The Season of Death and Life

In  front of Akahama elementary school of Ootsuchi City in Iwate Prefecture.
One day after working at creating a veggie/flower garden at the back of the temp housing, I halted in front of the school by the mesmerizing beauty of sakura in the heartwarming spring sunshine.
"Snow is growing out from the trees!"  I thought to myself.
Wind from the ocean breezed through the sakura branches, and the petals showered like snow in a winter day.  Standing in a pink wind of flowers, there are no words poetic enough to describe the dazing beauty of the moment.

I scoped up a handful of pink petals from the ground, I thought of Jesus' parable of a kernel of wheat. Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains as a single wheat. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.
The fallen flowers blend with the earth, and the earth carries its fragrance. Is it the flower or the earth?  It really doesn't matter anymore.  Petals fallen decay over the bitter winter, and become fertilizer for the tree in springtime.    
One God, One Spirit, One Church -- if we can give ourselves to one another, we are One.  We gives, so that one another can become more.
Lying down oneself for one another.  This is the love of Christ.

Haiku by the Seashore

March 1, 2012

There is a little temporary grocery shop beside our work base at Ootsuchi Akahoma elementary school.  The shop owner is a gentle artistic soul that loves to draw and write poems.  He treats us free coffee everyday.  It is a life saver when it is minus zero and snowing!!!

One day in Feb, a Haiku was written on the board.  It says,

In March
People who are to be met in dreams
Are plenty

Did you lost many friends?  I asked him. He nodded.
His original shop was actually right beside the ocean.  When the tsunami came, he made all the customers run and when he finally was going to flee for his own life, the water already came.  He had no choice but to hang onto a tree.  The water swallowed him and the tree.  He was actually under the water for a few minutes, or at least he felt it was.
It is truly a miracle that I am still alive, he said.
Although his family was fine, the land that he was once familiar has lost its landscape and the people he knew.

I look forward to have the volunteers come everyday, he said.  I think I did it more for myself.
Sometimes, when the snow is heavy, the Ootsuchi team will call off the work for a day because the land will be frozen.
He said, on one of those days when I don't see the bus arrive in the morning, I would think to myself, 'ahh, maybe they are not coming today...'

Snow day today, and Ootsuchi team is called off.
I thought of the lonely shadow in the small shop as I looked out through the window.
It would be a quiet day today.

Bag

http://unoproject.exblog.jp/12314725/

Disclaimer: This is not my bag.  

It belongs to an awesome friend I met when volunteering at Magokoro net.   In the past two years he has been volunteering as a teacher in an elementary school in Mongolia.  He just came back to Japan not long ago. 

In a jist, his blog entry talked about this bag that he has been using for the past three years.  It is sturdy, despite of the heavy load it has been carrying.  Parts worn out at times but after some needle works, it's as good as new.  It was loaded with pencil crayons, notebooks, dictionaries, scissors, camera, passport copy, teaching plans and water etc, as he traveled from place to place in the yellow wind of dust in the far far land.  

This bag is still running around with him in the disaster area. 

I am neither a person obsess with brand names nor hating it. The craft work and material quality of some brand names are well deserving.  Just that nowadays most buy for the name or trend without making the full use out of it.  Chinese has a saying, "Killing a chick using a butcher's knife for a cow".  I think probably most brand name products are wasted in such a pitiful state.  

When a brand name product met an owner that uses it for the purpose it is made for fully, what a rare and wonderful thing it is for both!

On the side.

I have had a retired "companion" bag too.  For almost 7 years, it has been to Kolkata India and over half of Japan with me.  One time one side of the strap broke off suddenly, just as I was about to leave a house to catch a bus.  I had no choice but to delay abit to do some patch work.  The short stay was a story by itself.   

When it was at its final stage of life beyond repairable, I couldn't manage to throw it away.  It is still sitting quietly on the shelf of my closet.  One day when I get home, I should take a picture of this old friend and show you here! :)

The Wait

Sun rises and night falls,
The little horse sits in silence watching
cars zoom and people trickle by.

I passed by it everyday
A little pat on its head is all I can give.
One day, maybe one day you will be gone when I come, I said to the little horse.
Maybe your owner will come pick you up and take you home.

The little horse continues to quietly sit.

In the Soil.

We went to Ootsuchi everyday to clean up debris from the foundation of houses.  Sometimes we find the concrete, sometimes it is all earth only.  In those cases, we will only plow through about 10cm deep of earth to clear any debris that come out of it, then all will be smoothed out.

Today at this site, it amazed me that the ground looked EXACTLY the same at the end of the day as it was at the beginning of the day. Only, we had a little mountain of debris on top of it as the sole evidence that we have actually worked!  I find it fascinating,  as if it is some archaeological artifacts in a deep slumber in the soil, awaits to be unearthed to see the sun again.  I guess in some ways they are the same.  They are all proves that people have once lived.

Under Your Wings

Everyday I passed by this breathtaking harbor view to get to the temporary housing complex.  Not far from this bay, it is a sight full of destruction: bare foundations of houses, metal infrastructure of buildings with many artifacts hanging over them, proving once there were lives living here.  I stared at the beautiful, calm horizon, trying to imagine what it was like on that fatal day.
Did these pastel colors turned black?  How high did the water go?  Were there any cars taken from my current position?   My imagination is out run by the reality.  

I continue to pass by it everyday, pondering what it is like when such beauty turned into a monster.
And I ponder, what I am like when that time comes.

"God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, 
though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging." ~Psalm 46:1-3  

O God my Lord, if I am less faith than that, please help me. Because I am of little faith, but I choose to believe in You.

There is a Story to be Told

Jan 13, 2012.

This was the first time I talked with a survivor who has lost an immediate family member.

In our mobile cafe, Yuri was a middle-aged lady with a polite smile.  Sitting beside me, she joined in the conversation occasionally.  When she was not, Yuri would seemed to have left us briefly to be in a world of her own, deep in thoughts, frozen in time.
When I asked about if her family was ok in the tsunami, her facial expression froze for a moment.  Then she shook her head and said in a quiet voice, "My son was gone."
I wasn't quite sure of my ears and was suspecting my crappy japanese had misinformed me.  In the moment I was hesitating, the topic of the group conversation changed like a tidal wave in the ocean, washed over the hidden wound Yuri has just spoken of.  I felt a great sense of grief and tenseness from Yuri, and somehow I felt this was something very important that needed to be told today.  I caught a chance to ask her again about her son.
Where was your son at that time?  I asked.
He was working, in the car on his way going somewhere, then the tsunami came,  she said. Tears started glittering in her eyes.  They found his car, but not him.
The group went quiet.
"Can you tell us about you son?" I asked gently. "Anything... something happy, something special, something that you remembered about him."
"Something about my son..." she hesitated, and her eyes started wandering into that world of her memory.
"Don't strain yourself over it," one of the volunteers said.
I prayed desperately in my heart, asking God how far would He allow the story to be told today.  From my experience in playback theater, I truly believe being able to tell one's experience of pain is the first step toward healing.  I stayed with her in that moment of  brewing thoughts, guarding that moment of awkward silence that I could see others were uncomfortable with.
Suddenly she broke the silence.
"He was huge," she said.
Then she told us about her son Kasuki practiced Sumo from from primary school to junior high.  Because he was big and practicing Sumo, no one on the class dared to bully him.  Just when he started high school, he refused to do Sumo anymore.  "I hate it!" Kasuki said.  I'd always wandered why he hated it, Yuri smiled.  She was smiling faintly and there was a sparkle in her eyes as she told us about Kasuki.
But with my house washed away, I have lost everything of him.  Not even a picture.

At the end, we prayed with Yuri.  There was no one I really could tell this to in the temp house, Yuri said.  But I felt more relieved now that I have spit it out.  One of the volunteers, who is also a mother, gave her a hug in tears and Yuri broke down crying in her arms.

It was a beautiful scene.

In a Loud Silence

Jan 12, 2012.

Varying from the previous work I have done with All Hands, the type of work we are doing at CRASH Japan is mainly emotional/spiritual care.  A mobile cafe that goes to different temporary housing complex regularly creates a space for people to be listened to and to build community.  It has been almost a year since the devastating disaster has happened.  I was abit in shock when I first learned how some residents still  do not know anyone in their temporary housing complex. Slowly, I began to learn this is at large a common phenomena, if not the majority.  In many of the temp house complex, residents come from different area, only a few lucky complexes are blessed with people who come from the same neighborhood of their previous life.  Japan is a society where the building of community takes time and relational connections.  The earthquake and tsunami have not only torn families apart, but also communities that had been living the area for years if not generations.  The devastation is not physical and emotional, but social as well.

My first day's work was distributing blanket at temp house complex.  An elderly grandma came to answer the door.
"Come in, come in, it's so cold outside!"  She greeted us with the warmest smile.
Grandma Setsu* lives in this unit alone with a daughter living close by.  As we were drinking green tea and peeling mandarin over an exchange of conversation, she told us about herself.  Because of her diabetic condition and other unmentioned reasons, she said she doesn't go out much nor does she has visitors.  She pulled out a letter she has received from her long time friend Miyu.  Miyu left her home town Ootsuchi, an area seriously damaged by the tsunami, to live with her son in Chiba.  She wrote in her letter that she doesn't know anyone in the neighborhood, alone in the house everyday.  Miyu desperately wants to come back to Ootsuchi, where her friends and home are, and were.  Grandma Setsu paused, with her gaze far far away.  After a moment of silence, she said, "I want to meet her so much.  But she did not include a returning address."  I held her hand in mine, patting the back of her hand gently, as we took a moment to let all the feelings occupy the tiny room in a loud silence.

** For privacy reason, all names in all entries will either be a partial or fake name.

Flower on the Pebbles

January 13, 2012.  Tono-->Otsuchi.

Second day working at CRASH Japan Tono base.
On our way to Otsuchi, a tsunami-devastated area, to distribute blankets to residents of temporary housings, we passed by a deserted land of an originally what supposed to be a residential area,  a man on the side of the road caught my eyes.
He was sitting squarely on the edges of what was the foundation of a house.  A solemn silence was frosted on his slightly frowning eyebrows.  His eyes was staring deeply beyond the space in front of him, as if this is only his shell with a world of memory living within.  Not far away from him, a small bouquet of flower was lying against a short wall of rubble.
As our van passed by him, our eyes met.  I am not sure in what dimension we were looking at each other at, but I was almost certain that we saw each other.
I bowed deeply to him, and to whom he is grieving and mourning for.

Loss and grief, are pebbles that you can find on the frozen ground of Tohoku.

An Imperfect Offering

After 5 hours of travelling, here I am, back to the city of Ofunato.  Only this time there are no ditches to be dug nor walls to be knocked down.  I walked on the street where our base used to be.  It seemed awfully quiet and empty.  The Yoda figure in the t-shirt shop’s window is no longer holding the All Hands poster.  The big blue handprint sign of All Hands Volunteer is now buried under a layer of white paint.  No hands, only the same hue of blue and white is only trace that the busy traffic of volunteers had once constantly flooded in and out of the shop’s gate.  I took one last look of the empty street, and turned into the small street toward Mr Asano’s house, who has kindly offered me an empty apartment to stay at during my time here.

        In between pints of beer and exchange of updates, Yu-san told me after the project was finished and the volunteers left, he felt such a huge, indescribable emptiness grew within that at times, he would wander to the places where the volunteers had worked at.  Sometimes, he walked along the ditches that we had cleared; Sometimes, he sat in the Midori Park by himself. Yu’s eyes were misty as he told me, and added, “Sometimes, my eyes would become teary when I looked at the messages you guys have signed on the benches.”

        My eyes became teary too, as I listened to Yu.  All of us who have been here are inevitably bonded to the people of this land more or less in some ways.  We are not of the same blood line, nor do we have the same color of eyes or skin, nor speak in the same tongue.  But only because we allowed ourselves to be here at a time of great need, consciously or unconsciously, an imperfect offering we have made ourselves to be. To the people in need, to the hearts in distraught, even though we, ourselves, are as broken as we are in our own life.      

3

Winter is drawing close to the land of Tohoku as the wind chills our bones when we work outside.  For the people who live in the temporary housing, no one is sure how well those thin walls can shield them from the bitter cold.  A department store generously donated tens of thousands of hot water warmers to the ones who lives in temp house, and we have been busy packaging them with a couple other basic essentials and delivering them.

This day we delivered almost 800 hot water warmers, came to about 393 families.
After a whole day of labor, we have only reached a tip of the iceberg.  Sometimes it truly leaves me feeling so small, so insufficient.  I constantly have to remind myself that I am merely like the little boy in 5 bread + 2 fishes.        As long as I have given my everything, God will feed all who are hungry.  It is not me, but Him.

In one of the temp house compounds, the occupant number of all 48 households are either 1 or 2.  Likely that none of the families in this compound is whole.  Especially when it came to household that was only grandpa or grandma, it wrenched my heart and I could only bless them with a silent

Mr Sasaki and his highschooler son came to help with our packing and delivering when we arrived upon his compound.  We learned that he is a temple priest, in which his temple/house was washed away in the tsunami, and nobody can tell when it can be rebuilt.  His tone was gentle and light, only with a slight hint of sadness in his eyes.

I needed to go to washroom and Mr Sasaki had his son took me to their unit.  This was my first time to be inside a temp house.  Sasaki's younger daughter was also in the house and looked over to say hi.
I took a quick glance around the room, went to washroom and returned to the meeting place with Sasaki's son.  A question was burning at the tip of my tongue all the way as we were walking, but I couldn't manage to roll it out to ask him.

After I got on our van, I fetched out the occupant's list and searched for Mr Sasaki's unit number.  In the column of occupant number, the number "3" was printed beside their name.
When I walked in their house, the chaos was unimaginable for a japanese family.
It could be a single parent family,  It could be just their way to be.
But my initial impression was a chaos that stemmed from an utter loss.
Probably, probably mommy is not in the household anymore.

I often hope that I'd thought too much when these moments come.

Train Cross way

Have you ever waited in front of the train's cross way?
We just had the day before. In the morning we were busing down from our dorm on the mountain down to our base, just as our daily routine goes.  When we got close to the cross way, the safety bar was lowered and there was a little line up in front of it.
"Oh, how I  have missed this!"  said Mr Wada, our bus driver.
We all poked our little heads to see through the front window.  Slowly but surely, a small train head passed through the crossway as we bursted into cheering and clapping our hands.

The lifeline of train tracks was destroyed in the tsunami in the coastal area, since then train service has been suspended.  Hearing the sound of train is like hearing the sound of the footsteps toward recovery.  Slowly, but surely.

How odd it is now that the usual stressful wait in front of the cross way become so moving.

Stardust

Yesterday when Mr Kawahara learned that it was the last day of one of our volunteers Mayumi, he said, "Please don't forget Ofunato."

My dear people of Ofunato, do not be afraid
We can never forget  you.
We who come from all over the world have met you in the debris of mountains and sea
We have laughed together, we have cried together.
When we leave, your lives are like stardust
ingrained on our hearts.
Perhaps one day, when dark night comes onto our path
it would be these sparkling stardust that save us from the starless nights

Thank you for sharing your smiles and tears with us
Thank you so much.

Park 2: The Bricks

Before 

After

We found out this the hard way.  

At the final finish of the brick-laying, we pour fine, white silicon sand to fill the gaps between bricks.  

Using a brush to push aside the excess, a beautiful brick road comes into being.  

As I was brushing the excess sand off, I discovered that a few bricks appeared to be very loose.  Soon we realized those were the bricks that weren't hammered well enough to be sturdily lodged in the sand base.  Painfully, we had to take them out, filled in the extra sand that was needed to become the solid base, then pound it back. 

I was wondering why we have to sweat so much effort to fix the sand level and everything.  Now there was the answer.  I thought of what Jesus said about people who hears His words and put them into practice.  

Jesus concludes at the end of The Sermon on the Mount, ""Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock."    (Matt 7:24)  

All looks beautiful, until the trial comes.  

Read Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7

Park: A Park!

Laying down bricks in a park was my major task of the day.  I'd never thought about how that piece of brick road under my feet have come into being.  Ever.  And I am giving birth them right now!  After flattening the sand, we lay bricks down and hammer them down.  Each brick needs to be at the same level as the rest of its buddy, else somebody is gonna trip over it.  It's not as easy as it sounds, because each brick is not exactly the same thickness, and could be uneven on its own surface.  So we put different amount of sand underneath each brick to level it, and pound to its perfection.  As the day went, my hammer managed to miss any parts of my hand most of the time.  But finally I managed to miss the gigantic brick and hit my tiny little finger with the rubber hammer.  Oh I feel so smart these days when learning how to do handy work.

We are making a park for the kids in the community.  Most of the recreational space like park have been used for temporary housing, leaving the kids nowhere to play. One afternoon when I was killing my back with the brick-laying work, a small voice asked, "May I ask what you are making?"  I looked up, and saw two elementary school kids standing on the path in front of the bench area I was working at.  

"It is a park.  Please look forward to it!"  I smiled.  

"It's a park!  Isn't it great?"  The boy who asked turned to his friend exclaimed with excitement.  

I stood and watched as they walked away with a smile.  I never knew a park could bring so much joy to a little soul.

More bricks please! 

Park

At the Door

Today's work is to take people to spend money! XD
Most of  locations of temporary housing are inconveniently located in the middle of  nowhere.  People who don't own a car, esp the elderly, can only wait for the mobile food truck to come, or take the shuttle bus to shop grocery which comes to the area once or twice a week.  The temporary housing area that we serve doesn't even have a shuttle bus service.  Honestly, I am pretty upset about the negligence from the city officials!  On top of that, the shuttle bus service, when it is available, is not free.  Each time they will have to pay 600 yen.  When you have lost everything and the government is not paying you much, it is a lot of money.
The grannies and grandpas really appreciate our help to get some food.

One of the grannies called Mrs Asano asked me to carry her grocery to her house.  It was definitely my pleasure to give her a hand.   When we arrived at her small square box, she stopped in front of the door.  She turned around and said to me, "It is really embarrassing inside, you can leave the grocery here, thank you."
I was a little stunned, and was overwhelmed with sadness.
Usually Japanese are very hospitable.  They would double the miles if you have walked them one.  And I wouldn't be surprise if the little old lady attempts to feed me.
She could barely lift the bags herself...  How much shame does it take for a japanese old lady to refuse someone who has just helped her to carry heavy grocery to even step inside?
Yes, with a roof over their head.  A roof that reflects their embarrassing and stranded situation.  A roof that makes them feel they are not good enough to open their door to welcome a guest.
I suddenly remember the vision of Habitat for Humanity:  A world where everyone has a decent place to stay.  I wish for the day to come, that they can smile and open their door to guest with all the warmth and pride in the world.

Pieces of broken lives.

One of the important works that we do is to clean ditches (sewage system, canals... whatever you like to call it!).  The tsunami has brought loads of mud and all kinds of debris into the canals along the road side clogging the water sewage system, thus floods the area when  it rains.  What we do is to lift all the concrete cover of  canals, pull out the weeds that blossoms in the tsunami mud, then dig out the mud/earth shovel by shovel.  After we dug out the soil, we must sort out the concrete and debris from the soil, putting them into different bags for disposal.  Just a fun side note, there was a fish factory in one of the area before.  Many fishes were washed to everywhere, including ditches.  After so many months, the fishes decomposed into the mud, wherever they had landed.  The mud becomes kinda  sticky, gluey  aka asphelt-like (I am sure it is full of collagen and protein!), emitting a distinctive obnoxious smell.  YYYyuummmmmmmmmMMm.

In the usual japanese cleaning standard, we use a brush to clean the ditch after digging the mud out.  A straw-made broom is used to clean whatever is left behind before the final touch of a lighter broom to rid the dust off the sidewalk.  To be honest, my room has less treatment than the ditch!!

As we dig thru the ditch meter by meter, lots of different debris are recovered:  a watch, calender, penguin-glass paper holder, red wine bottle, fragments of fine china... I feel I am picking up broken pieces of people's lives.  In the midst of all the debris, we found a collection of train miniatures.  We carefully put them aside as we found them one by one.  over the span of that morning, we found a total of 4.  We were all abit quiet and heavy.  Perhaps they were once a favorite toy of a little boy.  At the end, we couldn't manage to throw them away.  Heather brought them back to the base in a small towel, and gave me 2 of them after washing them.

I carry them around in my bag during my break in Osaka and Kyoto, as a reminder of why I am here in this far far land.  At times, I tell their story to my new friends.  My new friends would look at these little trains with a tint of overwhelming sadness in their eyes.

I feel this has become a part of my mission.  It is not to sell tragic tearful stories, but to tell the stories and lives of the earthquake area to others, so people of the Northeast will not be forgotten as they try to live their best in the midst of loss and grief.

Forget them not.

For more photo:

Ditches

An Old Man's Tears

Today's work is salvaging Mr Asano's old storage house before it gets torn down due to the damages from the earthquake. It was a dirty and mouldy job! That storage house contains family artifect and all kinds of living utility that Mr Asano has inherited. He hasn't moved it for years and many things he only saw it for the first time! O_O Browsing through dust and sweat, it was like going through a japanese family history. Mr Asano at times told us story about certain things, like the gigantic barrel used to make miso. There was STILL miso in there. Yes, you've read it right. After 60+ years. The miso looks like brown jelly, or the turtle jelly if you are chinese. Goosebumps are growing as I thought of it. There is also old fashion sewing machine, beautiful kimono belts, Mr Asano's high school uniform, japanese traditional wooden chest and cupboard filled with personal artifects, china dishes and cups, japanese trad small eating table, grandpa's 乓amboo reclining chair...... it's more than I can fill the page. Even included a samurai armor set, with Mr Asano's grandpa's name on the box. When I was handed the armor, I wonder where has it gone to war for.

During break time, Mr Asano told me about his 25+ years friend, Takashi, who was a carpenter. Takashi was the one who built the house that we were clearing out today. He also helped Mr Asano to fix his house, store, and storage house in previous earthquakes. Just that this time, Takashi won't be here to help anymore. He escaped the tsunami when it hit, but went back for his dog even though his wife pleaded with him not to. This time, the wave took him. Mr Asano's eyes were misted with tears as he stared into space, and wiped his eyes when the silence fell. He quietly said that if Takashi is still alive, perhaps he can fix this house.

You must be sad and lonely, I said.

He nodded and said, yes, sad and lonely. And wiped more tears away.

My heart breaks as I listened to his story. There must be many stories like Mr Asano's in the area. How I wish I can listen to all of them, and wish they know that there are people who care to come.

Day1: Their Photo Albums

I was planning to start the volunteering with some majorly hardcore physical labor, but signed up for photo team accidentally. at the end of the day, I am actually glad that I have taken this job, and decide to clean more photos for one week. Our main job is to clean photos that relief workers or volunteers have picked up when they are cleaning up the debris. Because the photos were soaked in sea water and often have mud on them, we gently remove them from the album, or whatever left of it, and wash with in water to prevent bacteria growth in future.

As our bus passed by the area close to the ocean, there are mountains of debris. Although I know in my head that these are Fremains of houses, buildings, I just couldn't register and sink in the idea that this construction site-like place was once a community, once a place full of life and people living here. I think it will take some time before it can sink in.

The photos were so fragile, but contain so much memories and lives once lived. Baby naked after bath, high school graduation trip, wedding... one of all photo sets that caught me the most was a picture of a middle school class reunion, grandmas and grandpas stood neatly in rolls with their beloved teachers, just the same as if they had once taken the class photo in their old days in middle school. They were laughing and cheering in the photos, their teacher giving them a speech on the stage... as I washed the mud off the photo surface, I can't help but to think if the owner of this photo is alive to ever see this precious memory again.

I have to say, it is not job for everyone. Emotional aspect for one, and some people are simply more the action-type. I am not really the delicate type that handles fragile things very well usually, but this I just have to do. Playback theater honors stories of life through playing them out on the stage. This photo cleaning honors stories of life through gently gliding the fragile damaged photo through the water, brushing residual mud that stained the surface and restoring the memory as much as we can. One girl and a guy came back, taking 2 full boxes of cleaned photo album back to where they live and let ppl check through them to see if their photo are there. Wynne asked us to remember their faces, because they have come from time to time to ask if we have found their pictures. The girl's house was entirely gone, so has her previous life. I pray that she will find hers one day.

For more photos of Day1, click

Ofunato tsunami relief work

The Beginning: CCU

This journey of faith started in the morning after I arrived in Kolkata. The volunteer friends whom I have made upon arrival offered to meet up and show me the way to the Mother House. Afterall, it was only my second day. They were going to meet me in front of my hostel at 5:15am. Now, most people know that there is a 7.5 hour time difference in Kolkata. Most people. Except me. So after I waited on the street for 15 min and the soliciting and stares from the men on the street became uncomfortable, I didn't want to miss the morning mass so I decided to start walking.

"Go straight on the street ahead, and you will find Mother House," they said.

Uncomfortable as a newly arrived, with my untrusting nature I kept on asking. At times, when I saw a street on the right, I would make a right turn to announce my suspicion by detouring. But the people kept pointing me back to the original street I was instructed to walk straight thru. As I walked on, there were some individuals who would point toward the end of that straight road without me asking, and said, "Mother House."

All of a sudden God's voice spoke, "See, I have told you where to go. It is only you who doubt. But despite your little faith, I still have placed beacons to show you the way."

I was stricken to the core. Where can I hide from your Spirit? The streets of Kolkata became an entrance to the Labyrinth of my faith.

Labyrinth looks very much like a maze. But in fact, no matter how we walk it, an exit awaits us. In our own pace, pause at times when we want to, it is a long stroll of rhythm where we slowly synchronize with God's and encountering Him in the whisper of the breeze. Every now and then, when I need to make a decision out of faith, I think of that morning in Kolkata. And every time I take a leap in faith with prayers, He proves He is God. The rhythm of faith seems to swing in pendulum. Between the tick and tock, slowly I am moving close to the edge of the boat. The storm seems wilds and the waves seems high. I heard His voice in the wind and His arm stretches out invitingly.

The Voice says, "Do not be afraid."

Come, let go. Let's go.