the beauty of kim

Last weekend I had the privilege of sharing some of my music at a church in London where Kim Phuc came to speak. What a beautiful evening.

Kim was the "girl in the photo" running naked down a road, her skin on fire from napalm after her village had been bombed. Her picture stunned the world and changed the outcome of the Vietnam War. Kim received third-degree burns covering half her body that would require many operations and years of therapy. For the next 20 years the Communist regime in Vietnam used Kim as a national symbol of war in all their propaganda. Eventually she and her husband were able to defect to Canada.

Kim now lives in the Toronto area with her hubsand and their two sons. She is a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Peace and travels the globe to tell her story of healing and forgiveness. She also started the Kim Foundation, a non-profit organization committed to funding programs to heal children in war-torn areas of the world.

This was the second time I'd heard Kim tell her story (and play for an audience she was speaking to). But this time was just as powerful as the last. You would think that after the kind of pain and suffering she's experienced, would have every reason to be hard, jaded and scarred. But instead Kim is a woman of grace, beauty and gentle strength. After hearing her speak, you just want to take her home with you. She's that sweet.

So to team up with Kim again was enough in itself, but then the church that hosted us -- Byron United -- well, they were just over the top and treated us both like queens. People to escort us around, make sure we had what we wanted to drink and eat, lovely introductions, flower arrangements to thank us both (and gerberras -- my favourite!).... not to mention good sound, live video feed on a screen above our heads... apparently they even advertised it on local radio stations. Top notch. And would you believe this was the third time this year that this particular church has invited me down to play and sing for them? I feel like they've adopted me. Very generous and encouraging people.

On the way home that night, my friend Kelly and I encountered a group of crazy teens travelling at stupid speeds and passing everyone on soft shoulders and double lines in spite of oncoming traffic. It wasn't all that surprising when one of the cars of kids in front of us skidded off the road, just missing a big tree that could have ended their lives, taking out a hydro pole and jumping a fence instead. The transformer blew, there were several explosions and an electrical fire, and since they downed the lines on the road we couldn't get to the kids to see if they needed first aid. (Fortunately, Kelly caught the lisence plate of some of their friends who quickly realized they were going to be in trouble and tried to leave the scene.) After calling fire, police and ambulance, redirecting traffic, getting our story straight with other witnesses, watching the kids be escorted off the scene (much less injured than they could have been) and standing around for about an hour before giving statements to police, I found myself thinking...

These kids had no idea when they made the choice to drive the way they did how many hundreds of people they would affect. No idea that one person making a single decision at any given time can have such a significant cause-and-effect on other people they don't even know. Sometimes forever. With a slight difference in timing, any one of those kids could have ended our lives and theirs in a single breath. Instead, we spent an extra hour of our evening at the scene and taking another route home.

And then I thought about the people who gave orders for the bombs to be dropped on Kim's village. They didn't truly know the consequences their actions would have.

And then I thought of Kim. Here is a woman who for so long tried to run from her photo and the negative effects it was having on her life in Vietnam, and has now chosen to embrace her photo and use it for good instead. She asks people not to look at her photo and see a girl who is crying out in pain, but to see a girl who is crying out for peace. And her story of healing and forgiveness is powerful and beautiful... it has a different kind of cause-and-effect.

It seems like our lives are like a tower that takes years to build and can be destroyed in only a moment. I could spend half my life investing myself in Maia and lose her in one heartbeat because of someone's idiodic choice. I can have no control over anyone else's actions. But I can control mine. So I'm going to build anyway. I'm going to add to the beauty, even though I have no guarantees that what I create or give or invest will be taken from me one day.

So thank you for adding to the beauty, Kim, when you could have chosen so many other roads.