It's All Happening

    It happens when you open your eyes after meditating with the students in the school yard. The mountains of mythical proportions now are familiar and comforting. It happens when one day you instinctively turn and respond when a child cries out, “Madam!” in the street. It happens when late one night when you are returning to Thimphu on a bus and you think, “Almost home.” It happens in the middle of the night when you wake up and you no longer have to remember, “Where am I?” It happens when laughing sincerely around the dinner table with a group of people who just a month before had been unfamiliar faces in a staff meeting. When you leave the city, climb a mountain and really see with your eyes that you have done it, found the place where nature reigns. Where humans have not harnessed it in national parks and greenbelts. It happens when spending thirty dollars in one week seems like a small fortune. Or when you realize that you lived on three hundred dollars in a month, rent included.  The last couple weeks have been filled with moments like this, when I understand that it’s all happening for me.
   
    When you leave home, what are you looking for? I know that when I left, what I wanted was to know was what is revealed when layers of familiarity and comfort are removed. In these small moments I am finding that what is revealed is definitely not fear and worry as we anticipate in the unknown, but rather new forms of familiarity and comfort. Happiness is to be found underneath and the excellent news is that happiness is not dependent on everything that you think you need at home but exists abundantly in the world at large. So when I say, “It’s all happening” I mean that over and over the universe is proving to me that it provides graciously.
   
    Spring is seeping through all of the cracks around here. Bright pink blossoms on trees pop out of the dusty landscape. Between uncharacteristic thunderstorms the sun shines. Going outside or to bed no longer requires three layers, beanies and gloves. I like this new side of Thimphu.

    School is three weeks underway. Today a parent walked through the gate during the all-school assembly. “Where is your son?” Asks Madam Deki, the principal. “He’s not coming today. He had very bad diarrhea all night,” replies the parent in front of THE ENTIRE SCHOOL. I wait for the thunderous laughter. It doesn’t come. I think about the lifetime of social ridicule that would have befallen an American student who’s father made such a comment in front of their entire peer group. Later in the day a student doesn’t have his homework, “I didn’t do it, Madam Kellie, because I had diarrhea last night.” That’s a new one, much more believable than the dog eating it.