Andrew Kooman

Human Trafficking: Let's Write A New Story This Year

2011-01-13T17:36:45Z

Stories, both real and imagined, have the capacity to change us. The stories we love show us what we value and remind us of what is important. They delight and entertain us and tell us things we might otherwise never know.

Humans are story-based organisms. Among all the other things 2011 will be, it will certainly be 'The Year of the Story'. The average North American child will watch upwards of four hours of programming a day.

Meanwhile, real life stories of hope, redemption, grit and tragedy will play out all around the world.

One story that continues to repeat itself year after year is the shocking story of human trafficking. Men, women, and children are sold within countries and across borders, duped and forced to work as slaves.

Experts estimate that there are approximately 28 million slaves in the world today. This staggering number equates to more slaves than during the entire trans-Atlantic slave trade, an atrocity abolished over 200 years ago.

One of the most horrific forms of slavery today is child prostitution. About 1.2 million of the world's slaves are young women and children forced into some aspect of the sex trade worldwide each year.

The number of child prostitutes has tripled in the developing world in the last three decades. Many live in inhumane conditions and are kept subservient through psychological and physical violence.

These statistics are difficult to digest, but our disgust doesn't change the reality. How do we come to terms with such overwhelming numbers?

One way is to tell and consume stories, both real and imagined, that remind us of the immeasurable value of human life. It's the first step of many to transform real world stories of injustice and tragedy into stories of redemption and hope.

It's a pretty grand statement, I know, and the way to realize it is, firstly, to be willing to go into the darkness and then to shine the light on the humanity of those trafficked and enslaved.

As we are convinced that people caught up in stories of injustice matter, our inherent capacity to say no to injustice is activated.

It's one reason why I wrote She Has A Name, a play that will soon be shared with audiences in Calgary and Red Deer in February and March 2011.

The play imagines the story of one girl, a 15-year-old, who is forced to work as a prostitute in a Bangkok brothel. A Canadian lawyer poses as a john so he can interview her and build a case against her pimp.

The tragedy of her story highlights that real justice must be secured for real victims around the world. It also suggests that justice can only be won if real people know, care and take informed and decisive action.

The real men and women who do the difficult and sometimes dangerous work to prosecute the perpetrators of such horrific crimes are heroic.

They work in cities like Red Deer, Vancouver, London, Bangkok and beyond because the story of human trafficking is a story that is told every day, everywhere.

And they need all the help they can get. Before we can help them, though, we need a groundswell of will at every level of society. People who don't only want stories that entertain, but who look at the bleak truth and courageously engage it.

As we head into the new year, I think one of the most significant things we could ever do is resolve to do what we can to stop human trafficking.

It may seem a tall tale now, but so are all the greatest stories ever told.

The good news is that there are more than 28 million un-enslaved people to do the daunting but meaningful work to end the horror story of modern slavery.

A Ticket Home

2010-11-05T23:06:16Z

from Disappointed by Hope - Photograph by Jonathan Kwok

The next group of Vietnamese detainees were more fortunate. Ellen had tickets for ten of the eleven. Seven men and three women. The lone unfortunate was a few weeks away from being given the same good news. Ellen tenderly touched his cheek and told him to be strong as he waited patiently for release. A bittersweet moment to be sure. The men were happy. All of the men had been scooped up on a RELA raid, Malaysia's citizen action group given the power to arrest and detain foreigners with irregular status, at a construction site a few weeks earlier.

The three women were a different story. So young, children they seemed, two of them no older than sixteen. All three from an area of the Mekong Delta, a triangulation of land where the countries of Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam meet. A poor region with little work, a viable trade for many of the girls is prostitution. Some arrive in Malaysia expecting work of another kind, only to find they've been duped and forced into the world of the sex trade. Others come willingly to sell their bodies for sex and make more money then they ever could at home. Two of the girls were disappointed to hear from Ellen they were leaving Malaysia. They pleaded with her to let them stay, told her they wanted to remain in the centre where they made money as prostitutes. The other girl seemed happy to go home.

The last visit we paid was to a young man who was marched like all the others, but on his own. Handsome, young, he didn't look a day over 18. He had been detained for a number of weeks in the Detention Centre. Ellen showed him the papers that had been sent to him from home. Without any money and captured or arrested unexpectedly, most families of the men and women in detention have no knowledge their loved ones are detained. One of the first things Ellen does when she meets detainees is give them money for a phone card so they can phone home, reconnect with their families, so the families can send papers from Vietnam in order to secure their release from detention and get a plane ticket home.

It's a process that isn't without bumps and obstacle. Sometimes she works directly with the Embassy, sometimes she is in touch with the families in Vietnam. Sometimes papers arrive in the mail to her home, and each visit to the Detention Centre Ellen brings what new information she has acquired and compares her records with whatever records the Immigration officers have of detainees.

Ellen had good news for the young man that day: a passport that had been sent from home. She had a plane ticket for him. He would be leaving Malaysia! I watched the wave of relief wash over him, imagined how it must have felt to be so suddenly so close to seeing family again after a long, horrible ordeal. Ellen tenderly wiped the tears that fell to his cheeks with her thumb and asked him if we could pray for him. He had been terribly sick over the last few days, and the lymph nodes on his neck were quite swollen. We laid hands on him and quietly prayed.

When I was in Kenya, I felt the presence of God in a similar way, a heaviness that seemed to push me into the ground. God for whatever reason was suddenly very real and present in my wakened senses, a privileged moment when the veil or fog covering my eyes lifted and I could perceive somehow through the limited grid of my body that heaven was open and that its resources were available to us. Words fail my limited faculties, fail to describe the holiness, the goodness of such a moment. I can, at least, tell you what I prayed. For healing in his body. For courage to swell and conquer his heart. That he would be a faithful shepherd that would feed and lead vulnerable sheep. That he would be certain of the love of God.

Who am I, Lord, to pray such a prayer? Who am I to touch the shackled hands, the swollen lymph nodes of Christ? Who was this man, and who will say with certainty that he was not the most important person I will ever meet in my life?

His name? Neither of us knows. Ellen confided to me, outside the Detention Centre after we had driven along its southern border, the wheels of her car making a full revolution for each coil of barb wire that stretched along the top of the high security fence, that the name on the passport didn't match the one he had give her on her previous visits. I sat at the hawker stall where we ate lunch thinking about this.

The owner's initial surprise that I, a white man, would eat in his restaurant in the small out-of-the-way town, was replaced by his surprise that I could order my food in Hokkien. Whose passport did the young man have? How did his family acquire it? How to see the hundreds of thousands of stories of misplaced, stolen identity come to a tidy end?

Two young Burmese men ran around for the owner of the shop, bringing our drinks, our noodles, cleaning tables. My hungry stomach so easily filled so near to where hundreds of men and women with uncertain fates tried to push away thoughts of the only consistent certainty in their wasting lives: hunger. My own identity papers tucked neatly away in a pocket, hidden and safe, I quietly watched the young men serving us, and wondered how accessible their papers were to them.

##
In 2009 Andrew visited Malaysia and met with migrants and refugees from around South East Asia to hear their stories about their life in Malaysia. Many of the accounts were told by Burmese refugees fleeing the junta. Their stories were the basis for the new book Disappointed by Hope: Migrants and Refugees in Search of a Better Country published by YWAM Penang and Raise Their Voice to highlight the plight of displaced and undocumented migrants.

The above account is a portion of Andrew's personal reflections on his experience in Malaysia. Some names and locations have been modified for reasons of confidentiality.

The Horrible Drudgery of Detention

2010-10-29T01:54:23Z

from Disappointed by Hope - Photograph by Jonathan Kwok

The first group of Vietnamese men marched from their block two by two. Handcuffed in pairs, free arms holding the shoulder of the detainee in front of them, heads down. They entered the small building, sat in two neat rows, cross legged, leaning against each other. Seven in total. They were all young. Haggard and tired, sickly and pale, in detention already for about two months. You could see it on each face. Thin for not eating enough food, tired for not being able to sleep decently through the night, bored with another day of drudgery.

While many migrants come to the country with legitimate contracts and experience Malaysia as the country of opportunity for which they dreamed, many are not so fortunate. Foreign workers are often promised contracts and working conditions in their home countries by various outsourcing agencies that have government contracts to supply migrant labor to a variety of Malaysian companies and individuals.

There's a whole spectrum of agents who get migrants jobs and bring them into Malaysia. Some good, some not who exploit workers intentionally, and who sell or traffick the unsuspecting worker for labor or for sex within the country.

Migrants are frequently cheated and used, and are especially vulnerable to exploitation. Some are paid poorly with wages wrongfully or arbitrarily deducted from their salary by employers. Others aren't compensated for work-related injuries, which abound, especially in manufacturing jobs. Some are not paid at all. If they complain about mistreatment, employers are able to cancel their work permits and render them 'undocumented.' Without proper documentation, the foreign workers are subject to arrest, detention, and deportation.

These are typical stories repeated every day across the country. Migrants who are mistreated in this way, if they seek justice through the legal system for their unfair treatment are required to pay RM 100 each month for a 'Special Pass' which grants them temporary legal immigration status. Yet, with the ability to earn a wage stripped from them by their unjust employer, these migrants who seek resolution to their dispute cannot afford to remain in the country long enough to see the legal process through. As a result, most migrant workers are forced to return to their home countries without completing their court cases or receiving compensation.

Although a terrible ordeal, migrants who are granted special passes and eventually leave the country without compensation are fortunate if they avoid arrest and detention. Those migrants who are arrested are brought to one of the 13 Immigration Detention Centers like the facility I visited.

In theory, after 14 days of detention, arrested undocumented migrants are either released, or are sentenced to imprisonment, which often includes two to four strokes of the whip, an unimaginably painful corporal punishment I would learn about later in my trip through the first hand account of a friend. Since the government introduced a policy of whipping for immigration offences in 2002, thousands of undocumented migrants have been whipped, a practice the Bar Council of Malaysia has condemned as degrading, cruel, and inhumane treatment that violates basic human rights.

Described as "a siren call [that] will... forever take us from our complacency to the plight of so many lost, lonely and hurting"
Photographs by Jonathan Kwok
Stories by Andrew Kooman
Reflections by Melanie Hurlbut
with a Foreword by Ambassador Dato' Dennis IgnatiusFormer High Commissioner of Malaysia to Canada
:: Buy Now ::

Was one of the young men the boy Ellen told me about in the car, in the detention centre after wasting away in prison for two years? I am not certain. The boy in question was arrested for stealing wan tan mee - a few kilograms of noodles from the hawker stall where he had worked. Accused by an angry boss for a crime he did not commit, in a moment of anger he exchanged words with his boss who later filed a report with the police that landed him in jail for two years. Unable to communicate in Bahasa, and given no translator, he simply was stuck in prison with no trial, until Ellen heard his case and with the little Vietnamese she knew was able to get him out of the prison. Since his work visa expired while he was in jail, where he wasted two years of his life forgotten and alone, his papers had become outdated and he was, therefore, an illegal migrant and sent to a Detention Centre. Men like this young man populate the centre we visited and the 12 other Immigration Detention Centres in Malaysia.

I sat close to the seven men, shook their hands, prayed for them under my breath as Ellen took what information she needed from them in order to get them out of detention. The young man I spoke with, his English simple but clear, told me a little about life in the centre. He talked with his hands, moving them with each word. The first three fingers on his right hand cut off at the first knuckle. The stubs tapped against the palm of my hand when we greeted each other. A working accident he did not speak about.

Few of the men had blankets, and all of them had only one change of clothes: a pair of shorts or pants, a Tshirt, and underwear. Not allowed cards, books, paper to write letters, they sat day after day with nothing to do, little to no contact with the outside world, parents, girlfriends, siblings or friends back home. Sitting in their small enclosure waiting for who knows how long for who knows what to happen. Hot and miserable throughout the humid days in their block, a roof over their heads but no walls. Cold through the night lying on the cement floor in the dark with no bedding.

About one hundred men in their block and three toilets between them, their space crowded and uncomfortable, the cement slab they slept on, covered with the sweat and smells of the refuse of a hundred others whose stomachs growled in hunger, not filled by the one piece of roti they were issued for breakfast, the handful of rice at lunch, and the small bowl of rice with the finger-sized fish they were given at night.

I asked them what food I could buy them at the small canteen in the centre where visitors can purchase over-priced food for detainees. Noodles, they said, and soda. I bought bread, cake, cookies, hard candy and snacks. The best RM 50 I have ever spent.

We said goodbye after Ellen and I prayed for them, in the open, in front of the Muslim guards, invoking the name of Christ and his God openly for all to hear and see, a thing some in the country would caution against. The most honest words, perhaps, that I have ever prayed, however feeble and self-conscious under the guards' bored and distracted eye.

Ellen later said she risked praying in such a way once, and has done so on every visit since, sometimes to her own derision. In her opinion it is one of the most useful things she can do, a thing that encourages and strengthens the detainees. We watched them march away, back to their block, back to the grinding and habitual boredom of another day in the centre. None of these men were going home, but Ellen secured some necessary information. Perhaps on her next visit, some of them would have a plane ticket in their hand.

In 2009 Andrew visited Malaysia and met with migrants and refugees from around South East Asia to hear their stories about their life in Malaysia. Many of the accounts were told by Burmese refugees fleeing the junta. Their stories were the basis for the new bookDisappointed by Hope: Migrants and Refugees in Search of a Better Country published byYWAM Penang and Raise Their Voice to highlight the plight of displaced and undocumented migrants.

The above account is a portion of Andrew's personal reflections on his experience in Malaysia. Some names and locations have been modified for reasons of confidentiality.

Undocumented Migrants Detained by Immigration

2010-10-20T17:37:30Z

Vietnamese Migrant, from Disappointed by Hope - Photograph by Jonathan Kwok

The Detention Centre we visited is tucked away in a small town, about an hour and a half drive from the main city where we met. We drove through the rain, a down pour of tremendous rain drops that threw themselves against the windshield with incredible force. Ellen drove her small Proton at a casual pace, not hurried and frantic like many of the other cars on the road earnest to arrive at their destination in record time.

As she drove we talked. I peppered her with questions about the Detention Centres and her work ministering to Vietnamese workers who by some ironic twist of fate, or a bad decision, and usually because of forces outside their own power, arrive in Malaysia legally on contracts, but become illegal in the process.

Ellen owns a computer business and has spent a career in the technology sector. She happened into the gritty and thankless work of helping migrant workers not so much by chance, but surely not with intention. She met real people. Heard real stories. Responded as she could, with her own limited power and resources to help right wrongs, of which there are too many for her to address on her own, try as she now might.

Her vocation, if you call it that, takes up most of her time, requires most of her resource and strength, sees her bring young men - foreigners, criminals - into her home because they have no other place to go. "The could kill me in the night, my husband too," she retorted when I asked her about how safe she feels inviting strangers into her home. "But they don't. I do what I think is right," what must be done, what she as a Christian feels she cannot but do, "and trust God that he will protect me" if there is any real threat.

By the time we arrived at the Detention centre, the sky had cleared. The grey, ominous clouds had rolled back and the sun shone on us as we walked to the gate. Emblazoned on a red sign was a message that I understood very clearly, though I know hardly a word of Bahasa: "Kawasan Larangan," and below the words the image of a stickman with a gun, shooting a running stickman in the back: "Restricted Area."

We entered the Detention Centre on the wings of prayer, evidenced by the ease we had with the guards when we stepped to the guardhouse to show our passports and gain permission to enter the restricted area. The Malay woman at the desk was pleasant, seemed happy, even, to see us. When we were handed our ID passes and were returned our passports and told to go to the main office, Ellen whispered to me how pleasant the entrance was: on her frequent visits, sometimes it takes her a whole hour to be given the pass we were given in two minutes.

Ellen told me later that every entrance to the Detention Centre was unique. A Chinese guard, a woman, pulled Ellen aside on a previous visit and told her the place was cursed. The woman warned her not to pick any of the flowers so carefully kept in beds at the Detention Centre's entrance, sure they would poison any household the flowers were brought to. She asked Ellen if she too saw the unhomed dead, roaming restlessly in the spirit world all throughout the Detention centre. Ellen did not. Nor did I on our visit, a fact I am still thankful for to this day. I do not doubt such things might be unfolding in the spiritual realm. We both agreed how convenient it was not to see in such detail these things, how difficult such vision would make the practical work of meeting with detainees, buying food, and getting the information necessary to start or finish the work of securing identity papers so the detainees could go home.

The two of us walked together to the main office. As we passed the first building, the doors were pushed open, and a Middle Eastern man emerged, handcuffed, wearing shirt and pants that were clean and white, presumably his own clothes. Clean shaven with hair closely trimmed to his skull, he walked down a ramp followed by an official. His deep-set eyes were serious. He walked ahead of us to a series of large steel enclosures, like massive bird cages, in front of the main office. An official opened the door for him and he joined four other men, also wearing their own clothing, where they sat in a neat row, cross-legged on the ground. Behind their cage another, with two lines of men quietly sitting in bright orange jumpsuits. Men being processed into the Detention Centre watching the backs of those men, dressed again in their own clothes, on their way out.

The main office was filled with Malaysian Immigration officials smartly dressed in navy blue uniforms. Woman in hajibs and men with shortly cut hair. Clean and neat, sitting around each other's desks, doing work but enjoying each other's company. I was surprised how casual the environment seemed, given the location the office was situated. A large white board covered most of one wall with a grid describing the number of detainees in the centre, their nationality and gender. I stood near the door while Ellen talked with different officials, showed them papers, checked over records and drew up the list of detainees from different blocs that we would meet. I slipped outside to text the information on the whiteboard on my phone.

That morning the tally of detainees was 760 in total. 157 from Indonesia. 94 from Bangladesh. 42 from Vietmam, 18 of them women who had arrived that very morning. Ellen told me later, when she asked to see them, the official she approached said, "Don't touch them." And told her that the Syndicate would come later in the day or on the next to get them. Brought to the country to work as prostitutes, we surmised, local crime lords had worked out some sort of agreement and were using the centre as a point of entry for their fresh new recruits, likely to end up in brothels or karaoke bars in spots all over the mainland. 397 of the detainees were from Myanmar, 148 of which were Rohingya. 7 Chinese, 4 Pakastanis, 3 Sri Lankans, 2 from Iraq, 2 Russians, and 2 Nigerians/ Africans. These were the numbers and nationalities I was able to scribe onto my phone in haste. Where the other 50 detainees were from I am not certain.

We walked to the small building where detainees are brought to meet visitors. The room was a simple construct. Divided in the middle by a room of booths with glass fronts with small holes cut in the glass, presumably the area designated for visitation. The groups we were to see, however, were too large, and so we sat on the floor, against the south most wall, in front of the desk where three Immigration officials, who looked fresh out of high school, sat and administrated the visits, checked our ID, told detainees where to stand, smiled at me, the foreigner, ate potato chips and tapped out texts on their flashy cell phones.

To be continued next week...

The above account is a portion of Andrew's personal reflections on his experience in Malaysia. Some names and locations have been modified for reasons of confidentiality.

The Impossible Choices of Refugees

2010-10-15T19:56:38Z

Rohingya Refugees in Malaysia - Photograph by Jonathan Kwok

Change Noor's name - he has done so himself - to another. Make it Hashim, or Ishmael. The names change but the stories have similar strands. Yet the threads that tie the stories together are not rich in hue: golds, emeralds, reds, weaving together a beautiful coat of colour. They are more like the clear and tough fishing line one might use, out of desperation, to sew together a raw and open wound torn into the flesh by blow after blow from the butt of a pistol, or cut into skin and muscle by the blade of a knife, sure to leave an unsightly scar.

Noor was fortunate enough to have money demanded of him by members of a crime syndicate when he was sold by a trafficker on the Thai border. He had been rounded up during a raid, put in a Malaysian detention centre holding illegal migrants after his arrest, and sat in the jungle heat for weeks. Some of the other men, like him sold to the syndicate, weren't so lucky. Had no money at all. And after phone calls to what friends they had in Malaysia, or back home in Burma, or to Bangladesh, when they still were unable to come up with funds - RM 1600, about 500 USD, to pay the men who now owned them for freedom - the pistol whipping, the cutting, the punches and bruising ensued. But no matter how hard they punched, their opened veins would not produce the funds. If you prick a refugee, does he not bleed blood? Their screams will never produce gold or other precious metals. If it were so, what a commodity their suffering.

Noor had RM 2000, so he could buy his freedom from the syndicate, and passage back into Malaysia. With the other RM 400 he bought some food for the men he was leaving behind, men who were sure to be sent to remote fishing communities to work on boats, perhaps never to return.

He had already paid the money and was waiting in the makeshift camp the traffickers assembled near the border, waiting to enter Malaysia at night secretly. But that night the police raided. Noor ran like everyone else, in one of a thousand directions, and escaped. Hid away. When it was safe, he found his own way back into the country. Came to Penang and the jungle on whose fringes we spoke.

* * *

My arrival in the country was a much different flight. Over land and sea in a jet. My legs occasionally cramped I found it difficult to sleep over the ten hour flight before I slept the night in a hotel for my layover in Taipei, before I made the final flight to Malaysia. Upon arrival in Penang, I handed my Canadian-issued passport to the smiling woman at the Immigration desk who welcomed me into the country after we chatted about local food. No bribes, no sneaking, no ducking or running through thick jungle at night. And yet my travels took their own amount of faith. Traveling to a foreign country for an extended period of time, a habit from which I hope to never recover, requires much from the traveler, no matter who they are and where they go: time, money, separations from, preparations.

But to leave your country running, without documentation? Travel out of your country and suddenly the passport you so easily hide away in the drawer in your room and forget about, thinking nothing of its security in the insulated walls of your carpeted home where you eat and drink, make love, watch TV, the passport you have to search for when you're booking your plane ticket online, muttering in frustration, suddenly that passport is everything. You know its whereabouts at all times. It gets zipped in hidden pockets, tethered round your neck, pressed against your skin. It is connected to you and at all times is within hand's reach. Leashed.

Described as "a siren call [that] will... forever take us from our complacency to the plight of so many lost, lonely and hurting"

Photographs by Jonathan Kwok
Stories by Andrew Kooman
Reflections by Melanie Hurlbut

with a Foreword by Ambassador Dato' Dennis Ignatius Former High Commissioner of Malaysia to Canada
:: Buy Now ::

When you are away you are where you are from. The small little book, with the alpha-numeric code above that horrid photograph printed on the glossy page is your identity. You are your passport. And you will either receive the stamp of approval or you will not.

To be without passport, without documentation is tantamount to being without identity. This is the jagged little pill the fifteen million refugees worldwide (and counting) have to swallow. The stunning slap against the skin tens of thousands of refugees in Malaysia, unlucky enough to be where they are from, without papers, feel when they arrive in the country, their safe haven, only to discover they are granted no official status.

***

The reality of Rohingya refugees is particularly dire, the story of a national identity stolen by those who ruthlessly wield power. When it came to rule in 1974, the military junta in Burma denied citizenship to the Rohingya and declared them stateless. Only, the declaration was no empty word, no abstract initiative set forth by a democratic figurehead whose impact or reach could not be quantified. The brutal dictates of the junta made incarnate their words with radical policies that have affected the Rohingya for 30 years. As a result scores of Rohingya have fled the country. With taxes on most goods and services, a ban of the Rohingya language, confiscation of land and property, forced labor, and systematic religious persecution it's no wonder.

Worse yet is the violence. Summary executions, torture, and systematic rape widely reported by organizations like Amnesty International led to waves of Rohingya fleeing the country. A campaign of concentrated violence saw an estimated 250,000 Rohingya flee to neighboring Bangladesh during 1991 - 1992 alone. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are upwards of 730,000 stateless persons, mostly Rohingya, and some estimate there are 1.5 million Rohingya refugees displaced outside Burma's borders.

When the country you've lived your whole life - for generations - suddenly denies you are its son, strips you of your dignity but also confiscates any legal documentation of your national identity and then flushes you like refuse from its borders, there are sure to be challenges ahead. For one, you can't book a plane ticket to safer lands, layover in Taipei, or engage in small talk with a customs agents about local cuisine.

The realities of extortion, bribery, imprisonment, and rape do not only linger as horrific memories of once terrible times, but become omens of the future, signposts in a unending journey of misery more likely to appear on the horizon than if you have a stamped, current passport, unflattering photograph and all.

And the question about where to go to, what border to cross, is no matter to take lightly either. Want to risk frequent extortion, malnutrition, and squalor living conditions that may require you to sell your body in order to get food? Head to Bangladesh to a refugee camp. Want to risk a trip over water at night in a rickety boat with the possibility that the navy will scoop you from the sea and force you to return to the very country you flee as a refugee? Go to Thailand. Such future sufferings aren't the rule, but neither are they the exception.

Many Rohingya have also fled to Malaysia where, like Noor, they hide in the jungle, work for months as labourers whose bosses don't pay up, simply because they know the undocumented migrants can make no case against them in a court of law. Having not signed the United Nations 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the Malaysian government grants no legal status to legitimate refugees like the Rohingya when they arrive in Malaysia. An unpaying boss can simply say, "You shouldn't have been here in the first place." With no legal status, a trip to Malaysia means the possibility of arrest, detention, and deportation, which is the government's official policy toward all undocumented migrants.

Choosing a new country, for many refugees, might seem a dangerous game of roulette. But most often the violence they might face in their country of refuge is perpetrated by scoundrels and is not endorsed by the state. And there are ways to hide, cracks to slip through and into, and for now, any country other than Burma, for a Rohingya, is a better country.

Read the other articles from the series:

Week 1: Refugees Hiding in the Jungle

In 2009 Andrew visited Malaysia and met with migrants and refugees from around South East Asia to hear their stories about their life in Malaysia. Many of the accounts were told by Burmese refugees fleeing the junta. Their stories were the basis for the new book Disappointed by Hope: Migrants and Refugees in Search of a Better Country published by YWAM Penang and Raise Their Voice to highlight the plight of displaced and undocumented migrants.

The above account is a portion of Andrew's personal reflections on his experience in Malaysia.

For excellent research and documentation on the reality of refugees, internally displaced and stateless peoples, visit the UNHCR's statistics page.

A Better Country - Refugees Hiding in Malaysia's Jungle

2010-10-11T21:27:52Z

Rohingya Refugee, Malaysia - Photo by Jonathan Kwok

He had no reason to lie to us. The tears on his face said it all. They appeared suddenly, streamed clear lines on his dark skin. The first, the only tears I saw during my time meeting with refugees in Malaysia, listening to their stories of survival, of exile, of suffering and displacement. Tears precious to me. I wish I could have collected them in the palm of my hand or in a small vile that I could seal with a lid, bring back with me to Canada to show you. Perhaps we could have found a seed or a small sapling to plant in the ground once the snow melts. Break open the vile of tears to water the soil. A single tear enough to grow a whole tree, the kind of nourishment that only comes with suffering.

We met Noor mid-afternoon, after the heat of the day had reached its peak and the humidity had rolled out like a large cloud, invisible but heavy, covering everything with its weight and presence. We wanted to walk with him out into the jungle, deep into the trees where his small community of 55 people, mostly men, live in huts made carefully out of tree branches and plastic bags, cardboard, garbage, whatever things you use to make shelters out of when you hide away in the jungle.

But we didn't go with him to see the community because it was not safe. The police were raiding their makeshift village over the last few days as police in Malaysia must do when local residents complain about illegal aliens in the area.

So we sat with him, the six of us, in a quiet restaurant at the bottom of an apartment building on a block of concrete lined by green. Vegetation in Malaysia is vibrant and alive. Turn your back on it for only a moment and it grows, jealous and hungry trees stretch out their limbs, vines creep and advance toward the edges of all things. But there we sat, on the edge of the jungle we could not enter for fear of the police, though at any moment it seemed the jungle would advance on us, so both parties might have their wish.

I asked questions which Stanley, the aid worker from a local Catholic parish relayed to Noor in Bahasa. His story came in pieces, was interrupted by memory that covered his soft features in shadow, and interjections from the other parishioners who had joined us to assess the needs of the community. By his tears.

Noor is a Rohingya, a Muslim from Burma, one of the millions of people suddenly stateless and internally displaced when the government announced in 1982 that the Rohingya were no longer citizens in the country where they had always lived. The policy that made them a stateless people was the first of many injustices that would lead to the exodus of millions of Rohingya from Burma over the subsequent decades.

Noor left with his family the following year, in 1983, and like so many others, went to Bangladesh. Only thirteen years old at the time, with his whole life ahead of him, little did he know he would spend the next fourteen years in a refugee camp and be witness to horrors, both small and great.

Described as "a siren call [that] will... forever take us from our complacency to the plight of so many lost, lonely and hurting"

Photographs by Jonathan Kwok
Stories by Andrew Kooman
Reflections by Melanie Hurlbut

with a Foreword by Ambassador Dato' Dennis Ignatius Former High Commissioner of Malaysia to Canada
:: Buy Now ::

Quietly, in a near whisper, Noor recounted the story of his imprisonment, seven years of jail in Bangladesh. A girl in the camp, beautiful and young, only eleven years old, was raped and killed by a group of worthless local men. It's the kind of thing that happens to refugees. To women. To girls. Helpless and displaced. The violence against the young woman one injustice among countless others that occurred in the camp. The community Noor was apart of had been ambushed and mistreated by locals many times and it was all too much. Noor went and spoke to the officers who had authority in the camp. The community was furious that the perpetrators of the crime against their innocent daughter had not been brought to justice and that no legal process was underway.

When Noor had spoken his mind and left, after vocalizing his anger, after speaking up for his community, he was accosted by junior officers, severely beaten and thrown into jail. There was no trial. There was no accusation. Only a clear message from the powers that be that it was better for him and his community to keep the collective mouth shut.

And there Noor stayed. In jail. For Seven years until he somehow he escaped, fled to Malaysia.

Like a puzzle spilled out on a table top, many of the pieces of his story are disconnected for me, flipped over. The border is framed and I have a sense of the greater picture, enough of the context to understand the scope of his suffering. I am unable to connect it all and can only imagine the bits in between. Limited by language, by the short time we had, these are the pieces of his story I was given.

Stanley and Noor had a long conversation in Bahasa about life in the camp. The others, all Malaysians, leaned into the table in silence. Occasionally shaking their heads in disbelief, looks of surprise on their faces. Stanley did not repeat it all, did not want to, his own heart raw and exposed, filled with enough of its own sadness, after learning only hours earlier that the nephew his family eagerly expected, died days before birth in his mother's womb. But I could tell they were talking about the different ways refugees in the camp in Bangladesh died at the hand of cruel men. As he spoke, Noor extended his hands, shaped them into the shapes of guns and knives, grabbed at his abdomen, sliced at his own limbs as he described the violence.

The tears trailed across Noor's face, wove quietly into his narrative when he told us that his family - siblings, a mother, and two sons - were still in the camp. In this place where horrors were not only conveyed in dreams of the night. In this place that he fled. Still living, forever just sitting there, away from their country and, worse, away from him. His wife had run. He had no knowledge of her whereabouts.

If the stories themselves, the experience of sitting with this man was not surreal enough already, his mobile phone which rang mid-conversation, would underscore that the experience of refugees is impossible - anything can happen and does. On the other end of the phone conversation was one of Noor's sons, calling to say hello to the father he had not seen for five years from the Bangladeshi refugee camp. Just like that, even as we spoke of his family. The pride in his eyes accentuated by Noor's beaming smile as he handed me the phone and explained to me through Stanley that his son wished to talk with me, to practice the English he was learning in the camp. I obliged and had a nice short conversation, my index finger jammed into my ear so I could hear across the ocean the young boy's clear, enthusiastic voice shape crisp words of English. Hello. How Are You? How Old? What Is Your Name? And me? Well, what else to talk about but European football. Where I come from. Wish him well and compliment his fantastic English.

But don't learn the language too well, dear child, the prayer I now pray, fervently, after learning the fate of one young boy in the same camp. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees, wanting to have a sense from refugees within the camp about their conditions, had given a phone to a young boy with good English, and would receive reports from him in secret. And camp officials found out. Why the UN officials snuck a phone to the boy I cannot say. Who the men were who caught the boy and what authority they had and still have I do not know either, but what is clear is that they were men who held the power of life and death in their hands. And it was those hands that grabbed the young boy by the ankles when they found the phone, when they discovered what he was doing. Grabbed him by the ankles and swung him around and around in the air. Like a rag doll. Swung him fast and high, bashed his head into trees, against walls. A young boy! A life! A human being! Swung him about until he was dead.

So don't learn your English too well, dear boy, refugee child of a refugee who, from the look of things, always will be.

Are any of these stories the truth? All I can say, with tears, is: I hope not. I want them to be lies. All of them. If only they were lies.

##
The above reflection was featured in EyeSee Magazine.

In 2009 Andrew visited Malaysia and met with migrants and refugees from around South East Asia to hear their stories about their life in Malaysia. Many of the accounts were told by Burmese refugees fleeing the junta. Their stories were the basis for the new book Disappointed by Hope: Migrants and Refugees in Search of a Better Country published by YWAM Penang and Raise Their Voice to highlight the plight of displaced and undocumented migrants.

The above account is a portion of Andrew's personal reflections on his experience in Malaysia.

Commissioned Work

2010-09-30T18:48:10Z

Commissioned Work

Way back in the 1490s, a man of many talents was commissioned by the French ambassador in the Holy See to sculpt one of his most well known works, the Pietà. Upon its completion, one of the artist's contemporaries wrote, "It is certainly a miracle that a formless block of stone could ever have been reduced to a perfection that nature is scarcely able to create in the flesh." [1]

For great work to become a fait accompli it often requires a commission from men and women with means, and it's why posterity can enjoy and appreciate some of the world's most famous works of art, Michelangelo's included.

I've been thinking about the word Commission. As a writer it is a welcome thought: to be sought out by someone who appreciates what you do, to partner in a new work, to bring into a reality an aesthetic dream, and to not have to expend all the energy on ends to figure out how they will meet.

The commission of the artist is a nice metaphor for a commission of another kind: the individual's invitation into the work that will accomplish God's ultimate dream. In Mark 16:15 Christ invites all who follow him into commissioned work: "Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation."

Some take the words more seriously than others. Certainly it might seem less romantic or significant than the commission of artistic work to some. The call of Christ to all seems so democratic, so universal - "everyone is asked to go? Not just an elite few with a particular skill set?" Scoff.

As I've looked at this passage which many Christians, myself included, are over-familiar with, a passage some say is only a footnote in an abruptly ended book that doesn't really belong in the original text, I'm interested in a twice repeated phrase: "they would not believe."

Jesus appears with the kingdom reality of the resurrection - in the flesh - to people who knew him from Adam and when those people who saw him shared the good news, they didn't believe. Mary Magdelene, saw the Lord in the garden and the two fellows traveling the road to Emmaus had personal encounters with Christ, but their accounts didn't assuage the despair of those lost to the darkness of fear, hopelessness, and grief. These people who watched or heard of his public execution, who grieved his death, who were told Christ was alive by three witnesses, did not recognize the Second Adam when he rose from the dead.

It took time, is what I mean to say. And I don't blame them. The first ever believers (people who already knew and had relationship with Christ) had to be told the good news three times and they had the advantage of being raised in a faith tradition expecting a Messiah and of being taught and prepared by him for the very truth that would transform their world and ours.

"Later he appeared to the eleven themselves as they were sitting at the table; and he upbraided them for their lack of faith and stubbornness, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen" (Mark 16: 14) and right after doing so he commissioned them.

I think it important to note the context of this famous commissioned work. It's encouraging that Christ doesn't belabor the point. He confronts the disciples' unbelief, but doesn't get hung up on it, and then calls them into the life-changing, life-long work of sharing the good news.

For me, the question isn't about whether we are to Go into all the world or not. Nor is it so much about how, or where, or what responding to the call to Go looks like. It does, however, make me curious about what our expectations are. I think there is a prevailing sense that when Christians share the good news of Christ to the last unreached pygmy that the lights on the world as we know it will go out (or turn on), once for all. I'm not saying that's a wrong belief. But I'm also not saying it's right.

Christ said Go and we must. We don't go because we will trigger the apocalypse or to meet quotas of some unspoken cosmic body count. We go because we obey. And we go because we know and understand and believe the good news. "The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned" (Mark 16:16).

Sobered by such words, like master artists, skilled in our craft, may we offer the world a message that is steeped in the beauty and clarity of the truth so posterity can enjoy and appreciate the most famous work, the most astonishing fait accompli of all. True to the metaphor, our patron has the means to ensure he meets his part of the contract for the commissioned work. If we resolve to go, then we must meet our end of the deal: everywhere the good news.

Thank God Christ appears to us more than once, and gives ample opportunity to those who will believe. If you plan to go, prepare to go more than once.

Visit www.andrewkooman.com

Got What it Takes? Re-imagining Discipleship

2010-09-16T00:53:34Z

Invitations to self-sacrifice and selflessness are seldom extended today. We're a Get-Anything-You-Want-For-Cheap kind of culture whose convenience and blessedness comes at the expense of others we don't see and, gosh-darnit, we want to keep in that way. We're insured or have access to insurance to protect the kingdoms we build for ourselves. We're padded, protected, and, even in a time of economic downturn, so many in the West have most everything they need and can get almost anything they want.

There's a very human desire, not a wrong one either, for comfort, perfection, ease, and blessedness. When the perks of our hard work and the fruit that comes through our own strength or shrewd shenanigans come at an unjust cost to others, or at no cost to ourselves, something is wrong with the picture.

As global movers and shakers continue to talk recovery, shell out money, talk debt and extend it, perhaps more than ever in recent history, average North Americans are very conscious of cost, spending, and the bottom line. And perhaps, more than ever, even as more people are infuriated at big government shaping and deciding where the money goes, at the same time, people are desperate. Like baited fish pulling on the line, the strings of people's hearts are caught up with the personal desire for bailout. Just let us off the hook!

G. Campbell Morgan was a dynamic preacher who had the Westminster Pulpit during the First World War. His preaching and Bible studies were attended by thousands during a dark time in world history when a useless war was being fought by men in power who wanted to shape the world according to their own making. The reason people listened to what he said is because Morgan gave people solid food and did not ration the truth; he gave the spiritually hungry sustenance they could chew and digest, even if it was, at times, difficult to swallow. Morgan didn't let people off the hook, but he did show them how to sink or swim.

One such sermon, given during his time at Westminster Chapel, was about the cost of belief in Christ, and the call to the individual disciple to carry the cross and follow after God. I'm no economist, but I am titillated by the words from Christ that suggest we are to "Give it all away" even (or perhaps especially) in the tough times, when it feels there's so little resource to give.

Morgan highlights a passage in Luke when Christ tells a crowd of eager disciples, men and women who wanted regime change and a bailout under the heavy hand of Rome, about the high stakes of following after him. It was, what some would say, a turning point in Christ's ministry, when he culled the ranks by urging people to count the cost of discipleship:

Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it?.... Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions (Luke 14: 27-33 NRSV).

Morgan highlights that the important word in the above passage is the "therefore", paraphrasing the above passage as such: "Because my work is the work of building and of battle, I am bound to be careful about the men that I choose to follow me; because I am not merely asking men to come after me in order to save them, but in order to help me and help God and humanity" (from "The Terms of Discipleship," The Westminster Pulpit).

It's a revolutionary concept, one that violently attacks our personal notions of self-preservation and comfort. And it is by no means attractive. A cross? Christ obviously didn't watch infomercials, like the ones if you sign up now, you get double what you pay for and a bit more swag for free. He does the opposite: it will cost you everything you got, even your life. For, the cross is a picture of death and suffering.

And yet it is also a symbol of transformation, redemption, and obedience. The truth of the matter is that Christ died, once for all. As I've reflected on this verse I'm aware at my tendency to not go very deep with the metaphor, imagining myself in Christ's place, shouldering a cross on the road to Golgotha. I need to venture deeper, for it is clear that neither you nor I have to literally die on a cross for the whole world.

We don't have what it takes to be the all-sufficient sacrifice that takes away the sin of the world. Sorry to burst the bubble. It's not a literal cross we're called to carry. Certainly disciples of Christ may literally die and do - it is a historical and theological possibility. But it is not what I think the call to shoulder the cross is about. Carrying your cross is about a life-commitment to follow God and his son. A commitment to follow God into what he desires the individual to do.

Peter objected to the cross of obedience - the literal cross Christ declared he would die on - because he didn't want to see his leader and friend crucified. Peter also, at the time, didn't understand that this path for Christ was the will of God or that it would achieve the ultimate vindication and eternal victory of God and man.

What the call suggests is that we are needed to build a structure that will last, and to fight out the remainder of a necessary war whose decisive battle is already in the bag. Disciples of Christ have specific roles to play and strengths to give to achieve the mandate of heaven. To be successful, successful candidates will have complete buy in. What kind of builder or king would Christ be if he didn't require it?

Christ understood his purpose on earth and that the call to specific action had Divine intent. His complete and unadulterated obedience would fulfill God's purpose. This obedience wasn't an arbitrary, self-punishing, masochistic call to death or to pain. It was the only tactic, costly and horrible as it was, that could achieve the ultimate will of God.

Understanding who we are and what we can give is important to our obedience to the above command. As Paul the great first century apologist wrote, "We are what he made us" created for good works. Understanding what those good works are and doing them to build the tower and fight the battle is the very act of carrying the cross.

Nothing, actually, comes for free. Free gifts always cost someone something. The tough financial times might increase our tendency to want things on the cheap. We must be careful that this tendency doesn't bleed over into our theology, for there's nothing more dangerous or damaging than cheap grace and cheap discipleship.

In a housing crisis, no one will be served by giving away free homes that are built poorly and won't last. In a time of war, no one will be served by pulling out of the battle in the short term to find a reprieve. The structures will collapse. The enemy will win.

Thank God Jesus carried his cross. It is the great hinge on which everything - history and our future - turns, empowering those who would follow after him to not only measure up, but to want to give their all. And thank God Christ also does his due diligence by asking us if we have what it takes. Obedience might be costly, but the only thing more terrible would be to be found outside the building when its finished or on the losing side of the war.

The Bible's Shocking 4-Letter Words

2010-09-12T18:32:47Z

Have you ever been shocked at the four-letter words in the Bible? Sometimes they offend me more than the four-letter words I hear on the street, because they offend and upend my whole view of things. Scripture, for instance, has the gall to tell you to go and find yourself and then shows you just how to do it.

I'm fascinated, at the moment, by the verse that the first century scribe Matthew records in his gospel, the words of the rabbi he followed for years before the bold teacher slipped away through the looking-glass at his ascension: Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you as well (Matthew 6:33).

The words bookend a famous passage from the Sermon on the Mount in which Christ seems to turn everything on its head - everything, that is, that religious people value and perceive as the priority and perspective of God. Things like outward appearances -gadgets and garments and rituals, for instance - that people easily confuse as proof of blessedness and rightness.

All these things - food, clothing, the provision of earthly things - come, we're promised, as we set our attention fully on God and his way of living. The Sermon on the Mount reveals that the believer in God, his followers who abide in him, love what he loves, do what he does, pray what he prays, and are filled with a spirit that lives completely opposite from our tendency to self preservation and protectionism. Believers store up their treasure in heaven not by hoarding things on earth; they have provision for physical needs not by focusing on acquiring them. This kind of believer in God does not worry and is not in want because they seek entirely after God.

(Insert your own four-letter word).

With the above command to seek, Christ brings everything into the present, calling people to focus on the reality of today and into what could seem an uncomfortable level of dependence on God. And he moves away from a focus on outward appearances to a passionate inwardness.

Forgetting Maslow's triangular hierarchy of needs, we are to set our hearts on a pilgrimage and transcend at our first step, climbing the mountain of God into his kingdom, a truly different way of living.

What fascinates me, today, about the verse is not the usual "and these things will be added to you as well" speculations, wish lists, and inventories that seem to automatically propagate when the verse is meditated upon. Nor is it the questions of responsibility and practicality that can so persistently nag the conscience should the command be obeyed. Rather, it is the four letter word "seek" that slaps me with all the power of an expletive across the spiritual face. Dare I turn the other cheek and let the words have their way?

Expounding on this verse, Oswald Chambers states in his career-defining work, My Utmost for His Highest, that "It is one of the most difficult, yet critical, disciplines of the Christian life" to allow these words of Christ to take root in our lives. We'd rather let our faith die, focusing on how to eat, and when, and with who, than risk succumbing to the elements by taking Christ's words at face value.

At the risk of our lives, is it not just a little bit intriguing that Christ frames the call of believers of God Above Everything Else in the vocabulary of a quest? With my Strong's Concordance for iPhone in hand, I did a little digging and learned that the Greek word used for "seek" in this instance is a word that implies a search for something hidden.

Whatever or wherever the kingdom of God is and his righteousness are, Christ implies they aren't always already apparent. But by no means does that mean they aren't available or readily found.

This weekend I drove for a few hours through Central Alberta. It's the most beautiful time of the year. The land is a rolling patchwork of crops, golden and green, like a giant quilt stretched and pulled along the fissures of the earth. And I found myself at the Dry Island Buffalo Jump Provincial Park, a stunning plateau in the middle of the Red Deer River Valley once used by the Cree as an ingenious means to kill bison in the hunt.

It's the very same area where the once unknown and now famous Albertosaurus was discovered, a dinosaur that once roamed the Badlands at the foot of the Canadian Rockies. It was 1910, in fact, when a number of skeletons of the beast were uncovered, but the American paleontologist who found them had limited time in the region and left, and it wasn't until 1997 that a team of scientists rediscovered the fossils and started more significant extractions to reveal the most important bonebed of the Albertosaurus in the world.

The great discovery had been there all along, a treasure of bones from the animal kingdom; to find, it simply required some seeking.

And when the treasure was found, the geography's status changed. It remained what it always was, but it was perceived differently. The layers of rock, the valley that cut through the rich Albertan soil, the river that slowly curled through the silent cliffs didn't suddenly change into something else. But the land was be set apart in the Dominion of Canada as a Provincial Park. It was granted special, blessed status.

What are the treasures buried in our lives, deep in the strata of who we are, whose excavation and study would change how we perceive our personal geography? What are the kingdom of God things buried not because they're dead or dumped, but because they are things we're meant to find and then treasure? We, like scientists, must seek them with scalpel, brush, and trowel, for they are more significant and important than dinosaur bones.

We are told to seek first the kingdom. And what is the kingdom? It is something not easily defined. It is the mustard seed, smallest of all the seeds that when planted becomes a large tree to shade the field and provide safe haven for birds. It is the woman who mixes yeast into the whole batch of dough. The kingdom is the merchant who finds a valuable pearl, sells everything he has so he can purchase it. It is like a net thrown into the sea that catches all kinds of things that get sorted - edible fish to the market, non-edible ones to the trash heap. The gospel writer Matthew piles image upon image of what the kingdom is like.

And even as the metaphors create a chain reaction of meanings we might never fully grasp, like a hook through the gills the bottom line is yanked taut, and we are told to chase after the meaning, and seek this hard to define kingdom. We must seek after the kingdom and its meanings because this is the only way we will find it; we must pursue the right living of God because we will only live that way if we intend to.

There is treasure in our lives deposited by God. There is a whole kingdom we must dig for, dust off, and reveal to each other and the world.

Go find yourself. The treasure's uncovered only by seeking.

Visit Andrew's official website at www.andrewkooman.com

Converted Rice: Anne Rice Leaves the Church and Heads into the Wilderness

2010-08-26T01:43:23Z

Those familiar with my personal reading list know that in recent years I've become a fan of Anne Rice's recent works, especially her Christ the Lord series about the life of Christ. But more than that, I'm a fan of her as a writer and a person.

She is generous and giving as an author. As a writer myself, I've been greatly encouraged by how much she gives. With frequent youtube videos commenting on her writing process, her avid social networking through facebook and twitter, Ms. Rice also responds personally to email she receives. I have been a thankful recipient and exchanged correspondence with her to discuss deep things of faith (I asked her questions about why she prays to Mary). She seems an exception among writers, not the rule: open and transparent about her writing process, her spiritual journey, and willing to engage other writers and fans she doesn't know from Adam.

Like so many others I've been fascinated to read and watch a wide range of responses to Anne's recent announcement via facebook that she quit Christianity "in the name of Christ." The most compelling to me have been 1) Anne's interview on CNN explaining she wants to be removed from the quarrelsome fray to go into the wilderness to hear from God how she can continue on in her faith, committed to Christ in these toxic times; 2) This article by a Christian apologist and author about how as member's of Christ's body we cannot amputate ourselves from the body; 3) And this fine article by Elizabeth Scalia about how, though it might look different in practice, church doctrine is not against all the "anti's" that led Rice to make her pronouncement.

Only God can know what's in Anne's heart or mine. I can only read what she writes (And I hope in the midst of all of this she will complete the Christ the Lord series!). However, above all else, I certainly appreciate Anne's honesty and openness in her personal quest of faith. Whatever people think of her decisions, it seems undeniable to me that she is doing her best to work out her faith with fear and trembling.

There's so much talk about 'teachable moments' in the USA right now. I think Christians and non should learn from Anne's willingness to honestly and openly engage the truth in the public domain.

I recently mused in an email to my friend James that "I'd leave the church simply because I'm bored and tired of the redundant conversation. If that's all the church was. Thank God it's not and that it is the great secret the world doesn't yet know. What about being filled with wonder, stunned at the worthiness of God and compelled by his transforming love to be light and love in the world?"

I hope that something that comes of all the attention and discussion from Anne's facebook post is that people will purpose, as Anne is, to get their heads above the fray. Like Job's friends I think we get it all wrong, missing the point entirely, so rarely looking up and out of the entropy of our world toward the Hand that can rescue us from all the darkness - a hand that is sovereign and worthy no matter what. May we look to God in the confusion of our lives for the truth of things.

I for one have faith for Anne and am excited about what new vision and faith she comes to because of her self-declared time in the "wilderness." Great writers, believers, doubters, prophets, princesses, and kings have ventured there before only to return renewed, resolved, committed and sure - more than ever before - of who they are and what they are meant to do.

So, among all the other voices in the world wide web commenting on Anne's words, I want to recognize (for what it's worth) what she has done for the church - edified it, challenged it, loved it - and bless her on her spiritual quest. Those who seek the truth will always be led deeper into the heart of Christ for he is the way, and he is the truth, and he is life.

The Horror and the Wonder of the Greatest Command

2010-08-26T01:34:00Z

Annie Dillard asks a question about beauty in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek that nearly stops my beating heart. She frames the question with an Eskimo story told by Farley Mowat about a man, his young wife, and the girl's mother at the top of the world. Jealous of her daughter's love, the old woman strangles and skins her, stretching her daughter's face upon her own while her son-in-law is out on the hunt. When he returns, he lies with her, thinking it's his wife. But, wet from the hunt, the skin mask of his wife's face shrivels on the old ugly's wrinkled cheek and he runs away in horror, never to return.

It's here that Dillard swings her club, driving home the sense of terror with the question: "is beauty itself an intricately fashioned lure, the cruelest hoax of all... could it be that if I climbed the dome of heaven and scrabbled and clutched at the beautiful cloth till I loaded my fists with a wrinkle to pull, that the mask would rip away to reveal a toothless old ugly, eyes glazed with delight?"

It's a question about what's underneath, under what we see. If all the beauty of the world were a hoax, wool pulled over our widened eyes, then how terrible that beauty. Often things we think beautiful wear a veil of deception and cover the true nature of things we want to be so pleasant, so good, and so beautiful.

What then of love? What masks does it sometimes wear? What smiles toothlessly underneath? The world and each human heart might need it, but is true love what it gets? It seems to me that what many call love really is not. To modify the idiom, there's more than one way to skin a true love.

What's offered by people often seems easy and cheap, a sly and skillful work that appears as love but isn't. The world's view of love, romantic and other, is explained almost as magic, something that appears without explanation or cause and cannot be wielded or controlled. If this kind of love is magic, it is dark magic, the kind displayed by an illusionist or at a freak show.

That's why I'm stopped in my tracks as I consider a statement Christ makes in Mark's gospel. When asked by a lawyer what he thought the greatest command was, Jesus responded by saying what righteous Jews had said for centuries, "Hear O Israel; the Lord your God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength."

In Christ's view, there was no greater thing. No higher or nobler purpose. Giving all the heart to God means giving all one's passions and emotion; all the soul means giving one's entire will and purpose; all strength is the whole output of one's person. And upon offering these things to God, one must love one's neighbour as one's own self. It is an involved command, focused not on the self, but on God and then on everybody else.

And in Christ we have an incomparable example of such self-giving love: a man, the Son of God, who was crushed because of his love for God and God's love for everybody else. His own flesh was skinned and cut, striped and speared when he hung upon a Roman cross. His flesh was marked not to dress up a deception, but to expose the everlasting truth that through the sacrificial love of God all deception and false love could be removed; the wool pulled over us collectively could be unpulled to reveal to our suddenly widened eyes God himself.

Through the horror of Christ's suffering, true love was undressed and totally exposed. Certainly this is troubling for some. It is surely troubling for me. Not only is it hard to stomach, it's difficult to respond to. If this is love then what will love require of me? Everything. If so, what good is that? I have so little on my own to give! And yet this is God's great command.

Like the hunter who came home and ran in horror when the truth was revealed, so to we might want to hit the road and not look back. However, upon reflection, it is clear that in the command itself there is great provision for grace. The love that is required of us is the same love that is given. As the scriptures further define, love is patient and it is kind, it isn't selfish or rude, it is not angry and it doesn't keep records of wrong. It always protects. It always hopes and trusts, and it does not and will never fail. It is the perfect love of God.

I've been acutely attentive through internet and other chatter lately about the real and perceived failures of the Church and of Christians to put love where the doctrine is, so to speak. Many have stretched out their hands to the so-called people of God only to pull away a facade and find ugliness underneath. Where is the beautiful bride scriptures promise? Instead of a spotless, faithful, gracious beauty, a whining and cunning wench often lies in her place. No wonder many run.

But even our ugliness can be redeemed. In our imperfection we can learn to better handle and wield this love. Our understanding might be limited, but it can grow. Our strength to some might seem only weakness, but it can increase. We might not even know we have a soul, but we can seek and find that too.

Like Christ who came in the flesh as a naked, helpless child, who was weaned from milk, not solid food, who found his feet and learned to run and jump, who learned compassion and love by seeing it in the faulted community of people who raised the Son of God, so too, can we grow in stature. We must.

No matter where we may stand on the continuum of knowledge, no matter how great our passion or strength, our capacities and abilities can grow. We can give all that we have now. And when we have more we can give that too. The fact is, wherever or however we might gauge the size and weight of our heart, soul, minds, and strength what we have now is what we've got. What we have now is our all, and we are asked to give it.

Our capacity to love God and others may not be where we prefer it to be or where it should be, but we must choose to pour the measure of that love out now. The good news for us all is that we have a perfect example in Christ of selfless love, given without reserve. It will be by looking to him that the measure of our love will increase.

For some, the Church is no bride, just an old hag with false teeth. For others Christ is only an object of horror, his death unveiling an unthinkable act that makes no human sense. And yet that self-giving act of love was the revelation of what is really underneath; the ultimate moment when man finally reached the dome of heaven and clutched at the veil. Hidden beneath all the ugliness was the astonishing heart that beats under the flesh of all that our eyes can see. A heart that can beat in us too.

Kidnapped Journalist Amanda Lindhout Talks about Forgiveness and the Future

2010-08-20T21:29:44Z

photo courtesy Amanda Lindhout

Amanda Lindhout was working as a freelance journalist in Somalia in August of 2008 working on a story about refugees when she was kidnapped with Australian photojournalist and colleague Nigel Brennan by a band of young Somali gunmen. During her 458 day captivity she was tortured and abused, often left in chains in a small dark room.

Like thousands of others worldwide who prayed for the release of Amanda and Nigel, I followed the story and held my breath. Amanda, with Nigel, was released in November 2009 and returned home to Canada after 15 months in captivity. It was a time of darkness difficult to imagine, and yet what is perhaps more remarkable than the fact that she survived the terrible ordeal, is the grace and vision with which she now lives.

Since her release, Amanda has launched The Global Enrichment Foundation which seeks to build stronger communities, cultivate leadership and promote peace through education in even the most poverty-stricken and violent of countries. The Foundation's first initiative is the Somali Women's Scholarship Program (SWSP).

It was my privilege to help Amanda put together a site for the Foundation, and to conduct the following interview, which took place via email, amidst her busy schedule.

Andrew Kooman: I've heard you talk about forgiveness, and that though not an easy thing or a straightforward path, that you've forgiven your captors. How essential has forgiving these Somali men been in your process of returning to normal life in the days since your release?

Amanda Lindhout: Forgiving the teenagers who took away my freedom for almost a year and half was essential to surviving my time in captivity. On a daily basis, while still a hostage, I set aside 'gratitude time' each evening where I would reflect on any moments of goodness I had seen in my captors. This helped me to remember that all human beings are essentially good, even if they are choosing to act in disharmony with that. Despite the abuse I endured constantly, I never doubted that those boys had inside of them the same spirit that I have, which is what all of humanity shares and which connects us.

AK: Your experience, from what I've heard and understand of it, seems unimaginable to me. You seem so resilient and strong. What was your survival strategy; how did you endure those long 15 months?

AL: I survived those long months in captivity by staying absolutely focused on the joy that can be found inside oneself. When you are locked up alone and shackled in a dark room, you realize that happiness doesn't stem from external circumstances, and that despite whatever painful, difficult experiences you may be going through, you always have the power to transcend it by connecting to the source of peace which is within all of us.

AK: It's been widely reported that your idea to create the Global Enrichment Foundation and the Somali Women's Scholarship came to you during your captivity. Who is the scholarship for and what criteria do candidates need to meet?

AL: The Somali Women's Scholarship Program was an idea I nurtured during a very dark time in captivity. Believing that I could do something to make Somalia a better country for those who live there gave me a goal to look forward to if I made it out alive.

I strongly believe that education has the potential to lead Somalia out of its current state of chaos and that educating the women, in particular, will make a significant difference. The SWSP is looking to educate, specifically, women who are interested in assuming leadership roles in their communities, ladies who will become roles models for the younger generations and create change in their country.

: photo courtesy Amanda Lindhout

AK: Given the fact that women experience great oppression in Somalia, how will the scholarship be administered and how readily available is education to the women who will qualify?

AL: Women in Southern Somalia who want an education face a great deal of obstacles. Poverty is one of the main issues but in addition to that the radical criminal groups who control the southern regions have prohibited women in many areas from attending school.

The SWSP is available to any woman in Somali who has a high school education and who has a positive vision of what her country has the potential to become. We are looking to identify the natural female leaders of Somalia and to support them through their education so that they can achieve their dreams. Through a series of essay questions we will select the recipients.

These will be very brave women who are willing to take risks in order to improve their communities and the lives of women in their county.

AK: Where does your capacity for forgiveness and your ability to turn your great suffering into something positive for others come from?

AL: I have a unique opportunity to practice forgiveness and to experience the freedom that comes with letting go, because I have had something very 'big' to forgive. What happened to me in Somalia is reflective of the state of that country: where children are given guns and no one knows life outside of war. I feel that it is my life's work to bring attention to this issue, and to create a program that will improve this situation. We all have the capacity to forgive. It is more natural then 'holding on' to something that is causing us hurt and pain.

AK: There's not much good news coming out of Somali. The picture we get of the nation through the news is of a war-torn, poverty stricken land of chaos. After experiencing the poverty and chaos first hand - and the sorts of oppression that can manifest from it - how do you see lasting stability being achieved in the country?

AL: When you hear about Somalia in the news it's usually related to terrorism, which is a legitimate issue and one that is difficult to address. I spent a lot of time thinking about this while I was in captivity and watching the kidnappers. I have come to the conclusion that education is the most fundamental way to create sustainable change in Somalia. By broadening the horizons of the mind, these young people will develop ways to improve the economy of their country, and will create mindful tolerance with the rest of the world. The good news coming out of Somalia is that the people themselves have hope for their future.

AK: You've reached out to the Somali community in Canada through your foundation, and you are reaching out to women in Somalia through the Somali Women's scholarship. How has the Somali community reached out to you since your return to Canada?

AL: The Canadian Somali community has been very involved with creation of the SWSP. I have received incredible guidance from them and have many volunteers in the Calgary and Edmonton areas helping me coordinate fundraisers. They understand the importance of this scholarship program better than anyone.

AK: What other work do you want to see the Global Enrichment Foundation achieve - will its focus be primarily in Somalia?

AL: I will expand the programs under The Global Enrichment's Foundation's umbrella to include micro financing and micro credit projects next year, which will assist our scholarship recipients in Somalia when they graduate university. Eventually, I envisage creating programs to help oppressed women around the world in similar ways.

AK: I've read through various media outlets that you decided if you survived your long captivity, you wanted to do something great with your life. What does "greatness" look like to you?

AL: In captivity, when you have had everything taken from you and don't know if you will live or die you ask your self the big questions. I knew then that there is nothing greater I could do with my life then to dedicate it to the service of others, if I were ever released. Now I have an opportunity to put my vision into action.

AK: Was your idea of A Great Life different before your ordeal in Somalia?

AL: I hardly even remember Andrew!

AK: You're stepping into an incredible year with an intensive program at St. Francis Xavier University and an increased public profile. How are you gearing up for the whirlwind?

AL: I take 15-30 minutes of quiet time each morning to give thanks for the life I have been given and to set my intentions for what I want to achieve that day, blessing all the events and people who will come into my day as learning opportunities and teachers, and blessing all the situations that have led me to this moment in my life.

AK: As you map out your vision for the next ten years, where do you hope the journey will take you?

AL: In ten years I hope The Global Enrichment Foundation will be operating in a dozen countries or more with programs that are empowering thousands of women.

Learn more about Andrew's work at www.andrewkooman.com. Follow him on twitter.