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.

¨Making it¨ through these two years

Hello, people whose world I will soon be joining. So begins my last week in Nicaragua.

I made it.

Although, examining those three words, I find them to be poorly chosen. Yes, I was put to the test by parasites, dust, the fumes of a poorly organized city, and more tryingly, a (comparatively) simple lifestyle which emphasizes befriending and accompanying the poor, and all the weight and hopelessness that implies. I feel their entrapment somewhat lies on my shoulders. That is, their enslavement in their lives and themselves is largely due to a legacy and culture I carry and have tried to unlearn, and an identity I cannot erase.

Yes, I made it, though I look four (and feel twenty) years older and yellower, as my very honest friends here say, though when I find myself quiet and allow my heart to absorb what it has found in these two years, I still buckle over in astonishment, expressed through laughter, tears, or speechlessness.

Yes, it is wonderful that I am still alive after the hardest two years of my life. But “I made it” is problematic for two reasons.

Firstly, the sentence emphasizes my initiative. As if I deserve praise and recognition for an accomplishment. But mostly I feel powerless in this experience, in this life, as if I have been plunged gearless into white water, and should be grateful, not proud, for having been plunged. And if I did stay afloat, it’s thanks to those who in some way offered me buoyance, though they themselves might have been drowning more than I.

Secondly, I’m not done yet. JVC is very clear about this from the very first discernment weekend. “I made it” could be better expressed, “I’ve begun.” Nicaragua has sucked me into a vortex of committed ruinage. I will never think or behave the way I did. And though they might forget my name, though I will probably become that-one-chela-who-told-stories-and-wore-many-colors (if they even remember that), I will never forget them. I seek to live in honor of them from now on. I seek to live consciously of, critically toward, and grateful for my reality. I seek to continue “living simply so others may simply live.” I seek to deepen my understanding of living the way Jesus and many others did and do. Most importantly, I seek love.

Perhaps you find this all idealist, silly, extreme. But those who set the world on fire have been called all of those things. (The Pharisees to Jesus: You’re silly)

And now for a change in topic and mood. Here’s what my days have been filling themselves with lately.

• Jana and I recently spent the night in the neighborhood where we work. I’ve only done it once before. El Recreo undergoes a juicy, goth makeover when it turns dark. During the twilight hours, families leave their tin houses to take in cooler air and rest for an hour before it’s time to wash the clothes and cook dinner, so there are more people to greet, and more time to greet them. I feel more connected with the community. It makes me wonder whether I’d ever be strong enough to live in a neighborhood like that, or in a house with a poor family. That’s truly solidarity. But the gangs and drugs and loud dogs also come out at night. So when 8:00 hit, Jana and I retreated to our friend Silvio’s street, and at 9:00, to his patio. From a safe plastic chair I heard drunken vulgarities over the barbed wire fence, and wondered whether being outside at night in El Recreo would be as dangerous legend tells.
• My friend Mey invited me to a Katia Cardenal concert on a recent school night. Jana and Sister Meli from Proyecto Generando Vida came along. I teared up during the deepest melodic segments. Colorful Nicaragua has awakened the musician in me, and I will feel so silent and white without her. Afterwards, sister Meli, of the Congregation of Zion, spent the night at our house. I like that some nuns can go to late-night concerts and spend the night in dirty-but-welcoming volunteer houses.
• On December 7^th, the Nicaraguan celebration of “La Purisima” (the purest) Virgin Mary, Jana, Chelsea and I boarded four different Managuan buses and screamed Mary songs at the top of our lungs, accompanying ourselves with plastic bottles filled with rocks. This was a prank combining two Nicaraguan realities: poor children boarding buses with homemade instruments to sing and ask for money, and the Purisima tradition to go out and “gritar” Purisima songs around the city on the night of December 7th. It felt a little sacrilegious and disrespectful, but I wouldn’t have missed it. Our friends Kira, Velky and Fabi accompanied us, sitting at the back of the bus and pretending to be passengers who randomly decided to sing along. Some people laughed encarcajada. Others ignored us completely or stared pointedly out their windows. Many smiled secretly and tried not to notice. And a few blessed souls sang joyfully along. It was the closest to candid-camera I’ve ever gotten.
• On my last free Saturday in-country, I returned to my host family in El Arenal, the rural community where I spent a week during my first month in-country. It meant a lot to me to say goodbye to them because of how different we are and how close we’ve gotten…I’ve never experienced those so starkly and simultaneously. It was the shortest and best visit I’ve ever had with them. Mari, the oldest daughter, is pregnant, and told me she’s worried about the costs of a C-section in January. Javi, the youngest son, told me how he feels the community university group is losing its voice to “gringo influence”: nightlife, designer clothes, and a repudiation toward the farming traditions of the pass, in favor of glorifying the city. And Alejandro, their dimpled, smooth-skinned first-born, confessed he’s always had a crush on me. “But I respect you so much that I never wanted anything to happen. It would be too complicated.” What a visit!

What else do I have planned in the coming days? A goodbye party with 100 invites. A first communion for my best friend Yelba’s daughter.A trip to the market to be a tourist for the first or second time, to buy goodies for loved ones.And one last week of work. And then, amidst red eyes, hugs and tears, I’ll get on a flying machine to Portland, Oregon.

You’ll hear from me on the flip side. Thank you for reading.

Last Newsletter

What follows is an update, not a blog. I sent this to a few people...thought I´d make it public.

Speaking with a good friend in the States last night, I realized it´s been at least half-year, yikes, since I last sent out my news from Nicaragua. Perhaps it´s because my time with JVC has become less an exciting adventure I want to publicize and more a transformative experience that deserves my full attention. And so I like to think that since I last emailed (almost) everyone I know, I have been less and less communicative with the States side of things, and, I hope, more available to mi gente aquí.

This, in the end, is problematic, since in one month I´ll be on a plane back to Oregon, and the impermanence of being here will set in (please spare a thought or prayer for me on December 19^th). And so I send out this email in hopes of connecting heart-to-heart with some of you, who may be able, physically, emotionally, or spiritually, to help welcome me back.

Life is good. Other than a few stomach bugs and a bad cold, I have been healthy. I have also been happy, though acknowledging that is more complicated. It´s hard to be happy when children you see every day are hungry, and you go home to too much food. Or when diabetes and lupus are considered lethal diseases because there isn´t money to combat them. Or when your friend Jorge, whose house straddles the line between gang territories, tells you, ¨I´d like to live to be forty. That would be a nice long life.¨

What I´m trying to say, and what I go everyday discovering more, is that oppression is no longer an unfortunate word written in the news. It´s a reality that affects me personally, through my friends. Actually, it affects all of us personally, whether or not we want it to. As Mother Theresa said, ¨If you truly have eyes to see, Calcutta is everywhere.¨ And at first reflection, it´s hard to stay I´m happy within that reality.

But one of my favorite songs says, ¨Look at your life through heaven´s eyes.¨ And so I make an intentional daily effort to go to bed watering the flowers instead of fretting about the weeds. And there are many flowers in my life. For instance…

Every other Friday, the library hosts story time with some of the kids who come to the Comedor for a free meal. These kids are mistreated by almost everyone. Because they have  live, and can´t read, and have learned to swear and scream a lot, it was a long time before they enjoyed Story Time. But with pep in my voice, the right animation, puppets, and patience, these kids come and participate in the dramatization of a story, exercising their imaginations for a few sweet moments. It´s a beautifully unexpected half-hour that always leaves me smiling and sweaty. Picture included below.

Though it´s pretty make-shift, I also have continued to form a reader´s club with eleven seventh graders (nine are male. Bummer). We can´t read together every week (reading is so BORING, Heather!), but by mixing reading with games, questions, and theater, these kids continue to show up. We recently took a trip to the zoo (picture included). We´re also planning to act out Rubén Darío´s poem ¨Sonatina¨ during the project´s end of the year bash (it was their idea). Aerobics classes continue to go well. Six to fifteen young women (and a couple brave young men) show up twice a week to crazy-dance to popular music (including ¨Sexy and I know it¨ and ¨Boom Boom Pow¨ by the Black-Eyed Peas—I never said it was the cleanest quality) with commate Jana and I.

I´m not going to miss working with large groups of children all day (though I´m apparently good at it, and need to be a mother, they say). But I will miss these spaces where my passions meet the need of the world, and I hope to find a place to plug into them in the States.

Speaking of that, I am excited to be back. Really! (As my mom pointed out when I was considering staying another year, ¨Heather, you love it everywhere you go.¨) I am not excited to say goodbye or lash out at family and friends because I´m experiencing a cultural car crash. But I am excited to the challenge of continuing to grow in the States.

The truth is, being here has been a grueling test of humility, guilt, and exhaustion, exemplified by JVC´s emphasis on accompaniment. Our role is not to ¨do¨ or ¨change¨ things—that, in the Freirean sense of the term, is only something Nicaraguans can do for themselves. Our role, rather, is to be with people. And though I have grown in my ability to sit powerlessly before suffering, and to acknowledge the complicated power dynamics at work by my presence here, I am ready to stop stepping on Nicaragua´s toes, and go apply what I´ve learned amid the people who formed me. My prayer is one shared by all returning JVs—that we do not grow complacent, that we do not forget whom we have become. ¨Live the ruinage!¨ They say.

Because US Americans like ¨plans,¨ I´ll share a couple of mine. I´m going to spend Christmas and New Year´s with my family in the Portland, OR area. I then hope to take a train trip through California, visiting (and taking advantage of hospitality from) everyone I know, in mid-January, until, well, I run out of money and energy. I´d like to try woofing and visiting a couple intentional communities along the way. Then, back to Portland, where I´ll take my time to discern what´s next—be it work, learning to farm, studying, volunteering more. I have no idea. I´ve never had no idea what to do with myself. This is a scary sponge soaked in privilege.

First, though, I have one more month left in Nicaraguita. I plan to hug, cry, and thank a lot. I don´t plan on making much contact with people in the States during this time—though I would love to hear if you´re thinking of me, and would love to skype or talk on a cell phone (those still exist, right?) when I get back.

Until then, thank you for your support, and I wish you open eyes and an open heart during the Holiday season.

P.S. Enjoy the first picture, of my friends Kenia and Zach, and a gringa who dressed up like the Grinch for Halloween because Nicaraguans tell her she has a protruding stomach, perturbing serious face and a green tint to her skin. They´re more honest than estadounidenses.

Death and Vacation: My Journey to the Murder Capital of the World

During my last three days of vacation, I’ve thought a lot about death.

I have a feeling that might shock people. I don’t think it should. As English poet John Donne maintains, Death is one of the only two things in life that really matter (sex being the other). It’s also an incredibly normal, frequent phenomenon. But in my culture, and most others, it’s an avoided and terrifying ordeal.

With this blog, I’m not going to try to prove that death isn’t wrenching. But after a few days on vacation in Honduras, I have been struck like a tolling bell that it's a little more normal than I once thought.

Granted, it’s not that I hadn´t experienced death before this two-day trip—three good friends, two Nicaraguan, have died on me in the last year. One because she couldn’t afford treatment for lupus. Another because she got hit by a woman talking on her cell phone while driving. That is, totally preventable, enraging situations.

But in Honduras, death is as frequent a topic as fútbol. BBC calls it the murder capital of the world, with a violent death every 74 minutes (an interesting investigation explains why).

As the sun, gracias a Dios, began to disappear behind green mountains, our bus pulled into San Pedro Sula, Honduras, the country’s industrial capital and most dangerous city. We passed a dozen factories behind barbed wire, where turbines painted with familiar brands like “Pedigree” and “Unilever” emitted face-furrowing fumes and questionably legal green toxins into the River Uloa, which bubbled under a bridge underneath us. I was accompanied by my Nicaraguan friends and co-workers Yelba and Zach, and Lydia, the Honduran who would be our host.

Lydia is a very devoted, very loving, consistently positive Bible-banging Christian. Though she has annoyed me with occasional subtle preachiness, I have been amazed at her gratitude for life, and her resilience to suffering.

Her mother died from ovarian cancer when she was 18. Her father, dejected, abandoned their family to work in the States, and her brother moved from their home on the Coast to San Pedro Sula. Luisa was left to live with her grandmother and find some way to support herself financially. She is now a successful dentist who sold her clinic to do two years of missionary work in Bolivia and Nicaragua. 15 years later, she says her patience and faith are paying off. Her father is even returning from the States to live with her at the end of September.

I have seen Lydia’s well-earned stubborn heart and smile. And so it didn’t surprise me when, pulling into San Pedro, she wise-cracked, “Well, it’s a good thing we’re getting in before dark. We’ll make it to the house without getting killed.”

I proceeded to tell her I didn’t appreciate the joke.

She chuckled, her curvy body jiggling. “I’m not really joking. People get killed all the time here, everywhere. That’s the reality of the world, and instead of worrying about how it’s going to happen, we should enjoy every moment we have.”

She said this without fear, sadness, or the strain of suffocating sorrow in her voice. I was captivated. It struck me that she has learned to accept death, something I’m told is necessary to living a fulfilled life.

The next day, we drove to a tour of Honduras’ famous dam, invited by her sister, a tour guide. On the way there we picked up her friend Luis, a short, squat, cross-eyed catracho with a comb-over. Lydia informed he his father had died three days prior and he needed to get away for an afternoon. “How are you doing, Luis?” Lydia piped, pulling into the parking lot surrounded by barbed wire.

“You know, I’m as well as I can be, considering my Dad died. Making the most of it. The sisters are taking it hard. I’m trying to be there for them. But all will be well.”

It sounded like a comment I’d make after getting a bad deal on cherries at the supermarket.

During the remainder of the afternoon, I was struck by his intelligence, amiability, and strength. As we pulled away from the green valley created by the dam, we once again crossed the polluted river Uloa, which flows through Chamalecón, the most dangerous neighborhood in the city.

“The river beneath us,” he whispered to Zach and I, “is where the maras dump the people who don’t behave.”

“Damn. Is that in the news a lot?”

“Yes, but that’s not why I know about it. I live down there. I was in the MR 18 gang for five years.”

Luis, prompted by nothing at all, told us everything he could fit into a single backseat car ride. He has tried heroin, cocaine, everything, but drugs were never his addiction. As a gang member, he was always addicted to violence. He has killed more than one person and served time. Sometimes he couldn’t sleep at night if he hadn’t taken out some of his rage with one of his two guns.

Then he found God. He told his homies he wanted to become a Christian. This is apparently the only way, other than dying, of getting out of a gang. He joined Lydia’s Mennonite Church and they kept him under close watch for four years. If he didn’t attend mass one Sunday, they’d have shot him.

That’s not what has kept him in Church. God has. He says both times a random pandillero has pulled a gun on him in the past month alone, he has prayed, and both times, the maje lowered his gun and let him pass. He’s also helping other former gang members to pull out. So far, their church has twenty youth in a rehab group. “All for the glory of God,” he says.

We went to eat platter-sized baleadas before dropping him off. “We’d better get going, though,” he chuckled. “I want to get home alive.” 

I laughed with him, and hurt badly at the same time. The catrachos I met in the last four days have transformed my way of thinking. I thank them for their hearty acceptance of what life has dealt them. But I was grateful to cross the border back into tranquila Nicaragua, where the burden of privilege churns my heart, but where I go to bed (more-or-less) safely. But because they can´t, I will always carry them in my heart. Is that enough?