Interfaith dialogue in the Philippines refugee camp where author Fr. Joseph Tuoc Nguyen, SJ, (above) worked, at times took the form of lending Christmas lights to the Buddhist temple down the street. Fr. Nguyen is now the assistant director of the Loyola Institute for Spirituality in Orange, Calif.

by Joseph Tuoc Nguyen, SJ

Knock . . . knock . . . knock.

Somebody was at the rectory door of my church. I was busy writing. Maybe it was a sermon. Maybe it was one of my short stories. I can't remember that, but I do remember it was a Sunday afternoon in May and the year was 1992. I was serving as a priest in a refugee camp on Palawan in the Philippines. My forehead was sweating. The wind from the sea could not cool down the tropical heat. April and May are the hottest months in the Philippines. Each time a vehicle passed by in front of the church, the dried dust from the camp's unpaved streets rolled up like a cloud. All the activities in the camp slowed down to avoid the heat. Who could be knocking on my door at this hour?

But I knew that pastoral work in a refugee camp is never ending. An unwed mother asks for a few dollars to buy food for her child. A drunk cries at your window. Someone is rushed to the hospital. "Father, come! They're fighting! They are bleeding everywhere." All kinds of knock knock knocks can sound on your door.

I wiped the sweat from my forehead and went to the door.

A young girl was holding a plate. She said, "Father, today is Buddha's birthday. Our Buddhist temple has something for you."

As the girl was saying this, she handed me the plate. It was covered with a napkin. I opened it. It was a plate of sweet rice cake, still hot, just cooked. I told her to carry my thanks to Rev. Thich Tong Dat and Sr. Dieu Thao, the Buddhist monk and Buddhist nun who were about a half a block away on the road that connected the Van Duc (10,000 Virtues) Temple and Mary Queen of Peace, my church.

The young girl smiled, turned around, and ran toward the temple, where musicians rehearsing for the festival could be heard.

Buddha's birthday fell on May 17 in 1992, the year 2,536 in the Vietnamese calendar. For several days previous, our Buddhist neighbors had been working hard to decorate their temple. Most of the lights gracing its roof and gate were borrowed from our church. Those lights shifted back and forth: on Christmas Day they were on our church's gate; on Buddha's birthday they were on their temple's roof.

In the refugee camp everyone was poor. We borrowed from each other. One day the big bass drum was drumming in the church. The next day it was being heard in the temple. However, poverty was not what motivated us to come together. If Rev. Dat had been a prideful man, he would not have borrowed our lights. If I had not encouraged our Catholic youth to go on camping trips with the Buddhist youth, the two groups would never have sung together in the same camp choir. For years, at Christmas, the Buddhist families always helped us put on an entertainment night for the whole camp. We were poor in material but very wealthy in spirit. We were living in happy days.

For six years I lived and worked closely with Buddhists at the refugee camp, serving the pastoral needs of over 8,000 boat people: weddings, funerals, baptisms, and CCD classes. I am now in southern California, at the Loyola Institute for Spirituality in Orange, tending to the pastoral needs of a diverse group of people, including Koreans, Hispanics, African Americans, and Vietnamese. Sometimes I meet Catholics and non-Catholics who had been at that camp. They, too, remember those days of beautiful memories.

Not long ago I received a phone call to do the sacrament of anointing for a Vietnamese woman who had been baptized a Catholic only a few months earlier. She was the only Christian in her Buddhist family, and her children were worried; some Buddhists believe whoever does the rites first will grasp the soul. I arranged with the children to let her cousins do all the Buddhist rites first; I would do the Catholic rites after.

Her children grew up in the States. Their Vietnamese was not very good, so I spoke to them in English:

"Your mom was born into a Buddhist family. But when she died she brought all of us together. She is a bridge bringing both churches together into one prayer: the prayer of love and support. I believe she is looking down from heaven and is happy to see us standing together here today. When she was on the earth she loved you with all the heart of a mother. Now that she is in heaven she understands more what love is: the love of God."

At the rites I chose the words of St. Paul:

"Love is patient, love is kind. Love is not jealous, it does not put on airs, it is not snobbish. There is no limit to love's forbearance, to its trust, its hope, its power to endure."

When I look at pictures taken at the refugee camp today, I hear the drum of the Buddhist dragon dancers in front of the church and see our Catholic children jumping with joy. Of course that day was also a day of joy for Jesus.