as some sort of theoretical, Thai version of the resurrection.  There again, I guess the wish of every human being is to be transformed for the better and what better symbol to use than water for expressing this human desire.

Water cleanses, gives life, refreshes, makes us feel better.  All these elements speak of transformation in life and who doesn't want to feel clean and refreshed?  Who doesn't want to live life and live it more fully?

Happy transformation!

Happy New Year

No, I am not mad. This weeks sees New Year in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.  This is the only country where I have lived that has three New Years - 1st January, Chinese and now this one which is the biggest of all three.  Its timing is based on the astrological chart. 

This is their real holiday season.  Everybody is off home to family or out of the country.  And, of course, let me not forget that this is the time for the annual engagement in serious water throwing. 

It is all based on a lovely cultural practice of wishing each other well and new beginnings in life. 

As I approach another year, I could not wish the people better than what is wished in this picture by Caritas Austria for people suffering in our world.  I pray that the people of Thailand treat each other with the respect they deserve as fellow and equal citizens in one society and in the world community.

Happy New Year!

Always the Mystery

The longer I live in Thailand, the more I realize how little I understand but also appreciate how much I learn.  Here is ever the mystery. 

As I hinted in my last entry, in the Land of Smiles, I do see before me people behaving badly or just not knowing how to behave themselves when facing difficult, unknown or unwanted situations.  My man of last week sat with anger for a month because his social junior handed him a document in the wrong way.  Incredible! 

There again, I am on the bus to work this morning and once again I see a conductor, a lowly, poor woman on the social scale here in Thailand, act with great social control.  What did she do?  She barked out her order to standing passengers to take empty seats and they did, silently and without question.  Back home, they might tell her to stick it.

Anyway, back to my senior manager at work.  What he told me more than once and with deep feeling was that this went against Thai culture which makes clear demands on how you deal with your senior.  Over such a minor happening, the anger sat with him and turned into hatred for his junior.  I have to say that after being here 10 years, I still do not get such behavior but it is here.  As for hating a person for such an affront, that just boggles my mind. 

I try to make sense of such an issue in life but I can't and my mind can easily become disturbed in trying to put it together.  So it is best to approach in a more healthy way, standing back and accepting what I can and cannot do.  There is no way I can act alone against culture.  So I decided to leave such a hot, workplace issue and personal problems of the manager in the hands of my boss, the bishop.  As he told once very wisely - Let Thais deal with Thais.  And so I did.  It seems to work, making life livable for those concerned.  This does not say that it resolves anything - it just lets ones face the day. 

Then I see how I behave badly in different ways and for different reasons.  I remember my own bad behavior and acknowledge how no one is better than or above another. 

In a stressful work situation with the affronted Thai male senior, I act in my role to listen to him, show some concern and deal with the situation as best I could, but as the "boss".  My failure was to take on the mission to create perfect order.  This was doomed to failure and this approach had disastrous affects on me personally outside the encounters I had with my man in my work scene, I saw how I was acting impatiently and becoming anxious about what next in my day.  None of this was the way to go. 

It then struck me yet again that it is okay to be vulnerable and fragile.  I have to give myself permission to be human.  I may be the boss in this work situation or the priest, being the shepherd, but I also need others to be a priest, a shepherd to me.  I think we are shepherds together, looking after each other as needed and that situation of need will arise for all of us, one way or another along the way.  We are all in the same boat and no one is ever the captain very long.

Then I read Pope Francis today.  He agrees with me, wise man that he is.  He said in this week's general audience:
How many times we say: "But he is a sinner. he has done this, and that ...".
And you? Each one of us should ask himself: "Yes, he is a sinner, and I?"
We must not be afraid of our miseries.  Each one of us has his own.