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.