tres misas

I recently received a letter I had written to myself about one year ago, reminding me of what I had learned and what I hoped to carry with me from my experience living in the Vincent and Louise House - an intentional community of 10 students centering on faith, social justice, simple living, and service. One sentence, underlined among a series of quick thoughts and stream of consciousness reflections, simply said, "Practice spiritual activism." I have since come to the conclusion that this is one of the many pieces of advice given to me by Fr. Memo, a good friend, beautiful spiritual companion, and also my recent guide throughout Colombia. I often use his words to articulate my experiences in the world, to discover what moves and urges and disturbs me, to seek what calls me, to ask how and why. I suppose people are borrowers as they grow, borrowing thoughts and ideas and words until our hearts and minds begin to discover their own molds and stretch to fit them. Memo once told us that he used to write everything down, tried to use the words of his mentors and teachers, and then eventually the whole lot of them existed within his heart and he no longer needed to reference a page. I'm still learning, and so I have a million things stuffed in my head hoping to leak into my heart, and my notes read as follows: spirituality and justice cannot be separated; our ministry will always be humanization; "in truth this man was the son of God"; imperfect and perfectable at the same time; I relate, therefore I am human; life and reality is the most important book of revelation; fight everything that is destroying the poor; the common good; the human way... It's all jumbled and stuffed and spilling, as you can see. So it's here that I stand, pen in hand, hoping to convey something.



Practice spiritual activism. I've been thinking of this a lot recently, recalling one particular day in Colombia, reworking it in my mind, thinking it over, holding it close. On this particular day, I attended Mass three times. It's true that I'm Catholic, but I for sure set a record that day. Though I suppose that if our guide for the week was a much loved and much missed Colombian priest, three Masses in one day shouldn't stand too far from the expected. Anyway, the first Mass took place at the small chapel in Pinares, the retreat center where we stayed. Each morning, Memo said Mass for the nuns of this community, a beautiful group of women who were endlessly hospitable and joyfully open to our presence in their home. Their songs were deep and deafening, an awkward and yet fitting movement of raspy, off-key, and yet somehow harmonizing voices bearing the weight of duty and praise not too unlike the sound of cows heavy with milk and aching for a release. We all enjoyed the sound, and let their songs settle deeper than most. The Gospel reading for that morning spoke of how we cannot serve both God and money, and how we shouldn't worry about what we will wear or eat, where we will live, how we will get by. St. Vincent DePaul once said, "If the poor call you, leave without hesitation." Just go. Just do. Just be. God feeds even the sparrows. Yet people are hungry and homeless, and dying because of it, so what's the message if you're poor? Faith doesn't feed an empty stomach or stop the cold. But I'm thinking perhaps faith helps plant seeds, be patient with growth, and share the harvest. It creates community and helps build homes. It gives us ways of wrestling with the impatience and urgency of the poor, the hesitations and resistance of the rich. I'm finding at the very least that my faith gives me a sense of hope. "'Still,' wrote Van Gogh in a letter, 'a great deal of light falls on everything'" (Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek).

Practice spiritual activism. The second Mass took place in Altos de la Florida, a community within the municipality of Soacha on the southern edge of Bogotá. Altos de la Florida suffers from a multitude of social ills, including poverty, displacement, and what has come to be called "social cleansing" - a rather sickening euphemism for government-backed murders of mostly young men accused of being involved in drugs, gangs or other criminal activities. For most of these young men, their only crime is poverty, and their bodies are often used as "false positives" in the war - meaning that paramilitary groups claim the bodies are actually those of members of guerrilla forces in order to give the impression that it is the government who is "winning" the war. On our walk through the community, we listened to one woman tell her story of losing both her husband and three of her children to such violence...Makes you wonder how she's alive, what makes one foot step in front of the other, what keeps food inside her stomach, what lets her close her eyes at night, what makes the words come out, how she could look at us and smile. She took us to the Tree of Love, the one single tree in Altos de la Florida and the only place for couples to seek peace and privacy and love amid the chaos and closeness of their makeshift shacks and thin walls. She laughed as she explained the story of the tree, and my insides shrunk a bit at the thought. I remember the smell of eucalyptus and the steep climb uphill.

When we first arrived in Altos de la Florida, the children greeted us with a song - all about the future and letting go of fear and painting your face the color of hope. I have yet to witness anything so cute as a group of small children singing in Spanish and forgetting half the words...Despite everything, there was so much joy in this community - a sense of progress and change that surprised us with its strength. The same woman that led us to the tree also eagerly welcomed us into her new home, glowing with pride the entire time. Since she was unable to pay rent on her previous home, which was beginning to slide down the side of the hill anyway, an organization called Elbow to Elbow assisted her in building a new home. Elbow to Elbow does a great deal of work for this community, assisting the people both economically and spiritually, building community and generating dialogue to work against violence and poverty. We were served a beautiful lunch in this community by the women of Hormipaz, which roughly translates to "little ants working for peace," a group of widows in the community that have come together believing that change is possible. Just before lunch, everyone crowded into a single-room building to celebrate Mass.

Cement walls, flapping roof, concrete floor. Loud songs with muddled verses and clapping hands. Faint and confused Gospel readings, lost in translation and drowning in the buzzing energy of hot bodies and growling stomachs. Restless, dirty, and eager children crowded around the altar with toys and flowers and empty hands staring at Fr. Memo as he raised the host - making it more sacred, he said. An old woman on crutches moving through the crowd to give the sign of peace to all the unfamiliar faces and Fr. Memo well after our hugs and handshakes had subsided. A final prayer for peace sung in Hebrew and Arabic, Spanish and English - the hands of many faiths and seekers clasped together around the table. Something crowded and alive and celebratory. And after the prayers, steaming hot bowls of thick soup filled with whole vegetables and strings of meat. Children sitting on the floor with soup-soaked and exhausted faces. A parrot sharing soup with a little boy and eating crumbs off Memo's shoulder. A sweaty, jumping dance party filled with sticky hands and heavy breathing and oh-so-many children. An atmosphere all at once light and heavy, draining and inspiring, hungry and filling. The Colombia that touched us.

Practice spiritual activism. I am often surprised by the times I'm moved to tears, and the times when I hold them back. The third Mass that day took place at Gloria's home, a woman who had spent the day with us in Altos de la Florida. Gloria's son's best friend David, a relative of Memo, drowned a couple of months ago in a lake while on vacation with his best friend's family. Gloria's home was middle-class, similar to any home you would find in the suburbs of the U.S. Safe inside the gate, the children of this neighborhood were free to run about after dark, play soccer, laugh and shout. Inside were shiny floors, high ceilings, paintings on the walls, enough pillows for everyone to sit on, a crowded living room of well-dressed men and women, no small children, cordial smiles and subdued questions. Yet the air was thick and sad and heavy. A picture of David decorated the small table that served as the altar, placed there delicately by his mother Olga who fought at every moment to hold back her tears. "It's the worst pain in the world, to lose a child," Memo said. Ironically, the Gospel reading for the upcoming Sunday was the passage about Jesus calming the water. Memo's entire homily was directed at Olga, who steadily maintained eye contact as she listened to Memo's words, telling her to cry as much as needed, to hold nothing back, and to give it all to God, who is hanging on her neck. You could practically see the knot forming in the back of her throat. I found myself soaked in tears upon watching Olga and listening to Memo's words, even more eloquent in Spanish. And I wondered why I hadn't felt so strongly in the displaced communities, in Ciudad Bolivar, in Altos de la Florida. Why didn't I cry there? What failed to move me? Why didn't I feel as hurt or aching or depressed? Many times in those communities, I even felt joy. In Altos de la Florida, we laughed and danced and shared food and stories. But in Gloria's home, veiled in wealth and security, was the most dreadful and complete sadness you could imagine. The loss of something huge, nostalgia, absence, lonliness. And a sense of being sucked backwards, an immobility in the present, a waking dread of the future. Yet still, some light. Some hope. Some prayers.

Memo often talks about "the dialectical dimension of reality," the idea that life is a paradox, that beauty and violence live side by side and we walk around like the humans that we are, incapable of avoiding any of it. It was all there that day, accompanied by the prayers that I've had memorized for years, the rituals that are now buried in my skin, remembered in my muscles. I walked as myself through everything that is life in just a single day. Practicing spiritual activism is like this, I think. It's getting in touch with all of those human things, knowing the stories, sharing the feelings. It's the way we hold things, memories, people. It's what we believe binded to what's real. It's walking with a sense of self, in relationship with others. It's me babbling about what all these experiences feel like, hoping for some listeners, some communication, some truth.

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ser arrancado en Colombia

We were invited to take off our shoes, to feel our skin against something deep. On the morning of our second day in Colombia, we gathered in the small flower garden of Pinares, a retreat center cared for by the Daughters of Charity in Bogotá, and began to reflect on the day’s theme: Internal Displacement and Refugees in Colombia. What does is mean to be uprooted? I suppose it is to have roots, and then somehow be torn away – though I have never felt that aching tear, that gash beneath my feet. I have moved, relocated, felt nostalgic, missed home, and struggled to find myself, but never have I been ripped away, stolen, forced, or displaced. Colombia is now home to the second largest internally displaced population in the world after Sudan. Approximately 4 million Colombians are internally displaced, most fleeing violence in the countryside and coastal regions of Colombia and migrating to large cities in search of work. In the capital city of Bogotá alone, approximately 1 out of every 8 people is displaced, totaling about 1 million. So what does it mean to be uprooted in Colombia? What does it look like? How does it feel?

As part of our morning reflection, we walked barefoot in the garden. Then after taking a handful of soil, we were instructed to meditate on our piece of earth in a separate area of the garden, later returning the soil to its rightful home. My hand felt invasive and disruptive as I sunk my fingers into the earth, reluctant and intrigued. I walked to the other end of the garden and sat staring at the teeming pile of life before me, considering the history and complexity of just one handful. The more I concentrated, the more the day weighed on my heart as I watched pieces of soil crumble and spill from my greedy hands. My thoughts quickened: I shouldn’t have taken so much, I can’t hold it together, I won’t be able to put it all back. I stared at the earth slipping through my fingers, uprooted and incurable. Suddenly I remembered Oti, a woman who accompanied me very closely on my journey in El Salvador. She once spoke to me about the difference between curing and healing, explaining how her work in her community never offers a cure, an elimination of pain, an end to sickness, the erasure of memories, poverty, violence, or loss. Rather, Oti’s work offers healing – a way of becoming conscious of suffering and the lasting weight of former pain, finding liberation in the midst of this reality. For Oti, healing was remembering. When I put the soil back, I remembered. I remembered the hole I dug in the earth, and the pieces I left behind at the other end of the garden. I remembered that I cannot fix it, that the pieces are too small and too many, and that the day would carry more than can be cured.

The day before, we looked upon the capital city from the top of Monserrate, a hill in the center of Bogotá that lies about 3,000 meters above sea level. It is a beautiful view - expansive, breathtaking, and peaceful. Yet something felt uncertain, detached, distant…What really lies beneath the clouds, past the fog, behind the buildings, over the mountaintop? Though the view of the city reached the horizon, our backs once again faced South. Little did we know that behind us was Ciudad Bolívar, an endless sea of makeshift shacks and cinderblock houses nestled against a backdrop of stripped and eroding mountains, downwind of a massive garbage dump that keeps expanding despite promises to the contrary, and home to nearly 1 million people. And below us, in the shadow of the presidential palace, was Tercer Milenio Park, now filled with approximately 2,000 displaced families crowded in small shacks and tents made of plastic tarps and plywood.

So what did it take to turn around, to look deeper, and to not simply look, but to truly see? I suppose it took Norma pushing me into the crowd to see the struggle for food inside the displacement camp. It took Memo tightening his arm around my shoulder and telling me to look at the man sleeping in the street. It took smelling the garbage. It took a man’s hungry shouts outside the church. It took the weight of a crowd, of men and women parting the plastic flaps of their tents to reveal children sleeping on dirt floors, asking us to make them visible. It took children, grabbing our hands and giving us flowers and broken toys. It takes pressure. It takes faith. Slowly, with the help of friends and community, we began to fall into the cracks, peer into the crevices, and immerse ourselves in the shadows. We began to turn around and see a different expanse: the pervasiveness of poverty, violence, loss, and death that are also Colombia. When I was walking through the displacement camp, the only response I could give to the pressure and questions of the crowd that followed us was a promise to tell their story, and by remembering, to help heal.