love and the pain of leaving by henri nouwen

"Every time we make the decision to love someone, we open ourselves to great suffering, because those we most love cause us not only great joy but also great pain. The greatest pain comes from leaving. When the child leaves home, when the husband or wife leaves for a long period of time or for good, when the beloved friend departs to another country or dies ... the pain of the leaving can tear us apart. Still, if we want to avoid the suffering of leaving, we will never experience the joy of loving. And love is stronger than fear, life stronger than death, hope stronger than despair. We have to trust that the risk of loving is always worth taking."

what I am reading right now

--------------------------- About the Author Born in Texas and raised in Chicago, Janna Levin is now an Advanced Fellow in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University. She holds a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked previously at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics and the Center for Particle Astrophysics at the University of California, Berkeley. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter 1 IS THE UNIVERSE INFINITE OR IS IT JUST REALLY BIG? Some of the great mathematicians killed themselves. The lore is that their theories drove them mad, though I suspect they were just lonely, isolated by what they knew. Sometimes I feel the isolation. I'd like to describe what I can see from here, so you can look with me and ease the solitude, but I never feel like giving rousing speeches about billions of stars and the glory of the cosmos. When I can, I like to forget about math and grants and science and journals and research and heroes. Boltzmann is the one I remember most and his student Ehrenfest. Over a century ago the Viennese-born mathematician Ludwig Boltzmann (1844-1906) invented statistical mechanics, a powerful description of atomic behavior based on probabilities. Opposition to his ideas was harsh and his moods were volatile. Despondent, fearing disintegration of his theories, he hanged himself in 1906. It wasn't his first suicide attempt, but it was his most successful. Paul Ehrenfest (1880-1933) killed himself nearly thirty years later. I looked at their photos today and searched their eyes for depression and desperation. I didn't see them written there. My curiosity about the madness of some mathematicians is morbid but harmless. I wonder if alienation and brushes with insanity are occupational hazards. The first mathematician we remember encouraged seclusion. The mysterious Greek visionary Pythagoras (about 569 b.c.-about 475 b.c.) led a secretive, devout society fixated on numbers and triangles. His social order prospered in Italy millennia before labor would divide philosophy from science, mathematics from music. The Pythagoreans believed in the mystical meaning of numbers and developed a religion tending towards occult numerology. Their faith in the sanctity of numbers was shaken by their own perplexing mathematical discoveries. A Pythagorean who broke his vow of secrecy and exposed the enigma of numbers that the group had uncovered was drowned for his sins. Pythagoras killed himself, too. Persecution may have incited his suicide, from what little we know of a mostly lost history. When I tell the stories of their suicide and mental illness, people always wonder if their fragility came from the nature of the knowledge-the knowledge of nature. I think rather that they went mad from rejection. Their mathematical obsessions were all-encompassing and yet ethereal. They needed their colleagues beyond needing their approval. To be spurned by their peers meant death of their ideas. They needed to encrypt the meaning in others' thoughts and be assured their ideas would be perpetuated. I can only write about those we've recorded and celebrated, if posthumously. Some great geniuses will be forgotten because their work will be forgotten. A bunch of trees falling in a forest fearing they make no sound. Most of us feel the need to implant our ideas at the very least in others' memories so they don't expire when our own memories become inadequate. No one wants to be the tree falling in the forest. But we all risk the obscurity ushered by forgetfulness and indifference. I admit I'm afraid sometimes that no one is listening. Many of our scientific publications, sometimes too formal or too obscure, are read by only a handful of people. I'm also guilty of a self-imposed separation. I know I've locked you out of my scientific life and it's where I spend most of my time. I know you don't want to be lectured with disciplined lessons on science. But I think you would want a sketch of the cosmos and our place in it. Do you want to know what I know? You're my last hope. I'm writing to you because I know you're curious but afraid to ask. Consider this a kind of diary from my social exile as a roaming scientist. An offering of little pieces of the little piece I have to offer. I will make amends, start small, and answer a question you once asked me but I never answered. You asked me once: what's a universe? Or did you ask me: is a galaxy a universe? The great German philosopher and alleged obsessive Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) called them universes. All he could see of them were these smudges in the sky. I don't really know what he meant by calling them universes exactly, but it does conjure up an image of something vast and grand, and in spirit he was right. They are vast and grand, bright and brilliant, viciously crowded cities of stars. But universes they are not. They live in a universe, the same one as us. They go on galaxy after galaxy endlessly. Or do they? Is it endless? And here my troubles begin. This is my question. Is the universe infinite? And if the universe is finite, how can we make sense of a finite universe? When you asked me the question I thought I knew the answer: the universe is the whole thing. I'm only now beginning to realize the significance of the answer. 3 SEPTEMBER 1998 Warren keeps telling everyone we're going back to England, though, as you know, I never came from England. The decision is made. We're leaving California for England. Do I recount the move itself, the motivation, the decision? It doesn't matter why we moved, because the memory of why is paling with the wear. I do remember the yard sales on the steps of our place in San Francisco. All of my coveted stuff. My funny vinyl chairs and chrome tables, my wooden benches and chests of drawers. It's all gone. We sit out all day as the shade of the buildings is slowly invaded by the sun and we lean against the dirty steps with some reservation. Giant coffees come and go and we drink smoothies with bee pollen or super blue-green algae in homage to California as the neighborhood parades past and my pile of stuff shifts and shrinks and slowly disappears. We roll up the cash with excitement, though it is never very much. When it gets too cold or too dark we pack up and go back inside. I'm trying to finish a technical paper and sort through my ideas on infinity. For a long time I believed the universe was infinite. Which is to say, I just never questioned this assumption that the universe was infinite. But if I had given the question more attention, maybe I would have realized sooner. The universe is the three-dimensional space we live in and the time we watch pass on our clocks. It is our north and south, our east and west, our up and down. Our past and future. As far as the eye can see there appears to be no bound to our three spatial dimensions and we have no expectation for an end to time. The universe is inhabited by giant clusters of galaxies, each galaxy a conglomerate of a billion or a trillion stars. The Milky Way, our galaxy, has an unfathomably dense core of millions of stars with beautiful arms, a skeleton of stars, spiraling out from this core. The earth lives out in the sparsely populated arms orbiting the sun, an ordinary star, with our planetary companions. Our humble solar system. Here we are. A small planet, an ordinary star, a huge cosmos. But we're alive and we're sentient. Pooling our efforts and passing our secrets from generation to generation, we've lifted ourselves off this blue and green water-soaked rock to throw our vision far beyond the limitations of our eyes. The universe is full of galaxies and their stars. Probably, hopefully, there is other life out there and background light and maybe some ripples in space. There are bright objects and dark objects. Things we can see and things we can't. Things we know about and things we don't. All of it. This glut of ingredients could carry on in every direction forever. Never ending. Just when you think you've seen the last of them, there's another galaxy and beyond that one another infinite number of galaxies. No infinity has ever been observed in nature. Nor is infinity tolerated in a scientific theory-except we keep assuming the universe itself is infinite. It wouldn't be so bad if Einstein hadn't taught us better. And here the ideas collide so I'll just pour them out unfiltered. Space is not just an abstract notion but a mutable, evolving field. It can begin and end, be born and die. Space is curved, it is a geometry, and our experience of gravity, the pull of the earth and our orbit around the sun, is just a free fall along the curves in space. From this huge insight people realized the universe must be expanding. The space between the galaxies is actually stretching even if the galaxies themselves were otherwise to stay put. The universe is growing, aging. And if it's expanding today, it must have been smaller once, in the sense that everything was once closer together, so close that everything was on top of each other, essentially in the same place, and before that it must not have been at all. The universe had a beginning. There was once nothing and now there is something. What sways me even more, if an ultimate theory of everything is found, a theory beyond Einstein's, then gravity and matter and energy are all ultimately different expressions of the same thing. We're all intrinsically of the same substance. The fabric of the universe is just a coherent weave from the same threads that make our bodies. How much more absurd it becomes to believe that the universe, space, and time could possibly be infinite when all of us are finite. So this is what I'll tell you about from beginning to end. I've squeezed down all the facts into dense paragraphs, like the preliminary squeeze of an accordion. The subsequent filled notes will be sustained in later letters. You could say this is the story of the universe's topology, the branch of mathematics that governs finite spaces and an aspect of spacetime that Einstein overlooked. I don't know how this story will play itself out, but I'm curious to see how it goes. I'll try to tell you my reasons for believing the universe is finite, unpopular as they are in some scientific crowds, and why a few of us find ourselves at odds with the rest of our colleagues.

"In Western Christian culture, we tend to oppose light with darkness and assume that since light is good, darkness must be bad. But it is not, necessarily. The darkness of the womb and of the soil, for instance, are places of incubation, gestation and growth. Seasons of darkness in our lives are often good and necessary...Death is a mystery, veiled and dark. We are tempted to fear this darkness, to forget that the good shepherd is with us, guiding and comforting us. In our fear, we can become hasty, rushing blindly and desperately through the darkness in order to get to the other side. But this we must not do. We must remain in the darkness as long as it takes to learn in death's shadow the lessons we can only learn there. We must wait patiently in the darkness, trusting that God is with us and is growing new life in us. For, Jesus says, only if a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies will it bear much fruit." Kimberlee Conway

“What we have to be is what we are.”
― Thomas Merton

I have become a victim to a humble state of fatigue. After days of resisting, I have finally given into going to the doctor tomorrow.
The thing I despise about being sick is that many of the emotional walls I have constructed fall and emotions surface. Its amazing how events from years ago still are buried deep down within. It makes sense I guess. We dont have time to properly mourn pains that should be grieved. And sometimes, even after we think we have properly grieved, we realize that the human heart isnt capable of completely erasing memories.
But to the credit of repression, we also cant function on a daily basis with being plagued by the past.
I tried to search and find a thread through the emerging emotion; was there a common element in the memories that were continually gnawing on my heart?
I realized in an instant that all these memories I was grieving were due to the loss of innocence; whether a part of my own or the loss of someone else's, what is it so deeply within humanity that wishes to maintain something that can never be returned?
I had a memory of an image. The image was the same one I had seen one night riding the bus in Buenos Aires about 9 months ago. I imagined one of my friends 10 years ago before I knew him. Now a man calloused by the world, a man possessed by an ambition that has already planted a deep seed of hatred towards himself, I saw him as he would have been ten years ago eating ice cream.
There he was, sitting on a table outside an ice cream shop, eating the melting ice cream illuminated by the city street lights. In the dark I stood across him. While speaking to each other, the words in the image were mute because the significance was within one simple moment. Bending over his cone, I saw an innocent boy who understood nothing of the complexities of life, and in that instance I suddenly knew that it was this simplicity that eternity is composed of.
I quickly turned my head from the window. The rain in the dark blurred my view and reminded me that I would never see his innocence.
What did thomas merton mean when he wrote this phrase: what we have to be is what we are? Did he mean, as the great writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote,“In the end, it is impossible not to become what others believe you are.”
Or was it that we are destined to become whatever virtue or vice is developing our character?
Regardless, I have concluded that though people will eventually lose their childlike innocence, it does not mean that they cant cultivate a simplicity or sincerity about life that are both forms of innocence. And while I can grieve over the calloused hearts that have taken over so many people, I can have hope that God will one day restore.

Goodbye Argentina

"I beg you...to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually without even noticing it, live your way into the answer..." rainer maria rilke
I used to believe that one day I would put a white dress on, and in a single moment, give my heart away. But as many ideas we discover to be illusions as we journey through life, I have slowly found that this is not the case. If to love is to be vulnerable, then love is something given away year by year. The deepest pain is seeded in the reality that a large part of our heart has been distributed before we are aware of it.
As if once upon a time, my heart existed as a mirror which served only to reflect my own ego. Looking back, the truth has surfaced that my heart was indeed, in the beginning, fully mine. But the mirror has been shattered. Piece by piece, I have given my heart away. How strange it is to arrive at a place in life where I see the necessity in grieving each piece in order to find peace.
Maybe even stranger, I have discovered that part of my heart has been given to a country.

Confessions

that “which thing I was sighing for, bound as I was, not with another's irons, but by my own iron will. My will the enemy held, and thence had made a chain for me, and bound me. For of a forward will, was a lust made; and a lust served, became custom; and custom not resisted, became necessity. By which links, as it were, joined together (whence I called it a chain) a hard bondage held me enthralled. But that new will which had begun to be in me, freely to serve Thee, and to wish to enjoy Thee, O God, the only assured pleasantness, was not yet able to overcome my former wilfulness, strengthened by age. Thus did my two wills, one new, and the other old, one carnal, the other spiritual, struggle within me; and by their discord, undid my soul.”
Then one night, Augustine finds himself alone in a garden weeping.
“I cast myself down I know not how, under a certain fig- tree, giving full vent to my tears; and the floods of mine eyes gushed out an acceptable sacrifice to Thee. And, not indeed in these words, yet to this purpose, spake I much unto Thee: and Thou, O Lord, how long? How long, Lord, wilt Thou be angry for ever? Remember not our former iniquities, for I felt that I was held by them. I sent up these sorrowful words: How long, how long, “to- morrow, and tomorrow?” Why not now? Why not is there is hour an end to my uncleanness?
So I was speaking and weeping in to most bitter contrition of my heart, when, lo! I heard from a neighbouring house a voice, as of boy or girl, I know not, chanting, and oft repeating, 'Take up and read; Take up and read.' Instantly, my countenance altered, I began to think most intently whether children were wont in any kind of play to sing such words: nor could I remember ever to have heard the like. So checking the torrent of my tears, I arose; interpreting it to be no other than a command from God to open the book, and read the first chapter I should find...I seized, opened, and in silence read that section on which my eyes first fell: Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and make not provision for the flesh, in concupiscence. No further would I read; nor needed I: for instantly at the end of this sentence, by a light as it were of serenity infused into my heart, all darkness of doubt vanished away.”

- st. augustine

excerpt from dark night of the soul

“...God desires to withdraw them from this base manner of loving and lead them on to a higher degree of divine love. And he desires to liberate them from the lowly exercise of the senses and of discursive meditation, by which they go in search of him so inadequately and with so many difficulties, and lead them into the exercise of spirit, in which they become capable of a communion with God that is more abundant and more free of imperfections. God does this after beginners have exercised themselves for a time in the way of virtue and have persevered in meditation and prayer. For it is through the delight and satisfaction they experience in prayer that they have become detached from worldly things and have gained some spiritual strength in God. This strength has helped them somewhat to restrain their appetites for creatures, and through it they will be able to suffer a little oppression and dryness without turning back. Consequently, it is at the time they are going about their spiritual exercises with delight and satisfaction, when in their opinion the sun of divine favor is shining most brightly on them, that God darkens all this light and closes the door and the spring of sweet spiritual water they were tasting as often and as long as they desired. For since they were weak and tender, no door was closed to them, as St. John says in the Book of Revelation [Rv. 3:8]. God now leaves them in such darkness that they do not know which way to turn in their discursive imaginings. They cannot advance a step in meditation, as they used to, now that the interior sense faculties are engulfed in this night. He leaves them in such dryness that they not only fail to receive satisfaction and pleasure from their spiritual exercises and works, as they formerly did, but also find these exercises distasteful and bitter. As I said, when God sees that they have grown a little, he weans them from the sweet breast so that they might be strengthened, lays aside their swaddling bands, and puts them down from his arms that they may grow accustomed to walking by themselves. This change is a surprise to them because everything seems to be functioning in reverse.” - St. John of the Cross

Stanzas of the Soul

1. One dark night,
fired with love's urgent longings
- ah, the sheer grace! -
I went out unseen,
my house being now all stilled.

2. In darkness, and secure,
by the secret ladder, disguised,
- ah, the sheer grace! -
in darkness and concealment,
my house being now all stilled.

3. On that glad night,
in secret, for no one saw me,
nor did I look at anything,
with no other light or guide
than the one that burned in my heart.

4. This guided me
more surely than the light of noon
to where he was awaiting me
- him I knew so well -
there in a place where no one appeared.

5. O guiding night!
O night more lovely than the dawn!
O night that has united
the Lover with his beloved,
transforming the beloved in her Lover.

6. Upon my flowering breast
which I kept wholly for him alone,
there he lay sleeping,
and I caressing him
there in a breeze from the fanning cedars.

7. When the breeze blew from the turret,
as I parted his hair,
it wounded my neck
with its gentle hand,
suspending all my senses.

8. I abandoned and forgot myself,
laying my face on my Beloved;
all things ceased; I went out from myself,
leaving my cares
forgotten among the lilies.
- St. John of the Cross

Picasso's kiss

Confused cubes
distort the imagination
neither yellow nor blue
always green


“to paint and nothing more”
Regardless of production
nothing existed before
“divested of useless realism”


the lines blur
the canvas tainted
the body frigid
the mouth opened


misplaced emotions
a wasteland
when a hunger for meaning
wraps its hands around my waist


"Neither the good nor the true"
colors that create nothing
my lips are void
“neither the useful nor the useless”

A Franciscan Benediction

May God bless you with a restless discomfort about easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may seek truth bodly and love deep within your heart.

May God bless you with holy anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may tirelessly work for justice, freedom, and peace among all people.

May God bless you with the gift of tears to shed with those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, or the loss of all that they cherish, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and transform their pain into joy.

May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you really can make a difference in this world, so that you are able, with God's grace, to do what others claim cannot be done.

And the blessing of God the Supreme Majesty and out Creator, Jesus Christ the Incarnate Word who is our Brother and Savior, and the Holy Spirit, our Advocate and Guide, be with you and remain with you, this day and forevermore. Amen

the reality of memories

The leaves of memory seemed to make
A mournful rustling in the dark.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


Sometimes I really miss being home. I miss the fields of bluebonnets outside of my house, I miss the coffee my parents brew every morning, I miss swinging on the back porch with my sisters.
I miss the smell off the heat dying off during a summer nights, I miss the sound of crickets in the countryside.
I am discovering more and more that this is not my home. But then the reality that when I go home it will not be the same is almost more frightening than living in a foreign country.
In Victor Frankl's “Search for Meaning,” he writes about the deep depression that many holocaust survivors faced after finding that the homes the returned to after years of suffering were not the same.
Frankl laments over this sense of idealism we build in our minds when we hold our memories to be a current reality. How could someone's memories be so strong that they sustain a person through such a hell? How could something hold someone together, give them strength to fight day to day, provide meaning through suffering, when that memory no longer exists?
And this is the struggle of living overseas. The people who are related to my memories our real; the love I feel towards them still “is”, but this ideal life I look back on, the accumulation of all the good moments, never was. And what is even more sobering is to realize that those moments have led me to where I am now.
I am at this point where I realize, in some ways, I am still that. But now, I am this also.
Its the analogy I have used before: my native country is yellow, this foreign country I live in is blue, and now I will just be green for the rest of my life. I can learn this country's history, I can learn the language, I can analyze and study the culture, but I will always be an outsider. Also, I can go home, but I will never be the girl I was before. I will compare and have part of an outside world always living with me. And most discussions will be tuned out in my mind by this repetitive saying when people begin discussions with me that, while this is the reality of their world, this is not the reality of the world.
Sometimes I wonder if this kind of introspection is harmful. I get so frustrated with people because they never want to have these kinds of conversations; but I question if in the end there is any kind of intrinsic value to these observations. Perhaps sometimes it is better just not to think about it. Besides, what kind of memories are made out of contemplating memories?

La soledad de America latina

Today I would like to honor Gabriel García Márquez.

Here is the speech he gave in 1982 after receiving the Nobel Prize in literature.

The Solitude of Latin America
Antonio Pigafetta, a Florentine navigator who went with Magellan on the first voyage around the world, wrote, upon his passage through our southern lands of America, a strictly accurate account that nonetheless resembles a venture into fantasy. In it he recorded that he had seen hogs with navels on their haunches, clawless birds whose hens laid eggs on the backs of their mates, and others still, resembling tongueless pelicans, with beaks like spoons. He wrote of having seen a misbegotten creature with the head and ears of a mule, a camel's body, the legs of a deer and the whinny of a horse. He described how the first native encountered in Patagonia was confronted with a mirror, whereupon that impassioned giant lost his senses to the terror of his own image.

This short and fascinating book, which even then contained the seeds of our present-day novels, is by no means the most staggering account of our reality in that age. The Chronicles of the Indies left us countless others. Eldorado, our so avidly sought and illusory land, appeared on numerous maps for many a long year, shifting its place and form to suit the fantasy of cartographers. In his search for the fountain of eternal youth, the mythical Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca explored the north of Mexico for eight years, in a deluded expedition whose members devoured each other and only five of whom returned, of the six hundred who had undertaken it. One of the many unfathomed mysteries of that age is that of the eleven thousand mules, each loaded with one hundred pounds of gold, that left Cuzco one day to pay the ransom of Atahualpa and never reached their destination. Subsequently, in colonial times, hens were sold in Cartagena de Indias, that had been raised on alluvial land and whose gizzards contained tiny lumps of gold. One founder's lust for gold beset us until recently. As late as the last century, a German mission appointed to study the construction of an interoceanic railroad across the Isthmus of Panama concluded that the project was feasible on one condition: that the rails not be made of iron, which was scarce in the region, but of gold.

Our independence from Spanish domination did not put us beyond the reach of madness. General Antonio López de Santana, three times dictator of Mexico, held a magnificent funeral for the right leg he had lost in the so-called Pastry War. General Gabriel García Moreno ruled Ecuador for sixteen years as an absolute monarch; at his wake, the corpse was seated on the presidential chair, decked out in full-dress uniform and a protective layer of medals. General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, the theosophical despot of El Salvador who had thirty thousand peasants slaughtered in a savage massacre, invented a pendulum to detect poison in his food, and had streetlamps draped in red paper to defeat an epidemic of scarlet fever. The statue to General Francisco Moraz´n erected in the main square of Tegucigalpa is actually one of Marshal Ney, purchased at a Paris warehouse of second-hand sculptures.

Eleven years ago, the Chilean Pablo Neruda, one of the outstanding poets of our time, enlightened this audience with his word. Since then, the Europeans of good will - and sometimes those of bad, as well - have been struck, with ever greater force, by the unearthly tidings of Latin America, that boundless realm of haunted men and historic women, whose unending obstinacy blurs into legend. We have not had a moment's rest. A promethean president, entrenched in his burning palace, died fighting an entire army, alone; and two suspicious airplane accidents, yet to be explained, cut short the life of another great-hearted president and that of a democratic soldier who had revived the dignity of his people. There have been five wars and seventeen military coups; there emerged a diabolic dictator who is carrying out, in God's name, the first Latin American ethnocide of our time. In the meantime, twenty million Latin American children died before the age of one - more than have been born in Europe since 1970. Those missing because of repression number nearly one hundred and twenty thousand, which is as if no one could account for all the inhabitants of Uppsala. Numerous women arrested while pregnant have given birth in Argentine prisons, yet nobody knows the whereabouts and identity of their children who were furtively adopted or sent to an orphanage by order of the military authorities. Because they tried to change this state of things, nearly two hundred thousand men and women have died throughout the continent, and over one hundred thousand have lost their lives in three small and ill-fated countries of Central America: Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala. If this had happened in the United States, the corresponding figure would be that of one million six hundred thousand violent deaths in four years.

One million people have fled Chile, a country with a tradition of hospitality - that is, ten per cent of its population. Uruguay, a tiny nation of two and a half million inhabitants which considered itself the continent's most civilized country, has lost to exile one out of every five citizens. Since 1979, the civil war in El Salvador has produced almost one refugee every twenty minutes. The country that could be formed of all the exiles and forced emigrants of Latin America would have a population larger than that of Norway.

I dare to think that it is this outsized reality, and not just its literary expression, that has deserved the attention of the Swedish Academy of Letters. A reality not of paper, but one that lives within us and determines each instant of our countless daily deaths, and that nourishes a source of insatiable creativity, full of sorrow and beauty, of which this roving and nostalgic Colombian is but one cipher more, singled out by fortune. Poets and beggars, musicians and prophets, warriors and scoundrels, all creatures of that unbridled reality, we have had to ask but little of imagination, for our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable. This, my friends, is the crux of our solitude.

And if these difficulties, whose essence we share, hinder us, it is understandable that the rational talents on this side of the world, exalted in the contemplation of their own cultures, should have found themselves without valid means to interpret us. It is only natural that they insist on measuring us with the yardstick that they use for themselves, forgetting that the ravages of life are not the same for all, and that the quest of our own identity is just as arduous and bloody for us as it was for them. The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own, serves only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary. Venerable Europe would perhaps be more perceptive if it tried to see us in its own past. If only it recalled that London took three hundred years to build its first city wall, and three hundred years more to acquire a bishop; that Rome labored in a gloom of uncertainty for twenty centuries, until an Etruscan King anchored it in history; and that the peaceful Swiss of today, who feast us with their mild cheeses and apathetic watches, bloodied Europe as soldiers of fortune, as late as the Sixteenth Century. Even at the height of the Renaissance, twelve thousand lansquenets in the pay of the imperial armies sacked and devastated Rome and put eight thousand of its inhabitants to the sword.

I do not mean to embody the illusions of Tonio Kröger, whose dreams of uniting a chaste north to a passionate south were exalted here, fifty-three years ago, by Thomas Mann. But I do believe that those clear-sighted Europeans who struggle, here as well, for a more just and humane homeland, could help us far better if they reconsidered their way of seeing us. Solidarity with our dreams will not make us feel less alone, as long as it is not translated into concrete acts of legitimate support for all the peoples that assume the illusion of having a life of their own in the distribution of the world.

Latin America neither wants, nor has any reason, to be a pawn without a will of its own; nor is it merely wishful thinking that its quest for independence and originality should become a Western aspiration. However, the navigational advances that have narrowed such distances between our Americas and Europe seem, conversely, to have accentuated our cultural remoteness. Why is the originality so readily granted us in literature so mistrustfully denied us in our difficult attempts at social change? Why think that the social justice sought by progressive Europeans for their own countries cannot also be a goal for Latin America, with different methods for dissimilar conditions? No: the immeasurable violence and pain of our history are the result of age-old inequities and untold bitterness, and not a conspiracy plotted three thousand leagues from our home. But many European leaders and thinkers have thought so, with the childishness of old-timers who have forgotten the fruitful excess of their youth as if it were impossible to find another destiny than to live at the mercy of the two great masters of the world. This, my friends, is the very scale of our solitude.

In spite of this, to oppression, plundering and abandonment, we respond with life. Neither floods nor plagues, famines nor cataclysms, nor even the eternal wars of century upon century, have been able to subdue the persistent advantage of life over death. An advantage that grows and quickens: every year, there are seventy-four million more births than deaths, a sufficient number of new lives to multiply, each year, the population of New York sevenfold. Most of these births occur in the countries of least resources - including, of course, those of Latin America. Conversely, the most prosperous countries have succeeded in accumulating powers of destruction such as to annihilate, a hundred times over, not only all the human beings that have existed to this day, but also the totality of all living beings that have ever drawn breath on this planet of misfortune.

On a day like today, my master William Faulkner said, "I decline to accept the end of man". I would fall unworthy of standing in this place that was his, if I were not fully aware that the colossal tragedy he refused to recognize thirty-two years ago is now, for the first time since the beginning of humanity, nothing more than a simple scientific possibility. Faced with this awesome reality that must have seemed a mere utopia through all of human time, we, the inventors of tales, who will believe anything, feel entitled to believe that it is not yet too late to engage in the creation of the opposite utopia. A new and sweeping utopia of life, where no one will be able to decide for others how they die, where love will prove true and happiness be possible, and where the races condemned to one hundred years of solitude will have, at last and forever, a second opportunity on earth.

My Name Is Asher Lev-the struggle between who and what you are

A few months ago I read "My Name is Asher Lev" by Potok Chaim. Potok presents a young boy, Asher Lev, who is a kind of child prodigy artist. From a very young age, Asher Lev compulsively draws very profound pictures. His parents, who are Hasidic Jews, hope that their son will eventually give up his childish hobby and follow in the footsteps of his father.
As the story progresses, the son becomes more and more obssessed with art which fuels the tension between father and son. Asher, who loves his father, wants to please him, but also struggles with this gift that has taken him over.
Throughout the story, Potok sets up a dictomy between "who" and "what" Asher is.
As an Hasidic Jew, Asher is destined to carry out the traditions and bloodline of his family because this is WHO Asher is. But as an artist, Asher is obligated to paint the world as he sees it because this is WHAT Asher is.
Finally, one night Asher's father discovers drawings of Christ and naked women. Astonished, he questions his son about the blasphemous art. Asher responds,"Because I'm part of a tradition, Papa. Mastery of the art form of the nude is very important to that tradition. Every artist who ever lived drew or painted the nude. . . . "Idont want to sit in a room painting for myself. I want to communicate what I do. And I want critics to know I can do it." . . . "I respect you,Papa. But I cant respect your aesthetic blindness." Asher's father refutes his son by exclaiming that it is better to be aesthetically blind than morally.
For the last few months, I have been contemplating the complexity and application of this dictomy. It appears that many people develop this tension between who and what they are. But why is that some people are able to come to terms with it better than others? Perhaps because of the nature of extremes, some are able to blend who and what they are, while others have to chose.
An interesting point is that, while it is obvious that Asher's father is condemning his son's love for art from a moral framework, it seems that Asher also develops a kind of worldview from which he observes his surroundings.
Asher's teacher, a man who serves as a type of role model states, "I sculpt and paint to give permanence to my feelings about how terrible this world truly is. Nothing is real to me except my own feelings; nothing is true except my own feelings as I seem them all around me in my sculptures and paintings. I know these feelings are true, because if they are not true they would make art that is as terrible as the world."

For Asher's teacher, art becomes the only objective reality from which he views everything else. And so also for Asher, art takes the place of religion to justify his existence. "Listento me, Asher Lev. As an artist you are responsible to no one and to nothing,except to yourself and to the truth as you se it."
What does it come down to? What matters is which one the individual finds more meaning in: who or what they are. For Asher, art became his reality.

Interestingly, his father views his son choice as something that he should morally evolve beyond to chose against. Asher Lev's father states,"An animal can't help it, " my father said. "Do you understand me, Asher? The Ribbono Shel Olom gave every man a will. Every man is responsible for what he does, because he has a will and that will he directs his life. There is no such thing as a man who can't help it."

The "what" Asher is fighting against, in his father's opinion, gives the importance to "who" someone is. Part of the esoteric truth discovered in religion is the importance of sacrificing what you are individually for the collective "who".

His father's frustration is displayed when he states, "It's difficult for your father to hate something the world seems to value so much."
For the Lev family, who they are is everything the world isnt. But then it begs the question: is the moral claim Asher's father is making against the world valid? Is the "what" Asher's father is trying to save him from only destructive in the sense that it opposes his religion, or is it initally destructive in "itself?"

The reader is stuck with a dilemma: From the father's perspective, sacrificing "what" you are is the choice many people have to make in order to find the blessing in "who" they are. Unlike animals, people have free will to chose what is morally right against what is aesthically pleasing.
From Asher's perspective, he is chosing against his very existence if he stops drawing. Art is his fate leaving him with no choice. He concludes that he "would not be a whore to [his] own existence."

all shall be well

There is a place where the human fails, breaks down, turns to ashes. Hope has not a single foothold. In such an hour there is a perishing of everything unless the soul waits in silence for God only." - Amy Camichael
A few summers ago I read Amy Carmichael's biography by Elizabeth Elliot and retained this image in my mind of a strong Irish woman in the mist of Hindu temples saving children from prostitution (ie Devadasi). I remember reading this quote after so much had seem to go wrong and feeling overwhelmed with the ability to relate with those few times in my life where I have felt helpless and frozen in emotion.
Living overseas in a different culture has a way of stripping all securities away. When friends, families, and communities are thousands of miles from your new home, God has a way of making you come to terms with yourself in a very deep and profound way. Recently, I have realized that this intense vulnerability, which can be so painful, is one of God's mercies.
It is in trials of intense vulnerability that we must make a choice to indulge in our emotions, being overwhelmed by either anxiety or depressing, or harden ourselves to feeling at all. But if we have faith that God is working through these trials, that they are not just a series of misfortune events, but God's way of developing meaning and character in our lives.
Though the world is overwhelmed with despair, suffering, and darkness, our hope is in Christ and He is our victory. But we must always make the choice whether to give into our own self-pity, doubt, and pain, or have faith that, as Julian of Norwich famously wrote, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

Or, as Thomas Merton ends his autobiography:

It was true. I was hidden in the secrecy of His protection. He was surrounding me constantly with the work of His love, His wisdom, and His mercy. And so it would be, day after day, year after year. Sometimes I would be preoccupied with problems that seemed to be difficult and seemed to be great, and yet when it was all over the answers that I worked out did not seem to matter much anyway, because all the while, beyond my range of vision and comprehension, God had silently and imperceptibly worked the whole thing out for me, and had presented me with the solution. To say it better, He had worked the solution into the very tissue of my own life and substance and existence by the wise incomprehensible weaving of His Providence.

the other

I just left a conversation over skype with a friend who just recently returned from living in Brazil's notorious favelas.
Leaving my computer, I was overwhelmed with anger.
I sat down. "Caroline, what am I so angry about."
And some how I already knew.
Im angry at the world. Im angry at people. And maybe Im just a little bit angry with myself.
Old emotions that I will never fully come to terms with.
After working with the same organization that focused on suffering and poverty, it seems that only the few people who have shared your experience are the only ones who really understand.
Others may politely listen and become bothered by your words; attempting empathy they may even cry. But you will you never look into their eyes and with an instance glance realize that they get it. No more words have to be said.
I should never pre judge people. I do not know what they have lived because I can only see the mask they wear.
But what made me so angry today?
When I first returned from Bangkok, I volunteered to teach a bible study at a youth camp. After one of the students pressed to know more about what I did overseas, I shared a few of my experiences. The youth were surprisingly receptive, but I had no idea how talking would effect me. As soon as the students left the room, I landed back into a small orange plastic chair and began to have flashbacks of a certain child I worked with. I started breathing heavily..I became a little dizzy..what was happening?
Upset after this experience, I talked to a man who had done loads of counseling. "What's going on with me? What was that? "oh," he gently replied, "your grieving."
what was I grieving? No one had died.
But in a way, maybe someone had died.
Fastforward to months later. I was watching a movie that showed, in just a flash, a cambodian woman standing on the street selling her body. And in an instant, I had a very similar experience: flashbacks, images, overwhelming sadness, tears boiling under the surface..
And its these kind of experiences that only a few people will understand. Only a few people will be able to provide some kind of solace. But in coping with these memories, I discovered, only today, something else evolve.
back to my conversation with my friend:
"caleb, what makes me so angry is that people will never understand what I experienced; they will never really see the world, and worst of all, they have their lives perfectly formulated in order to make sense of all this suffering. As they conjure up simplified answers to these colossal problems, they will be shielded from the reality of how life if. Yes, I accept a loving God who brings peace and brings healing..but I cant accept simple answers. You will never be able to emotionally and intellectually come to terms with that you have experienced. You have to accept that these issues are irreconcilable.
"Caroline, are you talking about yourself?"
And then something so profound and convicting hit me: I was not only angry at the world that creates this suffering, or the people who stand by idle and watch it happen; in the depths of my heart, I was angry at myself. You see, I realized that in not being able to cope with this hurt I've experience, I have hardened myself in some ways to not feel these pains anymore. I have become that person. Although vocally I still stand for the poor and the oppressed, my lifestyle screams apathy.
I guess this is what I really want to get down to and address: Why do we become "that something else we detest?" A few weeks ago, a seemingly homeless man started talking to me on the train. I had no idea where this vagabond had been or where exactly he was going; the only thing I really KNEW was that in that moment I saw something so profound concerning the human condition.
Our conversation started after he commented that I had "positive energy." "People's lives here are hard and superficial..that is why they dont smile. I like your energy though." Intrigued by this man's observations, I continued to listen to his stories. Trying to not stare at his snaggled teeth and tattered clothes, or turn my head at his breathe that REEKED of alcohol, I really tried to see his humanity and not objectify him because of his appearance.
The sojourner announced that he had become interested in martial arts from an early age to protect women. "You see," he explained, "my father abused me and my mother when I was a child. Now, I protect women," he added with a grin that reveal pockets in his gums where previous snaggled teeth existed.
I froze. I just couldnt come to terms with all of it. Here was a man who had a genuinely sweet and tender heart that desired to help others. In a sense, he had triumphed his father. He would give life in place of where his father had stolen it. But I couldnt ignore the overwhelming defeat I rationalized about the whole situation. He was homeless. He was a drunk. He scared children. So although in some ways he had the victory, I couldnt help but pity the loss. He couldnt deal with reality. His father took a part of him. So, he became that which is loathsome; he became the other.
Next example. A teenage boy who is raped, drugged, forced to dress as a woman, and prostituted. The boy cant deal with the reality or pain he has experienced. He is victorious because he chooses to love the innocent instead of rape them; he triumphs because the way he treats people makes the world a better place. But he is also defeated. As he looks in the mirror and runs his hands down his frail body, he continues in the identity he has been given because real life might literally kill him. So, the boy straps on his stilettos and continues down that street that has become all to familiar to him. He becomes that which he detests; he becomes the other.
But maybe most people's situations are not this extreme. Maybe most people dont experience the kind of traumatic experiences that provoke these reactions. But dont we all do it to an extent?
And so I return to that anger inside me, sitting patiently under the surface of my heart, waiting for some realization that would purge this *oh so unwanted* stream of emotions.
Why do we become that which we detest? Will I become that "other?"
And so I grieve the death of my innocence; I pray for my heart to be vulnerable, that I may feel the sorrows of the world and through the pain return the life that has been taken.

an existential experiment of displacement - prologue

A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.
Albert Camus
It's 1:30 in the morning here in buenos aires and im in the mood to write something deeply philosophical. Well, maybe not deeply philosophical, but something well thought out and profoundly sincere.
I have had a few glasses of wine, and finely want to express myself in a more honest way than before.

Maybe this is overtly emotional, but due to lack to sleep, wine, culture shock, home sickness, and repression of serious though, I hope that my few readers forgive me.
I ask one thing before reading anything I write:
Please use my writings as a part of a thought experiment. Well, maybe not all of my writings, but make a special exception for tonight. Yes, tonight maybe I am not fully present, so please do not take anything I write too seriously.
There are a few issues I would like to discuss. In some ways I feel intellectually repressed, hence my conversational tone in my blog, but in other ways I feel freed. I hope you can follow along.
1) A notion of truth
I would like to navigate between absolutism and relativism. I reject both as certainty, and would like to propose a balanced solution. We must acknowledge a need for balance.
An absolutist view asserts total knowledge of all things- although we find security in absolutism, we all know, as the cliché has it “deep in our hearts”, that we will never know anything with certainty.
But also, no human navigates in absolute relativity, even the most developed existentialist is still directed by some meaning in his “assertion of non- navigation”. Although we feel truth in the realizaion of grays in life, it is death to the human soul to surrender to total gray. Ironically, the person who prides themselves in relatvitism is the very person who terms to declare the “social injustices” of their communities.
2) An establishment of truths
Lets break it down to real life. What is real life? Is the rush of the big city absord in the pluralistic conflicts of the world 'real life”, or is the small country community that focuses on the trivial aspects of everyday life 'real life?' Of course, in a way, both ways address different aspects of life. The big picture of the metropolitan city, and also the small town farmer who feeds the cycle of life with the crops he delivers with his hands. Both are truth. One should not be elevated above the either. Both are equally important. The value of both is that they each attribute to the human.
3) We need to re-establish humanistic truths
Now here is what I am going to say is going to become a little sticky and abstract.
I do not believe in an absolutist truth, but I do believe in a type of universal truth. Now, although this seems contradictory, please try to follow. Or just stop!
What I definite is being a universal truth is a truth that is pro- human. Because we are all of the same species, there are going to “rights” and “wrongs” that are going to be found in every society, although maybe interpreted in maybe different ways. For example, family structure is pro human. Of course, the family structure is not absolutist, and can function in different forms, but there seems to be a universal need for family bonds.
4) An existential experiment of displacement
Perhaps one of the best ways to discover universal truth is through an existential experiment of displacement. Much like John Rawls' veil of ignorance, we must establish humanistic truths based on what we, as an individual, would choose if completely detached from our current position in life.
5) The balance between angels and animals
I think one of the most profound definitions of humanism is that which is seeks the divine, while acknowledging the animal. We MUST seek the ideal, perfection, or so to say..the heavenly. It is this which gives us hope, and it is these things that spur us on to overcome the animal. But, it is also vital to recognize we are mammals; we are not angels. We must not paint life in overtly religious rhetoric, over spiritualizing that which is not spiritual. The most obvious example of this balance is in erotic love. Being love is in a sense a denial of reality; it is envisioning a person in a divine light, which is also crushed later by life, but exists for a time. The ecstasy of the lover causes one to sore through the heavens, which as L.S. Lewis notes, it is no wonder that God created the human with such an animalistic way of consumating its affection in order to bring the person back to earth. The human, who has momentarily tasted soma, has to engage in an act that puts him back in his earthly place.
ok, enough for right now.

maybe its the small things

"Beloved young people, about to choose your life's vocation,
ponder how we are all called to goodness and how the older generation- my own, I regret-
is leaving you a heritage of so much selfishness, of so much evil.
Renew, new wheat, newly sown crops, fields still fresh from God's hand,
children, youths: be a better world." Oscar Romero / martyred March 24, 1980

Last spring, I moved to Bangkok, Thailand, in order to work with the ministry Word Made Flesh. Because one of the main goals of the organization is serving the poor, all of the teams live in simplicity.
For each field, simplicity has a different face.
When I arrived in Bangkok, I found a house full of people and empty of furniture. Day by day, I discovered my lifestyle of simplicity growing more difficult as the luxuries my American life had provided me previously disappear. My breaking point came in April after I had caught lice during a short term trip to Cambodia. I discovered not only my hair infested with little bugs that caused my head to painfully itch without relief, but also that I had caught a flu. Because I had no air conditioning and it was during the Thai summer season, I could not tell whether I was sweating profusely from the heat or my fever. Deprived of a wash machine, I had to boil water several times a day in order to clean my sheets and wash my hair. I remember laying in my bed overcome with self pity. I had never been so uncomfortable in my life and wanted nothing more than to return home. It was then that I thought of the children I worked with every week in the notorious Klong Toey slum. For many of these children, lice, heat rashes, and stomach pains, were a daily part of life. I will never pretend to understand the children of the slums, I will never guess at what they think, I will never comprehend how they feel. But after experiencing a glimpse of their everyday lives, I felt a a barrier that separated us fall. For fourth months, I was not only coming closer to the lives of the children I worked with, but closer to how most children in the world live. Also, I surprisingly found that simplicity was a tool that brought me close to both the children I worked with, along with my team members.
Months later, after returning to the States, my vivid memories of Bangkok mainly consist of sitting on an old tattered mat offering refuge from the cold concrete floor eating bowl after bowl of rice with my friends. Without television or computers in our house, we past time sharing not only stories of laughters, but tragedies in our lives that provoked tears, along with the dreams we hoped our futures held. Many nights we sat outside with out Buddhist neighbors as they shared they candies with us. I remember sometimes feeling the world stop; trapped in a realization that my life in the States was not blessed with this level of daily intimacy with others. In this community, I could not control when things happened or which people I would spend my days with; I had to accept everyone at all times.
I think the greatest challenge of my generation is learning that the Gospel is meant for community, and that community is a place of selflessness. Many Christians wonder if they would ever be able to pay the ultimate price of their lives for the Gospel. But sometimes I wonder whether the daily sacrifices we are called to make are just as valuable.
In Thailand and Cambodia, I had the priviledge of meeting missionaries who had dedicated their lives to serving the poor. For many of them, the cost they paid for their faith was not so drastic that they were running for their lives; instead, for them the challenge was dying to the small luxuries they had previous enjoyed. Saying they would give their life for the gospel was not always the biggest challenge. Sometimes the greatest cost for a missionary is eating another bowl of rice, week after week, when they crave a steak. Or perhaps wanting to sit on the back porch swing with their sister who they have not seen in two years. Because the reality is that giving our lives to the Gospel does not always include a moment of intense decision, but an accumulation of small pains that daily remind us of what we are giving up. It is this type of sacrifice I fear I, along with this generation of Christians, will struggle with. How many of us declare that we would give everything for Christ, as we sit excluded from the pains of the world in our secluded houses? Do we really think we will automatically become selfless human beings if we were forced out of our luxurious environments? The reality is that selflessness is the ultimate assertion of independence; paradoxically, we discover that the more we sacrifice, the more freedom we will find. It is in this liberation that we find it bearable, and even enjoyable, to daily struggle with others.
“What is the 'impossible'? It is liberation. To liberate people from the demons of fear, or loneliness, of hatred and of egoism that shackle them. To liberate people so that they also can love, heal, and liberate others. But in order to do that, you must go in poverty and experience the life of God flowing within your own flesh. You will give life but a life that flows from the heart of God. You will bring people to new life, a new hope. The mystery of community lies between the call of Jesus to communion with him, 'Come and be with me,' and the sending off to announce the good news of love, to give life to other people. - Jean Vanier

relativity of life

It seems wherever I go something tragic happens concerning the government. Although Argentina is not on the brink of a civil war like Thailand, the death of their ex- president has caused some tension amongst the people. The current president, who is the wife of the ex- president, was seen in many people's opinions as a puppet for her husband's political agenda. While not everyone of course was happy with the course of the country, many people have seen him as a balance between the right and left that have created a theme of polarization throughout central/ south america.
A few weeks ago,I watched on television the funeral of the ex-president. Hugo Chavez greeted the president as she stood beside her husband's coffin, the eclectic group of south american presidents symbolized some kind of superficial attempt for unity during this sorrowful time.
One of my assignments during this time is studying the history of governments for the last 50 years and how the church has responded. I think what is difficult is learning that the previous black and white dichotomy in my mind associating good/bad with certain political ideologies was very detached from the reality of what has happened in these country.
Although many groups start off with what seem to be admirable ideals, the reality of human nature always corrupts and blurs what seemed to be such clear visions. Honestly, the real difficulty is pressing on. Many people see the relativity of government, therefore, completely disassociate themselves with what is happening around them.
This translates into the same problem I have found myself in having worked with an organization that serves the poor. In the past, I have taken a lot of pride in serving the poor and have struggled with resentment towards the excessive American lifestyle. But recently, I cant help but be overwhelmed with the relativity of poverty. For instance, (i have to warm you-im an over analyzer, and although this may seem like im going a little too far, I think it is something to legitimately think about.) It is common to see people selling jewelry, sweaters, and other objects they have usually made by hand. In the past, I would take pride in purchasing these goods; afterall, I knew that the money was going back into the community and the person was not being exploited in any manner to make it. But the reality is, and of course this is a generalization, many of those people do paco. This drug, which is a cocaine paste, has become very popular in Argentina. This isnt an assumption I am making just because these people are poor; it is common knowledge.
But what if I go into a store, buy something that was made out of the country, know that the money is mainly flowing out of the country, but I am supporting the man who works at the counter and needs to support his family? My point is not that helping the poor only extends their misery, or that the inability for small local businesses to start because they cant even to begin with larger foreign corporations is justified, my point is to show you the relativity of the system. It is a fact I think is important to acknowledge.
This unfortunately brings me back to my days studying philosophy in college. How can we not collapse into complete relativism concerning our involvement in serving locally and also politically? Are we simply fueled by our own interests? Is everything a power game masked in rhetoric that makes us feel justified for claiming what we want?
This is my conclusion: I must acknowledge that there is a sense of relativity to things. I think this is important to in order to rid ourselves of self- righteousness. So that I do not think I am better for everyone else for working with prostitutes- so that others do not think they are justified in not helping others because they are entitled to what they have.
But it is in this realization that we can find freedom.
After concluding that the world is in a state of entropy,and that for many people life is only a power-play, we can come to terms with our humanity in the best possible way.
Humans, like one writer has put it, are neither angels nor animals. I think that fighting this realivity is what not only being human, but even moreso being a christian, is about.
Because Christ encompasses every ideal that separates us from the barbarism of animals, how true is it that our only salvation lies in living in his footprints.
One of the bests gifts we have been given is the gift of communion. How I ponder over the brilliance and beauty of this holy communion of the human with the divine.
We must not evade the reality of the brokenness of the world, we must not become discouraged when things no longer seem so black and white, because it is this acknowledgment that should make us run even quicker to the cross which embodies the only salvation we can receive from this world.

unsent letter: to the little boy of bangkok

This is a letter I am having published in the winter issue of "mission magazine." This letter was not written for shock value- this letter was written to share someone's story.

I will never forget the first night we met. I remember the suffocating humidity the notorious summer heat brought with it, like the pit of a furnace that was inescapable. I hope you did not think I was rude for staring at you when we first met. Friend, you were standing on the street of a red- light district and I had never seen a young boy like you before. Remember how I stood before you frozen? I can not help but think how silly this American girl was. I will never forget your frail body, the purple bruises on your arms, and the look of absolute desperation on your face. Someone had dressed you up in a tight pink dress and stilettos. I walked away the first time because I didn’t know what to do. I don’t think you realized I was standing across the street watching you dance. Dear friend, why was someone making you dress like that? You told me they were making you do it so you would have food to eat. But your body was so emancipated; I have wondered if they ever fed you. They drugged you didn’t they? I could see it in your eyes.

I was supposed to be stoic. “Stay calm and discrete” I told myself when I saw what they were doing to you. But as I noticed you sit down, curling your knees into your chest, and the stream of tears that smeared the hot pink make-up someone had painted on your face, I could no longer restrain myself from coming to you. When I sat beside you and put my arms around your tiny waist, I did not mean to cause such a scene by crying. I remember the warmth of your body as you learned into me, like a cub seeking refuge in its mother’s protection. I held you so tightly like I was never going to let go. Do you recall how the tourists lined down the street, gathered around, and watch me hold you? Why did that woman take a picture of us? That look in your eyes pierced my heart, when you looked up at me and didn’t know why I was crying. I spoke words rapidly over you as I cradled your grotesque body on display for the world. I was praying to God that He would take your life or deliver you from this place.

Young boy, this is why I was crying with you: because in realizing your suffering, part of me came alive. As the death of winter yields the lilies of spring, so in your brokenness I saw the true face of humanity. Unlike other boys who are consumed with their little league games, you little boy only worried about surviving through the night. Like the lamb before the slaughter, you were the innocence of this world spit upon. It was in your eyes that I saw the depravity of mankind. In the middle of a street where thousands of women sell their bodies, I was crying for the world.

I was supposed to come to Nana that night dispensing hope to those I encountered. I was supposed to be the light in the dark; I was supposed to be the stereotypical American who fixes the world. How ignorant I was. But you my boy were the Christ; you were the innocence ravaged and degraded. Your body was scarred with the desires of man’s flesh, and your eyes spoke of the raw wounds where salt was rubbed into in an attempt to break your strong spirit. I knew though that you had not been defeated.

Do you want to know what is wrong with people? No answer I give can justify what has happened to you. The best explanation I can give is that we all long to have the heart of a child. There is something beautiful about the undefiled perspective that is so fascinated by the world. But the world is not what it seems, something we all discover. It is the absence of innocence that drives some to rob it from others.

You didn’t want me to leave that night. I remember you called me “mother.” I had to leave I told myself that night. I thought I would be putting you life in greater risk if I stayed. I still tell myself that before I go to sleep now and see your face. I felt dirty that night I went home. It was as if I for a moment was able to carry your brokenness. I could not cleanse my body of it. I still haven’t.

And it is for this that I must apologize. I was so angry at what those people did to you; but now I wonder if I was just as guilty for walking away from you that night. Beautiful boy, like Pontius Pilot, do I also carry blood on my hands for deserting you? Maybe the problem with the world is not only the cruelty that drives some to rape an innocent child, but also the apathetic that do nothing. Maybe the problem with the world is that too many people overlook the importance of improving the quality of one life.

Beautiful boy:

In the darkness of death, my heart has been resurrected. Your pain will be my fire in which your story will be retold. In what seemed to be the silence of God, your voice will be echoed eternally.

Caroline

wordmadeflesh.org

nightlightinternational.com

buenos aires

It is hard to believe I have been in Argentina now for over two weeks. Culture shock seems to blur all the days together. Learning the subway system, buses, and streets is overwhelming. Monday through Thursday mornings I have Spanish class, then I spend the rest of the day either in the Kairos office or with Dr. Padilla. This morning I just finished constructing a paper from which Dr. Padilla will use to write a chapter to an upcoming book. He is also having me read about the political revolutions throughout central america and the response of the church.
Some of the stories I have read are shocking. I wonder how could so much injustice happen so close to home without any international recognition? These stories make me neither sympathetic to the fascist governments nor the marxist revolutionists, but make my heart break for the atrocities committed by both sides in the name of "justice." What a thin line mankind walks when he deems his actions justified at the cost of another's life.
Although working in Bangkok was a life changing experience, my hope is that now I will be able to make a difference in another way. I feel convicted to always serve, but I also think it is important to take a step back and re-evaluate my life to see if I am being effective in the best possible way. I know this is a vague statement, but I hope in due time it will make more sense.