Months ago, when I saw the advertisment for a London vacation at a price I couldn't refuse, I called long-time friend D'on and asked if she wanted to travel to London for a week. She never hesitated. Her answer was an emphatic YES! We had traveled in England and Scotland for two weeks 15 years ago, and spent all of our time in small towns and out in the country, promising to return to see London later. We never expected it to be 15 years later, but life gets complicated and time evaporates.
It was hard to leave Biloxi two weeks after arriving. I felt guilty for much of the trip about what I had left undone in arranging the Santa Shop and other small projects I had begun. But one thing that this work teaches you is that you cannot manage every aspect of projects. Too many variables interrupt and confuse and things you count on never come to pass. I gave myself the lecture several times, decided to get over my guilt and to enjoy the realization of a long-delayed dream.
One thing became obvious. No matter how many miles you walk in a day, there is more to see in London than you can possibly accomplish in a week. Our pedometers registered 22,000 steps often, and our fatigued feet and legs confirmed what our digital output told us. I saw so many old buildings, beautiful churches and museums that they began to run together in my memory. As I sat down to write the collection of sights and events, I began to find the reflection that pulled together what will remain with me long after the words of my journal entries fade.
Much of what continues to awe me about the buildings in which I sat and walked is the people who had been there before, and the spirit of the place that had changed because of their presence. One of those people is the fictional Jack Aubrey, a creation of Patrick O'Brian. I have been reading through the 17 novels which comprise the adventures of Aubrey and his ship's surgeon, Stephen Maturin for years now. They sail for the Royal Navy against Napoleon Bonaparte and his American allies in the early 19th Century. The world which O'Brian portrays is so complete, that my arrival at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich made me feel as if Aubrey himself was about stride out the door of one of those imposing symmetical facades and click his heels together, sweep his hat under his arm and introduce himself. The orderliness of the layout, the beautiful decoration and proportion of the chapel and painted assembly hall transported me back 200 years, and I found an appreciation of the spirit of the Royal Navy that put me inside it's culture instead of leaving me an observer. The hike up the hill to the Royal Observatory put my feet on the prime meridian and explained finally why a spot in England became the place where time originated. It was an Englishman who finally figured out how to fix your location on the globe by using time rather than by the stars. The spirit of those discoveries and the people who ventured forth to claim all that they enabled saturates Greenwich, even though it is also a lovely little town with shops and pubs and well-dressed 21st century inhabitants out buying Christmas presents and skating in the ice rink rigged between the wings of the Royal Naval College buildings. I was glad we had finally gotten to take the river eastward to appreciate the Thames as a highway for trade and travel, it was a beautful and interesting trip. But Greenwich itself overpowers the day for the immediacy of the past that lives there still.
The same immediacy lives for me in Canterbury. We took a bus trip into the Southeast on Saturday morning to view the Cathedral of Chaucer's tales and the Abbey of Augustine of Canterbury - a historical figure from my Early Church History. Gregory the Great sent Augustine as a missionary from Italy to Britain in 598 CE. We walked the damp grass through the ruins of the old abbey, and viewed the Tudor castle that forms the Northeast wall of the remains. It was interesting. We had made a decision to attend Evensong in the Canterbury Cathedral, wanting to experience it as a worship space first before seeing it as an old building. It was one of the best decisions we made, as the liturgy and song in that ancient space prepared us to approach the remains of the shrine of Thomas a Becket with a reverence that connected me powerfully to those pilgrims whose feet had worn the stone steps to their precarious unevennes. I began to reflect on my own pilgrimages, my own cares that needed to be put down in prayer in this place which had served so many before me as a sanctuary. This building is not just a beautifully porportioned space, or even an inspiring space for worship. It still holds the hopes and dreams of those who have carried their burdens there, and mine are only a small addition to what this place can contain and lift up to God.
The connection that these buildings embodied for me will be the strongest memory of this trip. In those moments, fatigued legs and aching feet faded away in the face of the living spirit of the place. But there was wonderful music in lovely old churches - D'on and I met each other in choir, so hearing choral music together is a special joy - amazing art, and always architecture that layers thousands of years side by side. I'll tell you about that later.
Monday, December 25, 2006
Thursday, December 14, 2006
London is Fabulous
I'm not sure my legs know what happened to them. We walked The City yesterday looking at Christopher Wren churches and buildings, the Bank of England, the Guildhall of the City of London, and other assorted monuments. We found the Lutheran Church of St Agnes and St Anne, which happened to be having a noon concert of a Bach Cantata. We grabbed a sandwich and cup of soup and ate there. Fabululous.
Today we spent a few hours at the Tate Modern, maybe the best contemporary art museum I have every seen. This evening we were at a Christmas concert benefit for the Blue Cross, like the Red Cross for animals. It was held at St Peter's Eaton Square, one of the ritzyest neighborhoods in London. My daughter Rachel sent us there because Anthony Stewart Head, also known as Giles on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" was doing one of the readings. She is quite the fan, and when she heard I was going to London, she checked via the internet for an ASH sighting for me. The concert was quite nice, and we enjoyed it- and getting to know a different part of town. It was quite a change from our ethnically diverse Portabello Road neighborhood with all its ethnic restaurants.
Tomorrow is a river day, with a trip down to Greenwich to stand on 0' longitude and then a chance to wander Westminster Abbey before a Carols by Candelight concert at St Martin in the Fields. If there's time, I still want to see more paintings at the Tate with all the Turners. But we are finding that time flies much faster than we expect. I think that's the sign of having a very good time.
Today we spent a few hours at the Tate Modern, maybe the best contemporary art museum I have every seen. This evening we were at a Christmas concert benefit for the Blue Cross, like the Red Cross for animals. It was held at St Peter's Eaton Square, one of the ritzyest neighborhoods in London. My daughter Rachel sent us there because Anthony Stewart Head, also known as Giles on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" was doing one of the readings. She is quite the fan, and when she heard I was going to London, she checked via the internet for an ASH sighting for me. The concert was quite nice, and we enjoyed it- and getting to know a different part of town. It was quite a change from our ethnically diverse Portabello Road neighborhood with all its ethnic restaurants.
Tomorrow is a river day, with a trip down to Greenwich to stand on 0' longitude and then a chance to wander Westminster Abbey before a Carols by Candelight concert at St Martin in the Fields. If there's time, I still want to see more paintings at the Tate with all the Turners. But we are finding that time flies much faster than we expect. I think that's the sign of having a very good time.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
London
Greetings from London. I landed this morning, took the train from Gatwick airport to Victoria Station and then took a taxi to my hotel on Bayswater Road, across the street from Hyde Park. It is wonderful to be here. It is so.....so....English. Driving on the scary wrong side of the road and turning into the wrong lane is just the beginning of how different things are here. This must be the most diverse city in the world. You hear every kind of language passing by you on the street, including nearly unrecognizable versions of your own. Who ever said we speak the same language?
Friend D'on got delayed by bad weather in Chicago and was rerouted through JFK to Heathrow, I met her at our hotel hours later. Our window looks out over Hyde Park, and our hotel room is quite comfortable, except that they put the light switches in the weirdest places. We are beginning to figure it all out. We are blocks from the Portabello Road market, which has market stalls on the street every day and the huge antique sales on Saturday. We walked today through that neighborhood and the adjoining Notting Hill neighborhood - which actually is on a hill. Who knew? Tomorrow is tour day, and planning all the other things we want to see and do for the rest of the week. I'll have pictures in a day or so. See you then.
Friend D'on got delayed by bad weather in Chicago and was rerouted through JFK to Heathrow, I met her at our hotel hours later. Our window looks out over Hyde Park, and our hotel room is quite comfortable, except that they put the light switches in the weirdest places. We are beginning to figure it all out. We are blocks from the Portabello Road market, which has market stalls on the street every day and the huge antique sales on Saturday. We walked today through that neighborhood and the adjoining Notting Hill neighborhood - which actually is on a hill. Who knew? Tomorrow is tour day, and planning all the other things we want to see and do for the rest of the week. I'll have pictures in a day or so. See you then.
Saturday, December 09, 2006
Quilts
It has been really cold here, for Biloxi, I mean. It got down around 26' Thursday night. I wondered why I had no water in my little RV when I flushed the toilet at 5:00 am. It took awhile for me to figure out that it was because the hose that hooks me up to the water supply was frozen. And when I got dressed it felt like my underwear had been kept in the freezer. It was still pretty cold during the day, and I took an application for help from a woman who needed jackets for her children. We have a voucher arrangement with a thrift store down the street that would help with the jackets. When I found out that she also needed bedding, I offered her some sheets and quilts from our supply. The quilt supply was getting pretty low. I went into Judy's office to tell her, and she assured me that contributions of bedding were already on the way.
Within minutes, she got a call from someone looking for blankets. It seems that the FEMA Village about 2 miles away from us had lost power during the morning. A transformer had cut out. There was no heat in the trailers, and the woman on the phone wanted to know if we had blankets. Not really. Not anymore. Six of us sat down and prayed for blankets. Judy decided that we should use some of the Wal-Mart cards we keep for emergencies and buy blankets to last until our supply arrived. We thought that several hundred dollars worth of blankets would last until the emergency was over. Lisa, the Medical Administrative Assistant and I dropped everything to hop into my car and drive to the largest Wal-Mart nearby. We found comforters on special; Twin size for $15 and Queen/King size for $25. We loaded up three baskets with 7 Twin-size and 7 Queen-size comforters and got into the check-out line. Suddenly it occured to me that I had automatically hopped into my own little Honda Civic instead of taking one of the Suburbans or the Dodge Caravan. My Honda was still full of my books, jackets, a suitcase with summer clothes and the long carrier with my alb in it. I looked at the comforters stacked over the tops of the baskets. "How will we get all these blankets in my little car?" I said to Lisa. She smiled. "Do you think that if the Lord can send us the blankets we need, he can't get all these comforters into your car? They'll fit." It looked impossible, even beside the car, but after moving bags around in the trunk and squishing the comforters into the smallest possible spaces, We got them all in. The top one popped out of the trunk when we opened it up, and the back seat was piled to the ceiling. But they were all there.
The word got out quickly, and even when we limited the distribution of comforters to one per family, we were down to one quilt at the end of the afternoon. It was about 5:30 when the phone rang again about blankets. Judy had been on the phone most of the afternoon, looking for blankets and the manager of the warehouse that supplies many of the relief efforts was on the phone. He heard that we needed blankets and he had a supply. "How many do you need?" Judy explained the situation. "Would 100 be enough?" he asked. "Bless you. You are the answer to our prayers." The blankets were delivered a couple of hours later. Some of the blankets are thick lambswool that would keep anyone warm, and some are heavy cotton jacquard. We haven't opened all the boxes yet, but this is a wonderful beginning.
Within minutes, she got a call from someone looking for blankets. It seems that the FEMA Village about 2 miles away from us had lost power during the morning. A transformer had cut out. There was no heat in the trailers, and the woman on the phone wanted to know if we had blankets. Not really. Not anymore. Six of us sat down and prayed for blankets. Judy decided that we should use some of the Wal-Mart cards we keep for emergencies and buy blankets to last until our supply arrived. We thought that several hundred dollars worth of blankets would last until the emergency was over. Lisa, the Medical Administrative Assistant and I dropped everything to hop into my car and drive to the largest Wal-Mart nearby. We found comforters on special; Twin size for $15 and Queen/King size for $25. We loaded up three baskets with 7 Twin-size and 7 Queen-size comforters and got into the check-out line. Suddenly it occured to me that I had automatically hopped into my own little Honda Civic instead of taking one of the Suburbans or the Dodge Caravan. My Honda was still full of my books, jackets, a suitcase with summer clothes and the long carrier with my alb in it. I looked at the comforters stacked over the tops of the baskets. "How will we get all these blankets in my little car?" I said to Lisa. She smiled. "Do you think that if the Lord can send us the blankets we need, he can't get all these comforters into your car? They'll fit." It looked impossible, even beside the car, but after moving bags around in the trunk and squishing the comforters into the smallest possible spaces, We got them all in. The top one popped out of the trunk when we opened it up, and the back seat was piled to the ceiling. But they were all there.
The word got out quickly, and even when we limited the distribution of comforters to one per family, we were down to one quilt at the end of the afternoon. It was about 5:30 when the phone rang again about blankets. Judy had been on the phone most of the afternoon, looking for blankets and the manager of the warehouse that supplies many of the relief efforts was on the phone. He heard that we needed blankets and he had a supply. "How many do you need?" Judy explained the situation. "Would 100 be enough?" he asked. "Bless you. You are the answer to our prayers." The blankets were delivered a couple of hours later. Some of the blankets are thick lambswool that would keep anyone warm, and some are heavy cotton jacquard. We haven't opened all the boxes yet, but this is a wonderful beginning.
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
The Faith Business
All these years I thought I knew what it meant to live by faith. I didn’t know anything about it. But I think I am learning about the faith business now. Bethel was planning a Santa Shop for Christmas. Parents would be able to come and pick out new, donated toys for their children’s Christmas, and children would be able to choose gifts for their parents from shirts, socks, cosmetics and other donated items. There was one small problem. The huge truckload of toys from churches in South Carolina turned out to be only a small portion of a truckload.
We had applications for 132 children to receive toys from the Santa Shop, and barely enough toys to fill those requests. We went into the sanctuary to pray about the situation. How could we tell families we were not able to live up to our promises of Christmas gifts? Last Christmas was so chaotic; this will actually be the first Christmas celebration after the storm for many. As we read through the applications we came to understand in a new way how the smallest material things can make a big difference to those who have lost everything.
We contacted another site to see if we could work together to deliver the promised shopping opportunities. We were overjoyed to hear that they had a pile of donated toys and lots of money and would be glad to send it all to our Santa Shop. It was my job to meet with their site director. I came away heartsick. There were no toys, only a promise of a huge truckload (where have I heard that before) to be delivered about 3 days before the event. The cash is only promised, too, as are the matching funds. I have been in business way too long, I guess, because all I could see was an empty warehouse and a lot of customers who would be disappointed. Those kids were counting on us.
Our volunteer coordinator smiled at me when I told her my story. “What do you think?” I asked, “You have been in the faith business, but I have not. Should I worry?” She didn’t answer. But that afternoon, a giant bag of Beanie Babies arrived from a doctor at the VA hospital who heard that we were planning a Santa Shop. Then two women volunteers arrived to cook for us this week bringing five trash bags packed with Beanie Babies. Tonight another site called to say that they had several big boxes of donated toys, and they would drive them over to us. I sent out an e-mail to our support network explaining our need for people to adopt families and support our Santa Shop and within an hour we received an e-mail from a couple who had volunteered earlier in the year. They are sending money for toys and their congregation will adopt a family. I have a family in mind for them already. I work with people who have seen miracles happen in the last year. I want to be in the faith business, too. I think I am in the right place.
We had applications for 132 children to receive toys from the Santa Shop, and barely enough toys to fill those requests. We went into the sanctuary to pray about the situation. How could we tell families we were not able to live up to our promises of Christmas gifts? Last Christmas was so chaotic; this will actually be the first Christmas celebration after the storm for many. As we read through the applications we came to understand in a new way how the smallest material things can make a big difference to those who have lost everything.
We contacted another site to see if we could work together to deliver the promised shopping opportunities. We were overjoyed to hear that they had a pile of donated toys and lots of money and would be glad to send it all to our Santa Shop. It was my job to meet with their site director. I came away heartsick. There were no toys, only a promise of a huge truckload (where have I heard that before) to be delivered about 3 days before the event. The cash is only promised, too, as are the matching funds. I have been in business way too long, I guess, because all I could see was an empty warehouse and a lot of customers who would be disappointed. Those kids were counting on us.
Our volunteer coordinator smiled at me when I told her my story. “What do you think?” I asked, “You have been in the faith business, but I have not. Should I worry?” She didn’t answer. But that afternoon, a giant bag of Beanie Babies arrived from a doctor at the VA hospital who heard that we were planning a Santa Shop. Then two women volunteers arrived to cook for us this week bringing five trash bags packed with Beanie Babies. Tonight another site called to say that they had several big boxes of donated toys, and they would drive them over to us. I sent out an e-mail to our support network explaining our need for people to adopt families and support our Santa Shop and within an hour we received an e-mail from a couple who had volunteered earlier in the year. They are sending money for toys and their congregation will adopt a family. I have a family in mind for them already. I work with people who have seen miracles happen in the last year. I want to be in the faith business, too. I think I am in the right place.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Has it only been a few days since I arrived here to work? This week has contained so many turns and switchbacks that I can hardly keep up. It seems that Judy Bultmann, the site director here at Bethel Lutheran Disaster Relief has been praying for a pastor for the disaster relief ministry. When I was here in June, I fell in love with this ministry and commented to Judy that if I didn't find a call when I returned to California I could come back to Biloxi where at least there would be a bed and three meals a day. "Oh, don't tell me that, I'll be praying you don't get a call," was her reply. She swears that she did not pray that I would not get a call in Southern California, but instead that a pastor would be available for a call to this ministry. Well, here I am.
It seems that my duties will entail things like working with caseworkers to give out grants, gather the resources and coordinate with caseworkers for special events like the Santa Shop in which parents can come and shop for their families from donated toys and other gifts. Much of my work will pastoral work for the staff and long term volunteers as well as being available as chaplain in the on-site medical clinic. I will be able to take a lot of the pressure off existing staff by offering followup and communication with other disaster relief efforts in the neighborhood as well.
This is definitely a multi-tasking environment. Nothing ever moves from idea through process to completion without a million interruptions. Often the complications are because so many agencies are involved in every project. Sometimes it's because there are always at least 7 things happening on this site at any one time. Sometimes it's because a new set of personnel is on hand for so much of the work each week, as volunteers do almost everything here.
Our population is low this week, with only 40 or so volunteers in residence. Still, the kitchen is busy all day long preparing breakfast, lunch and dinner and cleaning up. There is laundry all day as all the towels and bathmats are washed and dried each day and stacked in fragrant piles outside the largest of three showers. Floors are swept, the dining hall vaccumed and kitchen and bathroom scrubbed every day. The facilities coordinator is a long term volunteer, as are all the volunteers who do this ministry of support.
Teams go out every day to repair, rebuild and finish the restoration projects Long-time handymen and newbie college girls find themselves installing cabinetry, flooring and tile, as well as painting walls and trim. They come back filled with tales of their own accomplishments and with the stories of the residents whose homes they are rebuilding. This work is life-changing, there is no doubt about it. These volunteers bring the hope needed to rebuild the lives which have been devasted by loss, but they are inspired by the stories of courage and determination that they hear from the survivors they came to help. It is always amazing that those who give end up receiving as well. Participating in this work is such a blessing it is hard to describe.
There are many ways to participate, and contributing financially is still needed. Currently Bethel is in need of WalMart, K-Mart or Visa gift cards in $100 denominations for the Santa Store. So many people are still without resources for furniture, toys, children's clothes and food beyond the most basic necessities. Many who have moved back into their restored homes are sleeping on the floor because there is no money for new furniture. Adopt My Room (adoptmyroom.org) provides a complete bedroom for a child, designed to the child's preferences plus a kitchen kit for the child's family, all for $500. My siblings and I are committing to a room for a child instead of exchanging Christmas gifts this year.
I am so blessed to be part of this ministry. For many years I have laughed about being homeless, although sometimes it was pretty lonely to be without a home. I came to believe that my home was actually in my call, rather than in a place. Today, this ministry feels like home to me, and chance both to serve and to grow. When I said something about the surprise of that to Judy and some other staffers, they laughed. "Yes, we know all about that. We pray for food and get a truckload of mattresses."
It seems that my duties will entail things like working with caseworkers to give out grants, gather the resources and coordinate with caseworkers for special events like the Santa Shop in which parents can come and shop for their families from donated toys and other gifts. Much of my work will pastoral work for the staff and long term volunteers as well as being available as chaplain in the on-site medical clinic. I will be able to take a lot of the pressure off existing staff by offering followup and communication with other disaster relief efforts in the neighborhood as well.
This is definitely a multi-tasking environment. Nothing ever moves from idea through process to completion without a million interruptions. Often the complications are because so many agencies are involved in every project. Sometimes it's because there are always at least 7 things happening on this site at any one time. Sometimes it's because a new set of personnel is on hand for so much of the work each week, as volunteers do almost everything here.
Our population is low this week, with only 40 or so volunteers in residence. Still, the kitchen is busy all day long preparing breakfast, lunch and dinner and cleaning up. There is laundry all day as all the towels and bathmats are washed and dried each day and stacked in fragrant piles outside the largest of three showers. Floors are swept, the dining hall vaccumed and kitchen and bathroom scrubbed every day. The facilities coordinator is a long term volunteer, as are all the volunteers who do this ministry of support.
Teams go out every day to repair, rebuild and finish the restoration projects Long-time handymen and newbie college girls find themselves installing cabinetry, flooring and tile, as well as painting walls and trim. They come back filled with tales of their own accomplishments and with the stories of the residents whose homes they are rebuilding. This work is life-changing, there is no doubt about it. These volunteers bring the hope needed to rebuild the lives which have been devasted by loss, but they are inspired by the stories of courage and determination that they hear from the survivors they came to help. It is always amazing that those who give end up receiving as well. Participating in this work is such a blessing it is hard to describe.
There are many ways to participate, and contributing financially is still needed. Currently Bethel is in need of WalMart, K-Mart or Visa gift cards in $100 denominations for the Santa Store. So many people are still without resources for furniture, toys, children's clothes and food beyond the most basic necessities. Many who have moved back into their restored homes are sleeping on the floor because there is no money for new furniture. Adopt My Room (adoptmyroom.org) provides a complete bedroom for a child, designed to the child's preferences plus a kitchen kit for the child's family, all for $500. My siblings and I are committing to a room for a child instead of exchanging Christmas gifts this year.
I am so blessed to be part of this ministry. For many years I have laughed about being homeless, although sometimes it was pretty lonely to be without a home. I came to believe that my home was actually in my call, rather than in a place. Today, this ministry feels like home to me, and chance both to serve and to grow. When I said something about the surprise of that to Judy and some other staffers, they laughed. "Yes, we know all about that. We pray for food and get a truckload of mattresses."
Saturday, November 25, 2006
December 2006 Letter to Grace Lutheran Church
Waiting. Waiting is the lens through which I see the world these days. It is quite disorienting for someone who has been committed daily to a goal that has driven the last ten years of my life. Since I started study to complete my undergraduate degree in the fall of 1997, working, studying, sleeping, eating was all of life. Conversations with friends, movies, travel hardly existed. I became so disciplined at my monastic existence that I almost forgot what people do with leisure time. So the time I spent traveling this summer, visiting friends, seeing parts of the US and Central America, studying Spanish again felt like a well-earned rest. But even my rest was a carefully mapped-out adventure with just enough time to indulge in the various pleasures which had been sacrificed to my vocational call to prepare for ministry.
In September, all that changed. I have been fully engaged in waiting. I am waiting for a congregation to choose me as its pastor – the work for which I have now been trained and the work for which I have been longing since I recognized a call to ministry in the early 1990’s. Day by day I swing between wanting to make my peace with waiting and wanting to stir up more possibilities for pastoral work. The former feels like sitting on hold, my love and gifts for ministry idle and wasted. The latter is frustrating, pushing for something that just doesn’t happen, all my hopes raised at every opportunity, only to be dashed when things don’t pan out. “How long, O Lord, how long?” The Psalmist cries, asking God to wake up to the tragedies of the people who trust that God will answer their prayers because they are God’s beloved. Those words often mirror my own impatience, my need for God to answer me.
Lately a quieter voice enters my prayers. It is a voice that calls me to open my heart to the gifts of this time of waiting. What if the confusion of this time is of my own making? What if it is a struggle between what I want to see and what already exists for me? So I have decided it is time to accept the invitation back to Biloxi, Mississippi, where there is ministry to a community still suffering the effects of the biggest storm ever experienced on the Gulf Coast. I spent a week there this summer working as a chaplain in the medical clinic and washing the towels for 100 volunteers working to rebuild homes. I don’t know exactly what my days will be like or what my duties will entail or even how long I will be needed. Right now, all I know is that having a chance to use my gifts of ministry is a gift to me, an answer to my longing.
The Apostle Paul says that the whole creation waits with eager longing, groaning in expectation for the full revealing of God’s redemption. I know that I am not the only one who waits. In this season of Advent we all enter a time of waiting, of looking more deeply at our longings. Where is God at work that we have not noticed? What is the gift that waiting with openness can bring to each of us and to our community? What adventure awaits?
It has been so wonderful to be with you again these last few months. Grace is home, my solid ground. I will miss you all, but know that we are together in our work in God’s service. May God continue to bless you.
In September, all that changed. I have been fully engaged in waiting. I am waiting for a congregation to choose me as its pastor – the work for which I have now been trained and the work for which I have been longing since I recognized a call to ministry in the early 1990’s. Day by day I swing between wanting to make my peace with waiting and wanting to stir up more possibilities for pastoral work. The former feels like sitting on hold, my love and gifts for ministry idle and wasted. The latter is frustrating, pushing for something that just doesn’t happen, all my hopes raised at every opportunity, only to be dashed when things don’t pan out. “How long, O Lord, how long?” The Psalmist cries, asking God to wake up to the tragedies of the people who trust that God will answer their prayers because they are God’s beloved. Those words often mirror my own impatience, my need for God to answer me.
Lately a quieter voice enters my prayers. It is a voice that calls me to open my heart to the gifts of this time of waiting. What if the confusion of this time is of my own making? What if it is a struggle between what I want to see and what already exists for me? So I have decided it is time to accept the invitation back to Biloxi, Mississippi, where there is ministry to a community still suffering the effects of the biggest storm ever experienced on the Gulf Coast. I spent a week there this summer working as a chaplain in the medical clinic and washing the towels for 100 volunteers working to rebuild homes. I don’t know exactly what my days will be like or what my duties will entail or even how long I will be needed. Right now, all I know is that having a chance to use my gifts of ministry is a gift to me, an answer to my longing.
The Apostle Paul says that the whole creation waits with eager longing, groaning in expectation for the full revealing of God’s redemption. I know that I am not the only one who waits. In this season of Advent we all enter a time of waiting, of looking more deeply at our longings. Where is God at work that we have not noticed? What is the gift that waiting with openness can bring to each of us and to our community? What adventure awaits?
It has been so wonderful to be with you again these last few months. Grace is home, my solid ground. I will miss you all, but know that we are together in our work in God’s service. May God continue to bless you.
December 3, 2006 Bluegrass
Church this morning was a Bluegrass Mass composed and presented by a band from Faith Lutheran Church in Lebanon, Tennessee. Morgan Gordy, currently their pastor, is a diaconal minister who was assigned to the Bishop's Office for the Gulf Coast before she decided to become a parish pastor. She brought the group back to the coast for a concert fundraiser last night and church this morning. They helped to raise $5000 to rebuild the home of Bethel members Vince and Judy Moto. The Moto's have had to move out of the area while their home was being mucked out and during the rebuilding. There was a lot of toe-tapping during church this morning. It was joyous and reverent at the same time. One of the parishoners said she'd go to church every day if it was like that. They arrived on Friday for a concert at another local church, and left after church this morning. all except the keyboard player, a nurse who wanted to stay a few more days and work in the clinic.
This kind of generosity is astonishing, but all too common around here. Last week a box full of quilts arrived from a woman in Wisconsin. She had volunteered in the clinic in May and seen the manager give quilts to a few families. She was so touched by their appreciation, that she began quilting when she returned home. In the last five months her friends have donated the materials, she has designed and stitched the tops, and she and her friends have quilted 10 twin quilts and 4 crib quilts. She has designated them for people who are returning to their homes. I got to unpack the box and unroll the quilts to shake them out and refold them. I could feel the love and prayers the quilters had stitched into each blanket. Beautiful.
If you or your church are interested in adopting a family or kid's bedroom, let me know. If you want to come to Biloxi and be part of this, shout out.
This kind of generosity is astonishing, but all too common around here. Last week a box full of quilts arrived from a woman in Wisconsin. She had volunteered in the clinic in May and seen the manager give quilts to a few families. She was so touched by their appreciation, that she began quilting when she returned home. In the last five months her friends have donated the materials, she has designed and stitched the tops, and she and her friends have quilted 10 twin quilts and 4 crib quilts. She has designated them for people who are returning to their homes. I got to unpack the box and unroll the quilts to shake them out and refold them. I could feel the love and prayers the quilters had stitched into each blanket. Beautiful.
If you or your church are interested in adopting a family or kid's bedroom, let me know. If you want to come to Biloxi and be part of this, shout out.
Biloxi
Here I am back in Biloxi. I will be working as a volunteer chaplain again at Bethel Lutheran Church's free medical clinic. There is still so much to do here, even though it has been more than a year since the hurricane. Bethel lost the funding from Lutheran Disaster Response at the end of September, and has committed to funding the few paid positions that enable them to provide housing and food for a continuing army of volunteers who come to rebuild homes and staff the clinic. In the meantime, Direct Relief International gave them nearly $50,000 to support the medical clinic and increase the range of services it provides. The clinic provides free medication and medical and psychological care for a population that was already underserved before the hurricane destroyed what little infrastructure provided for them before. I was able to make the connection to DRI for Bethel when I was here in June. It is an organization that provides medical supplies to disaster areas both international and domestic, and is located in my hometown of Santa Barbara, California. It was so gratifying to be able to put the clinic in touch with an agency that specifically supports the work they are doing here.
When I was approved for a call to a Lutheran congregation in the spring, I was assigned to the Southwest California Synod. During my summer of travel, I returned to Southern California for an interview with a congregation that didn't hire me. After my return to Santa Barbara, I interviewed with another congregation who also felt that I was not the right pastor for them. I had an invitation from Bethel to return to serve as the chaplain in their clinic, and here I am. I will include in this blog the December "Letter to Grace" column from my home (Grace Lutheran Church, Santa Barbara, California) congregation's newsletter, as it explains my process of waiting and my decision to come to Biloxi.
Tonight as I write this I am the only one awake in a room of women sleeping on donated Tempurpedic mattresses thrown on the floor in one of Bethel's Sunday School rooms. The others are all from Carlton College in Minnesota, part of a team that starts working on rebuilding tomorrow morning after church. They will be here for a week. More volunteers are due tomorrow, and although it has been pretty quiet here today, the place will be full by tomorrow night. It is exciting to be part of such energy and dedication. but just as often it is overwhelming to be surrounded by people. This will be a test of my need for privacy.
When I was approved for a call to a Lutheran congregation in the spring, I was assigned to the Southwest California Synod. During my summer of travel, I returned to Southern California for an interview with a congregation that didn't hire me. After my return to Santa Barbara, I interviewed with another congregation who also felt that I was not the right pastor for them. I had an invitation from Bethel to return to serve as the chaplain in their clinic, and here I am. I will include in this blog the December "Letter to Grace" column from my home (Grace Lutheran Church, Santa Barbara, California) congregation's newsletter, as it explains my process of waiting and my decision to come to Biloxi.
Tonight as I write this I am the only one awake in a room of women sleeping on donated Tempurpedic mattresses thrown on the floor in one of Bethel's Sunday School rooms. The others are all from Carlton College in Minnesota, part of a team that starts working on rebuilding tomorrow morning after church. They will be here for a week. More volunteers are due tomorrow, and although it has been pretty quiet here today, the place will be full by tomorrow night. It is exciting to be part of such energy and dedication. but just as often it is overwhelming to be surrounded by people. This will be a test of my need for privacy.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Pictures
There are pictures of the Westward leg of this summer journey at http://s85.photobucket.com/albums/k80/barbarapunch/
There is an overview of the whole summer, plus sub-albums of various segments: the newest is Westward Journey. Enjoy.
There is an overview of the whole summer, plus sub-albums of various segments: the newest is Westward Journey. Enjoy.
Home
This summer's travel adventures have been so wonderful, I'd almost forgotten what it feels like to come home. Arriving at my friend Marti's home in Santa Barbara this week has been a homecoming that I didn't expect and didn't realize that I craved.
Coming home from Guatemala was arriving at the home of my brother Richard and sister-in-law Dianne. Their quiet and spacious house, the backyard with the pool and the flow of children and grandchildren, good meals, and lots of good conversation was a lovely respite from my conflicted feelings about being in Guatemala and the hard work of being submerged in another language. As I prepared to leave I found myself entertaining thoughts of finding a way to make a home in Texas, close enough to continue being part of Richard and Dianne's daily routine.
I took a few days before continuing westward to drive up to Tulsa Oklahoma for a short visit with Grace Hanlon, who had been my mother's dearest friend. Grace's husband Horace died unexpectedly in the year between the deaths of my own parents. Grace has always been one of my favorite people, and with the death of my mother, Horace's death and then the deth of my father, she and I had almost lost contact completely. We had a wonderful visit in which we talked about those loved ones we had lost. Old memories and new stories to share about how life had been and how life has continued has begun to establish a new connection between Grace and I that feels like its own homecoming. It was soon after I left Grace that I remembered how hard I had worked in the years after my divorce to get in touch with people from my single life with whom I had lost touch in the years of marriage and chile-rearing. Maybe my summer of travel to old friends and new was a similar journey to reground life as a post-graduate with new vocation in the life I enjoyed before turning this page. Thank you Grace, for sharing such poignant stories with me and helping to knit the old and new together in such a lovely way.
After escaping Oklahoma, I was able to find the last available hotel room in the center of Santa Fe during the busiest weekend of the summer season. I treated myself to a ritzy stay at the Hotel St Francis, with dinner at their sidewalk bar, a plush bed and room service breakfast. It was the Indian Art Market weekend and so crowded that I left right after a quick tour of the Georgia O'Keefe Museum, heading for a private hot tub at Ten Thousand Waves before driving to Taos. I think Taos is more my style than Santa Fe. Certainly the smaller, more personal galleries intrigued me more and I found some beautiful jewely -- another indulgence -- and a sweet room at the Taos Inn. No more Comfort Inns or Super 8 Motels on this leg of the journey. There is so much beautiful handmade art on the road from Santa Fe to Taos, that I promised myself to return when the day comes that I am furnishing a home. This trip turned out to be about personal decoration, as I detoured through the back country to the Zuni Pueblo and bought several sets of inlaid pendants and earrings. What a beautiful day, complete with a further detour through the Petrified Forest National Park and a night in Sedona. It was the perfect end of a scenic day, watching the sun set on the red rocks, sitting on my motel balcony with a cold glass of white wine in hand.
A week in the Phoenix area with my sister, Pat was an opportunity to catch up with another part of the family, swap stories and share memories. Pat is a gifted and dedicated photographer, and we took an overnight trip to Prescott Arizona to photgraph "the dells", a spectacular outcropping of rocks gathered around a lovely lake. We got some great pictures, and it was fun to compare my efforts with hers. I was hoping to use the trip to Prescott to look up Mary Fenton, an Arizona friend. The last address I had for her was in Prescott, but between her cross-country moves, and my moves to school and internship, we had lost touch. Pat and I arrived in Prescott at the beginning of a violent rainstorm that made outdoor photography out of the question. We wandered across the street to the Christian Bookstore Pat wanted to visit. As we walked in, the woman behind the counter said, "Is that Barb?" It was Mary Fenton! We had a chance to catch up and shake our heads more than once about how people reappear in your life. What a lovely blessing.
It was wonderful to be with Pat and to meet some of her friends, but after a week, I was ready to move on. The heat in Phoenix was intense, and it was beginning to wear me out. I dreaded the drive to Santa Barbara, remembering the stretch between Phoenix and Blythe and Blythe and Palm Springs as being the most boring drive in the universe. I guess a summer of driving for leisure has changed my attitude, as the trip was comfortable, pleasant and uneventful. Arriving at Marti's house was like coming home. I always loved driving into Santa Barbara and I loved living there. It is beautiful between the mountains and the sea, and has a peaceful pace that always makes me feel welcome and calm.
The remodel of Marti's house is almost done, and her home is a beatiful embodiment of her welcoming and generous spirit. The garden is finally finished, and now it is not only comfortable to settle inside, there are also comfy places outside to settle to work or read or dream. This feels like the perfect place to end the summer's journey and turn my face toward the future.
What that future will hold is still an open question, as I have not heard from a congregation that wants me as their pastor yet. There will be conversations over the next few weeks about what other possibilities there might be. I feel blessed to have this place to rest and regroup while I open to possibility, awaiting the movement of the Spirit leading me toward the next journey.
Coming home from Guatemala was arriving at the home of my brother Richard and sister-in-law Dianne. Their quiet and spacious house, the backyard with the pool and the flow of children and grandchildren, good meals, and lots of good conversation was a lovely respite from my conflicted feelings about being in Guatemala and the hard work of being submerged in another language. As I prepared to leave I found myself entertaining thoughts of finding a way to make a home in Texas, close enough to continue being part of Richard and Dianne's daily routine.
I took a few days before continuing westward to drive up to Tulsa Oklahoma for a short visit with Grace Hanlon, who had been my mother's dearest friend. Grace's husband Horace died unexpectedly in the year between the deaths of my own parents. Grace has always been one of my favorite people, and with the death of my mother, Horace's death and then the deth of my father, she and I had almost lost contact completely. We had a wonderful visit in which we talked about those loved ones we had lost. Old memories and new stories to share about how life had been and how life has continued has begun to establish a new connection between Grace and I that feels like its own homecoming. It was soon after I left Grace that I remembered how hard I had worked in the years after my divorce to get in touch with people from my single life with whom I had lost touch in the years of marriage and chile-rearing. Maybe my summer of travel to old friends and new was a similar journey to reground life as a post-graduate with new vocation in the life I enjoyed before turning this page. Thank you Grace, for sharing such poignant stories with me and helping to knit the old and new together in such a lovely way.
After escaping Oklahoma, I was able to find the last available hotel room in the center of Santa Fe during the busiest weekend of the summer season. I treated myself to a ritzy stay at the Hotel St Francis, with dinner at their sidewalk bar, a plush bed and room service breakfast. It was the Indian Art Market weekend and so crowded that I left right after a quick tour of the Georgia O'Keefe Museum, heading for a private hot tub at Ten Thousand Waves before driving to Taos. I think Taos is more my style than Santa Fe. Certainly the smaller, more personal galleries intrigued me more and I found some beautiful jewely -- another indulgence -- and a sweet room at the Taos Inn. No more Comfort Inns or Super 8 Motels on this leg of the journey. There is so much beautiful handmade art on the road from Santa Fe to Taos, that I promised myself to return when the day comes that I am furnishing a home. This trip turned out to be about personal decoration, as I detoured through the back country to the Zuni Pueblo and bought several sets of inlaid pendants and earrings. What a beautiful day, complete with a further detour through the Petrified Forest National Park and a night in Sedona. It was the perfect end of a scenic day, watching the sun set on the red rocks, sitting on my motel balcony with a cold glass of white wine in hand.
A week in the Phoenix area with my sister, Pat was an opportunity to catch up with another part of the family, swap stories and share memories. Pat is a gifted and dedicated photographer, and we took an overnight trip to Prescott Arizona to photgraph "the dells", a spectacular outcropping of rocks gathered around a lovely lake. We got some great pictures, and it was fun to compare my efforts with hers. I was hoping to use the trip to Prescott to look up Mary Fenton, an Arizona friend. The last address I had for her was in Prescott, but between her cross-country moves, and my moves to school and internship, we had lost touch. Pat and I arrived in Prescott at the beginning of a violent rainstorm that made outdoor photography out of the question. We wandered across the street to the Christian Bookstore Pat wanted to visit. As we walked in, the woman behind the counter said, "Is that Barb?" It was Mary Fenton! We had a chance to catch up and shake our heads more than once about how people reappear in your life. What a lovely blessing.
It was wonderful to be with Pat and to meet some of her friends, but after a week, I was ready to move on. The heat in Phoenix was intense, and it was beginning to wear me out. I dreaded the drive to Santa Barbara, remembering the stretch between Phoenix and Blythe and Blythe and Palm Springs as being the most boring drive in the universe. I guess a summer of driving for leisure has changed my attitude, as the trip was comfortable, pleasant and uneventful. Arriving at Marti's house was like coming home. I always loved driving into Santa Barbara and I loved living there. It is beautiful between the mountains and the sea, and has a peaceful pace that always makes me feel welcome and calm.
The remodel of Marti's house is almost done, and her home is a beatiful embodiment of her welcoming and generous spirit. The garden is finally finished, and now it is not only comfortable to settle inside, there are also comfy places outside to settle to work or read or dream. This feels like the perfect place to end the summer's journey and turn my face toward the future.
What that future will hold is still an open question, as I have not heard from a congregation that wants me as their pastor yet. There will be conversations over the next few weeks about what other possibilities there might be. I feel blessed to have this place to rest and regroup while I open to possibility, awaiting the movement of the Spirit leading me toward the next journey.
Monday, August 14, 2006
Ascension Lutheran Church, Xela, Guatemala
The guesthouse where I planned to live during my stay in Xela was a disappointment. I asked the school to find me a place with a family instead. It was not necessarily a better option, as the home of the family was not much better, but I loved the family, so I stayed. The guesthouse, Casa Concordia, was owned and operated by a Lutheran Church, and the family of Pastor Ignacio Chan Cux lived there. As I was scurrying out the door with my luggage, Pastor Ignacio invited me to come to church the following Sunday morning.
I caught a cab on Sunday, having asked my maestra to call the church to get directions. I gave the address to the taxista, and asked him, "Tu conoces?" (are you familiar with it?) They always answer, "Si." I am not sure whether it's just good business or courtesy, or just a macho thing, but they never tell you they don't have a clue. Rather they drive as far as they have figured out, and then stop a passerby (usually male) and ask for directions. Unfortunately, no one in Guatemala ever admits that they don't know where something is, so the directions he receives may or may not get you where you are going on the first try. That's one of the reasons why it's always a good thing to set the price of the taxi ride before you start. It only took us two stops for directions for the taxista to find Iglesia Asencion, a small parish partially painted yellow, in the same neighborhood as Casa Concordia.
I arrived pretty early, and was greeted by Pastor Ignacio, his wife and each of his little girls with the standard Guatemalan kiss and embrace and "Bienvenidos a la casa de Dios (welcome to God's house)." While I was standing talking to Pastor Ignacio's family, other members arrived and each adult and child also greeted me in the same way. I was so touched. No one in Guatemala had ever before greeted me with the kiss and embrace used for friends. As parishoners continued to arrive, everyone was welcomed with embraces and kisses. My conversation with Pastor Ignacio was difficult as I didn't understand most of his questions, but I had no trouble calling myself a pastora luterana. I was able to explain that I was a recent seminary graduate, and that I was not yet ordained. He asked me to assist with communion, explaining that just saying "cuerpo de Christo (body of Christ)" while I gave out the bread would be sufficient. When church started I was introduced, and my status among them clarified. If any of them ever wondered what the giant gringa was doing in their midst, they never let on. It was wonderful to be part of their worship. The liturgy was easy to follow, and most of the hymns were ones I already knew in English. I did not understand one word of the sermon, although I kept straining to hear something that I recognized. At the end of the service, Pastor Ignacio thanked me during the announcements, and then asked me if I would say a few words. My Spanish was so bad -- I had managed to forget most of what I had learned six months before and was still going through the basics at school. I did stammer out a couple of sentences to say that it was a real pleasure to meet then and worship with them. I can only imagine how horribly grammatically incorrect it might have been, but I have no idea. Everyone smiled and seemed delighted to have me there. As the service finished up, no one left. People began to visit and the children began to play, moving into the front court after awhile. Pastor Igacio asked how long I would be in Xela, and invited me to come back. I was planning to leave the following Saturday for vacation, but promised to return in two weeks when I got back to Xela from the coast. He invited me to preach, but I firmly declined, expressing my certainty that I could not deliver a message in Spanish. He suggested that I would have two weeks to practice, but I knew that even two weeks was not enough. I firmly declined again. NO WAY!
I did come back two weeks later, basking in the warm greetings, and assisting once again at communion. I was able to offer a blessing after I communed Pastor Ignacio - rather than the stunning silence of the previous occasion -- and to really say "the body of Christ, given for you," as I placed the bread in the mouths of the communicants.
My welcome at Ascension Parish was so warm, and their sense of community was so palpable. I have never been in a church like theirs. It will always be a fond memory of my time in Xela. The Lutheran Church in Guatemala is very small, and this church is "independiente," says Pastor Ignacio. As far as I can tell, that means that his parish is no longer associated with the Guatemalan Lutheran Church, associated with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. I never understood his explanation of his independent status and what his associations actually were. He wanted me to help him connect with the ELCA or with ELCA congregations who would become partners with his parish. I was very clear that I had no authority to offer any help or connection, and was somewhat concerned that I could not even imagine the path to such relationships since his "independent"situation has the possibility of being troublesome. I was scheduled to leave Xela at the end of the week, and at the end of our meeting, Pastor Ignacio offered to pray. He prayed for my vocation, and for a congregation to love me. And then he wished me the peace of the Lord. Y contigo, tambien, Pastor Ignacio, and also with you.
There are pictures of Iglesia Luterana, Parrochia Asencion in my photobucket album:
http://s85.photobucket.com/albums/k80/barbarapunch/
There are also pictures of my return from vacation, Xela, and my return to the US in the album Summer 2006
I caught a cab on Sunday, having asked my maestra to call the church to get directions. I gave the address to the taxista, and asked him, "Tu conoces?" (are you familiar with it?) They always answer, "Si." I am not sure whether it's just good business or courtesy, or just a macho thing, but they never tell you they don't have a clue. Rather they drive as far as they have figured out, and then stop a passerby (usually male) and ask for directions. Unfortunately, no one in Guatemala ever admits that they don't know where something is, so the directions he receives may or may not get you where you are going on the first try. That's one of the reasons why it's always a good thing to set the price of the taxi ride before you start. It only took us two stops for directions for the taxista to find Iglesia Asencion, a small parish partially painted yellow, in the same neighborhood as Casa Concordia.
I arrived pretty early, and was greeted by Pastor Ignacio, his wife and each of his little girls with the standard Guatemalan kiss and embrace and "Bienvenidos a la casa de Dios (welcome to God's house)." While I was standing talking to Pastor Ignacio's family, other members arrived and each adult and child also greeted me in the same way. I was so touched. No one in Guatemala had ever before greeted me with the kiss and embrace used for friends. As parishoners continued to arrive, everyone was welcomed with embraces and kisses. My conversation with Pastor Ignacio was difficult as I didn't understand most of his questions, but I had no trouble calling myself a pastora luterana. I was able to explain that I was a recent seminary graduate, and that I was not yet ordained. He asked me to assist with communion, explaining that just saying "cuerpo de Christo (body of Christ)" while I gave out the bread would be sufficient. When church started I was introduced, and my status among them clarified. If any of them ever wondered what the giant gringa was doing in their midst, they never let on. It was wonderful to be part of their worship. The liturgy was easy to follow, and most of the hymns were ones I already knew in English. I did not understand one word of the sermon, although I kept straining to hear something that I recognized. At the end of the service, Pastor Ignacio thanked me during the announcements, and then asked me if I would say a few words. My Spanish was so bad -- I had managed to forget most of what I had learned six months before and was still going through the basics at school. I did stammer out a couple of sentences to say that it was a real pleasure to meet then and worship with them. I can only imagine how horribly grammatically incorrect it might have been, but I have no idea. Everyone smiled and seemed delighted to have me there. As the service finished up, no one left. People began to visit and the children began to play, moving into the front court after awhile. Pastor Igacio asked how long I would be in Xela, and invited me to come back. I was planning to leave the following Saturday for vacation, but promised to return in two weeks when I got back to Xela from the coast. He invited me to preach, but I firmly declined, expressing my certainty that I could not deliver a message in Spanish. He suggested that I would have two weeks to practice, but I knew that even two weeks was not enough. I firmly declined again. NO WAY!
I did come back two weeks later, basking in the warm greetings, and assisting once again at communion. I was able to offer a blessing after I communed Pastor Ignacio - rather than the stunning silence of the previous occasion -- and to really say "the body of Christ, given for you," as I placed the bread in the mouths of the communicants.
My welcome at Ascension Parish was so warm, and their sense of community was so palpable. I have never been in a church like theirs. It will always be a fond memory of my time in Xela. The Lutheran Church in Guatemala is very small, and this church is "independiente," says Pastor Ignacio. As far as I can tell, that means that his parish is no longer associated with the Guatemalan Lutheran Church, associated with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. I never understood his explanation of his independent status and what his associations actually were. He wanted me to help him connect with the ELCA or with ELCA congregations who would become partners with his parish. I was very clear that I had no authority to offer any help or connection, and was somewhat concerned that I could not even imagine the path to such relationships since his "independent"situation has the possibility of being troublesome. I was scheduled to leave Xela at the end of the week, and at the end of our meeting, Pastor Ignacio offered to pray. He prayed for my vocation, and for a congregation to love me. And then he wished me the peace of the Lord. Y contigo, tambien, Pastor Ignacio, and also with you.
There are pictures of Iglesia Luterana, Parrochia Asencion in my photobucket album:
http://s85.photobucket.com/albums/k80/barbarapunch/
There are also pictures of my return from vacation, Xela, and my return to the US in the album Summer 2006
Friday, August 04, 2006
Return to Guatemala
The return trip from Belize was dramatic, a flight in a four-seater over the coast of Belize to Belize City and then an hour flight in the same plane over the jungles of Peten to Flores, the gateway to the Mayan ruins of Tikal. I´ll have my pictures up on photobucket as soon as I get back to my own computer in a few days. It was an expensive trip, but one of the highlights of this vacation.
I must confess that it was hard to go back to Guatemala. I have been wrestling all week with sadness at being back. Everything in Guatemala seems to be either broken or incomplete. I miss the sun and the humid breezes, Guatemala has been rainy and grey, even the night at the lake in Flores was overcast and dull. Somehow the incompleteness in Belize seemed charming in the middle of the laid-back, friendly Caribbean culture, the result of too much sun and too much heat. Here in Guatemala it seems grubby - as if no one really knows how to do a good job of things, or how to gather the resources necessary to do something well. I am rediscovering my own racism, too. Somehow the natives in Belize - all shades of black and tan - don´t seem so foreign because they speak English, thought it is flavored with Creole and sometimes hard to understand. It feels as if there is a cultural pride there that is more confidant, less of a strruggle to own.
I must confess that Guatemala wears me out, makes me feel guilty, makes me want to run from the complicated problems which are constantly thrown up to me. Life is hard in Guatemala, and Guatemaltecos are hard-working people, but there seems to be no solution to their troubles. The government just talks and enacts policies that have no effect on most of the people who live in the countryside, and hardly touch the core of the problems of those who have the least. In spite of how hard people work, it will take generations, if all goes well, for any appreciable change. Guatemala makes me sad. This is my last week here. I can hardly wait to go home.
I must confess that it was hard to go back to Guatemala. I have been wrestling all week with sadness at being back. Everything in Guatemala seems to be either broken or incomplete. I miss the sun and the humid breezes, Guatemala has been rainy and grey, even the night at the lake in Flores was overcast and dull. Somehow the incompleteness in Belize seemed charming in the middle of the laid-back, friendly Caribbean culture, the result of too much sun and too much heat. Here in Guatemala it seems grubby - as if no one really knows how to do a good job of things, or how to gather the resources necessary to do something well. I am rediscovering my own racism, too. Somehow the natives in Belize - all shades of black and tan - don´t seem so foreign because they speak English, thought it is flavored with Creole and sometimes hard to understand. It feels as if there is a cultural pride there that is more confidant, less of a strruggle to own.
I must confess that Guatemala wears me out, makes me feel guilty, makes me want to run from the complicated problems which are constantly thrown up to me. Life is hard in Guatemala, and Guatemaltecos are hard-working people, but there seems to be no solution to their troubles. The government just talks and enacts policies that have no effect on most of the people who live in the countryside, and hardly touch the core of the problems of those who have the least. In spite of how hard people work, it will take generations, if all goes well, for any appreciable change. Guatemala makes me sad. This is my last week here. I can hardly wait to go home.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Communidad Santa Anita
Two weeks ago, our school made a trip to a cooperative coffee finca in the Boca Costa, the region toward the coast in which most of the coffee plantations are located. We had a private bus because fourteen of us would have been hard to manage on local buses. ¨Private bus¨ means a minivan with seats everywhere and people piled four and five across. The idea of personal space is very different in Latin America than the US, and the idea of privacy is something you get over fast. The community of Santa Anita is a success story. A group of nearly 30 families of ex-comabatants from the civil war joined together to buy and work a large plantation on the side of a steep hill in a lush area about halfway to the Pacific coast. They have been there for about 8 years, grooming, growing, learning to market and sell their organic coffee around the world. They have established a primary school and begun ¨basico¨ which goes from grade 6 to 9.
Education is of particular importance to this community as much of their activity in the mountains during the civil war was concerned with educating the workers in the countryside, both in their human rights and in reading and writing and good health practices. This part of their mission continues strong today, and their community is both beautiful and interesting to visit.
We were invited to walk through the tropical forest by Gloria, whose guerilla name was Teresa, a proud, machete-wielding member of the community. She described how workers have to carry the yeild of the coffee plants up the steep slope during harvests, a feat I can hardly imagine, as the trail we were on was slippery in the humidity and after the rain, and precariously steep. We stopped often to take in the view across the deep canyon, rich with huge trees necessary for the shade coffee cultivation requires. At the bottom of the canyon is the Rio Naranja, which defines the extent of the cooperative´s territory, and which then joins the Rio Mujulia, the largest river in the area, the border between the county of Queztaltenango and neighboring San Marcos. From a few spots, you could see into San Marcos, and Gloria and Ronaldo, our guide from the school, told us that they met each other in those mountains when they worked there as guerillas in the 1980´s.
At the bottom of the canyon was a beautiful waterfall, a real treat as we were hot and sweaty from our downward trek in the humidity of the forest. But the real test was the trek back up. Slippery, steep, and humid it seemed never-ending. By the time we got to the top, my thighs were wobbly, and I was steaming like racehorse - huffing and puffing and dripping wet. It would have been really embarrassing, but I was not the only one. The women of the community served us a rewarding lunch, and we had a chance to talk to the leader of the commercial operation about the history of the conflict and the work of the guerillas, as well as the history of the community. The armed conflict ended only 10 years ago, with the peace accords of 1996, so this story is very fresh in the memories of those who suffered during that time, mostly country farmers who wanted a better life for themselves and their families and found themselves thwarted and threatened on every side by cruel dictators who represented the status quo. Whole communities were bombed and community leaders were regularly ¨disappeared,¨ usually tortured and killed by the army or police. The hardest part to hear, for me, is that those dictatorships, responsible for some of the cruelest repression in the world, were put in place through US foreign policy. It was a policy that protected US business interests in the region, regardless of the effect that policy would have on the burgeoning democracy and independence of the people of Guatemala. It is a story to make your heart ache, and to make you sad to be an American. I have heard it so often here that you would think it would no longer affect me, but it hurts every time I am faced with it.
It was so encouraging to listen to the leaders of the community of Santa Anita, who are living the dream that drove them to fight for their country and for their compañeros. One of the students asked if the community believed cooperatives like theirs could change the future for the people who still have little in the way of food security and education in the countryside. They said no. The only possiblity for real change will be through political organization to reflect the will of the people who desire change for themselves and their families. It is hard to imagine that such a change will happen soon, as the political conditions in Guatemala still reflect the will of wealthy landowners and large businesses more than the will of the common people. Witnessing the pride of the community of Santa Anita and the changes they have already wrought for themselves and their children is a source of hope that their dream of such success for the rest of their compatriots could really come true.
There are some pictures of Santa Anita at my spot on the photobucket website: http;//s85.photobucket.com/albums/k80/barbarapunch/ Enjoy
Education is of particular importance to this community as much of their activity in the mountains during the civil war was concerned with educating the workers in the countryside, both in their human rights and in reading and writing and good health practices. This part of their mission continues strong today, and their community is both beautiful and interesting to visit.
We were invited to walk through the tropical forest by Gloria, whose guerilla name was Teresa, a proud, machete-wielding member of the community. She described how workers have to carry the yeild of the coffee plants up the steep slope during harvests, a feat I can hardly imagine, as the trail we were on was slippery in the humidity and after the rain, and precariously steep. We stopped often to take in the view across the deep canyon, rich with huge trees necessary for the shade coffee cultivation requires. At the bottom of the canyon is the Rio Naranja, which defines the extent of the cooperative´s territory, and which then joins the Rio Mujulia, the largest river in the area, the border between the county of Queztaltenango and neighboring San Marcos. From a few spots, you could see into San Marcos, and Gloria and Ronaldo, our guide from the school, told us that they met each other in those mountains when they worked there as guerillas in the 1980´s.
At the bottom of the canyon was a beautiful waterfall, a real treat as we were hot and sweaty from our downward trek in the humidity of the forest. But the real test was the trek back up. Slippery, steep, and humid it seemed never-ending. By the time we got to the top, my thighs were wobbly, and I was steaming like racehorse - huffing and puffing and dripping wet. It would have been really embarrassing, but I was not the only one. The women of the community served us a rewarding lunch, and we had a chance to talk to the leader of the commercial operation about the history of the conflict and the work of the guerillas, as well as the history of the community. The armed conflict ended only 10 years ago, with the peace accords of 1996, so this story is very fresh in the memories of those who suffered during that time, mostly country farmers who wanted a better life for themselves and their families and found themselves thwarted and threatened on every side by cruel dictators who represented the status quo. Whole communities were bombed and community leaders were regularly ¨disappeared,¨ usually tortured and killed by the army or police. The hardest part to hear, for me, is that those dictatorships, responsible for some of the cruelest repression in the world, were put in place through US foreign policy. It was a policy that protected US business interests in the region, regardless of the effect that policy would have on the burgeoning democracy and independence of the people of Guatemala. It is a story to make your heart ache, and to make you sad to be an American. I have heard it so often here that you would think it would no longer affect me, but it hurts every time I am faced with it.
It was so encouraging to listen to the leaders of the community of Santa Anita, who are living the dream that drove them to fight for their country and for their compañeros. One of the students asked if the community believed cooperatives like theirs could change the future for the people who still have little in the way of food security and education in the countryside. They said no. The only possiblity for real change will be through political organization to reflect the will of the people who desire change for themselves and their families. It is hard to imagine that such a change will happen soon, as the political conditions in Guatemala still reflect the will of wealthy landowners and large businesses more than the will of the common people. Witnessing the pride of the community of Santa Anita and the changes they have already wrought for themselves and their children is a source of hope that their dream of such success for the rest of their compatriots could really come true.
There are some pictures of Santa Anita at my spot on the photobucket website: http;//s85.photobucket.com/albums/k80/barbarapunch/ Enjoy
Friday, July 28, 2006
The Bus Ride From Hell
Plans to travel to Caribbean coast of Guatemala and Belize were late in forming. I waited until the Monday before I wanted to go to talk to Patrick, the travel agent who had succesfully arranged my travel in January. He was really busy and didn´t get an agenda to me until Friday morning, for travel beginning the next day. The first stop was Rio Dulce, at the eastern end of Lake Izbal, a haven for tourists and yachties from all over the world. It is reputed to be one of the most beautiful places in Guatemala, and the trip down the river to the coast is famous, passing through an ecological preserve, manatee territory and some gorgeous tropical scenery. The plan was that I would take the agency´s own bus 3/4 of the way,and then pick up a luxury tour bus at the El Rancho junction. Patrick´s bus would turn north to Coban, and I would wait to pick up an east-bound bus to Rio Dulce. Patrick assured me that there would be ¨no problem¨ flagging a tour bus, as they go through there more than hourly. He assured me that Lucas, his driver would wait with me and see to it that I made a secure connection from El Rancho to Rio Dulce. I was skeptical because I have learned that buses run often early in the day, but are ususally not available after 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon. My nightmare was that I would end up on some local bus, unable to understand the driver or where we were going and facing all those stony Guatemalan faces that seemed to resent my presence as much as I hated being there. I knew Lucas to be conciencious and careful, and so with serious reservations I agreed to making the trip in one day instead of waiting in Guatemala City overnight and catching a first-class tour bus the following morning.
We set out at 8:00 am, twenty of us headed for Antigua, Guatemala City, Coban, and me, leaving at El Rancho for a Rio Dulce connection. Half of the passengers were French Canadians headed for Coban. They never shut up, telling stories and even singing songs from what turned out to be the children´s TV they watched. I think it would have been annoying in English, but it was really annoying in Canadian French. I realized that I was not feeling well, and that the intestinal distress that had been bothering me for the last few days was not going to just clear up, but might actually become a real problem on this extended day of bus travel. Of course. We were two hours outside of Xela, less than 1/4 of the way when Lucas pulled into a restaurant and announced that there was a demonstration up the road that had blocked the highway, and we were going to have breakfast and wait for half and hour for the road to clear. It started to rain.
After a breakfast of pancakes that helped to settle my stomach and an hour wait, we were off again, but the rain began to be a serious downpour. Traffic was already backed up because of the demonstration, the rain made it worst. We did not arrive in Antigua to drop off our first passengers until almost 2:00 pm. It normally takes about 4 hours to get there. The people in the back seat with the 4:00 flight out of Guatemala City were beginning to panic, as Antigua was filled with tourists for a big festival, and what should have been a quick drop-off took 45 minutes. Lucas managed to get the air passengers to the international airport by 3:00, plenty of time, but then there were several stops in Guatemala City for drop-offs, too. It was nearly 5:00 by the time we waited through the huge traffic jam headed east out of the city (construction and rain). and stopped at a Burger King for dinner. I was sure I would never find a tour bus by now, but Lucas assured me that they travel that road all the time and that it would be ¨no problema.¨ My stomach hurt.
It was nearly 6:30 by the time we got to El Rancho and it was still pouring rain. The road down the mountains from Guatemala City had been slow and running with mud. Lucas connected me with a micro-bus in pretty good repair whose driver said that he could take me to Rio Hondo where there was an ¨oficina¨ and that I could make a connection there to Rio Dulce. It would cost 30 Queztales. Where is Rio Hondo? Lucas began to draw me a map on the muddy ground, but I was impatient. I didn´t really care as long as it would get me where I was going. Lucas advised that going with the local micro-bus was the most secure way to get there, the other option being to stand at the corner next to the fruit stand in the rain and hope that a luxury bus would still come by. I took the micro-bus.
At about 7:30 we arrived at a series of food stands at a fork in the road. The driver hopped out and ran across the road to a stand and waved for me to follow. It was the öficina¨and a bored young man said that it would be another 40 Quetzales to Rio Dulce. The bus was due at 8:00, and would take 3 hours to reach Rio Dulce. I asked if he had a phone I could use to call my hotel and tell them I was on the way. No. I asked if there was a bathroom I could use. No. It was still pouring. I ran across the road to the big Texaco station down the highway and a woman generously let me use the inside bathroom. I noticed that the dark-skinned woman from Belize who also came over to use the bathroom had been directed to the one outside. The privileges of white skin are everywhere.
An hour passed with no bus. It was raining hard, the bored young man explained and the traffic was bad. Just as I discovered the pay phone that took coins next to the oficina, invisible in dark, and not offered by the official, the bus arrived. I was a huge Greyhound-sized vehicle, and was already filled with sleeping people. The lady from Belize, with baby in arms, and her daughter, who had promised to point out the proper bus to me, climed aboard with me. I thought that I might be on the overnight bus to Flores, because it was clear that everyone on board with a seat had been there for awhile,and were there for a long ride. Could it be that those standing would be required to stand through the night? Apparently so.
Suddenly, after more than an hour rushing throught the night, the bus stopped. 10 minutes to pee and get snacks from a roadside grill that was still open at nearly 11:00.
When we all got back on board, the generosity of the Guatemalan people began to emerge. One woman offered her seat to the lady from Belize with the sleeping baby in her arms, who gratefully accepted it. A woman next to me offered to let me sit in her seat for an hour. I was praying that Rio Dulce was less than an hour away, and turned down her offer, explaining that I would be getting off soon. The bus started up and we sped off into the night. I had learned that the bus was on it´s way to the Belizean border, and was expected to arrive at around 5:30 am.
Suddenly the lights went on and Rio Dulce was announced. Patrick had made it very clear that I was to take the bridge over the river to the far shore and ¨just stop into any tienda and call the hotel.¨ I had been panicked that the bus would leave me at some wide spot and that I would have to call the hotel in the middle of the night in tears telling them that I didn´t know where I was and to come find me. But the bus sped over the bridge as I was gathering my bags from the overhead and dropped me right where I needed to be. It was midnight and all that was open were roadside bars, no friendly tienda with a phone to call the hotel. A skinny young man and a scruffy looking older guy walked up to ask if I needed a hotel. No,I expallined, what I needed was to make a call to Tortugal, the hotel where I already had a reservation. Oh, Tortugal. OK. Since I didn´t have a phone card, the young man pulled out his cell phone (everyone in Guatemala has one on their person) and called the hotel, asking for the launch to pick me up. The men smiled and the younger one said he´d take me to the dock. He walked toward a dark, pebbled alley and motioned me to follow. Ok, I thought, here it comes, the final twist to this endless day will be being beaten and robbed in an alley. But, no, it was indeed the dock, just not lighted. The young man explained that the public launch down the river to Livingston, the collectivo, left the dock at 9:00 am, and that he was a driver and guide. He waited with me for the launch, telling me all about the services that were available in town, most of which I never understood. When I offered to pay him for the use of his phone, he said No, he was in the tourist business and it was his job to be helpful. The launch came, and in 10 minutes had me at the Tortugal dock and then into a lovely rustic room with a huge fan overhead.
Perhaps this trip from hell has finally freed me from my fear of being caught alone on local buses and not knowing where I´m going. After all, I have survived my nightmare, and woke the next day to sunrise over the river and breakfast in a beautiful place. No problem.
If you want to see pictures of this trip, please go to my albums at photobucket.com. The link is http://s85.photobucket.com/albums/k80/barbarapunch/ Enjoy.
We set out at 8:00 am, twenty of us headed for Antigua, Guatemala City, Coban, and me, leaving at El Rancho for a Rio Dulce connection. Half of the passengers were French Canadians headed for Coban. They never shut up, telling stories and even singing songs from what turned out to be the children´s TV they watched. I think it would have been annoying in English, but it was really annoying in Canadian French. I realized that I was not feeling well, and that the intestinal distress that had been bothering me for the last few days was not going to just clear up, but might actually become a real problem on this extended day of bus travel. Of course. We were two hours outside of Xela, less than 1/4 of the way when Lucas pulled into a restaurant and announced that there was a demonstration up the road that had blocked the highway, and we were going to have breakfast and wait for half and hour for the road to clear. It started to rain.
After a breakfast of pancakes that helped to settle my stomach and an hour wait, we were off again, but the rain began to be a serious downpour. Traffic was already backed up because of the demonstration, the rain made it worst. We did not arrive in Antigua to drop off our first passengers until almost 2:00 pm. It normally takes about 4 hours to get there. The people in the back seat with the 4:00 flight out of Guatemala City were beginning to panic, as Antigua was filled with tourists for a big festival, and what should have been a quick drop-off took 45 minutes. Lucas managed to get the air passengers to the international airport by 3:00, plenty of time, but then there were several stops in Guatemala City for drop-offs, too. It was nearly 5:00 by the time we waited through the huge traffic jam headed east out of the city (construction and rain). and stopped at a Burger King for dinner. I was sure I would never find a tour bus by now, but Lucas assured me that they travel that road all the time and that it would be ¨no problema.¨ My stomach hurt.
It was nearly 6:30 by the time we got to El Rancho and it was still pouring rain. The road down the mountains from Guatemala City had been slow and running with mud. Lucas connected me with a micro-bus in pretty good repair whose driver said that he could take me to Rio Hondo where there was an ¨oficina¨ and that I could make a connection there to Rio Dulce. It would cost 30 Queztales. Where is Rio Hondo? Lucas began to draw me a map on the muddy ground, but I was impatient. I didn´t really care as long as it would get me where I was going. Lucas advised that going with the local micro-bus was the most secure way to get there, the other option being to stand at the corner next to the fruit stand in the rain and hope that a luxury bus would still come by. I took the micro-bus.
At about 7:30 we arrived at a series of food stands at a fork in the road. The driver hopped out and ran across the road to a stand and waved for me to follow. It was the öficina¨and a bored young man said that it would be another 40 Quetzales to Rio Dulce. The bus was due at 8:00, and would take 3 hours to reach Rio Dulce. I asked if he had a phone I could use to call my hotel and tell them I was on the way. No. I asked if there was a bathroom I could use. No. It was still pouring. I ran across the road to the big Texaco station down the highway and a woman generously let me use the inside bathroom. I noticed that the dark-skinned woman from Belize who also came over to use the bathroom had been directed to the one outside. The privileges of white skin are everywhere.
An hour passed with no bus. It was raining hard, the bored young man explained and the traffic was bad. Just as I discovered the pay phone that took coins next to the oficina, invisible in dark, and not offered by the official, the bus arrived. I was a huge Greyhound-sized vehicle, and was already filled with sleeping people. The lady from Belize, with baby in arms, and her daughter, who had promised to point out the proper bus to me, climed aboard with me. I thought that I might be on the overnight bus to Flores, because it was clear that everyone on board with a seat had been there for awhile,and were there for a long ride. Could it be that those standing would be required to stand through the night? Apparently so.
Suddenly, after more than an hour rushing throught the night, the bus stopped. 10 minutes to pee and get snacks from a roadside grill that was still open at nearly 11:00.
When we all got back on board, the generosity of the Guatemalan people began to emerge. One woman offered her seat to the lady from Belize with the sleeping baby in her arms, who gratefully accepted it. A woman next to me offered to let me sit in her seat for an hour. I was praying that Rio Dulce was less than an hour away, and turned down her offer, explaining that I would be getting off soon. The bus started up and we sped off into the night. I had learned that the bus was on it´s way to the Belizean border, and was expected to arrive at around 5:30 am.
Suddenly the lights went on and Rio Dulce was announced. Patrick had made it very clear that I was to take the bridge over the river to the far shore and ¨just stop into any tienda and call the hotel.¨ I had been panicked that the bus would leave me at some wide spot and that I would have to call the hotel in the middle of the night in tears telling them that I didn´t know where I was and to come find me. But the bus sped over the bridge as I was gathering my bags from the overhead and dropped me right where I needed to be. It was midnight and all that was open were roadside bars, no friendly tienda with a phone to call the hotel. A skinny young man and a scruffy looking older guy walked up to ask if I needed a hotel. No,I expallined, what I needed was to make a call to Tortugal, the hotel where I already had a reservation. Oh, Tortugal. OK. Since I didn´t have a phone card, the young man pulled out his cell phone (everyone in Guatemala has one on their person) and called the hotel, asking for the launch to pick me up. The men smiled and the younger one said he´d take me to the dock. He walked toward a dark, pebbled alley and motioned me to follow. Ok, I thought, here it comes, the final twist to this endless day will be being beaten and robbed in an alley. But, no, it was indeed the dock, just not lighted. The young man explained that the public launch down the river to Livingston, the collectivo, left the dock at 9:00 am, and that he was a driver and guide. He waited with me for the launch, telling me all about the services that were available in town, most of which I never understood. When I offered to pay him for the use of his phone, he said No, he was in the tourist business and it was his job to be helpful. The launch came, and in 10 minutes had me at the Tortugal dock and then into a lovely rustic room with a huge fan overhead.
Perhaps this trip from hell has finally freed me from my fear of being caught alone on local buses and not knowing where I´m going. After all, I have survived my nightmare, and woke the next day to sunrise over the river and breakfast in a beautiful place. No problem.
If you want to see pictures of this trip, please go to my albums at photobucket.com. The link is http://s85.photobucket.com/albums/k80/barbarapunch/ Enjoy.
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Travels
This has been a summer of travels. I left Southern California on May 24, after spending two days with friends celebrating their 60th birthdays at Disneyland. That night I was in the Grand Canyon watching the sunset and two days later, checking into a cabin at the Flagg Ranch in Grand Teton. It was snowing, and continued to snow throughout my two days in Yellowstone Park. I spent a night with the family of Lara Janssen, a friend from seminary, in Volga, South Dakota. Never having seen the prairie, I was enchanted with the open skies, endless stretches of tall grass and open highway. I arrived in Champaign IL on June 2, in time for the wedding of friend from Portland, Mittens (Eileen Gebbie) and her partner Carla. I was able to spend a few days visiting before driving to Chicago to visit long-time friend D'On Voelzke. D'On's father, my former pastor, was also visiting her family there and we had opportunities to take an architectural tour, hang out in the city and catch up on life.
During my visit to Chicago, I flew back to Southern California to follow up on an interview with the call committee of Central Lutheran Church in Van Nuys. I met their church council and preached on Sunday morning. The congregation's vote the following week was not to call me as their pastor. I had a sense that it was not a good match, and once I got past the old ego need of having everyone love me, I was actually relieved that they had made the decision for me. I am sure they were right, I was not the pastor for them. After a short visit with SCal friends and with my kids, I flew back for a few more days with D'On before heading for Louisville KY. I had a chance to tour Churchill Downs, the Four Roses Distillery in Lawrenceburg KY (Four Roses Blended Whiskey was in my maternal grandmother's favorite whiskey sours), and then the Museum of Applachia in Clinton TN, before driving to Columbus GA to spend a few days with Mary Carlton Lull and her mother. Mary Carlton is the widow of Timothy Lull, who was our seminary president. He died suddenly following successful surgery. It was the same week in May 2003 that my mother died.
At the suggestion of Mary Carlton's friend Alice Ruth, I drove to the Florida Gulf Coast for a few days at the beach before arriving in Biloxi MS to work for a week with Lutheran Disaster Response, out of Bethel Lutheran Church. My brother, John, had been in Biloxi in December, following Hurricane Katrina, (Aug 2005) which destroyed somewhere between 80% and 90% of the homes and businesses in the area between Biloxi and New Orleans. John and his friend, Glenn Harris, who had been an insurance adjuster during Hurricane Camille (1969), met me there and we spent the week sleeping on mattresses on the floor of the church classrooms with 100 other volunteers who had come to rebuild homes, staff the free medical clinic and distribution center for clothes and household items for people who are still unable to gather the resources for living in the aftermath of the biggest hurricane on record. Katrina will be the standard by which to measure storm disasters for a long time, and the LDR expects that reconstruction of the Biloxi area, the hardest hit of all, will take at least 8-10 years.
It has taken me weeks to process and reflect on the Katrina relief week. We talked everyday about where we had seen the face of God that day. Sometimes it was in the stories of the people whose lives had been destroyed, who refused to give up hope, and who treasured the efforts of those volunteers who came to share their work of rebuilding. Sometimes it was in the faces of those who gave up time with family or at work to spend a week sleeping on the floor with a bunch of strangers and working in the miserable heat to do what they can to help rebuild homes and lives. It was an astonishing week, filled with people and stories that will live with me forever. It was joyful and heartrending at the same time, and a lesson in what community can be, knitting together the lives of strangers who share a life and hope through the love of Jesus Christ. Those who came as strangers are strangers no longer, they have become the face of living love to each other and those they came to serve. It was hard to leave such a community.
After a week in Lewisville TX (outskirts of Dallas) with brother Richard and sister-in-law Dianne, and children and grandchildren filling the house with noise and delight, it was off to Guatemala for three weeks of Spanish and a week of vacation. Not having used any of the Spanish I studied in January, I have spent the last two weeks reviewing, reviewing, and reviewing -- and feeling like an idiot because I can hardly remember my own name anymore. But this week is vacation again, and I wanted to spend my time somwhere hot and sultry after the weeks of cold and rain in the Guatemala highlands. So I have been in Rio Dulce on the shores of a beautiful tropical river and ecological preserve in Eastern Guatemala, having cruised down the river to Livingston, a tropical port on the Caribbean Sea, and am now at the beach in Placencia Belize, steps from the beach on the Caribbean. I have enjoyed the heat, cooling off in the sea or the shower several times a day, living in a sarong or shorts, sitting on the porch or in a hammock with a book. It is lobster season in Belize and so I have had lobster with every meal but breakfast, just as in the Mississippi Gulf Coast we ate shrimp every day. Life is sweet.
During my visit to Chicago, I flew back to Southern California to follow up on an interview with the call committee of Central Lutheran Church in Van Nuys. I met their church council and preached on Sunday morning. The congregation's vote the following week was not to call me as their pastor. I had a sense that it was not a good match, and once I got past the old ego need of having everyone love me, I was actually relieved that they had made the decision for me. I am sure they were right, I was not the pastor for them. After a short visit with SCal friends and with my kids, I flew back for a few more days with D'On before heading for Louisville KY. I had a chance to tour Churchill Downs, the Four Roses Distillery in Lawrenceburg KY (Four Roses Blended Whiskey was in my maternal grandmother's favorite whiskey sours), and then the Museum of Applachia in Clinton TN, before driving to Columbus GA to spend a few days with Mary Carlton Lull and her mother. Mary Carlton is the widow of Timothy Lull, who was our seminary president. He died suddenly following successful surgery. It was the same week in May 2003 that my mother died.
At the suggestion of Mary Carlton's friend Alice Ruth, I drove to the Florida Gulf Coast for a few days at the beach before arriving in Biloxi MS to work for a week with Lutheran Disaster Response, out of Bethel Lutheran Church. My brother, John, had been in Biloxi in December, following Hurricane Katrina, (Aug 2005) which destroyed somewhere between 80% and 90% of the homes and businesses in the area between Biloxi and New Orleans. John and his friend, Glenn Harris, who had been an insurance adjuster during Hurricane Camille (1969), met me there and we spent the week sleeping on mattresses on the floor of the church classrooms with 100 other volunteers who had come to rebuild homes, staff the free medical clinic and distribution center for clothes and household items for people who are still unable to gather the resources for living in the aftermath of the biggest hurricane on record. Katrina will be the standard by which to measure storm disasters for a long time, and the LDR expects that reconstruction of the Biloxi area, the hardest hit of all, will take at least 8-10 years.
It has taken me weeks to process and reflect on the Katrina relief week. We talked everyday about where we had seen the face of God that day. Sometimes it was in the stories of the people whose lives had been destroyed, who refused to give up hope, and who treasured the efforts of those volunteers who came to share their work of rebuilding. Sometimes it was in the faces of those who gave up time with family or at work to spend a week sleeping on the floor with a bunch of strangers and working in the miserable heat to do what they can to help rebuild homes and lives. It was an astonishing week, filled with people and stories that will live with me forever. It was joyful and heartrending at the same time, and a lesson in what community can be, knitting together the lives of strangers who share a life and hope through the love of Jesus Christ. Those who came as strangers are strangers no longer, they have become the face of living love to each other and those they came to serve. It was hard to leave such a community.
After a week in Lewisville TX (outskirts of Dallas) with brother Richard and sister-in-law Dianne, and children and grandchildren filling the house with noise and delight, it was off to Guatemala for three weeks of Spanish and a week of vacation. Not having used any of the Spanish I studied in January, I have spent the last two weeks reviewing, reviewing, and reviewing -- and feeling like an idiot because I can hardly remember my own name anymore. But this week is vacation again, and I wanted to spend my time somwhere hot and sultry after the weeks of cold and rain in the Guatemala highlands. So I have been in Rio Dulce on the shores of a beautiful tropical river and ecological preserve in Eastern Guatemala, having cruised down the river to Livingston, a tropical port on the Caribbean Sea, and am now at the beach in Placencia Belize, steps from the beach on the Caribbean. I have enjoyed the heat, cooling off in the sea or the shower several times a day, living in a sarong or shorts, sitting on the porch or in a hammock with a book. It is lobster season in Belize and so I have had lobster with every meal but breakfast, just as in the Mississippi Gulf Coast we ate shrimp every day. Life is sweet.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Guatemala Summer, July 18, 2006
While planning my journey back to Guatemala this summer, I found a guesthouse online owned by a Lutheran Church in Xela. I made a reservation (in Spanish) and arrived on Sunday night the 9th of July. I was horribly disappointed by the spare room and the filthy bathroom, and confused by the two women who greeted me, apparently knowing nothing about my arrival and no more fluent in Spanish than I was. Things improved on Monday morning when I came downstairs to breakfast to be greeted by Sebastiana, who introduced herself graciously and invited me to sit down to a breakfast of scrambled eggs, tomatoes, tortillas and black beans. Though young and dressed in the same traditional dress as the other women, she was obviously the mistress of the house. We were joined at table by a young man in clerical garb (without the white insert in his shirt) and a large silver cross on a chain around his neck. He introduced himself as Pastor Ignacio, and said a blessing over our breakfast before digging in. I had already made up my mind to find other lodgings as soon as possible, and when he asked how long I would be staying, I muttered, ¨maybe three weeks.¨ In the course of introductions I mentioned that I was ¨una pastora luterana.¨ I thought Pastor Ignacio was going to jump out of his seat. ¨¿Es verdad?¨ he kept asking.
When I got to the school I asked if it were still possible to live with a family for the first two weeks of my studies, and the office coordinator was happy to fix me up. I thought that nothing could be worse than the dirty bathroom and bare room at Casa Concordia. I was wrong. I went back to the guesthouse to pack up my bags, pay Pastor Ignacio and move to the home of Doña Doris, the lovely woman who cleans the school. As I left, Pastor Ignacio gave me the address of the church and invited me to Sunday services.
The home of Doña Doris is a good example of how many Guatemalans live in the city. She has raised three children by herself since her husband died 14 years ago. The oldest, Jorge, is now studying to be a lawyer. Lilian, who I met in January when she worked inthe office at PLQE, is studying at the University and working part-time, as well as helping Doris clean at the school, and the youngest, Lesbeth is in her last year of Diversificado, like a combination of high school and junior college. She will go to the University in the fall to study to be a nurse. Everybody works in this house, except Fifi, the silly little terrier/chihuahua combination. Their house is reached through a dingy passage through an auto shop. All rooms open onto a courtyard. The living room, storage room, tiny kitchen/dining room, and bathroom downstairs. Three bedrooms are upstairs looking out onto the highest point in Xela, ¨El Baul.¨ It is wonderful on sunny days when I walk out on the balcony into sunshine and the clouds that always make the skies of Guatemala so interesting and beautiful. But it´s pretty miserable when it´s cold and raining and you have to go down the open stairs to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
The house is crowded and not particularly clean, but I love the family. They are proud and hardworking, and have done very well for themselves against difficult odds. Life is very hard here, and keeping a house clean is complicated by the constant dust, grime, car exhaust, and summer rain. There are no screens, no heat, everything is open to whatever lands in your house, on your clothes, gets embedded in your shoes. I have taken over the dishwashing in the pila in the courtyard, calling myself the Queen of Clean Dishes. Doña Doris laughs. I have come to love Doña Doris´s cooking and her gentle good humor in spite of her demanding, underappreciated job. And I have become very comfortable in her home, a big surprise to me, who started out so picky. It´s the people who make a home, right?
When I got to the school I asked if it were still possible to live with a family for the first two weeks of my studies, and the office coordinator was happy to fix me up. I thought that nothing could be worse than the dirty bathroom and bare room at Casa Concordia. I was wrong. I went back to the guesthouse to pack up my bags, pay Pastor Ignacio and move to the home of Doña Doris, the lovely woman who cleans the school. As I left, Pastor Ignacio gave me the address of the church and invited me to Sunday services.
The home of Doña Doris is a good example of how many Guatemalans live in the city. She has raised three children by herself since her husband died 14 years ago. The oldest, Jorge, is now studying to be a lawyer. Lilian, who I met in January when she worked inthe office at PLQE, is studying at the University and working part-time, as well as helping Doris clean at the school, and the youngest, Lesbeth is in her last year of Diversificado, like a combination of high school and junior college. She will go to the University in the fall to study to be a nurse. Everybody works in this house, except Fifi, the silly little terrier/chihuahua combination. Their house is reached through a dingy passage through an auto shop. All rooms open onto a courtyard. The living room, storage room, tiny kitchen/dining room, and bathroom downstairs. Three bedrooms are upstairs looking out onto the highest point in Xela, ¨El Baul.¨ It is wonderful on sunny days when I walk out on the balcony into sunshine and the clouds that always make the skies of Guatemala so interesting and beautiful. But it´s pretty miserable when it´s cold and raining and you have to go down the open stairs to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
The house is crowded and not particularly clean, but I love the family. They are proud and hardworking, and have done very well for themselves against difficult odds. Life is very hard here, and keeping a house clean is complicated by the constant dust, grime, car exhaust, and summer rain. There are no screens, no heat, everything is open to whatever lands in your house, on your clothes, gets embedded in your shoes. I have taken over the dishwashing in the pila in the courtyard, calling myself the Queen of Clean Dishes. Doña Doris laughs. I have come to love Doña Doris´s cooking and her gentle good humor in spite of her demanding, underappreciated job. And I have become very comfortable in her home, a big surprise to me, who started out so picky. It´s the people who make a home, right?
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Guatemala Summer
July 13, 2006
Here I am back in Guatemala. It looks very different in the summer. The patchwork of brown fields covering the mountains along the Interamerican Highway are now filled with waving fields of corn, bright green and as high as the men who cultivate it. There are fields of squash dotted with deep yellow flowers. It looks as if the harvest will be good, and I pray that it is enough to help mend the damage from Hurricane Stan last October. The storm took out cities along the lake, washed out bridges which still have not been repaired and destroyed the harvest leaving families with damaged homes and no food, I had almost forgotten the damage from ¨El Stan,¨ having spent a week in the Gulf Coast working with people who are just beginning to dig out from Katrina. So much damage, so much loss makes my heart hurt. I don´t know where to put the sadness.
As I expected, I have forgotten almost everything I learned in five difficult weeks last winter. I promise myself that I will not make the mistake of not using Spanish every chance I get. I want to find a language partner who needs my English as much as I need their Spanish, so that I will not lose it again. So I am back in the present tense, practising those irregular verbs. My maestra Ana Maria is an expert teacher and has a more organized way of presenting lessons, so that it makes much more sense to me than I remember. Maybe I just needed a second time around. I find that much of what was lost is coming back in our conversations.
I originally arranged to stay in a guest house owned by a Lutheran Church here in Xela. I hated the room I was assigned, and arriving at the end of a week-end, I found the bathroom to be so dirty that I hated to use it. I went right to the school on Monday morning and asked to stay with a family. When I got the guest house to pick up my bags and pay for one night, the duena had returned and maids were scrubbing everything. The family I got lives in a small apartment behind an auto shop. It is not very clean either, and my room is tiny. But I like the family and I have a second-story view that I love. I´m unpacked now, and so I´ll stick it out for the two weeks I am scheduled to study before my week of travel. I hope to arrange a room in the sparkling clean guest house across the street from the school for my final week in school.
All in all, it is lovely to be back. I feel at home here.
Here I am back in Guatemala. It looks very different in the summer. The patchwork of brown fields covering the mountains along the Interamerican Highway are now filled with waving fields of corn, bright green and as high as the men who cultivate it. There are fields of squash dotted with deep yellow flowers. It looks as if the harvest will be good, and I pray that it is enough to help mend the damage from Hurricane Stan last October. The storm took out cities along the lake, washed out bridges which still have not been repaired and destroyed the harvest leaving families with damaged homes and no food, I had almost forgotten the damage from ¨El Stan,¨ having spent a week in the Gulf Coast working with people who are just beginning to dig out from Katrina. So much damage, so much loss makes my heart hurt. I don´t know where to put the sadness.
As I expected, I have forgotten almost everything I learned in five difficult weeks last winter. I promise myself that I will not make the mistake of not using Spanish every chance I get. I want to find a language partner who needs my English as much as I need their Spanish, so that I will not lose it again. So I am back in the present tense, practising those irregular verbs. My maestra Ana Maria is an expert teacher and has a more organized way of presenting lessons, so that it makes much more sense to me than I remember. Maybe I just needed a second time around. I find that much of what was lost is coming back in our conversations.
I originally arranged to stay in a guest house owned by a Lutheran Church here in Xela. I hated the room I was assigned, and arriving at the end of a week-end, I found the bathroom to be so dirty that I hated to use it. I went right to the school on Monday morning and asked to stay with a family. When I got the guest house to pick up my bags and pay for one night, the duena had returned and maids were scrubbing everything. The family I got lives in a small apartment behind an auto shop. It is not very clean either, and my room is tiny. But I like the family and I have a second-story view that I love. I´m unpacked now, and so I´ll stick it out for the two weeks I am scheduled to study before my week of travel. I hope to arrange a room in the sparkling clean guest house across the street from the school for my final week in school.
All in all, it is lovely to be back. I feel at home here.
Monday, January 30, 2006
Guatemala Journal
January 30, 2006
Although I have been home from Guatemala for a week, there is a part of me that is still in suspense. What feels natural to my body does not necessarily feel so natural to my soul. Being in my own room, seeing old friends, preparing for classes and reading all the mail that has stacked up since mid-December does feel good and grounds me in the life in which I have been working so long. But the part of me that came to love life in Xela has not been integrated into my American life. It’s the part of me that notes in Spanish how late it is when I wake up and have to hurry to get ready. It’s the part of me that is ready to greet the people I meet on the sidewalk with a smiling “Buenos Dias.” It’s the part of me that doesn’t care how well put together my outfit looks because we are all just wrapping up against the cold and every colorful outfit seems appropriate. It’s the part of me that still forgets that you can flush the toilet paper and brush your teeth in the water from the tap. It’s the part of me that misses the everchanging, always interesting sky of Guatemala, and the constant reminder on the faces of people around me that the world can be a dangerous and difficult place.
I suppose I have been changed by what I learned about life in Guatemala. People are careful there when they talk about politics. Even though the Peace Accords of Jan 1996 ended the bloodbath of the civil war, the rich and powerful still are free to act with impunity, and one must be careful not to offend someone with powerful and influential friends. Corruption is so blatant, the rich so privileged that people are always careful about what they say and do. The damage from Hurricane Stan in October 2005 is largely unrepaired because the money that comes in for aid rarely makes it to the farmers and villagers who have suffered losses. So cornfields are washed out, streams eroded up to the front doors or houses. It is hard to look at. It is not just that I have not forgotten what it looks like. Just knowing how hard life is for so many of the people in the villages that I passed through has changed the way I understand life. It hurts in a place that wasn’t there before I went to Guatemala. The question still remains for me: what will I do with this new understanding? If I feel as if I stand in solidarity with those who struggle for the necessities of life, if I have come to think that Jesus would be organizing the poor of Guatemala and healing their sicknesses, how will this change what I do with my time and my resources? As I reconnect with academic life and the studies that are shaping my skills as a pastor, how will I keep alive this experience of Guatemala and its strong and beautiful people?
January 30, 2006
Although I have been home from Guatemala for a week, there is a part of me that is still in suspense. What feels natural to my body does not necessarily feel so natural to my soul. Being in my own room, seeing old friends, preparing for classes and reading all the mail that has stacked up since mid-December does feel good and grounds me in the life in which I have been working so long. But the part of me that came to love life in Xela has not been integrated into my American life. It’s the part of me that notes in Spanish how late it is when I wake up and have to hurry to get ready. It’s the part of me that is ready to greet the people I meet on the sidewalk with a smiling “Buenos Dias.” It’s the part of me that doesn’t care how well put together my outfit looks because we are all just wrapping up against the cold and every colorful outfit seems appropriate. It’s the part of me that still forgets that you can flush the toilet paper and brush your teeth in the water from the tap. It’s the part of me that misses the everchanging, always interesting sky of Guatemala, and the constant reminder on the faces of people around me that the world can be a dangerous and difficult place.
I suppose I have been changed by what I learned about life in Guatemala. People are careful there when they talk about politics. Even though the Peace Accords of Jan 1996 ended the bloodbath of the civil war, the rich and powerful still are free to act with impunity, and one must be careful not to offend someone with powerful and influential friends. Corruption is so blatant, the rich so privileged that people are always careful about what they say and do. The damage from Hurricane Stan in October 2005 is largely unrepaired because the money that comes in for aid rarely makes it to the farmers and villagers who have suffered losses. So cornfields are washed out, streams eroded up to the front doors or houses. It is hard to look at. It is not just that I have not forgotten what it looks like. Just knowing how hard life is for so many of the people in the villages that I passed through has changed the way I understand life. It hurts in a place that wasn’t there before I went to Guatemala. The question still remains for me: what will I do with this new understanding? If I feel as if I stand in solidarity with those who struggle for the necessities of life, if I have come to think that Jesus would be organizing the poor of Guatemala and healing their sicknesses, how will this change what I do with my time and my resources? As I reconnect with academic life and the studies that are shaping my skills as a pastor, how will I keep alive this experience of Guatemala and its strong and beautiful people?
Monday, January 16, 2006
Guatemala Journal
January 15, 2006
In the last ten days, I have seen extremes that make this journey a wonder. The Boca Costa has some of the richest agricultural territory in Guatemala and some of the most grinding poverty. We students had a chance to witness the richness of the land and the warmth of people who live on next to nothing.
CHICHICASTENANGO
When I left, I went back to the highlands via Chichicastenango, a famous market town in the altiplano. Indigenous people come from all over the central highlands to buy, sell, and trade agricultural and artesenal products. I was out in the plaza as soon as I arrived on Saturday afternoon to look at local weaving. I found every kind of blanket, bedspread, and tablecloth. There were bags with leather trim, bags without leather, bags big and small. Women´s traditional blouses and skirts were for sale, as well as weaving and embroidery specifically for the tourist trade. I found a shop on the plaza that had clerical stoles and bought two. I wish I could say I was glad to be back in the thin cold air of the altiplano, but I loved the warmth of the Boca Costa. My trip was rudely interrupted by food poisoning. I had been the only student so far not to experience stomach distress, but I made up for it in one dramatic night of misery. What made me think that ordering chorizo in a country restaurant was a good Idea? As I was making trips back and forth to the bathroom, I could hear trucks and handcarts arriving in the dark, and locals setting up booths all around my plaza hotel location. I finally slept and when I got outside at 11:30 am, the streets were packed with merchants and customers for six blocks in every direction. I think I saw more American tourists in that morning than I had seen in all my time in Xela. I wish I had been able to enjoy the drama of the market. It was a throbbing, colorful whirl in every direction. I have never seen anything like it. Everytime I walked out in to the throng my stomach began to tighten up, and I went back to my room. I just wanted my car to come and take me away.
TIKAL
I returned to my own apartment and private bath in Xela, settling in for another week of study and quiet for my stomach before leaving on Friday afternoon for Antigua, the beginning of a trip to the Mayan ruins in the jungle of Tikal. A 6:00 am flight took us to Flores, from which the hotel bussed us into the ecological park about an hour away. Our guide, Nixon, took us for a four hour hike across ruins that date from as far back as 250 BCE. Tikal comprises the largest area of Mayan ruins in the tropics. Archeologists worked for 30 years to clear vegetation and reconstruct the limestone ruins that have been melting under rain and vegetation since 900 CE. Some of the temples emerge from mounds of vegetation on one side to huge blocks of limestone on the other. Nixon introduced us to local trees, including the cieba, the national tree of Guatemala. The largest example we saw rose hundreds of feet to branches so thickly covered with epiphytic vegetation that they looked like they were wearing fur trim. We climbed up wooden ladders to the top of Templo IV to look out across the acres of flat green forest in every direction. Two other temples rise up out of the forest as if the civilization which created them is still scurrying around below trees. We saw squirrel monkeys chasing each other through the trees, and a squad of coatimundis busily checking every root and crevice for bugs.
This is a perfect time of year to visit the jungle. It is warm, but not too hot, and because it is starting to dry out after the rainy season, the mosquitos are not too bad. Our hotel was a tropical dream with thatch--roofed bungalows and a huge pool.. A bunch of Spanish students from all over the world hung out by the pool, in the dining room, wandered the grounds looking at amazing birds and animals we had seen in books. We had long conversations in English and Spanish, drank beer, lay in the sun. I didn´t want to leave.
I kept trying to remember that only the week before I had been living with some of the poorest people in the world, had been in the thin, bitter chill of the altiplano. But it was hard while my body was so comfortable and relaxed and warm, full of good food and charmed by pleasant company. What a lovely respite. Guatemala is a land of extremes, hot and cold, rich and poor, lush jungle and barren mountain plain, old and new squeezed side by side every minute. It is almost too much to take in. I am eternally grateful to have had the chance to experience so much of it. I makes me wish I had more time to travel and see even more.
January 15, 2006
In the last ten days, I have seen extremes that make this journey a wonder. The Boca Costa has some of the richest agricultural territory in Guatemala and some of the most grinding poverty. We students had a chance to witness the richness of the land and the warmth of people who live on next to nothing.
CHICHICASTENANGO
When I left, I went back to the highlands via Chichicastenango, a famous market town in the altiplano. Indigenous people come from all over the central highlands to buy, sell, and trade agricultural and artesenal products. I was out in the plaza as soon as I arrived on Saturday afternoon to look at local weaving. I found every kind of blanket, bedspread, and tablecloth. There were bags with leather trim, bags without leather, bags big and small. Women´s traditional blouses and skirts were for sale, as well as weaving and embroidery specifically for the tourist trade. I found a shop on the plaza that had clerical stoles and bought two. I wish I could say I was glad to be back in the thin cold air of the altiplano, but I loved the warmth of the Boca Costa. My trip was rudely interrupted by food poisoning. I had been the only student so far not to experience stomach distress, but I made up for it in one dramatic night of misery. What made me think that ordering chorizo in a country restaurant was a good Idea? As I was making trips back and forth to the bathroom, I could hear trucks and handcarts arriving in the dark, and locals setting up booths all around my plaza hotel location. I finally slept and when I got outside at 11:30 am, the streets were packed with merchants and customers for six blocks in every direction. I think I saw more American tourists in that morning than I had seen in all my time in Xela. I wish I had been able to enjoy the drama of the market. It was a throbbing, colorful whirl in every direction. I have never seen anything like it. Everytime I walked out in to the throng my stomach began to tighten up, and I went back to my room. I just wanted my car to come and take me away.
TIKAL
I returned to my own apartment and private bath in Xela, settling in for another week of study and quiet for my stomach before leaving on Friday afternoon for Antigua, the beginning of a trip to the Mayan ruins in the jungle of Tikal. A 6:00 am flight took us to Flores, from which the hotel bussed us into the ecological park about an hour away. Our guide, Nixon, took us for a four hour hike across ruins that date from as far back as 250 BCE. Tikal comprises the largest area of Mayan ruins in the tropics. Archeologists worked for 30 years to clear vegetation and reconstruct the limestone ruins that have been melting under rain and vegetation since 900 CE. Some of the temples emerge from mounds of vegetation on one side to huge blocks of limestone on the other. Nixon introduced us to local trees, including the cieba, the national tree of Guatemala. The largest example we saw rose hundreds of feet to branches so thickly covered with epiphytic vegetation that they looked like they were wearing fur trim. We climbed up wooden ladders to the top of Templo IV to look out across the acres of flat green forest in every direction. Two other temples rise up out of the forest as if the civilization which created them is still scurrying around below trees. We saw squirrel monkeys chasing each other through the trees, and a squad of coatimundis busily checking every root and crevice for bugs.
This is a perfect time of year to visit the jungle. It is warm, but not too hot, and because it is starting to dry out after the rainy season, the mosquitos are not too bad. Our hotel was a tropical dream with thatch--roofed bungalows and a huge pool.. A bunch of Spanish students from all over the world hung out by the pool, in the dining room, wandered the grounds looking at amazing birds and animals we had seen in books. We had long conversations in English and Spanish, drank beer, lay in the sun. I didn´t want to leave.
I kept trying to remember that only the week before I had been living with some of the poorest people in the world, had been in the thin, bitter chill of the altiplano. But it was hard while my body was so comfortable and relaxed and warm, full of good food and charmed by pleasant company. What a lovely respite. Guatemala is a land of extremes, hot and cold, rich and poor, lush jungle and barren mountain plain, old and new squeezed side by side every minute. It is almost too much to take in. I am eternally grateful to have had the chance to experience so much of it. I makes me wish I had more time to travel and see even more.
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Guatemala Journal, Jan 10
Guatemala Journal
January 10, 2006
The mountain school is located in one of the most beautiful parts of Guatemala. The Boca-Costa is one of the richest agricultural areas, the home of the coffee plantations. It is a land of deep, green ravines and tall trees. The vegetation along the highway looks familiar, ferns and philodendron just like in people´s living rooms, but the leaves are the size of tabletops and double beds. Volcano Santa Maria dominates the landscape, and I understand that if you get up just before dawn, you can see the glow of the fire in the volcano at the very top. I cannot testify to this phenomenon. The air is so moist that it sticks to the edges of the ravines in white wisps at all times of the day, but in the evening the clouds come down to touch the treetops all around the school, and as the light fades it is often colored rose or coral. I found myself always checking the sky and the clouds, it was a never-ending show.
The school itself was the home of a landowner long-gone. It is a very grand house by any scale, especially Guatemala, and easily houses 12 students 5 shared bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. It is a working organic farm with herbs and 100 chickens and the remains of a coffee finca worked by local families who tend, harvest and arrange for roasting of the coffee. There is fresh, real ground coffee all day every day at the mountain school, a real treat after two weeks of Nescafe´in Xela. The teachers conduct their classes in bamboo and grass huts in the basckyard. It is quite exotic. I loved it. The house has a kitchen where everyone gathers for beer or chocolate at night. We always started our conversations diligently in Spanish, but it didn´t take long for them to become a combination of Spanish and English, or all English. I found myself telling a story Maestra Miriam had told me of her trip to San Francisco and Redwood City – quite adequately in Spanish!
We ate all our meals with families in the neighbourhoods that the mountain school has been supporting since it´s arrival in 1997. It has helped to build schools, send students to school beyond primary education, bring in electricity and sanitation, and also teach health and nutrition in the neighborhood. The meals I ate were very basic, mostly beans and tortillas and soup. But I like beans and tortillas and soup, so I was happy. It is a revelation to sit in a block house with no windows, no running water, to share a dinner cooked on a wood-fired stove with a family of five that feels fortunate because their father has a regular job, and they are part of a community that owns the land their house is built on.
The stories of how these communities came to be on that particular mountainside were much the same, and matched the story of the finca across the highway that had just become the property of the workers. The original owner was a good man, treated his workers well, but when he died his children were not such good employers. Here the story varies a bit, but they all involve real hardship, no work, or work for no pay, the church or other organizations feeding families while they organize and try to gain their rights to back pay, etc. It usually takes a few years before anything changes, but the communities of Fatima and Nuevo San Jose, where we were, won enough to gain title to the land on which they currently live. Nuevo San Jose has been there since 1993 and has electricity, running water and septic system. Fatima has only been there for four years and has electricity, but no water yet.
I am very glad that I spent the week in the country, meeting people like Elsa and Juan and their beautiful and boisterous children. Ocsar taught me to play rummy en Español, and Gladis at 13, looks like a goddess on the way down to the local mill with a basket of leached maiz balanced on her head. It is not something I will ever forget. I know I would never have understood their lives in the same way if I had not been welcomed into them with such generosity. But the poverty and difficulty of life wore me out. ¨Los insectos¨ were really annoying, and two of the women in the school became sick with dengue fever from the mosquitos. At the end of the week, I was ready to leave. But as we drove up toward the altiplano again, I watched the clouds touch down on the trees and creep across the ravines. I was sorry that I would not be seeing that soon again. When I told the driver of the car that I thought the sky and the clouds in Guatemala were beautiful, he looked at me like I was crazy.
January 10, 2006
The mountain school is located in one of the most beautiful parts of Guatemala. The Boca-Costa is one of the richest agricultural areas, the home of the coffee plantations. It is a land of deep, green ravines and tall trees. The vegetation along the highway looks familiar, ferns and philodendron just like in people´s living rooms, but the leaves are the size of tabletops and double beds. Volcano Santa Maria dominates the landscape, and I understand that if you get up just before dawn, you can see the glow of the fire in the volcano at the very top. I cannot testify to this phenomenon. The air is so moist that it sticks to the edges of the ravines in white wisps at all times of the day, but in the evening the clouds come down to touch the treetops all around the school, and as the light fades it is often colored rose or coral. I found myself always checking the sky and the clouds, it was a never-ending show.
The school itself was the home of a landowner long-gone. It is a very grand house by any scale, especially Guatemala, and easily houses 12 students 5 shared bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. It is a working organic farm with herbs and 100 chickens and the remains of a coffee finca worked by local families who tend, harvest and arrange for roasting of the coffee. There is fresh, real ground coffee all day every day at the mountain school, a real treat after two weeks of Nescafe´in Xela. The teachers conduct their classes in bamboo and grass huts in the basckyard. It is quite exotic. I loved it. The house has a kitchen where everyone gathers for beer or chocolate at night. We always started our conversations diligently in Spanish, but it didn´t take long for them to become a combination of Spanish and English, or all English. I found myself telling a story Maestra Miriam had told me of her trip to San Francisco and Redwood City – quite adequately in Spanish!
We ate all our meals with families in the neighbourhoods that the mountain school has been supporting since it´s arrival in 1997. It has helped to build schools, send students to school beyond primary education, bring in electricity and sanitation, and also teach health and nutrition in the neighborhood. The meals I ate were very basic, mostly beans and tortillas and soup. But I like beans and tortillas and soup, so I was happy. It is a revelation to sit in a block house with no windows, no running water, to share a dinner cooked on a wood-fired stove with a family of five that feels fortunate because their father has a regular job, and they are part of a community that owns the land their house is built on.
The stories of how these communities came to be on that particular mountainside were much the same, and matched the story of the finca across the highway that had just become the property of the workers. The original owner was a good man, treated his workers well, but when he died his children were not such good employers. Here the story varies a bit, but they all involve real hardship, no work, or work for no pay, the church or other organizations feeding families while they organize and try to gain their rights to back pay, etc. It usually takes a few years before anything changes, but the communities of Fatima and Nuevo San Jose, where we were, won enough to gain title to the land on which they currently live. Nuevo San Jose has been there since 1993 and has electricity, running water and septic system. Fatima has only been there for four years and has electricity, but no water yet.
I am very glad that I spent the week in the country, meeting people like Elsa and Juan and their beautiful and boisterous children. Ocsar taught me to play rummy en Español, and Gladis at 13, looks like a goddess on the way down to the local mill with a basket of leached maiz balanced on her head. It is not something I will ever forget. I know I would never have understood their lives in the same way if I had not been welcomed into them with such generosity. But the poverty and difficulty of life wore me out. ¨Los insectos¨ were really annoying, and two of the women in the school became sick with dengue fever from the mosquitos. At the end of the week, I was ready to leave. But as we drove up toward the altiplano again, I watched the clouds touch down on the trees and creep across the ravines. I was sorry that I would not be seeing that soon again. When I told the driver of the car that I thought the sky and the clouds in Guatemala were beautiful, he looked at me like I was crazy.
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