I didn’t expect the smell. For some reason, my mind’s eye pictured a site like many other memorials I’ve visited: somber, dismal, and somehow always sterile. Perhaps the former two still applied, but nothing about the Killing Fields could be called sterile. Walking the dirt paths, I wondered if the other tourists knew what they were smelling. After all, it’s easy to lose track of putrid smells in a Southeast Asian country like Cambodia, where sewage, exhaust, and a cacophony of street foods blended together under the scorching sun.
This smell was different though. This place smelled of death.
Queasiness took hold of my stomach from the gasses seeping out of the mass graves, but it wasn’t enough for the stench of decaying bodies to hit me in the face with every gust of wind that swept over the eerie mounds. Like the black oil slicks that still rise up from the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor almost 77 years later, there were still white bone fragments and teeth pushing their way to the earth’s surface, reminding the living that the dead will not relinquish their voice so quickly.
The largest of these bones were displayed in glass cases throughout the park, just a bunch of femurs and humeri tossed in large piles for us to look at. Time had visibly done its work on them. Strangely, they brought me back to my childhood memories of playing with old deer skulls and rotten cow bones out in the Texas countryside. How could they look so similar? How were these bones any different from those dead animals left out in a pasture? In a desperate attempt to retain my humanity, I fought to rip off the calluses forming on my heart.
Every bone was an innocent person. Every skull was a future wasted.
It took time to really accept that 20,000 dead bodies lay beneath my feet as I walked through Cambodia’s grim reminder of what took place here only 40 years ago. Even in the afterlife, these people have tragically kept their position as forgettable refuse in the chronicles of world history. Pol Pot survived into my lifetime, yet I could hardly tell you how or why he wiped out 25% of his fellow countrymen.
Near the end of my visit, I noticed a large tree that loomed over the center of the Fields. Its regality was enhanced by the streamers and bracelets adorning its branches. Trees like this one have always been wonderful symbols of new life and mother nature. But this tree had once been an instrument of human nature, and thousands of infant lives were obliterated against rugged bark before the eyes of hysterical mothers. After bearing witness to such cruelty, I wondered how many of those women saw their impending fate as merciful relief from unfathomable pain and anguish.
Beneath the brightly colored bracelets, I could distinguish the dark discoloration of the bark. Whether artificial or authentic, I did not want to know.
Two weeks ago in Thailand, I decided to read Ezekiel.* I don’t often read entire books of the Old Testament (though maybe I’ll try to do a better job in the future). Fortunately, Ezekiel is rich in symbolic imagery and visions through which God shares His intentions for the people of Israel. Near the end of the book, in chapter 37, God gives the prophet Ezekiel a vision where he walks through a Valley of Dry Bones [you may read it or skip down if you like]:
1The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2 He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. 3 He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”
4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! 5 This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. 6 I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’” 7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. 8 I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.
9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’” 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.
11 Then he said to me: “Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ 12 Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13 Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. 14 I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.’”
New International Version
Yesterday, I stood in a very real Valley of Dry Bones, attempting to quantify the depth of evil in this world, and I knew that God’s plan was not to resurrect the bodies of slain Cambodians as certainly as Ezekiel knew that God’s plan was not to resurrect the Israelites slain at the hands of Babylon. God’s plan was to resurrect His one and only Son, whose death upon a cross provided the necessary and sufficient propitiation for the sins of this world, that whoever would believe in His sacrifice, place their hope in His love, and profess their faith in Him alone should know everlasting life.
Flesh, tendons, bones, and skin are not what make me and you unique from deer or cattle. All of our “inalienable rights” are predicated on the image of God stamped in our hearts. A failure to understand this concept will always result in atrocities like the Cambodian Genocide, like the Holocaust, like the Great Leap Forward, like the Holodomor. Furthermore, if we only give the appearance of life without inhaling the breath of life in the Holy Spirit, we are spiritual corpses.
Yesterday, the fragility and brevity of life was evident in a very painful way. I am thankful for my ability to breathe deeply from the Father’s love whenever the air of this world makes me want to vomit.
His is the air I breathe…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge_Killing_Fields
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide
*For all of my squad-mates reading this, I read Ezekiel the day I arrived at Awakenings before Mr. Shearman spoke to us. Between his sermons and my personal readings, I can see how God was preparing my heart for this moment. This is a necessary detail because the independence of those two events highlight His presence in tying all of these ideas together for my growth.
