Sacred Life Sunday: Coming Through the Rain....

Thanks to all of you for your wonderful comments on my last post. Thanks for assuring me that it wasn't "stupid" to open up in such a personal way. You might not believe this ~ but I do pay attention to what you say. :)

This past month hasn't been a great one and suffice it to say that I came close to losing hope a few times. As you can imagine, there's not much life force without hope.

I'm not a score keeper in the traditional sense ~ but in my private life, I notice who is around when times get rough and who is not. I had some rude awakenings.

The same people are around all the time. As I've mentioned here, most of my fledgling community has been formed among the Lao people in my area. They are wonderful, warm, loving and generous people and I'm honored to know them and get to know them better. They have a comforting practicality along with a generous spirit that warms me. All the time. They have taught me some very valuable lessons, too, which I'll probably write about here in the fairly near future.

One of them came through for me in a very important way on Friday. It involved a sudden long drive to another city and a hurried transaction but this is something that didn't have to take place by current cultural standards. But it did.

A friend from the Lao community bought me a car.

Yes. A car.

They ain't cheap!

Naturally, I am going to pay her back as we agreed. That amount of money shouldn't be a gift from a working person who struggles like everyone else. We discussed it and agreed on pay-back terms. At the same time, there's something else I want to talk about that has nothing to do with the car specifically. I didn't nearly lose hope because of a silly car. I'm not that shallow. I lost hope because I was coming to believe there was no hope for ever getting past the separation and the nature of the social contract here which is "you're on your own". If you sink, so sorry, it's a terrible thing but that's just how it goes. Perhaps this will make me look weak in Western eyes ~ but it's too brutal for me. I'm not a cowboy sort of girl. I need the safety net of community. Without that, my life is totally and completely meaningless. The hard, cold truth is that I don't want to be here if life has to be that way.

M and her community have a very practical approach. Basically it is "I have it right now and you don't. I'll share it with you. When I need it, you'll share it with me."

That's a very sound social contract and one that makes all of us comfortable. The unspoken rule in this, of course, is "you'd better come through when it's your turn."

I think it would serve everyone well to adopt M's and her community's way of life. Imagine what it would be like if we helped each other in these simple ways. All of our lives would be so much better. This might sound facile on the surface but if you go a few layers deeper, you'll see that it's really not. It's the substance and core of life. The coming together, the sharing, the good and the bad, just the vicissitudes of life.

Over this past month and those few times I nearly lost hope, I remembered what a dark place that is. I've been there before in 2004 and consider myself lucky to have come out of it at all without following my father's footsteps.

Because that's the brutal truth of it. I wanted to die. I felt alone, abandoned and irrelevant.

I'm not given to melodrama. This is serious. Perhaps it's an exhortation of sorts because I know who could have helped and didn't. And I know we could all be doing better, including me. I know who couldn't and wanted to. And I know who did. The latter two are the ones who keep me going, who keep me rising out of bed each day and trying to exist with as much integrity and honor as possible, no matter how the outside world might look.

It's renewed my desire to give to others again, to be more generous with my own resources and to remain rooted into what I believe is the purpose of our material existence. I was beginning to pull back because it seemed that I was the only one who cared in that way. Thank God I didn't allow that callus to form. I got closer than I like to admit.

Something unrelated: Anyone have any plans for Election Night? I've decided to go get a big combination platter of Thai food and visit with a few people on the phone that evening to compare thoughts on the incoming results.

~*