To Managua and Back Again. Pastoral Reflections

--years ago, when I was going on a volunteer in mission trip to Brazil, my daughter asked me, rather petulantly, I thought, : Mother, why would you want to go to a third world country for?
As the heat enshrouded me like a hot wet blanket; as the discordant noises of nighttime Managua rattled my brain; as I walked down the dirt road through the dump, with its assortment of cattle and goats and dogs poking through the trash for grass; -as I picked my way around the detritus on the hard packed and rutted road, carefully avoiding stagnant garbage-filled puddles, I wondered that myself. What on earth am I doing here?!
The heat was miserable, the food, monotonous, the issues insurmountable,the dirt inescapable. My sense of helplessness,grief, anger, tempered with cynicism, ate away at me.Why am I here? Why am I doing this at all? What could my presence here mean for these people; why do I take the time, spend the money? Is it self-serving do-goodism; some warped need to experience another’s suffering?
What could it all mean for the women I visit in the vast scheme of their very difficult lives,
Perhaps a few moments of reprieve from the burden of their lives? A good laugh at my clumsy Spanish? some gifts? Maybe there is neither meaning; nor purpose; but then, I things happen.
Marta the Elder walked up to me as I walked and slipped her soft hand into mine. She was a big woman and her gold rimmed teeth sparkled when she smiles.We walked companionably down the road; she telling me her ills; I trying my best to understand and be understood, and both of us smiling and laughing as I struggled
The women and children gathered to welcome us in the dim light of Women’s Center greeted me with smiles and hugs and laughter and questions about my family, my health, about others who had accompanied me before.
Ruth Esther, now a few inches taller than last year, her hair long and shiny, losing some of its childish curl and bounce, came dancing and laughing to me for a grand hug. Antonio, also taller, looked at me very shyly, his eyes wide, and he too, came over for a hug.then stood next to me I put my hand on his shoulder; I called him my friend, my companero; They are my children; I am their madrina. I have known them since they were 2; I am sponsoring them so they can go to school.
And the dancing; gracious, exotic; the costumes; beautiful, and every year; better; more elegant; more sophisticated.
Sr. Joan Chittister writes:
Every spiritual master in every tradition talks about the significance of small things in a complex world. Small actions in social life, small efforts in the spiritual life, small moments in the personal life. All of them become great in the long run, the mystics say, but all of them look like little or nothing in themselves.
I like this quote; it makes me feel comfortable; fills me with warm fuzzies about the beautiful if brief moments of delight and laughter and love that I find--indeed, that I look for---each day, ammidst the squalor of tin and wood shacks, indolent youth; starving dogs; exhausted horses; weary mothers.
But is this then, what it is all about? Just these small acts? These brief moments of delight in the midst of it all:
Is that it? Is it enough? I cannot go and come without asking myself those questions; I cannot go and come without trying to tease out my own needs from what my presence there might mean or be to the people there.
Someone with a group there with me had brought a suitcase of children’s books in Spanish; well-written, beautifully illustrated books. they were stacked up on a table in the women’s center; all the children were doing crafts. I was wandering around helping, engaging, the children, and then I looked up, and there in the weak light, sitting in shadows around the table, ten women and one man, engrossed in the books; reading intently; each would put one down, pick up another, keep on reading.
It was one of the more beautiful things I have seen in Nicaragua;
For a brief while those books provided respite from worry about where money for supper’s rice would come from; for a brief hour there was delight.
Those small acts may be comforting; they may add up; but unless they are accompanied by greater acts;they are in themselves, only small acts
--comforting to reflect on, perhaps, but not much else.
--back in the day before computers I would come home from school and whine to my mother that I had to write a story a composition; well, she would say in her inimitable cut to the chase way, you can’t do anything if you don’t sit down with paper and pencil and start writing.
At trials, witnesses speak the truth--at least they are supposed to --speak to the truth of what they have seen and observed.
So perhaps therein lies the meaning of it all; I am supposed to be a witness--I am supposed to be a witness who speaks to the truth of what she has seen and heard and come to understand even if it is hard, and threatening and un-nerving.
- - I can say only what I have seen and experienced; I can talk of the rich behind locked gates with guards at their doors; of the free trade factories with razor wire atop their walls; where the women who work in there speak of being locked in; of having no time to use the bathroom; having 15 minutes to eat lunch; being fired for being late or sick;
the brewery that gets larger and larger as the unemployment rate gets higher and higher--
--I can speak of the misguided policies of international organizations that so manipulated the coffee market that thousands of Nicas were driven from work into settlements like La Primavera; I can speak of the Scripture being used to oppress women; I can speak of rain forests being decimated by rapacious multinationals; trees being helicoptered out of inaccessible places; of a free market entrepreunur making money on recycleables from the dump he owns, whilst thousands suffer ill health scavenging for a few pennies a day.
-- I know enough of the history of Latin America to know that our American hands haven’t always done God’s work there; that we have--and still do-- exploite the vast resources that exist there to our own benefit.
--yes, I can speak to all those things;
Proverbs 31:8-9 tells us:
Speak out for those who cannot speak,
for the rights of all the destitute.
Speak out, judge righteously,
defend the rights of the poor and needy.

-A a Xian I am compelled to bear witness and speak out about what I have seen and experienced. and you need to hear my witness, we need to examine that story through the eyes of our faith; we have to hear in the voices of the poor around the world the voices of our brothers and sisters in Christ;
-- Dom Helder Camara, said this: When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.
--as difficult as it might be we have to ask those questions We have to look at that naked emperor and like the little boy in the story, ask the hard questions that get at uncomfortable truths; questions that we might not want to hear or to answer.
--It isn’t fair; it isn’t fair that shy Antonio and dancing Ruth Esther, and little giggling and cavorting Juan probably won’t have even the simplest of opportunities available to them: they probably won’t go to college; won’t have a car and a good job and a retirement account; won’t have a well appointed home; they might not even finish high school/
but --life isn’t fair; right??; well that’s a cheap cliche if there ever was one; indeed life isn’t fair; --but the bible never says that: Jesus never utters those words; certainly circumstance and fate and coincidence impact the direction of our uncertain lives, but that doesn’t free us to dismiss another’s suffering as fate, cast a blind eye on injustice, and ignore our Xian responsibility to answer yes to God’s question to Cain about being his brothers’ keeper.
--Daniel Berrigan wrote: The God of life summons us to life; more, to be lifegivers, especially toward those who lie under the heel of the powers.
So perhaps that’s what it is all about, finally, being sent out by Jesus to be a witness means to be a life giver.
Our faith give us new life and calls us to be out and about sharing that life. We give life when we find ways to lift up the heels of whatever powers oppress others; we give life when we find ways to loosen the chains that bind people into unrelenting poverty.Yeah, I know; those eco palms cost more than the traditional ones do; but think of what good that purchase did; I know; fair trade coffee costs more; but think of how it liberates all those coffee growers to independence.
Do you know where your clothes are made? Do you know under what conditions your clothes are made? DO we need more when most of the world has little or nothing?
Ignorance is never bliss, and, our ignorance about the world and its conditions can be downright dangerous: our ignorance only feeds those who would exploit the poor; our ignorance stops us from living full lives as followers of Jesus.
I walked down the dirt track with Marta. past the rusting metal walls of stifling windowless tin shacks; past the children squatting in the dirt sucking on chocolate covered bananas; past the starving dogs scavenging on the streets toward her home’ past well groomed teenage boys hurrying off somewhere.
She had been worried she told me; they had had no gas for the cook stove; she knew she was going to invite me to her home; what would she do?
But, she said, “Gracias a Dios,” something hand happened--I didn’t quite follow her Spanish, she was talking too fast-- they found the money; bought some gas, and she could cook for me! I was touched beyond words;
So maybe the witnessing was in the other direction: maybe the witnessing wasn’t done by me afterall, but by those who opened their hearts and homes to me and showed me kindness and hospitality and affection and absolute trust in the goodness of God The greatest gift, afterall, they could give me. And perhaps my witnessing to you, besides opening your minds and hearts to the needs of people around the world; to the call of the Scripture to practice justice at the gate; is to share with you the infinite power of God’s love shown again and again in the lives of these women.
- Oscar Romero, wrote
It helps now and then to step back and take a long view.
The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.......We cannot do everything, and ...This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning,
a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's
grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the
difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not
messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.
Hear the stories; imagine the people; not strangers all, but our brothers and sisters in Christ. and together let us ask the questions; challenge those who would exploit and oppress p and allow God’s grace to enter all our deeds as we work to build the kingdom