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| A view of the Red Mountains from the Naryn campus, right after sunrise. |
Saturday, December 17, 2016
A Brief Hiatus
Life in the Stans will be on a brief hiatus until the middle of January; thanks for visiting this blog during the past year. Best wishes to everyone for a wonderful holiday season. May the year 2017 be filled with peace and joy, despite however improbable the likelihood of that might seem at the moment. Let us go forward with great courage come what may.
Tuesday, December 13, 2016
Pineapple Dreams
We had a gathering on campus yesterday and I was sitting with a couple of Expats and inevitably we discussed what foods we would be bringing back from our home countries when we returned from our winter breaks in January. Someone mentioned obtaining a range of vegan products unknown in the sheep-eating land of Kyrgyzstan. I proposed almond butter and rooibos tea as potential stowaways that might find their way into my luggage.
Longing and desire are constant companions of those who live far from home. In casual conversation we dare not name some of the subjects of our yearnings, so we settle for sharing descriptive accounts of the delicious and tasty items that we cannot seem to find anywhere. This is why almond butter is talked about like a beloved cousin who lives in a distant land, whose companionship is sorely missed. It is also why we eagerly share our stories of finding rice milk in Bishkek at five times the price one would pay at home--even when we aren't particularly fond of milk made from grains. Longing and desire cause us to seek out different comforts than we might otherwise and pay a steeper price for them.
When winter descends upon the Kyrgyz mountains a biting cold accompanies the season. Sometimes I am huddled on campus for days at a time, never leaving the cocoon in which I live. I seldom remember my dreams while living in this frigid land and I suspect that it's a good thing. But as the chill grows deeper across the landscape, the fog of my slumber has been lifted and fragments of dreams stay with me and accompany me as I climb out of bed. These new dreams are unlike ones I've ever had: images of pineapples, coconuts, and mangos drift across my consciousness and contribute to the murky haze of my morning until they are banished by my first cup of tea.
Unlike the land of my dreams, there are no mangos cultivated in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan. Apples and potatoes and carrots are the bounty of this place. As wonderful as they are, eating them in copious amounts has not been the antidote to this obsession that seems to have overtaken my sleep. I find it peculiar that a person as pale as a sheet who can barely tolerate an ounce of sun has a mind suddenly fixated on this tropical fare.
Then, this past Saturday, I wandered through the Naryn produce market to buy some pears and apples and the occasional banana that somehow finds its way to every corner of the world. While contemplating a burlap sack crammed full of local carrots, I spotted it, hiding in a bin of onions at the very back of the adjacent produce stall. It was a golden, prickly pineapple, with a forest of spiked green leaves protruding from its top. At that moment it seemed unreal, as if it had tumbled from my dreams onto a random pile of onions, a mirage in Naryn Market.
The sharp thorns that stabbed me when I grabbed it was proof of its realness and greedily I bought that pineapple, despite the fact that it cost more than all the other produce I had purchased combined. Longing does that to you.
That night I ate half my pineapple, the fiercely sweet and burning sensation darting through my mouth, then settled into bed in a state of tropical bliss.
When I woke up the next morning, my mind was empty, no memory of the tropics or of anything at all. At first I was very pleased to have escaped the odd dreamscape that had been confounding me. Two more nights passed and still no recollection of anything--just more blank and uneventful sleep. My pineapple dreams had vanished, which left me wondering which was better: the empty memories of a sleep whiter than the snow-draped Kyrgyz mountains or the puzzling images from a colorful equatorial illusion?
When all of us living here go searching, for whatever it is we are looking for during our holidays, we will be trying to live out our elusive pineapple dreams. Then eventually we will return to the blazing, white Kyrgyz mountains and may still be left wondering which reality we might prefer.
Longing and desire are constant companions of those who live far from home. In casual conversation we dare not name some of the subjects of our yearnings, so we settle for sharing descriptive accounts of the delicious and tasty items that we cannot seem to find anywhere. This is why almond butter is talked about like a beloved cousin who lives in a distant land, whose companionship is sorely missed. It is also why we eagerly share our stories of finding rice milk in Bishkek at five times the price one would pay at home--even when we aren't particularly fond of milk made from grains. Longing and desire cause us to seek out different comforts than we might otherwise and pay a steeper price for them.
When winter descends upon the Kyrgyz mountains a biting cold accompanies the season. Sometimes I am huddled on campus for days at a time, never leaving the cocoon in which I live. I seldom remember my dreams while living in this frigid land and I suspect that it's a good thing. But as the chill grows deeper across the landscape, the fog of my slumber has been lifted and fragments of dreams stay with me and accompany me as I climb out of bed. These new dreams are unlike ones I've ever had: images of pineapples, coconuts, and mangos drift across my consciousness and contribute to the murky haze of my morning until they are banished by my first cup of tea.
Unlike the land of my dreams, there are no mangos cultivated in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan. Apples and potatoes and carrots are the bounty of this place. As wonderful as they are, eating them in copious amounts has not been the antidote to this obsession that seems to have overtaken my sleep. I find it peculiar that a person as pale as a sheet who can barely tolerate an ounce of sun has a mind suddenly fixated on this tropical fare.
Then, this past Saturday, I wandered through the Naryn produce market to buy some pears and apples and the occasional banana that somehow finds its way to every corner of the world. While contemplating a burlap sack crammed full of local carrots, I spotted it, hiding in a bin of onions at the very back of the adjacent produce stall. It was a golden, prickly pineapple, with a forest of spiked green leaves protruding from its top. At that moment it seemed unreal, as if it had tumbled from my dreams onto a random pile of onions, a mirage in Naryn Market.
The sharp thorns that stabbed me when I grabbed it was proof of its realness and greedily I bought that pineapple, despite the fact that it cost more than all the other produce I had purchased combined. Longing does that to you.
That night I ate half my pineapple, the fiercely sweet and burning sensation darting through my mouth, then settled into bed in a state of tropical bliss.
When I woke up the next morning, my mind was empty, no memory of the tropics or of anything at all. At first I was very pleased to have escaped the odd dreamscape that had been confounding me. Two more nights passed and still no recollection of anything--just more blank and uneventful sleep. My pineapple dreams had vanished, which left me wondering which was better: the empty memories of a sleep whiter than the snow-draped Kyrgyz mountains or the puzzling images from a colorful equatorial illusion?
When all of us living here go searching, for whatever it is we are looking for during our holidays, we will be trying to live out our elusive pineapple dreams. Then eventually we will return to the blazing, white Kyrgyz mountains and may still be left wondering which reality we might prefer.
Wednesday, December 7, 2016
Moments of Epic Wonderment
I have a very good friend who is a work colleague stationed in Bishkek with whom I usually communicate with via Email once or twice a day on business. Sometimes, I conclude my communications with a whimsical or peculiar closing salutation. Today, in my salutation, I wrote that I hoped her day had "moments of epic wonderment" as my day seemed to contain nothing of the sort.
She wrote back and told me that she had experienced a moment of epic wonderment today. And then I realized I had too. Epic wonderment. It's a "state of awed admiration or respect." It can also be defined as the "surprise and admiration caused by something beautiful, unexpected, or inexplicable." After considering these definitions, it's not astonishing that many of us go for days or weeks without perceiving that we ever experience a moment of epic wonderment. It seems as though lately our surprise and amazement has been caused by unexpected or inexplicable events of shocking ugliness, rather than those of profound beauty. Yet they are here to be grasped, these positive moments of wonderment, if we can somehow find them.
My moment of epic wonderment today was the feeling of surprise and awe I experienced when I considered an unexpected friendship that has enriched my life more than I might have imagined months ago. I also feel wonderment, when I look out my office window at the stark and beautiful landscape and consider the unexpected nature of life that caused me to somehow end up living in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan. Almost every moment in our lives contains the possibility for wonderment when we realize that a state of awed admiration and respect should not solely be reserved for the remarkable or the unusual, but also for those things which are embedded in our daily lives that are often overlooked and ignored. Whether it is the spectacle of the night sky, or the warm and gentle touch of someone's hand, uncountable sources of wonderment like these surround us, despite our obliviousness to them in our hurried and unreflective lives.
Each day I witness much that fills me with concern. The state of the world is alarming. Aspects of my existence are sometimes troubling and I fail to grasp the intricacies of the challenges those around me face in their own lives. Then I must stop. It is at that instant, when I need to search outside myself for the surprisingly beautiful and unexpected. It is in these moments of epic wonderment where meaning and insight most intensely reside and where some small strength to continue onward can be obtained.
She wrote back and told me that she had experienced a moment of epic wonderment today. And then I realized I had too. Epic wonderment. It's a "state of awed admiration or respect." It can also be defined as the "surprise and admiration caused by something beautiful, unexpected, or inexplicable." After considering these definitions, it's not astonishing that many of us go for days or weeks without perceiving that we ever experience a moment of epic wonderment. It seems as though lately our surprise and amazement has been caused by unexpected or inexplicable events of shocking ugliness, rather than those of profound beauty. Yet they are here to be grasped, these positive moments of wonderment, if we can somehow find them.
My moment of epic wonderment today was the feeling of surprise and awe I experienced when I considered an unexpected friendship that has enriched my life more than I might have imagined months ago. I also feel wonderment, when I look out my office window at the stark and beautiful landscape and consider the unexpected nature of life that caused me to somehow end up living in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan. Almost every moment in our lives contains the possibility for wonderment when we realize that a state of awed admiration and respect should not solely be reserved for the remarkable or the unusual, but also for those things which are embedded in our daily lives that are often overlooked and ignored. Whether it is the spectacle of the night sky, or the warm and gentle touch of someone's hand, uncountable sources of wonderment like these surround us, despite our obliviousness to them in our hurried and unreflective lives.
Each day I witness much that fills me with concern. The state of the world is alarming. Aspects of my existence are sometimes troubling and I fail to grasp the intricacies of the challenges those around me face in their own lives. Then I must stop. It is at that instant, when I need to search outside myself for the surprisingly beautiful and unexpected. It is in these moments of epic wonderment where meaning and insight most intensely reside and where some small strength to continue onward can be obtained.
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| A source of wonderment: the view outside my office window |
Sunday, November 27, 2016
My "Reading the World" Project: Finding the Holy Grail
I've spent the last several months engaged in my own personal "Reading the World" project, inspired by Ann Morgan who read one work of literature from every country of the world during the course of a year. She describes her project in the following Ted Talk.
https://go.ted.com/CjMW
If you are interested in checking out all the books that Ms. Morgan read, you should go to her website.
ayearofreadingtheworld.com
I had hoped to find the book on Ms. Morgan's list written by Chingiz Aitmatov, Kyrgyzstan's most noted writer, but failed miserably in my search for any copy of his works during the time I lived in Bishkek. (I described my futile search in my post of August 16.) Instead, I resigned myself to reading a collection of four works focused primarily on Turkey. While they were all great books, I still felt a tinge of sadness that I couldn't find any of the works of Aitmatov.
But then, one fine September morning, I was aimlessly searching the shelves of our new campus library, when I discovered it: The Holy Grail of Kyrgyz literature for which I had been so intrepidly hunting.
It was Jamilia, the book considered to be Aitmatov's master work. Where did I find it, exactly? It was hiding among the miscellaneous books and items wedged into the backside of one of the library's movable bookshelves, disguised from clear view. But find it, I finally did.
I've now read the novella, which tells the story of a young Kyrgyz woman in World War II Kyrgyzstan named Jamilia who is married to a soldier who has gone off to battle the Nazis. Jamilia spends her time engaged in the back-breaking work of hauling sacks of grain to the station where they will be used for the war effort. Her marriage is a loveless one as her husband barely even addresses her in his infrequent letters home. The novella focuses on Jamilia's budding romance with a crippled war veteran named Daniyar who has returned to Kyrgyzstan and has been enlisted to assist Jamilia in hauling the grain.
I see the value of this novella, not so much as a story recounting the love of two people, but rather as a narrative that expresses love for the Kyrgyz landscape, its arts, music, culture, and traditions as a nation struggling to transition from its traditional ways to the modern Soviet world. This portrayal of Kyrgyzstan is particularly compelling for me now that I reside in this landscape and have some small appreciation for the traditional Kyrgyz ways to which I've been exposed.
I invite those of you who haven't taken me up on my invitation to read at least one work from Ann Morgan's list during the year 2016 to do so right now. You have only a month left, but that's plenty of time to pick up an outstanding work of international literature and to learn about a part of the world with which you are completely unfamiliar.
Happy reading!
https://go.ted.com/CjMW
If you are interested in checking out all the books that Ms. Morgan read, you should go to her website.
ayearofreadingtheworld.com
I had hoped to find the book on Ms. Morgan's list written by Chingiz Aitmatov, Kyrgyzstan's most noted writer, but failed miserably in my search for any copy of his works during the time I lived in Bishkek. (I described my futile search in my post of August 16.) Instead, I resigned myself to reading a collection of four works focused primarily on Turkey. While they were all great books, I still felt a tinge of sadness that I couldn't find any of the works of Aitmatov.
But then, one fine September morning, I was aimlessly searching the shelves of our new campus library, when I discovered it: The Holy Grail of Kyrgyz literature for which I had been so intrepidly hunting.
 |
| Published by Telegram Books of London, 2007, ISBN 978-1-84659-032-0 Perhaps the most annoying thing about this version of the book is that the woman on the cover portraying the Kyrgyz heroine is clearly not an ethnic Kyrgyz and bears no resemblance to the woman described in the book. Some art director at the Telegram Book Company failed to do their research. |
 |
| Where I discovered the Holy Grail of Kyrgyz literature known as Jamilia. |
I see the value of this novella, not so much as a story recounting the love of two people, but rather as a narrative that expresses love for the Kyrgyz landscape, its arts, music, culture, and traditions as a nation struggling to transition from its traditional ways to the modern Soviet world. This portrayal of Kyrgyzstan is particularly compelling for me now that I reside in this landscape and have some small appreciation for the traditional Kyrgyz ways to which I've been exposed.
I invite those of you who haven't taken me up on my invitation to read at least one work from Ann Morgan's list during the year 2016 to do so right now. You have only a month left, but that's plenty of time to pick up an outstanding work of international literature and to learn about a part of the world with which you are completely unfamiliar.
Happy reading!
Saturday, November 26, 2016
An emptiness of mind
One of the faculty members came to our office the other day to complain to my colleagues and me about his boredom. There was nothing happening on campus, he said, that satisfied his interest. Not only that, he noted there was nothing inside the entire community of Naryn sufficiently interesting to break his boredom funk.
I thought about this for awhile. Perhaps I am greatly lacking in empathy, but I have almost no empathetic impulse for those claiming boredom. One of the problems with the bored is they think that boredom is a condition that springs from a deficiency of the outside world when, in fact, I am convinced that boredom is almost exclusively a difficulty that comes from within.
In defense of my bored colleague, after considering the idea of boredom in a solitary moment over a cup of tea, I realized that what we call boredom might actually be something else. Perhaps boredom is much more complicated. It is an emptiness of mind.
An emptiness of mind is when you don't feel any engagement with the world as it presents itself to you. Perhaps it is because you are depressed, which makes it difficult to connect fully with the world. Maybe the cause is you don't have the capacity to understand or relate to the stimuli you are encountering. That's why nuclear physics seems boring to me: I am wholly incapable of understanding it. It is an emptiness of mind that comes from non-comprehension.
In my contemplation of boredom, I realized that I have also been suffering from an emptiness of mind lately. I didn't attach the term boredom to my disengagement from things that usually keep me occupied, nor did I call it boredom those many times I've spent just staring out my window. But an emptiness of mind it is, and it has caused me these past couple weeks to be like a car stuck in neutral, moving nowhere at all.
There is a reason, however, that some spiritual traditions encourage an emptiness of mind. When our minds are empty, we can despair, or we can raise a call against what we perceive is a boring world that's overtaken us. Or we can take this emptiness of mind as an incredible opportunity to re-focus and contemplate again what we want to take from the world and, even more importantly, what we wish to contribute to this cosmic accident where we happen to find ourselves. Boredom cannot flourish in a climate where what one gives takes precedence and a mind cannot remain empty when its focus is outside itself.
And I also learned last night there is one other sure-fire cure for an emptiness of mind, even if you aren't able to successfully fill your mind yourself. With a group of awesome people, we made pizza together and engaged in pleasant conversation while eating. What a useful rule of thumb: make pizza with friends and your emptiness of mind will disappear. Even better: make a hundred pizzas and share them with the world.
The world is in a bad state and evil forces surround us. Hope seems distant. Boredom and an emptiness of mind can so easily overwhelm us. Time to re-focus, knead the dough, and get to the business of baking and, in embracing this process, we then take the actions needed to bring us engagement with the universe and those with whom we share it. Let us act to transform our emptiness of mind by contributing to the fullness of each other's lives, because each moment is too precious for us to do anything else.
I thought about this for awhile. Perhaps I am greatly lacking in empathy, but I have almost no empathetic impulse for those claiming boredom. One of the problems with the bored is they think that boredom is a condition that springs from a deficiency of the outside world when, in fact, I am convinced that boredom is almost exclusively a difficulty that comes from within.
In defense of my bored colleague, after considering the idea of boredom in a solitary moment over a cup of tea, I realized that what we call boredom might actually be something else. Perhaps boredom is much more complicated. It is an emptiness of mind.
An emptiness of mind is when you don't feel any engagement with the world as it presents itself to you. Perhaps it is because you are depressed, which makes it difficult to connect fully with the world. Maybe the cause is you don't have the capacity to understand or relate to the stimuli you are encountering. That's why nuclear physics seems boring to me: I am wholly incapable of understanding it. It is an emptiness of mind that comes from non-comprehension.
In my contemplation of boredom, I realized that I have also been suffering from an emptiness of mind lately. I didn't attach the term boredom to my disengagement from things that usually keep me occupied, nor did I call it boredom those many times I've spent just staring out my window. But an emptiness of mind it is, and it has caused me these past couple weeks to be like a car stuck in neutral, moving nowhere at all.
There is a reason, however, that some spiritual traditions encourage an emptiness of mind. When our minds are empty, we can despair, or we can raise a call against what we perceive is a boring world that's overtaken us. Or we can take this emptiness of mind as an incredible opportunity to re-focus and contemplate again what we want to take from the world and, even more importantly, what we wish to contribute to this cosmic accident where we happen to find ourselves. Boredom cannot flourish in a climate where what one gives takes precedence and a mind cannot remain empty when its focus is outside itself.
And I also learned last night there is one other sure-fire cure for an emptiness of mind, even if you aren't able to successfully fill your mind yourself. With a group of awesome people, we made pizza together and engaged in pleasant conversation while eating. What a useful rule of thumb: make pizza with friends and your emptiness of mind will disappear. Even better: make a hundred pizzas and share them with the world.
The world is in a bad state and evil forces surround us. Hope seems distant. Boredom and an emptiness of mind can so easily overwhelm us. Time to re-focus, knead the dough, and get to the business of baking and, in embracing this process, we then take the actions needed to bring us engagement with the universe and those with whom we share it. Let us act to transform our emptiness of mind by contributing to the fullness of each other's lives, because each moment is too precious for us to do anything else.
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| One cure for an emptiness of mind |
Tuesday, November 22, 2016
Explaining Pumpkin Pie
One of the more peculiar duties I have had while living on international campuses is helping put together the menu for holidays and festivals that are not part of the local tradition. Thanksgiving is usually the big offender as food is the centerpiece of this celebration and the culinary traditions of this feast cannot be translated easily across boundaries.
My Italian cooks at NYU in Florence were sharp and adaptable and had the ability to crank out a Thanksgiving feast that would have made grandma proud, although I will never forget the response of one of my Italian chefs when I was explaining how to make mashed potatoes: "Why would someone commit such violence on a potato?"
The rural and unworldly Dutch staff in the Castle where I celebrated Thanksgiving had a bit more trouble navigating the holiday. I remember the looks of horror when I described how to create stuffing. "Excuse me, you shove the dried bread mixture where?" they would ask me repeatedly. Their sour frowns at my excessive interest in a turkey's innards seemed to border on moral disapproval and caused me to question the very nature of this holiday treat.
And now in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan I find myself explaining this strange assortment of foods that we eat when we are supposedly thankful to two Pakistani cooks and a Kyrgyz kitchen supervisor. What makes it even more challenging is the none of the ingredients seem to exist within 200 kilometers of our mountain home.
Explaining pumpkin pie. With language barriers. The kind and good young Pakistani baker and I went through the recipe several times, but his quizzical expression and his constant head scratching were ominous signs. "I think I should also bake some pastries," he said. "Yes, you are right," I replied, agreeing to his back-up plan.
A few hours later he brought me a bowl containing his experimental efforts at making pumpkin filling for me to try. It had a pleasing taste, but something was awry. "Is this pumpkin?" I asked. "Yes," he beamed.
When we entered the kitchen, he proudly showed me the assortment of small, brown autumn squash displayed on the counter. "Pumpkin," he exclaimed proudly. "Yes, pumpkin," I said, quietly, as I tried to figure out in my mind how I would explain squash pie to the small group of North American visitors who would be coming to our campus on Thanksgiving, expecting a traditional feast. It's no wonder I didn't even try to go down the stuffing path this year.
I have no doubt the Thanksgiving meal we'll get tomorrow, will be the strangest one yet from all the Thanksgivings I have spent in various corners of the world. It will be okay. It will be a good reminder that it really isn't the food that makes the holiday. It is the efforts of a Pakistani baker who is probably still furiously working to transform squash into dessert even as I write, it is the paper turkeys and other handmade crafts created by Tajik and Kyrgyz students in art club to celebrate our day, it is the warmth generated by a hundred hearts eating together in a dining hall in the mountains, far away from anyone, that really matters. And it is for these, and many other, small blessings that go unnoticed throughout our days for which I am quite thankful.
My Italian cooks at NYU in Florence were sharp and adaptable and had the ability to crank out a Thanksgiving feast that would have made grandma proud, although I will never forget the response of one of my Italian chefs when I was explaining how to make mashed potatoes: "Why would someone commit such violence on a potato?"
The rural and unworldly Dutch staff in the Castle where I celebrated Thanksgiving had a bit more trouble navigating the holiday. I remember the looks of horror when I described how to create stuffing. "Excuse me, you shove the dried bread mixture where?" they would ask me repeatedly. Their sour frowns at my excessive interest in a turkey's innards seemed to border on moral disapproval and caused me to question the very nature of this holiday treat.
And now in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan I find myself explaining this strange assortment of foods that we eat when we are supposedly thankful to two Pakistani cooks and a Kyrgyz kitchen supervisor. What makes it even more challenging is the none of the ingredients seem to exist within 200 kilometers of our mountain home.
Explaining pumpkin pie. With language barriers. The kind and good young Pakistani baker and I went through the recipe several times, but his quizzical expression and his constant head scratching were ominous signs. "I think I should also bake some pastries," he said. "Yes, you are right," I replied, agreeing to his back-up plan.
A few hours later he brought me a bowl containing his experimental efforts at making pumpkin filling for me to try. It had a pleasing taste, but something was awry. "Is this pumpkin?" I asked. "Yes," he beamed.
When we entered the kitchen, he proudly showed me the assortment of small, brown autumn squash displayed on the counter. "Pumpkin," he exclaimed proudly. "Yes, pumpkin," I said, quietly, as I tried to figure out in my mind how I would explain squash pie to the small group of North American visitors who would be coming to our campus on Thanksgiving, expecting a traditional feast. It's no wonder I didn't even try to go down the stuffing path this year.
I have no doubt the Thanksgiving meal we'll get tomorrow, will be the strangest one yet from all the Thanksgivings I have spent in various corners of the world. It will be okay. It will be a good reminder that it really isn't the food that makes the holiday. It is the efforts of a Pakistani baker who is probably still furiously working to transform squash into dessert even as I write, it is the paper turkeys and other handmade crafts created by Tajik and Kyrgyz students in art club to celebrate our day, it is the warmth generated by a hundred hearts eating together in a dining hall in the mountains, far away from anyone, that really matters. And it is for these, and many other, small blessings that go unnoticed throughout our days for which I am quite thankful.
 |
| Not my squash pie. |
Sunday, November 13, 2016
Where is God today?
Where is God today?
When I was an undergraduate I had an electric alarm clock that never seemed to work. When there was even the tiniest of power surges, it would revert back to 12:00 and flash incessantly. Other times it would turn itself off spontaneously and the snooze button simply seemed to just turn the alarm off. And the plug didn't seem to fit into any outlet and would fall out of the wall if you breathed upon it too heavily. It's a wonder I made it through my Freshman year with the world's most unreliable timepiece as my guide.
On many days, when I look at the world, I think God possesses an alarm clock from the same company that made the one I had in school. I believe, during the relatively quiet year of 1707, he set his alarm for 200 years, anticipating a wake-up in 1907, ready to get up and at it to face the challenges of the 20th Century. But, poor God, with that same crappy brand of clock I had, has overslept and much has happened since that 1907 wake-up we've all been expecting. What better reason could explain World War I, the Holocaust, fifty different genocides, and countless famines, just to name the highlights?
Today as I walked along the streets of Bishkek, shopping, enjoying unseasonably warm weather, I was successfully managing to keep the events of the past week out of my mind, when suddenly I encountered a beggar sitting on the sidewalk as I waited for the light to change. This was no ordinary beggar, but instead was one of the saddest people I have ever seen. It appeared he had either lost a fight with the baddest UFC fighter on the planet or had been run over by a cement truck. His clothes were torn, cuts and bruises encrusted his body. I could see his blood dried on his knee through the giant hole in his pants. He spoke to me in Russian asking me for money. And the first thing I asked myself was "Where is God today?"
I tried to fish some coins out of my pocket, but all I had was a One Som coin, worth about a penny. Crap. The only other money I had in my pocket were really large bills. Then the light changed back to red and I had to wait for the light again. And I was late to get to a store I wanted to visit before it closed. I was about to hand him the One Som coin, when I realized that it's really more insulting to give a person such a small pittance than it is to give them nothing at all. It feels like giving a person One Som is like taunting them or spitting at them in contempt.
I stood and looked at the man, deeply into his eyes. Damn the light turned red again. All I really wanted to do was just cross the street. Exasperated, I pulled a 500 Som bill out of my pocket and handed it to him. I might have detected a small flicker brighten his eyes as he said three or four sentences to me. I wish I could have said something more meaningful to him than "good-bye." Oh no! The light turned red again. Oh well, what can one do?
Please do not operate under the impression that I am a good person. If I were I would have given him all the bills in my pocket and would have tried to find a place where he could have had his wounds cleaned and tended. No, my complete lack of skill in Russian is not an excuse for my inaction. And as an even worse reflection of my character, I do admit, for a second, I did calculate how that 500 soms could purchase two weeks of my blood pressure medication (which I am in much more dire need of since Tuesday) or even six delicious Perfection 80% Cocoa chocolate bars, my favorite chocolate in Kyrgyzstan.
Where is God today? After I finally crossed the street I realized that the problem with God is not His alarm clock. It is actually a problem with bicycles. If there is a God, maybe He/She/It is not sleeping after all. Maybe what has happened is that the Supreme Being has decided that after centuries and centuries of providing humans with prophets and messiahs and holy texts galore, that it's time to take the training wheels off and let us humans ride the bicycle of destiny for ourselves and learn to properly use that gift of free will we've been given. Sadly, like the small child riding a bike without training wheels for the first time, we all expect the hand of someone more powerful to control our ride and keep us from crashing. But one will never learn to ride a bicycle correctly if one always expects a guiding hand.
Where is God today? If the Kingdom of God is to appear it will not come from the skies or fall from the heavens. The Kingdom of God will come only if it is present in all our hearts and manifests itself in each of our little daily actions; bringing the Kingdom of God to Earth is OUR responsibility. The Kingdom of God will come when we bring it to the planet by taking good care of every person in the world.
We cannot wait for God's alarm to go off, as who knows when that will happen. Instead, the training wheels are off and we must pedal as hard and as fast as we can, whether we are Buddhist or Christian or Muslim or Hindu or Jew, or lapsed-Lutheran agnostic. We must ride with the message of love toward one another, kindness towards all who are different than ourselves, and assistance to all in need, while resisting the messengers of greed and hatred. And we must ride no matter the risk of crashing into the ditch and despite the peril we face from our adversaries chasing us on Harleys.
Where is God today? He is the man I met on a street corner in Bishkek. And God is also in our hands.
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