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.
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