Meditations on God

Years ago, the coffee shop I worked at in downtown Annapolis flooded during a hurricane and was shut down for some time. All of the employees were displaced and given hours at other stores, but I was a salaried assistant manager and none of the local stores could afford another salaried employee, so they sent me to a high volume store about forty five minutes away from where I lived. I knew it was temporary and I viewed it as an opportunity for new experiences, an adventure if you will.

Understanding my situation and knowing that I would have to travel halfway around the Washington DC beltway to get to work everyday, the store manager worked around my schedule as best he could. We agreed that the best shifts for me to work would either be opening or closing shifts because these would allow me to miss the worst of the traffic. I have always been more of a morning person than a late night person, so I often worked the morning shifts which meant leaving my house at about 4am to have the store open by 5am, but I was used to it.

My tenure at this store lasted longer than any of us expected and I started to feel at home where I was. The holiday season was approaching and, historically, the company I worked for closed all stores for Christmas Day. This year, however, the economy was struggling and some managers volunteered to keep their stores open to help make budget. It was announced that one store in each district would be open, but the stores would be staffed on a volunteer-only basis.

As I tend to, I resisted the idea and spoke out against it, explaining that this was the one day of the year that people were guaranteed to not have to work. Besides, I explained, it was Christmas. My manager kindly reiterated to me the that this was ‘volunteer-only’ and then explained that he had no family in the area to spend Christmas with, so he did not mind working, especially if it helped him to reach his numbers and receive his bonus. Furthermore, some people needed or wanted the holiday pay. Lastly, he politely pointed out that, unlike the store I came from, almost every single employee at this store was either Jewish or Muslim and did not place the same value on the Christmas holiday as I did. Often, we do not realize how culturally tunnel-visioned we become, which is why traveling, even to a new coffee shop 45 minutes away, can be an expansive experience.

– Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Gracie Jiu-Jitsu

Not long after my in-laws moved here from Cambodia, I was at home with my mother-in-law who, up until that point, I had assumed could speak very little English. I forget what we were doing, but there was a magazine or newspaper lying around and, to my shock, she picked it up and strugglingly read a few words aloud. Taken aback, I looked at her and said, “You can read English.” “A little bit,” she replied. “I used to read and write,” she continued slowly. I asked, “What happened?” She looked at me and said, “I had to forget.” Confused, I asked her, “What do you mean, you had to forget?” “I had to forget,” she continued, “or they would have killed me.”

I knew very little about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge (the Cambodian communist party) up to this point, but I looked at this woman, the mother of my wife, and my heart broke for her. I was so confused. I began asking more questions here and there, always careful to be respectful of the fact that this was a sensitive subject. I discovered that the Khmer Rouge killed anyone who had any connection to the West. That means that if you were educated in a Western classroom, if you knew any Western language such as English or French, if you wore Western clothing, or were simply known to associate with someone who did, they would kill you, no questions asked.

I think about this kind, intelligent, generous, and strong woman who taught my daughter how to speak two languages and who is now teaching her how to read and write in them as well. Then I think about what the Khmer Rouge set out to destroy. They wanted to kill anyone who had what they considered to be ‘unfair advantages’ of education, wealth, or status. They wanted a society of agrarian equality, wherein everyone (except them) had an equal share of nothing, so that they could rebuild their country ‘fairly.’ If a person had more of some thing or some trait than others, or stood out in some way, he or she was killed. If they were not killed, they were sent into the fields to do manual labor under the harshest and most cruel conditions a person can imagine.

When I hear so many young people these days angrily decry privilege or advantage, I think about my daughter and I fear that someday they will come for her. Then I wonder if she will be able to forget what she knows and hide in plain sight like her grandmother did so that she to can live to see her granddaughter grow up.

– Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Gracie Jiu-Jitsu