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Home » The story of Chin and Rae in India

The story of Chin and Rae in India

So many people have asked about what in Kentucky we are doing in India, and here I answer this question.  All bloggers are always balancing openness and the need for privacy, and so I have written as much as I feel comfortable sharing.  If you have more questions you can email me at journeymama[at]gmail[dot]com, and if you know us, please honor our desire to keep some details private.  Thanks.

Here’s a story that goes back to another time and another place.  It starts far from here, far from jungles, unless you consider the jungle of the City a true jungle.  In any case, the beginning of this story smells like eucalyptus trees in San Francisco.

It’s where we met.

Chinua had already been living there for some time when we met, but the point of this story (I could go on and on about how we met, and how we fell in love and how he fell down laughing when I made a joke and that’s how I knew I loved him, but I won’t) is that we lived with some of the truest and most beautiful people in the world, and we grew addicted to a certain kind of lifestyle.

It’s a lifestyle of community.  And community not in a myopic, insular sort of sense, but a community of people working together and living together with a purpose; to welcome other people in, to be rest for the weary, a family for the lonely, a soft place for a tired head.

Back then, we all busted it out to help out kids (young folk, not children) who needed food and maybe a shower.  Oh- those were fun days.  I’ll never forget them.  I have memories that are like jewels to me, and I take them out and polish them whenever I can.

I’m telling you, there is nothing like working together to bond people and give them sweet and strong friendships.  I believe this is what is called church, only it is easier to be together more often when you live close together and know each other really well.

So, we all lived in this big ol house for a time, and then some of us decided to take a trip to India.

That was crazy.  And fun.  And life changing.  And crazy.  And we found that we loved not only the traveling kids and Rainbows in America, but the international traveling community.  In fact, some of us who seemed to have been born with wings on our heels (like my Superstar Husband with his gift for languages, who speaks German and Korean fairly fluently) found that we really really loved the international traveling community.

And we went back to California.  And then we came back to India with even more friends.  On our second journey, Chinua and I got engaged.  And many other things happened.  We went to the Kumbh Mela.  We rode on a ship and slept in hammocks.  We got sick.  We saw naked saddhus.  We met many, many delightful travelers from around the world and had many beautiful conversations over dinner with them in our little house.  We talked about all of the important and brilliant things of life; the beginning, the purpose, and the end.

And then we came back to California.

Chinua and I got married in Canada, three days before 9/11.  We always planned to head back to India.  We’ll wait a few years to have kids, we said.

And by Christmas we knew that we were expecting Kid A.  And then when Kid A was ten months old, we found out that we were expecting YaYa.  And then when she was thirteen months old, we found out that we were expecting Leafy.  And through it all I wandered through the tangle of a permanent residency in the U.S. of A. (I’m Canadian).

We kept right on doing what we’ve always been doing.  Living with other people in our Jesus focused community, inviting people over, helping where we can, and sometimes we did it more sanely than other times.  Actually, we were mostly insane.  But we were very, very idealistic.  I remember one time, we were trying to help this girl who was perhaps crazy and very paranoid.  She was really tripping out.  But she was pleading for help.  She wasn’t sleeping well and she needed to sleep so her body could work better, so to make sure she felt safe, I had her sleep in the bed with me and Chinua slept on the floor at the foot of the bed.  Not your average situation.  But things like this came to us a lot, and it always seemed like God was asking us, What do you think you can do to help this girl/boy/man/woman?

For a while we lived in a little house in a town in the far north of California. (For a time, with all guys.  EVERY WEEKEND, KUNG FU MOVIES.)

And then we moved back to San Francisco, where we lived in a flat on Haight St. with about a hundred people.  Well, not a hundred, but it might have been.

And then we moved to the Land, where we lived in a one-room cabin for a year, until a bigger house was ready for us.  It was lovely and beautiful, and turned out to be unsustainable for our community.  But God was calling our names out in loud ringing tones again!  And this country, India, that had been in the back of our minds for so long, well- we were ready to try to make it here again.

To live the way we love to live, we have always needed to live simply.  We spend our money on very basic things, in order to have the freedom to be around people, in small spaces and big ones, traveling at times, stationary at times.  When the Land was sold, it went into a trust that helps with the set up costs of starting a new community.  Chinua and I are also working on becoming sustainable financially from our art, music, and writing.  We want to perfect our crafts and truly make them a huge part of our lifestyles. (At times, the needs of people and community have rushed over these things in a tidal wave.)  And we have several incredibly loving friends who have helped us at various times, believing in what we do.

So, to answer the questions.  We’re here to do the same things that we’ve always done.  We want to be a haven for the weary traveler, a creative and loving community with a Jesus focus.  We have big dreams!  Art, gardens, music, dance.  We want to make stuff, we want to be living and vibrant, a community that glows.  We are excited about being in India partly because there are so many wandering souls here, but also because there is so much room for us to help in places of need.  Believing the way we do, we are also convinced that we are called to help the widow, the orphan, those in need.   We don’t yet know the way, but we’ve put ourselves where we will find a way.

Tomorrow Chinua and I celebrate our seventh anniversary.  Seven, the number of completion, and here we are, with a brand new start, back where we first decided to commit a lifetime to each other.  And wow, our four kids are with us. Whew!   We are heading into the adventure of the first traveler season, looking for a spot that will be the right place for us, wading in waist deep, continuing- onward and upward!