Well, my friends, I made it back from Thailand in one piece, and now I have one day in Louisville before everyone's favorite adventure-- World Tour Time!! I leave tomorrow for Memphis, where I'll spend the evening with the folks at Rhodes College before moving on to little Lyon College in Batesville, Arkansas. As far as jet lag goes, I'm feeling pretty good right now. I'm just thinking that in the next few days, Starbucks will become my best good friend. Sorry for all you anti-Starbucks folk out there... it is hard to find local coffeeshops when you're traveling.

After the conference on Sunday, Ann, Molly and I went on an official guided tour of the city of Bangkok with Song. Song, who had worked on transportation for the entire conference, said that he went home every night to tell his wife the crazy things he had seen those feminists doing at that conference, and she never believed him. Apparently we were not your typical international conference. Anyway, Song showed us the world's largest Buddha made of solid gold, worth over $40 million dollars, as well as a giant reclining Buddha at the Wat Pho temple (here is a photo). We also saw a marble royal temple that held the ashes of Rama V, the king of Thailand you all may remember as the boy prince in The King and I. Fun times, I can assure you. I also went to the famous Patpong Night Market, where I discovered that I am a horrible barterer. But hey, live and learn.

Last thoughts about the AWID conference... all in all, it was a good, well-done event. Any event that challenges me and causes me to think through my own understanding of feminism is worthwhile, and this event certainly did that. The one thing I would challenge from the conference lie in the binary dualisms that in some ways it challenged and in other ways perpetuated. The feminist movement is very big on critiquing the way in which our society tends to put gender in black/white, good/bad binaries-- for instance, masculine traits are good and feminine traits are bad; reason good, emotion bad, etc-- without recognizing the ways in which we are more often both/and rather than either/or. And yet, when it comes to talking about people who think radically differently, many times I found the conference still falling into that good/bad binary, that combative "us against them" mentality. Yet as we continue to wage war against those who disagree with us, don't we continue to perpetuate the cycles that don't bring about transformation?

Now, I want to make clear that I'm not talking about the need to stand up and speak out for justice. When we see wrongs in the world, God calls us to be the prophetic voice for change. But do we have to always see the "other" as our enemy? Maybe that's what Jesus means when he talks about loving your enemies, blessing those who curse you-- he is calling us to change the entire way in which we think about combat and those who oppose us. Because I don't really think (despite some old gospel songs I know) Christianity is about "winning" as such. Christianity is about the transformation of the world into a place where everyone wins in the end.

"But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." --Matthew 5:44

Kelsey