hello!
so this one is less of a blog and more of a request to each of you to take about 5 minutes to be part of my final project for my liberation theology project. The assignment is to in some (creative) way represent how we have been liberated during our time in El Salvador. For me, in so many ways my time here has been a time of Liberation. So many boxes have exploded: my faith, my view of myself have both expanded through my relationships while I have been here and with this expansion and liberation I have been able to be in relationship, in friendships in a more complete way. In particular one way I have been liberated has been how I value myself. I realized here that when I think of myself I often think of all my mistakes, all of the things I could have done better or differently first. I have been learning to see the good in myself... and through that, have been able to see that my thoughts and feelings have more value than I tend to give them, and so I am (learning!) to speak from myself, to see the good in me to value myself enough to then be able to share my uncomforts with others.
so in the end, this really has been a circle, that through my relationships I have been able to see, to value myself, more and so then to be able to be more fully in relationships with the people who have been walking this journey with me.
Each of you reading this has been walking this semester with me and so you too have been a part of the process for me ... though maybe you didn't know it until now! So I would like to invite you to be a part of my project. Here it is:
I am making a quilt of squares, one square for each person who has been part of my liberation. In EL Salvador, this means I give you a square and you get to draw or write your answer...for you my friends back to home, it means please respond to the following in a message or email and I will write (or draw if you tell me to!) on the square for you.
in the center will be: what do you love about yourself? what about you makes you the most you?
on one side will be: please write me a short message about what you love about me
on another side: i will write a short message about what I love about you (and tell you in a replying email so you can know what i put)
much thanks and more love!
christy
05 May 2009
27 April 2009
more campo!
so more stories from campo...
the second day there we played soccer...divided up so first the women playe and then the men so the women woudn´t have pena... it was a blast, and surprisingly (we were expecting to be cruchsed) we tied, empate!
about half way through julia and i taught eduardo how to play crazy eights (or crazy eights). i think we started wednesday night. i lost everysingle game...and we played probably about 10 or something. the next morning we hiked to the top of the mountain. steep hot dusty. but then we just hung out up there for over an hour, played crazy eights some more. and eduardo brought cucumbers (5 rather large ones) lime and salt. so after a couple rounds of losing i asked for a cucumber. i peeled it with his machete and i ate it, holding the whole thing in my hand, putting lime and salt on top, and just taking huge bits out of it...lik it was a banana but not. the rounds we played while i was eating my pepino i won. so for the rest of the week we talked about my lucky pepino and esuardo would say "cris, va perder por que no tiene su pepino" ... you are going to lose because you don´t have your cucumber. and i would respond... nope, i still have it, it is still in me...
and lets just talk about that for a second. and just a preface, we talk about poop a lot here. it is just part of life, and an important part because if you poop normal it´s kind of a big deal... and if you are not, well it´s nice to know everyone else here understands and shares your pain. so anyway, i´m inviting you to http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42197join this conversation about the poop side of life: here we go. i pooped twice the whole week we were in the campo. once teusday and once sunday morning (easter --such a good gift! .. though a part of me wished i could have waited til i was back to a flushing toilet instead of a latrine... but you know asi es la vida...). so my luckjy pepino was with me wednesday on, though honestly it didn´t do me much good and i my losing streak started up again. and the toilets: they had a special kind of latrine that was two "toilets"so you use obne until the hole beneath it gets filled up, switch to the other, wait a year i think and then mix it up and use it as fertilizar. now the things is that only poop is good for fertilizar, the pee would mess it up. htis means that the "toilets" look pretty funny... i really meant to take a picture, but i never remembered to take the camera with me to the bathroom. but so the latrine is made of cement and the back half goes straight down like a normal porta potty thing (though much less smelly cause you put like sand and lyme in after every time you poop) and then the front half was like a ement cylinder into a plastic black tube that took the pee to another little bit different place... so proabably more than you wanted to know, but part of life. it´s probably funny but just about everytime i use the bathroom (especially when it is actually in a toilet...) i just think of my interreligious dialogue class and how rabbi white said part of one of the traditional jewish prayers thanks God for the ability to go to the bathroom, and i do the same.
and back to easter! holy week traditions here are beautiful. there´s the traditional holy thursday last supper washing of the feet. on friday there are stations of the cross and then a mass, and then an easter vigil on sautrday night. but there´s a huge difference, especially in the campo: everything is at least an hour walk away. 4 cantones (hamlets) celebrate the easter season together and so each canton hosts a different day. carasque where i was this year had palm sunday, which was before we got there, so everything else was a quite a walk. my favorite parts. we did live stations of the cross, walking outside in the hot dust, with a pick-up driving behinf the whole crowd with a megaphone, the readers speaking into wireless mikes at each station. and for each station they had a little poster on a tall stick (i might have a picture... i´ll see) and they would tell the story of the station and then they would prayer these beautiful prayers. the one i remember the best is the one where the strip Jesus of his clothes and they prayed, Lord we too have been stripped of the little we have. OUr jobs, money food... even our human dignity (plus a little mre) Lord Here our prayer... and then the would continue: Lord at times we have taken the dignity and the little of other, Forgive us Lord forgive us. Abnd some of the women who walked an hour to walk an hour and half in the stations were old and would kneel in the dust at each station.
saturday day we spenet at the river. this tradition on hoy saturday to go to water and just have fun. we played and plashed and it was so fun. lydia brought tamales for lunch, chicken tamales. and they were good except they don´t take the bones out of the chicken before putting the chicken in the tamales! and so the inside of one of my tamales was a whole chicken foot! wacala (yuck)! ..i quitely took it out and his it under a rock in the beach. i may be soemthing less than a fan of chicken tamales...
my other favorite part was on the way to the easter village it was dark and it´s el salvador and the mass was supposed to start at 7 so of course we left the house at 7 and were walking and we take a short cut of the road through the trees and brush and walk and walk and walk and walk and we get finally down to the river, a little bit before the bridge and we see these flashlights behind us. it was so beautiful: ileas (who is about 6 and lived in carasque and just shines really...) and matt (a jesuit novice) and several families and we just all met up crossed the bridge, left the road again and are walking single file along the river with four flashlights, some times in silence and soemtimes laughing and sometimes running to catch up, in the night with these four lights bobbing around. and i felt so at peace to be in the procession, and completely unatease thinking that this is what it was like during the war when they had to abandon their homes and take to the mountains to avoid being slaughtered by the army. this is like that... but at the same time this is completely different: we hve light and we can laugh and talk and we are not walking in fear. and so it was peaceful and ghostly. and how ppropriate that those deaths and that fear should be remembered and walked in the night after Christ died. Marcel says that hope only is when despair is possible. the image of those four lights in the safe darkness i can still see when i close my eyes ... and how corny does that sounds, but they talk corny here, and it´s true.
more pictures...
oops... i don´t have my campo pictures on my flash drive so instead i´m going to put up some pictures of my kids and me ! (all of these are my kids except the third from the bottom which is a picture of the youth group that meets every daturday evening... but it´s the room where we have engish class...)
the second day there we played soccer...divided up so first the women playe and then the men so the women woudn´t have pena... it was a blast, and surprisingly (we were expecting to be cruchsed) we tied, empate!
about half way through julia and i taught eduardo how to play crazy eights (or crazy eights). i think we started wednesday night. i lost everysingle game...and we played probably about 10 or something. the next morning we hiked to the top of the mountain. steep hot dusty. but then we just hung out up there for over an hour, played crazy eights some more. and eduardo brought cucumbers (5 rather large ones) lime and salt. so after a couple rounds of losing i asked for a cucumber. i peeled it with his machete and i ate it, holding the whole thing in my hand, putting lime and salt on top, and just taking huge bits out of it...lik it was a banana but not. the rounds we played while i was eating my pepino i won. so for the rest of the week we talked about my lucky pepino and esuardo would say "cris, va perder por que no tiene su pepino" ... you are going to lose because you don´t have your cucumber. and i would respond... nope, i still have it, it is still in me...
and lets just talk about that for a second. and just a preface, we talk about poop a lot here. it is just part of life, and an important part because if you poop normal it´s kind of a big deal... and if you are not, well it´s nice to know everyone else here understands and shares your pain. so anyway, i´m inviting you to http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42197join this conversation about the poop side of life: here we go. i pooped twice the whole week we were in the campo. once teusday and once sunday morning (easter --such a good gift! .. though a part of me wished i could have waited til i was back to a flushing toilet instead of a latrine... but you know asi es la vida...). so my luckjy pepino was with me wednesday on, though honestly it didn´t do me much good and i my losing streak started up again. and the toilets: they had a special kind of latrine that was two "toilets"so you use obne until the hole beneath it gets filled up, switch to the other, wait a year i think and then mix it up and use it as fertilizar. now the things is that only poop is good for fertilizar, the pee would mess it up. htis means that the "toilets" look pretty funny... i really meant to take a picture, but i never remembered to take the camera with me to the bathroom. but so the latrine is made of cement and the back half goes straight down like a normal porta potty thing (though much less smelly cause you put like sand and lyme in after every time you poop) and then the front half was like a ement cylinder into a plastic black tube that took the pee to another little bit different place... so proabably more than you wanted to know, but part of life. it´s probably funny but just about everytime i use the bathroom (especially when it is actually in a toilet...) i just think of my interreligious dialogue class and how rabbi white said part of one of the traditional jewish prayers thanks God for the ability to go to the bathroom, and i do the same.
and back to easter! holy week traditions here are beautiful. there´s the traditional holy thursday last supper washing of the feet. on friday there are stations of the cross and then a mass, and then an easter vigil on sautrday night. but there´s a huge difference, especially in the campo: everything is at least an hour walk away. 4 cantones (hamlets) celebrate the easter season together and so each canton hosts a different day. carasque where i was this year had palm sunday, which was before we got there, so everything else was a quite a walk. my favorite parts. we did live stations of the cross, walking outside in the hot dust, with a pick-up driving behinf the whole crowd with a megaphone, the readers speaking into wireless mikes at each station. and for each station they had a little poster on a tall stick (i might have a picture... i´ll see) and they would tell the story of the station and then they would prayer these beautiful prayers. the one i remember the best is the one where the strip Jesus of his clothes and they prayed, Lord we too have been stripped of the little we have. OUr jobs, money food... even our human dignity (plus a little mre) Lord Here our prayer... and then the would continue: Lord at times we have taken the dignity and the little of other, Forgive us Lord forgive us. Abnd some of the women who walked an hour to walk an hour and half in the stations were old and would kneel in the dust at each station.
saturday day we spenet at the river. this tradition on hoy saturday to go to water and just have fun. we played and plashed and it was so fun. lydia brought tamales for lunch, chicken tamales. and they were good except they don´t take the bones out of the chicken before putting the chicken in the tamales! and so the inside of one of my tamales was a whole chicken foot! wacala (yuck)! ..i quitely took it out and his it under a rock in the beach. i may be soemthing less than a fan of chicken tamales...
my other favorite part was on the way to the easter village it was dark and it´s el salvador and the mass was supposed to start at 7 so of course we left the house at 7 and were walking and we take a short cut of the road through the trees and brush and walk and walk and walk and walk and we get finally down to the river, a little bit before the bridge and we see these flashlights behind us. it was so beautiful: ileas (who is about 6 and lived in carasque and just shines really...) and matt (a jesuit novice) and several families and we just all met up crossed the bridge, left the road again and are walking single file along the river with four flashlights, some times in silence and soemtimes laughing and sometimes running to catch up, in the night with these four lights bobbing around. and i felt so at peace to be in the procession, and completely unatease thinking that this is what it was like during the war when they had to abandon their homes and take to the mountains to avoid being slaughtered by the army. this is like that... but at the same time this is completely different: we hve light and we can laugh and talk and we are not walking in fear. and so it was peaceful and ghostly. and how ppropriate that those deaths and that fear should be remembered and walked in the night after Christ died. Marcel says that hope only is when despair is possible. the image of those four lights in the safe darkness i can still see when i close my eyes ... and how corny does that sounds, but they talk corny here, and it´s true.
more pictures...
oops... i don´t have my campo pictures on my flash drive so instead i´m going to put up some pictures of my kids and me ! (all of these are my kids except the third from the bottom which is a picture of the youth group that meets every daturday evening... but it´s the room where we have engish class...)
24 April 2009
campo!
finally, here we go: campo! .... and i only have about 10 minutes, so this one may come in installments :)
so i spent holy week in carasquem which is a little cantón (hamlet) outside of arcatao in the department chaletenango. we were right on the border of Honduras. I spent the week with a beautiful family, Lydia and Beto were the parents and Eduardo (20), Hector (19) and Marina (18) were the kids you still ived at home --the have three older siblings who have already moved out.
Lydia had planned a very special dinner for our first night: crab and fish soup. New this is nothing like what you would think. Are you ready? So clearly it still had to be prepared when we arrived and so the first thing I did in "my" house was "help" Lydia get everything ready. This meant tearing the claws off live crabs, then ripping the top part of the shell off, and putting everything in a small wachal (small tupperware-ish plastic circle container). Then, the fish: they were about the size of my thumb and cleaning them entailed slicing open their bellies, squeezing out the guts and fish poo, and throwing them into the same wachal. Now, innocent that I was, I figured some further cleaning was going to take place before all these mariscos (sea food) were put in the soup. Absolutely not. So eating this soup meant fishing around (hehe) in the soup and when you got a fish, the fins had to be removed, and the "espinas" (spines - bones) removed, the head... and scales and the little meat that there was eaten ... and let me tell you i am fairly certain that there were more bones then fish in those little guys! then the crabs...oh cangrejos (like how i´m slipping in all this spanish? just getting you guys ready for when i come back! lol)... the bones were everywhere and the meat was in hidden pockets... i got a little bit and then i got tired of getting crab shell in my teeth and i kind of stopped... oh my goodness. and Lydia was so cute and soo excited to be having crab.
and i have to be running so just a hint of what is to come (and a reminder to me...;)
-ochos locos y pepinos
-the bathroom
-soccer
-the river
-chicken tamales
-the hike
-mangos and pineapple
- motorcycles!
oh and some pictures here too...
a picture of the mountains
the girls (us girls and carasque girls) playing soccer and just hte beautiful view the mountains behind
my "brother" eduardo and I after he taught me how to ride his brother´s motorcycle!
julia (the other woman from my program who stayed with me) and hector in front of the sunsetting behind the mountains or our walk back home one evening.
and our family´s chicken house --they had a chicken farm and 700 chickens are in that little house!
so i spent holy week in carasquem which is a little cantón (hamlet) outside of arcatao in the department chaletenango. we were right on the border of Honduras. I spent the week with a beautiful family, Lydia and Beto were the parents and Eduardo (20), Hector (19) and Marina (18) were the kids you still ived at home --the have three older siblings who have already moved out.
Lydia had planned a very special dinner for our first night: crab and fish soup. New this is nothing like what you would think. Are you ready? So clearly it still had to be prepared when we arrived and so the first thing I did in "my" house was "help" Lydia get everything ready. This meant tearing the claws off live crabs, then ripping the top part of the shell off, and putting everything in a small wachal (small tupperware-ish plastic circle container). Then, the fish: they were about the size of my thumb and cleaning them entailed slicing open their bellies, squeezing out the guts and fish poo, and throwing them into the same wachal. Now, innocent that I was, I figured some further cleaning was going to take place before all these mariscos (sea food) were put in the soup. Absolutely not. So eating this soup meant fishing around (hehe) in the soup and when you got a fish, the fins had to be removed, and the "espinas" (spines - bones) removed, the head... and scales and the little meat that there was eaten ... and let me tell you i am fairly certain that there were more bones then fish in those little guys! then the crabs...oh cangrejos (like how i´m slipping in all this spanish? just getting you guys ready for when i come back! lol)... the bones were everywhere and the meat was in hidden pockets... i got a little bit and then i got tired of getting crab shell in my teeth and i kind of stopped... oh my goodness. and Lydia was so cute and soo excited to be having crab.
and i have to be running so just a hint of what is to come (and a reminder to me...;)
-ochos locos y pepinos
-the bathroom
-soccer
-the river
-chicken tamales
-the hike
-mangos and pineapple
- motorcycles!
oh and some pictures here too...
a picture of the mountains
the girls (us girls and carasque girls) playing soccer and just hte beautiful view the mountains behind
my "brother" eduardo and I after he taught me how to ride his brother´s motorcycle!
julia (the other woman from my program who stayed with me) and hector in front of the sunsetting behind the mountains or our walk back home one evening.
and our family´s chicken house --they had a chicken farm and 700 chickens are in that little house!
17 April 2009
blood and roses...and not the campo
What do I remember? The first night, week, moments: images rise up behind my eyes.
Everything is the same and everything is different. This has been my refrain for the past what? Month, I guess. But what is the same? And what is different? My heart tightens even as I try to give it a name.
I am different. I am different. I have a nose ring and a new dress. I wear tang tops without an over shirt. I have orange and blue yarn around my wrist. Sometimes Spanish comes easier than English, and I find myself saying “chivo” or “va, pues” without thinking. I dream in Spanish and sometimes my fingers have a hard time finding quotation marks on a regular US keyboard … and all of these are real, but there are a million things in my appearance, speech, mannerisms that are ever so much the same. And these visible concrete things are symptoms rather than the root anyway.
What is at the heart then? What is at the heart of my hearts? Right now, in this moment: tears. Tears and this bittersweet ache that wants to shy away from naming this because to name it is to know it, to name my love for my samedifferent self and to own that love, with one month left, one month before returning to the states where everything is the same and everything is different, but it is a samedifference that will make me more the same and more different. Sometimes I wonder which way is down in DC, where are my feet? What are they grounded on? Do my samedifferent feet have a home in my life of last semester? Of course not. That was last semester and neither my feet nor my heart can return. And that is scary. And relieving.
When my mom and sister were here, we went to the beach. My sister and I stood side my side in the waves. With each gentle crash, our feet were buried deeper and deeper and deeper until one crash, one not so gentle crash, knocked me into stepping back, my feet away from their home, sand and water filling in the space which had seconds before held my feet. I couldn’t go back. And in a new place, new sand and new water, I stood. And again my feet put down roots and I laughed. I laughed with the waves while watching them more carefully, so my feet would not be knocked back again from their comfy, though rocky, home.
I can see the next wave coming, and it is giant. I am in its shadow, and in this wave the sun is shining through and swimming in the wave are sharks, shining in the sun as the blue water sparkles. And it is coming towards me and it is beautiful and terrifying. There are 30 of us here now, our feet in the sand, holding hands, grips ever tightening, in love and in pain, some with eyes on the sun, the waves, the sharks, our feet, each other. All of us knowing the wave is coming. And we will be crashed over, our feet uprooted, forced to find a new home on a beach that was once wholly known, but now where the sand and water and sun are both familiar and strange, our previous foot homes long ago filled with water and sand, though still visible by an soft shadow.
And that big wave, the one with the sharks, beautiful and terrible, casts its shadow over the fish at our feet, the birds, the smaller waves that crash before us, our gripped-tight hands. And it is here where the secrete lies: do we close our eyes, ignore the shadows and bury ourselves in the sweet singing of the birds, or bury ourselves in the overwhelming sight of the shadow, the darkness, the terror? Or de we see the fish, hear the birds, and the people laughing, while we stand in the shadow. Do we let the hands holding the knots in our hearts stay? Do we see the beauty and the terror? The shadow and those other waves? And those sharks shining in the light of that grand wave.
Fear and suffering are part of life, side by side with hope and joy. Now. Right now: do we live in a world that allows both to live together, as hands clasped one to the other, fingers intertwined? Or do we live with minds and eyes and hearts half open, in realities where suffering and joy are mutually exclusive?
Irony. That cat of blood and roses. The crucifixion and resurrection, suffering and joy, tears and laughter.
And I yell and I scream, my feet in the sand/hands gripped tight/eyes on those sharks, that I am more.
I claim my fears and my pain and my tears and my hurt. I claim my struggle to feel all of these things.
I clam that I am the daughter of my parents – and the smile that that brings and also the fear it implies.
I claim my depression and even those desires I have had to stop existing.
But these here I do not claim alone because alone they is false, and if these fingers are not intertwined with those of the other hand, I reject this as lies, because to be true there must be more.
And so I claim my hopes and my joys and my laughter and love. I claim my faith and my strengths: the goodness that is in me even when I forget.
I claim my desire to love and be loved and the hidden fear that I don’t deserve it. and so I claim too my friends, my family, the people I love and the people who love me, proving my fear a lie – and I claim myself as a created being and so made to love and be loved.
I claim my heart, the way it leads me to love, the way it overflows sometimes at the drop of a leaf, a crash of a wave, a hug, a kiss, a wink.
I claim that I am the daughter of my parents and my love for them and theirs for me.
I claim my sister as my friend and sister and confidant, there in laughter and tears.
I claim my fire for life, my wonder at being alive. The incredible fact that i AM.
I claim myself. A pilgrim, a lover, a beloved, a friend, a sister, a daughter, a woman, alive.
And all of it, my hopes dreams fears and pains, all of it leads me to smile and sigh, and hold my heart, my broken dirty dusty beating wonderfully alive heart, as that bittersweet ache grows and grows and yearns. As the waves and sharks, the sun, beautiful and terrible, come closer. Eyes wide open and watching, heart beating waiting and loving: loving and knowing and so seeing where I am. And so being scared that I will break when it changes. Eyes and heart seeing and loving where I am going –this summer next year and the next. And so being afraid for I am fragile yet, and I am the same and I am different –everything is the same and everything is different. And this samedifferent me, my samedifferent love, I worry that it, that I, will not be enough. That my words will not make sense, my heart will not be seen, and my samedifferentness will not be –in me nor in the world – or at least won’t be together, that it will be the same or it will be different and so it will be a lie, those fingers untangled; that the irony of cat of blood and roses can exist only in Annie Dillard, only in my Thursday morning philosophy class. #(but I know this isn´t true so I end in the hope of a return and of something completely new -- this same different hope)
#(but to end here, to end in fear without hope...then those fingers have already begun to loosen at my inability to live in irony. and so i hope and i dream and the life and the love and the friendships i envision (and not just envision, but live in) when i return...i hope that has it´s roots here and now in my own liberation, in the growth in relationships countries away, and my faith that God is good, my new understanding that i am loved (my God myself my people) and that I love. Therese says there is no greater vocation than the vocation to love...and love is here there everywhere...in el salvador colorado dc...and that´s just the beginning of the list!)
#clearly ive been having trouble ending this one... so it´s a choose your own adventure type of close :)
Everything is the same and everything is different. This has been my refrain for the past what? Month, I guess. But what is the same? And what is different? My heart tightens even as I try to give it a name.
I am different. I am different. I have a nose ring and a new dress. I wear tang tops without an over shirt. I have orange and blue yarn around my wrist. Sometimes Spanish comes easier than English, and I find myself saying “chivo” or “va, pues” without thinking. I dream in Spanish and sometimes my fingers have a hard time finding quotation marks on a regular US keyboard … and all of these are real, but there are a million things in my appearance, speech, mannerisms that are ever so much the same. And these visible concrete things are symptoms rather than the root anyway.
What is at the heart then? What is at the heart of my hearts? Right now, in this moment: tears. Tears and this bittersweet ache that wants to shy away from naming this because to name it is to know it, to name my love for my samedifferent self and to own that love, with one month left, one month before returning to the states where everything is the same and everything is different, but it is a samedifference that will make me more the same and more different. Sometimes I wonder which way is down in DC, where are my feet? What are they grounded on? Do my samedifferent feet have a home in my life of last semester? Of course not. That was last semester and neither my feet nor my heart can return. And that is scary. And relieving.
When my mom and sister were here, we went to the beach. My sister and I stood side my side in the waves. With each gentle crash, our feet were buried deeper and deeper and deeper until one crash, one not so gentle crash, knocked me into stepping back, my feet away from their home, sand and water filling in the space which had seconds before held my feet. I couldn’t go back. And in a new place, new sand and new water, I stood. And again my feet put down roots and I laughed. I laughed with the waves while watching them more carefully, so my feet would not be knocked back again from their comfy, though rocky, home.
I can see the next wave coming, and it is giant. I am in its shadow, and in this wave the sun is shining through and swimming in the wave are sharks, shining in the sun as the blue water sparkles. And it is coming towards me and it is beautiful and terrifying. There are 30 of us here now, our feet in the sand, holding hands, grips ever tightening, in love and in pain, some with eyes on the sun, the waves, the sharks, our feet, each other. All of us knowing the wave is coming. And we will be crashed over, our feet uprooted, forced to find a new home on a beach that was once wholly known, but now where the sand and water and sun are both familiar and strange, our previous foot homes long ago filled with water and sand, though still visible by an soft shadow.
And that big wave, the one with the sharks, beautiful and terrible, casts its shadow over the fish at our feet, the birds, the smaller waves that crash before us, our gripped-tight hands. And it is here where the secrete lies: do we close our eyes, ignore the shadows and bury ourselves in the sweet singing of the birds, or bury ourselves in the overwhelming sight of the shadow, the darkness, the terror? Or de we see the fish, hear the birds, and the people laughing, while we stand in the shadow. Do we let the hands holding the knots in our hearts stay? Do we see the beauty and the terror? The shadow and those other waves? And those sharks shining in the light of that grand wave.
Fear and suffering are part of life, side by side with hope and joy. Now. Right now: do we live in a world that allows both to live together, as hands clasped one to the other, fingers intertwined? Or do we live with minds and eyes and hearts half open, in realities where suffering and joy are mutually exclusive?
Irony. That cat of blood and roses. The crucifixion and resurrection, suffering and joy, tears and laughter.
And I yell and I scream, my feet in the sand/hands gripped tight/eyes on those sharks, that I am more.
I claim my fears and my pain and my tears and my hurt. I claim my struggle to feel all of these things.
I clam that I am the daughter of my parents – and the smile that that brings and also the fear it implies.
I claim my depression and even those desires I have had to stop existing.
But these here I do not claim alone because alone they is false, and if these fingers are not intertwined with those of the other hand, I reject this as lies, because to be true there must be more.
And so I claim my hopes and my joys and my laughter and love. I claim my faith and my strengths: the goodness that is in me even when I forget.
I claim my desire to love and be loved and the hidden fear that I don’t deserve it. and so I claim too my friends, my family, the people I love and the people who love me, proving my fear a lie – and I claim myself as a created being and so made to love and be loved.
I claim my heart, the way it leads me to love, the way it overflows sometimes at the drop of a leaf, a crash of a wave, a hug, a kiss, a wink.
I claim that I am the daughter of my parents and my love for them and theirs for me.
I claim my sister as my friend and sister and confidant, there in laughter and tears.
I claim my fire for life, my wonder at being alive. The incredible fact that i AM.
I claim myself. A pilgrim, a lover, a beloved, a friend, a sister, a daughter, a woman, alive.
And all of it, my hopes dreams fears and pains, all of it leads me to smile and sigh, and hold my heart, my broken dirty dusty beating wonderfully alive heart, as that bittersweet ache grows and grows and yearns. As the waves and sharks, the sun, beautiful and terrible, come closer. Eyes wide open and watching, heart beating waiting and loving: loving and knowing and so seeing where I am. And so being scared that I will break when it changes. Eyes and heart seeing and loving where I am going –this summer next year and the next. And so being afraid for I am fragile yet, and I am the same and I am different –everything is the same and everything is different. And this samedifferent me, my samedifferent love, I worry that it, that I, will not be enough. That my words will not make sense, my heart will not be seen, and my samedifferentness will not be –in me nor in the world – or at least won’t be together, that it will be the same or it will be different and so it will be a lie, those fingers untangled; that the irony of cat of blood and roses can exist only in Annie Dillard, only in my Thursday morning philosophy class. #(but I know this isn´t true so I end in the hope of a return and of something completely new -- this same different hope)
#(but to end here, to end in fear without hope...then those fingers have already begun to loosen at my inability to live in irony. and so i hope and i dream and the life and the love and the friendships i envision (and not just envision, but live in) when i return...i hope that has it´s roots here and now in my own liberation, in the growth in relationships countries away, and my faith that God is good, my new understanding that i am loved (my God myself my people) and that I love. Therese says there is no greater vocation than the vocation to love...and love is here there everywhere...in el salvador colorado dc...and that´s just the beginning of the list!)
#clearly ive been having trouble ending this one... so it´s a choose your own adventure type of close :)
15 April 2009
"¿Cristi que es eso?" pokeinthenose...
so i got my nose pierced on monday. it was really exciting, i took the bus with three of my friends (Elizabeth and Kelly whom I live with nd Carmela who is at Calle Real with me) to metro centro, a huge mall, and... i´m so excited about it. and it didn´t hurt, like a prick and then nothing and then since a little sore. and i have never had so many compliments about how good my nose looks!
i suppose maybe there is a why question here... why? some is just whimsical, some i i want el salvador to have left a physical mark on me, something i can see and touch and remember the people here (those i live with and the salvadorans). i´ll come back and everything will be the same and everything will be different and i´ll need something to hold on to. oh man...i have three weeks of classes left, 6 times in calle real with my kids, one week after and then... how did it go so fast... but to be slightly less serious, all this thought is a putting into words of something that was kind of there but the main reason: i just wanted to :D
i wondered what my class would say to me if they would notice. and yes they did. a couple of them smiled and touched their own nose and then Roxana, who´s 14 and...how to describe Roxana, outspoken maybe? bossy? blunt? and completely wonderful tells me. "Cristi (i spell my name this way cause that´s how the say it...) Cristi, no nos pidió permesion de hacer eso..." (you didn´t ask us permission to do that!)... no i didn´t. so i opened my eyes wide and said no, you´re right. raise your hand if i have permission to have this... and they all raised their hands including Roxana, who immediately then siad so no you don´t have my permission. so i put my fingers around and said oh man well i guess i have to take it out then...my thumb in my nose. and she laughs and yells "mentira mentira me gusta!" (lie! lie! i like it) and we laughed. it´s nice coming back... it was two weeks today since i had been in calle real since i was in the countryside for semana santa (holy week) and today felt like the best day of my life... to come back and just tease and play and be with my kids. they, after this suggested i get my eyebrow pierced or my lip (both top and bottom were mentioned) and the cartilage in my ear...lol!
class just went so well this morning. we are doing emtotions so we cry "i am sad" laugh "i am happy" yell "i am angry" ... and for "I am scared," i say it and they all just scream. then we drew times we had felt happy and sad and scared and angry and then class was over...and i went down stairs and read stories with the 3 and 4 year olds. i turn into a sifa and this time and as many kids as possible, alberto his brother behil, susan (roxana y bea´s little sister) hasel pamela jefferson... sit on out as close to on my as possible...and then at least three of them during the story, behil and alberto and i forget who elso, poked me hard in the nose and said what is this, not sure if this change in me was ok. i told thm and we talked a little and they said it was ok ... but man that hurt mynose!
and then i went and hung out in william and marina and ahsley´s house and jsut chatted and was so happy to be back i almost cried.
more coming tomorrow about campo and holy week :) probably tomorrow!
love
02 April 2009
my prayer
This song has been on my mind since yesterday...i sang it out loud as i was walking to the UCA this morning :)
Take Me
-Hawk Nelson
Can you hear me? Does anyone around me
Feel the way that I feel now?
Cause from the window where I sometimes cry
I just want to see Your face tonight
And I'm willing to lose everything I am
Cause I need you more than ever
I need Your help to find where I've been going wrong so far
Take me under Your wing tonight
Make me so perfect in Your eyes
Hold on cause it will be alright
You're not alone.
When You're near me, I feel like I just found me
In the traces of the boy from yesterday
But in a world that is so black and white
I will take the steps to change my life
And I won't be coming back to here again
I need Your loving hand to guide me
Through the maze of all the things inside me
Then I'll know that I'm alright
Cause I need You more than ever
I need Your help to find where I've been going wrong so far
Take me under Your wing tonight
Make me so perfect in Your eyes
Hold on cause it will be alright
You're not alone
Please help me get from worse to better
Before these tears soak through this lonely sweater
And let me know that I'm alright
I still have one strike of this match left
And I'm holding on to my last breath
And its getting a little dark around to see here
Take me under Your wing tonight
Make me so perfect in your eyes
Hold on cause it will be alright
You're not alone
Take me under Your wing tonight
Make me so perfect in your eyes
Hold on it will be alright
You're not alone
And You'll be here forever, forever You'll stay
And You promised to love me, You'll love me always
You'll love me for always, You'll love me for always
Always
Take Me
-Hawk Nelson
Can you hear me? Does anyone around me
Feel the way that I feel now?
Cause from the window where I sometimes cry
I just want to see Your face tonight
And I'm willing to lose everything I am
Cause I need you more than ever
I need Your help to find where I've been going wrong so far
Take me under Your wing tonight
Make me so perfect in Your eyes
Hold on cause it will be alright
You're not alone.
When You're near me, I feel like I just found me
In the traces of the boy from yesterday
But in a world that is so black and white
I will take the steps to change my life
And I won't be coming back to here again
I need Your loving hand to guide me
Through the maze of all the things inside me
Then I'll know that I'm alright
Cause I need You more than ever
I need Your help to find where I've been going wrong so far
Take me under Your wing tonight
Make me so perfect in Your eyes
Hold on cause it will be alright
You're not alone
Please help me get from worse to better
Before these tears soak through this lonely sweater
And let me know that I'm alright
I still have one strike of this match left
And I'm holding on to my last breath
And its getting a little dark around to see here
Take me under Your wing tonight
Make me so perfect in your eyes
Hold on cause it will be alright
You're not alone
Take me under Your wing tonight
Make me so perfect in your eyes
Hold on it will be alright
You're not alone
And You'll be here forever, forever You'll stay
And You promised to love me, You'll love me always
You'll love me for always, You'll love me for always
Always
01 April 2009
"let the children come to me"
i don´t know what to say today...or rather i don´t have the words. a million things are swirling through my head, they´ve been overtaking me all day, every once in a while overwhelming me so that I have to escape, get away from the people the noise the conversations...none of which i can be present to today and so being in the presence of all of these upsets me.
to love like a child. i was the recipient of this wonderful love today. i spent the hour after class before lunch first at william´s house. he has a little sister named ashley in the chicatito´s class in the morning and i gave her a hug and she just held on to me, so I carried her home, sat on the couch with her on my lap for a little while and talked with her mom and grandma. in the chicatito´s class as soon as i came down i was met with smiled and engulfed in so many little arms i couldn´t move.
we did emotions in my morning class today. we al cried "i am sad" we laughed "i am happy," growled and yelled "i am mad" yawned "i am tired" screamed "i am scared." i think it was as carthartic for me as it was for them. will do it again when i go bacl after easter. and my girls were mad at me (an they told me, let me tell you!) that i only gave one star on monday. so they all told me they were mad... in english! i am so glad for them to yell at me... how good, how healthy to be able to YELL it ... and then smile and say "la quiero cristi" ten minutes later.
so after class i went home with ahsley and then her people had things to do and i left and i went to blanca´s and karina´s home but they weren´t there but the little two year old twins were and yancy and milton (i think 5 and 9 respectively?) were there, as were there mom and i think grandma? the twins started playing tag with me, but i tag where it never counted when i got them so i was always it. milton went back behind their house and gave me a bag of mangos which then we all ate. yancey just kept calling my name and then asked me to read her a book right before i had to leave. and everyone just went on with their life and i just got to sit there with them, eating mangos, laughing with the twins, searching for mangos with milton, telling yancy how bonita y linda she looked in her uniform. a quiet love, not a monton of hugs, but just this ability to be.
and then i went to lunch. my afternoon class the past two times have adopted the tradition of coming an hour early to class "to help prepare" what this really means is the color and play while i get ready for class. the rule though is if they come in the house early they have to be quiet cause that´s peter carmela´s and mine hour to descansar (rest) and prepare. only wiliam came early today and i have never been happier to see that kid..i told him he was the light of my day, and it was true. and it made him smile. his sister marina knows how to say monkey in english and has adopted monkey as her personal animal and so today in class she was jumping and latching on to me, karla, anyoone big enough and in the same place long enough really.
these kids love me in a way that i have been loved before, but i feel like i have words to describe it today. there´s a freedom in, a wastefulness that has nothing to do with me and everything to with me. they love me because they do, they don´t need a reason, but it is intensely personal, exclusive love, different than any other that is the way it is because they are who they are and i am who i am and we love each other and walk together.
my house loves me this way too and i´ve seen it these past few days and apreciated it, the realness the genuineness and sincerity newly. what a gift to be loved, what a gift to be aware of this love.
and my room mates at home, at georgetown. emily and sarah, them too, with honesty and fierceness and this fierce love has all of a sudden connected el salvador to georgetown. i am home and i am loved and i love in both. these words don´t even begin to capture the bigness of this because a lot of the time gu and el salvador feel like they must be in different worlds, and in many ways they are... but at the same time they are right on top of each other. everything is the same and everything is different...and how can both be at once? but they are.
and so the me who is all different and all the same, who hurts and cries and screams and smiles and laughs and hopes and despairs. who gets angry, who callenges and asks questions and takes risks, whose heart has been cut... the intensity and the realness of these which have come to light in el salvador, all of these are true at georgetown (that other reality :) and even being here in el salvador world, i have felt all of these for georgetown. for georgetown, for el salvador, for colorado (really for the people i love, no matter where)my hearts is cut open and in the hurt and confusion hope and love are there, welling up. and it´s funny because i expect that here, here, here...but how good is God that pain and joy are not the sole property of el salvador.
and hope and joy, in none of these realities, make the pain and hurt go away nor justify them just as the resurrection does not make the cruifixion go away not justify it (well the pain and hurt and crucifixion are ok, maybe even good, because the hope the joy the resurrection are there). the hard is transformed but not denied nor watered down by the good. otherwise we live "in the best of all possible words" as whatshisface says..candace? candid? but pain and joy are hand in hand and so we have hope. so we learn to have faith. we learn to laugh and cry and hurt and bubble over with joy.
and the love of children, to love as children, helps the movement between it all.
to love like a child. i was the recipient of this wonderful love today. i spent the hour after class before lunch first at william´s house. he has a little sister named ashley in the chicatito´s class in the morning and i gave her a hug and she just held on to me, so I carried her home, sat on the couch with her on my lap for a little while and talked with her mom and grandma. in the chicatito´s class as soon as i came down i was met with smiled and engulfed in so many little arms i couldn´t move.
we did emotions in my morning class today. we al cried "i am sad" we laughed "i am happy," growled and yelled "i am mad" yawned "i am tired" screamed "i am scared." i think it was as carthartic for me as it was for them. will do it again when i go bacl after easter. and my girls were mad at me (an they told me, let me tell you!) that i only gave one star on monday. so they all told me they were mad... in english! i am so glad for them to yell at me... how good, how healthy to be able to YELL it ... and then smile and say "la quiero cristi" ten minutes later.
so after class i went home with ahsley and then her people had things to do and i left and i went to blanca´s and karina´s home but they weren´t there but the little two year old twins were and yancy and milton (i think 5 and 9 respectively?) were there, as were there mom and i think grandma? the twins started playing tag with me, but i tag where it never counted when i got them so i was always it. milton went back behind their house and gave me a bag of mangos which then we all ate. yancey just kept calling my name and then asked me to read her a book right before i had to leave. and everyone just went on with their life and i just got to sit there with them, eating mangos, laughing with the twins, searching for mangos with milton, telling yancy how bonita y linda she looked in her uniform. a quiet love, not a monton of hugs, but just this ability to be.
and then i went to lunch. my afternoon class the past two times have adopted the tradition of coming an hour early to class "to help prepare" what this really means is the color and play while i get ready for class. the rule though is if they come in the house early they have to be quiet cause that´s peter carmela´s and mine hour to descansar (rest) and prepare. only wiliam came early today and i have never been happier to see that kid..i told him he was the light of my day, and it was true. and it made him smile. his sister marina knows how to say monkey in english and has adopted monkey as her personal animal and so today in class she was jumping and latching on to me, karla, anyoone big enough and in the same place long enough really.
these kids love me in a way that i have been loved before, but i feel like i have words to describe it today. there´s a freedom in, a wastefulness that has nothing to do with me and everything to with me. they love me because they do, they don´t need a reason, but it is intensely personal, exclusive love, different than any other that is the way it is because they are who they are and i am who i am and we love each other and walk together.
my house loves me this way too and i´ve seen it these past few days and apreciated it, the realness the genuineness and sincerity newly. what a gift to be loved, what a gift to be aware of this love.
and my room mates at home, at georgetown. emily and sarah, them too, with honesty and fierceness and this fierce love has all of a sudden connected el salvador to georgetown. i am home and i am loved and i love in both. these words don´t even begin to capture the bigness of this because a lot of the time gu and el salvador feel like they must be in different worlds, and in many ways they are... but at the same time they are right on top of each other. everything is the same and everything is different...and how can both be at once? but they are.
and so the me who is all different and all the same, who hurts and cries and screams and smiles and laughs and hopes and despairs. who gets angry, who callenges and asks questions and takes risks, whose heart has been cut... the intensity and the realness of these which have come to light in el salvador, all of these are true at georgetown (that other reality :) and even being here in el salvador world, i have felt all of these for georgetown. for georgetown, for el salvador, for colorado (really for the people i love, no matter where)my hearts is cut open and in the hurt and confusion hope and love are there, welling up. and it´s funny because i expect that here, here, here...but how good is God that pain and joy are not the sole property of el salvador.
and hope and joy, in none of these realities, make the pain and hurt go away nor justify them just as the resurrection does not make the cruifixion go away not justify it (well the pain and hurt and crucifixion are ok, maybe even good, because the hope the joy the resurrection are there). the hard is transformed but not denied nor watered down by the good. otherwise we live "in the best of all possible words" as whatshisface says..candace? candid? but pain and joy are hand in hand and so we have hope. so we learn to have faith. we learn to laugh and cry and hurt and bubble over with joy.
and the love of children, to love as children, helps the movement between it all.
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