The Waves of Questions: Colonization

I am not here to colonize. I am not here to live luxuriously while you suffer or to promote English Only. Listen to me: I'm not. 

But you can't just listen to my words and believe me, you have to listen to my story: my history. I am my own person, yes. But more than that, I am a part of a history and a culture and this is alive and active in who I am. To separate myself from that would be giving in to one of the biggest lies white culture tells.

My skin color and Christian faith is enough of a historical red flag. Add on my US citizenship and native language and I'm a recipe rich in imperialistic history that needs to be examined before I step foot onto a plane and off into some developing country with all my foreign money or good intentions.

"To hell with good intentions," Ivan Illich declared.

Generations have come before me. The land I live on is "mine" because of blood shed, people coerced, and proselytization. The education system I learn in and will soon teach for is white washed and not pretty; text books excluding whole peoples and realities.

I cannot ignore the systems and history that shape who I am and how others see me.

Does this mean staying? Not necessarily, because too often staying "home" means staying stagnant. And, no, because I have to believe that systems change. That power can be transformed. Not in and of myself or with my white friends. But in realistic communities which reflect the life around us. In asking questions and listening for understanding.

The waves of reality come in and I let them wash away any facades I have of my good intentions overriding my racial, ethnic, and religious history. My intention is not to colonize, but my history lends me towards subconsciously acting out of a colonizing mindset.

I keep walking, next to my brothers and sisters from different countries, races, native languages, sexualities, and religions. And I push through my paperwork for the new school I will teach at: A Christian school in Buddhist Thailand. Here I go.

Water and Buds and Lightning Across the Sky

For an hour (maybe it was more or maybe it was less)
I had sat, captivated by the lightning I saw right when I blinked my eye. So I stayed and I watched the branches of the trees become silhouettes while the still-brown leaves of the oak trees rustled in their goodness. Wind through the leaves and the tufts belonging to the geese who just returned home.

Then there was that time, the wind paused and it was silent. A holy silence filled with the many thanks from the trees and the blades of grass still under the soil and the now-calm water on the lake. Thanks given in a million different ways from the millions of different creations around me and I, there, in the midst of it
a witness to this gratitude.
A gratitude filled with trust. Trust that life is being redeemed, it is being made new;
the rain will come.

And when it did come, I, the last of all,
gave my thanks.