Vietnam Day 12 (Heading Home/Reflection)
On the last day of my travels, I often leave early enough that it doesn't allow anytime to see anything, but simply it becomes a moment to reflect on everything I experienced, at this point I am writing this from home, and right off the bat I noticed an obvious point. My Google blog, when I was in Vietnam, there was no blog option on my account there. Thankfully I just pulled up my browser history and that's how I blogged, otherwise blogging doesn't seem to be allowed or promoted there for obvious reasons; communism. Upon my return i'm already ready to leave again as it's always tough to return to regular dysfunction. I won't bore you with the details, but I have barely been back for 12 hours, and 6 of them I was sleeping. It's been petty headaches from the people that complained to our flight attendant at the end of our flight, to the people I bought my car from, new phone I received but can't activate, to the typical frustrations I have with those close to me, it's just challenging to do the everyday routine with others, after experiencing such freedom in travel. Please excuse the scattered ways of this blog as it was written in pieces while recovering from jet lag and sleeping.
As I reflected last night, I wished I could've been more thankful for all the great experiences I had individually. As I wrote my thank you letter to all those that Father Joseph introduced me to, I wished I could say every person by their name I met, but that was a challenge due to the different language and large number of new faces I met in each visit.
To begin, it truly has to be emphasized that these people treated me like a rock star, which very often priest receive this great treatment as well but I seemed to get both, being an American, who came across as a priest since I was around so many priest. In addition like I've shared multiple times, if we look beyond the politics of any country we will see the great good that goes on there. It's usually a very small percentage of the people driving the negative divides of politics. America is not exception to this, but when you spend time intimately with the people, you will see we are all different, but very much the same flawed humans trying our best, in accordance with the understandings we have learned throughout our individual lives, even if they may be bad, they are usually well intended, just unfortunately shallow in philosophical good.
Despite such pollution I experienced, I saw a people who had somewhat healthy lives and adapted to their environment. Many wore masks when they moved around the city, and some even covered their bodies in extremes to prevent any sun from touching their skin, quite the opposite of the states. As an American this was a great inconvenience and struggle but I can understand why it's so important to protect our environment, once you go dirty, it's very difficult to clean.
The people were somewhat healthy, because when I travel overseas I see the simple things we take for granted like great dentistry and medical. Many complain we do not have sufficient health care, but in reality we have some of the best, just many are spoiled in their customer service mentality and expect everything fast and for free, which actually lowers the standards . This is my personal experience in the pizza industry. A person would call for a pizza, and if it was raining, which leads to traffic and uncontrollable factors, the customer would forget all these things, and expect their food for free, despite the fact that it costs money to produce the food they are eating, which is still a food of high standard despite the low standards of production.
This in a nut shell is our modern mentality towards healthcare, other countries brag about giving away a low standard of free healthcare, which actually costs a lot of money in taxes and provides lower standards and service, but because no one pays for it, the standards are consistently lowered due to no advantage of improvements. For example, my American money allows me to pay cash to keep my teeth clean through personal hygiene I can afford due to my personal choices financially, and the doctor's visits I pay for out of pocket since the price isn't too absorbent due to insurance balloon costs.
The average Vietnamese cannot afford these products due to the deflated value of their money and society, which is why you see so much decay in their dental hygiene but they again have good health in other areas, due to the foods they prepare. There was other great decay as well in the society that was above my head and understanding, I just know it wasn't the American standard which actually spoils us. I will share a brief glimpse as well, as Father Joseph and I had to sleep on a bed that was a wooden frame with a very thing mat made from palms trees. It was very uncomfortable for both of us who were spoiled by American, again a nutshell comment of the vast blessings we take for granted.
The bottle of snake wine is an example of things, I wanted to buy one, but because cobras are an endangered species this would've been illegal in the United States. I don't like snakes, especially poisonous ones, which is why I like this snake in a bottle, but nonetheless it's illegal for a good reason. Unfortunately poor people don't care about this, and they capture and kill these snakes regularly since it's a novelty to the rest of the world, and is a source of income for them. It's no different than selling drugs, there's a moral challenge to the behavior but in need of survival many do things that hurt the environment around them, again, I don't like snakes and feel better if ones like this are extinct, but everything in our world has a purpose and all life should be respected, no matter how ugly or vicious it may seem to be.
Resourcefulness is always one of the greatest strengths of poverty and low living conditions, the people make the best of what they have. These images remind me of this, but I saw far greater ones, like those towing stuff with their motorbikes. In America we buy over sized trucks to haul around children's toys and people, here they would just figure out a way to fit it on the back of a bike and ride with it.
Devotion should be appreciated here, whether you are Buddhist or Catholic. This was one of my greatest highlights, to see two dominant faiths in the world, existing together, complimenting each other greatly in their practices, this was not always the case though as not only the communist government disrespected certain traditions and cultures, but so too did the people of the Catholic Church in their notorious ways of over stepping their boundaries.
As I looked around, I noticed the Buddhist praying in different manners which looked similar to Catholics. It was fascinating because Buddhist do not believe in a God, which is why some do not consider it a religion. This is a great misunderstanding, as religion means to tie back to a tradition in the original meaning, in the case of the Buddhist, they tie back to Buddha's teachings just as Catholic Christians tie back to their founder Jesus Christ. History might manipulate those teachings in redefinition as we saw during the Protestant Reformation and the various styles of churches that came from there, or modern Buddhism and Yoga which to some extent paganize those ancient traditions from the disciplines they truly practice, this is rampant in the U.S.A. with all faiths, we take the original traditions, and we Americanize them like our coffee, which is very watered down compared to the original. On all levels there are great similarities if one truly studies things at their root with bigotry removed, they will see the American way is not the original way.
Father Joseph brought it to my attention, just as I had previously learned through the Ethiopian culture that when Catholic missionaries arrived to share the faith, they came in with a misunderstanding of the culture, and while imposing their ideas, trampled on traditions of the culture which actually complimented ones faith. Sadly it caused backlash before a reconciliation happened and set the faith back many years, as the Catholic Church so brilliantly does. Our troubles historically always do this, we do so much good, the greatest good actually and the historians and scholars can easily debate this, but unfortunately when you are one of the largest organizations in the world, there are great troubles too that eclipse the worlds troubles.
In close I'd like to focus in on what it's all about for me in travels, to eat meals together, to better understand things in our world, and to connect with humanity. All of this is what Jesus does when He comes into our world. He empathizes with humanity by being among us, he shares with us what the kingdom of heaven is like, and he shows us the way, through the Eucharist aka the New Passover meal, aka the Last Supper. In his 3 years of ministry he served all people from all parts of society, he welcomed them into the fullness of understanding, and never held any lacking of understanding against them if they were humble, it was the prideful like the Pharisees who experienced the anger and judgement of God. Jesus was patient as He taught these people though, since He understood their broken frailty as humans that were all misguided by the world.
He did something very special though on the night He was set to suffer the greatest suffering anyone could experience. He gathered 12 men together (representing the lost 12 tribes of Israel), from different backgrounds and different divisions, all who had some political aspiration of power, due to their worldly understandings at the time, they had no clue what was truly going on, thus why they fled in fear when the suffering began, only to later give their life fearlessly after the Resurrection, there was a dramatic change and understanding when the Risen Christ appeared to them, men who feared death and gave into further division created by worldly politics, now gave their life to unity of all human lives, Jews and Gentiles.
This is a pivotal moment in history which is why we mark it as A.D. the Year of our Lord. Something really happened at this point in time that is not common in any manner as modern C.E. (common era) assertions like to apply. Many over look, it was a time humanity was being reunited with each other, while simultaneously being reunited with the Kingdom of God/heaven/afterlife. This is what we do everyday in the Mass, which is the reenactment/remembrance of what Jesus does for us every moment in life. He physically comes into our presence, then He shares a meal with us in bread and wine, then he heals and inspires us to go out and share this joy with the world, hoping to heal it. In a small way, we do this in every meal we eat with each other, where 2 or more are gathered, He is there. I hope you enjoyed the trip, I tried to share a variety of emotions, and views without much bias, but to help us to see a bit better the good's and bad's we have, before we as humans lose what we have in taking things for granted.