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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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.

Guatemala Journal

Guatemala Journal

December 29, 2005

It continues cold in Xela, and even though it is the dry season, there was thunder and rain today. The clear days are best because the sun warms everything up pretty quickly, but the last few days have been overcast and really cold for a Southern California girl. This morning I put on a camisole, slacks, turtleneck shirt, cotton cardigan, fleece vest, zip sweatshirt and gloves for the walk to the school at 8:00am. I was able to shed the sweatshirt by midmorning, but the last few days I was still wearing all the layers including my gloves at our break at 11:00. Spanish instruction is 5 hours every day. This week I meet with my Maestra from 8:00 to 1:00. Last week I met with a different teacher in the afternoon from 2:00 to 7:00. Most of the time is spent in conversation. It sounds ridiculous, considering my Spanish skills, but we have talked about what the Lutheran Church thinks of Mary Magdalene, the syncretism of the Mayan/Catholic religion, Jewish festivals, the position of the Catholic Church on the poor in Guatemala, and whether Mary was really a virgin. We have also discussed the simple questions that illustrate new verbs and verb combinations: How old are your daughters, what do you wish for?
On Tuesday when my maestra asked me what was in my purse, I realized that I didn´t have it with me, which is unprecedented. We went back to Lila´s house to see if it was there, but it was not. The last time I remembered seeing it was in the internet cafe´. I had put it next to the laptop I was using. The room was so dark, the screen so bright, the conversation with the South African couple who let me use their connector to download my pictures so diverting, my black purse so small, it was easy to pack up my the bag with my flash drive and walk away without my purse. I was in a panic. I expected that it was gone for good. After all, this is Guatemala, and everyone just wants to rob rich Americans, right? We hiked over to the “Gospel Internet Café” where I was sure I´d left it, and they recognized me when I walked in. They had my purse, and everything was in it, my dollars and queztales, my id and my passport. I guess the Gospel part is not just a title.
As much as living with a family drives me crazy, the food has been wonderful. Lila is a good cook and turns the simplest ingredients into delicious meals. This morning I had banana pancakes with honey, yesterday a big fruit salad with fresh bananas, pineapple and melon with my toast and honey. Lunch is the main meal and on Monday we had Carne Asada – the Guatemalan style turns out to be two tortillas piled with grated cabbage and pimento pepper, thin grilled steak and homemade salsa. Tueday was a vegetable broth you ladle into bowls and then fill with rice and avocado, then after the soup you eat the cabbage, potatoes, corn, and chunks of carrots that have been cooked in the broth. There are usually tomalitos to go with everything – thin slices of masa that are heated up in the banana leaves in which they are refrigerated. A few days ago Lila made fresh tortillas on the stove to eat with fried chicken and vegetable salad. But sometimes the combinations get weird, like the afternoon we had chow mein, noodles with thin slices of peppers and cabbage, served with tortillas.
Next week I will be in the mountain school. I was prepared for it to be really cold, but it turns out to be in the Boca-Costa, the mid-coastal area, a lower altitude than Xela. The Boca-Costa is where coffee grows and the mountain school is in a village that grows coffee. Only 10 students study there at a time, and live in a dormitory in the school. We will take our meals with local families, and work with them in the organic garden when we are not studying or doing homework. I am looking forward to sunshine and warmer weather.

Guatemala Journal Dec 26, 2005

Guatemala Journal December 26, 2005 Christmas comes a little slower in Guatemala than in the US. It took all week for the Christmas lights to go up. The house next-door put up a spectacular display of lights over their façade that twinkled and played “We Wish You A Merry Christmas.” We had a wonderful Christmas party on Friday for all the families that house students, complete with a Posada around the local plaza. We lit candles inside red plastic cups and blew ceramic whistles as we marched out into the night, four students bearing the nacimiento (manger scene). When we returned to the school, we stood outside the door singing the traditional plea for a room, while those inside sang the reply, “go away, there is no room.” When the door was finally opened and we came in, they set off firecrackers in the street and fireworks on the roof plaza. We sat down to a feast of Christmas tamales and Ponche, a wonderful concoction of chopped pineapple, papaya and coconut that has bubbled on the stove in huge vat with water for a few hours. The school gave each family a gift basket filled with all the goodies required for holiday celebrations. Most of the families that house students depend on the 280 Queztales (about $35)per week that the school pays them to house us, so the cookies and chips were welcome. I´ve always wanted to be part of the group that makes Christmas tamales, but, of course, I grew up in the wrong ethnicity. This year I was able to join a group of women who giggled and gossiped while they worked. I didn´t understand everything, but I got it when they asked if I had a boyfriend. When I said no, they wanted to know if I wanted a Guatemalan boyfriend. I declined. Colleen (a student who lives with the family next door) told me later that the part I didn´t understand was their suggestion that having a Guatemalan boyfriend is a good way to learn the language, especially the parts of the body. The women had ground the rice for the chicken tamales earlier in the day, and the achiote paste that seasoned the chicken. Colleen and I helped assemble them in the banana leaf wrappers. Then we washed corn husks for wrapping the cambray, sweet tamales with raisins and colored sugar inside. We learned how to wrap and tie them, but not as well as the women who have been doing it all their lives. They whipped them together so fast you couldn´t even tell what exactly they were doing. Lila and Mari-Jose and I visited with two families after the tamale making, arriving at our second destination at midnight, just in time to hear the whole town set off their firecrackers and light up the sky with rockets of every variety. We sat down to sweet wine and tamales and cake that was soaked in rum. Wow! We exchanged our own small presents at 2:30 am, and slept til 10:00 am Christmas Day. Lila and Mari-Jose got a color TV and DVD player for Christmas. Mari-Jose has not taken her eyes off it since. She tried to set up the DVD player, but couldn´t get it right. I was no help, there were no instructions in English, and my electronic skills are shaky at best. The teenaged boys next door (known affectionately as El Guapo, “Handsome”) had been showing off their DVD´s when we had been there the night before, so I suggested to Mari-Jose that she ask el Guapo for help. The youngest son came over when he woke up later in the day and set it right up, explaining what she had done wrong. Mari-Jose and I spent the day watching American movies with Spanish subtitles. It was fun. I was reading the story of the Annunciation in Spanish and English Christmas morning, and singing the Annunciation from Holden Evening Prayer. It is one of my favourite pieces of music. Mary´s song of justice finally coming to birth has a different sound to me in Guatemala. It makes me sad to realize that not much has changed in these 2000 years. I see the poor every day here. Climbing on the local bus with the indigenous people makes me aware every time that they often live in squalid conditions. There is a particular smell that comes from living in a mud house. It is not offensive, but it is distinct. A Mayan man and woman were at the Christmas celebration we attended. They had their new baby, wrapped in several layers of white blankets. He might have been the one to save his people from the way that they looked at him. Does every family who lives in such conditions hope their son will be the one to change their world? I wonder.

Guatemala Journal Dec 20

Guatemala Journal

December 20, 2005

Xela (Quetzaltenango) is more foreign even than I imagined. Streets are narrow and houses and stores front right on the narrow sidewalk. The sidewalks are high and narrow enough that it is sometimes safer to walk in the street. Drivers rocket through them, honking at unwary pedestrians. The part of Xela which houses the school is low, having been a lake in the past. Some streets have concrete and iron bridges over them, dating from the days before the lake was drained for houses. Much of this part of the town suffered flooding and mud damage during Hurricane Stan in October. There are still piles of mud against some curbs and driveways, but most of it is cleaned up by now.

Projecto Linguistico Quetzalteco Español is a friendly face on a street where everything looks the same. Bright ochre yellow, the door opens onto a courtyard full of desks with students and teachers. There is coffee and tea in the café and a room full of internet-abled computers, free for the first half-hour. The library has games and films as well as books in English and Spanish. There are trips to local spots through the week and lectures about various human rights causes. PLQ is revolutionary. They are deeply involved in the struggle for true democratic institutions in Guatemala, and have strong connections to the local indigenous culture, where the profits from the school are distributed to provide opportunities which otherwise would not be available.

Today several of us took a trip to Olintepeque, a village higher up in the Quezaltenango province. There is a large indigenous population there, and today is market day. The market was full of chickens old and young, turkeys, geese, and ducks. Christmas is coming and the local people make special tamales. They are made with rice instead of corn and filled with meat and olives or with raisins and other sweets. The market was full of all the ingredients for Tamales Natividad, plus every other imaginable item from laundry soap to shoes and local fabrics.

The indigenous women wear skirts which are two panels of dark patterned weaving wrapped around their waist and tied with a patterned, floral belt and an embroidered apron tied on the front. Most of the colors from this region seem to be dark. The skirts are most often indigo with a white pattern woven in. But blouses and belts are bright with embroidered flowers on a light ground, pink or coral or lavender. Even the girls are usually dressed in handwoven colors. In Olintepeque, almost all the women wore indigenous clothing top to bottom, but here in the city, you are likely to find any combination local fabrics and European fashions.

My host family lives about six blocks away from school. Lila and her daughter, Marie-Jose, are my hosts. They are very patient with my poor Spanish, and lack of conversation. Their house is pretty primitive, but, I think, about average. There is no heat, but my room has sun coming in all day, so it is warm. It is hard to live with someone and not be able to talk to them. I have a million questions to ask and lots of stories to share, but I can´t. Some days it is really frustrating and makes me sad.

I meet with my Maestra every day for five hours and we converse in Spanish. I am getting to the point where I use my dictionary equally for Spanish and English, but it is still such an intellectual process to produce a sentence or two. I alternate between being proud of my progress and discouraged that I´ll ever learn. I look forward to what the rest of the week will bring.

Retreat Days

September 1, 2005, Saint Andrews Abbey

Underneath all the planning, preparing for approval, accepting responsibility for stewardship of my new financial assets is still a well of grief. It meets me here. I was already weeping when I arrived. Every time I thought about money, it opened a well of tears. It should have been clear from my inability to do anything smart with my money that it was complicated for me. Leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars in my checking account and using it to buy hundred-dollar shoes is not a good investment strategy. But I was unprepared for the deep anxiety and tears that followed my conversation with Jim Kottra, my new financial manager.
It was tempting to spend my time here working my way through the Buffy DVDs Rachel gave me as a birthday gift, and making runs down the hill for chocolate bars. I made another choice; to be in the quiet of this place and let it inform my reflection. If this is “God’s House” for me, I need to bring all the turmoil, all the doubt, all the fear and questions and let them breathe in this high desert air. I want to let God’s presence here inform how I see them, how I hold them, how I live in those questions.
This openness is so hard. Everything makes me cry; singing “into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit…” at Compline; watching the morning light illuminate the cups and glasses on the empty breakfast table brings tears up from a deep well of both sadness and joy. These are the images that go with me when I leave here, that are part of my dwelling in God’s house forever.
Walking on the monastery road this morning, Father E’s garden with its avenue of brilliant green Lombardy Poplars rose up on the hill to my left. Ahead of me were the cottonwoods which surround the pasture, reaching higher than the five-story Disney Concert Hall we visited on Monday. The trees never fail to move me with their glorious, unself-conscious beauty. On Monday, Marti and I spent the day at the new concert hall and cathedral in Los Angeles, architectural wonders of the modern world. And, I find, they pale in comparison to the simple beauty of these trees. The rise of the poplars is the truth that the spires of cathedrals imitate, the delicate green on the huge cottonwoods, the real grace that architecture emulates. Walking among these monuments of living praise invites me to release the reactions that drive my compulsions for the time that I am here, knowing that when I pick them up again to leave, I might have some new peace with them.
In Psalm 50, God chides the people for going through the motions in their worship and praise. The praise God asks for is disarmingly simple – requests for help in distress. Who would have thought that asking for help when you are lost and confused is praise? So I will spread my loneliness and confusion out before the God who invites them into our relationship. I will bring that home.