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.

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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?