Rainy Season

I’ve never been one to prefer an umbrella. Don’t buy them, don’t walk under them if they’re offered. And today I never would have tasted the rain on my apple if I had been using one. It’s been raining for two days straight. There is usually a break in the rain when a strong sun appears for a good few hours of the day, but in the past 48 hours no such thing has happened. And so my laundry hangs limply across strings inside my house, gradually losing it’s clothing-like shape as it silently surrenders to the creeping mold and damp air.

The reason, in the middle of this bird market, for the slight smile on my face, is that this boy let out this pink chic from his wooden bird cage and chased him (bare-footed) across the brick street. His baby-giggling and baby hands reaching for the pink chicken fluff is an image that will stick in my memory for years...

I'd love to blog about the heart of Jakarta, the trash-filled streets, and bicycles balanced 7 feet high with rice crackers. About flooding due to a lack of sewers, about garbage piles that should have been streams and molding shacks built on stilts above it all. About the smell of an illegal fishing port and the way that men sit, sit, sit squatting for hours without moving a muscle (did he blink? through my tinted window it's barely perceptible). About a toothless fisherman grin and a small child's batman sandals flippantly disregarded as unnecessary when he lounges on a bamboo mat, top of the fishing boat. About the way that unregulated, polluted port-waters transform into the clearest aquamarine vistas that you can ever imagine. About how even in the rainy season, the breeze is markedly tropical. About turtle conservation and butterfly reserves. Mangrove nurseries and the white odor of jasmine and gardenia.
But all I can think about right now is her face when she says, 'silakan, masuk.' Please, come in. She allows me into the home, where she is a maid, and works for my friend. She smiles and then retreats, visibly and emotionally, into her room. At the moment I am thinking: If I wasn't paid so much stinkin money, maybe I could be her friend. Instead, I hear through the grapevine about what she really thinks of me: rude, selfish, egotistical. All of my smiles, swirling thoughts, and grasping-grasping for some connection through the culture, class, and language barriers have, thus far then, been to no avail.
My heart pounds and I walk down the street with the gardener, quietly listening to what she has told him... gossip, cruel words, yet her honest feelings. She doesn't like me, and even, her actions would betray that she hates me. In this moment I feel a deep culmination of all of my cultural and spiritual frustrations thus far: it is so dang difficult to be understood, and to understand. And when you are "rich" and white in this country, misperceptions of who you are will be run with, guaranteed. My reaction, today, was to retreat myself, to my own room and cry for a while. Cry, cry, and pound the door of prayer: He already knows what happened and He already knows what is in everyone's hearts, but I just want to share my burden of purpose. Why am I here? After 6 months, one who lives closest to me is entirely offended by me. And no, it's not because I was preaching Jesus, it's just because I'm not living correctly in the culture. I exhale and ask how did this happen? (As if, in my desiring to live for others I have somehow earned the right to touch someone's life.) Yes, true, there are all 100+ students who I come into contact with... but changing a life as a teacher is a slow process. You so need a farmer's patient eye and the foresight to know that fruit doesn't often come until the tree is mature. But deffering to the fact that my student's lives may, possibly, slightly one day be changed is not enough for me. No! I scream in my spirit. I want those whom I touch every day to know implicitly that I carry the knowledge of Christ. I want to unmistakably, undeniably, carry tenderness, mercy, peace, and grace within my person. I want it so badly that my lungs constrict and my lips tremble and my knees pull up to my chest. Why doesn't she know that she is loved by what I do? It's not a selfless desire, surely it's not; it's messed and muddled with my own sin and imperfect motives. But I am crying from my core today and moaning my purpose. Jesus, I want you, but I also want to work with you... and, likely because of those impure motives, I am hurt when my energies seemingly reap nothing.
Jesus exhorted the disciples to forgive their brother 7 times in a day, but what about the stranger? Sigh. I need to be purified. I'm such a baby, truly. In graciousness, though, I've been provided (even here) friendships that hold a clear mirror to my face: Katie, they say to me, it's not about you. (Thank you: I don't want friends who coddle my pain.) It's not about me, and I must simply die to my flesh - that searing, aching, fleshly wound - and realign myself again tonight with who God says He is.
A 9pm mountain run, draped in stars and darkness, and an hour of worship will work wonders, I am sure. But if you are reading this, and you follow the Way, pray - pray that my heart would change and pray that (not for my sake! sigh!) this precious, loved woman-child of God would see Jesus' face in mine one day.