Luck, Women, and Faith

Hi there! The battery in my camera ran out early in the trip, and I've used my telephone for most things ever since. But yesterday I found a strange little device that allows me to step power down to DC and adjust the wires to fit almost any battery. It worked, so I brought the camera and phone here to this internet cafe and here are a lot of various, random picks to throw on the blog... I've also been thinking a great deal about a lot of things... So I am going to write this post in an unusual fashion... I am going to write captions for these pics, and then let some of the captions expand into something closer to a post.

So, bear with me!

The Rose Window in Notre Dam Cathedral in Paris
Imagine the impact this had on people in this enormous stone space... living light shinging through, showing the elements of their faith in glorious colors.

This is a brand new temple near Buri Ram, Chicken's home. These statures are covered with real gold. The standing figure in the back is an earlier king.

Here is a crucifix in Notre Dam

In the foreground are stulpas. People use them to places ashes and bone fragments of their loved ones. I wrote about a glass sided stulpa in Siem Reap in an earlier post. In the background are some "Buddha houses" which nearly everyone tries to make or buy in some fashion here. Chicken brought us here so she can shop for one for her home. Just about every single piece of property has something like this where incense and foods and various tokens are kept fresh at all times.

Snake cuddling

This is the Buddha house Chicken is thinking about getting.

Speaking of snakes... this bronze fellow is having a disagreement with a snake at the Louvre in Paris

Here is the boat that took us up and down canals in older sections of Bangkok . I am still amazed that he has an enormous diesel truck engine balancd on that steering paddle attached to a propellor. It must weigh nearly a half ton!

Deep thinkers at The Louvre

OK... this is unusual. This mummy is almost 40 years old. Famous monk. There is another around here, on Koh Samui, also.

I went swimming here this morning. The waves get maybe three inches high.

Breakfast

More of the strange... This is in that new temple I showed you earlier. This is a monk who has been dead only a short while... still looks in good shape. It was strange to examine him closely...

The Louvre again Notre Dame ceiling

Notre Dame

I love those flying buttresses!

Here are some carvings for tables and other furniture this guy makes out of teak wood here on Lamaii Rd., Koh Samuii


the shore here at Koh Samuii
I think I've mentioned lady boxing. This is Aih practicing with her coach. She fights this Saturday. Another woman from the same bar is up the week after. Aih asked me to help her practice, so I put on the padded girdle, the padded arms protectors, and had her kick at me... Apparently because I'm a bit larger I was a good boxing bag. Harder to move. It was a trip to be in that boxing ring. Those kicks were hard. I bet if it wasn't for the padding she would have broken some of my ribs!
The three fish in the center, from left to right, are tuna, shark, and barricuda. I think the lime in the shark's mouth is amusing.
I thought this was a very interesting photo. The woman on the left is Miw. She is new to this life, and I tried to persuade her to go back to her small vilage... that I thought this place would change her heart. The woman in the mirror is Anne. She is making her afternoon observations to Buddha before starting work. She is a practical woman who sees her trade in practical terms, but, upon a little private prodding, confessed she is hoping to meet a nice man who will take care of her and she can raise a family. Anne is 28, but her heart is much older.

Which brings me to the title of this post.

I spent 28 years fooling myself I had found a lifetime love. I dedicated myself to one woman, though she strayed more than once.

Now I am free to make whatever choices I want, and I am surrounded by a culture where it is acceptable to be "a butterfly" and see as many women as I like.

But the more I see of this, and the more I think of Miw losing her innocence, and Anne being practical and cynical, and of the 12 year old girl in Angkor Wat, Cambodia who is already far more hardened than any I have met, the more I insist my heart, my choices, be those that are me, not what others think is acceptable, the better I feel.

A common theme here in Thailand is luck. Thai are always talking about luck, seeking luck. They count how many times the geckos croak, they count the flashes of lights in a thunderhead, they note which way a coin lands if they drop one... they buy lottery tickets when things seem auspicious (I think the lottery is a tax on those who aern't good with math). They make offerings to their little Buddha shrines, always wishing for luck. They send off little hot air balloons. Next week everything will shut down for a couple of days and people will stream to all the temples to give gifts to monks so they may have good luck in the coming year.

For them, meeting a mate or getting a good deal at the market isn't about real world choices, but about luck.

Their faith is based on luck. Keeping the incense burning in the Buddha house is good luck.

Mine isn't. My faith is based on the sense that the universe is stable. That the creator is not mercurial. That He is as steady, steadier, than the four laws of physics (for his essence of love and creativity was here long before the blossoming of this universe, and will be here when the universe has turned to cold ash).

My faith isn't about convincing a deity to do something for me, but rather about sharing who I am, sharing my life, with Him, because He finds me worthy of love and of interest. It is about a relationship, not cajoling.

So, there it is... a random post made of random pics. I know that the woman I will find for my life, if I am to have one, will not be a matter of luck, but a matter of love and of blessings freely given by my creator.

I am having a great time being a square peg in this culture. Drinking juice when others are having alcohol. Paying a bar fine for a lady of the evening so she is free to have a night away from the hustle of men trolling for sex.

I love the surprise in people's faces when they see I am genuinely concerned for who they are and not for what I can get from them.

This trip has made me more me than ever before. I come and go as I please, and with every choice that goes contrary to what others do, the better I feel about who I am.

I don't think I will act all that dfferently when I return home to Canby, Oregon, but I will be returning with more confidence in knowing who I am, what I stand for, what I choose to do.

That is pretty cool.