i guess i live in mexico now

The street beneath my apartment houses a karate school, strangely, and a woman who lives and works out of a small ventacita. I pass by regularly to see her stretched out horizontally in her pink, flimsy nightgown, her doughy legs facing me. She is Mexican, to be sure, but looks as if she hasn’t seen a day in the sun. Daily, I find myself walking the street, and each time, I am alarmed when I see her. You would think by now that I would grow accustomed to seeing someone napping in their house for the public to see, but I haven’t…yet.

I live in an area called Colonia ___________ with the local yucatecans, mothers nursing their babies on the porch, children running from corner to corner counting in Spanish, and kids coming to and from the karate school across the street. My apartment conveniently sits on top of a chain smoker, who I haven’t yet identified, and I am assuming is male (sorry, men). The smell wafts into the chamber of my laundry room where my gas tank and water heater are located. I unlock the heavy door, looking around and down through the spaces in my cement floor on a day-to-day basis checking to see if things have caught on fire yet. If I ever meet him (or perhaps, her), I will let her know the disservice she did to me in my first few weeks that ensued in manic paranoia.

Regarding smokers, I have learned one must use delicate tact with a dose of I’m-sorry-I-am-allergic so as not to light any flames. I have already thought about the conversation I will have when I will thank my neighbor for cutting a year off of my life while living here. The point is: smoking is bad for you. And I don’t like to do bad things. Because in the South, people don’t do bad things.

I was raised in Texas where the earth is flat and dry, and the skies are round, open, beautifully polluted and stained with dark oranges and pinks. People go out of their way to let you in on one secret: everything is better in Texas. To be truthful, I can’t exclude myself from that population of people because I leave the house in Texas t-shirts and introduce myself as such: “Hola, me llamo Margarita. Soy de Texas.” Usually, I get blank stares from Mexicans who either love Texas and have family there (always in Houston) or who hate immigration laws, Texans, and the President at large. Either of these reactions merit some beginning of a conversation where a new friendship can grow or be lost forever. As far as those little things go, I am banking on growing some during my nine month stay in Mexico, as if I could plant them outside my apartment to greet me each morning and tell me that I was going to have a good day. Unfortunately, I have cement sidewalks that heat up to 1000 degrees Celsius, and the closest thing to dirt is the abandoned house down the road with rusty pipes lining the roofs and overgrown colonies of ants.

So. For now—I have decided to write.  Everyday, I will walk down my pink, tile stairs facing a vacant apartment, and I will listen to the water bombs that reverberate off the cement building, rejoicing, bubbling, bursting. I most likely won’t be greeted by pretty flowers or friends telling me the day is courting my favor, but I will be blessed by my blue mini van. It is parked valiantly, half on the curb and half on the street, and it must feel similarly to what I feel, straddling two places, awkwardly. I won’t feel sorry for it’s Y2K appearance that yells soccer-mom-with-7-catholic-kids, and I won’t allow self-pity a parking space in my own heart.

I will live the life that has dropped me here, unknowingly, miraculously. I want to cooperate with this new thing being birthed inside of me and around me, open my heart to God and others, and practice gratitude for all that is instead of focusing on all that isn’t.

I am sharing it with you all because afterall—happiness is only real when shared….I think, at least.

we are the light-bearers

June 25^th

            My time in Nicaragua has officially ended, and I wanted to say a few things quickly while they were fresh. As I have a week in Costa Rica to reflect, I wanted to start with a list of things I have learned both about others and myself in these 5 months overseas.

1)   Poverty is so very real.

2)   Evil and suffering do exist.

3)   I can move and have my being in those worlds.

4)   We, as humans, have the crazy ability to adapt to any place and relate to any person.

5)   One of my goals is to continue learning different languages. I enjoy the process and am passionate about communicating with different cultures.

6)   Independence makes me feel alive.

7)   People are the most important.

8)   Exteriors don’t actually matter.

9)   God can be found: both in darkness and in light, in joy and in pain.

10)                  I need support.

11)                   I am a declared hypochondriac. No way around it. Damn.

12)                  I do like some form of routine/structure.

13)                  I crave like-minded individuals in whom I can share my heart.

14)                  The poor are so very blessed despite the physical circumstances.

15)                  Nature speaks.

16)                  I am a small, small part of this world.

17)                  Having said that, though we may just be a flicker of light, one person can set the world ablaze.

18)                  Everyone I meet can teach me something.

19)                  Gratitude. Gratitude. Gratitude.

20)                  I can survive with a lot, a lot LESS.

21)                  Time passes, and we have no control over how quickly or slowly it goes. Appreciate each moment.

22)                  I have been set free knowing that the opinions of others & the need for approval should have no bearing on who I am. 

23)                  Beauty can be found anywhere.

24)                  Beholding brokenness draws me closer, closer, closer.

25)                   In God’s heart, there dwells joy and grief, pain and pleasure, beauty and brokenness. If I want to experience one, I must accept the other, realizing that you cannot truly know one without the other.

On that last point, something I have felt a lot of conflict over and struggled with in my time in Nicaragua--working for House of Hope, and just seeing the poverty these people live in, is doubt. I have found myself asking, “God, where are you in this? Why does this happen? How can this much darkness and evil exist?” I began to pray the Psalmist David’s plea:

“Part your heavens, O Lord and come down; touch the mountains so that they smoke…” (Psalm 144:5).

I found myself praying that when I felt despair over the situation of the girls in the home, when I heard about an experience my brother or mother was going through, when I saw the pregnant adolescent on the corner begging. It made me doubt, made my faith feel shaky and illegitimate. This leads me to a moment I had as I was driving away from Nicaragua. I cried the whole bus ride to the border. Why? I felt deep in my soul like I was leaving these people behind. I felt the sadness I had encountered, and it felt heavy. I kept asking, “God, where are you in this? Where is the hope?”

I do believe God said to me, “Margaret. You got to bring the hope. You brought the light. You WERE it.” And it hit me in that moment that God, in His goodness, allows us to see His heart by embodying that sort of hope. We are made to bring the light. He showed me his special treasures, his own heart, when he allowed me to share in their sufferings. This world is a dark place, and evil does exist. But, it is our responsibility to open our hearts and release light into those places. I believe light is love. It is Jesus in human form. It is not burdensome because it is not my job to save these people. However, it is beautiful for it IS my calling to love these people. That’s the part that will live on, the act that is eternal. I choose to believe that love will overcome the evil that I saw in that place. I choose to believe that God is gathering little light-bearers to expel darkness and to live out his goodness and his love in this world. 

Ode to Nicaragua

Here is the beginning of my ode to Nicaragua and the time spent here--for I am entering into the last days...


...I will look back and lament the loss of these nights. Like when you wish you could just hold on to things and preserve some kind of feeling that would outlast it all. I can feel something that's about to expire, and I'm anxious. My head hurts and my heart even randomly skips a beat. I don't know that I've experienced this sort of angst before...I believe it's the counted-ness of days, the planning for departure, the sighs that go along with a goodbye, and the strange emotions of feeling in between, not really fitting distinctly anywhere. Im trying to grasp in my heart what this all was and has been. Yet, my mind is already trying to walk away, for in this moment, i am thinking about what i will lose.

I will miss the nights where I could walk outside my little room at 3am when everything and everyone was silent and look up and see stars, moon, and feel quiet inside, except for the far off sound of a lone rooster crowing for a new daylight. I will miss oatmeal and milk at nighttime with spoons upon spoons of raw sugar--it made me feel like a child again. I will miss my head being scratched every night while listening to bob marley with my hermano. I will miss the sound of my fan spinning against iron and shaking like a generator as I fell asleep. I will miss praying with my madre, listening to the reverence in her voice and letting my tears fall freely. I will miss her small, dark hands that held mine when she wanted to tell me something important. I will miss the smell of rain and dirt and the sounds on my tin roof. I will miss making apple tea and wearing a mint julep masque while doing so. I will miss not giving a shit about what I was wearing or what I looked like. I will miss walking everywhere with my oversized backpack and somehow, feeling entirely unbound. I will miss flailing in a freezing cold shower to warm myself up. I will miss juicy fruit on the streets and cold coke in a bag and tired feet at night and desperate prayers at midday and ziplock bags of coins and windy taxi rides and aimless walks and the sheer discomfort that comes with living in a place where people don't have everything.

I have found the secret to being content, and it does not lie in exteriors, and it is not found in people. It is in all goodness, beauty, love, patience, peace, joy, gratitude, courage, and truth. It is the Spirit sprinkled over all things if we could but just catch a glimpse of that sort of glory.

The secret is.



God.

quick thoughts on the one month mark

I leave Nicaragua one month exactly from today. A couple of things that have been on my mind:

1)   I imagine myself looking into the face of my mom, feeling her skinny arms wrap around me, and having the deep sense inside of myself that life is right.  I feel it sitting here, now, in a café in Managua. It feels familiar and for a moment, I feel safe. Amidst the pain and the hurt, good people exist in this world. I feel it for myself, but the nagging voice inside of me wonders if all people have this sliver of hope to grasp onto when they are fearful or hurting. Here I am thinking of my homecoming, my sweet mother, and the out-of-body experience I will have when walking through my garage and realizing that these 5 months really did occur, I wasn’t dreaming, and I am different. But, what about the people that I carry inside of me? What do they feel? Do the girls at House of Hope feel loved by a momma? Do they know that through it all, people can learn to love? I do believe this particular part of me will never be the same. I house the hurt that I have seen and heard, and I will never be able to deafen my ears to it. In some ways, that frightens me, makes me feel sad and alone. But, more than that, it makes me want to fight. It compels me to take action, to use their stories as impetus to rise up and say NO to all the injustice in this world. And though I am one person, I am one more person that God is sending out into battle, one more torch set ablaze to bring light and expel the darkness. The reality: I have seen, and I am responsible now.

2)    I wrote a piece last year about the idea of hope, otherness, loss and love. As I was reading through it again, it occurred to me: I will arrive a stranger when I return home. A particular quote comes to mind: “It’s a funny thing ‘bout coming home. Looks the same, smells the same, feels smells the same. Ya realized what’s changed…is you” (Benjamin Button). I must admit: I do feel apprehension to confront my life back home. Though I have spent 20 years growing up in one place, so many things will be new to me in that place. Just to name a few: walking into a cool building, putting my trash in a receptacle, going to a private market, driving a car, feeling hot water, eating things other than rice & beans (ha!), using a dollar bill, paying more than $2 for a meal, having access to a printer, streets without stray dogs, not smelling burnt trash, actually being on time, the absence of street venders, and lastly—the unawareness that comes from living in abundance. I fear that. To put it into words: I am so sheltered from the poverty that exists everywhere around me, whether that poverty is spiritual, physical etc. There is something rich about seeing and feeling a lack every single day, about walking into a place where people are wearing shirts that have holes and stains down the front, about being with people that aren’t addicted to their cell phones because they don’t own one, people that wash their clothes in a sink, people that unplug their fans during the day to cut their electric bill, people that cook 3 meals a day in house, people that are grateful for the gift of life: the pure, sensory, nothing added, experiential life. Do not misunderstand me: I am by no means glorifying the poor or hating on the rich. However, I am agreeing with this truth: Jesus blesses the poor. I was reading the story of the fisherman that dropped their nets to follow Jesus when he called out to them. A thought occurred to me: those fishermen dropped their nets easily because they had nothing to lose. The emptier our hands, the easier it is to let go of that net and follow. When I empty myself, I leave room to be filled to capacity. I hope I don’t lose that awareness when I return because I do believe, despite physical circumstances, one can carry that truth at all times. It is the revelation that none of the exteriors really matter. It is the belief that we are all the same, that if hearts could be measured numerically, we would all be roaming the streets like beggars, all together in heaps and heaps really really feeling it: having the knowledge that we lack so much on the inside despite what the outside may look like.


For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 

Let's Draw by Gioconda Belli

LET'S DRAW
by: Gioconda Belli
Let's listen to the women
their feet are dancing on the sand
let's listen to them
and be silent.

Over there one is dragging her sandals
looking at her damp fingers 
she‘s coming from the factory 
with a handkerchief tied around her head
the machines still echo in her ears 
In the place she dreams 
there are children crowding noisily
around the chairs and the tables 
a big bundle of clothes to wash 
the raw vegetables 
the pots familiar with no other hands but hers. 

The other closer woman. Yes. Young
and walking in her floral dress 
like a balancing artist in her high shoes
with long fingers and red fingernails 
she came from the office 
tired of the telephone's incessant ringing
the coffee in cups of all sizes 
In the place she dreams there's a man
waiting for a smile 
and the bundle of clothes to wash 
the raw vegetables 
the pots familiar with no other hands but hers. 

Over there. Yes. The big woman who
looks like a monument against the light 
Her hands are rough and never have
known the sweet oil of almonds.
They resemble the earth. Clotted. Deep. 
She spent the whole day bent over
below the sun planting the
furrowed earth, 
busy taking care of the seeds' germination. 
In the place she dreams there are
Children crying. Children whose
Profiles resemble earthen jugs.
Children who appear when the moon is full.
And never stop appearing as long as the man
keeps returning from the fields, with dirty clothes,
hungry, and eyes that say fire in the hearth,
kindling in the kitchen,
corn for tortillas.

All the nocturnal bees are coming
with their honey hidden.
These women wanted to be butterflies and spread their wings
Inside the gentle walls of their homes when the day is over.

Let’s listen
here comes the man with his bundle of work on his back:
he leaves it at the door of the house
the raw vegetables aren’t waiting for him
the pots aren’t familiar with his hands
the children are asleep
She is the one who comes to the door
With a smile on her face
the woman, with her bundle of clothes,
the raw vegetables, the hearth,
and the eternal tired smile.

Let’s listen
Let’s draw the future in the sand
and men and women drawing
a world with no divisions
and a blue world where the sky isn’t compartmentalized
where love might leave the beds and the parks
and enter the bedrooms, the mops, the bundles of clothes,
the raw vegetables, the pots, and the children.
Let’s draw a man and a woman engaged in conversation
accompanying each other with their
eyes beyond the door

A man and a woman happily walking on 
the sidewalks on Sundays
as if they had been born together.
Let’s draw a single world where even
small things are important.
Let’s draw a home that’s the same size as the factory
the same size as the best, most valiant battle.

Let’s draw love with big letters;
and men and women loving each other
let’s draw them like the angular stone of a beautiful building.
Let’s draw the strength of a man and a woman
and their love like that of lions for their cubs
Let’s draw a star of light
a bright star on the man’s forehead
a bright star on the woman’s.
Let’s draw ourselves with the colors we love most
the color of peace
the color of tomorrow
The swaying color of sugarcane
the color of that house that we call my house
Let’s draw ourselves
like two hurricanes that hold hands
and draw the world over again.

Loose the Fear & Live

April 18, 2012

I had the strangest feeling as I was walking home from class this morning. I felt for a moment the sadness of estrangement wherein one seeks any alleviation that might dull the pain that I believe every human feels in the depths, in the quiet, in the secret space of the soul. I felt it, for a moment. I watched the students, and in my mind, I saw the frantic race of people trying to escape all the sadness. I saw the moments spent alone in fear, I felt the aching heart after a relationship lost, I smelt the liquor on their lips, I heard the voices in their heads that paraded around telling falsehoods, and I watched as little hands grasped for anything that might fill the emptiness. I knew it for that moment, and it made me want to cry for every human experiencing this feeling. Whether you are jumping ship like Jonah or you’re drowning out the voice that tells you there’s something more, we are all running in some form or fashion. That’s what humans do: we run. When I feel myself running: I listen to far too much music, I lose sleep over my thoughts, I use the future to feel secure, I count the days of the calendar to exert some type of control over my life, I make phone calls to silence the fear, I write to alleviate the pain, I ignore the pain, I act as if everything is fine, and lastly, I begin to seriously doubt the existence of all things good in this life. I wallow.

It takes courage to confront the fear we all feel. I am beginning to believe the opposite of love is not hate, nor indifference, but rather, fear. Most of us feel fear in some form or fashion on a daily basis, whether it comes in the form of anxiety, stress, depression, despair, loneliness, you name it—I believe all these arise from the origin of fear. In order to rid ourselves of the fear, we must face the fear. We must give it up, let it out, confess it like a secret long kept hidden. And there is no fear in love, but perfect love has the power to cast out fear, to throw it out and give it no place in our lives. Love, then, hates fear.

-----------------

I am sweating and the stream of my tears feels cold on my face. I am crying the tears of my momma. They weren’t mine. They were hers. I do believe I have just shared a real pain in my spirit, so closely, so tenderly. I walked in the little cement kitchen with a loaf of bread to tell her I could fix myself a peanut butter sandwich. As I glanced up, I watched as tears began falling down her face. I wondered what I should say or how I might be able to give her a timely word or some form of comfort. I claim no mastery over the Spanish language, and I stumble through sentences and can’t find the words to say, but in that moment, it didn’t matter. She didn’t need words. She needed someone to feel with her, to say it hurts, to know the pain and to let her cry and be small again. I told her I wanted to pray for her in that moment. Since tomorrow will be the 5-year anniversary of the death of her eldest son, the house has been heavy with a sadness that seeps through the walls, leaks out the vents, and crawls on every piece of furniture he once knew. The boys don’t say a word, and the father has been on the computer all day. Only she chooses to feel and let God do his work in her. She chooses to let the sadness in, to let it change her, to allow it inside. As I prayed for her, looking for the words in Spanish, I began to weep. I could hardly speak. I held her trembling body against mine, and I let myself feel, if only for a moment, her sorrow.

As I write, I still cry. I cry because it is the same sadness I felt earlier this morning, the place of fear and of solitude. What balm might provide a salve for that? For her, it is more than just sadness; hers is the termination of memories and of a life once lived and shared. Though I can’t begin to imagine the pain, I know it in the strangest place inside. I feel it like I felt it this morning, except, there’s something different about the outcome. I don’t see her running around frantically. I see her bowed, knees on the floor, head in her hands. I see her asking God the whys and hows, wondering if she will ever be able to go on, and yet, standing up in the midst of it all. I smell the rich aroma of trust, of faithfulness, of belief, and of love rising from her prayers. I believe she is getting closer and closer to Jesus himself in every prayer, every act of service, every loving word spoken. I believe God wants to tell her “Well done my child, you are faithful, you believed, and there are crowns of gold awaiting you. I see you. I feel your pain. I am with you in all of it. I cry with you there in your little room. If you could only see…”

She’s been chipping away at all the walls inside of her since he passed. I see them coming down, and I see God building a new home inside of her. It bears great treasure and peace. It is holy and sweet to my soul. It gives me new life each time I walk through that little iron gate. It is a dwelling for God himself.

-----

We are all knocking on the doors of eternity, waiting to get in. To those that are chipping away at the walls, removing the bricks that we have all laid to self-protect and hide, I am walking with you. I want to say this: he is making a home out of us, but we must make the conscious decision every single day to allow him entrance into our little houses. The doors don’t unlock by themselves. So turn the key, swing wide the doors, loose the fear, and live.

a traveler's thoughts on time

dated: April 14th

There are days when I count the minutes. There are days when all I can think about is the future that I believe awaits me on the other end of things. I think up every scenario of my plane ride home. I see my tears, I hear my music, I see the hugs, I see the sighs, I feel my nerves already. What it will be like walking down that aisle traveling home, what I will do when I see my old friends, who will I be after 5 months of time spent in a 3^rd world country with nobody familiar to me but my own thoughts? I wonder if I will feel the solitude that so often separates one from another after months of separate experiences, I wonder if God will travel with me there, to those places.

I find myself thinking in future mode when I feel alone, when I feel afraid, when I feel weak. It seems controllable, it seems like it sits in the palm of my hand, like I could somehow teleport myself to that place and cease to feel in the present. But, today, I didn’t feel that way. I felt ready to face the present moment, I felt like time was so out of my hands that it was free to be and to pass as it wished. It felt like a person I was well acquainted with, like it was for me and not against me. Anyone that faces an extended period of time away from the comforts and the familiars of home has most likely experienced this same type of conflicted feeling over the passage of time. In some ways, it passes so quickly I don’t even have a chance to know it. In other ways, I feel like I am living a new life that will never end here, like my entire past got wiped off by a few months, never to come back to me.

As I walked the dusty streets and breathed the smoke-filled air and carried my sack of shampoo and water bottles home from the store, I asked myself: “Why and when do I specifically experience these moments of freedom? What is it about this point in solitude that makes me feel somehow more alive and yet, less human?” There’s something divine about that place, it is free. Like Rainer Maria Rilke says in his “Letters to a Young Poet,” I believe it has something to do with a deep and profound trust of what difficulties lie ahead. Future thinking gives us the illusory idea that we can control. We cease to operate in faith because we don’t feel any need to. And yet, time might be the only thing we absolutely have no control over. It passes quickly and then it passes slowly and we have no way of speeding it up or slowing it down. But, might I just trust that life happens right? Might I just trust enough to let go of my grasp of the future, the future that I have made up in my own mind?

In the remaining two months I live here, I hope I can break out of this very human way of thinking, that somehow I might be able to break out and really live as one set free from time, from anything that tries to set a boundary in places that should be limitless. In trying to control time, I allow time to control me. I want to think of time as segments of growth, love, rightness, and realization. I don’t want to be hemmed in to the very human way of thinking in days and hours and minutes for didn’t we just create all that just to give ourselves some form of structure? I want to think like Jesus thinks with Kingdom thoughts. I want to use my moments of fear as opportunities to open the doors of my soul and let trust in, let God do His work in that moment, let His love destroy the fear that so often accompanies the inevitable human solitude.