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!

Wa-Hi Girls!

We're up and running... 

and there's lots of them (who are sooo fun!)

First dual meet is tomorrow... and home!  

READY, SET, GO!

Thank you, Brian Gaines, for a great picture of the fishies!

Sharing My Story, Take 1: Fox Island UCC (August 14th)

As I'm working on what I'm going to speak about at College Place Presbyterian on September 18th (you're all invited :) ), I realized that I never shared what I spoke about a month ago at FIUCC... so, for anyone interested, here you go! 

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I spent the past year working and living in Guatemala as a volunteer with the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s Young Adult Volunteer program. It was an incredible year filled with awesome events and activities and people whom nunca olvido – I will never forget.  I landed last night, surrounded by the shocks of moving sidewalks, escalators that don’t cause me to fear for my life, the magic of flushing toilet paper, and the strange phenomenon of no longer being the tallest person in any given setting.

I am nowhere near finishing the action of processing this whole year nor what its effects are on my life to come, but as I have begun to go down that path, two words have repeatedly come to mind:  comunidad y amor,  There are three reasons for their significance:

Reason 1) I learned that comunidad y amor means community and love in Spanish. 

Reason 2) I came to see that community is God’s gift and solution to feelings of loneliness and living without a purpose. 

Reason 3) I began to live the truth in what I once believed to be exaggerated folklore:  Love is universal.

These lessons have been priceless and come in countless varieties of stories:  some hilarious, some painful (both physically and emotionally).  Some that involve intense anger with God some intense joy and wonder at the magnitude of His world.  Some have been embarrassing, others empowering… and all of them, at least in retrospect, have the hand of God on my shoulder guiding my fears, actions, doubts, and triumphs.

Today, I’m going to tell you some of these stories, primarily focusing on my living situation and personal growth.  My job in Guatemala was working with students, some of the greatest students with some of the hardest stories I have ever heard.  These students stole my heart and have filled my mind with tons of memories, but those memories are too fresh and not ready to be articulated.  Therefore, I'll be focusing on my living outside of the school, something that also was amazing and for some reason has been processed to a greater extent at this time.  

I will also be framing the tales with our scriptures in an attempt to give us some sort of order as cuento algunas historias… as I recount some stories.

MATTHEW 18:1-3… “At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?  He called a little child, whom he placed among them, and he said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

I’m not one who strives to be in the spotlight with a lot of attention, hence I loved Lynda Wickline’s puppet ministry, and hence I’ve never really wanted to become the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.  But I have spent a great deal of my life perplexed by how to enter that kingdom and what it means; how are we to live out this verse and command to change and become like little children. Are we supposed to become immature?  Silly?  Ridiculous?  Impulsive?  Naïve? I didn’t get it. I had already decided that I wanted to enter the kingdom of heaven… having God on your team seems to make this life a lot more enjoyable… but I always felt like I fell short.

To help me combat this question, I read the book, Dangerous Wonder: Adventures of a Childlike Faith by Mike Yaconelli two times last summer on my cross-US, identity crisis road trip.  Before that trip, in my other life of working in youth ministry, I had been in or led bible studies on it. twice.  Then, I read it another time during this year in Guatemala.  Obviously, I like the book.  Mike’s chapters on living with wonder in this world, curiosity, the willingness to abandon everything and play.  To allow ourselves to be terrified.  To allow ourselves to not know everything.  To listen with wonder.  To believe… they all became aspects of my faith that I greatly valued, but I still felt as though I was still missing something. 

Then, I moved to Guatemala.  And I learned something else about how to be like children.  How to be clueless… I’m not talking about being clueless in the sense of not knowing the answer while watching Jeopardy on TV, but about being clueless as you drive from the airport to your next dwelling in a van with 5 strangers who are going, by default, to become your best friends, reading sign after sign on the highway and realizing that you don’t understand a single word, and seeing men drive around on motorcycles without helmets with large guns strapped to their backs and realizing that you have no idea what it means to be in the most dangerous city in Central America but finally it’s making sense as to why my overprotective father mandated a father/daughter date to the rifle range before my departure for Guatemala.  As we drove, I realized that yes, I was clueless.  I had no idea what I was getting myself into or how in the world I would make it out alive.  I didn’t know if it was going to be easy or hard.  I didn’t know a word of Spanish and had never learned a language before.  I didn’t know a thing about living outside of Washington, let alone outside of the United States. Clueless.  Clueless.  Clueless.

And this cluelessness continued. 

Just like a child, I was unable to communicate.  Just like a child, I was learning a culture and therefore, at times, I was inappropriate and not sure how to blend in to their customs … I was not living with the perception of personal control and cultural awareness that I had come to value so much throughout college, seminary, and my time working with youth and families in the church.  Just like a child, I had lost control and had gained humility… humility in giving control over to God and being willing to make mistakes.  But it definitely wasn’t, and still isn’t, easy.  My journal entry from two weeks into the program says,

The desire to have control has a complete grip on me.  I want to control what I say, but I can’t communicate.  I want to control what I eat, but I can’t cook and I’m living with another family in another culture and with food that is totally foreign.  I want to control others’ perceptions of me, but I can’t talk about anything more than the weather… if that…. I sense this need for control in everything I do, but I can’t fill that desire.  Lord, how do I give up control?  Change me, Abba, please take control of my life.  I don’t see any other way.

I became a social toddler who tried so hard to walk and eventually, I got so tired that I had to collapse in my Abba, in my daddy’s, arms.  Clueless, imperfect, humbled, and out of control. 

And this cluelessness, imperfection, and lack of control was the exact becoming like a child I had been searching for for years.  My humility and vulnerabilities were the gateway to my entry into real community… and the lesson that the kingdom of God is a lot about having community with God and others and losing enough control to be able to accept love; love for us, as broken, clueless, and imperfect as we are.

 The Old Testament reading for today is from Isaiah.  It reads,

Isaiah 56:1,6-8 – “This is what the Lord says: “Maintain justice and do what is right, for my salvation is close at hand and my righteousness will soon be revealed.”  … And foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and who hold fast to my covenant – these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer.  Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.  The Sovereign Lord declares – he who gathers the exiles of Israel: “I will gather still others to them besides those already gathered.””

In my clueless, imperfect, humbled self, I realized that I had an opportunity to see what life was like as a foreigner, and as one who is discriminated against. 

I spent a lot of life confused, and it was quite overwhelming.  Everything was so different: sources of income, family practices, churches.  This was especially exemplified at my first house in Xela, very close to my school.  I wrote in my journal my first day: “I’m taking this all in.  I am in urban Guatemala, underseige by fleas, living with a family consisting of 5-9 depending on how you define the word, residing in a room situated in between the family’s bedroom and clothing with broken windows that the boys love to peek through whenever I’m inside, confronting an endless stream of adolescent boys coming in and out to check out the gringa and talking in a language that I still can’t understand, worshipping with new friends who are all truly Pentecostal, and spending countless hours playing cards and tossing masa attempting to learn how to make tortillas.  Wow.”

It was foreign in every since of the word. I was the foreigner in an incredibly foreign situation and once again I was humbled, clueless, out of control, and my tortillas were the definition of imperfect.   Not to mention my complete inability to speak with my host mom who spoke Guatemalan slang while I attempted to speak Spanish with proper grammar and neither of us knew the other’s vocabulary nor verb tenses. 

It was here, sitting in the tortillaria, tortilla making store, that I realized God’s promise to have his righteousness soon revealed.  I couldn’t talk, and I couldn’t produce tortillas, but my attempts could produce laughs.  Furthermore, I could play cards with the kids, kick the soccer ball around, and be a presence of safety as the 16 year-old and I walked through dark, scary, and sometimes violent streets with a pushcart holding 100lbs of corn to be ground in the Molina.  Most importantly, my presence could demonstrate for us all what true love is. 

For the two weeks I lived with that family, I concentrated on our volunteer focus for the year:  putting our US ideals of productivity behind and just living in the Sabbath, ministering in the name of the Lord solely through my presence and love and willingness to humble myself and be his servant.   I spent every minute that I wasn’t at school in the tortilla shop with my family.   God knows that I wasn’t at all being productive; if anything, I was hampering their productivity and product by changing the water composition of the tortilla dough as I messed with it, vainly attempting to make at least one acceptable tortilla every hour.  But that wasn’t important.  What was important was that I was there, present for the kids who worked in that shop 14 hours a day, and I was sitting, dwelling with God’s children, understanding for the first time what it means to be accepted, keep the Sabbath, and be in a foreign land.  

That family welcomed me into their home and church with assistance, acceptance, and comfort. Even when I had to leave after two weeks due to violence both in the neighborhood and family, I continued to be invited into their family and see God’s love within them. Every morning, I walked by and was greeted with, “Adios, Que te via bien, Buenos Dias”  on my way to school.  I continued to be invited into their home and played soccer or cards with my littlest host brother almost every Thursday this spring.  The 19 year old completely trusted me with her newborn baby and constantly asked me to teach little Angelito English.  

It was a hard situation, but it continued to teach me lessons of humility, imperfection, love, and most importantly, that God’s righteousness can be revealed through community when we sit back and allow it to happen.

The next passage, Romans 12, is the passage that I have been referring to: attempting to live and breath all year.  This passage talks about living as sacrifices to God, going above the patterns of this world and serving those around us with whatever gifts we are given.

I used to think that my gifts from God were defined as the things I could do and could do well.  I was a good planner.  I could make a pretty catchy sign on the computer to advertise an event at church in less than 5 minutes.  I have always been athletic and have found that I relate to kids a lot through sports and recreation.  Up until I got in my car and drove away on a really roundabout trip to the airport (driving Walla Walla – San Diego – Colorado – Idaho – Minnesota – Gig Harbor is probably not the most direct way I could have gone), I was a fulltime student.  For 19 consecutive years.  Even while working fulltime plus having some other jobs.  I prided myself on busyness and my ability to succeed under stress.  I could do a lot.  Often at the same time.  And I could do it all well.

Then, I showed up in Guatemala to teach English.  I knew that our program really valued being versus doing and that I was going to be living with a family so I would have the opportunities to be with them and form solid relationships with them.  What I didn’t know was that the Guatemalan school year runs January to October… landing me at school for my first day when there were exactly two days left of school before the three-month long break.  Excellent.  Not.

 I wrote in my journal, At school today, it was confirmed for me that I will be a jobless nomad for a little while… as in for a few months.  That’s not super exciting.  I’m going to be learning a lot.

And learning a lot I did.  It was painful, but I did learn.  I learned that my gifts weren’t all measured by what I could do.  I was able to make relationships with people, even despite our language barrier, and they could become people who I really cared about.  I learned that my positive attitude that I use to survive can be radiated and express emotions that accomplishments nor language cannot.  I learned that I can overcome challenges.  Not because I’m strong but because I have been given the gift of amability – of the ability to make friends and have potential friends around me.  And through these gifts, I was able to live out the first part of Romans 12.

Then, right as I thought that I was beginning to grasp the concept of being versus doing, life began to get really challenging.  All year long, I had some really not fun digestive issues.  They stressed me out and them, along with the fleas that seemed to constantly plague me, slammed my physical self esteem. It’s hard to think you’re attractive or physically worthwhile when you are covered with small, itchy welts created by mysterious black bugs who are habituating on your flesh while your digestive system is simultaneously revolting.

But, what made life really challenging was my living situations.  I had to move from my first family during language school because of food issues and fleas (I should have taken notice to the beginning of the trend).  Then, as I just recounted, my first family in Xela had both internal and external violence problems as well as a plague of fleas and no water to help tackle the challenges. 

After them, I moved in with a great middle-class Ladino family with three delightful little girls.  These girls became my little sisters and life blood. During school vacation, any time that I wasn’t volunteering at the orphanage or in town checking email or learning to play and have adventures, I was in the house with them, using cards, ipods, headlamps, and anything else we could find to have adventures of our own.  But, after a string of growing gang violence in the city that caused the dad to lose his job, the family began eroding leaving me as the live-in nanny living off questionable food.  After that house, I moved in with some other volunteer friends to recuperate.  By this point, I had ameobas, parasites, a staph infection, and (shockingly enough) fleas.  I also had a broken heart from leaving the little girls in a really unhealthy household and that was possibly the most painful of all my ailments at that time. 

During this time, my prayer became: God, I don’t know what you’re doing, what your plan is, but you have brought me here physically broken – both internally and externally - emotionally broken – internally and showing it more externally than I have in a long time, and spiritually broken – lost and confused.  I came here dreaming of lessons of life’s goodness, simpleness, and familial relationships.  This doesn’t fit those dreams or that plan.  You were thinking along a different path, and you’ve dragged me to your path, kicking and screaming, and I guess I have the choice of if I’m going to begin walking it or kick and scream idly making life even more rough for us all. 

I began to question love.  Love between spouses, love between friends, love within the church, love for life, love for God, God’s love for us.  I didn’t understand it all. I was disenchanted and angry.  Angry at all forms of love: for others, for me, for God, from God… I didn’t get it anymore.

So, that’s when Romans 12: 9-21 came to my rescue.  Abridged, it says, “Love must be sincere.  Hate what is evil, cling to what is good.  Be devoted to one another in love.  Honor one another above yourselves.  Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.  Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.  Share with the Lord’s people who are in need.  Practice hospitality.”

I began reading it every night, not really understanding, but realizing there was a lot of knowledge behind the words that my walls of pain were up too high to see. 

Finally, after moving in with yet another family, house number 7 for a year that was supposed to only have 3, I climbed high enough to see over the walls, and it all clicked.  It was a Sunday morning mass, and 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 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 greater church and its mission for the world's issues and call for justice.

And this family showed me love.  Within a month of moving in with them, Robin, the senior pastor at the church I used to work at, lost his battle with cancer. A week later, I lost my appendix.  I was broken.  Wrecked and broken.  But not alone.   My family lived out Romans 12:15, … Rejoice with those who rejoice, mourn with those who mourn…  And they cared for me, gave me space, rejoiced with me, mourned with me, and motivated me.  My host brother would go for walks with me between lunch and my naptime.  My host grandpa, every time I entered the kitchen, would say, “Aqui es su casa!”  Here is your house – in an incredibly excited voice that only a weathered, strong 84 year old indigenous man can muster. 

They picked me up, brushed me off, and welcomed me into their community and loving arms.  From the safety of their arms, I began to understand love, and together we struggled through living out Romans 12.  They weren’t perfect: they hurt too as the tough things of life:  domestic abuse from my host sister’s husband, two neighbors being murdered, and a close relative passing away.  We cried together, we drank cheap whiskey together (they were a good Catholic family), and we laughed together at the most ridiculous things, laughing until we cried. 

We were a family with community that was both true and truly beautiful.  Comunidad y amor were in our house. I’m going to end with our Psalm for today, Psalm 133 - How very good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!  It is like the precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard, running down on Aaron’s beard, down on the collar of his robes.  It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion. For there the LORD ordained his blessing, life forevermore. 

This Psalm just screams for joy and power of unity and brotherly love.  One commentary sums up my assessment and living of this psalm throughout this year, “Loving people are blessed people”  They are blessed by those whom they love and they are loved and blessed by God.  This doesn’t always come in the form of physical, wealth, or visible blessings… some of the people involved in the most definitive communities of brotherly love have next to nothing, but they are blessed because they love.  

Henri Nouwen, my favorite author ever, describes community as the result of solitude greeting solitude.  He defines solitude as broken, vulnerable, loved, and a part of a family.  Solitude is not loneliness, and that's what makes true community unique.  That is what made my community experience this year unique.  Up until my year in Guatemala, most of my relationships were based upon either dependency or the love and desire to be together because being together is a whole lot better than being alone.  This year, I learned solitude and suddenly, my community became more real and authentic because I was broken, out of control, imperfect, humbled, and able to accept love.  In our community, we were together because of love, not desperate loneliness and need.  Nouwen also says, "Community develops where we experience that something significant is happening where we are.  It is the fruit of the intimate knowledge that we are together, not because of a common need such as to learn a language, but because we are called together to help make God's presence visible in the world."   

With that definition, community then becomes related, connected, interdependent, healing, accepting, and although not perfectly harmonious, a place to simply receive love and care. 

And that community and love are what defined my year in Guatemala:  Comunidad y amor. 

The song that we are singing today, the summons, has had a special significance to me throughout this past year.  It is the story of my year, and the year for the other four volunteers in my program.  We all felt called and that calling came in different words and different actions, but it was a call.  We reminded ourselves of that call almost every time we were together by singing this song, often more than once during our retreats together.  It is the story of our lives in Guatemala; God summoned us there to do exactly what he had planned.   We also sung it at our last retreat because it is the story of our life in the States; God has summoned us here to do exactly what he has planned.

I learned this year that when God summons people he gives them the community and support to survive and, even more so, thrive, in that setting.  This year, God gave me an amazing group of people who supported me through prayer and financially, and I felt that support in so many tangible ways, even when I was 3000 miles away.  Many of those people are in this church, and I am so thankful for you.  Not only for the support you have given me over the past year but also for the support you have given me since I was 5 and decided to make FIUCC my church home. 

Thank you for all your help, love, and support… I truly value this community.

Adjusting...

"The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and
hate too often.

We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things.

We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships.

These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom....

Remember, to spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever. Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side.

Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent.

Remember, to say, "I love you" to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you.

Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person might not be there again. Give time to love, give time to speak! And give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind."
- Bob Moorehead


I'm trying to remember this as I'm transitioning... life is much busier than I expected (which shouldn't surprise any of us) and I'm a bit more hesitant that I thought I would when it comes to to rekindling social interactions. 

Part of this may come from the changes in expectations and part may just be the overwhelming difference between living in a city where you don't really know anyone and they all speak a different language to living in a town where it as been claimed that I know everyone (which is not true... usually).

But, life is good.  There are 34 girls on the high school swim team and I'm in the midst of trial by fire to figure out exactly what it means to be a head coach.  I couldn't ask for a better group of beautiful girls - they're bonding and speeding up and working hard.  We're going to have a great season.


My job at Whitman is amazing - it really is the dream job for this place in my life that I never knew I wanted.  I have a great "boss" (lower monkey) and co-workers and I get to be in the same building as Lish.  We've been so busy with opening week, it's not even funny, but the first-years are all acclimated now and after a few more big events tomorrow, I think I'll get to learn what my day to day life looks like. 


It's fair weekend - I'm going to see a lot of Touchet kids - that is really exciting.  They have stolen a bit of my heart.

Mi Perro...

es fantastico! 

tenemos mucha divertida juntos... nos gusta a mirar los nubes!

y jugar

y el le gusta a comerme.

Bienvenidos a USA!

New Sights

A week ago, my parents and I were driving down the Panamerican highway back to Antigua from el Lago Atitlan.  Now, looking at that fact, I sit here amazed at modern transportation and how fast and short a day really can be.

  

On Thursday, I was in Antigua with Dina.  A new friend whom I met through really obscure connections.

 

On Friday, we went to Guatemala City for a tour of the gorgeous city that I had never spent time in before 

and we stayed at a ridiculously gorgeous hotel and I had my culture shock for the year.

Saturday, we woke up to this...

and flew out to Seattle.  They are both gorgeous but look different.  That flight was amazing.  We took off at sunset in Houston and as we flew Northwest to Seattle, it was a sunset the entire way!  It was amazing.  Just a constant orange horizon that we flew into.  Tears fell down my face pretty much the entire flight as I processed all that was about to happen in my life.  Country, job, age group, language, housing status, comfort levels, responsibilities... all changing.  Quickly.  But the sun was a good piece of closure.  Closure that the day has set on Guatemala but the day is beginning in a new place now.

Sunday, I preached at FIUCC and received some of the most heartfelt hugs of my life.  It was amazing.

Monday, I visited some people I love and these fools who I really love came to visit... we tubed, floated, ate salmon burgers, camped out, and had a blast.

Tuesday, I drove to Walla Walla

And today, Wednesday, I started my new job at Whitman which I already love.

It will be good.

But it has all come sooooo fast!  Modern transport and technology are crazy.  

I'm really grateful to have a job and a house - it's such a blessing. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One night, before I left Xela, Kyra and I had a conversation about the saying her Thai friends always say, "same same but different"  That's what Walla Walla is.  

It's the same.  Same people, same roads, same college, same friends, same ice burg.  But it's also so different.  People have come and gone.  We've built a new highway and resurfaced lots of roads.  The college always has students rotating in and out.  My friends change, because they're people too. Ice burg has lots of people I know working there... 

It's also what I am.  I'm the same person, same personality, just different.  I've seen new things, learned a new language, grown up, matured, have a different job, different life expectations, and different goals.  

My prayer is just that I can healthily navigate the "same same but different"-ness of being here. Especially when part of my heart is still there.

I'm sure excited for what is to come.

Enjoying the Ordinary

Caterpillar!!!

One of the things I've loved about having this blog this year is how it has inspired me to really see the beauty around us.

By "really see", I mean that I have taken the time to notice, give attention to, think about, ponder, and put words to the sight.  

This has resulted in me having a greater appreciation of the world and awareness of the beauty outside, inside, and around us all. 

And this revelation and lesson is something that I have learned in Guatemala and never want to lose: How to take the time to really see. 

Or, to put it in more blunt words: Stop thinking that my actions of doing life are more important living life.

So, in an effort to continue encouraging myself to really see and to begin a conscious pursuit of living life stateside, I am going to continue blogging a bit. 

This will encourage me to continue carrying my camera, continue looking for quotes, and continue pondering stories and really noticing, giving attention to, thinking about, pondering, and putting into words the world around me and the actions of living life.

I can't promise every day or week, but I hope that this serves as some accountability to maintain the lessons I've learned of being and not just doing.

You don't have to read or look, but if you see me around and I'm running like a chicken with my head cut off, smack me upside the head and ask, "are you living or doing"  or "what have you really seen this week?"

Hopefully that will be a wakeup call for me.  Maybe for us all?

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

New Eyes

That's not me editing photos... that's the colors of sunset!

Being in Guatemala with my parents the past week has given me a fresh set of eyes in which to see the world.  We have spent a lot of time in Antigua seeing museums, restaurants, a super sweet coffee tour, and climbing Pacaya.  We also went to the Lake where we went on the zipline (even my mom!  with some help...), explored San Juan and San Pedro and spent the night on the patio of our hotel drinking wine, watching the boats on the water, admiring the lightening behind the clouds, and talking about aliens, weather patterns, and everything in between.

I am continually amazed (and, yes, slightly embarrassed) by their excitement and attempts at undercover picture taking whenever they saw someone carrying a basket on their head, the comments of colorful clothing, or their adverse reactions of fear to some of our shuttle bus drivers' car-handling maneuvers.  These things that have become so normal and natural to me are incredibly new and different (and at times terrifying) to them... and their shock, fear, and excitement is what fuels them into wanting to try new things and get out of bed at the inhumanely wee hours of the morning.

 Watching their reaction keeps reminding me what it is like to be in new situations.  They are excited by the classic cross and arch in Antigua - it's new to them and they now can say that they conocer (really know) that location (well, they could if they spoke Spanish, but we're working on that). They can be shocked by the clouds, the mountains, the volcanoes letting off a bit of steam...  It's a healthy joy, a fascination with the new... the childlike viewpoint that we all secretly desire whenever we are with an easily excited child.

As I see them and their excitement, and get a glimpse through their eyes, I realize that I'm going to be having a very similar experience Saturday night when I step off the plane in Houston, and for many more days after that.  Like them, the States will be all new for me.  Exciting and new.

Yes, I did grow up there and have seen them, but when I last saw the States, I was a 25 year-old driving around with a friend, a tent, and a mountain bike on the lookout for the next adventure and begging God to take notice of me and give me guidance.  I was a girl who was confused about life, God, and hitting an identity crisis.  I had an appendix.  I didn't speak a word of Spanish and had no close friends who came from socioeconomic backgrounds other than my own.  I didn't realize the global effects of our actions.  I did not come nearly close enough to understanding and valuing community.  There was so much I didn't know, and even more I didn't know that I didn't know.

Now, I'm returning to the States as a 26 year-old who will be starting her first "big girl job" (Wednesday afternoon, I looked at my dad and said, "In a week, I will be finishing my first ever lunch break").  I will be on the lookout for a healthy friendship community around which to surround myself.  I will speak Spanish and try to actively seek out others who do as well as friends from classes and backgrounds different from mine.  I will hopefully not lose anymore internal organs.  I will still not know exactly who I am, but I will at least stop working in vain to find out and/or run away and instead be still and know that I can listen.  I will understand my worth through being versus doing and value relationships over checklists.  I will be aware of my actions and their effects on the world.  And most importantly, there will be so much that I don't know and I know that I don't know even more.

Or, at least, these are my prayers.  These are some of the lessons I have had the honor of learning this year and that I would like to continue learning over the years to come.  I want to go back to the US with these new eyes and be able to see the same things I saw before I left, but with a new excitement and viewpoint that leaves me wondering and enjoying for a long time to come.

Even if these new eyes give me so much excitement that I begin taking pictures of animals on the highway through the dirty windshield as we drive down the road...

Community

(if you go to FIUCC, what I speak about Sunday will be rather familiar to this post... just for a heads up!)

 One of the major themes of my personal study this year has been community.  As I've been going through my journals processing and making a memory book of the year, I have been continuously reminded about how thick the theme of community ran through my writing, reading, and thinking. 

And it makes sense why.  

I was sent a year ago last August to a country I had never been to that spoke a language I did not know.  I was sent with two people I had met for about a day in March and with two people I had never met in my life.

and then they became some of my best friends in the world.

Monday, the last of them, Andrew, left Antigua.  Now that leaves us with three in the States, one in Honduras, and Marcia and I here in Antigua until she leaves for vacation tomorrow.  It's so crazy.  Our family for the year is breaking up... or, I guess I would use past tense, it has broken up.  Not forever, primero dios, but at least for now.

Henri Nouwen, my favorite author ever, describes community as the result of solitude greeting solitude.  He defines solitude as broken, vulnerable, loved, and a part of a family. Solitude is not loneliness, and that's what makes true community unique.  We're together because of love, not desperate loneliness and need.

With that definition, community then becomes related, connected, interdependent, healing, accepting, and although not perfectly harmonious, a place to simply receive love and care.

That's definitely the community that I saw this year.  I came into this country and community with a lot of loneliness and not much solitude.  My walls were up pretty high.  Through health, family, and general life fatigue issues, the vulnerability and brokenness that defines solitude and therefore prepares us for community were able to enter into me.  And these people were ready to accept me for who I am and was.  Thus, I became a part of the community.  

We're all different, come from different pasts, have different strengths and weaknesses, but we are a community.  And in a community, we are here to celebrate each other's gifts and through that celebration we are accepting one another's full humanity as a reflection of God (thanks, Nouwen, for that genius thought!)

 

"Community develops where we experience that something significant is happening where we are.  It is the fruit of the intimate knowledge that we are together, not because of a common need such as to learn a language, but because we are called together to help make God's presence visible in the world." - Nouwen, Gracias

 I am so grateful for my YAV community, as well as Team Xela, this year.  These friends have become so close to me and supported me through so much this year.  The ongoing question throughout my journals is, "how can I do this during my stateside life?  How can I find community?"  I think I go back to solitude... only through solitude can true community exist.

One of the greatest oxymoron's of life - but oxymoron's do make sense... at least on some level.