They come to my door sometimes, always unannounced, and always with some inexpensive sugary drink or snack to give to me, the hostess, as is proper Asian custom. A blurry photo I snapped during one of those visits. We sit down, usually on the floor. They’re more comfortable there. I […]
Read MoreThe Charis Project
What Christmas Songs Tell Us About Hate
It’s all around us this time of year, if we listen. Subversive, revolutionary ideas about how the world ought to be fill the air. Our ears ring with the promise of hope, life, light in the darkness, the broken made whole, those who are oppressed finding justice, those who are […]
Read MoreOn Not Taking Things For Granted
We play a little thought game sometimes, my husband and I. It’s simple really. We take what we know about the people we meet, and we speculate on what their life would have been like if they had been able to access the same resources we had when we were […]
Read MoreHolding The Pieces
I sat on a pile of concrete fence posts across from her. She juggles her baby, almost a year old now, she says. She doesn’t really know because the baby’s father has taken all of her birth records. I ask her to tell me how she came to be “married”. […]
Read MoreOf Darkness, and Hope, and How You Can Help Bring Light
Today I met a 14 year old girl, when I was visiting two of the mothers in my birth class. She was squatting in the house next to one of the grandmothers. I thought she was a kid who came in to watch the babies. 17 year old mamas The […]
Read MoreOne Day
I participated in the One Day party on Instagram again this year, hosted by Laura of HollyWood HouseWife. Every year that I do this I think to myself I will follow up by making it into a blog post so that readers who aren’t on IG can see what goes […]
Read MoreFalse Alarms and Energy Drinks
She hands me a little plastic bag through the driver window. “Ah Sayama, chesu tin ba deh.” (Teacher, thank you, in Burmese.) I let my surprise show on my face. Not over the drinks, the ladies have taken to giving me these little gratitude tokens every week, almost always an […]
Read MoreWe Are Small
Sometimes I want to quit. Pack it in. Go home. Sometimes I feel like all our work, all my efforts, are just a drop in a bucket or worse, completely futile. A class I had organized is on hold because the participants are afraid to be seen gathering in public […]
Read MoreAn Embarrassment of Riches
She carefully hands me the coins she has swept up from the corners of my bedroom, this change I didn’t even notice was missing. The way she holds them and places them in my hands tells me that she would notice. Her life is so hardscrabble and close to the […]
Read More7 Quick Takes – So much to say
Little bits from around the web that I thought worth sharing. I wanted to include pictures but my internet out here in the Thailand boonies is so slow tonight that’s it’s not going to happen. 1. Modesty, I Don’t Think it Means What You Think it Means Probably everyone has […]
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