::: DIRT IN THE WRINKLES and THE ESCALATOR THAT IS A BRIDGE :::

EDITORS NOTE: since it has been a week since the last post, I combined two of them for your reading leisure. END OF EDITORS NOTE.

Signed,

The Editor

::


The thing about seasons is that they help you determine.

You determine your outerwear...and, in some parts of the world, your underwear by the seasons. You can determine the difference in the season by just looking at your electric bill, your check book, your laundry pile.

My laundry pile is showing a change of season. But, I am talking about a different kind of laundry here. I am talking about the laundry that needs airing out...the dirt in the wrinkle of the laundry of our everyday. Our lives. My life. For me, as a follower of Christ, it is things impure, things that are not what God has offered us. Things that I have taken grasp of by myself...while thinking they are the best for me. No, I am not going to be making any major public confessions, other than this...I am an f-ed up individual...and I am okay with it. That is what grace will do for you. Give you the strength to admit it and yet still find peace about it. In this season, the message of Jesus is quite clear yet again...by giving it up, you gain it all. And, I feel like I have.

This morning I was walking to campus after stopping off for milk-tea and there is a two tier escalator I take to get there. By the way, escalators are everywhere here. In fact the longest in the world is here...it’s in a part of town called the Mid-levels. I digress.

The seminal thought this morning however is how it amazes me that as a foreigner, I “get” escalator etiquette far quicker than locals and young people...at least it seems. The escalator playing the subject of my morning light-bulb moment handles all the traffic between the huge apartment complexes and the MTR station near where I currently live. All sidewalks converge here for those who live on the upper level of the Estate trying to go lower, and the many students who’s schools are in the upper. At 8.05-8.15 the escalator is quite busy. Peak time if you will.

Hong Kong is packed. More than NYC. In fact, I laugh at NYC sidewalks now. “UNLIMITED COSMIC POWERS...little bitty living space.” (Aladdin, for those who can’t remember). Imagine the arrivals hall of Grand Central Station in between the Subway Station at 5.30pm absolutely everywhere you go. The worst part of it is the total chaos that it can be. People walk on both sides of the walkways in both directions. It is like your own personal game of Frogger. And no one knows how to be courteous..at least when walking. People cut in line if there is enough space to jam a foot between them an another person.

Get the point?

So I am on this two tier escalator packed full of folks, holding a cup of steaming milk-tea. We are heading up to the second tier and then it begins...the shift.

We go from traveling at a nice speed, you know, normal escalator pace...and as we get to the top, the back up begins. I see the crowd as I crest the top of the escalator hill..what ever that thing is called...we’ll go with dismount. I am trying to figure out what the hold up is. It is nothing. It is people. Everyone crams two side by side when they get onto the escalator but, fail to have the insight to remember that when we get to the dismount at mid level of the two tiers, we are dumped onto an area about 5 feet deep to catch the ride to the second level...and we keep on coming, and so do the people behind us.

Before getting on the first level, I was cut off by a teenage girl that I wanted to slap for being so pushy and rude and selfish. Bad words were said in my mind. I cooled off on the ride up...only to get to the cram fest at the middle platform. Steaming hot milk-tea still in tact. It was like an assembly line of idiots all backing up and Lucy and Ethel were running out of room for all of us ‘candy.’



We are all crammed together tighter than Ross Geller in leather pants.



I walked away from the experience frustrated. Then, another teenager decided that she and her friends were going to yell at each other...while laughing...in that high-pitch puberty tone that would irritate Mother Theresa...with food in her mouth...for like two minutes. Blood pressure rising...culture stress kicking in.

Culture Stress is one step away from culture shock...the other way. It is after culture shock, but before integration. It can get the best of me sometimes and I just want to yell, “Hey idiots...get a clue. This is supposed to be one of the busiest places in the world...whatever happened to that? Walk faster...on the left, like you drive!”

They just do things differently here. And, I am the one who needs to be patient and see it all as part of this adventure. I am actually getting pretty used to it and have adopted some of the local ways. God help me when I get back to Dallas!

But the point is that I am the one swimming upstream. I am the one who is different. I am the one in rebellion to the ways of Hong Kong. And the worst part is that these are the some of the most caring and sensitive people I have ever met.

Humbled yet again.