by Ashley Barker, Urban Neighbours Of Hope, Bangkok, Thailand.

Like common threads, God weaves our experiences to become the tapestry of our lives and nothing is wasted. One thread that has kept popping up through my life has been soccer. Now, most evenings I wonder a few minutes from our home to The Church of Christ in Thailand's community centre. In its courtyard I play soccer, finding a way of sharing life beyond words, creeds and cultures with the young men of our slum. After living here six weeks, I can connect with the locals in few other ways.

One evening the ball skipped over the cracked concrete field toward me. My four other team mates were all covered by their opponents and so I could not pass the ball on quickly as is my habit. So I trapped the ball and moved forward, hoping to draw out some markers and create some options. Still there was nothing. The 90 percent humidity seemed to have melted the run out of our front runners. I kept moving forward, crossed the half-way line of the tennis court sized pitch and still hoped to pass the ball off. It was then that I caught a glimpse of their goal keeper moving forward, and with a clip of my favoured left foot, chipped the ball over his head toward the far left hand post. The keeper stumbled slightly as he tried to regain his position and could only watch with the rest of the court yard as the ball looped over his head toward the metal and string netted goals. Thwack. The ball hit the goal past and I could not make out through the crowd of players in the near dark, who got to the rebound first. Within in a mini-second I found out. My team mate, who tells me his name is Michael Owen (which happens to also be the same name as a Liverpool and England star), pushed the ball into the back of the broken, spaghetti-like net. Like prize fighters we raised our arms in unison and moved back toward our own half of the concrete pitch, ready to take on the next five challenges. "Dee muk maa Cantana" ("Very good Cantona" - Eric Cantona is the former French and Manchester United player who, unlike most Thais, has stubble like I often do. He was also infamous for jumping the fence and karate kicking a Crystal Palace spectator so it might be a reference to my tackling!). Such moments in Klong Toey makes my skin tingle. It transcends any Nike contract or the mega-salaries of World Cup stars and is more addictive than any drug that can be offered.

Soccer has been a God-given grace weaved throughout my life. As a child it introduced to me a wider world. As a nine year old I joined the local soccer club, Dingley United, which was unusual in Ozzie Rules-mad Melbourne. Johnny Warren, an icon of Ozzie soccer, entitled his autobiography "Wogs, Poofters and Sheilas" because those of us who chose soccer above other football codes were taunted with such sledges. Whether it was the connection with my folks' British background, just enjoying the drama of the game or hearing of places like Brazil and wondering what it would have been like for Pele to grow up in barrios, my world grew larger and such sledging seemed a small price to pay to be part of something bigger, something of world-wide importance.

When I look at the children standing behind the goals at the community centre's courtyard, bare foot, some with fake Arsenal and Liverpool shirts and little else, I can almost see the dreams of something bigger in their eyes too. With the World Cup being hosted in Asia for the first time later this month and with Thais now playing in Europe's big leagues, this court yard has the potential to transport them to places beyond the poverty they now experience and is so close they can almost taste it. A bigger world is opening up to these children too.

As a teenager I discovered through soccer that no matter what talent is possessed, it is how it is focus and dedicated that matters. I was never as talented at soccer as most of my early teenage team mates. I was a big, lumbering centre-half who needed to work harder than most. By the end of my teens, however, I was representing my State at schoolboy level and playing State League, going further than most of those with whom I started. At a time when many of my peers were turning to drugs and alcohol, a combination of my new-found faith in Christ and a love for soccer helped focus my passions during the rat-fink years of adolescence. One of my early coaches, Billy Rice, was a committed Salvo and had played for the Socceroos in the 60's and one of my first youth pastors, Arthur Cherry, played State League. Soccer and living Christ seemed viable partners since I knew these people, respected them, were inspired by them and could relate to them. They were viable, life-giving alternatives to the boredom and angst of adolescence.

The young men in Klong Toey have far more to contend with in seeing their talents fulfilled than I ever had. We did not start on same starting line. One of the biggest hurdles however, is still a boredom that can lead to despair. George Orwell once wrote of his experiences as a poverty stricken young writer in "Down and out in Paris and London" that, "You discover the boredom which is so inseparable from poverty: the times when you have nothing to do and, being underfed, can interest yourself in nothing." When young men make the effort in 38 degree heat to come out at the end of each, long day to do battle on a soccer ground they are keeping poverty at bay, no matter what the surroundings may say. By using their energies in a positive way, and away from the yabbah (a cheap meth-amphetamine Thai's call "crazy drug"), the alcohol or the glue-sniffing that is destroying a despairing generation here, they have an opportunity of a healthy future. Who knows, one or two may emulate their heroes at the World Cup or the Premier League one day. While this is unlikely given the fraction of players who make the big time, they belong to the game and may participate throughout their lives as spectator and players. A stronger chance now however, is that some of these players may connect with me - like I did with Billy and Arthur - and find the hope of Christ whose presence can help give courage to navigate through the turbulent teens and into adulthood.

As an adult, soccer helped me to find common ground and a local identity among some of the world's poor. I never lived out my dream of being a professional footballer. At eighteen I caught Glandular fever, then CFS and with the ministry with Youth For Christ and then UNOH taking off during my early 20's, this dream had to be sacrificed. Yet, soccer has popped up again and again, not in the ways I would have envisioned as a child, but in ways that connected me to something bigger nevertheless. Thomas Merton once wrote, "With a kind of surprise I realised that all the things I might have given up I had really retained, in so far as they were implicit in a higher good: and the wonder of it was, that in this form they continue to give me joy that I could not longer get out of them in the world." I have experienced this new kind of joy through soccer that I doubt I would have now if I played professionally. Whether it was representing Vietnam at the mini-world cup in Sunshine with some of the Springvale Vietnamese refugees, or goalkeeping in Dili to the amusement of the local Timorese while my hosts gambled on futu mano (cock fighting), or introducing Serbian refugees to Frankston Strikers soccer club soon after they arrived from Sevijago or winning an indoor soccer league with East Timorese asylum-seekers in Springvale, soccer provided some common ground and some relief from not knowing what else to do.

As a white, middle-class Christian, my background is another universe away from those of the refugee, the asylum-seeker or those forced to live in a slum in Bangkok. If poverty is about powerlessness, then I will never be poor as I have choices and connections others do not. Yet, on the almost level, concrete, playing fields of Klong Toey, we have an opportunity to connect and to develop a sense of brotherhood that transcends our backgrounds. Even here however, we do not have an equal footing. Half the players are barefoot, some have no shirts revealing their rib bones through their skin and, of course, there are varying degrees of natural talent and aptitude. Sometimes, if I hadn't bought a ball - the only real equipment required for soccer- there would be no game at all since balls soon wear out on the concrete and are expensive (300 baht or AUS$15) to replace. At a time when few Western Christians know any poor people and are finding it easier to avoid responses to the anonymous, soccer has provided me a kind of starting point. It has placed me in the presence of some of the world's poorest where I begin to know people's names and faces and lives. Responses have then flowed from these relationships.

God shapes each of us differently, not wasting any experiences, giving seeds of transformation from our childhood. Ephesians 2:10 says, "We are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do the good works he prepared in advance for us to do." Just imagine, God knew that my first tentative steps on a soccer ground as a nine year old were part of preparing me for a time when I had no language, cultural or creedal connections, except soccer 24 years later. Not all our life experiences have been pleasant, but they can become the golden threads of God's design in our lives, if we are willing to detect, highlight and use them to help others. My life, and I hope the lives of young men in Klong Toey and Springvale, would be lesser for not embracing the odd threads of soccer in my life.

To beat the boredom in a Bangkok traffic jam I like to count Manchester United stickers and other paraphernalia plastered over motorbikes, cars and buses. So popular is the English Premier League club that this can occupy fifteen minutes or so without a problem. I get off my bus early to start to walk home under the huge banners of advertising in every direction. I notice the motor bikes weaving between the cars and buses. "Hey you, Cantana." I hear from behind me. A barefooted motor-cyclist has a grin. It's Klong Toey's own Michael Owen. I am not sure my new local identity is what I expected, but at least I am known after six weeks of living in Klong Toey! In the future I hope we can help Michael Owen and others find a more sustainable and peace-full life through Christ above the seductive and superficial goal posts set by the huge advertising industry here. Who knows, maybe I might become part of the threads in his life and he mine.

[Reproduced with Ashley's permission].