Things You Give Up

Greetings from an organic farm overlooking the Rogue River in Curry County, Oregon. I am happy to be here, and to have my heart with me. I can honestly say my heart and mind are with me in the present. I wouldn't rather be anywhere else right now, and worries, fears, guilt is minimized. What a gift.
(I'll put up a picture ASAP...can't use plug-ins at this library computer)

What do you give up to live a loving life, a life in harmony with the rest of the world?
Are you a travel-holic who decides to forgo the airplane and take a bus?
Are you a mother who gives all of her time to her children?
Are you a father who listens when he wants most to talk?
Are you a partner who sacrifices her dreams and freedom to be with the one who loves her, who needs her?

How are these things loving?

In this post-Nica life of mine, I have discovered the necessity to explore a life without the following things, however much or little the cost of that sacrifice. I invite you to reflect on them with me.

A porcelain toilet that uses water to flush
Keeping up with birthdays
Health insurance and retirement benefits
Living in an accessible, plush place
Using a car daily
Staying dry
Consistent internet access
Television
Food in bags, boxes, plastic
Keeping clean
Bananas in Oregon in January

I suppose the real question, though, is not what I give up, it's what I gain. Why does it matter, to live a life that questions the "need" for these things?
I can't yet name that.
I can, however, name the following.

1. I will never be satisfied with the estadounidense status quo. I will forever question what and who is beneath comfort, security, and privilege. I will not give them up, not completely. But I will always wonder.
2. It feels so right, to wake up in a solar-powered house, dig up weeds and plant radishes that we will pull from the Earth and consume two weeks from now, and finally, tired and smiling, watch the sun go down over the Pacific.

Thank you for the things you give up, for the ways you love.

The Disclaimer

I've spent the last month revisiting friends and family whom I haven't seen in three years, and I'm (relatively) recently back from a cross-cultural experience that "ruined" me for life (JVC intentionally chooses that terminology).

The result of these two facts juxtaposed is that I find myself wanting to really say "something" but unable to do so given the circumstances, which usually involve a cup of overpriced tea and the inevitable question, "So how was it?"

And so here's everything I am afraid and unable to say in those moments.

Hello. It is good to see you, because in every interaction with you or anyone else, I am given a glimpse, whether minute or gargantuan, of the cosmos in each of us, of the reality that we hunger for the same things. Let's not gloss over that intensity with pleasantries. I am happy when you show me your soul.
That said, I'm angry.
Exasperated.
It's beyond words, so let me try to paint a picture.
I feel that every one of my pores contains a volcano connected to the magma center of my heart, and the unfamiliar home around me causes eruptions that social etiquette demands I swallow, causing implosion. Implosion that manifests itself in nervous ticks and awkward silences and other creatures that are best left unnamed.
Allow me to be perfectly clear that I'd prefer to explode.
I'd prefer to tell you this, that I have seen poverty, I have lived with it outside my barred front door and inside my gut, and it has left me reeling, wondering if you have felt the same bottomless incredulity.
I have seen love, triumphant in the maggots-on-stomachs, laughing mindlessly while Satan strives to comprehend, and it has raised me out of bed with a drive beyond my own understanding, whispering si se puede.
I have asked questions that are knives plunged into my past, about why it's worth existing when one-sixth of the people on this paradise planet barely survive, and it's in our grasp to change that.
And now I'm here with you. As I cautiously sip from my styrofoam cup, my feet are silently crossed under this transparent marble table. Say, I do like your shoes, but I admit I'm stuck on how many extra pairs we have between the two of us that could be sold to give a single pair to Denika and her brother Brian, who walk barefoot in broken glass. And while we're stuck on shoes, allow me to admit that HDTVs make me vomit a little inside.
It's hard to enjoy this tea while I'm vomiting.
I know that soon we will collapse full-bellied into your recently-washed Lexus and head home, where even I will happily dull my mind with a movie or two. Plasma-projected. It will be pleasing, even for me, for a little while, but I apologize if afterwards I must excuse myself and take a long walk alone with little faces dancing in my memory. Could I tell you about them?
I also know my words are dripping with swords. But it's not personal. It's buried where I cannot expunge it in the deep end of me, not you. I wonder if you are the sort of person who will jump in with us.
While I get used to this dark water, please forgive the judgment, and know that I do love you and thank you for receiving what you may or may not understand. I look forward to the moment when this disclaimer will no longer be needed. I sincerely ask, would you like to get tea again sometime? Even if I'm erupting, I can't stop trying. Peace.

Top 10 Reasons I Love the United States

I'm past the three-month returned mark.
Allow me to say...

I love being back in the United States!!!

Maybe if I write it emphatically enough, it will come true.

In all seriousness, in order to let culture shock "gracefully" run its course (actually, it feels more like I'm a ballerina repeatedly pirouetting into concrete walls), I have been advised to focus on two facts. One, what I am feeling is natural, and it will end. I'm not crazy. It's okay that I feel the ground will cave out from under me every time I enter a Walmart, and that I gawk at $9 airport sandwiches realizing that amount of money could buy dinner for five in Nicaragua. It's okay, because some day I will be adjusted to being back in this place. Some night I will be able to put those marbles away (see last post).

The other fact is a little peppier. The fact is that there are good things about being back here, and it would be a disservice to those who have welcomed me lovingly "home" and to the Nicaraguans who sent me off with a (sometimes joking) "Get back where you belong!" if I didn't acknowledge these things.
And so here they are.
10. Biking
There's nothing quite like not going five miles in ten minutes without using any gasoline--no guilt involved! And Oregon, where I've spent the majority of my returned time so far, is brimming with velo-culture. I especially love country downhills after angry uphills where you realize as you fly that you earned all of it.
9. Enough sleep
Adios to the days of 5am "good" mornings and 10:30pm goodnights. I will guiltily leave those to the world's hardest workers and accept my privilege to be a culture-shocked bum. At least for now.
8. Winter
I don't much miss Managua weather in December-March. 37 Celsius. Creeks that evaporate and leave festering beds in their place. And I never felt comfortable in clingy clothing for more slender women. Meanwhile, in Oregon, my colorful scarves and cobwebbed boots await, and rain will make the flowers grow ;).
7. Inspirational people
I'm not saying there aren't inspirational people in Nicaragua. But I would like to thank those of you who have learned to love committing your lives to simple living, community, spirituality and social justice, without having to leave the States. You inspire me to keep trying. Keep in touch.
6. WORDS
I've always been someone who prides herself on her expression. Though my Spanish grew in Nicaragua (duh), I couldn't be true to the introverted, sarcastic intellectual in me, not only due to a lack of vocabulary, but due to a lack of people who understand the hilarity of LOLCats and Monty Python. Instead they laugh at Chapurin Colorado. Cheers to English wit. It is good to be back in your presence.
Disclaimer: I miss Spanish everyday. But I live in the United States. Se encuentra en cada parte, y va creciendo!
5. Music
I made an intentional decision to not bring my iPod into my JVC life. What joy to hear Nickel Creek, Muse, Shokolo and Bill Whelan again! Not to mention that in the past three weeks I've participated in jams involving banjos, ukelele, and steel drums. Bagpipes to come. I suppose not having los Mejia-Godoy around isn't so bad. Heck, it's my opportunity to pass them along to new communities here. Say, have you heard of los reyes del son Nica, Carlos and Luis Enrique Mejia-Godoy? Check them out.
4. Food
Alas, no more rice and beans three times a day. I may feel guilty surveying the seven varieties of spinach and mushrooms at eco-friendly Oregon supermarkets, but when they make it on to my plate, sauteed with long-missed curry, I realize I have newly come to appreciate the beauty that is food. Healthy (or not), delicious food. May it be available to everyone.
So you know, almond milk, frozen blueberries, and granola is the best breakfast God ever desired for humankind.
3. Wide Green Expanses
Grass. Trees. Large meadows in the center of the city. Call Avatar cliche and call me hippie, but they DO have healing powers. That's why all Catholic Worker houses grow a garden. And the ability to roll in grass daily is a privilege not available to the urban poor in Nicaragua. Or the United States.
2. Diversity
My favorite salsa partner is a 65-year-old Chinese grandpa named Tom, who speaks a single phrase of Spanish, "No toques mi culo."

1. Family/Friends
Relationships are the hardest and most rewarding thing about being alive. I've got good people near me who care about me. Nicaraguans taught me the importance of taking care of them and allowing them to take care of me. After one-half of my JVC experience was over, I told my friend Yelba I was considering staying in Nicaragua. "You can't do that," she mandated. "Shame on you. You have to go back to your mother."

Have You Ever Seen God in a Marble?

There’s not much to do for fun if you’re a child in the inner city in an abusive, poor family.

You don’t go to school because you don’t learn anything, even when the teacher does show up, and because your mother doesn’t notice whether you go or not.

She doesn’t notice because apart from buying herself a coke or some beans every few hours, she stays in “your” cardboard hut, spending your father’s drug sale money, whatever’s left after his nightly boozing, of course, on cable television. She watches telenovelas (soap operas) that you don’t understand.

Your older brothers are trying to keep themselves alive by robbing buses all day, so they can’t give you something to do.

Luckily for you, in your barrio, next to the Comedor (eatery) that gives you a free meal every morning, there is a humble library. It has lots of books with pretty pictures that numb your mind for a few minutes. There are words on the pages, but you never learned to read, and even if you can sound out a few letters, they switch places on you and your eyes blur them together, such that reading hurts too much.

Esteven and Alejandro outside the library

The life I just described belonged to a frequent library “client” named Alejandro. He lived across the alley from the library, so like it or not, I saw him every day. He played all day in the dirt, with various cheap games.

One favorite was top-spinning. Alejandro and his cronies—Laura Fabiana, Esteven, Cambell, and so many I can’t name—would place chipped sidewalk pieces in a circle they drew in the dirt, wind their adobe-colored tops tightly in dishwater strings, and hurl the tops at the ground, aiming to hit the chipped concrete. I remember how their biceps flexed and eyes grew firey and focused before releasing the tops. Such strength, determination, anger, potential. To be NFL quarterbacks. Or world-class archers. Or farmers. Or mechanics. Or pistol-wielding gang members.

But being too poor for dreams and too young for gangs, they play with tops.

Or marbles.

Marbles were the weekly treat. Perhaps mom decided it was high-time Alejandro bought her a coke, so she gave him six córdobas, and risking the spanking if she found out, he bought himself three marbles. Or perhaps he found them in the dump, remnants of a richer kid’s boredom. Or perhaps it was Friday, the day the library loaned out marbles.

However Alejandro found those marbles, it happened weekly. Then he’s lose them or they’d get stolen. Which is why the humble library would hesitate to loan them out.

The sight of those marbles in Alejandro’s hand is one I will not forget. I’d place them there and look into his eyes, hoping to convey the importance of returning a loan so precious to so many children. For a few seconds he’d just look at them in his grungy palm. His eyes contracted and relaxed and glistened. Three smooth crystals in a cracking calloused shell. As round as his protruding, foodless belly. Three gemstone tickets to hope in a grey-brown world.

I came to understand that kids most liked the games and activities that gave them control of something resembling money or food. Monopoly, Candyland, marbles. Temptations of a life they’d never lead.

This past Friday I went to see Jack, a spiritual director. To get to his house in Portland, I drove a car, shinier than any marble Alejandro would ever see. Before Jack said a word, I spent a long time crying, thoughts and heart flying too fast to comprehend, and then zoning out by staring at the startling blue and green of the Oregon outdoors. Blues and greens that reminded me of the crystals in Alejandro’s hands. I told Jack that I don’t how how to find the space to grieve in this place.

Years ago, Jack spent time in rural Guatemala, and described the first time he left the campo to go to the city to buy some medicine. He entered a supermarket and found himself staring at an aisle stocked with weight-loss products. On sale.

Weight loss. Money spent to lose weight. What would Alejandro think of that?

Then Jack placed before me two netted bags of something small, round, beautiful. One bag blue, the other bag green. “I just bought these, and you’ll be the first recipient,” he said. “These marbles represent your tears. Every day, you need to hold them in your hand, and give them as much space as they ask of you. God needs you to cry God’s tears.”

I took three blue, three green, and held them in my hand. My world crashed into itself. “You don’t know…” I tried to begin, but tears congealed the memory. He told me to take my time.

A few minutes later, I was able to tell Alejandro’s story. “In Nicaragua, children would save up to buy marbles. Their favorite game. What all the poor children played, in order to distract themselves from food they didn’t have and things they couldn’t do. Marbles were so coveted, so cherished.”

As the salty tears from my eyes mixed with the gemstone tears in my hand, Jack whistled. “Oh. That hit a heart-chord for you, didn’t it. Perhaps they’re going to be too much for right now.”

Not too much. Too perfect.

And so, because I cannot give them to Alejandro, I hold these treasures in my hand, and cry God’s tears.

Initial Thoughts on "Being Back"

I doubt this post will be of much interest to people who haven't experienced culture shock.
Then again, I'm doubting a lot lately.

How does it feel to be back? They say. This is actually the best of the hardest questions I've had to answer. The worst has been, Do you know what's next? Presenting that question is like calling for directions from someone who's caught in a hurricane. "Say, do you know which way to What'sNext?"...I'm sorry; I don't. But perhaps you could tell me which way is up.

Here's my best answer to that well-meaning question. Firstly, am I really back? Perhaps physically.Though there's very little physical presence in sitting for an hour and a half by a full-blast heater, staring out a frosty window onto a suburban lane, my eyes and mouth stuck only slightly open. That happened this morning.

Some days I do plug in to this beautiful Oregon world. I must admit--its colors, cultures, fresh air--it is beautiful. I go to MLK Jr. marches with Sisters of the Road Cafe in Portland. That was sweet. I take long walks and order fair trade tea and read A People's History of the United States, a book that reminds me there ARE people in this breathless, pounding country who think the way I do. That was a good afternoon.

And then there are days like today when I wake up with Carlos Mejia-Godoy's voice in my head, singing about "el Dios de los pobres,"  and I feel so far away, misunderstood, and before I know it my forehead bunches up and eyes squint and I am crying, wondering how I'll ever be. here. again.

Music is the hardest part. It is the Nicaraguan jewel I miss most. In college at LMU, the musical side of me was largely suppressed, by the push to achieve, by "whiteness" (I could only take so many cold sacred hymns without looking for something meatier), by fear. In Nicaragua it awoke again. The music of that (I can no longer say "this") country embodies the spirit of revolution, the yearnings and faith and poetry of a people eternally victorious against their oppression, an oppression which "this country" (here I am again!) has played a--if not the--major role in causing. The music of Nicaragua--the feminist three-step of its folklore dance, the way guitars are played with the lyricism of harps and the power of drums, its rhythm that convinces my soul it could march on accompanied forever--has awoken a volcano in me, one that is rumbling and ready to burst.

But now there's a million-ton boulder called the United States over my crater. And I can tell you, it doesn't feel good to have lava stuck in my stomach. No quick-fix highly-processed antacid can clear that up.

Allow me to slow down and see more of the horizon. I'll be okay. This is all expected. Some day the clouds of purposelessness, longing, and isolation will melt away, and I will see the beauty of where I am, and more importantly, I will see all people, Nicaraguan or not, for what they are--worthy of love, on their own journeys, though worlds different from mine.

But in the meantime, while I figure that out, Two Thoughts (Estha in The God of Small Things, anyone?):

1. Some things, I hope, will NEVER make sense again: daily car usage, a closed mind, making choices without taking into account a preferential option for the poor (So long as I live comfortably and others live dismally, my well-being should not be the principle motivation behind  my decisions), power and privilege. So long as I continue to question these and other realities, I am living true to the person I have become. To the person I have always been that Nicaragua has showed me.

2. Aunque se aclare el horizonte, el volcán nunca se apague.