A small rant...

Hi world -
I know I haven't blogged on this site in a long time... and didn't even finish my last blog for that matter (sorry about that).  With so many social media (and real world) communication platforms, it's hard to stay on top of them all, so the emphasis seems to ebb and flow with my world's current events. Today, it has been decided by Team Katharine that Blogger would be a great venue to highlight one of the many results of the serious global issue of people just not caring enough about one another.

Just this week, in a conversation with a friend, I espoused my theory that 95% of this world's issues are based upon poor, or  a complete lack of, communication.  If you are not communicating your needs with one another, there can never be a compromise that helps everyone succeed at this thing we are all in together - life.

Within that 95% pitfall of communication (78.9% of statistics are made up on the spot), we must remember that communicating is comprised of talking and listening.  And that's where the world's issues often are highlighted the most... in our ability to (or lack of ability to) listen.

We are surrounded by a serious global issue revolving around the developing and industrialized worlds having large communication gaps and therefore overlooking one another's priorities, committing a huge oversight and crime against humanity... valuing transportation and cheap fuel prices over food for those who have none.   This is highlighted in Guatemala right now as the bio-fuel market and demand sky rockets, leaving local Guatemalan farmers landless.  That means that subsistence farmers, humans (who are just like us... nothing different besides where God placed them when they were born) with few financial means of attaining food thus depending on their own abilities, are losing land, and therefore, food.  To put it bluntly, people are starving, because we want to fuel our cars.  The New York Times does an incredible job spelling out in their recent article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/science/earth/in-fields-and-markets-guatemalans-feels-squeeze-of-biofuel-demand.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

I hate petroleum as much as the other person.  Global warming, yes, that's horrible too.  The fact that we are physically destroying our world and finding ourselves about to be up a creek without a paddle (that is if we still have creeks in 100 years at the pace we're going), living on a world that we have destroyed filled with historically unique natural disasters and who know what else our actions are causing.  We (myself included) have this overwhelming compulsion to be lazy, yet also to be everywhere quickly, thus we drive when it's not necessary, we aim to live life with a bigger carbon footprint than necessary.

So, as we are looking at a solution for global warming and the negative effects of global warming and consumption, one of our "viable" solutions is only viable in our own eyes.  Biodiesel is a great idea if you think about how much corn the US produces, and the possibility of reusing corn from those nasty artery-clogging restaurants.  But, we forget the mouths of those from whom we are taking food.

Our habits and desires should never, ever, come above the needs for basic survival for hundreds of thousands of people.   We need to find solutions for what our lifestyle is doing to the world, yes, but those solutions cannot include stealing food from the mouths of babes.  Or anyone.

It's a good thing God's in charge of this world and not us... I just get so sad when I hear how much we're messing it up :(

Let's all pray for Guatemala and our world today.

Guatemala! Trip Two

One's love for a country has a loud and distinct cry, and after 10 months of being away, I just had to go back. So that's what I did the last two weeks of June and first week of July!

College Place Presbyterian was kind enough to allow me to go on a mission trip with them and the blending of two of my most formative adult life experiences (my time at CPPC and my time in Guatemala) was incredibly healthy and revitalizing.  

I went into the trip with the prayer that it would provide a place for discernment, peace, and service.  It became my DPS... Distance Per Stroke in swimming which is the mysterious balance that makes swimmers become faster, more efficient, and fall in love with the sport. I decided that I needed more DPS in my life Stateside. ... and I think I succeeded.  

I haven't been blogging much since moving back to the States (or at all) and that has been for a lot of reasons.  Busyness, work, friends, and trying to emphasize relationships here versus there and live more in the present are all some of these factors. Then there are the other factors, like re-entering into the States has just been tough, Guatemalan intestinal creatures still continue to love me, reality has sent in that my parents are older than I think they are (but doing much better now!), and I just have been homesick for my new "home" - the country of Guatemala, all of which have encouraged me to avoid processing all the changes that have been going on in my life over the past year.  I joked (not so jokingly) about wanting to go back for two primary reasons: to start re-entry again and to get a lot of parasites that would be diagnosable, treatable, and able to eat all the creatures that currently reside within me.  My goal was to come back physically, mentally, and spiritually healthy.  I think I'm mostly there, but most importantly, I've come back at peace, with direction, and with a feeling of self-worth and the assurance that who I was in Guatemala is not gone.

The logistics of the trip itself were phenomenally smooth!  I started in Seattle and flew down to Guatemala with a rather painless stop in Dallas/Fort Worth.  Edgar, the phenomenal taxi driver of the year, picked me up at the Guatemala City airport (right on time!) and took me to Marcia's house in Antigua. Being together again with her, Josh, and Eva was so much fun.  Marcia and I had some great conversations, shared memories, and just picked up where we left off.  The next day (Sunday), I met up with Laura, her boyfriend and her cousin who just happened to also be visiting Antigua.  It was like old times except this visit we decided to be touristy and did a chocolate tour.  It was 2 hours all about chocolate: the history, the tree, the process, and then we made it ourselves!  I highly recommend it.  After that, we met up with Marcia, ate street food, and then I headed for the city to meet up with the CPPC youth group.

Ross and Laura making delicious chocolate!

The corn field before we cleared and planted it.
Yes, it is on a slope.
Yes, that is a very steep slope.

CPPC spent 4 days in Guatemala City at ministry sites and near the home of the Agrellus family. Kim and Mark Agrellus, and their kids Amanda, Megan, and Zachary, are a family from Walla Walla who moved to Guatemala to primarily serve as missionaries at the Christian Academy of Guatemala, a school for the missionary kids.  I met up with them a few times while living in Xela and really appreciated their hospitality, knowledge of the country, and passion for what God had called them to.  Being with them this time, my respect for them and gratefulness to them swelled.  These five people are incredible - incredibly passionate, incredibly dedicated, and incredibly approachable.  I loved working with them and would love to just spend even more time with them in the future.  

Nick was "El Caballo" - the horsie.

Our time in Guatemala City was spent at El Refugio, a women's shelter that Kim and other missionaries helped found.  It is a long-term shelter for women and their children who have been victims of abuse.  When I visited them while living in Xela, they were living in a tiny house with no green space and very limited room. In the last few months, the door has been opened for them to buy property.  And what great property it is!!! 

It was incredibly humbling to spend a few days with these women.  They opened up their home to us as well as their hearts as they shared their stories.  They trusted us with their kids, taught our team to make tortillas, and invited us, complete foreigners who many couldn't speak their language, to be a part of their lives.  We were given the opportunity to serve them through planting a corn field, working on a roof, cementing the swingset, and a few brave ones (not me) played in the realm of plumbing.  It's hardly a fair trade for their confidence, but it was delightful to do life together.

Cementing the foundation of the playground

 In addition to our time at the shelter, we spent our time in Guatemala City in Villa Nueva and Linda Vista, two poor squatters' villages, teaching in the public schools.  Initially, this was a terrifying day for me and my 1-year rusty, 2-years old Spanish skills, but God is good and it ended up being amazing.  We went to a lot (more than 10, less than 19) classrooms in 3 different elementary schools and one middle school and presented short Sunday School/VBS lessons.  The lessons went remarkably smoothly: the kids were attentive and engaged, the teachers were relieved and I spent time getting to know some of them, the Guatemalans who regularly minister there were encouraged, and Love was shown.  This was due mostly to how amazing the CPPC students were in the whole process.  They successfully spent all 8ish hours at the school pouring into every class, every student.  They sang "Yo tengo gozo" sixteen times, each with more energy than the time before.  They presented a silent skit of the Good Samaritan and/or Joseph gazillions of times without losing character. They tied countless bracelets and strung countless beads just so kids could remember that day every time they look at their bracelets. They put the Guatemala children first and made them feel like we traveled all the way from the US to their school just for them.  The students did a phenomenal job, it was soooo encouraging!

The evening after our time at the school, we sat on the balcony of the house where we stayed and sung, "God of this City" while overlooking Guatemala City.  The passion that the adults and students on our trip had developed for Guatemala City was palpable.  They were broken by the brokenness, encouraged by the hope, and didn't know how they could change the situations we had heard from so many people: gangs, drugs, violence, abuse.  They were broken, but we were also reassured.  We saw a lot of hopeless situations, but the people in them were hopeful.  They were hopeful of change, of redemption, and knowledgeable that God was not giving up on them.  Just as at times I find my mindset bringing me hopelessness in a hopeful situation, their mindsets brought hopefulness, a desire, drive, and will to live, in a hopeless situation.  We can learn a lot from that.


After our time in Guatemala City, we headed for Antigua for a day.  It was great to give the kids a chance to relax, see the country in a different light, and just be a tourist for the day.  I ended up hanging out with the boys and a few of the girls, targeted on bootleg DVDs and tops from the locals market.  We had a blast, but I gave my camera to some of the girls who took pictures that have brought a whole different perspective to a town that I have begun to call one of my homes.

Hannah got a little confused at the public pila...

 Finally, on day 6, we headed to Lago Atitlan.  The lake was one of my favorite places while living in Xela.  It was a happy, gorgeous place with a culture of people who stay true to their culture, are hospitable, loving, and forgiving.  I love my friends there and loved all the time that I could spend.  However, I had only been on the Santiago/Pana/San Pedro half of the lake, where the public boats went to.  San Lucas Toliman, on the east half, was my uncharted lake territory and exactly where our group was going.  And it was just as gorgeous with people and a culture just as phenomenal as the side that I already knew and loved.


Our time at the Lake was led by this phenomenal woman named Terry. Terry has dedicated the past 20 years of her life to the K'itche and Ketchakel people of Toto and San Lucas Toliman.  The way she does ministry, however, is admirable, to say the least.  She feels very called to serve the widows and asks village leaders to serve alongside of her.  They work together to identify the villagers in need of her services, and then bring those villagers all together to decide in what order the services get involved.  It appears to be a very effective way of guarding against the "Santa Claus" effect of North Americans barging in, making changes they see appropriate, and then leaving the projects there to rot.

The other neat thing that Terry does to protect her projects and create ownership is to require the recipients to be a part of the building, feeding the volunteers and assisting on site, to own the land, and to install their own windows and doors.  This ownership really works to make the house their own.

 We primarily spent our lake time at Tzan Coral, a very remote village up in the highlands above San Lucas.  It was remote enough to not have any bus service and the residents had seen few, if any, gringos before.  They were so hospitable to us, albeit at times confused.  During our time in the village, we went on a wet hike, ran two VBS sessions, built 3 houses, and hosted a two-day soccer tournament for nearby towns, complete with trophies (we brought home 4th place!!!  (out of 4)).       Below are various pictures of our worksites, kids, VBS, and our hike.

Some of the kids "helping us" at house 1.  They were great playmates when we waited for levels to be begun by the workers and Sergio was an awesome brick carrier.

Alexa and her little friend

VBS!

Parker and his boys - loving the crayons

The moms came with the kids and they loved the activities too.   Natalie and Jojo were champs - they went back and worked with these women, many of whom didn't even speak Spanish.  Actions speak louder than words!

Girls and crafts

Walking out the impassable road!

Keep walking...

Building House 3

House 1 almost done!

Rose and the workers on top of house 3, roofing

Our Team at VBS Day 2

I climbed on top of us our bus...
This is a street sign...
It is bolted in lieu of an emergency exit

Swimming in the Lake

  
 After our time in the villages, it was time to move on to Panajachel.  We first stopped by Terry's house, a completely off-the-grid, self-sufficient house right on the lake.  It was awesome!  Unfortunately, the lake has risen 6 meters just since I left and is creeping up on her house more and more, so she is building up the hill, trying to not lose everything.  Swimming in the lake, observing the gorgeous things at her house and the beautiful world that surrounds it, and talking to Terry and the boat drivers about water levels, began preparing me for the shock that would set in when I went to the side that I am more familiar with  - San Juan and San Pedro.

Terry's House

Pana from the water... also affected by rising waters

I am not a big Panajachel fan... it is touristy and the strange market dynamics of poor people asking for money for lots of things cheaply that are not fair trade yet still is how they make their living sends my head for a loop and I can't decide how I feel or how I should react and then I just get introverted and grumpy figuring it all out.

BUT there are some amazing things about Pana: the zipline, the nature reserve, and my new favorite place on top of the hill, The Eagles Nest in Solala.   We did all these things as we unwound, preparing to return home.

Zipline: I don't have any pictures of it, but it was amazing to do it (for my 4th time) with people I know from so many other contexts.  Every person in our group went down the lines and, as far as I know, enjoyed it.  Yes, there was fear, but they did it.  One woman, Karen, was very anxious about it but so determined.  Her determination to go down the lines was something that I want to get through lots of things in my life.  Ropes courses are so symbolic about our lives, if we let them be.

Nature Reserve: We stayed in eco-lodges -it was awesome!!!

Eagles Nest:This is actually the orphanage where the Agrellus' son, Zach came from.  After adoption closed, they lost the majority of their income but was still determined to stay open.  The family who runs it is from the States and has begun using their grounds as almost a retreat center, separate from serving at the Orphanage.  We visited the kids, who are extraordinarily cared for, enjoyed the amazing views, and debriefed our time in the country thus far.  We also set off 5 meters of fireworks for Jojo's birthday.  That was awesome!  If you're ever in the area, I highly recommend staying there.  It supports their ministry, gets you out of Pana, and is just amazing.  You can play soccer too!

With Alandra 

 After our night at Eagles Nest, it was time for me to say goodbye and for them to go back to the States.  They dropped me off at the highway to catch a camioneta down to Pana and find Tina.  It was weird to say goodbye to the group - some had been friends for years, others for just 2 weeks, but now we all have a great experience in common.  I went to church last week for the first time since I returned and it was amazing the community that was formed out of our common experiences.  I felt welcomed, loved, and ready to join the church again, because I had people I could relate to on a deep level and because I was a part of their lives.  If that, a deeper community to sustain me during my time here in the states, was all I achieved out of this trip (which is definitely not true), it would still have been totally worth it.


My adventure was not done!  But my patience for computers is... (my internet is deleting blog posts!).  I will write about phase two in a bit!

Kara is a rockstar

the end.

(My blogger hates me... so that was my test.  Kara Thonney, you're who I was talking about.  Sending my love to Afghanistan!)

Happy New Year

2011 was a year of new roads.

Some were rocky, some paved, some full of potholes, some smooth and new.

But they were all roads to somewhere.  

And all beautiful in their own way.

Some were new, some were familiar, some were full of surprises.  

All were where I'm called to be.

And now, it's time to see where God's calling me next... 

2012, may your road and surprises unfold,

and let me not miss the beauty in each moment.

"days pass, years vanish, and we walk sightless among miracles"

Speaking at CPPC - Sept 18th

I'm really enjoying the opportunities to speak at churches; it has given me the chance and motivation to face this reverse culture shock head on, and also a starting point in order to begin reconstructing the relationships I had before I left.  Here's the gist of what I said at CPPC this past Sunday.    

Wow.  What a strange, wonderful, and curious feeling to be standing here in front of all of you today.  Life changes and works in wonderful, confusing, and beautiful ways.  

When I last stood here in front of all of you, I was finishing four wonderful years of working with the youth, children, and family at this church.  I knew God was calling me for a new adventure.  I had agreed to go to Guatemala with our denomination, the PCUSA, as a young adult volunteer.  I knew that it would be an adventure that was life-changing, but in hindsight, I knew these things with my head and my mouth, but my heart and body had no idea.  The 15 months I was gone were more life-changing and adventurous than I could have imagined – no question about that.  

I left Walla Walla and CPPC on June 1, 2010, ready for an adventure.  One of my closest friends and I had a long-standing dream of a road trip and, as we found ourselves both graduating, me from Seminary and my job here at CPPC, and her from her undergrad at WSU, we decided it would be as good a time as ever to go for our dream.  We dreamed of hitting all 50 States.  After a reality check of how boring driving through Kansas would be, we stuck with the West.  But a month-straight of camping around the West was phenomenal - so great that I then set out on my own mini-roadtrips for the next month and a half until I left the country. 

This trip was amazing – not only because of the great sights and friends I got to see along the way and the insane stories I acquired, but also because of the identity crisis I allowed myself to have.  I was able to begin the process of defining myself by who I am, not what I did.  This was counter to my family and upbringing, and most of the US population, and it was hard. I had to begin figuring out who Katharine is, not who Katharine the student is, not who Katharine the swim coach is, not Katharine the church employee, or Katharine the athlete, or Katharine the ____ whatever else I used to define myself, just Katharine.  Because when you’re driving by yourself through North Dakota after your friend flies out of Minneapolis and you see one car in the entire day, you begin realizing that you don’t really know the person you’re in the car with.  Even though that person is the only physical person who has been with you every day since you were born, and it strikes you that it’s time to start defining who that person is. 

And that process that began during the road trip, continued at great lengths in Guatemala, and is continuing now that I’m back here, in my former setting, but with a new self-definition and new occupational roles. 

While working on defining who I was and who I want to be, I remembered my seminary classmate who said that the best sermon ever written was the Sermon on the Mount, and if he could convince his church of it, he would just read that in its entirety every Sunday for a month, serving as a sermon series.  This sermon, he said, tackles almost all of the biggest issues we preach about and debate about, and if we were to just follow it, we would begin having this Christianity/Jesus thing figured out a whole lot more.   After remembering his statement, The Beatitudes, the introduction to the Sermon on the Mount, began to fascinate me, and they became a theme that came up again and again during my year in Guatemala.   Therefore, when Doug and Skip asked if I wanted to preach as a part of this sermon series, I was more than happy to say yes.  God knows.  Yes, He knows. 

Today, we’re going to focus on the third and fourth Beatitudes, Matthew 5:5 and 6.  They say, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”  

I learned so much about these two beatitudes this past year.  The first one, I learned firsthand.  The second, by watching and living with people who really did hunger and thirst for righteousness, and many who were filled.

Guatemala has the highest malnutrition rate in Latin America with nearly half of the children in the country being malnourished, and nearly 70% in the indigenous communities.  That means that there are a lot of people who are going around hungry and thirsty.  For many of the people who lived around me, a standard breakfast or dinner is a corn tortilla with some salt and maybe butter and lime juice complimented with a cup of instant coffee because by boiling the water, they will hopefully have less critters living in their belly making them sick. 

Clean water costs a lot of money, thus many in the working or agricultural class don’t have any.  When I translated for a medical jornada, one of the most surprising things for our US doctors was how little water the Guatemalans drank.  For us from the US, the concept of paying 2 bucks for 5 gallons of clean water, getting stomach animals from tap water, or not having any running water to start with is so foreign.  For them, it’s life. And the life of thirst is hard.

I had two students, Isaac and Katerin, who were both in first grade.  Katerin was nine and Isaac, 7.  They began the school year as great students.  They were bright, motivated, confident, and funny.  However, about a month and a half into the year, they changed.  Katerin began stealing things, stopped talking, and her facial bone structure got increasingly more defined.  Isaac began failing all his subjects and crying every time he had to go to the library where they took their shoes off. We realized that his tears were because he only had one pair of socks, and he wasn’t big enough to reach the pila to get them clean. We also learned that Katerin’s silence and newly defined facial structure was due to hunger.  The mother of the kids had been murdered by the narco-trafficers and they were put under the charge of an aunt who then left for the States in hopes of an income for their family to keep them alive, so the two kids were living in the care of a 15 year-old cousin.   They hungered – hungered for food, hungered for love, and hungered for stability.  And their hunger took charge of their lives, causing the rest of life: the dignity of not crying, relationships, social norms, studies, and physical appearance to crumble. 

Every time I go back to the beatitudes, I think of the intense hunger I saw with these two kids.  When Jesus said, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, he wasn’t meaning that blessed are those who want righteousness, he means, blessed are those who are screaming for righteousness, having their desire for righteousness take charge of every other aspect of their lives. 

But what is righteousness – this thing that blessed are those who crave, seek, and will lose everything to gain? 

I took this question to my good friend, the New Bible Dictionary.  It says that the Bible “uses righteousness in the sense of conformity to the demands and obligations of the will of God.”  Between men, it is the action which conforms to the requirements of a relationship and promotes the well-being and peace of the community.   My favorite way of explaining Righteousness is that it is coming closer to God – taking the things that separate us from Him away so we can fully focus on Him.  We’re human, and therefore can never be fully righteous, but we can surely hunger and thirst, desiring from the deepest depths of our being, to become so.  

In addition to being a poor, hungry nation, Guatemala is also a rather violent nation.  Every day, about two dozen murders happen in the country.  The majority of them will go unsolved.  Thus, the murderer will be running free to strike again.  The New Yorker opened an article on Guatemala by saying, “if you’re going to commit a murder, Guatemala is the place to do so…”.  Sadly, that’s true. 

But, there are people who want, with all their being, to change that.  These are the people who hunger and thirst for righteousness.  One of these people was the director of my school, Jorge.  Jorge was one of the demonstrators during the country’s 30 year civil war.  After waking up to a dead body and death threat on his lawn, he left the country to seek asylum in Mexico.  There, he studied and got the goal and vision of a new school.  He wanted to build a school that could give private school educations to poor families, as well as teaching them social lessons that could maybe begin to overturn the oppression and violence in the country.  Jorge has a hard job. His life is that school.  But the kids are making a difference, and they are learning the social skills they need to get out of the life their socio-economic status has them set up for.  Jorge wants righteousness for his school, country, and students and he works 16 hours a day, 6 days a week, to make it happen.

“And they will be filled”.  What a great result.  If I was allowed to have favorite students, I would have to choose Ofelia.  Ofelia was a 6^th grader who, with 3 high school aged cousin/neighbor people, left her family in a small village, three hours away, and moved to Xela to attend our school.   She lived with the other three in a small, one-room apartment that their families split the rent on.  The kids had a rough start learning to care for themselves, and Spanish was their second language; one that was rather new to them.  English classes were a disaster, and the other subjects were not very pretty either.  School was hard and Ofelia looked so confused and quiet and lost in her class. 

 Then, as the year went on, things began to click.  She and I hit it off and developed a pretty close relationship, her grades improved, as did her social skills.  Her success definitely went in waves: her mom sold her as an indentured servant to another family at our school whose dad was an abusive alcoholic, and Ofelia was so busy that her grades began to fall, but she kept trying. 

At our medical jornada, Ofelia and the other three brought what seemed to be their entire town to come and get medical care.  I was the triage translator, translating Spanish to English for the nurse.  It was amazing, but my language skills fell short with this group.  The people from Ofelia’s town didn’t speak Spanish.  Ut oh.  So, we had people from her town speaking in K’iche to Ofelia who told me in Spanish and I, in turn, told the nurse in English.  This three-way translating was quite the adventure, even more adventurous when we had a mute person whose only translator/person who understood her only spoke K’iche.  It was incredible to see this 12 year-old stand in front of her elders since childhood and explain in two languages problems with their backs, stomachs, and more taboo body parts.  The confidence that radiated from this child’s face was so inspiring.  She had been filled. She’s not 100% there and life is still hard for her, but she had taken the stand to go on her own and make the best she could with her life, and I am thrilled for what her future holds.  Saying goodbye to her was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. 

So, I look at this beatitude, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled, and I realize how powerful of a statement this really is.  This year, I saw first hand the power of hunger and thirst. They are our most instinctual desires and will take over the rest of our lives if not met.  And I saw the effects of being filled.  Of having your desires filled and surpassing your expectations.  And how beautiful that is.  And I want that.  As I’m continuing defining myself here in Walla Walla, I want to be hungering and thirsting for righteousness – desiring with every ounce of my body to be closer to the conformities and norms God wants for me.  To have that desire is my prayer for each and every one of us.

Then, I go to Matthew 5:5 – “blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth”.  I’ve never really had a positive picture of the meek.  When I think of meek, my highly visual self pictures an earthworm – gently going about doing its stuff, fertilizing the ground, secretly making our world turn, but doing it all behind the scenes.  But earthworms are also weak;  I was responsible for many a worm’s death as a child.

Reading for this sermon, I have come to redefine meek, but the earthworm still fits.  To be meek is a quality of the Messiah – gentle and unassuming.  To be meek is to be like Moses and humbly walk through life without imposing your greatness and privilege.  To be meek is to be poor and afflicted and react with patient submission and humility.  Meekness is an inward attitude that portrays itself outwardly through gentleness.  It is not weakness.

 Although I haven’t mastered meekness, and coming from a human, US background, probably never will, I did get a glimpse of it this year.  For Katharine Curles, to be meek is to go to a foreign country and not speak a word of their language. To be meek, is to lose all the traits and skills you value and pride yourself on and become “useless”, at least by your definitions.  To be meek is to have an unprecedentedly high incident of host familial crises that causes you to move from house to house and go through it without being too bitter – although at times, I was.  To be meek was to have my body completely rebel for the entire 11½ months I was in the country, including having appendicitis and a resulting appendectomy.  To be meek was to fight through it all, realizing my weakness and dependency, and to allow myself to, for once, define myself as a member of a community and accept the love of that community. 

My New Bible Dictionary friend says, “The meek do not resent adversity because they accept everything as being the effect of God’s wise and loving purpose for them, so that they accept injuries from men also knowing that these are permitted by God for their ultimate good.” 

Although I did not do it well all the time, I did begin to embrace this definition of meekness.  I began to see being meek as being a lamb – thus the bulletin cover for today.  This sculpture was at both entrances to my favorite town in Guatemala – San Juan La Laguna.  I went there monthly the first 5 months of 2011. It was my happy place – where I could take the time to hike, be with Guatemalan friends who live there, sit in a hammock, kayak the beautiful lake, cliff jump, and just find God so I could sit in his lap and cry, yell and scream at him, or anything in between.

When I was in Guatemala, many of my lessons in meekness came from my family life.  Our program usually has us live with a total of 3 families – two for language school and one for the other 10 months.  I lived with 7.   I haven’t every thought of myself as a “familially gifted” person – I love working with them, but not so good at living with them.  I’m too independent.  I set out to Guatemala on a secret quest to change that.  When that didn’t happen and I lived with 7 families, it was really, really hard.  Although all of my family moves were due to issues, outside my control, I spent many nights lying in bed feeling as though I had been slapped across the face. 

One day, after one of my most miserable moves, I wrote in my journal, “On a scale of 1-10, today was a negative 100.  I think life is a lot like learning how to ride a bike.  Sometimes you are riding and all is great.  Other times you live in a country without helmets and therefore are destined to be hurt.  And still others, you only have one training wheel, one peddle, and one brake.  The latter is Yajaira’s bike and also was me today.  … I moved out, the girls sobbed, I cried, and then I went to the doctor to find out that I have a parasite, amoebas, and staph infection… on top of my normal fleas.”

That was becoming meek – and weak.  But, through that experience, I slowly began learning how to meet the poor and afflicted side of meekness with patient submission and humility.  Once we can do that, then we’re able to begin learning how to put God first enough so we can inherit the earth. 

And, inherit the earth, experience heaven and know that I wasn’t forgotten, I did.  Well, not completely, but I got a glimpse of what it could look like.  My seventh and final house was amazing.  I lived with a woman and her two children and two parents.  The abuelo, grandpa, was 84 and taught me so much about life.  The abuela, grandma, was 77, and she was on a quest to try to teach me to cook…. That always ended in shock at how poor my skills really are.   My housing situation at their house was by far the shabbiest.  My bedroom was also the storage closest/entry way to the house.  Therefore, I had daily buckets of pigslop coming through, the old drunk farmhand knocking on my door with his machete at 6am, goats coming to be milked (a whole new definition to fresh milk!), and I had a roommate for quite a while of a duck who actually lived outside but seemed to have a fascination with being in my room whenever I wasn’t around.  Despite the awkwardness and the necessity of an umbrella to go to the bathroom during the rain, this experience was amazing. 

One day, shortly after I moved in, my host siblings, Marie and Porfi, ages 24 and 22, took me up the highest mountain in our pueblo for a mass, a service dedicated to praying for rain for the upcoming crops.  We began the adventure at 6am, leaving our house to go climb up the mountain.  After a few rendezvous points, we summited around 10 to meet around 1000 people at the top of this mountain, almost all in their traditional clothes, skirts, and many without shoes.  They were scattered through the trees, ready to worship and expectant of God’s blessings.

This service was my turnaround point.  I finally went from having my pity party of isolation to a land and community of hope.  I went from the poor side of meek to the patient submission and humility that allowed me to see the truth in the beatiduinal promise, “blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth”.   I wrote, I finally see why I’m here and why I’ve been everywhere I’ve been.  This house and family show me what my future could be.  Experiencing a life of simplicity, health, and community both within a greater family structure and among peers.  It gives me hope for the church – and my life no matter where I go next.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.  That is a true promise of God’s.

But even though I have had a taste of experiencing it, it’s hard to remember. This week has been a rough week for me personally.  My family found out that my mom has a rare type of breast cancer.  They’re running tests Monday and then my parents leave for their dream trip to Peru on Tuesday.  When they get back in early October, they’ll meet with the radiologist, oncologist, and surgeon to figure out what the next stage of attack is.  We’re going to have some scary times coming up.  I spent a lot of this week freaking out – and therefore procrastinating on what this sermon will look like. 

But then I realized that this is just another test – can I stay fighting to live in these beatitudes?  Can I see this new adversity without contempt and instead gently tackle it with the inward attitude of meekness knowing that God has a purpose in it somewhere?  This situation, like so many hard situations in our lives, is an opportunity for us to choose how we will react.  This time, unlike Guatemala, I have an option of if I will react with meekness or the independent strength that we normally value in our society.  It’s my own culture where I can speak the language, pretend that I’m strong, and revert back to my ways when I was “above being meek” – it is my decision… am I going to face this by playing strong or am I going to play it meek?  I hope that I play it meek.  I’d appreciate your prayers as we sort it all out.

“Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled.”  In other words, blessed are those who portray gentleness and faithfulness in times of trial and blessed are those who desire with the deepest depths of their being for closeness and authenticity with God and justice with others.  They will come to know God and be filled more than we can ever imagine.

Thank you for your prayers and support this past year and throughout the years.   I am so grateful for you all!