Slippery Green Leaves of Grace

The spring rain has begun. I heard it falling and splashing under motorcycle tires from my bed this morning. Naturally I was not looking forward to being wet and cold and most likely late for work because the buses are always overloaded on rainy days. But for some reason, when I left the house, umbrella in hand, what I noticed was not the mud in the gutters or the puddles or the dripping hem of my left shirtsleeve, but rather the way the rain made all the branches of the trees black and the leaves a slick and vivid green.

The reason for this happy turn of events was that as I was walking to the bus stop I saw that the gate of Hà Pagoda was open and decided to step inside, buses and work be damned.

Perhaps the fact that I've lived for a year and a half in a city of four million honking scooters has eroded my standards for quiet. Or perhaps there really is something about a walled garden, incense, a fishpond, and rain falling on a tiled courtyard that is more silent than silence. In either case, the effect was the same: I began to settle down. And since praying is what you do in a pagoda, I started to pray. And as I prayed, I was given a gift.

As I watched the incense float heavily off into the wet air, the gift I received was the realization that this is not about me. Yesterday was not about me, or what I did, or how much fun I had with my friends last night. Today is not about me, or the long soggy commute to the office ahead of me, or the computer I will sit in front of when I finally get there. And tomorrow is most certainly not about me either, or about the pain and pleasure I will experience then. And because it is not about me, I am free to notice the world for what it is, rather than for the obstacles it puts in my path. I am free to notice the color of the leaves in rain.

I cannot put into words what a relief it was to remember this, what a relief it is every time I truly pray to remember that I am not the center of the universe, nor the master of my own destiny. So I won't try. Let it suffice to say simply that I walked through an open door like grace and received there the eyes to see the true color of things. The true color of my small self, and the true color of this majestic, sopping wet, slippery green world made by God.

"A funny thing happened in asia the other day..." Vol. 1 Ed. 3

This edition was sent in a mass e-mail on 1 Nov. 2008

Dear friends and family,
I hope you all have been well. Some of you may have heard on the news that Vietnam is experiencing record-breaking rains. It's true. Two days ago I never expected to find myself riding on the back of a motorbike going the wrong way down a street with water washing up to my ankles, but that is exactly where I found myself Friday evening at 5:05pm.

At 4:50pm, when I looked out my office window and saw that water had washed over the sidewalk and was lapping the edges of our building, I turned to my coworkers Thuan and Long and asked point-blank "what am I supposed to do?" Miss Thuan kindly offered to take me home, and we promptly donned our ponchos and shed our socks and shoes. As we passed waterlogged motorbikes and taxis abandoned in the street I was simultaneously scared I might not make it home and disappointed that I hadn't brought my camera along for the ride.


For lack of a camera, I resort to two pictures downloaded from the internet.

Here is a link where you can see more like them.

Up top is a picture of me in full rain attire (note the shoes in a plastic bag).

But before you are shocked and horrified at the terrible hardships I am suffering, consider this: rain, to Vietnamese, is like snow to Michiganders. Any tropical-born foreigner who experiences a Michigan blizzard for the first time is shocked and horrified at the sheer amount of it, and no less so by the behavior of Michigan natives as they go on with their lives, apparently oblivious to the peril to life and limb all around them. The foreigner might even write letters home about it (complete with photos downloded from the internet and pictures of themselves in full snow attire). These Americans! he/she exclaims in disbelief, How can they put up with this? The answer, of course, is that they (and their parents before them) have been putting up with it before they even knew what "it" was. And there are so many other things that keep them there: family, friends, the leaves in fall, etc. The same is true for Vietnam. The city of Hanoi alone is nearly 1,000 years old. A little rain--even a lot--is not going to make it wash away overnight.