All That Is Bitter and Sweet (21 page)

Yet after a while exploring the realms of ecumenical faith, I’ll be inexorably swallowed up by the resiliency of the specific tradition in which I was raised. I never stray too far. I often find myself yearning for the ritual of communion, I long for the little mountain church, icons of Appalachia, and Sunday dinner on the ground. I dream of the third pew on the left in the First United Methodist Church on Winchester Avenue in Ashland, Kentucky, where I learned the doxology. I reach for my own, deepest traditions in times of pain or stress. Which may be why, after an afternoon of witnessing the suffering of so many abandoned hospice patients, I found myself yearning for Jesus. And as I watched Father Michael pay his respects to Professor Monk by bowing slightly in front of him with his hands in the culturally appropriate gesture of respect and deference, I wondered about that commandment that says, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Once more, it was conflated in my head. I wondered how Father Michael explained it to his superiors, this easing from mass to Buddhist chants with radiant enthusiasm. I wanted to ask him if he tried to slip in a little Christ chat with patients. Even Mother Teresa of Calcutta qualified which deaths were “beautiful” on the basis of Christian conversation. But then I thought more about all the ineffable things I had seen today, the incontrovertible peace and palpable presence of grace, and how I was inspired by the monk and the priest working side by side in addressing the needs of the sick, rejected, and despised.

Then I remembered.

Sometimes I forget, but it does always come back to me: God is Love. Period.

That night I retreated to my hotel room in Bangkok to write up my journals and prepare for a big day tomorrow. Sleep didn’t come easily, and my stomach was uncomfortable. I figured I was hungry, as I typically eat a lot but hadn’t been doing so here, and I have low blood sugar, which can make me nauseated. Eventually I fell asleep.

A short while later I woke up sick as a dog, erupting from both ends. When I could lift myself off the floor, I’d go back to bed, trembling with aches, listening to my stomach build up for its next maneuver. I was writhing in pain.

I tried to put it in perspective. When Ouk Srey Leak in Phnom Penh gets the trots, she goes to an outside hole toilet. No running water for her, not even to wash her hands. One of the friends I met in the hospice lived at home for seven years, HIV-positive and ill, neglected by his family before he came to the temple. He had no one to comfort him, no one to offer him medicine, no one to help him heal. I figured I shouldn’t feel so bad, but I did.

I decided to reach across the international date line and call my friend Mimi in California—she would still be awake. She answered on the first ring, I asked for advice, and she suggested we call one of our yoga teachers, Seane Corn, for reminders about postures that would support and soothe me through this. Seane is an incredibly dynamic instructor who emphasizes the spiritual as well as the physical benefits of the practice. In fact, they are inseparable. The word
yoga
means “to unite” or “to yoke,” and teachers like Seane show us how there is a divine connection between mind, body, soul, and all creation. She also teaches that the body absorbs and remembers every experience, good and bad, and these in turn affect our health. The mind-body-spirit phenomenon has been increasingly studied and measured by plain ol’ Western doctors and has largely become mainstream. Seane had just returned from a weekend retreat on energy work and was flush with guidance and perspective to share with me.

Speaking through Mimi, who held a phone to each ear, Seane advised me to lie on the floor with my legs placed up a wall and reminded me of the simple, consoling relief of a cold cloth on a fevered forehead. Then she gave me the lesson I really needed.

Seane said what was actually making me sick was the devastation I had witnessed during my trip and not setting and maintaining appropriate boundaries as I did so. I had left myself too open to the suffering of others, extending myself beyond empathy to vicarious trauma. My body was manifesting the emotional pain. She said it was critical that I pray every morning before I left the hotel and pray upon my return, to ground and protect myself. Mimi agreed. They reminded me I could not take on the pain of everyone I met, the HIV-positive prostitutes, the orphans, the sick mothers in their huts, my farm friend trapped in a brothel.

Seane’s words flowed through Mimi’s voice. It said, “You can carry the message. But you are not
the
message. God’s love is the message. Quit taking on people’s stuff. Pray for the spiritual wisdom to have discernment between empathy and enmeshment. There is a God, and it’s not you.”

When I realized what had truly been bothering me, I broke down in sobs. I bawled and bawled until reasonable people would think a body would be dried out to its bones, then I cried some more. I wanted to forget, to go home, be in my yellow kitchen, wearing my great-aunt Pauline’s apron, baking a cake. I wanted desperately to lie with our dogs pulled up against me, their bodies running perfectly down my core, all of us breathing and sleeping and loving as one person. I wanted to sit on Squeaker’s little grave and fiddle with my roses, accompanied in the garden by our cats Bunny, Amelia, and Albert, and see Agnes on the upstairs porch, waiting in our spot for me to come brush her. I wanted to lie down on soft, old cotton sheets and share my pillow with Percy, who purrs in his sleep while we hold hands. I wanted my husband to hold me and for sex to be all that it is meant to be, beautiful and kind and fun and fascinating and a union between two bodies, characters, and souls.

Seane and Mimi were right. I had been trying to take on the pain of the world without realizing it, making myself sick—physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I had been praying for the exploited, their abusers (well, sometimes), and those who try to help them, but not for myself. I had no mastery over my own trauma and unresolved grief, which was being seriously triggered. (It would be a while before I would even begin to understand what that meant and know what to do about it.) I had even done something genuinely embarrassing, perhaps the most embarrassing thing I have ever done in my life, because of my immaturity in this work. Holding that first HIV-positive, transgender sex slave in Svay Pak, unsure of what to do about her tremendous display of vulnerability, keen to help in any way I could, in my mind I had whispered,
Give your pain to me, I can handle it. Give it to me
. Now my own grandiosity took my breath away. Although it was well-intentioned, it was nothing less than overweening hubris! When I put all of this together, lying on the carpeted floor, words rushed to my mind:
The Lamb of God is the One who takes on our suffering, having chosen to die that we might live. Cast all your care upon Him, for He cares for you
.

I had felt the unmistakable presence of the Holy Spirit a lot on this trip, especially (strangely, perhaps) when I invited Her into the most desolate places. In the Pattaya bar, as I prayed upon entering, the power of the Holy Spirit was so instant, so enormous, characterized inadequately as a rushing wind, that I nearly dropped to my knees right then. I wish I had; it was obviously what I needed. I also saw God in action among the
wat
grannies and the gentle monks of Lopburi. But I hadn’t seen a lot of God in my bedroom. There, my self-will had cut me off from the sunlight of the Spirit.

I was reminded of one of my favorite pieces of scripture, an especially powerful series of verses, from Ephesians. It is about how to prepare for spiritual warfare—and make no mistake about it, that is what this was:

Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God …

Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness;

And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace;

Above all, taking the shield of faith …

And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God

I needed God’s armor. My thinking had become distorted; pain had tricked my heart into taking on God’s work, confusing it with my own. Seane was right: I could be God’s light,
but I could not work out each person’s salvation
. I could not rescue each person. I could not heal them.
Only God could
. I repeated it over and over like a mantra, with my legs up the wall, a washcloth over my eyes, as I buckled down to wait out my own dark night of the soul.

As soon as the sun was up, I called Kate and told her I needed a doctor to settle my turbulent gut. I had obligations to meet, including an appointment with the prime minister of Thailand that afternoon. By midmorning it appeared that everyone in the hotel knew I was ill. When I called room service for ginger tea, they asked what else they could do to help me feel better. Housekeeping sent me pink lotuses and a get-well card. The hotel sent a Western-style doctor to my room who prescribed a typical round of pills that suppressed symptoms. Meanwhile, Kate tracked down a wonderful Chinese doctor who used acupuncture to calm my stomach. He determined that the heat had done me in, and I had to agree. It had all been a little too hot, too emotional, too intense. But I wouldn’t have changed a thing. I started taking his herbs and ignored the other doctor’s advice—except for his suggestion to eat warm chocolate pudding, my ultimate comfort food, so associated with Mamaw and Papaw, and those tender, musical summer nights in eastern Kentucky. God, it was delicious, and it was all I could keep down. I put on a clean white cotton nightgown and waited. Healing became merely a matter of time.

In spite of shaky legs, aching hips, the sweats, and the often abrupt need to run to the toilet, I not only got through the day, but with my PSI/YouthAIDS team ran a very successful afternoon meeting with Thaksin Shinawatra, the prime minister of Thailand. It turned out that he had studied at Eastern Kentucky University and he’d been at the Kentucky Derby in 1973 when Secretariat won. I fussed over him for that. I also took the opportunity to affirm his government’s stance on expanding access to anti-AIDS drugs. Since he had been in office, dozens of hospitals in Thailand had stepped up distribution of the potent antiretroviral cocktail that was keeping patients alive. And the government was defying the pharmaceutical companies by using cheaper generic drugs to keep the costs down.

Because PSI was new to his country, this was our big chance to introduce him to our programs and gain his support. The PM listened with great interest as we described what we do, emphasizing prevention and government partnerships. We were all thrilled when he offered PSI the full support of his government. I felt like high-fiving everyone but worried about how I stank from all the adrenaline that was running through me.

Then, at last, having made it through the day, I went back to the hotel and took a bath. I watched TV for the first time since I’d left America, a Discovery Channel program about chimps. Perfect. It helped me realize how deeply I had gone into the trouble of our world, how much I had almost lost myself in it. I determined to keep my equanimity, to find a way to stay in the work and not burn out. I then proceeded to sleep twelve and a half hours—by no means a personal best, but still impressive. When I woke I was still shaky, but I was not throwing up, I was not crying, and I was ready to fight.