Good Medicine
January 1995
This Christmas brought to my mind some "good medicine" times of other Decembers, like my first Christmas in Irian Jaya, Indonesia.
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My psyche refuses to acknowledge that it is Christmas. The suffocatingly hot day has cooled somewhat at sunset, but the unmistakable odor on the wind is sweaty bodies, not snow. The sound assaulting my ears is not jingling bells but the swell of a language I don't understand yet. The pageant begins and the angels dance onto the stage. Ahh, something familiar. Using Balinese ballet movements. Nice. To the tune of "My Grandfather's Clock." Of what?
Two years later, my third Christmas in Irian Jaya, I am with missionary friends at Mapnduma, mountain home of the Nduga tribe. A small diesel generator lights two bare 40-watt bulbs hanging from the rafters of the shed-like church. The mountain night air is chilly, but the Ndugas are comfy, squatting on their hunkers skin-to-skin on the grass-covered dirt floor. The prevailing aroma is again sweaty bodies. The pageant begins. Gabriel comes in the back door and walks through the crowd towards Mary. He goes by too fast in the dim light. What is it that is different about him? (Besides the thick-soled dirty bare feet.) He is leaving, climbing out a window. Joseph takes Mary's place at the front. Good. Gabriel will come back. Yes, here he comes. He is wearing a halo around his head and through the hole in his nose. Through what?!
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The laughter wasn't good medicine until I laughed at myself, not at the "quaint" ways of people different from me. Why not "My Grandfather's Clock" and who says angels have halos at all? The joke was on me, learning not to take myself or the (American) way to do things too seriously.
At Mapnduma we invented the MTS (Mountain Transport System) so that I could go on a picnic a couple of rivers away. Braced poles with an attached flattened net-bag for me to sit on and be carried, it was the Ndugas' chance to learn that there is more than one way to scale a mountain. We laughed together.
Laughter -- prince of barrier breakers and stress relievers. It helps me confront not being "normal" and invent a new way. It's Vitamin L, the cope enabler. Keeps my spirit whole and my bones juiced. And it comes with a life-time, no-cost guarantee from its Maker. Beat that, all you herbals!
