So a Christian, a Muslim and a Buddhist walk into a ...
During a 2007 ceremony at Mercy in the slums of Bangkok, left to right, Father Joe, who is the slum's Catholic priest; next to him, the son of the slum imam (the older slum imam, Fr. Joe's good friend, died in 2006) at the end, the slum abbot.
From Chapter 1 of The Gospel of Father Joe: Revolutions & Revelations in the Slums of Bangkok
The story begins like the parable it’s become, in a no-man’s land with the seed of dreams strewn in the most foolish of places: slum rubbish. This was the 1970s when few people believed anything good could grow from the backwater of the undeveloped world. There were no official addresses or property deeds in the cordoned-off corners of Bangkok, nothing much for the municipal books, just putrid ground so primal and bleak that land was free for the staking. It’s where squatters pretended to own real houses and children made do with make-believe.
But these seeds were sown by an angry young Catholic chased from finer society. A priest, stubborn and cursing. The local Buddhists, Muslims, and Christians nurtured that seed, and in time the people and the priest, the abbot and the imam, worked together, as though the Buddha, Muhammad, and Jesus Christ were brothers and best friends. No doctrine, dogma, or creed was lorded. No growth tethered chapter to verse. The only belief that mattered was the one they shared. In the children. That was common, sacred ground.
Nourished like this, the seeds exploded with growth. There was a harvest, then another and another. The seeds grow still today, more than three decades later, a genus of hope thriving in the muck, as if it had been indigenous to the slums all along.
Tales of it grow too, spreading from those roots in Thailand to the media of North America and Europe, and in the retelling, it can begin to sound legendary. How in Gideon’s name does something grow from nothing and multiply like New Testament fishes and loaves?
But nothing about it is myth. Every tale is true.
--
To search through the book, read reviews and excerpts go HERE
For more information on Father Joe's work and chairty visit the Mercy Centre website or its USA tax-deductible equivalent here
So a Christian, a Muslim and a Buddhist walk into a ...
During a 2007 ceremony at Mercy in the slums of Bangkok, left to right, Father Joe, who is the slum's Catholic priest; next to him, the son of the slum imam (the older slum imam, Fr. Joe's good friend, died in 2006) at the end, the slum abbot.
From Chapter 1 of The Gospel of Father Joe: Revolutions & Revelations in the Slums of Bangkok
The story begins like the parable it’s become, in a no-man’s land with the seed of dreams strewn in the most foolish of places: slum rubbish. This was the 1970s when few people believed anything good could grow from the backwater of the undeveloped world. There were no official addresses or property deeds in the cordoned-off corners of Bangkok, nothing much for the municipal books, just putrid ground so primal and bleak that land was free for the staking. It’s where squatters pretended to own real houses and children made do with make-believe.
But these seeds were sown by an angry young Catholic chased from finer society. A priest, stubborn and cursing. The local Buddhists, Muslims, and Christians nurtured that seed, and in time the people and the priest, the abbot and the imam, worked together, as though the Buddha, Muhammad, and Jesus Christ were brothers and best friends. No doctrine, dogma, or creed was lorded. No growth tethered chapter to verse. The only belief that mattered was the one they shared. In the children. That was common, sacred ground.
Nourished like this, the seeds exploded with growth. There was a harvest, then another and another. The seeds grow still today, more than three decades later, a genus of hope thriving in the muck, as if it had been indigenous to the slums all along.
Tales of it grow too, spreading from those roots in Thailand to the media of North America and Europe, and in the retelling, it can begin to sound legendary. How in Gideon’s name does something grow from nothing and multiply like New Testament fishes and loaves?
But nothing about it is myth. Every tale is true.
--
To search through the book, read reviews and excerpts go HERE
For more information on Father Joe's work and chairty visit the Mercy Centre website or its USA tax-deductible equivalent here