Casa Kidz

Every Tuesday night I head over to Casa de las Comunidades, a Catholic Worker house on the other side of Albuquerque that provides transitional apartments for those in need, many of them families of undocumented persons. Sr. Teresa and Alan, the folks who run the place, are wonderful, and they also organize advocacy, prayer groups, and ESL classes. Tuesday nights are ESL, and I get to hang out with the kids while their parents are in class.

Two weeks ago was my first time, and Alan taught us to plant corn. I started out with these three shy brothers, Romeo, Angelo, and Antonio (I ended up just wanting to call them the Mario Brothers). There was another group of kids messing around in the street and when I saw them, I thought they'd definitely pronounce themselves "too cool" for gardening with us. But Alan invited them and they finally wandered over when we had a few rows left to plant.

I was amazed at how interested these city kids were in planting something. They got into it right away, and then called more friends over to teach them how to plant the kernel in the mound and cover it up gently. One of the girls, Giselle (sp?), wanted to take some seeds home to plant in her tiny backyard.

These kids have so much potential. I asked them about the different languages they spoke, and we found out that everyone speaks (or is learning) at least one language in addition to English. Many of them speak Spanish with their families; Marissa knows some words in Navajo; the Mario brothers had lived in Hawaii and learned some Japanese from some of the immigrants there, and Antonio was even delving into Arabic.

There's a lot of gang activity in the neighborhood, which is on the edge of an area people there call "The War Zone." I feel lucky to share a few moments of their growing up time and hope the Casa garden is a fun and safe place where they can hang out with their friends. I'd really like to take them on a hiking trip up in the Sandia mountains... We'll see what happens!

like a walrus

Last week I traveled to Carlsbad Caverns with Sr. Kathi and the Michigan girls. It was a fantastic walk through the imagination, and it revealed to how difficult it is for us to take in brand new sights--as humans, we must relate something unknown to our previous experiences. The fear of the unknown creeps in when we cease being able to make those connections, leaps between known and unknown, and can no longer process something new. We then also become terrified of change.

Our stroll through the speleothem castle of the caverns convinced me that the four of us are still staving off xenophobia, armed with an endless supply of similes:

like cauliflower popcorn rib bones,
a seven-layer forest carved
out of bone snow wax ice,
a ballerina's butt,
that pointy rubber thing on the end
of an old man's toothbrush.
soda straws draperies
chandeliers theaters for
dolls giants lions.
like a walrus.
yes, like two dancing walruses.

Adoration

Last month, I spent a few days in NYC with Sr. Kathi and a dozen college girls. It was a wrap-up of our two-week service in GR, learning about the issues of homelessness and the roles of various creative non-profits in the area. In New York, we stopped by the United Nations, spoke with a panel of staff from different NGOs, and met an incredible Franciscan sister named Ana.

Sr. Ana has lived on the streets for four years. She collects bottles and cans for the deposit money with a group of homeless folk who call themselves the Canners, or "Sure We Can." She introduced us to a whole host of interesting people, including Eugene, the "King of Cans," who you can meet too, on YouTube.

The sights we went to see may not be the usually tourist destinations, but we did hit up a couple of those too. One afternoon, a few of us wandered over to St. Pat's, and I sat in the back row of the adoration chapel there and prayed in front of the Eucharist, the leftover wafers from communion services. Many Catholics consider this a very meaningful form of prayer, since the Eucharist represents Jesus' body and presence.

The experience, after hearing Sr. Ana speak about her desire to live as a homeless person, to minister to Christ thrown out on the streets, was a strange one for me, and it led me to write the following prayer-poem.

Adoration

Jesus, we break your body
and pour out your suffering
on Sundays.
We recognize you
in the wafer
placed in our hands
or behind golden doors
where I kneel to pray,
to bare my head
and heart
and bottoms of my feet
before your presence
in humility and awe.

But at night,
you unlatch the tiny handle
of those doors and slip,
by ever-glowing candle flame,
to the street corner.

I pass by you in the morning,
my eyes avoiding yours
as you wait in line for breakfast,
my hands shoved deep into pockets
to protect my dollar bills
from your empty coffee can,
my feet stepping easily
over your body,
asleep on the cement.
I turn away from the smell
of wine on your breath,
forgetting the cup I drank from
the day before.

But today, Jesus,
you called my name,
and I recognized you.
You took my hand
and placed my fingers
in the holes of your coat
and shoes
and blankets.
And I saw your face.

Today, Jesus, and every day,
may we fall to our knees
at street corners.
May we be drawn to your presence
on steps and in doorways;
may we sit at your feet
and listen to your story.
May our hearts overflow with joy
at the sight of your face, crying out,
“Immanuel, God with us!
This is the body of Christ.”

Into the Desert, Part 3: Dorothy Returns

Called to community living, but not to religious life, at least in its traditional sense, I set out to find a place where I could work, play, and pray with people who shared this calling, in all its joys and pains, and were living out the love of a compassionate God together. Hence began my theoretical romance with the Catholic Worker, love child of none other than old-time radical Dorothy Day and her philosophical French counterpart, Peter Maurin.

The Catholic Worker movement today is represented by some two hundred houses of hospitality and sustainable farms across the United States and in Germany, Canada, New Zealand, and the U.K. Since the movement has ties to anarchy, there is no CW headquarters. Each house has its own personality and focus. There’s a running joke among the workers themselves that goes, “Have you heard about the Catholic Workers? They’re not Catholic and they don’t work.”
But in general, the stock for a CW stew is stirred together from a variety of the following zesty ingredients:

community—in which workers live in voluntary poverty alongside (literally, in the same house as) the involuntarily poor
hospitality to those on the fringes of society
resistance of the unjust structures in society (through newsletters, protests, civil disobedience, and daily nonviolence)
study and discussion of the issues at hand (from nuclear proliferation to hunger and beyond)
prayer—to seek the radically welcoming God who calls the world to transformative action

In two weeks, I fly into the desert to get my taste of these lofty principles on the ground. As a romantic idealist, I’ve experienced my share of disillusionment and am going in with the expectation that it may not be…what I expect. Loving unbrushed, untamed, unruly humans—which include the whole earthen species when you see them before breakfast—is not really a glamorous task. But my hope is to learn and to grow, and I think there’s plenty of room for that.

Into the Desert, Part 2: Sister JoAn

While living with the Dominicans, I met many sisters and heard about the lives of many more. Famous nuclear disarmament demonstrators. Ministers on death row. Starters of low-income pharmacies, inner-city arts academies, women studies departments. Directors of affordable housing and community media centers. Dreamers and doers.

But one of the most remarkable women I met was Sr. JoAn. She was the strangest Catholic I had ever encountered. And she was like me.

Sr. JoAn graciously served as my spiritual director for three months this past fall. She spoke to me from her 78 years of wisdom—about mindfulness, centering, and the inclusiveness of God—and she listened. One week, we probably only exchanged five or six sentences. The rest of our time together, we spent in silence. It was the most supportive, peace-giving hour I have ever experienced.

The first time I walked into Sr. JoAn’s office, I asked her about a painting of Jesus she had on the wall. I’d heard that she was somewhat of a radical, and I was disappointed to see the traditional blue-eyed, sandy-haired representation of Christ in her domain. “Tell me about this Jesus,” I said. It was a challenge.

“They call him ‘the smiling Jesus,’” she said. And I saw him. Not stretched out on the cross, succumbed to the violence in the world, but alive, overcoming it. Not judging the world for its shortcomings, but welcoming everyone in the human family.

Sr. JoAn passed away a few weeks ago after a sudden complications from a stroke and an infection in her heart. She was a no-nonsense kind of person, and far from self important, so she probably would have pooh-poohed the overwhelming heartbreak it caused me to see her go. It was devastating loss of all she represented to me—the solidarity of someone who understood me, an ear I could turn to after a debate with a friend about the “gender” of God, hope of a home for my reckless heart.

The Dominicans had given me a home, but only a temporary one. I knew I could not enter “the sisterhood,” even if I wanted to, as a non-Catholic. And I knew that I would never be able to sacrifice my freedom to a hierarchical church in order to become Catholic, no matter how liberating the underground doctrine of its women religious might be. After Sr. JoAn died, I laid in the grass next to the convent I could not call home and wept, feeling more alone than ever.

Belonging has always been important—and difficult—for me. It’s something all of us desire. For me, it’s especially important to belong to some kind of community. Living in community with the sisters has made me question the merits of the societal norm of building our lives around a population of two. Wives, husbands, families can be supportive partners through whom life is multiplied and flows out to serve the world. But if we focus all our love into one other person, the rest of the world misses out. And we miss out on getting to know the rest of the world, on being part of a global community and an ancient human family.

During Sr. JoAn’s remembrance service, the words of a hymn we were singing became her words, and I realized that she was still with me, turning over a little piece of her legacy. As I let her body go, her spirit came to me and sent me to continue on my journey. She whispers,
Go forth in truth and beauty
to love and serve the world.

Into the Desert, Part 1: The Story

I’ve come and gone from Costa Rica, and now I’m leaving long-missed Michigan, with its leafy forests and wide lakes, for a stretch in hot, dry, urban Albuquerque. Perhaps the trip is part-whim, but it’s also a blindfolded baby step into something that’s been brewing in me for a long time now.

The Story

Back in April of 08, just over a year ago now, I was reeling, recently drop-kicked by a decision at my college in the name of my faith that left me feeling betrayed, suspicious, righteously angry, and alone. The rules of my church forbid me to follow the God of wide-open love I believed in, and the community I worshipped with was on the same page.

Scraping together the common ground we shared, I stuck around in hopes of continuing the dialogue. But I was spiritually homeless.

That month, I saw a one-woman performance of the life of Dorothy Day, a Catholic rebel stirring things up during the Depression. She became my anchor that April. If Dorothy could look the church in the face and say, on the basis of her faith in God and her sense of justice, that it needed to make some serious changes (i.e. serve the poor/oppressed), then so could I.

To me, the church, with all its hierarchy and prescriptive doctrine, was painting a portrait of a child bearing remarkably similar resemblance to the parent who Christ rejected two thousand years back. We had constructed a new building in the style of one that crumbled and fell from its heights.

Jesus taught to reject all established structures—to overturn systems of oppression and stagnancy—and to love with no rules. Love meant everyone—even the prostitutes—though we still have a hard time believing that today.

How then, I wondered, could we call ourselves Christians, “Christ-followers,” when this institution that claimed us as its own seemed to follow, more accurately, that infamous high priest fed up with a meddling 30-year-old rebel?

Instead, I believed, Christ called us to enter the wilderness, where there was neither bread nor wine, and make our home among the wild—the unbrushed, untamed, unruly humans of the world.

After informing the heavens of my intent to indict God’s church, I didn’t exactly trek into the wild, but I signed up to live with two religious sisters, which some friends considered just as crazy. Never mind that nuns are known for taking vows of obedience to the Pope, my current arch-enemy.

But the Dominicans were different. The house I joined introduced me to its namesake, St. Catherine of Sienna, a mystic from the 1300s who wrote letter upon biting letter to the Pope in her own day, and even traveled weeks on foot to deliver her mind to him in person. And the sisters I met made it quite clear that today’s women religious, by and large, are already engaged in the volatile, creative process of rebirthing the church from the inside.

Strong Girl the Gecko Tamer

Lately, lacking time, I have painted my adventures in large, detail-less strokes in the hope that the photos would speak for me…but laziness no more! (At least for a day). Many things have happened in a month apart from my weekend trips which cannot be told in pictures…I’ve eaten a fried chicken (really—almost an entire chicken) at TC Pollo, and a Whopper (my first ever) at a Burger King Bus. I’ve joined a film discussion group led by my lit professor (Tuesday night we watched Viva Cuba, which you absolutely must see—very cute; like a Latin American version of My Girl except with better cinematography and music and not quite as sad an ending). I have attended a church service of some Pentecostal variety, which I had to slip out of after two and a half hours of singing and shouting (in order to meet Lindy for chicken). I have watched a man mix clay with his feet, and I’ve learned not to look cocaine addicts in the eye. Entonces…let the anecdotal account begin!

Part 1: Geckos

Although I have been in Costa Rica for one month now, it was not until a week or two ago that I saw the first gecko in our house. The little (sometimes bigish) creatures are common and harmless, insect-eaters who, if all goes well, rid the shower of cucarachas. They remind me of their existence every now and then with a little clamor in the ceiling of the library or my bedroom, a sound I can best describe as a kind of chatter, the way squirrels might sound if they were kissing each other from across the room (if you cannot imagine this, I guess you will just have to come to Costa Rica to hear it yourself).

One evening, my housemate Lindsey, a fellow AQ student, Maria, and I were all sitting in the living room on the orange velvet couch when we heard the Gecko Noise. Maria swore she had seen a picture frame on the wall move and told us there was a gecko behind it.

“No,” I said. “They live in the ceiling.”

“No,” said Maria, the paranoid killjoy who insisted that the ancient wooden ladder we climbed up the side of a half-constructed concrete building in the mountains with three Costa Rican boys in the dark wasn’t safe. (It was safe, by the way—I was the first one up and the last one down, no problem, which earned me the nickname “Strong Girl”).

“I dare you to take down that picture frame,” she said. “There’s a gecko behind it.”

“No, there is not,” I said, very knowingly. “I will take it down to show you.”

Inside this frame is a needlepoint creation that says something like “Home Sweet Home” (in English)—I imagine it is one of the gifts given to Eliet by her many guests. I carefully lifted this precious artifact from its nail on the wall, gripping the sides very tightly so as not to break anything if I were to be startled for no reason, since, after all, there are no geckos on the walls in Eliet’s house.

It was 8:30 pm or so, Eliet’s bedtime, and she had already retired to her room at the back of the house, where I am sure she clearly heard our screams.

As soon as I moved the picture, a dark blur darted across the wall and disappeared, probably behind the 3’ x 4’ tin portrait of the Baby Jesus and his shining gold and copper tinted Holy Family. I dropped “Home Sweet Home” on the orange couch and retreated in an adrenaline rush to the kitchen, where we peeked out at the Gecko Wall from behind the lace curtains.

“Take down the Holy Family,” ordered Maria.

“No,” answered Strong Girl the Gecko Tamer.

“I’m sleeping outside,” said Lindsey.

--

Part 2: Drug Bus—coming soon to a blog near you… Also, the Zen perspective on tiny ants in my toothbrush…

Until then, happy early birthday to Julian. I took the angel down from the calendar in order to see your picture, but he magically reappeared. I’m sure he is playing “Feliz Cumpleaños” on his harp for you.

To everyone, hope you are having a marvelous time in Michigan! I miss the Big Lake, even though I realize it is frozen over right now, and have decided that the disgustingly salty ocean cannot compare. Love to you all!