Quality

“NO SPITTING ON RESTROOM FLOOR,” a sign declares in all capital letters from the wall. I search awkwardly for the lever to turn on the water in the long trough sink as seasoned workers hurry about the bathroom on their break. The man next to me gestures down below and I finally see a pedal which I lean into with my knee and send scalding water cascading from the faucet and splashing onto my sweatshirt.

I yank open the bathroom door and walk out into the cafeteria. The lunch line is off to the right and vending machines line the far left wall. The long sidewalls are covered with small gray lockers. Long fold out tables with bench seats fill the center of the room in rows of two. It is as though I am walking out of the smoky bathroom of my high school back into the crowded cafeteria. I feel as though I need to have a pass to prove that I am allowed to be here. I glance nervously among the tables and breathe a sigh of relief as Eh Kaw waves me over to the Karen table where there are already many Tupperware containers of curry spread out between bowls of rice.

It is my first day as a Quality Assurance Technician at the chicken plant, which is mostly spent watching the others quickly weigh random samples of “product” and place holds on seventy pound tubs of chicken nuggets which contain too many pieces several grams too heavy or connected together by fat or cartilage. “The most important thing is speed,” my supervisor tells me as he sits me down in his office to read company and department policies to me, after which I am to initial off on several items on a list.

Quality assurance as it turns out is mostly a matter of quickly collecting data to keep “product” moving along the line. While I am required to stick my sheathed hands and arms into the tubs and stir around to look for foreign material, mostly my purpose is to ensure the homogeneity of fillets and nuggets to keep Chick-fil-A and Zaxby’s from making too many complaints. I am to report any defects, or signs that the product originated in a living creature: cartilage, excess skin, fat, bloodspots, or worst of all, bone.

My first day is relatively easy and I question the suggestion made by the representative from human resources during the classroom orientation the previous week, that you take a couple of over-the-counter painkillers before work everyday for your first week. The second day, however, I am to report at the regular time and so I carpool with my Karen friends in Comer already working at the plant. A silver SUV pulls up outside the house at 6:35 am the next morning, roughly ten minutes after Eh Kaw knocks on my door to wake me up.

I sip on my thermos of tea as we cruise down 72 towards Athens in the darkness before dawn. The headlights illuminate a large tractor-trailer stacked high with cages in the lane adjacent to us. Gloomy white shapes squirm inside the squatty cages and feathers rush in the headwind. We are caravanning from Comer together with our product.

Quality can never be evaluated by adherence to a particular model, because quality exists only relative to particularity. If you eat the same identical piece of chicken every day for lunch, eventually the distinctions of “good” or “bad” lose their meaning because no experience is unique. There is only one experience: chicken. The chicken plant is the industrialization of our oblivion. Without the mindfulness with which to actually make distinctions between experiences, we become the all-white meat fillet that fills our belly. As we genetically engineer ourselves into machines, we make our world into a place where consciousness is a scary thought. What is the purpose of all of these people working in a cold and noisy factory under fluorescent lights to produce low-quality food to fatten the drive-thru patron? What are people for?

When my great-grandparents immigrated to the United States from Germany they were poor working class people living in Baltimore city. My great-grandfather established a bakery in his new country and this was the means by which he supported his family. After my grandmother completed the 8^th grade, she went to work in her father’s bakery also. As the story told many times at her funeral in January goes, this is where she met my grandfather, who kept coming back for doughnuts. This is my most recent relative whom I have heard of employed in the work of food production.

We encounter low quality when we are unable to conceive of the existence of multiple realities: rich and poor, delicious and bland, life and death. Our memory becomes bleached by monoculture. As my psychiatrist recently reminded me, “Depression is not good for you. There have been studies showing links between depression and all kinds of health problems, especially memory loss.”  The symptoms are perhaps a sign of the disease.

My second day I begin working alongside one of the other technicians who kindly teaches me all of the different tasks and tricks associated with the job. Tub after tub of chicken comes on the rollers to be processed. My lower back begins to ache from standing and pushing the tubs as 4:15 PM approaches. The lines show no sign of stopping. The product continues to appear without notification from anyone as to what time the machines will be shut off and the birds will be finished so that we can go home for the day.

I am faced with the challenge of remembering the distinctions between the days of my toil, of countering the temptation to classify my new work as monotony and follow this to its logical conclusion of meaninglessness. I must frame my new position as an act of anamnesis for my middle class mind to accept it. If I am to pursue quality I have to counter my journalistic judgment of the chicken plant. To find joy to in my work I search for a melody for a line from the morning psalm so that I can sing it to myself as I work. I will sing of your salvation! I will sing of your salvation! The chicken plant is an absurd venue in which to sing of God’s healing, but it is precisely for this reason that there is quality to be found here amidst the roaring portion sizers, plastic tubs of raw poultry, and wet concrete floors.

Disappear

“Have you been here before?” the woman asks from behind the desk.

I look around the office nervously. Sterile tables and chairs float like islands on the expanse of green carpet. The security guard glances up at me from his desk at the back of the room.

“No. Well… not for myself,” I say, remembering my trip here last year with Hei Nay Htoo and Tha Htaw. Blay Blay and Ga Pu were in tow since Baw Baw was still working at another poultry plant. We had to make a stop halfway to Athens because Blay Blay got carsick all over himself.

“Fill this out to complete your registration,” she says handing me a pen and packet of forms.

I sit down at one of the many empty tables and begin filling in my contact information on the top of the generic form. I hesitate at the line for college or university education. Cautiously I scrawl out, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, check the box indicating that I graduated, and then write in my major: Religious Studies, hoping this compensates for having a bachelor’s degree in the first place. I find comfort in the thought that I am only at the Georgia Department of Labor, and know the person with whom I am meeting.

A short black woman comes out from the office area and calls my name with a thick West African accent. I hardly recognize her, but know this must be Sola, so I get up to greet her. She smiles at me and asks jovially:

“So how come this time you are here for yourself? You are looking for a job?”

“I just moved in with Eh Kaw in Comer and am looking for a job at the poultry plant,” I say as I follow her into her office in the back.

“Did he start there already?”

“Yeah. I think they wanted him in H.R. but he insisted on working as a wing cutter on the line.”

“It is very slow right now. They really are not doing very much. Maybe if you go with Eh Kaw…”

“Yeah that is what I thought I would do, but he told me to come through you because usually the people he brings are given the hardest jobs. He has seen me try to cut meat before and is pretty sure I would sever a finger if I worked as a wing cutter.”

“Well, I will do what I can, but I never know when they will come to us and ask for people. You might have to wait several months…”

She points to a stack of applications in a tray: all people waiting for work at the plant.

“Home Depot is hiring right now if you are interested in that… or since your last job was as a tutor, what about this preschool teacher position?”

Feeling discouraged about the possibility of the chicken plant I let her tell me about the other job openings in her database. A middle aged white woman comes in to the office and starts talking to Sola about some video series on job searching to show for an event at the labor department. I gradually tone out there conversation in spite of my impatience and try to imagine myself with an orange apron unloading freight from trucks.

“…And this is Zac. He worked with Jubilee Partners and now he is coming to me to look for jobs,” she says with a chuckle. I smile at her co-worker.

“What kind of job are you looking for?” she asks.

“I want to work at the chicken plant.”

“I have been telling him about other possibilities, but he wants to work there,” Sola chimes in.

“You don’t want to work there,” the woman says, “I went for a meeting there once and it… it was horrible! I knew someone who worked there once who told me they could never get the smell of dead chicken out of their car! It’s not for you.”

“Are you sure you can handle it?” Sola asks.

“Well… I want to try… So many of my friends are working there and I feel like I need to know what it is like… Eh Kaw asked it of me.”

“So you just want to experience it? How long do you want to stay there? Six years? You think it is worth you just going in there to see what it is like when there are so many people waiting for jobs there?” the woman barks at me.

“It’s not for you. It’s for… who it’s for,” Sola agrees.

Who is this dastardly group that the chicken plant is for? Most Karen certainly have a knack for butchering meat and the plant does provide necessary employment and decent wages to many much more skilled with their hands than I. However, as ragged white-feathered chickens, unable to walk if they are kept alive too long, are brought in by the filthy truckload in order to please our hungry consumer society like a demon child being suckled by the boneless breast, we must acknowledge the reality that we are all being processed.

If the chicken plant vocation is intended for anyone, it is meant for the people who have taken and eaten. We the processed meat, are called to the line. We must without hesitation hop on the conveyor to our deconstruction. James writes:

Let the brother in humble circumstances take pride in his eminence and the rich man be proud of his lowliness, for he will disappear “like the flower of the field.” When the sun comes up with its scorching heat it parches the meadow, the field flowers droop, and with that the meadow’s loveliness is gone. Just so will the rich man wither away amid his many projects.

 “If you really have it in your heart to work there we will see what we can do, but I am telling you it might be several months,” the woman says leaving the room.

Sola hands me an application.

“Make sure you omit your college degree on here. Can you fax this to me by tomorrow?”

“Yes. I will.”

The next day I return to the work of watching my niece and nephew in the morning for a few hours while Baw Baw goes to English class. Blay Blay and Ga Pu follow me outside of the K-House and I direct them to edible weeds for a wild salad.

“Blay Blay, can you pick the little umbrellas?” I ask, pointing to a patch of thriving cranesbill.

“Oh yeah!” he says, scampering towards the foliage, carefully snipping off the tops of the umbrellas and placing them in the metal bowl.

Ga Pu looks at the cranesbill with apparent disinterest and hops over to where I am picking violet.  Her eye catches a tiny lavender-colored flower, which she delicately plucks from the ground. She hits my arm forcefully, to pull my attention from the violet leaves.

“Zac! Zac!” she calls. I finally stop pulling the leaves and look to see why she is so excited. She holds the wild pansy up in the air for me to see, eyes big with wonder. I find another wild pansy growing close by and pop it in my mouth, pleasantly surprised by the subtle burst of floral wintergreen. Her brow furrows.

“Can you put the flower in the bowl?” I say, picking more pansies, in hopes that she will follow suit. Her lips curve into a smile as she places the flower in the bowl and hunts for another. With each pansy she picks, she comes over and hits my arm again, holding the single flower up as high as she can before placing it carefully in the salad.

Passing

“Oyyy!” Hei Nay Htoo yells from the passenger seat, charged with anxious energy. A large beige mound approaches on the right shoulder.

“Ghay deeahh—Is it still good?” I ask.

“Ghay deeehh—Yes!” he replies.

I quickly turn around on the next dirt driveway and pull over on the side of the road. We hop out of the car like a swat team and run behind the van. I open the back hatch. He shakes his head up and down virulently from beside the animal, calling me to come. Each grabbing a leg, we hoist the dead doe into the back of the van. “Na ga mah noh ga a tah mah gwa ba daw ta ha nya ee na ga aw da ho nya a beh—You are going to pass the driver’s test and tonight you will eat delicious venison!” I tell him as we get back in the car and zoom up 72 into Comer.

While Hei Nay Htoo goes inside and gets his I-94, I deposit the deer carcass on the ground by the front door and retrieve two bikes from the shed, setting them up on both ends of his minivan. Baw Baw looks at me like I am crazy. Hei Nay Htoo told me in the car that he had never practiced parallel parking, and so before we return to the DDS in Athens for his road test I instruct him and let him practice backing into the simulated parallel parking place between the two bicycles. Baw Baw stands on the side shouting, “Na ga taw seh beh nay—You are going to hit the bicycle!” He glares at her and proceeds to back in to the space almost perfectly two times. Baw Baw agrees to put away the bicycles and we race back to the DDS.

Six months ago, I allowed Hei Nay Htoo into the driver’s seat of my 2010 Corolla for the first time. I sat in the passenger seat trying to slowly breathe in the new car smell, intermittently barking directions at him in the simplest English I could muster as he jerked the car around the shopping center parking lot off of Memorial Drive. Since then, he purchased his own minivan and soon will have his license.

I watch from the top of the hill as Hei Nay Htoo drives methodically through the course, stopping at each stop line, backing up perfectly, mastering the three-point-turn, and gliding neatly into the parallel parking space between cones. Chills run through my squatting frame as though I am watching my own son try for his license. The van pulls out of the course and onto the highway, accelerating out of sight. I lean forward from my chest as if to follow, but remain in place, feeling abandoned. Ten minutes later, the van pulls back in to the parking lot. The two faces are both fallen and somber through the windshield.

The van slows as we ride up the ramp to merge onto the Athens loop. “Faster! Faster!” I call to him and eventually he speeds up. We continue on to Atlanta to move my bed and larger things out to Comer in the back of the van. Every once in a while, Hei Nay Htoo lets out a sigh of frustration and says something in Karen, which I do not understand. As we approach Clarkston I tell Hei Nay Htoo to stay on 78 until the exit for I-285. “This will probably be the hardest thing you have ever done. The exit comes in on the left and you have a half a mile to cross four lanes of traffic to get over to the exit for Ponce on the other side.” I am not sure if he understands, but cars are already zooming past us on our right side as the exit winds adjacent to the interstate.

“Na bleeahh—Are you scared?”

“Ya ta blee bah­—I’m not scared.”

“Nyaw nu pe gleh ta boh ee yeh ya blee ah do ma—Usually on this road I am very scared. Get over!”

I look back at the oncoming traffic. “Get over!” I call again. Before I know it we are passing into the exit and gliding up the hill to the stoplight on Ponce. I clap my hands boisterously, declaring: “YEAH! Na noh ga bahehh—You can drive!”

We fill up the back of the minivan with my bed, desk, boxes, and clothes from my room in that house on Casa Woods where I spent my past few months. Bernard and Amber moved out a few days earlier to live with Maung Soe and Kmoo Paw’s family in their apartment on North Indian Creek. By the end of the afternoon after visiting friends and seeking a seemingly unattainable closure, I am sprawled out on the floor of Lay Moo’s apartment, completely exhausted. I have the keys to the van, but Hei Nay Htoo holds out his hand. “Na mee luh ga boo thay—You can sleep in the car.”

We so easily conflate our sense of place and the order of life that we create for ourselves, with the fleeting nature of reality. Our plans, ideas, and concepts bring order to the formless void, allowing our brains to play at comprehension while the great cloud of change broods over us. We can only speculate from memory.

Solomon, when standing before the altar in the newly built temple declared, “Can it indeed be that God dwells among men on earth? If the heavens and the highest heavens cannot contain you, how much less this temple which I have built!” God is a wanderer, telling tales of perpetuity. In transition, we realize that the corners in which we disguise eternity are small, and as the walls come crashing down we are forced to look that great judge death in the face and state our case.

I awaken as we roll in to a stoplight somewhere on 78. I look over at Hei Nay Htoo as a little child emerging from sleep. He meets my gaze, his brow furrowed with fatherly concern, overtaken by confusion at the strangeness of this situation. We look at each other curiously, brothers from opposite jungles, and then turn back to the road, passing endlessly into the twilight.

Ora et Labora

The kitchen emits a bright glow and the faint drum of voices emanates into the living room. My eyes squint at this unwelcome interruption to sleep. My arm extends out across the plastic mat and I push the button on the side of my phone to see the time: 3:45 AM. I elevate my upper body on my elbows to scope out the situation.

Last night Bi Kan No told us to go to sleep early because we would wake up at four in the morning to slice cucumbers. I assumed this was a joke, because why wouldn’t one do this the night before, or at least at a more humane hour? But sure enough, there is Bi Kan No with his machete, launching cucumber discs into an aluminum pan. With somewhat of a struggle I perch on my feet. I hear Bernard begin to stir on the floor next to me, and mumble, “What is going on?”

“Cucumbers,” I mutter.

“Ummm…”

“Good morning!” Bi Kan No calls, looking up at us momentarily from his task as we meander to the threshold of the kitchen. This day marks one year since Bi Kan No’s family arrived in the United States, and there is much to be done in preparation for the party. I pick up another machete from the counter and squat next to the bowl that Naw Dee Poe places on the floor before me. The blade slides slowly through the cucumber in my left hand and sends one rather uneven disc slipping into the bowl. My pace increases gradually as I come to consciousness and the probability of sending a shard of finger into the bowl declines.

“Pa mah tah a weh ee keh ee bah mah nu leh—Why are we doing this now?” I finally ask.

“Pa nyaw nu gheh htuh peh lwee nah ree law—We usually get up at four o’clock,” Bi Kan No replies.

I realize that he leaves early every morning for his shift at the poultry plant and feel foolish for questioning his daily rhythm. He offers a carefree smile and seems still amused by me as I struggle to retain consciousness.

After the cucumbers, apples, and Asian pears are sliced, Bi Kan No returns the massive pots sitting on the carpet mat adjacent to the kitchen one by one to the charcoal stoves outside on the back porch of their apartment. I stop slicing and pick up one of the pots, removing the lid just slightly to see what kind of meat is in each. I pick up the pork curry pot and hobble to the back door and into the cold black morning and wait for him to direct me towards the appropriate stove. The largest of the pots remaining inside contains what Bernard and I refer to as “meh teh leh tah eh a htee—goat shit soup.” When Karen people butcher a goat, meat typically goes in one pot and organs in the other, including part of the small intestine containing partially digested material, a black ooze that we watched spurt out of the intestines as they were slit open in the pot the previous evening.

I dread work at the poultry plant and the haunting thoughts of a life confined to the toil of such dismal labor, yet my soul cries out for repetitive work that will drag me out of bed early, and call me into rhythms of gratitude for the luxuries I unconsciously misuse. It was after Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden that they were assigned to the tedium of manual labor. And so work is an act of repentance, a prayer to teach us gratitude for the confines of circumstances. In her book, Acedia & Me, Kathleen Norris writes:

The Presbyterian pastor John Buchanan believes that passivity and indifference that make us less able to engage in vital occupations and concerns are as problematic today as intentional evil. But they are also an ancient curse. The Judeo-Christian story places it in Eden, where the primal sin involves refusing to take responsibility. Put on the spot, Adam tries to excuse himself by blaming Eve, and Eve then blames the serpent. Neither cares where the buck stops, as long as it rests with someone else. God responds to this display of sloth by sending the first people, who had been intended for the holy leisure of paradise, into a land where they must labor for their sustenance.

My eyes open again and there is light coming in the window and a middle aged woman with bad teeth who I have never met before looking curiously at me lying there on the floor. It is a little bit after seven. I wait for her to walk into the kitchen before emerging from under the blanket in my long underwear and wrapping the longyi around my waist.

The living room fills with people sitting on the floor patiently awaiting the beginning of the worship service. The pastor and the young man who will be preaching both sit on the sofa at the head of the room. One of the elders starts off with a short speech and then the congregation sings a song from the hymnal cued by the pastor. Before long they are signaling to me to sing a song.

I was honored when Bi Kan No invited Bernard and I to come over the night before and help with preparations for his one year celebration, and even more so when he asked me to offer a song for the worship service. I strum a G chord on the guitar and begin to sing:

God will make a way

When there seems to be no way

He works in ways we cannot see

He will make a way for me

Norris describes Benedectine monk David Steindl-Rast’s definition of faith as “‘an intensive listening,’ whose opposite is the acedia that recognizes life’s absurdity but chooses to remain ‘deaf to its challenges and meaning.’” I probably would not care for this upbeat catchy God song aside from the story that it emerges from and invites me into. My friend James taught me this song almost four years ago at Jubilee. James was one of my first Karen friends, but he taught me this song in English. It remains in me along with my peculiar attraction to his obscure ethnic group. God makes a way for us by overturning our work with prayer. It is by this means that cucumber slicing in a kitchen before dawn and placing chicken on a conveyor in a damp factory become paths to paradise.

Resolution

“Ha luh a ghay!” I call into the microphone.

“Good Afternoon,” Eh Kaw echoes into his mic next to me.

He launches into a rapid Karen explanation of the petition we are asking everyone to sign for Derek Mitchell, the ambassador the United States recently appointed to Burma subsequent to Hillary Clinton’s visit. People are spread across the gymnasium like a fan, decorated with multicolored garments, many red, blue, and white, the colors of the Karen flag. Around the edge of the fan, the remaining space is packed with standing spectators. It is the Karen New Year celebration in Clarkston, and this year, the year 2750, the turnout is larger than ever before, with five hundred or six hundred people in attendance.

“…Tablu,” Eh Kaw finishes his speech and walks off the stage, leaving me standing by myself, hoping that I tied my longyi tight enough that it will not fall off as I stumble through this unanticipated bout of public speaking.

“The United States has not had diplomatic relations with Burma for some time now, but following Hillary Clinton’s recent visit to the country, we appointed an ambassador by the name of Derek Mitchell. A Karen woman in Washington, D.C., created a petition charging him to meet with ethnic minority leaders and not only the central Burmese government and in spite of reforms, to respond to the unceasing violence in the ethnic areas. We have the original version of the petition designed for resettled refugees from Burma to sign, with copies in Karen and Burmese, as well as a modified version for American citizens to sign over there at the table on the side. Thank you.”

The words flowed from my mouth with only one or two interruptions of “umm.” With no preparation or warning that I would have to mount the stage to speak about this, I am amazed that I did not stammer through the whole thing with a mess of nonsensical phrases. I descend the temporary stairs to the hardwood gym floor feeling the weight drop from my chest as I flee the spotlight. My shoulders relax and I know a deep peace. “The words came as I needed them,” I realize.

One of the most important things I have gleaned from Karen culture is intentionality submersed in the unpredictability of experience. There are few certainties in the lives of many Karen, and so decisions are typically made quickly. Structures are built within a day. Marriages take place after less than a year of courtship. Deliberation takes on a different shape when you are not in control of your own time.

I come from a culture where planning is essential for survival. Your planner quickly fills up with appointments. People have lengthy meetings to discuss future possibilities. With the luxury of stability and infrastructure, we tend to think of these plans as concrete realities rather than visions for the future. But it is precisely in vision: anticipation rather than expectation, that intentionality finds its proper expression. Vision is the coalescence of collective values and circumstances. It unravels our sense of entitlement, whether to pleasure or suffering, and transforms our present reality.

Vocation finds its place only within the realm of vision. The word “vocation” when it first came into usage in the 15^th century referred to “a spiritual calling.” It came from the Latin verb, vocare, which means “to call” and shares its etymology with the word “voice.” To find one’s vocation is to find one’s voice in the choir of creation. However, this concern becomes largely irrelevant if vision, or corporate vocation is neglected. Cacophony quickly takes over if everyone is using their voices in service of themselves and fails to engage in the larger vision. Culture collapses because there is no longer a cult in which it can be cultivated. Isolation and despair wave their batons to conduct the dirge of fear. We are left with the challenge to listen for overtones of hope in the discord.

I stand behind the long folding table as people pour over to sign the petition. Eh Kaw and I spread sheets across the table so that four people can sign at once. The petition for American citizens to sign receives some attention as well with the surprisingly large number of gaw lah wahs in attendance. Several people ask me what organization I am with or what kind of work I do.

“Umm….”

Eh Kaw leans over and tells me, “You work for the Karen!”

“I am with the Karen?” I reply hesitantly, and then go on to talk about my work as a tutor, my “freelance social work,” and my background at Jubilee Partners. I wish that I could have an easy answer to this question, but it seems as though my answer is becoming more and more complex.

What do you do? This question is thrown around so much and I am as complicit as anyone in this, but how often does it become a bastion of performance-based esteem? We must recognize this as the demon of despair, which is forcing us to define ourselves in convenient categories as though to show our resume to each acquaintance. Vocation takes on a different connotation when many of your close friends labor tirelessly in poultry plants in support of our abandoned sense of vision. Vocation is indeed what we do, but it is what we do with our whole lives, not out of concern for financial security.

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (Matt. 13:44 NRSV). We recover the fullness of vocation when we give the entirety of our livelihood in pursuit of an ordinary field, its grasses waving wildly. Such a field would be perfect for grazing, but without any leftover money with which to purchase livestock, we must simply lie down beneath that ancient Oak standing strong and lonely in the pasture, and rest in the quiet joy of knowing we have found treasure.

Sweet December

I tape one end of a thin strip of red, white, and green striped wrapping paper to the hula-hoop for Wonderful Htoo, pleased to discover that it coils nicely around the gift. I look down to see that I have only covered a small fraction of the hoop and realize how long this process will take. Why not just give it to him? He’ll throw away the paper instantly! The thought fires in my mind that this is incredibly inefficient, a waste of time. This thought is quickly defeated however by the meticulous and absurd pleasure of winding strip after strip of paper around the blue plastic hoop, the rhythmic task somehow saving me from the inner grinch.

There is a Karen holiday known as “Sweet December” which is something like American New Year, but for the month of December. Traditionally, Karen people stay up all night on November 30 to greet the sacred month of Jesus’ birth. People go from home to home, singing songs, exchanging gifts, and eating together. Baw Baw told me very excitedly about Sweet December several times: how enjoyable it was in the camp in Thailand and in Karen state, with sometimes even more festivities than Christmas itself. A friend recently told me that when she came here from Thailand, it was no longer Sweet December, but “December a kah,” Bitter December. Here, everyone stays inside and keeps to themselves, even her Karen friends. She still stayed up until midnight with her daughter to greet December 1^st in prayer though.

According to an article in the New York Times, 6.8 million mobile devices were activated on December 25, 2011, up from 2.8 million last Christmas. After families finished unwrapping their new gadgets, they went on to break records for app purchases, with 242 million downloads on Christmas Day. In the recesses of our memory is the incarnation of Christ, the human hope offered in the birth of a child. To set aside this day yet mark it with such practice is rolling our soul out like sugar cookie dough ready to be lacerated by that ugly Santa Claus cookie cutter that keeps appearing year after year. It is not difficult to imagine everyone sitting around on the couch Christmas day playing with new iPhones, while the turkey burns in the oven. No wonder “the most wonderful time of the year,” has come to breed such feelings of emptiness and hopelessness, when time spent with family becomes like time spent with zombies possessed by their new technology.

The more I learn about countering my tendency towards depression, the more I learn about the importance of rhythmic activities inviting me into mindfulness, recharging me in order to recognize the “bad thoughts” or “demons” that seek to pull me into despair if I follow them. We must acknowledge the desire to do away with or escape our holiday traditions as a “bad thought,” the same thought fueling the rampant consumerism and the distraction of mobile devices on a day set aside to remember our spiritual membership in the birth of the Christ child. The exchange of gifts is a sacred act, which though perhaps crushed to death under the weight of consumerism, can be revived through creative energy instead of credit cards. The holidays are meant to be a time of holy inefficiency when we eat together, give gifts to one another, sing together, and other activities which cannot be expedited by an iPhone.

Let us resurrect the miscarried infant Jesus by caroling in the streets, those same old songs that we sing year after year, declaring this as a time of joy, not concerned about offending the neighbors. This is the despair of relativism. I have a friend who often refers to “the tragedy of diversity,” which I think points to the truth that in diverse areas such as Clarkston, there is a brokenness that has brought all these people to this place from their homelands and an impending danger of losing their unique ethnic identities, boiling their culture alive in the melting pot. Diversity jargon and iconography often neglects this reality in favor of imagining peaceful coexistence. If the uninviting urban landscape of the apartment complex is keeping us from caroling or the iPhone is keeping us from real conversation, we must seek ways to recreate Sweet December.

Christmas is a time to remember who we are, for better or worse, to remember our origins, the places that have shaped and created us and to move forward with these memories fresh, as we engage a new year of life. Christmas may not always be a time filled with comfort and certainty, with the warm fuzzies of loved ones and familiar things all around. The first Christmas was spent much like many of my friends from Burma have spent many of their Christmases, fleeing persecution in makeshift shelters, separated from family, and uncertain of what is to come. But as I hear the stories of Christmas celebrations in the confines of the camps in Thailand, I cannot help but want to see the fullness of that joy at the birth of hope into the world here in my country, where we have succumbed to sloth with regard to so many of our traditions from caroling, to giving meaningful gifts and making holiday foods from scratch. These are the things that help us to remember who we are and why we are.
I rediscovered delight this Christmas in giving toys to my nieces and nephews, distributing a trunk full of live chickens, guineas, and rabbits as gifts, playing volleyball over a septic field at a Karen Christmas celebration in Vesta, and even caroling at one stranger’s house in Comer. We cannot rationalize this time of year, but must let it overtake us on our terms. Human beings are incredibly inefficient, and we commit corporate suicide when we deny the sanctity of this exuberant celebration with technologically facilitated isolation. Come together. December is sweet.

The Wolf

Dusk blends skeletal trees with the sky. The roar of Interstate 285 rushes through the empty spaces. Light pours from the porch light over the front lawn. This little brick house is not mine, but it feels so familiar. It is not strange that I am here, yet I do not know where I am. I step over the curb and walk into the yard. There are two cars in the driveway and a woman standing on the porch who must have just arrived home after a long day of work. She calls to me and I am unsurprised, but cannot make out her words.

The dogs, all puppies really, scamper about the yard playing with one another like little kittens. There is a brown dachshund, a beige cocker spaniel, and a gray one with icy blue eyes that glimmer in the porch light. The little dog with blue eyes looks directly at me. His gaze lingers sending a sudden shudder of fear through my body. “I think that one…” I start. Then he lets out a piercing high-pitched howl. He looks away and then his eyes meet mine again. I am captivated by the clarity. His pure blue eyes like translucent pools, his bark crisp and clean like a hymn, yet with a hint of what he might become if nothing gets to him first, which surely nothing will while he is being swaddled like a newborn by these people, in this house.

“My God,” I mutter under my breath. I try to speak again and say, “Not that one! I think that one is a wolf!” The woman is unfazed and opens the screen door, holding it open with her large backside, accentuated by her puffy black winter coat. I want to look her in the eyes and talk some sense into her before it is too late, but I cannot even see her face. It is as though she refuses to look at me. Her pudgy cream-colored hand turns the doorknob and the dachshund and the cocker spaniel race into the dark house. The little wolf turns again to look at me from the cement porch and lets out another yelp, slowly crossing the threshold as the woman coaxes him.

My eyelids slowly open to the darkness of my bedroom. Dawn diffuses through the purple and red batik curtains. I roll over and pull the blanket over my head, drifting carelessly back into oblivion.

Something came over me as I left Comer after the Thanksgiving holiday: a deep gratitude and a sharp sadness, yet a sadness one can take delight in, a sadness within the realm of joy. What an awesome relief to move away from the coldness of heart, the numbness of depression which has hung over me these past couple years. The whole ride back to the city, in the quiet of my car, I wondered at the warmness, the feeling of inseparable connection: the assurance that without any vows or monthly payments that I will always share a special love with this energetic family of six, soon to be seven, perhaps even eight. It may be a queer love, but I know it to be real.

Jesus teaches with clear and offensive words because he is not restrained by fear. Fear is what moves us into relativism and indecision. Surely, easy answers do not meet the complexity of suffering, but neither does language that mystifies its causes. For too long I have allowed myself to become lukewarm like the water around me. We live in a world governed by fear itself. Life is found in the visions that freeze and boil, which embrace the dynamism of ecstatic love.

On Sunday night I knew with a clarity I have not known in a long time, that I must go to Comer next year to continue this journey and that I must now finally out of love for my Karen brothers and sisters seek employment at the poultry plant. I tremble with fear at the thought of taking this step alone, but know this thought to be a fear-driven lie, which denies the reality of the spiritual friends I already have who are putting down roots in this bizarre little town where I find my search for God taking me. I will leave behind some of my best gaw lah wah friends in Clarkston by making this move, but I am subject to a spirit of exodus larger than myself, and know proximity can be motivated by fear just as much as love.

St. Francis of Assisi once stayed in the town of Gubbio where everyone feared a wolf that was terrorizing the town, killing animals and even people. Francis went out into the forest to meet the wolf one day. When the wolf saw Francis, he charged at him, but Francis calmly made the sign of the cross and he ceased. He spoke to the wolf, saying, “Come to me, Brother Wolf. I wish you no harm.” The wolf laid his head at the feet of St. Francis like a lamb. Francis negotiated peace between the people and the wolf and the wolf placed his paw in Francis’ hand in agreement. Then they walked through the town together while the people looked on shocked. From that day forward the people fed the wolf as he came to their doors. He lived the remaining two years of his life peacefully among the people of the town, loved by all.

While staying with Hei Nay Htoo and Baw Baw’s family in their new house over the Thanksgiving holiday, I was reading Dorothy Day’s autobiography, The Long Loneliness, one afternoon in the bedroom with the door closed. The door opened rather suddenly, and unsurprisingly, there stood Blay Blay Htoo with a slightly mischievous smile on his face.

“What you doing?” he asked, coming into the room.

“Reading. Do you want to read with me?”

He sat down on the floor next to me and leaned in to look at the page. I started reading out loud to him, “Body and soul constitute human nature. The body is not less good than the soul. In…” I stopped for a moment to cough and clear my throat.

Without pause, he helped me to the next word, “MOTORCYCLE!”

I glared at him as he offered me his usual flamboyant smile. The text continued, “mortifying the natural we must not injure the body or the soul,” but I decided to heed his suggestion and continue reading: “In MOTORCYCLE the natural we must not injure the body or soul. We are not to destroy but to transform it, as iron is transformed in the fire. Most of our life is unimportant, filled with trivial things from morning till night. But when it is transformed by love it is of interest even to the angels.”