Staying Connected
Jasmine ’08 and Ashwin Get Married
By Marty Schmidt
2008 Jasmine Lau It’s perhaps well-known that being a high school teacher requires a broad array of skills, but one thing I never anticipated was to serve as a wedding officiant for one of my students! But that’s exactly what happened on New Year’s Day, 2018 when I, along with New York teacher John Ditton, co-officiated the wedding of Jasmine Lau ’08 to her fiancé Ashwin Kaja in Bagan, Myanmar. The original inspiration was that Ashwin decided to ask his most influential teacher of his high school career to be an officiant at their wedding, and then Jasmine asked me to represent her formative years at HKIS. It was a thrilling moment for both John and myself.
remarkable: I know of no other HKIS student who has started their own NGO fresh out of university. When I began thinking about this wedding in a field in Bagan, the words of the Persian poet Rumi came to me:
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
Here are some of my remarks to the couple and the hundred-plus family and friends who travelled from around the world to a temple ground outside of Bagan to celebrate their wedding day.
Beyond wrongdoing and rightdoing is a field...To me this means going way beyond so many conventions — beyond an Indian wedding or a Chinese wedding. Because in that field something new, something unprecedented, something authentic and beautiful is breaking out. What is that new thing? It’s a global field of love. When you think of the refugee crisis or North Korea or US politics or ethnic cleansing right here, isn’t it obvious that what our world needs more than anything else is a global field of love? I think I’m expressing the wish of this new couple that each of us is somehow changed by being here — by participating in and contributing to this field of love.
I first got to know Jasmine half of her lifetime ago at the tender age of 14 when she left local Hong Kong schools and became a grade 9 student at HKIS where she was deeply influenced by a course that my wife and I teach called Humanities I in Action. Here’s something Jasmine wrote about the course in 2005, and says a lot about what kind of person Jasmine is: “We
Jasmine and Ashwin, it was a great honor — another life highlight — to be present at your wedding, and we all look forward to the ways that you will impact the world for good through your marriage! We as an HKIS community are honoured to be a part of this great unfolding. Wishing many years of joy and service. n
are all part of the human family, so we should not ignore the sufferings of other people.” Even at that young age Jasmine made her high values very clear: One human family, the sufferings of others, universal brotherhood and sisterhood. When she and Jenn [Jennifer Wu ’08] were seniors, they put these high values into action, raising enough money for 100 girls in China to get a high school education. When I gave a speech at their senior project in 2008, I said that working with Jasmine and Jenn on this project would be one of my life’s proudest accomplishments. But it didn’t stop there. These girls started their own NGO called Ember to support the girls and have run a summer camp for these girls for 11 years running. More than 450 poor girls in China have received a high school education and 30 of these girls have gained a college education because of Ember’s work. Jasmine, your commitment to bettering the lives of others is SUMMER 2018 DRAGONTALES
57