Discernment

One day after class a friend and I decided to walk instead of taking a red taxi truck to the city center. More than once we turned one way but had the gut feeling we really should have gone the other way. Still, it was kind of fun get a deeper a sense for Chiang Mai: dust in my nose and on my bare feet, couples whizzing by on scooters and motorbikes, exhaust and dirty air except for the occasional heavenly whiff of jasmine, and then the gagging vomit smell of overripe papaya. Scents and traffic pulsed at us in waves like alternating pockets of warm and cool air.

Then turning down a trafficless street, I felt my whole self observing, soaking in information, aware of the play of sun and shadow, every face looking down from a window, and every crack in the sidewalk. And then suddenly my stomach clenched and I looked up from the ground to take in the street we had just walked into. Temple compounds rose up on either side of us, and monks in orange were kneeling and chanting up ahead. It was as if we had walked into another pocket of air or another wave of scent where the spiritual realm was as tangible as the smell of incense or the sensation of air moving the hairs on my arm or the back of my neck. We were all very aware of each other but pretended not to watch as we kept walking by.

It made me wonder about all of us foreigners traveling to Thailand. We Westerners are all either humanitarian-missionary types, or hemp wearing, faux-Buddhist backpackers, or eye-contact avoiding middle aged men on the prowl for girls, free from the home constrains of conscious. All tourists here are running from something; all expats are hiding away.

What do they think of us all when we come here? How does our God apply here? And what do they think of us all when they come to Europe to see our cold, drab, empty, stone cathedrals? Do they know better than us that God does not live there, alone by himself, available to the public only on Sundays and according to the schedule? How will they know that God lives among us, not in temples of stone? How will they know that the Holy Spirit teaches my own spirit and prompts me even to turn to the left or right on a street, if I choose to go the wrong way?