Wholeness

Been thinking more about oneness/wholeness. About past and future and present/presence.
If I feel desolate sometimes these days, I didn´t before, and won´t always.
I was electric, proud, hopeful.

I am still ten years old, grassy soccer knees and unstoppable smile, exhilarant. I am still seventeen, wild hope. I am still twenty that first summer in New Mexico – the whole world changing and opening before my eyes from the tops of ragged mountains. I am still here, newly twenty-three and feeling displaced and emptied but still possible and so grateful to be learning.

Even if now can feel no good, it is still one with what lies ahead and what lay behind.
Nothing is lost or ruined. I still contain that electricity, pride, and hope. That never changed, and never will.
It´s in there, feeding new roots somewhere deep.
Thank God.

Does that make sense? I feel fine.

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Also, we just had an earthquake. Shook is the wrong word. I was sitting here writing this and it felt like I was suddenly in the wave pool and then suddenly not. Everything and everyone is fine, but I feel a little dizzy. Weird.

Also. I love Cat Power lately. Is she out of my league?

One

Lately I´ve been reading Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening by Cynthia Bourgeault, which focuses on the contemplative tradition in Christianity and its relevance for our current day and individual lives. Centering prayer is essentially the practice of surrending thoughts and sitting quietly in the moment, seeking God´s presence and relinquishing thoughts gently as they come to you. It is helpful to have a single word to bring you back to your practice when you notice yourself thinking (which happens very often at first). I´ve been experimenting with this method as part of my larger attempt to spend more time with the Divine and from a real need to center myself daily in my deeper identity and in God´s being before I head out into the chaos of living here and doing what I do.

I´ve also been in the practice of going to yoga every Monday and Wednesday morning from 6:40 to about 7:40 for some prework exercise, wakefulness, and meditation. Today as I laid down for the final part of the yoga practice, savasana (a short meditation and stillness), I started counting my breaths (one, two, one, two) as I tried to quiet down. I quickly grabbed onto "one" as my meditative word, and had a little something of a realization (which is, ironically, not actually the point of centering prayer as a specific meditative discipline, but whatever) that what I want to tell you about.

As I breathed in and out, letting thoughts go and returning to the word when necessary (often), the word swelled and became something much bigger and more meaningful than I expected. As I tried to relax, my mind slipped to more peaceful settings I have known. Specific mountaintops at Philmont, the shade of specific trees at Shawnee Mission Park, etc. filled my mind, and it all seemed like a quick round the world flight (in my mind. I had no illusions about actually be transported. And I might seem a little weird to be saying all this, but come on, I´m not that weird). As I noticed myself thinking, again and again I came back to my word "one," and some kind of sense was made of everything when those very visions in my head collided into a mess of formless color and beauty.

Whether or not the lesson was meant to be this literal (or even a lesson at all), I felt as if I saw the oneness of my life and this world. Where I am now is not as beautiful or peaceful or easy as where I have been at other times, but it is absolutely one with them in some fundamental, ineffable ways. The implications of this are, of course, big - calling me to a deeper presence in my current situation, a stronger rootedness in the oneness of my being, of God, of this world - rather than some kind of overwhelming attachment to a particular home or group of people. In saying all of this, of course, I´ve not only fallen far short of explaining anything like the actual reality, I´ve also changed it a little bit. But what does T.S. Eliot say?

"Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholy new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate - but there is no competition -
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business. "

(Four Quartets, East Coker, V, l. 3-18)

Perhaps he is one of the few who has conquered by "strength and submission" that which simultaneously evokes and evades description, but I am not. Hope some of this has made at least a little sense, though. Much love to you all.

Monterrico

"We gotta get out of here. It´s been too many weeks in the city." We say that occassionally. Living in this city of four million (planned for less than a million) feels a little bit like you´re constantly on the run: racing to get to work, to get into line, to get off the street before dark, to stay safe, to get work done despite myriad infrastructural and organizational roadblocks. Though there are certainly good things about the city, they´re mostly people related - so when you can bring those people along with you (in this case, friends from work Kelly, Kimberly, and Kati), it can be a real relief to get out of the city. I guess this is just big city life, but I don´t remember feeling spiritually exhausted by New York City or Chicago or Denver or KC. Guatemala City is just tough to live in, and we feel the weight after enough time here. So this last weekend we planned/improvised a trip to the beach town of Monterrico. Here´s how it all went down.

There was no first class bus, so we rode the fabled chicken buses all the way there. 3 bucks for a 4 hour ride, but three to a seat plus people standing in the aisles.

We stayed at a place called Eco Beach Place run by a man named Luis and his family. We met his soon to be daughter-in-law, a girl from Virginia who happened to stay here one weekend on break from language school in Antigua and never left. She gets married this coming Saturday. We ate lunch as soon as we got there. (LtoR: Me, Kati, and Kelly).

Then we napped.

Then we went and played on the beach.

Down the beach was the weekly baby turtle race. Contestants buy a baby turtle for 10 Quetzales (about $1.24) and cheer them on as they race from the rope to the line.

It was a beautiful Pacific sunset.

The beach was steep so the undertow was really strong, but I went in up to my waist to play for a little bit after the race.

That night we went dancing at a club down the beach. I guess we don´t have any pictures of that. The next morning, we got up at 5 AM for a tour of the nearby mangrove swamp. I tried to take a picture when we started, and this is what came out.

And then it got lighter.

And lighter.

Etc.

That´s Kim in front.

We took a boat across the river to another town to take a different, quicker way back to Guatemala City. I guess they take cars across too.

That´s a bucket of fish in the foreground. It sat in the sun for a least two hours. I´m pretty sure the lady who brought them intended to sell them. Ugh.

Packed again on the bus back. We made it home on time to see the Superbowl, complete with Spanish commentary.

The Flower Debacle

As some of you may remember, shortly after returning to Guatemala I made a list of ways that I wanted to change the ways I live and think about life here. Point five on that list was all about searching out and creating beauty wherever possible. In the weeks since then, I´ve done a pretty good job of bringing beauty to my bedroom, my desk, and even my car. Yesterday, I accidentally (and in the end, fortunately) stumbled into an opportunity to spread some life and beauty throughout this entire windowless office.

It was 7:55 and we were just a few blocks from work. As we passed a big market on the way, I pulled into a parking spot I´d parked in before to buy some flowers for my desk (having previously bought a vase for $6 at a nearby antique store). The first time I did this there was no problem. Bought the flowers and went. This time, for some reason, a vendor had left a significant amount of flowers (exactly 12 vases-worth) wrapped up and on the ground in that parking spot. Of course, I didn´t see them until I saw them under my back tire. I got out and offered to buy them all - which seemed to confuse the vendor. I think she expected me to argue or something. She kept acting mad until a fellow vendor said "He just wants a price and then he´ll buy them all and go." Oh. So we settled on 140 Quetzales (about $18) and I went on my way.

Not sure what to do with all these flowers, we knew couldn´t leave them in the hot car all day. So carrying the flowers into the office, I impulsively offered a couple bunches to a shop/restaurant named Willy who is just one of the nicest guys I´ve ever been acquainted with. He took them and put them out on his dining tables. Boom. Beauty Bomb number 1. Then coming into the office, I arranged, with our office manager/maid, to get a vase together for every female member of the office (plus me at my desk). Everyone was really excited about their flowers and very thankful. There was even enough leftover to bring back home at the end of the day for my host mom´s birthday. How ironic that I was going to buy flowers and ended up running over them. What was at first frustrating turned out to be quite a blessing for the whole office (and Willy, and my host mom).

The whole cache. Proof that I made good on the beauty goal at the office, complete with pictures of friends, a Kansas calendar, a Rilke poem, a few photos of St. Louis sent from an old friend, a paper crane sent from Spain, a drawing of some old guy carrying wood up to a cabin, and of course, the flowers.

Bea.

Delmi.

Miriam.

Lately

A lot has happened over the last two weeks. One of our lawyers left the mission for a job closer to home, Kimberly and Kelly (new interns) have come to start their year of service, and Alex finished up his service and headed back home to Chicago. Here´s some pictures, many of which are courtesy of Kim.
We went to the beach for the day two weeks ago for Kim´s first full day in the country.

This is Alex. He just finished a year of service here as a Church Relations intern. He showed me the ropes and became a dear friend. We spent the last week hanging out as much as possible. Following our day at the beach, we went to this fondue place to kick the last week off.

Cheesy deliciousness.

Alex was really sad about leaving. I tried to console him... ...everything got better when dessert came. I really enjoyed the chocolate-covered marshmallow. We had wine flights at a little shopping center named Fontabella. It feels like a tiny, tiny version of the plaza in KC. That´s Kim on the left.

Then we went to dinner at a bookstore/cafe called Sophos. They have the best salad in the world. It´s called the Paraíso. On Saturday we had a Día de Gozo, which means "Day of Joy." It mostly means we bring all the clients and their families to a church or children´s home or somewhere and play with them all day. At this particular Día de Gozo we had a clown (payaso), which was both creepy and great. He did a great job. All my other pictures are of our totally adorable clients, which you´ll just have to see when I come home.

We went dancing for Alex´s last night at a dancehall reggae club. We were busting earth-shattering moves.

My first Sunday morning at Union Church I was invited out to lunch with an older group of folks, and I kept coming. At first it was a more mixed group, but now it´s usually just three women over 50 and me. Totally strange, unexpected, and hilarious. Also a good time. It´s usually just a quick lunch after church, but yesterday we went to Julianna´s apartment in Zone 14 for cake. This is her view. I live somewhere down there in the valley. Yesterday I ran for 80 minutes to the top of that half-hidden mountain on the left and came back down to Boca on time for dinner. It was awesome. Now we´re back to the daily grind. This is what traffic looks like in the morning. It moves about as fast as this picture.

And this is where we park. It´s a tight squeeze every day.