Great Wall of Chaingmai

I broke my crown when I fell off the great wall of Chaingmai. A missionary shouldn't be wearing a crown, in fact I didn't think I was. I didn't notice it until I hit the ground and heard it clatter on the cement behind me.

Thailand was just too much of who I am- too much white, too much money, loud and boisterous, demanding demanding. When I go home, if I go home, that's who I was and who I am. It's okay there. And it's not okay that it's okay because there is no need inside all of that wanting. The needing is still there, but it's for affection and touch; touch we push away.

In the Chaingmai temple, the energy seized me: It strangled me as I sat at the feet of the meditating Buddha. I turned my own feet away. I turned them away and I hid my face. I hid from everything that was in the darkness, and in the hiding I opened myself. If this is a foreign idol, I will not bow down. I will not surrender to what is unclean. But what is this peace, what is this power? Truly, truly this is the peace I wanted- peace that fills emptiness, that releases the valve that suffocates my heart. What is this wanting? This waiting. Then my soul was empty, empty of even the emptiness. I was staring into the eyes of the meditating Buddha. He did not see me and I didn't see me either. I just saw the great wall. The great wall that keeps me from where I'm going and keeps me in who I am.

I wandered out of the hall and into the courtyard. My feet moved like the unmoved and I was brought low at the thought of the Creator. The God of Chaingmai held me steady and strong, the grip tight on my mind as the song filled my ears. It was a quiet song, low and lonely, whispering for what we all lost when the white people came to Asia; when I came to Asia and tried to make it my own. Chaingmai is not for me, none of this is for me. It's more of what we've taken. I will not be the one to seize it.

I stepped away from the wall and begin the aerial descent. It was dark and deep and full of the love I've given away, never to feel again. It's saturated with who I wasn't and couldn't have been, but who I wanted to be in every dream and in every reality. And that's what I lost in Chaingmai. Falling from a wall, great or not, is all about letting go. Loss of selfishness is the path to nirvana. Loss of self is the path to Christ.

"It was more beautiful up there in the temple," I said, getting up from the cement on which I'd landed. "And I was more beautiful in my dreams." I looked into the dark where my crown had rolled away.

A history

At six weeks old I was baptized with the name Virginia and my soul was saved from hell. At six-years-old I redamned myself by asking my mother “What if God doesn’t exist?”

“He does,” she said. I still think this is an unsatisfactory answer for a Christian of any age.

My religious formation started early. While my brother and my friends were goofing off in Catechism, I was hanging on every word. Everything I need to know in life, I learned from Sister Grace Marie:
Every time you sin, you alone nail Jesus back to the cross. (I lamented all through the day that I had failed to make my bed that morning.) Dogs don’t go to heaven- God only saves people. (My dad said Sister Grace was not only wrong, but frigid. He was still a Methodist then.) Jews may or may not go to heaven, but that’s not your concern. The crucifixion really, really hurt. Holy Eucharist is the greatest gift Christ gave us. Your non-Catholic friends can’t take it.

The time I was most afraid of my father was in eighth grade when I got in a fight with him about why I was being so moody. I went to a convent that weekend with some of friends to do community service. There, I got my first beer. One of my friends attacked me for what seemed like no reason. Years later I found out her father sexually abused her. I’ve never figured out what to say.

I read my first National Geographic later that year, specifically a story about nomadic shepherds and camel herders in India. “A dying community” the article said, “the local church is trying to help them keep their livelihood.”

“I want to be a missionary,” I told my mom.
“I thought you wanted to be a doctor,” she replied and handed me the dishes to set the table. It’s hard to be taken seriously when you’re wearing tie-dye in 1997.

I fell in love my last year of high school. I saw God in every mile the Greyhound bus traveled to Lancaster. I felt like I understood Psalms. A man I’d defended wrongfully died on Orthodox Christmas that year. I felt like I understood Isaiah.

God’s come in many forms since then. He fell like an angel out of the sky while I was doing data entry in an office on H Street. “Was that a bird?” I said to a coworker. I stood up and peeked out the window. The jumper lay in the alley for hours while the police analyzed the crime scene. I was 18 and had not gone home for the summer. I could not look away.

God is a black woman who was locked up for using crack. While in the slammer, she became a dealer. We called her Ma Belle and she was the kindest soul I’ve ever met. God is a white man who got addicted to heroine in Vietnam. He lived in a box outside my building and we went to McDonald’s together. The day the big hurricane came to Washington I couldn’t find him anywhere and I haven’t seen him since. I called him Doc but never knew his real name.

God was in the bear at the Russian carnival. Chained to a pole, the bear was beaten with reeds until he performed tricks. I also saw people beat him for fun. I hope by now the bear has died. And God is the 14-year-old stripper at a nightclub in Moscow. The bartender told the marine she would show him a good time. The marine paid up and led the girl to the back. If God did not damn Lot for offering his virgin daughters to the mob, will God damn a US Marine? And if he damns even one person, do I have a chance of salvation?

Salvation was my own apartment in Glover Park, was my dog coming to live with me and sleeping next to me in bed. If sin was listening to “Songbird” with my 25-years-older boyfriend, redemption was loving a dog. And then a person, and then people. And then maybe, just maybe myself. Loving is hard. You have to start small or it’s just impossible.

Sixteen years after I damned myself, I tried to save my soul. “Do I exist?” I asked the bathroom mirror as I studied the blue in my eyes.

“You do,” it replied. An unsatisfactory answer, yes, but part of life has been learning to take some things at face value.