75% of the Kids We Confirm this Year Will Leave the Church by 2018

(I don't plan on reflecting on the Sunday readings with the blog for the foreseeable future.  Fr. Pat now has a blog (http://frpatearl.blogspot.com) where you can enjoy his wisdom-filled weekly reflections, so long as he sends them to me to post.  Instead, I will write about the joys and pains of ministry in the Catholic Church.  Read on if you dare.) 

A conversation I had with a parishioner the other day went like this:

Me: "So you're saying that my confirmation students can't have one of the two service time slots you promised them, but a group, the majority of which are not parishioners, can keep their four slots?"
Parishioner: "Well, they have a legacy."
Me: "Our kids ARE our legacy!"
Parishioner: "Are you serious?"

When I started preparing to design a curriculum for the final year of a confirmation program I read a great deal about the theology of the sacrament.  One essay sticks with me.  In his book "A New Look at the Sacraments" William Basuch includes a chapter describing the murkiness of confirmation theology.  Not only is it not well grounded in scripture or the life of Jesus, like say baptism, anointing, or reconciliation is, confirmation, in fact, has no clear theology.  Throughout history culture and circumstance reordered the practice of a bishop laying hands on and anointing a person with Pentecost's spiritual Advocate so many times that the ritual practiced today (and the process leading to it) is beyond misunderstood - it is blatantly ineffective to the point that it's detrimental to the future of the Church.

A more traditional Catholic might argue that the "graces" of the sacrament (love, joy, peace, etc.) will work on the hearts and souls of it's recipients, even despite their own motivations.  I beg to differ.  The last time I checked kindness, goodness, temperance and so on were learned habits, not supernaturally granted attributes.  Sacraments, I'm told, are ritual actions that point to and participate in the life of Christ.  Maybe a "going-through-the-motions" confirmation process, like what most churches have today, points to a life in Christ, but it surely doesn't help our kids desire, or form habits, to participate in the life of Christ.

The confirmation program we developed, inspired by Pedro Arrupe's call for Jesuit education to "form men and women for others", hoped to place our students in the heat of the many efforts to build a kingdom of justice made by the parishioners of my parish; hoped to prepare them to carry the uniquely Christian flame of justice - forgiveness, healing, and communion - to the world.  Opportunities for service and justice education were schedule.  A classroom curriculum that weaved together confirmation, Ignatian Spirituality, and social justice was designed.  Young adult mentors were recruited. But, I am told, our children our not our legacy.

Here is a fact.  "85% of the kids we confirm today will leave the Church before the age of 30," reports the Dynamic Catholic Institute.  "Oh," you say, "they'll be back when they want to get married or have kids."  No, they won't.  There are 18 million more Catholics today in the US than in 1972, but there are 60% fewer weddings in the Church.  That doesn't even include the couples who register, marry, and then stop coming in a year.  Why do they leave?  Because we don't work hard enough to keep them!  10% of catholic teens go to youth group.  Is it because their parents won't bring them?  No.  They don't come because the programs we offer lack resources, (adequately) paid staff, meaningful events, or priority in parish life.

Our kids our our legacy whether we admit it or not.  If we don't start acknowledging this, then our legacy is a dying Church.  Our legacy is not the meager amounts of justice that we brought to the world through charity or advocacy - it is the people we leave behind to carry that torch.  And if the people we leave behind aren't prioritized, then flame of justice we so ardently champion will surely smolder.  There is a genius to the Catholic faith, but it must be passed on from generation to generation through relationship, not by inadequate faith formation programming.  Until Catholic adults come to see this, our Church, and the justice it strives to bring, are at great risk.

Pray for our youth, but more importantly, pray for the Catholic adults who are blind to the importance they can play in forming the future Church. 

Al-Hallaj and St. Paul

My last semester as a student at John Carroll University was mainly spent finishing my thesis on how the new translation of the Roman Missal is a Vatican political move to revert the changes of Vatican II, but every Thursday I took a much needed break from that chaos to study Sufism with Zeki Saratoprak. 

Zeki is a kind man, maybe the kindest I encountered at JCU, which is certainly saying something.  Not only would he offer me his lunch or dinner every single time I ran into him heating it in the staff microwave, but he would treat me with such warm hospitality even when I had interrupted one of his 5 daily prayers.  Through Zeki’s class I not only came to appreciate Islam and Sufism, but to envy their faith.  Daily prayer not only reminds a Muslim, but also helps them put into practice, the literal meaning of the word Islam – surrender to God.

The God which Muslims surrender to is the same God Christian’s call the Creator/Father/Lord Almighty/etc…, but the Muslim imagination projects a few distinct non-Christian traits on our shared Creator.   For instance, a Muslim could never accept Jesus as both God and human because God cannot be man; God is other.  In fact, God is so much so “other” that Muslims say no matter what is said about God is untrue.  God is not of this world; God is other.  This is clearly quite distant from the Christian theology of an incarnate, fleshy God.

Yet listen again to Sunday’s reading from Isaiah:

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are you ways my ways,” says the Lord.  “As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.

Is this pre-incarnation image of God so different than that of Islam?  The Lord is clear – our thoughts are not the thoughts of the Lord.  And beyond that, the Lord clarifies that our ways and thoughts are worlds apart.  We’re not even on the same playing field…

…except that we are.  For Christians, we have faith in an incarnate God, a God made human.  Muslims, especially in the Sufi tradition, rest their belief in a God whose reflection can be found in all things.  The 99 names of God can be found in every existing thing.  For example, in a tree is the reflection of Al-Khaliq, God as Creator.  Its fruit is a reflection of Ar-Razzaq, God the Provider.  Its shade reflects Ar-Rahman, God the Merciful.  Its height reflects the Al-Aliyy, God the Most High. And, even when a tree falls and tragically takes a life, it’s a reflection of Al-Mumit, God the Causer of Death.  God’s reflection can be found in all things.  Sound similar?  Sound like the Jesuit idea of “finding God in all things”? 

Al-Hallaj was a famous Sufi martyred in the middle ages for claiming that the only thing inside his cloak was God.  His meditation and prayer brought him to see only Allah’s reflection in everything he encountered, including himself.  For Al-Hallaj, the blasphemous statement made perfect sense, he was a reflection of Allah in all Allah’s glory. 

For Paul this Sunday it’s the same.  He writes, “For if we live, we live for the Lord and if we die, we die for the Lord; so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.”  He could not have been more right on so many levels.  Literally, yes, our life and death is at the hands of our maker, but it's deeper than that.  We are the Lord’s…image, body, hands, feet, breath, speech…we are the Lord’s reflection AND action in the world.  When we wake each day, we should find ourselves saying, like Al-Hallaj, that everything inside this cloak is God, that everything inside this cloak is the body of Christ.

September 4, 2011
Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordnary Time
Ez 33:7-9
Ps 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9
Rom 13:8-10
Mt 18:15-20

My best friend, Steve, has no formal religion.  He is like many in my generation. Raised by semi-religious parents in the Christian faith, but without much grounding in a tradition other than democracy and consumerism.  Even after living together for two years and once spending a college summer galavanting around the southwestern national parks with him, Steve and I have talked about faith less than you would think.  Whenever religion did come up, as it often does for someone who works at a church, Steve would interject, "I believe you just have to be good to others."  That's his moral ethic and as close to a religion as he's come.

St. Paul gives us a different one word ethic in Sunday's epistle: love.  "Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another,"  he tells us.  Sure, Paul is crafting an argument that has a more specific goal (includsion of gentiles in salvation) than simplifying religion to a word like Steve, but does this nonethless by borrowing Jesus' revised second greatest commandment: Love your neighbor as yourself.

What's odd for both Steve and St. Paul is that they both only tell half the story.  Being "good", whatever one self-defines that to be, is always "I" centered at its root.  The "good" ethic only calls you to be what you desire to be to the point it doesn't knowingly infrindge on others, maybe like non-interventionalist foreign policy.  Paul does more or less the same thing with his one-word-ethic of love.  Loving your neighbor as yourself is dependent on how you love yourself.  His "love" ethic relies on how you choose to love yourself - still an "I" centered activity. 

The broader scope of Christianity, however, calls for a different ethic. Yes, love is at its core, but a love centered first in and of God (see Christ's first great commandment or Thomas Aquinas on moral ethics). This love ethic should push us beyond ourself, beyond our space, to seek a justice-centered love.  The reading from Jewish scripture reminds us of this.  God says to Ezekiel:

You, son of man, I have appointed watchman for the house of Israel;
when you hear me say anything, you shall warn them for me.

God goes on to say that if we do not speak out against injustice we will face the same punishment of the injust.  Depending on how you read Paul, this could fit his love ethic, but surely is not just being "good".  God's guide for how to live this week calls us to be prophets in the world, to live for others in all our actions, whether its what we buy, who we vote for, or the quality of how we listen to our neighbor.  God calls us to be men and women for others.  Goodness and love that is drawn from an ethic of "I" do not begin to encompass this calling.

Here's a small story: Andy is fixing some plaster in the church office for us.  He's the best plaster guy in Charlotte, so I'm told.  He's also dying.  He and cancer have been walking together for three years.  Chemo, radiation, chemo, surgerys, two times being told he was cancer free, and yet a month ago he started waking up every day with piercing headaches.  The doctors found 5 tumors in his brain.  They want to do the chemo, radiation, etc. dance all over again.  Andy refuses.  He'll die with dignity, he tells me.  He'll come to work everyday and do whatever his body and the painkillers will let him.  He says he's ready for heaven, for hell, for whatever death will bring, so long as he begins that journey with the dignity he deserves.

I know Andy's story because he asked me how I was doing.  I told him that I had a headache and he told me to get my coffee and take a seat.  Then he told me his story and called me to give him the dignity he deserved.  To listen, to reach out beyond mysef to be with someone who needs love, to be a man for another.  May God bless Andy, help him continue to call us to be for others, and help us to challenge others to be for the Andys we ignore.

Adult Peer Pressure?

August 28, 2011
Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
Jeremiah 20:7-9 - Jeremiah laments but cannot fail to speak in God's name.
Psalm 63:2-6,8-9 - Our souls yearn for God.
Romans 12:1-2 - Paul encourages the Romans to stay faithful to God.
Matthew 16:21-27 - Jesus speaks of his Passion and rebukes Peter for his objection.

At some point in my youth I had heard the term peer pressure until it became trite. "Peer pressure this... Peer pressure that... Avoid, avoid, avoid." Now that I'm an adult, those warnings seem warranted. More than a few of my poor college decisions were the result of peer pressure. Oops! Live and learn, I guess.

The readings this Sunday remind us that peer pressure doesn't end when we reach adulthood. Jeremiah laments that he, even when he tries to submit to the pressures of his society, cannot turn away from God. He says this about when he tries to repress of his desire to speak of God:

But the it becomes like fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones; I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it.

The gospel portrays Peter pressuring Jesus to rise up against Israel. To fight against Roman oppression like the disciples thought he would. But Jesus rebukes Peter calling him "Satan" and reminding us that following God's ways are not easy, even our friends can steer us wrong.

Finally, the beautiful lines from Paul's Letter to the Romans reminds us that every generation will face peer pressure:

Do not conform yourselves to this age
but be transformed by the renewal of your mind,
that you may discern what is the will of God,
what is good and pleasing and perfect.

Today, when industrialization is killing our environment, people are starving throughout the world, and we don't think twice about the amount of polution created by eating a hunk of Argentinean beef, we must ask ourselves tough questions. How we conform to this age? How do we allow the pressures of society, government, peers, even (maybe especially) Church, to prevent us from being a living sacrifice, doing what is good and pleasing and perfect in God's sight?  Liberation Theology and Vatican II got it right, we must pay attention to "the signs of the times."  We must face adult peer pressure by recalling the burning fire in our bones for God, justice and love, and be transformed by renewing our minds.

The Doubting Jesus

August 21, 2011
Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time
Is 22:19-23
Rom 11:33-36
Mt 16:13-20

What Jesus knew about himself and his role in salvation has always bothered me. In high school I remember thinking, "if he knew that his death would save the whole world, how hard could it have been to make the sacrifice?" Allow "high school Mark" some leeway on this because, while the question was a bit naive, it points to a bigger question, the question of Jesus' self-knowledge.

Traditional Christian logic would follow like this: God is all-knowing, Jesus is God, therefore Jesus is all-knowing. This same logic traditionally reads this famous gospel story as Jesus testing his disciples and finding Peter to be his number one pupil. Try a different approach, try reading the story from the perspective of Jesus' humanity.

Hiding out in Caesarea Philippi far north of Jerusalem, maybe Jesus pondered his own ministry. Maybe his thoughts went something like this: First, John, my one-time mentor and cousin, was beheaded by Herod for stirring up the people. Am I next? And the last time I encountered the leaders of my own people, men who I studied with growing up - the Pharisees and Saducees - I insulted them, calling them hypocrites. And recently, while fleeing my homeland for safety's sake, a poor gentile woman kept calling to me, begging that I heal her daughter. When I finally listened, my what faith she had! What is my Father asking of me? Who is God asking me to be?

Is it wrong to think that Jesus's humanity often left him in such doubt, wondering to what God was calling him? Doubt is not a sin, so long as we do not bow to it. When Jesus asked the disciples "Who do you say that I am?", couldn't it have been because he wasn't yet sure? And isn't that what discerning people do - take their doubt prayerfully to those who love them? Today's passage from Romans says: "For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor?"

Yet, we scorn ourselves when we doubt. We allow uncertainty and the unknown to haunt us instead of embracing them with a spirit of discernment, asking our friends and familes how they see us. A great lesson from Jesus this week is exactly this: when we struggle to know who and whose we are, we should not fear asking our friends for help. Identifying God's call in our life is never an individual task, but always one in which we need to call up our community. In times of struggle, may we remember Jesus' response to adversity, allowing ourselves the freedom to doubt, and taking those doubts to people who love us.

The Faith of Canaanites

August 14, 2011
Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Is 56:1, 6-7
Rom 11:13-15, 29-32
Mt 15:21-28

A quick preliminary note: In the United States we have an option of transferring Monday's readings from the Feast of the Assumption to the Sunday prior. You may not hear the above readings at mass.

In the Gospel Jesus calls a woman a dog, there's no two ways around it. Some biblical scholars have claimed that in the original Greek the word used was better translated with an affectionate tone, like puppy or lap dog, but they're just evading the truth - Jesus called a woman a dog.

You might not believe me. You might think I'm crazy. "Jesus, divine love incarnate, would not do such a thing," you might be saying. But, according to the the author of Matthew, he did. And, call me crazy, but I love this passage. I love what it says about Jesus' humanity and divinity. I love what that further reveals about God. A closer examination of the reading will show you what I mean.

By the time Jesus walked the streets of Jerusalem Canaanites didn't exist. The Jews had seen to their destruction years earlier. Calling someone a Canaanite was like calling someone a Benedict Arnold - everybody knew exactly what you meant and it wasn't very nice. Actually, it's worse than not nice. Calling someone a Canaanite is saying "you're the lowest of the low, you don't even exist."

Jesus was human and accordingly he was a man of his culture, place, and time. Sure, Jesus hung out with sinners, but usually Jewish sinners, not random Gentile women from far north of Israel. Jesus even goes so far as saying, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." That is, not to Gentiles, and definitely not to this Canaanite woman.

But something powerful happens in their encounter. After ignoring her, ordering the disciples to send her away, and then insulting her, Jesus changes his mind. Something in him shifts. Her faith - the faith of the one that barely exists in his eyes - is a mission altering encounter for Jesus. Her faith not only heals her daughter, but widens Jesus' mission from Israel to the whole world.

There's plenty of evidence for this in the rest of the gospel. For instance, just before their encounter Jesus fed 5000 hungry families - all Israelites; but after their encounter when Jesus feeds 4000 more families they're all Gentiles. His vision of salvation grows to include all of humanity because of this women, a woman seen at the time as nonexistent and hated.

If we believe that Jesus is the revelation of God, that Jesus reveals to us Who God is, then the image of a Jesus who changes, grows, and allows for his vision of love to widen tells us that we have a God that does the same. We have a God who hears prayers, especially those of the poor and outcast, and changes His plan for them. We have a God who hears the persistent prayers of a people of faith and adapts to love them better.

When I ask myself how I can become more like Christ, I find myself wondering who are today's Canaanites. What people do I ignore? What people do I refuse to listen to? What people do I ask my friends, family, and coworkers to dismiss on my behalf?

The homeless guy I try not to make eye contact with - Canaanite.

My grandma who lives at a retirement center that I rarely call or visit - Canaanite.

The coworker I ignore or am cold to - Canaanite.

The poor Salvadoran whose land was taken to mine gold for yet another gift for someone I love - Canaanite.

How can I be more aware of these people? What can their faith teach me? How can I grow to love them, and the world, more fully? This is the challenge of the gospel then and today. May it change us like it did Christ.

To Be Seen by the Crucified People

This is the personal knowledge that does not distance us from the world but brings us into community, face to face. A knowledge that heals and makes whole will come as we look creation in the eyes and allow it to look back, not only searching nature but allowing it to search us as well.
- Parker Palmer

* * * * *

Forgive me for this final delayed entry. The last ten days have been a fast-paced, no-holds-bar, all-out assault on my body, mind, and soul. The corporal readjustment from hot to cold and beans to no beans would have been enough for anyone, but the last week was more experientially generous than you can imagine. Yes, there was the transition to speaking and spending American, but the real wrestling came with some long-term life/employment questions. A quick summary for those wondering: I turned down the best job for me in CLE+ (an environmental theology teaching position at St. Martin de Porres), canceled all future campus ministry job interviews, and decided to channel Good Will Hunting and say "if the Professor calls about that job, just tell him, sorry, I have to go see about a girl." So yeah, I'll be moving to Charlotte sometime before September. I'd rather have a life than a job.

Yet, through all the chaos of week one stateside, a blog post has been brewing in the depths of my head and heart. Admittedly, I'm conflicted. I want to summarize, highlight, lowlight, reflect, provoke, inspire, honor, cherish and so forth, but all that seems too lofty for this space. What I've decided to leave you with is the reason I go (and the reason I want others to go) to El Salvador.

Often we hear missionaries and pilgrims say that seeing poverty changed their lives. When I returned from the Dominican Republic in 2002 I'm this line played on repeat from the speaker that is my mouth. After four trips to El Salvador, all with students and first time travelers, I believe that its only partial, tangential truth. Years ago I couldn't articulate the deeper, more fundamental experience that occurs when we (read: rich people; and yes, you're a rich person) visit the poor. I am not sure I can articulate it now, but its why I go, so I'll try.

* * * * *

For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophesying is imperfect;
but once perfection comes all imperfect things will disappear...

Now we are seeing a dim reflection in a mirror;
but then we shall be seeing face to face.

The knowledge I have now is imperfect;
but then I shall know as fully as I am known.
1 Cor. 13: 9-10, 12

* * * * *

St. Paul writes that our self-image is blurry at best, but at the time of perfection we will see clearly, face to face. Our self-knowledge, he goes on, is limited until we are seen fully. I'm no student of Paul. He could as easily be talking about Christ's second coming as he could the fall of the Roman Empire, but reading this through the "Dean Brackley lens" I have come to think this: when we are seen by the "crucified people" of El Salvador face to face we begin to see ourselves as they see us, which is how God sees us. Broken, yet miraculously whole. Sinful, yet wholly loveable. This is not how we were taught to see ourselves. American culture tells us we need to look this way, dress like that, drive one of these, and have sex with one of those. But when they look at us, when we are seen for the God-image that we are, those cultural chains lose their weight. Life becomes lighter, love becomes possible. This is the Salvadoran experience: to know as fully as we are known.

Thomas Merton says this:

"But God communicates Life and Spirit to humanity. It is not God's plan to lure the soul out of the body, but to sanctify the two together, divinizing the whole person so that Christian can say: 'I live, now not I but Christ liveth in me. And that I now live in the flesh, I live in the faith of the Son of God Who loved me.'"

Divinization at the hands of the poor. To live in the faith that the crucified people of El Salvador have seen us and have univocally determined that we are loveable. This is why I go and why I want other people to go.

Encountering this self-image in the eyes of the poor is not without responsibility. Parker Palmer is quiet clear. This personal knowledge demands that we engage the world, demands that we enter into community. Solidarity is not easy with a people who suffer. Sustained community is not easy with people thousands of miles away. But once we take this road, once we are seen and begin to see, nothing seems impossible.

John the Baptist = Dean Brackley?

Cormac Mccarthy is not a good author to read while living in a third-world country. He describes a God that is "unmoving, austere, implacable" and Who's justice, if it exists, is post-history. Justice, for his God, might be an afterthought, but it might also actually be the seemingly unmediated world we live in where more people are hungry, sick, underpaid, under-loved, and treated with indignity than not.

Living in El Salvador, witnessing the struggle for food, education, health, freedom, democracy, dignity and all the rest scares me to death sometimes. At timesI buy into Mccarthy's vision of God. I buy into the idea that evil will win, that justice is not possible, that there will always be the forgotten poor and the forgetful rich.

Then from the wilderness I hear a voice. (This wilderness happens to be Rafa's bookshelf and the voice if of Dean Brackley, S.J., who was the first Jesuit to transfer here after the six were assassinated, the author of The Call to Discernment in Troubled Times which happened to be sitting in English with a personal inscription on Rafa's bookshelf, and whom I had lunch with on this week at the UCA.)

Faith affirms that God's Reign irrupts into this world and advances in the heart of history, within and beyond these often-ambiguous movements. In the end, faith is not based on those movements, but on a deeper experience, a shared sense that, despite egoism, suffering, and death, life is worth the trouble. It springs from the internal conviction that sacrifice, love of neighbor, and celebration make sense, less because of apparent facts than despite them. The easy smile of the poor and the severely handicapped and their readiness to celebrate have a basis in reality. While they show us that life is more cruel and evil, more tenacious than we ordinarily admit, they also help us recognize that there is something going on in the world that is much more wonderful than we had imagined. The experience of this quiet assurance - that it makes sense to struggle and to celebrate - is our solid grounds for hope. It is experience of such a kind that we cannot give full account of it. And yet it furnishes sufficient reason to believe in God's Reign, reason enough to trump the evidence to the contrary. Though I cannot always explain why, deep in my heart I do believe that we shall overcome some day...love and community are possible, and not simply in exceptional corners of an unloving world. And if life and truth and love will have the last word, then history has direction, although it has less to do with conventional measures of progress than with crosses and resurrections.
Dean Brackley, S.J.

And there it is - I'm off to work, to teach English, dignity, love, justice, and to believe those things are possible.

Pupatating People

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls.
When she finds a pearl of great price, she goes and sells all that she has and buys it.

The very hungry caterpillar is dead. The second graders killed her on Tuesday. They also abruptly ended one of Mrs. Frizzle and the magic school bus’ famed field trips. I’m not sure if they salvaged the bus or if it went to the junkyard, but Mrs. Frizzle’s students surely went home disappointed.

When books die everyone loses. Killing a book by cutting it up for an art project turns an educational tool, a tool which has the power to overcome poverty through knowledge, into trash can filler. But, for some reason, a teacher here didn’t see it that way. I don’t know what she saw. Maybe she saw me having the kids write books and cut out images from magazines for the pictures. Maybe she was trying to use some of the materials sent creatively in her class. Or maybe she saw stacks upon stacks of books written in a language she does not understand and could not imagine how to integrate into her classes other than removing the part that confused her – the words. I really don’t know. At this point, I’m not even asking why. I didn’t come to Agua Caliente to look backward, but to look forward, to look toward the future for these kids.

Ever since my very hungry friend failed to pupatate I’ve thought a great deal about the teachers here, their education, motivation, and classroom preparation. I’ve thought about the kids, their smiles and joy, what an education can mean for them, how the school here can be for them the story of metamorphosis that they cut to pieces. The problem, it seems, that always interrupts my dreams for their future is the past. The past is never quite behind us, it formed us and continues to push us forward.

An explanation: when I witness the ancient, and often torturous, pedagogical practices of our teachers (one example being the 4th graders writing every twentieth number from 0 to 1,000,000 so they “could know they existed”) and I try to remind myself that this is how the teachers were taught too. And, at the elementary school that they attended, where teachers are known to attend class drunk, not show up regularly, and do other worse things to students, the education we provide is an improvement. For our teachers, showing up every day and “teaching” is a stark improvement on what their past told taught them was a teacher. The past forms are present.

For 12 years during the Salvadoran civil war people were “disappeared”. Really, since the Spanish showed up until today the very lives of native people/poor people have been seen as disposable. Just last summer, when two environmentalists “disappeared” because they spoke out against the Canadian cyanide-leach gold mining outfit Pacific Rim, the government blamed it on gangs. For centuries the people here have been trained to think that everything, even their lives, is disposable. This is why the streets are filled with trash, why they don’t see the beauty of the landscape, why 3:00 pm always means sometime around 3:40, and why a teacher thought it a good idea to dismember the very hungry caterpillar.

Fatima, a future English teacher and friend from Agua Caliente, has been observing my classes lately. This embarrasses me. I am not trained to teach ESL or elementary kids and my daily preparation is less than it should be (but heck, I’ve got 7 preps ranging from first grade to adults, what can you expect?!?!). When I ask Fatima why she wants to watch me, she says it’s because I use all the techniques she’s learning about in school. I can’t tell you what these are in English, let alone in Spanish. My class often just happens – like the other day when my planned 10 minute demonstration of the game “Go Fish” turned into the kids teaching each other how to play the game, with them forming teams to reinforce the newly learned question and response to the kids who hadn’t memorized it yet. They taught each other; Fatima and I sat and watched. I had no clue this would happen, but I did not fear letting it happen. I’m glad she witnessed it because this approach to learning is nowhere to be found in Agua Caliente. But I’m also glad she witnessed it because she knew my lesson plan was different. She watched a teacher demonstrating the courage to be different, tolerance of the failures and frustrations that lead to learning, the decisiveness to make the decision to adapt a lesson on the fly, the humility to acknowledge that the students knew how to learn the material better than I did, love of the process – of making it happen and appreciating it when it does, the self-security to allow the students to venture into the educational unknown, and a teacher who braved the wilderness of patience with engaged student discovery. In seeing all of these she saw my utter joy in watching it all unfold. This was a gem of a lesson to observe and I’m well aware that most days my classes don’t even come close to resembling it.

Paulo Feire writes in Teachers As Cultural Workers, that these qualities: humility, lovingness, courage, tolerance, decisiveness, security, the tension between patient and impatience, and the joy of living are necessary, on top of solid pedagogy, for a teacher to be progressively democratic. I don’t know about “progressively democratic,” but I’d say those are the qualities a teacher needs to succeed in educating his students. I’d even say those are simply the qualities that a person needs to succeed in being human.

Am I angry that those books, so generously donated by my friends in Kent, were destroyed? Yes. But even more so I moved to compassion for how the Salvadoran people view themselves and the world around them. Training these teachers to be effective in their classrooms involves more than showing them some best practices, it involves lifting their self-worth and self-value above what they’ve been trained to allow for themselves. Before they can employ all the qualities listed by Freire, they first need to be able to acknowledge that some things are not disposable. Some things have an innate value that nothing can take away. Until they come to realize that they are that thing, that they are the pearl of great price, the education will lack. This is a slow process, to be sure, but the most important of processes. While I can guarantee you that before this happens you can train for and run a marathon, I can also guarantee you that only through educating the Salvadoran people will we see the reign of God – a world community free from the suffering of indignity and worthlessness – fully manifest itself in the present.

Running Up a Mountain...

There are least two perks from my odd morning ritual:
1) The view after 3 miles of up hill.
2) Feeling super fast on the second half of the run.


The speckles of white on the left between the three hills is Agua Caliente.

The Glory of God is a Person Fully Alive

Fr. H. Paul Kim is the most transparent mystery I’ve ever met. His English confuses me, his actions puzzle me, and his strength, courage and faith leave me stunned, but what’s behind it all, what this man lives for, is simple: to glorify God in all things.

You’re wondering why I’m writing about a South Korean priest who has never been to El Salvador. (He would if he could, having traveled to over 30 different countries.) The reason is simple: four days a week I run through the mountains around Agua Caliente dodging cattle headed to water, dogs who’ve never seen a leash, and cars which abide by a system of unspoken laws that I don’t understand. I do all this because six years ago H. Paul heard the St. Irenaeus quote, “The glory of God is the living man” and interpreted this to mean that he should run marathons to raise money for kids in Madagascar. (Yes, after months of badgering him, I got him to change the quote to “living person”.) You can read more about his story at his website http://www.frhpaul.org/.

But how’d I get roped in to this mess? This I ask myself daily. Basically, H. Paul is stubborn. Last year, for three months, I told him that I wouldn’t run the Cleveland Half-Marathon. But I forgot the first rule of all things at JCU, which is "H. Paul wins." So yeah, he broke me and I ran it. You can watch my “enthusiasm” for the race in his promotional video on YouTube here. This year, knowing his persistence would wear me down, I agreed to run the whole race from day one.

I’ve tried to write about my experience of running and I keep drawing a blank. There’s not much positive. I don’t run every time I’m supposed to. I don’t meet my mileage goal every time. I don’t get up as early as I want to run when it’s still cool. I don’t run nearly as fast as I’d like to. I don’t feel good afterward. Sure, I’m fitter and have lost some weight (not that I needed too), but my feet hurt daily and I’ve got some gnarly blisters on the fourth toes of each foot. I sweat so much that I have dehydration headaches some days after really long runs. There’s not much positive in this for me, yet I keep doing it.

Admittedly, there are aspects I like. Getting to the top of a mountain or seeing one of my students in the street or experiencing the shock when I tell someone I ran 22 kilometers – these all give me pleasure, but they aren’t what push me through the pain of long runs. What keeps me going, I think, is the mystery of H. Paul. What gets him to run? What has he discovered about himself and about God by physically punishing himself to help the poor? Yes, he’s written a “marathon spirituality”, but the intrigue for me is his giving of his bodily self to do good for others.

The homily today was long and I didn’t like it very much. Besides only understanding half, what I did translate from Padre Javier had to do with the importance of the Lenten practice of mortification of the body. I think he meant stuff like flogging yourself or using one of those medieval spiky leg belts that cuts into you. That stuff is ancient and, as far as I’m concerned, offensive to the message of Christ, but then I realized that before Mass I ran up a mountain for 5 miles only to have to run back down. That’s self-inflicted torture. And that was when I think I started to understand.

Marathon spirituality is letting go of ownership of your body, giving it to God. It shapes your days, your eating and drinking, your sleeping and waking, everything revolves around it. And the training hurts. The pain helps you let go of your attachment to comfort, to security, to wealth. In El Salvador, my body has not been mine; it has been for and with the poor. That is what my whole experience here has been and will continue to be. Running teaches me, very physically, that my whole self can live, love, and even hurt for others.

My body is not mine; it is for and with the poor.

* * * * *

Anyway, here’s my pitch to raise money with H. Paul for the kids in East Cleveland and in Madagascar. This is what H. Paul has to say:

To commemorate the 125th anniversary of John Carroll in a way that reflects the spirit and mission of the University, the goal of Living Person 7 is to have 125 runners participate in the Cleveland Marathon and raise $12,500 to support the children in the Fatima Family Center in Cleveland, Ohio and to support the children of Madagascar, Africa.

Past “Living Person” runs have raised funds to help the children of Cleveland have a good meal at Thanksgiving and have fed the homeless and poor children in the slums of Madagascar.

What is “Living Person” all about?

St. Irenaeus said, “The glory of God is the living person.” He believed that God’s glory manifests in people that are fully alive. The Living Person believes that he/she can glorify God through the body, like taking part in the marathon (hint, hint).

After coming back from Madagascar, Africa in 2005, I was eager to do something beautiful for God and His people in that part of the world. So I ran the Cleveland Marathon, gathering people and raising money for the homeless shelter run by the Missionary of Charity Brothers. Since then, the “Living Person” has lived out what it means to be one with the poor in their discipline through participation in the marathon.

I also run (and encourage others to run) in support of the Fatima Family Center, which does amazing things for God’s children. The John Carroll campus community strongly supports the Fatima Family Center, and I’m happy to encourage more support for it and the children of Madagascar. So please come out and run, cheer our runners on, or donate!

You can donate (with a tax return) at this JCU website.

An Old Saying Tested

Beans, beans, the magical fruit,
The more you eat, the more you toot.
The more you toot, the better you feel,
So eat your beans at every meal.

I am here to say that I have stretched my personal inquiry into the validity of this saying to the maximum and have concretely discovered that it is indeed false. Just so you know.

Corridos de Peregrinación

What was here to be found was not a thing. Things separate from their stories have no meaning. They are only shapes. Of certain size and color. A certain weight. When their meaning has become lost to us they no longer even have a name. The story on the other hand can never be lost from its place in the world for it is that place. And that is what was to be found here. The corrido. The tale. And like all corridos it ultimately told one story only, for there is only one to tell.
- Cormac Mccarthy from The Crossing: Border Trilogy (2)

Here are two stories, which I hope, tell that one story adequately.

* * * * *



One of my greatest joys teaching here has been watching Mauricio. He and I met in Tejutla in 2006 at a late night soccer match when I was still a Kent State student and he was a seminarian for the diocese. Life has changed a great deal for both of us since then, but we now find ourselves teaching the same students in the same school in the same village. Mauri now has a wife and daughter. He rents a room in a restaurant on the outskirts of town. I am now clean shaven and wear my hair short. This may not sound like a dramatic change, but trust me, it is. I rent a room in the rectory at the center of town.

Why do I watch Mauricio? I'm weird (praise be to God!), but I'm not a creeper. Watching people isn't something I normally do. But with Mauricio its different. Every year I give $250 to Padre Rafa so Mauricio can go to college. The $250 is one third of his tuition. The other part is paid for by his work at the school. He has no idea that I'm his sponsor. The only things he thinks I've given him is a box of Ernie Ball nylon guitar strings and a capo for classical guitars(see the above picture for this gifting). I'm just the crazy gringo teaching English and always bugging him for a new Palabra de le Fe to teach the kids in English that corresponds with his religion lessons.

When I watch Mauricio, this is what I see. Primarily, a man who loves students. He is gentle. Kind. Thoughtful. Extremely patient. Creative with his lessons. Hardworking. He teachings in the morning, takes a bus to Chalate for class in the afternoon, and returns to direct the children's choir in the evening. When the combination of their untrained voices and offbeat tambourines makes my head wince in pain, Mauricio just smiles. He is shy, but will play guitar and sing in front of anyone. He is fiercely competitive when in all sports. He loves, and I mean LOVES, his faith and his family.

In a few months Mauricio will have his degree and teaching license. My sponsorship will end, but his teaching will continue for decades. For my meager $250 a year this man will being shaping hundreds of student's lives for a generation or more. While watching Mauricio I'm sometimes in awe of how far a little generosity can go, but more often I find myself mesmerized by gentle, passionate, loving spirit with which he engages our students. The miracle is not that my $250/year bought him an education. The miracle is Mauricio.

* * * * *



Jimenita is 5 months old. Marta, the school's principal, 3rd grade teacher, host-mother to Rodrigo, and regular cook of my food is her mother. Like Mauricio, Marta and I have known each other since my trip as a student in 2005. She is a graduate of Rafa's sponsorship program and has worked at the school since it opened two years ago. She is principal because, as Rafa said, there was no one else. She is a good woman and she's always working. But, as my dad pointed out, she's sad all the time. Sometimes I think her life has been so hard that she never learned to smile.

Jimenita makes Marta smile. She rarely cries. Is soft and silent and doughy and cute and smells better than any baby I've ever held. She will grow up in Agua Caliente. Rodrigo will be her "brother". (He currently claims she's his girlfriend. That, Marta and I hope, will change.) She will be raised solely by women, but will see Padre Rafa weekly. She may come to think he is her father. But he is not. Her father is somewhere in the States and nowhere in the picture. Normally, babies cry when I get within 20 feet. Jimenita beams the minute she hears my voice. She laughs, giggles, coos, babbles, mumbles, squeaks, smiles. She loves when I speak English. I hold her as often as possible.

A few weeks ago Marta asked me to be Jimenita's padrino. In the sponsorship program we often tell the kids they have an American padrino so they can build a relationship with their sponsor. Marta's sponsors, by the way, were a lovely couple from Kent. They keep in contact years after their sponsorship ended. Yesterday a package came with baby clothes and toys. $31.05 to send. She asks if they're able to visit every two weeks. I wasn't sure if Marta was asking for me to support Jimenita financially or actually be her godfather, but, to my surprise, it was the latter. Babies are baptized after one year. She says she'll wait until I return, whenever that is.

I've said that I came here to continue the relationships that normally end after immersion trips, but Marta's offer boggles my mind. Yes, for her, I am the only man with any consistency in her life other than Padre Rafa. She has seen me four out of the last six years. We share friendship and I treat her as the equal she is. But to be a godparent in Latin America is no small thing. It is the honor of honors. It is a bond often stronger than family. But as humbled and honored by it as I am, the honor is no way compares to when Jimenita, in the arms of her mother, reaches joyfully to be passed to me.

* * * * *

A pilgrimage is taken in light of a story. The story proceeds us: we've read it, we've heard it, we've been raised in it, in many instances. And at some point we need to test that story with our own experience -- to read it with our lives and make it our own.

A pilgrimage...has certain distinguishing features. The pilgrim sets out on a path that others have taken, hoping to witness what others have seen -- to see it with his or her own eyes. Pilgrims travel in company, but each must encounter the holy site personally. Finally, the pilgrims, on their return, tell others of what they have seen and heard, so that others might be moved to set out on pilgrimage themselves -- to go and do likewise.
--Paul Elie from Pilgrims (In Spite of Ourselves)

Some of My Dad's El Sal Pics

Click on the picture of Alejandra to see some of the pics my dad took while visiting. Feel free to ask questions about what is in them. Enjoy!

Specifity

Ohioans, I'm first addressing you. While you're in the midst of one of the harshest winters in years (a great reason to teach English for 3 months in El Salvador), I would like to remind you of summer rain. Ya know how on those hot, humid, mid-July days you can feel the coming rain in the air? How your body anticipates the soothing sound of the rain fall and the cool aftermath of the newly bathed world? Well, on Tuesday while my dad and I watched dark clouds roll of the mountains, we felt exactly that. The Salvadorans I asked said, "No, its not going to rain. It's still February!" I'm prone to trusting my body, but when a community of people in a foreign land tell me its not going to rain, I generally trust their bodies. Well, lets just say Ohioans 1 - Salvadorans 0. It rained through the night! Can you believe it? We even lost power. It was great. My dad was so happy for the rain that he laid in a hammock until late that night listening to its relaxing patter on the metal roof.

* * * * *

After finishing with their studies two young monks discussed their hopes after leaving the monastery. They both eagerly agreed that they wanted to experience the world. (One can't blame them after years of silence and meditation!) As they parted ways they vowed to return at the end of their lives to that very same village to share what they had learned.

The first traveled the world by foot, boat, and horseback. He saw many things and met many people, but rarely traveled with any of them for long. His life was filled with beautiful images of the earth's bounty.

The second, notably clumsy, twisted his ankle just a mile from town. A kind young woman found him, cared for him, and, even though he kept talking about leaving on his great adventure, married him. They rarely left the village (she feared he'd wander), but were content with its intimacy and the life they shared together.

When the first grew old and weary of travel he returned to the village to meet his friend. When he arrived at the village with the caravan of things he had collected in his travels he was created by a large group of people, at the center of which was his friend. After the traveler told of his many journeys and showed off his numerous collections, he asked what his friend had seen and done. The second monk told the story of falling in the road, falling in love with his wife, and failing to go anywhere at all. They pondered the paths they had taken, what they had gained and lost. The first knew the whole world rather poorly, while the second knew his small village extremely intimately.

* * * * *

On Friday, my dad, Rafa, and I went to the UCA (Universidad de Central America) to visit the martyrdom site of the six Jesuits and two women killed there in the late 1980s. While there, we met up with Dean Brackley, a Jesuit and friend of Tom Schubeck, whom I worked for at John Carroll. But he wasn't the only gringo (gringo is not a derogatory word in El Salvador) we ran into.

Check this out: while taking photos of the rose garden which rests on the ground where the martyrs died, two gringas walked up to the garden. One, Elizabeth "Z" Zunicha (sp?), was an RA at John Carroll and helped lead the LGBT protests we held there last year. The other, Elisa, is a Catholic Worker from Cleveland. They both live in the Whitmer House in Cleveland, which happens to be a home that serves immigrants. It was once the home of "pre-Padre" Rafael Fuentes for over a year.

When things like this happen, people say that the world is small. They're wrong. Its frickin' huge. People also say the world has shrunk with the help of modern technology. They're closer to being right. The world is more accessible to the rich developed world. But I'm still not buying into this "shrunken world" description completely. How about this for an observation: random happenings like running into "Z" at the UCA or going to mass with Natalie Terry (another JCU grad) in Romero's crypt actually show us how specific our relationships are.

The thing about us "randomly" meeting is this:
- We both went to a Jesuit university...and we met at the most famous Jesuit university in Latin America
- We both are passionate about El Salvador and justice...we took a class together about it two years ago
- We both live in CLE+ which has many, many Salvadoran ties...blame Padre Rafa, who rightly claims to have started the Salvadoran community there
- We both had been to El Salvador in the past...and once you come, you come back
- We both recently graduated...recent graduates from Jesuit institutions have a tendency to wander
- We both visit the UCA every time we visit El Salvador...at least once per trip
- We are friends because of all these reasons and some more, but El Salvador brought us together originally

Was our meeting fate or destiny? No. Was it random? Also, no. We ran into each other because our lives and our relationships are specific. She could have been Lauren Fraser, Tom Weinandy, Andy Treras, Tom Kerrigan, H. Paul Kim, John Ropar, and so many others who names I would also misspell, but who fit most of the above description.

My next question is how specificity impacts our lives? Its not like its a new thing. 500 years ago, when most of the world never left its backyard, relationships were always specific to a place, but now we chose our own specificity. We chose our clan. Facebook friendships demonstrate this, online chatting and email reinforce it, the telephone and Skype cameras make it live action. But the real questions for me are what do we gain and what do we lose, as a people, by embracing a scattered specificity of relations?

I'd like to hear some thoughts on this. Email me, post on this blog, facebook message me, whatever works for you. These are my thoughts:

Maybe we lose:
-intimacy of place
-learning to love neighbors we can't avoid
-the importance of physical community
-time spent on our computers relating to all these people
-physicality
-?

Maybe we gain:
-freedom to chose family
-the ability to maintain friendships
-the ability to hide from our immediate reality
-?

What more?

Chele

 

I Wonder as I Wander

A pre-story note: A good homily, I was once told, is written with three specific people in the congregation in mind. If your words resonate with those three, it will be fruitful for all. Knowing my audience is smaller than a congregation, I write with one person in mind, a different person every week. Here's to hoping the theory holds.

Saturday morning at 8 am Rodrigo and I hopped on the bus to start our journey to San Salvador to retrieve my dad from the airport. The night before I had received the reassuring call from Padre Rafa that Trinidad, a friend from town who I knew to be trustworthy, would be accompanying us to San Salvador and from there drive us to the airport, back to San Salvador, and then back to Agua Caliente. But, like all things El Salvador, plans changed. Around 7:30 am, after I had picked up and fed my six-year-old companion, Rafa called to inform me that it would just be Rodrigo and I going to the airport. And, I assure you, at six Rodrigo was not going to be doing the driving.

Getting on the bus knowing I’d never alone navigated the dangerous buses of San Salvador, had never driven on its chaotic, if not anarchic, streets, and had no clue how to locate the highway to the airport, let alone follow it back to Agua Caliente, could have be described with an array of pessimistic adjectives. Ones that should have come to mind at time include: stupid, foolish, insane, irrational, idiotic, reckless, irresponsible, rash. Romantic optimists might suggest the opposite, that the action was one of trust or faith or love of my dad or some other virtuous Aristotelian thingy, but they’d be wrong too.

Here’s the secret: what put me on that bus, what brought me to El Salvador in the first place, what keeps me here, what makes discovering divinity every moment in every possible thing possible, what births love (and sustains it) in the oddest circumstances, what heals the wounds of hatred, brokenness, and loss, is the simple – and often hard to come by – ability to embrace wonder. Do you know what Rodrigo and I were doing when we got on the bus yesterday morning? We were enthralled in our ump-tienth game of “Veo algo” ("I spy"). We were in the midst of being grasped by wonder.

“Mark,” you might be saying, “you were ignorant of the danger you were putting your and Rodrigo in and that was irresponsible.” You are free to think that. And you are probably right. I'm comfortable with that, because wonder, the things that sustains me, requires ignorance. A Montanan philosopher once journaled, “that only an admission of ignorance can open us to fresh knowings. Wonder is the experience of that admission: wonder is unknowing, experienced as pleasure.”

He also wrote that “love is just wonder aimed at a beloved.” After a bit of editing (I feel at liberty to do this because I’m quoting him third-hand anyway) try on my version of his sentence: God is just wonder aimed at a beloved. For me, this fits perfectly. The ultimate-being-supreme-creator-thingy that got the ball rolling in the first place, keeps participating in Its creation like a child firmly and forever caught up in the rapturous, ignorant joy of beholding the world for the first time. God is like Rodrigo playing I spy in the face of life-threatening danger.

Imagine a God like this.

Imagine seeing the world in this way.

Imagine never letting go of the wonder.

And then, imagine how wonderful life would be if it was always, forever, wonder-filled.

Henry Bugbee (my Montanan philosopher) also said, via a joyfully recollected, but admittedly inaccurate paraphrase by David James Duncan, that “the only limit to the duration of wonder is the limit of our ability to remain open.”

May we always remain open.

(for those wondering, Rafa showed up in San Salvador to take us to the airport - danger avoided)

The Heavenly Jerusalem is a Free Woman

Warning: this has not been proofread, but I want to put it out there before midnight Ohio-time so that I stay true to my every Sunday promise.

My editing friend Dane tells me never to start a paragraph with a quote. I’m quite certain this advice does not pertain to blog posts since they’re a new sort of medium which is happily unorthodox (like most of us!). Avoiding the existential question of whether we’re a new sort of medium too, I will proceed with quoting Lief Enger from his first novel Peace Like a River:

And now, from beneath the audible, came a low reverberation. It came up through the soles of my feet. I stood still while it hummed upward bone by bone. There is no adequate simile. The pulse of the country worked through my blood until I recognized it as music. As language. And the language ran everywhere inside me, like blood; and for feeling, it was as if through time I had been made of earth or mud or other insensate matter. Like a rhyme learned in antiquity a verse blazed to mind: O be quick, my soul, to answer Him; be jubilant, my feet! And sure enough my soul leapt dancing inside my chest, and my feet sprang up and sped me forward, and the sense came to me of undergoing creation, as the land and the trees and the beasts of the orchard had done some long time before. And the pulse of the country came around me, as voices lifted at great distance, and moved through me as I ran until the words came clear, and I sang with them a beautiful and curious chant.

While I found the book less than stirring, this passage had its desired effect. In some ways it is an adequate simile for my experience in El Salvador. Here’s my slightly altered Salvadoran version:

And now, from beneath the audible and robust menagerie of bus/car/bicycle and tricycle horns, chucho/cat /cow/pig/turkey/roster and numerous wild birds’ attempts at midnight communication, came a low reverberation, like the heavy dust-filled winds, but from below. It came up through the soles of my sandaled, tanned, closer-to-the-dirt-than-they-have-been-in-a-longtime feet. I stood still (I also ran a helluva a lot) while it hummed upward bone by bone. There is no adequate simile. The pulse of the country worked through my blood until I recognized it as music, although noticeably out of tune, yet fully tuned into something more essential. As language; although a language which I felt more than I understood, to which my natural, guttural, human response was always a joyful (albeit confused) smiling, head-nodding “sí”. And this language ran everywhere inside me, like blood; and for feeling, it was as if through time I had been made of earth or mud or other insensate matter. Like a rhyme learned in antiquity a verse blazed to mind: O be quick, my soul, to answer Her; be jubilant, my feet! Our God is marching on! And sure enough my soul leapt dancing inside my chest, and my feet sprang up and sped me forward, and the sense came to me of undergoing creation while also viewing a sort of slow re-creation, as the land and the trees and the beasts of the mountains became what they were some long time before. And the pulse of the country came around me, as voices lifted at great distance, and moved through me as I ran until the words, the logos, came clear, and I sang with them in a beautiful, curious, Span-glish chant. And their chant was this: The heavenly Jerusalem is a free woman; she is our mother.

* * * * *

Frances scares the hell out of me. Sometimes strong, beautiful women have that effect. I’ll let you analyze that all you want, but I’m not touching it. She teaches Sexto Grado (or 6th grade) and was at first a complete mystery. This is what I have slowly gathered.
• She lives in Chalatenango – at least an hour away
• She has no kids
• She has no husband
• She often stays the night at our principal's house
• She is 35
• She has been teaching for around 5 years
• She is not overtly religious, possibly not religious at all, but chooses to teaches at a Catholic school...what I’m saying is I don’t know if she chooses to teach here or if it’s the only place that would hire her
• She is a diligent note taker in my English class
• She is, be my estimation, breathtakingly beautiful in that unexpected and definitely not know by the person themselves sort of way
• She does not correct me when I pronounce her name incorrectly

Why do I write about Frances? The teachers were once talking about how many kids we wanted to have. I jokingly responded, “20, oh mi esposa, pobrecita!” but went on to tell them that it wasn’t up to me how many kids I had, it was my wife’s decision. All the women looked at me half excited and half confounded. They asked why I would say that. I started, “because my wife’s body is her body, I do not…”, but I couldn’t conjure the verb I needed. After three patient minutes of them waiting, and me wading through a dictionary, I finished “…control it.” The verb I used more likely meant “govern it” and is linked to kingship and ruling. It was the only Spanish verb I could find to describe control. That evening at dinner Frances spoke to me, possibly for the first time, about how she will never marry because she will not subject herself to someone else’s governing, someone else’s rule. In El Salvador, that is what would be expected. She would, to quote a friend of mine's retired archbishop uncle, “dooo whateeevvver HEEEEE tells you.”

* * * * *

The heavenly Jerusalem is a free woman; she is our mother.

This line from Galatians appeared in the “Liturgy of the Hours” this week. How it so precisely merges Salvadoran reality and Pauline eschatological jargon haunts me. Because the heavenly Jerusalem, the glorious city on the hill which Paul points to, is for many in El Salvador a free, liberated woman. I mean this quite literally. A woman freed to access education only available to men; a woman free to work; a woman free to not bear children if she so pleases; a woman free to share equally in her relationships; a woman free to…control her own body, destiny, home, livelihood, life, self.

And this haunts me because the opposite is here in El Salvador. Women are not free. They are expected, coerced, prohibited from not, and often physically forced into every kind of bad situation you can imagine. Call it machismo, call it genderism, call it unjust, unfair, unloving, call it whatever you want. Paul didn’t write his letter this way, but I’m shouting his line as an outraged demand: Damn it, the heavenly Jerusalem is a free woman! And she is our MOTHER! Do we know what we’re doing to our mother?

But, as Enger’s character experienced his journey to heaven, so too do I experience El Salvador: O be quick, my soul, to answer Her; be jubilant, my feet! Our God is marching on! For the women of El Salvador are marching on. The march is slow, its uphill, and they’re carrying a ton of unneeded baggage, but they do not march alone. I speak of this in hopes that Oscar Romero, the Jesuit martyrs, and, most of all, the beaten, raped, and murdered Dorothy Kazel, Jean Donovan, Maura Clarke, and Ita Ford, are listening and doing something up there in heavenly Jerusalem to free the women down here.

Whether they’re responding or not, I cannot prove, but I do know that El Salvador is changing. Women are being educated, working professional jobs, and, like Frances, taking a stand against injustice. As I reflected on this change, “sure enough, my soul leapt dancing inside my chest, and my feet sprang up and sped me forward, and the sense came to me of undergoing creation while also viewing a sort of slow re-creation, as the women of El Salvador became what they were some long time before. And the pulse of the country came around me, as the voices of women lifted from a great distance, and moved through me as I ran until the words, Her words, came clear, and I sang with them in a beautiful, curious, Span-glish chant. And their chant was this: The heavenly Jerusalem is a free woman; she is your mother, she is your sister, she is your daughter, build the kingdom, set her free.

"3- Mark"

In grade school there was a number evaluation system for our writing that was almost forever engraved in my self-perception. I’m not sure at what number the system started or ended, but I am confident that a 4 indicated we were writing at the level “they” wanted us to be. In fourth grade, I distinctly remember the disappointment of not getting 4s. I’d write what I was convinced were kick-ass stories about aliens on the moon with broken arms and memory altering machines who wanted to invade Earth but were stopped by some space hero, but these stories almost always received a 3, maybe a 3+ or 4- if I was lucky. This led me to believe that my writing was forever stunted. (The things that affect little kids and stay with them for decades are so mysterious, aren’t they?) By the seventh grade my self-perceived failure in writing led to such frustration that I turned in plagiarized biographies to salvage my grade. (Sorry Mrs. Loveless!) Writing so petrified me that I refused to risk it, refused to risk the failure.

In 2002, when I met Carmen Roebke and John Jerek at the Kent Newman Center, a journey in the opposite direction began. They so clearly preached the power and importance of story to faith and life. Carmen was the first to introduce me to the phrase “all stories are true and some even happened” (from Megan McKenna?) and Fr. John’s homilies weekly weaved together the mysteries of life, death, and resurrection in such a seemingly effortless manner that I could not help but be mesmerized by the power of his storytelling.

A short essay given to me by Fr. John – Credo by Brian Doyle – so deeply resonated with my experience of faith, clearly and gracefully articulating what I felt was the Truth beyond truth that I couldn’t help but desire to write like Doyle. I couldn’t help but want to express myself/my beliefs/my creed/my being, so simply and yet so profoundly. Unfortunately, “3- Mark” was still alive and well. Never, I believed, could I write like that, could I speak of such Truths.

Last August, at the same time I was embarking on the 80-page-journey that came to be my already-out-of-date thesis, I began quite a different journey in writing, what has been affectionately dubbed a “pen-pal-ship.” I am not sure how many pages Chelsey and I have exchanged, let alone written, but I am certain of what they have done to me. I am a man in love (….dramatic pause…) with writing. Our letters have made it quite clear to me that even I, “3- Mark”, can draw love from the deep well that is the human heart with a pen, paper, envelope, stamp, and cup of tea in hand. My words can do to another what Doyle’s did to me – they can help us see clearer the mystery in which we were formed, presently surrounds us, lives within us, and regularly calls more from us, beckoning us beyond a 3- evaluation system to a daily acknowledgment of the dignity we do, and will always, carry.

There were other things I was planning on writing about this week that actually had something to do with El Salvador, and I may tell those stories later in the week, but tonight is tonight and yesterday was yesterday, and yesterday I randomly happened upon (in El Salvador nonetheless!) a book edited by the my-life-changing-author-friend Brian Doyle. In the introduction he writes, among other wonderful things:

"I think about how I would be a lot less of a man if I didn’t have ways to wake up to what I can be if I harness mercy and humor and wisdom and attention and prayer and humility and courage and grace…This is what all true stories about, which is what we are, really, at our best – true stories. And true stories, stories with love and power in them, can save your life and save your soul and bring you, if only for a flickering instant, face-to-face with the unimaginable creative force that once, a very long time ago, explained itself to Moses as, simply and confusingly, I AM WHO AM. That force is in you, in every moment, in every story. Here are some of the stories…"

Many thanks to all of you who have read the stories I’ve told. To those that have commented so positively, whether on the blog or through email, with every bit of positive reinforcement you’re quickly creating a man who loves to write. I am honored you read these words, that you find them of meaning and value, and the you return to them each Sunday. Peace and grace to you.

i AM DoG gone tired

I'm exhausted (after a long week of teaching Padre Rafa had me spend the weekend with high schoolers on retreat...), so I can't promise much from this reflection only that it fulfills my earlier promise of posting every Sunday.

* * * * *

Walking home Thursday night from dinner at my principal's house I found myself staring upward. Maybe this wasn't the safest decision considering Salvadoran road quality, but the moonless night sky provided too good of a view to look elsewhere. Earlier that day I'd heard a guy playing Dave Matthew's Band's "Satellite" on guitar as I walked home from work, so in the back of my head I had expectations. Oddly, they were fulfilled more triumphantly with a sizeable shooting star. It streaked across a third of the sky and left me breathless.

Finding God in things like shooting stars on perfectly black nights in the trash filled streets of El Salvador is easy. Events like this could be called positive contrast experiences, to twist Ed Schillebeeckx's words a bit. When I'm granted the gift of finding simple natural beauty in a landscape so scarred by war and hatred, trash and feces, poverty and abuse, I am not shocked that I "find God". What I struggle with daily is the opposite, how can I experience God in the anger, resentment, racism, classism, and rampant self-loathing present here?

* * * * *

The week of teaching was especially rough for me. I hit the wall where my limited Spanish was no longer enough to maintain control of my classroom. My anger boiled over. I yelled at a few kids. I even physically picked one and sat him in his desk. Feeling anger and frustration upset me. They are not qualities I like to associate with myself.

Throughout my life I've never been able to find God in negative things. Fr. Tom Schubeck, S.J., uses Schillebeeckx's negative contrast experiences to teach undergrads about how injustice can teach us about the indescribable truth that is true human dignity and justice. While I agree that negative experiences can point to sacredness of their opposite, I've always wanted more from them. I want to find God in all things.

* * * * *

As they continued their journey he entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him. She had a sister named Mary (who) sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak. Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving? Tell her to help me." The Lord said to her in reply, "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her. - Luke 10:38-42

Two thoughts:

The first is that possibly my conception of God needs to change. Maybe a God that is all-loving has righteous anger and dignified frustration. Quite possibly God would be frustrated with people that fail to respect themselves or others. Quite possibly I need to acknowledge that frustration with what is bad is a normal, healthy reaction.

The second thought is that anger and frustration are signs that I'm not looking for God at that given time. Maybe I'm trying too hard to impose my will, my ego, my plan on a given situation and I'm not, like Mary, taking the time sit find Christ in the children I teach. Maybe when I boil over, I need to remember to sit at the feet of the Christ in each and every one of my students AND to listen closely to their needs.

Maybe this isn't finding God in all things, but it’s using all things to find God. And that, I can live with.

Time, Place, and Rodrigo

"From that day on...I was running." -Forrest Gump

Monday morning was the beginning of my ESL teaching career. The night before school began the principal of the school gave me my schedule - a whopping 29 classes per week, amounting to four more than when I taught full-time in the states. I only had two on Monday, but had the full load the rest of the week. Of course there are highs and lows when teaching kids in a language they're mostly unfamiliar with, but the most stressful part of teaching has not been the students (unlike high school algebra in the intercity, Salvadoran kids actually want to learn English!). What gets under my skin is the lack of attention to time that the people of the developing world hold. If you've been to the Third World, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

My most recent favorite author, David James Duncan, writes about what a "non sense of place" can teach a person. This short little phrase of his went into my head about a week ago, bounced around for a time, and came out slightly altered to describe the Salvadoran situation as a non sense of time. "So what then," I keep asking myself, "is non sense of time teaching me?"

Lesson One: In a timeless world, we control the length and purpose of our actions more fully. Time isn't out there telling us to start, stop, go faster, slow down; it doesn't control us, we control it. The freedom of time-less-ness is like being naked. There's a vulnerability in it which leads to fear, and while the fear is unnecessary, the vulnerability can open us to new depths of comfort within ourselves. When time isn't out there giving orders, we're freed to take orders from something more essential to the human form, our own desires.

Lesson Two: When you're super poor and there's no future in front of you, time has little sway. You start to take orders from more fundamental things: first, your stomach; second, the rest of your body; third, your heart/spirit/emotions/soul/whatever-you-call-it-thing-inside that needs filled with love. The only time worth worrying about is the amount of time you have each day to meet these needs of survival.

Duncan says - and I totally agree with - the following:

I sense two things here. Both sound silly to the rationalistic half of my head. But I feel in my native heart and bones, first of all, that most of us drastically underestimates - with tragic results for our...greater selves - just how primitive we still are: how basic we are, despite our modernity. And the second thing I feel we underestimate - again with tragic results - is how spiritually alive and capable we are.

Freedom from time allows us to engage with no worry of our engagement's end; instead, we can give ourselves for as long as needed, as wholly and completely as needed, as the lovely gifts of grace that we were created to be.

* * * * *

"That's where you went wrong," said the prophet. "You looked at the scriptures. You should have also looked into his eyes."

Freedom from the grip of time let's us do just that - look into a person's eyes long enough to see something more than irises and pupils. When you look, truly look, into someone's eyes you meet them somewhere which place and time disappear, where we are totally vulnerable, but not afraid. The afraid person never makes eye contact, it's too much of a risk. When you look someone in the eye and really see them, it's impossible not to fall in love. I've fallen in love many times in El Salvador; it's why I keep coming back. Something about this place allows me to love so easily.

My latest love's name is Rodrigo. He and I shouldn't know each other. Rationality says that we should have never met. The poorest of the poor, only six years old, from the most remote area of a mostly forgotten war-torn nation, with no father, barely a mother, and almost as little going for him as possible in this world, should not be best friends with a rich (certainly by Salvadoran standards), twenty-six year old gringo from the most powerful (read: reckless) country in the world who barely speaks his language, let alone understands his life situation. The only thing mi amigo Rodrigo and I have in common is the light which pours forth from our eyes - but of course this is the only thing that matters.

Rodrigo and I sing, read lots of books, eat most meals, play cards-frisbee-basketball-soccer-anything we can come up with, sleep in hammocks, search for turtles, walk home from school hand-in-hand, make dinner, console crying infants - all together. When we don't see each other in the evening there is a void. His host mother verifies this daily. My heart echos his. As illogical as love usually is, as far from expected, as far from rational, as far from home as one could get - but yet somehow totally at home - this is Rodrigo for me.

Why is this possible? Simply because what is written - the rational reasons for us to never meet, communicate, enjoy each other - are the diction of time and place, but both are walls easily torn down by looking directly into the eyes of the people around you and letting them do the same.

The Head and the Heart

The Head

Here's what I think is going on: I think I'm teaching English to grades 1-3 at the parish school. The schedule is all messed up, so we'll see what happens. For example, the second English teacher is scheduled to teach on days she has university classes and they have me teaching English to the first grade for three straight hours on Wednesday, but no other day the whole week. Does that make any sense pedagogically? The other question is what those kids are going to do when I leave at the end of March.

The second task I've taken upon myself is to create a book about the sponsorship program with a history, student bios and photos, and updates on students who made it through the program. Somewhere out there some people (Carmen and Ashley?) started this task, but being here gives me a little advantage in completing it.

The Heart

I had to go to the beach again yesterday. Sorry if this complaint comes off as ungrateful. The beach in El Salvador, for me, means the end. It means the trip is over. It means goodbyes. It means sadness. It also means I can taste home on the breeze. This time, just like on Tuesday with the bridal party, it meant that every gringo went home except me. The problem is that I'm conditioned to associate the beach with leaving and so going there makes me desire the joys of home in a very concrete way. Except this time I don't get on a plane to reunite with the familiar; instead, I say adios to all things familiar, chuck English conversation out the door, and begin the struggle of bartering my English for their Spanish. The beach, with this mixture of emotions, is more hurricane than paradise.

* * * * *

This all reminds me of a story:

"Excuse me," said an ocean fish.
"You are older than I, so
can you tell me where to find
this thing they call the ocean?"

"The ocean," said the older fish, "is the thing
you are in now."

"Oh, this? But this is water. What I'm seeking
is the ocean," said the disappointed fish
as he swam away to search elsewhere.

Anthony de Mello adds:
Stop searching little fish.
There isn't anything to look for.
All you have to do is look.

* * * * *

I grudgingly did ocean things - swam, sun bathed, ate fruit, drank some beer. But then the sun started to set and, with two of the cutest girls who have ever mistaken me for their tio (uncle), I marched - their hands in mine - to the seashore. Their shorts-shirts-hair-sandals-faces-laughter-smiles-hearts soaked in the joy of comfort in place and time finally broke me. I began to look and to see. My ego receded and the moment interceded. For half an hour we tested our fate (read: were chased by the smallest waves you've ever seen until we fell and got wet) until darkness and dinner descended upon us. Applications, jobs, pen pals, parents, fear, insecurity - all that is elsewhere - dropped to the background, while the incoming tide of laughter and joy brought in with it awareness of God in the present. Moments like this when we look, feel, and be to the present are what I long for, what God longs for us all.

We're created to experience the joy of creation in the present, not to have a heart attack about things past and things future. This is all: see the ocean you're in, look at it, smell it, taste it, laugh with it, breathe it in, and receive it wholly. If you're a praying person, I'd ask that you pray we may all be able to do this more often.

Piojos

Many things happened today worth noting and there are so many things to share/react to/understand... Here are a few:

1. The newly-weds, after spending their honeymoon on a bunk bed in a small room with many of their closest friends, said their farewells until David can get permission from Homeland Security to bring her to the USA.

2. Andrea (Padre Rafa's first unofficially adopted daughter, 12 years old, with multiple learning disabilities from early malnutrition) met her mother and brother for the first time. I witnessed this one hour after watching Dave and Oly part and am not yet even close to processing either event.

3. Interrupted by two cute kids pretending to be doctors while in the middle of an attempt to nap, Hermano Pedro (Oly's saintly father, lives a two hour walk from a road on a mountain top, is simple and holy and gentle) made the following statement: "The doctors are killing the dead!" The girls then proceeded to wash my feet and head. I had early declared my feet to be in great pain and that I had piojos (lice), with the simplest holiest gentlest hands in the world. Later I found out they had lice last year, so knew exactly what to do!

4. Rafa told the story of being guarded by 3 weeks last March by 30 soldiers in his church because of threats from gangs. I can't really explain this now because it makes no sense if you don't know El Salvador.

Hay muchas cosas...

(There are many things...)

Practical things are not fun to write about, but here's a few to get us started:
- Dave and Olymipia had the longest wedding in the history of weddings, somewhere around 3 hours, making Easter Vigil feel short
- I took my watch off three days ago and never have any clue what time it is
- Padre Rafa took many liberties in the translation of the Bishop's wedding homily
- Latino dancers are not as good as you'd think. They young groomsmen stood along the wall most of the time while Dave, Nick, and I salsa'd the night away
- Salvadoran men are such bad dancers that my hip-shakíng dance moves were getting cat calls from the ladies...and not in jest
- If you get married on a beach or somewhere else really hot, do not make the groomsmen wear all black suits
- I still don't know where I will live next week or what exactly I'll be doing other than teaching English
- It sounds like we're headed to the beach tonight, will be there Monday, and the wedding party will fly out Tuesday afternoon
- I met the famous Molly Linehan (spelling?)

* * * * *

Currently, I'm reading two books. David James Duncan's My Story As Told By Water , which is wonderful, and The Song of the Birds by Anthony de Mello, which is also wonderful. Here's something they're making me thing about.

From "The Song of the Birds":

The disciples were full of questions about God.

Said the master, "God is the Unknown and the Unknowable. Every statement about him, every answer to your questions, is a distortion of the truth."

The disciples were bewildered. "Then why do you speak about him at all?"

"Why does the bird sing?" said the master.

* * * * *

My morning begins when the bus to San Salvador blasts its horn at 5:30 am, at least most days...the wedding day, however, began nearer to 4 o'clock than I'd like to admit. But, this time, it wasn't my obnoxious bus horn alarm; it was a full mariachi band bellowing a song of lovers from the heart of the rectory. My hope, though fleeting, was that as soon as the groom greeted his bride with the first kiss of their wedding day the band would serenade them with one final song. They instead responded by putting on a pot of coffee and playing long past sun up.

I often wonder why the roosters sing from the early morning (or even late hours of the night) until sunrise, but I'm now convinced that every night rooster-mariachi bands appear in the trees and outside the windows of young gallinas to woo with their coo (so to speak) until their future hens are smitten with the romantic efforts of an off key cock-a-doodle-do.

* * * * *

All good mysteries, it seems, only reveal deeper mysteries. I don't know why the birds sing anymore than I know why that mariachi band insisted on their third pot of coffee - but then again, we all know why, don't we?