I have a window in my kitchen that faces our backyard. Much of my days are spent cooking and watching, washing dishes and listening, making granola and checking. The kids are often outside, playing on our mini-playground with the zipline, and I keep an eye on them through the window.
Soon after I moved here, I started asking my questions,
listening to the stories. And somewhere in the middle of living my own life of
homeschooling and reading and learning and friend-making and writing and
cooking a mediocre dinner, I found a dream.
It’s a small dream. Don’t laugh. And please don’t roll your
eyes. My dream is this: to have both Christian and Muslim kids playing in my
yard at the same time.
It’s really nothing new, nothing that’s not already
happening somewhere in this town right now. While there are a couple Christian and
Catholic-specific schools and several Muslim-specific schools, there are also
public schools where both kinds of kids attend. There are parks and arcades
where all kids are welcome. While some streets are mostly Muslim or mostly
Christian, some have a mix. And kids, they just like to ride bikes and look for
rocks and chase each other.
It's almost too easy where I live. Indonesia is a country where tolerance is not only valued,
but drilled daily into kids’ heads at school through the daily recitation of
the Pancasila. This 17,000-island, 700-ethnic-group strong country depends on tolerance for its
very survival. With so many cultures and languages, tolerance
is a treasured value that is integrated into the various belief systems themselves.
How many times here I have heard the polite phrase, “All roads lead to the same
God?”
But still. I ask my questions, listen for the answers and sometimes I hear fears and worries about the “other.” What about the Muslims moving into town who are probably terrorists,
I’ve heard people say. Let’s make a
law—no newcomers allowed.
Or: How do we keep our
beliefs from being tainted by non-Muslim values? We have to be careful.
And then there’s local history. The times of ethnic clashing, of violence. No one wants that again, I hear from both sides. Can we just live in peace? Make lives for ourselves and our kids without fear?
And there’s ISIS, which everyone here—Muslim and
Christian—fear. So, how do we do this? How do we live in a world of terrorism and
retribution and differences and misunderstandings and really, truly live?
This is where my small and big dream come into play. The
small dream? Watch kids play in my backyard. Big dream: It’s a big word:
Reconciliation.
It’s a big dream I want for this town with the long name. In
small ways and big. We (two American families, five Indonesian families) here at MAF in Palangkaraya like to say call MAF a bridge. Not
only do we bridge the supplies with the needs through our float planes, but we
desire to bridge church groups that are divided, ethnic groups that fear each
other, religions that are on opposite sides of the fence. MAF is looking for
ways to build bridges between the groups, provide neutral ground for conversations,
for voices, for listening, for grace.
We want to see people of different ethnicities and beliefs not simply living beside each other. We want to see them do life together--forgiving, sharing, eating, trusting, believing, and playing.
But my even bigger dream is that this would happen in other
places, too. That's why I feel compelled to tell you my dream. I’ve spent 12 years in this Muslim-majority country learning. Besides learning language and culture
and how to drive on the other side of the world, I’ve learned about different
perspectives.
I’ve learned that many of my Muslim friends want to find a good
school for their kids, want to feed their families healthy meals, want to do a
craft they can sell to pay for a haircut. They want deeper things, too. Love,
purpose, faith, acceptance, community, answered prayers. And they give. A great
recipe. Time over tea. Gifts when I have a baby. They’ve offered me deeper
things, too. Patience, vulnerability, friendship, grace.
They have so much to offer this world.
I see the same things in my Christian friends here—the ones
who are from tiny villages, who pray to God like they actually believe He still
does miracles. They’re trying to figure out how to pay for their kids’ school,
how to take care of their autistic relative, the child orphaned by their deceased brother and wife. They’ve cooked me meals, welcomed me into their lives, shown
me their deep faith and their sacrificial generosity.
They have so much to offer this world.
I see a lot of hard things here, and if not here, then on
the news. But I’m always looking for the good things. I desperately want to
watch stories of life unfold in front of me.
But I’m small, my world is small. There are dishes to wash
and dinner to make and kids to keep track of. Who has time to make world peace
when you just realized you’re out of eggs?
So, do you see now why I want to watch Muslim and Christians
playing in my backyard while I sauté the vegetables? Opening my home and yard is one thing I can do,
right here, right now.
Join me in small/big dreams?