Visitación

“ ‘Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled’ ” (Luke 1:45). 

Today is the feast of the Visitation, one of my favorite Marian feasts. The meeting of Mary, the mother of Jesus, with her elder cousin Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, is one of the tenderest encounters I can name in Scripture. It is so human: I can imagine the warmth of their sisterly embraces, and I can hear the joy and sorrow in their voices as Elizabeth and Mary recount the untimely miracles of their respective pregnancies and the surprise and danger entwined with them. There must have been so many more words exchanged than the ones handed down to us in the biblical tradition. 

At a moment when my confidence in the intentions, the love, and the will of God is shaken, I can draw near to these holy women, much in the same way that I can draw near to Jesus, whose words and actions bring me comfort and an assurance that the inscrutable Creator does care and is not capricious. These holy women had so little, and yet they had so much more to lose; and although they were afflicted, they trusted. They trusted, though even the blessing itself was also an affliction, a sword to pierce their hearts. Their sons were going to die a disgraceful death, executed as enemies of the state, enemies of the empire. What I have got to lose by throwing all my cares on a God who the holy women and men affirm does in fact care for me? May Mary and Elizabeth be our steady and faithful companions on the way, never leaving us alone, emboldening us to take the reign of heaven and claim our birthright as children of God. And as Pentecost nears, know that I expect a lot from God. Come, Holy Spirit! 

Today at Maryknoll: three periods of classes, two of them spent in the student lounge watching a video about a theater arts program in a prison in northeast Argentina. When I was not straining my brain to hear what I was listening to with Profesora Liliana and Grace, I was thinking about the utter lack of opportunities for men and women in prison in the U.S. to have programs of cultural enrichment within their barred and barbed and closely guarded walls. Women and men in prison are still deemed unworthy of rehabilitation, unworthy of any dignity at all. In America, we have a long way to go from a system of retributive justice, which lays waste to human lives and the wealth of our nation, to a system of restorative justice, which brings about a healing reconciliation between prisoners and society. But most of us do not want to go there, lest we discover our culpability for systemic violence against people of color, women, and the poor. Who is the criminal, and what is the greater crime? But I digress. 

In the fourth hour I made my excursion to the mission office of the Archdiocese of Cochabamba, escorted by Tania Avila Meneses, director of Maryknoll’s mission formation program. I spoke for an hour with one Señora Carla, who described a program of lay volunteers who give one year of their lives working with the poor in their places on the margin of Bolivian society, whether in the city barrios or the campos outside the larger towns. We strove to find parallels between the social works of the lay volunteers and the work I do to animate justice, peace, and integrity of creation with Church of the Good Shepherd in New York City. What we have in common is that it is difficult to unify the different strata of society. In Bolivia you have the gap between the poor indigenous persons who speak Aymara and Quechua and live in the campos, isolated and uneducated, their families broken apart by migration and the push-and-pull of work; and the wealthy, light-skinned hispañoles living in the cities with intact families and opportunities for higher education and skilled employment. In my neighborhood of New York City, Inwood, you have the Anglos who live a middle-class existence on the west side of Broadway and the Latinos, largely descended from the Dominican Republic, living a poor and working-class existence on the east side of Broadway. How might both communities integrate and build power together to preserve their neighborhood from the incursions of redevelopment causing gentrification and displacement of long-established families?

We did not resolve these second-order questions of evangelization and integral social and economic development in one hour together! But at least the encounter got me thinking. How we need to make many more visitations happen today! How many more encounters between kindred spirits we need not to be afraid to have, no matter what language we speak, no matter what religion we profess, no matter what the color of our skin or the weight of our wallet. Let us expect great things from God and good things from each other, and let ancient promises be fulfilled.

Volveré a Ver

“ ‘But I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you’ ” (John 16:22). 

How I long to see these words fulfilled in my own life. This calls for patient endurance until the end. As a friar, I have given many things away and given up many opportunities and possibilities. What I have not given away, I have had taken away. I imagine that the community of the faithful that produced the Gospel of John was remembering the mysteries of Jesus Christ from a place of privation, of enduring pain over losses, as well as from a place of plenitude and promise, according to its consciousness of new life, indestructible life, in the risen Christ. Many days recently, I have been dwelling on the privation and the persistence of lifelong losses. This, as opposed to the awareness of plenitude and promise that saturated me from the beginning of the Bolivian journey and even before that, from Christmastide. 

Am I not in fact describing the cycle of culture shock, running from delight to despond, from idyll to disillusion? Am I not right on time in my run through this course of experience? Perhaps, but I digress, because I have gone through cycles of euphoria and depression before, all throughout the journey of life, throughout my ongoing, continuing conversion to Christ. The cycles will not end, I suppose, until my life is totally consummated in Christ. When will it be? How long, Lord? How I long for the joy that cannot be taken away. But such security cannot be found on this side of eternity. So, how to cross over—or, how does that impossible reality cross over to here? This calls for faith. 

I began this day in a bad mood. It certainly had its proximate cause in the day before, in the mental fatigue and the frustration over the lack of fruitfulness in my language studies. I had nothing, and by the day’s end yesterday I was withholding even the nothing in which I was mired. Don’t ask me to give that away, too, God! So I was cranky this morning for that proximate cause. But the crankiness had its ultimate cause in something beyond those petty things of the day. Señora Kitty saw me in the student lounge at breakfast, and I told her yo estoy de mal humor. She asked me why, but I did not have the words in any language to really name that longing and identify that absence. And if I could describe the ineffable, still, it is a very personal matter, even a private matter. I could not share that with her. 

So I began the day with despondency. But goodness overtook me gradually. Two good hours of classes with Profesora Viviana, who was substituting for Profesora Liliana. A game of Scrabble—and vindication, as Profesora Karla, Grace, and I defeated Profesora Sara, Joshua, and Brother Scott soundly. Then, two life-affirming and spirit-renewing conversations over Skype this afternoon with friends back in New York and Massachusetts. 

Nothing has changed outwardly, and these things are a bit more trivial than the second coming of Christ. But through these little nothings, I could see something of everything once again. Maybe I am ready to try again to let myself be seen, too, by a God whose love I do not understand.

Estirar

I bid you a weary good evening from Maryknoll. I should not be here tonight, because my mind is wiped out. But I want to hear, to the best of my ability, what they are saying in this part of the world about the crisis of accountability in the Church in the wake of generations of sexual abuse by clergy and religious. There is a colloquium that will get started at 7 p.m. in the hall of the mission center. So I dash this in haste from the student lounge before going downstairs for a listening-in on Latin American perspectives on clericalism and power.

I really do not like these long Wednesdays. I do not do well with them. Four hours of classes, then back to the convent for lunch, then volunteering at Nuestra Casa for two to three hours. And today I squeezed in Mass at midday here at Maryknoll, and now this colloquium. It is too much. My brain is in rebellion. 

In the third class period I was pushing back against Profesora Karla, bad cop to Profesora Liliana the good cop. I do not like getting so many corrections from Profesora Karla when I am in mid-speech. I do not like pressing ahead so firmly with our paces, as we do with Profesora Karla. There is scarcely any time through the class for a pause, for slowing down. (To the contrary, I have been advised to cut the pauses in my speech, as if I could think faster.) I just do not like it, and by the fourth period, our weekly conference, I was done, ready to tune out everything. Ironically, the topic was culture shock, presented by the director of the mission center, Padre Alejandro Marina. For me, it was more like culture stun, as my brain was tasered into a paralysis. 

Then, just as the bell rings, as we are ready to leave, Profesora Karla asks me to prepare some questions for a meeting being arranged by Maryknoll for me with the Cochabamba archdiocesan mission office. This is part of an effort to find ways to tailor my language acquisition to my ministry goals back in the United States. I think Maryknoll means well, but I am not entering mission in another country, I am not a priest, and though I work in a parish, I do not consider myself a pastoral worker. (If you are reading this, take note, Father Michael, Father Robert and the provincial council.) I am dubious about the merit of this meeting being arranged. So I do not have much motivation going into this meeting on Friday morning. As for the homework assignment: arrrgh! Stop springing these assignments at the final minute, profesora!

Nuestra Casa was not where I wanted to be this afternoon. I tried to talk Señora Janneth into agreeing that it was not working out for me being a volunteer, and she should let me go. She disagreed. I was dismayed. My tongue was tied, as usual, and I could not understand even the simplest words from one of the younger girls, who I am sure has a speech problem. She got me to understand that she only wanted to kick a soccer ball and color some pictures with her. We did that, but in silence for all but a few moments here and there.

Sorry for the venting and griping and moping today, folks. It was just a hard day today, and felt far from wherever the Holy Spirit was taking action. I do not respond well when I am stretched beyond my capacities. Rather I recoil and turn inward. But there are some days when you cannot hide your inadequacy. This was one of them. Sigh ... that is adulthood, I guess.

Acelerar

Good afternoon from Maryknoll, where I have been hanging out today. I stayed after morning classes for Eucharist at the chapel, celebrated by the Korean priests, Padre Pablo and Padre Juan de la Cruz. I had lunch at a nearby buffet and returned here to pray, write in my journal, and read a few pages from the Spanish-language edition of National Geographic. The June 2018 edition has a cover feature on our world of plastic, and wow, are we in a world of trouble. There are more than 50 pages of features and photographs on this theme. I have until next Tuesday to read and reflect. I have to read only one article, but I want to go beyond. I will read as much of the content as I can, including photo captions, graphics text, and sidebars.

Classes went well this morning. They would have been better if my mind was not so sluggish. It is the sleep medication. I stopped using it while I was sick last week and resumed my small dose last night. In the first days when I was on the medication, it felt like there was a blanket covering my brain. This was one of those days again. I was waiting for my mind to wake up and be alert. But it never did, not after the first period, not after tea with sugar, not after the third period. As I write this post in mid-afternoon, still I am running slowly. Oh, well. My body will adjust once more.

I read my vocation biography for Profesora Karla and handed it to her with satisfaction. Now she will have to sit and wade through six paragraphs and correct all my errors!

Listening continues to be a challenging exercise. Now Grace and I are hearing conversations spoken much more at normal speed. After three listens, I remain unaware of more than half of what was said. This calls for persistence. This calls for endurance. In fact, the pace of class itself seems to be accelerating. (Or is it the medicine?) We seem to be moving from one exercise to another more rapidly. I have been told to try to reduce the length of pauses in my speech. That is hard, because I like to think slowly before I speak, whatever the language. Our digressions into chatter get cut off more quickly now by the teachers. For example, I was giving an extended description of a Capuchin friar, trying to fill out the profile, when Profesora Liliana interrupted me to correct errors. When she was finished, I asked her if I should continue, and she said it was time to move on. So that is interesting. So many things to learn, and so little time! More and more I am glad I decided to study for six months instead of only three. More time to learn, more time to acquire, and more time to integrate.

And more time to discover Bolivia. I have wanted to visit the great salt flats of Uyuni. Joshua began to explore tour options a few weeks ago. You need at least three days and two nights to get a full experience. With trips to La Paz and Oruro in sight, I could not fit in Uyuni during recess, two weeks ago. Grace would like to go to Uyuni, and she is getting estimates on travel by airplane and on the tour itself. June 20 and 21 are national holidays, Corpus Christi and the Aymara New Year, respectively. We could leave for Uyuni the evening of June 19, a Wednesday, and return on June 23, a Sunday. It can be done! Stay tuned as plans come together.

Back to the magazine until it is time to take a taxi-trufi back downtown. Dinner with the Mennonite volunteers is on at last!

Biografía

Another spike in pageviews yesterday, with 239 in total, and only a marginal number of them from Russia. If there are not American bots trolling the blog, then my next comment, in gratitude for the attention, is To whom do I owe thanks for all the real eyeballs? 

And now, here comes a moment you may have been awaiting since I revived the blog. When, you may have asked yourself, will Brother Anthony write a post in Spanish? 

Well, here ’tis. Profesora Karla likes giving homework assignments in composition. The task was to write a biography of five paragraphs for a presentation in class tomorrow. Well, I went one better and wrote six, concentrating on my life as a Capuchin brother. It’s not Pulitzer Prize material. But I wrote it without help from anyone, including the algorithms of Google. However, if you cannot read Spanish, you can run this post through Google Translate and get the rough meaning of it. All errors are mine and I own them proudly. To those of you who are fluent in Spanish: be gentle! 

An advisory: your browser may automatically translate the following Spanish content into English. Whether it is Google Chrome or another culprit, try to disable the translation and opt to see the original page.

Me llamo Anthony Zuba, o Hermano Antonio (Brother Anthony). Soy fraile y miembro de la Orden de los Hermanos Menores Capuchinos. Éste es mi cuento sobre mi vida como Franciscano. 

Conocí a los capuchinos en el año 2000 en Nueva York. Muchas veces encontraba a ellos a través los siguientes años en Nueva York y en Nueva Inglaterra, y yo aprendía mucho acerca de su vida de la fraternidad, la contemplación, y el ministerio. Visitaba sus casas, rezaba y comía con ellos, y disfrutaba sus convivencias. Hacía numerosos retiros con los hermanos mientras vivía, trabajaba, y estudiaba en varias partes de Nueva York y Nueva Inglaterra. 

En el año 2011 les pedí a los capuchinos permiso para entrar la orden y ser un fraile. Cuando hice mi petición, debía proveer a ellos mi historia total. Yo les daba una biografía, una historia de educación, una historia de trabajo, y una historia de crédito. Yo les daba documentos acerca de mi salud y documentos para verificar membresía en la Iglesia Católica. Yo completaba una examen psicológico y entrevistas con los capuchinos. En mayo de ese año me aceptaron y yo comenzé el programa de formación en agosto en Nueva York. 

En el primer año viví en Brooklyn con los postulantes, los formadores y otros hermanos. Rezabamos, comíamos, y trabajabamos juntos. Ayudaba en una comedor y organizaba para los derechos de los pobres, los desamparados y los hambrientos. En el segundo año viví in California en el noviciado con muchos novicios, los formadores y otros hermanos. Lo hacíamos todos juntos: oraciones, comidas, trabajo, estudios, ministerios, y recreación. Yo trabajaba en un penitenciario federal. Todos nosotros escuchabamos a Dios y especialmente la voz del Espíritu Santo. Les pedí a los capuchinos permiso para hacer mis votos temporarios. En junio del año 2013 me aceptaron y hice mis primeros votos en julio. Estudié en Boston del año 2013 al 2015 y organizé un movimiento religioso para apoyar los derechos de los trabajadores. Volví a Nueva York en 2015 y comenzé trabajar en una parroquia para la justicia, especialmente para los hambrientos, los inmigrantes, y la cuidad de la creación. En la primavera del año 2016 les pedí a los capuchinos permiso para hacer mis votos perpetuos. Ellos hicieron un escrutinio, y decidieron sí. Cuando hice mis votos perpetuos el primero de octubre, era como boda. Eran más que 200 personas en la ceremonia y en la siguiente fiesta. Era uno de lo más orgullosos días de mi vida. 

La vida capuchina es un desafío para acercarse a Jesucristo en la vida de los pobres y en la vida cotidiana en todos lugares. Los hermanos siguen a Jesucristo por medio el ejemplo de San Francisco de Asis. El santo nos enseña que no tengamos nada sin el amor de Dios. Luchamos a vivir con el mínimo que es necesario, y queremos ayudar a otros que sufren las injusticias de la privación total. La raíz de nuestra vida es la contemplación. La primera obra de los capuchinos es la oración. La fraternidad es el valor San Francisco le dio a la Iglesia. Todos seres humanos y todos creaturas del mundo y del universo son hermanos y hermanos e hijas e hijos de Dios. La fraternidad es la llave para vivir el Evangelio de Jesucristo. 

Yo he dado gracias a Dios por mi vocación capuchina. El mundo y la Iglesia necesitan el ejemplo de todos grupos franciscanos, incluyendo los capuchinos. No es fácil para seguir a Jesucristo en este siglo. La vida consagrada del hermano capuchino no es fácil. Los votos de la castidad, la pobreza, y la obediencia demandan renuncios del poder de la sexualidad, las riquezas, y los privilegios. Sin la confianza en el amor de Dios y las promesas de Jesucristo, esta vida no tiene significado, pero es la insensatez. Yo soy hermano capuchino porque creo en Jesucristo y espero el Reino del Cielo.

Morada

“ ‘We will come to him and make our dwelling with him’ ” (John 14:23). 

I am still sitting with Jesus at the table of the Last Supper. Or it could be the table at Emmaus where he broke the bread and disappeared. I can understand why Christ disappeared at that moment of recognition. The disciples saw Christ risen, but they were not yet ready to have Christ risen dwell in their own bodies, in their own flesh. Their hearts were burning, yes, but nevertheless it may have been too much for them to have the living God take up room in their very bodies. So the risen Christ disappeared. It would require the gift of the Holy Spirit to embolden the disciples to accept what they could not, would not dare to ask in faith: that through Christ, God would live in every one of us, and would do so now. 

It is easier to write these words on my knees as a confession that I still have so many moments when I am not ready to receive a transformation, a visitation, an incarnation like this. Yes, I have brashly dared God to do more and change me, to take all the wonderful signs around me that I have seen in Bolivia and in many places before, to take all the wonderful people in my life and in whose lives I share, and to make it all change me and us. But when the moment arrives, when someone says “Are you ready?” I am not to be found. Change me, but not yet; change me, but when the change is to my liking. 

My prayers may not always have been true, but God is still going to make something of them. All I ask now is to be ready for the change for which I have prayed, the change that God is going to bring about sooner or later. However the change comes about—within me, with all my relationships, with the world I inhabit—let me be ready. Make my own home of flesh and blood spiritual, that is, flesh and blood responsive to the light and word of God. In the end, I do want God more than anything else. I may not say this or feel this with much conviction right now, but I will later, once again. What else do I have, for what else can I hope? But for this faith, but for this hope, but for this love, I have nothing, I am nothing. 

I’m not sure if this is making sense, or whether reading this inspires or depresses you, or whether this has anything to do with real life in Bolivia or the United States or anywhere. But this is where I am musing, and this is where my soul is wandering this morning, struggling to be at home in God while God is passionately trying to open my locked doors and take up room in me. Meaningful or not, these words fly to God and to you who read them, and Pentecost is still two long weeks away. How I long to sing Veni Sancte Spiritus (“Come Holy Spirit”) again. How I long for the Spirit to sweep down and surge within me once again. 

One of my dearest friends, Linda, has also been sitting at the table with the Holy One. Her companionship with Jesus inspires me. Recently, while I was ill, she sent me a short message, the fruit of her contemplative practice. Let me end with her words, which give me another way into Jesus’ words of farewell at the Last Supper. She puts more positively the glory that will come when we just surrender to God and allow the light and word to come to us and make a dwelling with us. 

Please don’t feel down even if physically uncomfortable, perhaps even in some pain.

Please remember that you are never alone; first because the source of all is particularly in love with you in more ways than you or I can recognize. I recount this now for my own remembrance as well as hopefully yours. 

Today the image of sitting across the kitchen table from God has come to and been with me. We sit facing each other with a “useful object” in the table between us. This is often how I end a day. 

The object in the table is the day and its events and we consider it together, me with curiosity (God with appreciation and tender amusement), about what I will see as we share impressions, understandings, wonderings. 

Because we are together in this looking, there is a kind of light that bathes the looking and the object being looked at. It’s a little like warm sun. And all kinds of understandings and appreciations appear to us both. Sometimes I laugh out loud at what I see about myself, with the pure joy of child-like discovery and humor. Always I am edified and calmed and satisfied with the companionship. 

God’s waiting for you at the kitchen table now.

Mejorando

My thanks to those of you who have sent messages of prayer with hope for a quick and certain recovery. Last night I slept well, and the bathroom runs stopped. I will have a little lunch later on, and I hope I will hold it in. 

It is ironic. Here I was thinking this week that nearly 100 days into my Bolivian journey, I had not experienced any physical pain or discomfort from airborne or waterborne illnesses. I’ve had the insomnia issues, but that is different from the shock of losing control of your basic bodily functions. I was giving thanks that I had been immune to the afflictions of foreign travelers, and I was beginning to conclude that I would avoid them for the duration of my stay in Bolivia. Well, look how wrong you can be! The body will humble you. 

There must be a hundred and one ways to get diarrhea in Latin America. I have been backtracking over the last seven days, thinking of what I did, what I touched or handled, what I ate, and what I drank. Whatever the case, I am guessing it is something bacteriological. I had three tablets of an antibiotic prescribed for me by my primary care doctor in January for traveler’s diarrhea. I decided to take one in the evening, and since then my intestines have been calm. I continue to hydrate, and I will take a little bit of food shortly. 

I felt so weak late Thursday and Friday, and all I could think about, when I was thinking of anything, was getting better, that I hardly prayed. How easy it is to forget God and the life of the spirit when I am sick. How easily all those good practices of prayer slip away when the body is infirm. Now I am returning to prayer. This morning I sat for a period of centering prayer with John 14. I will pray the rosary later today. I will return to the liturgy of the hours, though praying the divine office in Spanish lately has felt like homework, not like communion with God. What I would like is to forget about the words, whether English or Spanish, and find God in the silence, which is not merely me being quiet or absent from sound. Dear God, let me be with you today. I have been reading Henri Nouwen’s Latin American journal, ¡Gracias! It brings me back to my deepest desires. I ask God for help to unearth those deepest, truest desires from the dirt and the tomb of my selfish desires that bury and encase them. 

These past two days, I have eaten little, and I have prayed little. Have I loved much? If to love is to keep the commandments of Christ, then I who have often forgotten and lost the commandments have loved little. If to love is to remain in the love of the Holy One who loved you first, then I have loved very little. This illness has been a physical purgative; maybe it corresponds to a mental and spiritual purgation that has been in progress during this Bolivian journey. When will I love God? When will I love God above and before and in all things? When will I love people, places, and things as God loves them in and for themselves, and not for my own purposes? How can I love the God living and true whose love brings every creature into being and keeps them in life? God, I am starting over, again. Purge me of every falsehood. Remove my illusions, the ones I see and then the ones I do not yet see. Bring me back to you. Bring me back to the point where I know the way. Let me try again to accept you and everything you give me on your terms. Then let me live in your love and live the way you want me to live. When will I love my neighbor without the self-imposed debilities of fear, insecurity, embarrassment, self-consciousness, self-absorption, and selfishness? When will I love without wanting something in return? Have I ever performed even one act of selfless love in my life? Did I ever carry my cross, my cross, for even one moment? Did I ever stop the crucifixion of another person? I do not want to know the answers! All I want now is another chance to live well and love well. 

Briefly, to backtrack through the week before everything halted: 

On Thursday, for our fortnightly cultural field trip with the Maryknoll community, we had a three-hour tour of Cochabamba from the north to the south and back to the center. All the students and all the teachers boarded a chartered bus (minus seatbelts, alas) and we ambled past historic casonas of colonial vintage, contemporary museums and institutions of cultural higher learning; through the Recoleta district and one of the oldest churches in Cochabamba; El Pueblito, one of the oldest communities and public spaces of Cochabamba; onward from the northeast to the southeast past Cristo de la Concordia to Laguna Alalay, whose dimensions were engineered by humans and whose toil made it so, and whose waters are slowly being decontaminated with the help of the Japanese government; to the southern zone where nearly half of the population lives in dense quarters, in the valley and increasingly up in the hills, without reliable sources of water or electricity; through a tunnel to the eastern city limits and the next town of Sacaba; and back into the city center past the campus of the public university, San Simón (tuition: $2 per semester). Our teachers were able guides who offered descriptions of the cultural and historic points of interest at every phase of our tour. So was Señora Kitty, who came along for the ride. They carried off the tour in a timely fashion, too, bringing us back to Maryknoll by quarter to twelve. 

From Maryknoll, Brother Scott and I made it with plenty of time to spare to our lunch date with Padre Tomás Kornacki and the four other friars who currently live at El Hospicio, a fraternity located in Plaza Colón. From El Hospicio, the Franciscans provide meals and social services to the neediest neighbors of Cochabamba. We enjoyed the beauty of the friars’ humble cloister garden and appreciated the generosity of their table. I would have enjoyed our visit more had the fever, chills, and weakness not begun to grip me. 

On Wednesday, my long day, a cultural conference at Maryknoll on motherhood in Bolivia, then an afternoon at Nuestra Casa with the girls. Thanks to Daniela Mercado Antezana, a friend of the mission center, for her presentation. Did you know mama is as close to a universal word as we have? It’s present in virtually all languages and is thought to have its origin in the primordial cry of our ancestors for the loving protection of their female parent. We learned that May 27 is the Bolivian Mother’s Day in tribute to the women of Cochabamba who on that date in 1812 gave their lives in defense of their homes and communities from the advances of the armies of the Spanish crown during the struggle for independence. We learned much about the contemporary social and economic context of motherhood in Bolivia. We learned how the Bolivian economy has survived and grown through the entry of women into the labor market, but women still receive much less than their fair share of wages and benefits than men do. Through perseverance, women have begun to overcome the many barriers to participation in the economy while retaining their role as leader of the nuclear family. We learned about the prevalence of teenage pregnancy—Bolivia claims the highest rate in Latin America. We concluded by forming small groups in which we shared the names of our mothers and what we were thankful for from them. I said I was thankful for my mother Mary’s unconditional love. 

Then, on to Nuestra Casa. A few more girls have arrived, and one has returned to her family. They worked very well that afternoon on their drawing assignment; I asked them to draw an object of personal importance to them. They remained focused in quiet concentration for longer than the hour we allotted to them, so we let them keep going until they were done. In the remaining two hours I cleaned up the dining room and wiped down the dirty green tables; watched some of the girls play blindman’s buff; and joined Señora Nieves in preparing a peck of tomatoes for salsa to go with the tacos the girls would eat that evening. I’d like to return to the shelter tomorrow for my Sunday morning visit, but I do not want to risk sickening the girls with whatever I am clearing out of my system. I have written an e-mail asking to be excused. 

Lastly, I think classes went well this week. Joshua and Brother Scott are getting along famously. I am getting accustomed to the new dynamic with my compañera Grace. She is more reserved than Joshua—well, everyone is more reserved than Joshua. She knows her stuff, having studied Spanish through high school and done an immersion last summer in Lima, Peru. We are at the same level of skill, and I am sure she will leapfrog over me soon. For now, I find myself stepping up and speaking more. It’s a good challenge for me. And we have begun to use the intermediate-advanced level textbook. Time to climb!

Estoy en Cama

Down and out for the count with this diarrhea and bloating I’ve got. This is not how I expected to be marking 100 days in Bolivia, in bed and in the bathroom hourly!

Enfermo

This is not the post I wanted to write. I was hoping to join the Mennonite volunteers for dinner this evening. But after 11 a.m. I started feeling feverish, and I have aches and chills. Worst of all, I have lost my appetite, which never happens unless I have got flu-like symptoms. So I think it is best for me to rest this evening and ride this out and see a doctor tomorrow if I feel worse in the morning. 

With respect to the Mennonite volunteers, the timing of this is really bad, and it is ironic, since we had postponed our first dinner date when one of them was sick. Well, I promise them that the moment I feel better, we will get together for the best vegetarian chili in Cochabamba! I hope that the third time we try to break bread, the bread shall be broken. 

Going to Maryknoll tomorrow will be a game-day decision. I will let you know one way or another! In the meantime, pray that I recover quickly.

Fotos de Oruro

Good evening, friends and readers. In lieu of the usual text-heavy post of the day, I offer you a link to a photo album of the trip I took to Oruro with Joshua and the Maryknoll community last Thursday. What you will see is scenes on the road to Oruro; followed by our tours of the mine museum and the sacred museum at the Church of La Virgen del Socavón; our stop at Lake Poopó, where we had lunch at the cottage of Profesora Viviana and her husband Samuel; our visit to the monumental statue of La Virgen, and the views we saw from the hill where it stands; and a few more road scenes during our evening return to Cochabamba. 

Once again I thank Joshua for letting me download all his photos. And many thanks to Profesora Viviana and Samuel for getting us there and back again, nourished in mind, body, soul, and spirit.

Mil Gracias

It is fitting to pause, a little more than halfway through this Bolivian journey, to offer words of thanks to several people who have been companions on the way. These names are given in no particular order of preference or favor. Everyone has helped me survive, grow, and I hope, thrive in days to come. 

Brother Leo of Convento San Francisco. I began with him last time I wrote a litany of thanks, so I will start with him again. He has resolved a couple of plumbing issues in my bathroom. Now my sink has stopped leaking, and, wonder of wonders, I have hot water in my shower! He showed great patience when I was having meltdowns over my chronic insomnia and I was having difficulty communicating my struggles to the fraternity. He is being ordained a deacon on June 13, the feast of Saint Anthony of Padua. Please keep him in your prayers as his path to priesthood unwinds. He has ministered to all my material needs and improved my well-being. (A very honorable mention to Diana, the weekday cook, who keeps me and all of us well-fed; and Eulogia, who works in the laundry room and has mended some of my clothing.)

Fray Itamar, one of the brothers in studies at the convent. Nobody asked him to, but he has taken it upon himself to initiate simple conversations with me every day. He has been as cheerful, good-natured, and well-mannered as any Franciscan I have ever known, and he is one of the youngest friars in this fraternity. His empathy is strong. I think he noticed it, after Fray Jorge left the community, that I lost my best friend in the fraternity and I withdrew from everyone a little more. Thank you, brother, for casting a lifeline. 

Profesora Liliana from the language program at Maryknoll. I could acknowledge all eight teachers in the language program for their particular gifts and strengths, and I could write you a thousand words in English or a couple hundred in Spanish for Kitty Schmidt, the coordinator, for helping me find a way back to restful sleep. I will single out Profesora Liliana for the way she makes the values of the Maryknoll mission come to life through her spirit and good humor. Constantly she brings the history of Maryknoll, Bolivia, the Church, and the humble people of God to life with her stories, anecdotes, and cultural references. She shares the joys and sorrows of her life story and weaves it into the history she has lived … and survived. And she invites us, generously, to participate in the unfolding of God’s designs in history today. You begin to get a sense of the importance of who you are and what you are doing in Profesora Liliana’s classes. I get animated thinking about it. 

Joshua, my Maryknoll classmate in the language program. I have written more about him than any other acquaintance on this Bolivian journey. For good reason, too: We have been in the crucible together for so many days in the same classrooms. We have been to the top of the world, in Oruro and Tunari. We have celebrated birthdays and resurrection and Carnaval and k’oa and many other feasts. We have defeated everyone at Scrabble; he has defeated me at Scrabble. I wish him excellent adventures for the next two years in Bolivia and hope that God does good and very good things through him. 

There are a few other people, who, though not a daily presence in my life, who have made an impact on me during my time here. They make up the supporting cast in the drama God unfolds before me.

Doctora Ferrel and Doctor Siles, who have tended to my personal health, physical and mental, and brought me to better nights of rest than I have had for a couple of months. I will remember them prayerfully in those hinge moments between sleep and wakefulness. 

Señora Janneth, the director of Nuestra Casa, who has graciously given me time and space on Wednesdays and Sundays to accompany the girls as they live their way into wholeness and happiness after the trauma of sexual abuse in their families. Though I have fought back waves of sadness and feelings of helplessness and uselessness at times, I have not yet given up. One reason I return is because of Señora Janneth’s steady compassion and steely confidence that everything will work out all right. Nothing unnerves her, because she knows God is in control. Finite as our strength to love, and love well, may be, she knows that God’s compassion is illimitable and invincible. 

Father Ken Moody of the Maryknoll community has become my surrogate spiritual director as well as confessor. He appears when I need him, and even when I did not know it was time to receive guidance. It is easy to fall into conversation with him, and it always feels like the bell for class rings far too soon when we get going on some subject. 

These are some of the people in my life in Cochabamba who have made the ultimate difference in my experience. They disclose God, the living God, at work around me and in me, calling me to contemplation or bringing me into action; they are filling me, healing me, stretching me, emptying me; and they define for me the face of Jesus whom I seek with all my heart. 

Then there are all of you, the people in my life in the United States, and a few in other countries, who have remained with me in a communion of prayer; who write to me regularly or on occasion; who see me and speak with me over Skype video calls. You share the journey with me as much as or even more than some of the people I see in Bolivia. The gifts you bring me are precious; the value of your presence in my soul is inestimable. Thank you, friars; thank you, family; thank you, friends.

Separados

In yesterday’s post I wrote that I felt “maybe separated from many of the people and places I remember fondly, but not alone, not apart from them.” I was referring, of course, to my relationships in the United States. But you know that thing they say about God having a sense of humor? Today I experienced a small but significant separation right here in Bolivia.

It is the first day of the new term of the Maryknoll language program. I was anticipating a possible change in the hours of my classes. We have received five new students, including Brother Scott. That makes 13 of us: seven from Korea, four from the United States, and two from Kenya. Because most of the students are at different levels of proficiency, we now have nine class formations. There are only eight teachers. Consequently, two of the Korean students are in a class of their own, taking afternoon classes. I am still on a morning schedule. 

But Señora Kitty, the language program coordinator, had another curve ball to throw. She called together the eight current students for a huddle after the first period. She told us that with the new students having arrived, and in the pedagogical interest of having each of us interact in Spanish with other fellow students, she was switching our class partners. Immediately. Uh-oh. 

Just like that, I was separated from Joshua, my classroom compañero for the last three months. We were both surprised. We took it in good humor, joking about our shotgun divorce. One consolation is that Joshua has been paired with Brother Scott, so he is still in the company of a Capuchin. They began classes together right away. Meanwhile, my new classroom partner was finishing the student orientation with Señora Kitty, which meant I had to go solo for the last three hours. Perfect joy, as the Franciscans like to say with delicious irony. Who wants to hear me stutter and stammer for three hours in pulverized Spanish? Poor Profesoras Liliana and Karla, my mentors for the next three-week segment. Well, we got that over with today while I was awake and with-it. 

Tomorrow I will get to know Grace. Today all I know about her is that she is a nursing student from the United States and, judging by her sweatshirt, she goes to Creighton University. I don’t know any more than that. As for today, as my teachers joked, I was sin gracia. ¡Muy divertido, señoras! 

This is not the change I was looking for. For the sake of my sleeping troubles—it remains very difficult to wake early—I did want to change my class hours. I did not anticipate changing my class partner. Given that Joshua and I have spent four hours in a room together daily for three months, commiserating over or celebrating our immersion struggle, this is a loss. Put positively, I have found a friend in Joshua. Of course, he is still here, near at hand every day at Maryknoll. The real change will come when he and Charles conclude their classes for good at the end of July and begin their mission. Then, I will probably feel the way I did when Fray Jorge departed from the Franciscan fraternity late in April. 

But that is a separation for another day. For now, things begin again at Maryknoll. It will be a different dynamic with Grace, much different, I imagine. Just what it will be like, we will know soon. Surely the change will bring its own advantages, or so I hope. To put it positively, one more time: new wine in new wineskins?

Libros

“Jesus said, ‘This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another’ ” (John 13:35).

 

It is Sunday afternoon, and I feel myself cycling back to the beginning of this Bolivian journey, surrounded by the loving kindness of God; maybe separated from many of the people and places I remember fondly, but not alone, not apart from them; and filled with divine light. May the heavenly colors shine through for others to see. How will it go from here, after nearly one hundred days on this Latin American journey? Will I be wiser than before, than yesterday, or today, for that matter? 

Like many of you, I turn to books when I seek wisdom … and diversions. Currently, I am finishing a book by the late American biblical scholar Raymond E. Brown, The Critical Meaning of the Bible. Brother Lake sent three books with Brother Scott for us to enjoy when we need to return to the comforting, familiar space of English thought-forms. Brother Scott has put them in my custody while he finishes his own reading list. The first is a novel by Anthony Doerr titled All the Light We Cannot See. Are any of you bibliophiles familiar with this title? It’s a Pulitzer Prize winner, and that’s all I know from perusing the cover. The second is written by our dear late Capuchin brother, Fr. Michael Crosby. It’s titled Spirituality of the Beatitudes: Matthew’s Challenge for First World Christians. I read this book six years ago when I was in novitiate in Santa Ynez, Calif. I was going to say that you could get my impression of it by going back to my 2013 blog entries. Alas, I read the book in February-March 2013, while on a two-month hiatus from the blog! Well, I shall re-read it and give you a proper review this time around. Maybe the second impression will be more revealing than the first would have been. 

But it’s the third title that I will read first. It’s by the spiritual writer Henri Nouwen. It’s his renowned book ¡Gracias! A Latin American Journal, first published in 1983. It’s about his six-month journey in Bolivia and Peru. For a long time I have known about this volume by Nouwen, and now may be just the right time to gain from it. Having been to some of the places he has been and experienced some of what he has experienced, I will have a built-in empathy for the narrator. Having gone before me, Nouwen will surely provide a perspective that I am now more than kindly disposed to receive. I am glad and grateful to let him accompany me on my way through the next twelve weeks until I am returned safely to the United States. Where he went, I will go; his God is my God. 

And what does this God show us? What words of wisdom and light does this God “speak” to us? It all goes back to Jesus’ tender words at his last supper with his disciples, his friends: “I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35). This is all I need to know, isn’t it? This is all I have to do to be the person I am to be. 

I am looking now at the prayer cards on my desk. One of them is a prayer for the canonization of our Capuchin brother, Blessed Solanus Casey. I close with these words, taken from the beginning of that prayer, as a way of rededicating myself to my Capuchin vocation and to the journey ahead of me. 

O God, I adore you. I give myself to you. 

May I be the person you want me to be, 

and may your will be done in my life today. 

“Blessed be God in all His designs” (Blessed Solanus Casey).

Oruro

Oruro is a place very much to my liking. It is a small city. It is not a growing city, but it is a city gradually rebuilding itself as the center of Carnaval in Bolivia and as a conduit for Pacific trade markets. It was a mining town in its origins, and the mountains from which they extracted mainly silver and tin have been its fortune and its cross. It is located in the Altiplano, like La Paz, and thus sits at an equally high elevation, being 12,000 feet above sea level. 

And I did feel like I was on top of the world late Thursday afternoon when Profesora Viviana brought me and the Maryknoll students to the crest of the hill where the 148-foot statue of La Virgen del Socavón, taller than Cristo de la Concordia in Cochabamba and the world’s second largest icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary, keeps watch over the people. As impressive as it is to behold this figure of Mary and the infant Jesus crowned in glory, my eyes and my soul were captivated by the vast expanse of the Altiplano. The last time I saw a sky so broad, so blue, so deep, I was in Kansas seven years ago. But in Kansas all you had was sky and flat, flat prairie. Here, in Oruro, my eyes feasted on the distant mountains with their soft rolling ridges; and the marshes of Lake Poopó, which, despite its badly desiccated state, still held me rapt. 

The statue of the Virgin was dedicated on Feb. 1, 2013. The Altiplano was dedicated by God millions of years before. I forgot about my Maryknoll companions. I all but forgot about the marvelous statue and fixed my gaze on the world around me. I was being conducted into prayer by the gospel of creation God was preaching to me at that hour. There are very few places I want to be when I die. This could be one of those places where I could die peacefully, transported by the vision of heaven on earth around me. 

Joshua took many photos from our perch on top of the world. I will retrieve the best of them from him and share another album with you soon. 

Earlier that morning, we descended into the pits of the world when we visited the Santuario de la Virgen del Socavón. The church, which is of relatively modern construction, sits atop a mine. For 12 bolivianos (special rate for outsiders; Bolivians pay less) the Maryknoll crew went on a guided tour of the mine. Not only did we get a quickie course in mineralogy, but we also got a religious and spiritual history of the miners who toiled and died long before their time. It was they who cultivated a devotion to La Virgen del Socavón, protector of the miners, and also a devotion to the tíos or gods of the mine. The miners were very clear that the tíos were not demons but deities in their own right, to be supplicated with offerings of alcohol and cigarettes and other gifts for their safety. While the official Church may have frowned upon this vernacular polytheism, the miners had no difficulty synthesizing their cults to the tíos and to La Virgen. As we concluded the tour by ascending to street level from 70 feet below, I realized for the first time, as I took in breaths of fresh but thin air, grateful for the sunshine, how harsh, how merciless it was to work in those cold damp pits. Unremitting darkness. Dirt in the air. Cancer in the air. Sulfuric fumes, acidic water. No space to move around. Danger from dynamite. Danger from collapse. How many lives were sacrificed for the metals that provided convenience and luxury for others? 

From one history to another, we proceeded back to the church for a private guided tour of the “sacred museum,” which was a few rooms replete with archaeological artifacts, from fossils to the ceramics, stonework, and textiles of the Incas and their predecessors. We were whisked forward to the colonial and post-revolutionary eras and the Christian art and artisanal works of both the criollos and indigenous peoples. Coming up to the present, we beheld numerous masks from the artisans who make their living from Carnaval de Oruro. I felt saturated with history, living history, by the time we were through beholding these many items. I needed rest for my soul: the life-force emanating collectively from these objects was overwhelming to me. We adjourned to the church itself for a good 20 minutes or so. It was a relief to view the more contemporary, more familiar icons and statues around the sanctuary. By this time it was nearly one o’clock, and definitely time for lunch. We had traveled almost four hours in the car with Profesora Viviana and Samuel her husband, and we had absorbed the shock of Oruro’s cultural and spiritual dynamite for about two hours. We needed a break! 

So off we went toward the Chilean border to the one-room cottage where Profesora Viviana’s grandmother, or abuelita, had once lived. It stands way to the south of Oruro’s city center and on the shore of Lake Poopó, or what would be the shore if the lake were full. Talk about living off the grid: there is no water or electricity there, and almost no access to wireless Internet. It is also a perfect little fortress of solitude, with an amazing view of the lake and the vast expanse of the Altiplano looking toward Chile. It was here that we enjoyed our picnic lunch of hamburgers, beef or lentil; green beans and carrots; and rice with vegetables. A hearty repast for everyone, and we ate with grateful hearts.

We lingered at the cottage until it was past two-thirty, then made our pilgrimage to the Virgin and infant Jesus on top of the world. We left Oruro at about four that afternoon. Profesora Viviana and Samuel brought me to the corner of Avenida Heroinas and Calle 25 de Mayo just after eight that evening. They were as generous as a couple could be to a group of cultural expeditionaries as green and wet behind the ears such as us. 

It was good to have made these travels this week. It is also good to return to the routines of Convento San Francisco, Cochabamba: prayers, meals, studies. With Brother Scott here, we have a little Capuchin fraternity within the local Franciscan fraternity. Onward to a new term of classes; onward to the place Jesus prepares for us with God.

La Paz

My impression of La Paz, at least the pinpoint of the city where I stayed, is that it is like the New York City of Bolivia. The blocks around Plaza San Francisco and Plaza Murillo are busy, fast-paced, and crowded. Wealth and power tower over the poverty made visible in every outstretched hand, again a hand more brown and wrinkled than the hands of the ten thousand other people scurrying this way and that, trying to make something of their lives. As I have felt so often in New York City, especially in Times Square, so in this part of La Paz that is something like a crossroads of Bolivia and South America, I felt like a stranger in a strange land. I felt so on my own. Literally, I was: I had traveled from one city to another in a foreign country all by myself, relying on a second language that lives marginally in my soul. A peculiar vacation option, you might say. What could be relaxing about staying in a city in a different culture on your own where you know nobody, touring without a friend, without a companion? 

Convento San Francisco is grand, majestic, and underpopulated. Four friars live there, but I saw only Padre Ben Hur Soto, the guardian. I had only 15 minutes of his time Monday evening, long enough to be given the keys to the guest room and half a dozen other doors leading to the church and cloister exit. He gave me a breezy tour of the quarters, including the kitchen, dining room, chapel, and exit to the street. He warned me about the dogs that they release at 11 o’clock at night and advised me to return to the convent before that hour. I heard and saw the dogs barking and scampering madly in their cage under the stone stairs leading to the street exit. I swear to Jesus, they put the fear of hell in me. Is La Paz that dangerous a place? 

From my bedroom I could hear ten thousand lives jostling one another. Horns were honking loudly, constantly. Vendors were shouting their wares, continually, sometimes with amplification. All the muffled voices raising a din—were they all coming from the plaza? Were they mingling with voices in the church? I could not tell. The weather was cold compared to Cochabamba, but in New York City it would be just another cold spring day (though here it was a cold autumn day). I did see snow on the peaks of Cordillera Central for the first time during my eight-hour bus trip to La Paz. I arrived that Monday evening tired from travel, not from the altitude. That would not affect me at all except when climbing some of the steeper streets around Plaza Murillo in the oxygen-thin air. Overall, I could breathe. I could walk. And after a very good night of sleep Monday night, I recovered a sense of orientation. 

I had one mishap along the way. I took a terrible fall that Monday night when I returned to the convent. The premises is dark and poorly lit. I made a wrong turn from the small cloister where the chapel and dining room are located to the larger cloister where the friars’ room and guest rooms are. I thought I was entering the corridor linking the two cloisters, but instead my right foot hit air, and I began a slow tumble down a dozen steps more, impacting my shoulder, wrist, and hip, all on the right side. Worst of all, my head made impact with the hard tile step, leaving the right temple a bit swollen. I didn’t lose consciousness or get a headache or nausea, and I didn’t lose any mobility, but I was shook up! You never, never, never want to have your cabeza collide with the corner of a sharp step! But that is what it did. For the rest of the night I was worried about a hematoma. It’s been more than four days since I took a tumble. I feel fine, but I pray that my head is truly all right. 

Tuesday was my day to enjoy the finer things while on my pinpoint in La Paz. After morning payer, Eucharist at the basilica church, and breakfast at the convent, I made an all-too-hurried guided tour of the convent museum, with a look at the cloisters’ ancient foundations; some historic paintings, vestments, and sacred liturgical vessels; the rooms where the friars made sacramental wine; the cell where sculptor Francisco Tito Yupanqui created the celebrated icon of the Virgin of Copacabana; and finally a trip to the roof and the bell tower. I was hungry again quickly, so I had a breezy brunch at a café with facsimiles of centuries-old maps and other items of antiquarian interest. 

Then, a brief moment of rest in God at midday in the chapel of the smaller cloister of this mostly vacant convent. I suppose there is a vocations crisis for the Franciscans in Bolivia, too. From there I left in pursuit of museums. I found Plaza Murillo, named for one of the revolutionaries of La Paz whose valiant efforts won independence from the Spanish crown. And I found Museo Nacional de Arte, except it was siesta, with the re-opening of the museum at three in the afternoon. I was left with an hour and a half, or an hour and forty-five, to kill. I decided to have my third meal in five hours. I found a pizzeria, though I was looking for another café. So I made the impulse decision to have lunch on top of the light breakfast (bread, anise tea, banana) and brunch I had (vegetarian omelette, peach tea, and tres leches cake). So it was one slice of cheese pizza and one slice of chocolate cake. Oh boy! I walked leisurely, at a very slow pace, back to Plaza Murillo, where an army of pigeons was patrolling the park. I’m surprised there was hardly any pigeon poop. I lingered in the plaza, reading all that could be read on the monuments and markers until the museum re-opened. Admission was free for all this week—hooray! I luxuriated in the permanent exhibits for over two hours, soaking it all in, making up for the hurried half-hour at Museo San Francisco. 

By quarter after five I had been saturated, so I left, stopping on the way back to the convent at another church, San Agustín, which reminded me of Templo Santo Domingo and the Metropolitan Cathedral in Cochabamba. I skipped the Metropolitan Cathedral Basilica of Nuestra Señora de La Paz in Plaza Murillo because it is so grand, I would have needed a full hour at least to take in its architecture and iconography. I did at least observe the façade and the wreaths of flowers laid at the cathedral steps in honor of Paraguayan independence that day, May 15. I also caught a glimpse of the tomb of Bolivian patriot Andrés de Santa Cruz; his tomb is under constant guard by two members of the Bolivian Army’s infantry regiment. The solemn soldiers reminded me of the guards at Buckingham Palace! I was tempted to make them break their stoic character. Anyway, I made haste to the convent to say evening prayer before the sun set, and I did. 

I went out at six-thirty to find another restaurant where I could get trucha, and I did, just after almost being tempted to eat in an Italian-style restaurant. I did not come 4,000 miles and an entire day by bus just to eat ravioli! Trucha it was, and trucha I found again, and better than the night before, to my pleasure. Plus, a quinoa brownie as a bonus. Three desserts in one day … no wonder I felt sluggish by the end of Tuesday, stuffed like a Thanksgiving glutton. On Wednesday, the return trip to Cochabamba, I ate lightly, and hardly at all after midday. One day of indulgence was enough for me. It got me through the dull trip back to Cochabamba. The return was marred by a late arrival, which was not really an arrival at all. What do I mean? We entered the Cochabamba city limits around 7 o’clock, eight and a half hours after the 10:30 a.m. scheduled departure from La Paz. Lots of traffic in El Alto outside La Paz; lots of traffic through the mountains, and you can’t pass slow-running trucks and trailers easily when you have continuous curves blocking your vision. The problem was that evening traffic in Cochabamba was so bad, all the buses making intercity arrivals were backed up for at least a mile or more, and they could not enter the bus terminal. So the conductor simply ordered us off the bus about a mile out from the terminal. I was livid. I did not know where I was, so I insisted that the conductor lead me and another passenger to Avenida Ayacucho, where I could find my bearings. I walked the final mile and a half home. Grrr. Next time I will save time instead of money and fly to the next city I wish to visit, be it Santa Cruz or Sucre or Tarija. 

Well, that was La Paz for me. I will tell you about Oruro in a separate post.

Mi Hermano

Good morning to everyone from Cochabamba. Just a quick note (yes, another quickie post) to tell you that Brother Scott has arrived safely. Brother Leo and I met him at Jorge Wilstermann International Airport. Scott touched down at 6:30 a.m., right on time. He is here now at Convento San Francisco, and we just had breakfast. He is eager to start classes on Monday. Now he’s settling in, and I’m going to try to get a nap! Thanks ahead of time to everyone who follows this blog for keeping both of us in your prayers.

Llegada

Another quick and short post to report that I am back in Cochabamba, this time after a day traveling to Oruro and back with Joshua, Charles, Sister Martina, and our excellent guides and conductors, Profesora Viviana and her spouse Samuel. I am most grateful to the latter two for the generosity of their time, their safe driving, their picnic lunch (beef burgers and lentil burgers and plenty more), and their taste in music during the eight-hours-plus we spent in their Toyota. Having returned less than an hour ago, and already feeling sleep coming on, I will wait until tomorrow and the weekend to collect my thoughts and impressions of Oruro (and La Paz) and report back later. 

My departures and arrivals are at an end for now. Now, it is Brother Scott’s turn to arrive. All of us here pray for his safe and timely arrival tomorrow morning at the Cochabamba airport, Jorge Wilstermann International Airport. I am planning to go with Brother Leo, provided he returns from Santa Cruz tonight, as he assured me a few days ago. Of course, transportation through Bolivia has a way of humbling all of us. I just may need to be ready to hail a taxi-trufi for my brother in case worse comes to worst. We shall see. And we will make sure my Capuchin brother arrives all the way.

Aquí Otra Vez

And I am here again in Cochabamba, here for the night at Convento San Francisco. The round trip to La Paz took 17 hours total by bus. It is a wonder I am here before midnight. Bolivia by bus is not the way I would recommend, having learned now from experience. If you must cross mountains to get to another city, spend a little more money and take an airplane. Realize that you can either save money or save time, but you cannot save both when you attempt intercity travel in Bolivia. Now, off to bed, with the hope of getting seven hours or so with the help of the wonder drug I am using. I will try to wake early enough to freshen up before meeting Joshua and company at Maryknoll for the 7 o’clock departure to Oruro. I do not think I will have time to post about the La Paz and Oruro visits before the weekend. Hang tight, and I will try to get a digest version up this weekend. Until then, be well, and be safe and sensible in your own respective travels.

Hiato

Good morning, everyone. By the time you read this I will be on my way to La Paz. I am traveling without my laptop, and I will probably not be stopping at an Internet café or using the friars’ computers. Rather, I hope to let experiences happen. So this will be the first break in the blog since I began this Bolivian journey. I will, I hope, keep journaling while I am on the road, and at a later date I may tell you a little about my time in La Paz and Oruro. God willing, I will return to Cochabamba on Wednesday night, and I’ll try to remember to post to let you know I got back safely before going off to Oruro on Thursday morning. Until then, God be with you in all things, and please pray for me in all things.

Medio Tiempo

It is three months since I began this Bolivian journey. Tomorrow I begin the second half with travels: La Paz, then Oruro. Please pray for my safe passage over long roads and through unpredictable traffic. May the guardian angels who watch over my rest guard my waking as well. 

Today has been an ordinary Sunday. I woke late (my new normal under this medication for sleeping well) and I prayed morning prayer in private. I went to the girls’ shelter prepared to continue our drawing exercise, a still life with kitchen objects, or to read from the book of witch stories. These activities would not be necessary this morning. I arrived at 10 a.m. to find a theatre arts workshop in progress. With the help of three young women who are performing arts students, the girls were practicing their favorite dances that they found over the Internet. They also rehearsed some simple dramatic scenes. Then they practiced singing the popular songs of the day. One of them is by a Peruvian cumbia singer named Maricarmen Marín. It’s called “Por Qué Te Fuiste” (“Why Did You Leave”) and it hit the Top Ten in Bolivia last year. I hear this song everywhere I go. Click here if you want to slip this earworm into your head. I was always wondering who sang this song and what it was about. Now I know, and the discovery brought me down. How clever, underhanded even, to mask a sad, sad story in such upbeat music! As for me, I prefer the blues if I want to hear about love gone wrong. What you hear is what you get. Anyway, I was bummed out for being not very useful this morning at the girls’ shelter; I could have stayed home. 

Taking a step back, I feel like I am not really connecting with the girls. I can’t speak very well with them, and it’s hard to understand them when they speak. They are not as engaged or as focused with the art projects as they are with other activities. It doesn’t help that being there usually makes me feel melancholy instead of happy. I’ll give it a few more weeks, and then I’ll decide whether to continue volunteering at Nuestra Casa or not. 

Taking a larger step back: where am I now with language acquisition? I entered classes at Maryknoll at the intermediate-mediate level. To advance to the intermediate-upper level I would need to demonstrate the ability to speak in the past, present, and future; I would need to be able to tell stories with more detail than at present. I would also need to grow more comfortable expressing my opinion on various themes, especially current events in my life or in the world around me. Finally, I would need to consolidate the use of basic grammar, including the agreement of gender and number, and the proper usage of past, present, and future tenses. On that final count alone I would say I have not acquired what I have learned. While I have on occasion demonstrated an awareness of what I have learned as signified through an improved ability to express myself, I do not think I have made any advancement at all beyond the level where I started three months ago. Of course, I am willing to be disproved through an oral examination, that is, another interview with la coordinadora, Kitty Schmidt. But I am skeptical that I am a better Spanish speaker than I was in February. I listen, speak, read, and write more in Spanish, simply because I have to here, but this does not signify progress beyond what I could do before I came to Bolivia. This is a source of disappointment for me. In all honesty, if I returned to the United States tomorrow and resumed ministry at Church of the Good Shepherd immediately, I would be no more useful to the Spanish-speaking members of our parish and neighborhood than I was when I left. Or am I being too hard on myself? Has there been progress, albeit too gradual to notice? We will see. I will ask for an interview with Señora Kitty when classes resume. 

This afternoon I wished my Mom a happy Mother’s Day (in Bolivia El Día del Madre is on May 27, a fixed date) and cleaned my room thoroughly. Off now to a quiet evening: prayer, dinner, more prayer, fussing over what to pack for my trip, some reading maybe, and an early bedtime in the hope of leaving by mid-morning for La Paz.

Quillacollo

“Jesus then said to the Twelve, ‘Do you also want to leave?’ ” (John 6:67). 

Today I took a taxi-trufi eight miles out of town to Quillacollo so I could visit the sanctuary of Our Lady of Urkupiña. A first for today: I managed to travel from one city to another on my own in another country, using only Spanish to get me there and back again. And I didn’t get lost! One small step for a brother, one giant leap for … oh, never mind the hyperbole. I’m proud of myself. A prefiguration of the week to come, when I go solo to La Paz on Monday and return on Wednesday.

Around two in the afternoon I got to Plaza Bolívar, one of the main squares in Quillacollo, a city that is growing rapidly and which prides itself as being the city of the great valley. Quillacollo is also a province of the department of Cochabamba, and Tunari Peak, which I climbed over a month ago, lies within this province. If I had more time I would have lingered around the plaza and stopped in an heladería, but I wanted to get going to the sanctuary of the Virgin, which is a mile or so to the south.

First I stopped in the church of San Ildefonso, where there is a candle chapel and a shrine for the Virgin. I will not relate the architecture of the church this time, but know that it is built in the same Spanish baroque style of the colonial period as the Catedral de San Sebastián in Cochabamba and filled with statues and figures of all of the same saints I described in my tour of the cathedral, Templo Santo Domingo, and my spiritual home, Templo San Francisco. As I was peregrinating through the church, a marriage ceremony was getting started. There was a band of mariachi musicians; now I’ve heard Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” mariachi style. There was a red carpet down the nave (for real), white thrones for the bride and groom, and a videographer always three feet or less in front of the groom and mother, the ring bearers, the bride and father, and so on. Weddings tend to make me sad, and I felt a wave of melancholy come over me. What is more, I had read recently in Los Tiempos that 7 out every 10 marriages in Bolivia end in divorce, and I was thinking this would be one of them. That’s a morbid thought, I thought, and I decided to leave. 

I walked over a mile, maybe a mile and a half, south along Calle Martín Cardenas, an empty, dusty street, past open or closed dry goods stores and mechanic shops and industrial lots and sleeping dogs until I came to Rio Rocha, itself dry and running at a low depth. It has rained seldom lately. The dust was blowing everywhere. The dust was the most animated element as I walked down that lonely road, feeling like I had found the world’s end. I came to the hill called El Calvario where the apparition of the Virgin happened, and to the shrine that now stands there. There were almost no other visitors at the time I was there this afternoon—I counted three—which made it hard to imagine the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who come to this hill every year around the solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I will be leaving Bolivia on Aug. 10, so I will be missing the momentum of Aug. 14-16, when the festival for Our Lady of Urkupiña reaches its peak. Anyhow, I much preferred it this way, making my pilgrimage in peace and quiet on a sunny and breezy Saturday afternoon, almost alone. 

Two bridges cross the Rio Rocha and bring you to the foot of El Calvario, both a vehicular bridge and a pedestrian bridge. I walked over the pedestrian bridge. El Calvario is not a very high hill; in less than ten minutes I had walked up the terraced landscape. And I beheld a modest shrine chapel, with a stone sanctuary, a gable roof, and pillars of painted or glazed terra cotta, maybe, in the form of the palm trees of Bolivia. Behind and above the shrine is a stone wall encircling the area where the apparition is said to have happened. Several signs remind you not to enter that recess, which is landscaped within and contains statues of a herder girl and her sheep and the Virgin herself. Other signs tell you not to deposit rocks at the wall; apparently pilgrims take rocks from the hill, make a vow to the Virgin, then return the rocks a year later. Click here for more folklore about the festival. Anyway, I walked all around the perimeter of the recess, following the stone wall up and around to the plateau of the hill. Above the recreation of the apparition I found ash piles with dung patties and play money and paper ribbons and other burnt-out remains from many mesas. The k’oa and other Andean religious rituals still go on here. This hill is sacred, and not only for Christians. As you look from the heights of El Calvario north, you can see the much greater peaks of Cordillera Central, and you can understand why this is a holy hill. Oh, how you want just to stop, to drop everything and gaze. Stay long enough, and your soul will begin to see what the senses cannot apprehend. 

Ah, but I was feeling pressed for time. So I wound my way around and down to the shrine, where I recited a rosary. I decided not to bring my beads, using my fingers instead to count each decade of Hail Marys while recounting the joyful mysteries (Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, Presentation, Finding of Jesus in the Temple). I was also thinking of Jesus’ question to the Twelve after his Bread of Life discourse led many followers to leave him: “Do you also want to leave?” (John 6:67). Those of you who have been following the blog lately know I have been wrestling with God while clinging fiercely to Jesus. I have wanted to turn my back on God for being unclear with the signs and wonders I have seen, but I know that I cannot separate Jesus and God if I believe Jesus is the Messiah and the Christ who God has raised from death. So I was pleading in my prayer of the rosary not to leave, to stay with Jesus and to be reconciled to God. Where Mary fits into this is like this: she stayed with her son and she remained through all the mysteries of his unusual life. And in doing so she was reconciled to the mysterious, inscrutable ways of God in spite of the suffering she confronted. As I prayed I felt not so much the blessing of God’s presence but the blessing of absence, as God has given me room to ponder what has happened, what is going on, and what may come in my spiritual journey of faith. 

One more anecdote before I conclude this long post. Several yards to the east of the shrine is a candle chapel, like the one at San Ildefonso. It is a quatrefoil with a fountain in the middle (it was dry, alas). Basically, you have a large stone table on which pilgrims leave their votive candles. There are several women and men selling candles of various colors and lengths at the foot of the hill. I stopped in the candle chapel just before I started my rosary. It was breezy, and I noticed that most of the taller candles had been extinguished, although the shorter ones were still burning. I saw two tall tapers, white with two purple bands like ribbons on each one. I took them and lit them and stood them in another place on the stone table, closer to the still-lit candles, away from the breeze. Then I went to say the rosary, which took a half hour or so. Before leaving El Calvario I returned to the candle chapel to check up on those candles. They were still burning, and they had fused together. The melting wax dripped down and solidified to hold the candlesticks in place. Somehow, I took that as a very good sign. 

Down the hill and back up the empty, dusty road I went, alone but not separate.

Receso

Google tells me the blog received 223 pageviews yesterday. That is a new record. Was it the thanks I gave to all of you a few days ago? Then I will have to thank you every day for your visits. Was it the gloom or shadow I throw on occasion? Then I will have to find the cloud behind every silver lining. Was it one of you binge-reading the blog? Then I’ll have to award you a gold star and say sorry, but there’s no second season coming. Was it the bots from Russia? Then I’ll have to politely say thank you and move on, please. 

Classes will resume in ten days at Maryknoll. It’s time for a recess! I am making preparations now for the days ahead. My laundry is hanging out to dry in the athletic yard. I will head to the pharmacy after I publish this post to get the prescription for my sleeping medication filled. Four good nights of sleep and counting. Last night I woke up at 1:30 a.m. to use the bathroom, and I went back to sleep in very little time and stayed asleep. This medication has been a success. What is more, I feel less drowsy now during the day, and my mood has picked up. Good news indeed. Before Monday I will figure out how to pack everything I need for my trip to La Paz into my backpack and one additional tote bag at most. Toiletries, night clothes, underclothes, my breviary, my rosary, a notebook, a book to read, and sleeping medication and altitude medicine (sorochji pills or coca leaves?). Plus room in one or the other bag for souvenirs if I am spendthrift. I’m taking a bus to La Paz, a six-hour trip at the minimum on a “coach” with very little overhead storage space and no bathroom. I hope my bladder holds out for the one restroom break we make on the way. The trip to Oruro and La Virgen del Socavón on Thursday requires less logistics, being a one-day trip. We will meet Profesora Viviana’s husband at Maryknoll at 7 a.m. and depart together. We will either eat at a restaurant on the way or pack food for a good lunch. We will return to Cochabamba in the mid-to-late afternoon. 

Backtracking to class: We continued our review of the three past tenses for the first three class periods. Joshua and I remain mystified by the subtleties of time in the Spanish language. We are simply going to have to memorize the clue words that cue us to the preterite, the imperfect, and the preterite perfect tenses. We are simply going to have to read more Spanish texts to uncover the context for proper usage of these tenses. In the fourth period it was a Scrabble rematch. Today we had four teams: Profesora Vicky and me; Profesora Liliana and Joshua; Profesor Óscar and Charles; and Profesora Sara and Padre Juan de la Cruz, one of the Korean students. It was a close competition between my team and Joshua’s; alas, his duo bested mine by nine points. It was the luck of the fichas; what can you do when your opponent draws the Q, the Z, and the RR, the highest-scoring tiles? What can you do when, like my team, you have to forfeit your turn because all you have is consonants in your tile rack and need to change them out? Well, I say Profesora Liliana and Joshua won on points, but Profesora Vicky and I won on style and strategy. It looks like we will continue to have Scrabble matches on Fridays for the near future. One day I shall have my vindication! 

Coming up this weekend: I was thinking of making a day trip on Saturday to Quillacollo. I was planning to go to Quillacollo last month for the archdiocesan youth/young adult ministry event, before Fray Bladimir’s transportation plans proved untenable. I would like to pay tribute to Our Lady of Urkupiña, venerated across Bolivia but especially in Cochabamba. According to tradition there was an apparition of the Blessed Mother on a hill there called El Calvario. I would like to visit the hill as well as the church that enshrines this devotion, San Ildefonso. But if I stay back at Convento San Francisco, then I will plot my itinerary through La Paz; I’ll find some way to get fresh air; and I’ll keep writing more lyrics or poetry. On Sunday I will visit the girls at Nuestra Casa in the morning. Then, come Monday, time to travel.

Bloqueo

I am writing this post from Maryknoll, where I have stayed all day today. A full morning of classes, as per usual, then I attended Mass with Joshua, Charles, and the Korean students, with two of the Korean priests concelebrating. The main celebrant preached in Spanish and Korean. Then, a treat: lunch with the Maryknoll community. I spent some time this afternoon with Father Ken, to whom I have gone for confession, and who is something of a spiritual guide for me here. I am so grateful to him for his good cheer, his empathy, his patience and understanding, and his willingness to wear a New York Mets jacket even in these times of mediocrity.

One more day of classes until recess. Four more class periods until a week of rest and renewal. It is the right time for a recess. My mind is tired. I do not know how it was for Joshua, but for me I experienced a few mental blockages, especially toward the end of the second period and the fourth period. My brain just could not, would not, release the words to my mouth. We are on the last lesson in this textbook, a review of the three past tenses we have learned (preterite, imperfect, perfect preterite), and for some reason I could not toggle from preterite to imperfect when we switched the sense of time. I have said this before, and I will say this again: it is one thing to learn a language (aprender) and comprehend everything you learn. It is another thing, a much different thing, to acquire the language (adquirir), to absorb it into your tissues and let it live and breathe in you. You have a different sense of time in Spanish than you do in English because you have different grammar to shape different thought forms to construct that different felt sense. The subtleties are not completely identical. Small wonder I have a hard time integrating these grammatical rules into organic speech. I am trying to graft a different way of perceiving and expressing reality into an organism conditioned to perceive and express it in the only way that it has acquired deeply over 41 years.

In spite of the difficulty and deeply ingrained resistance, I want to overcome the mental blocks. I could not go over or around or under those blocks after too much mental heavy lifting of them in conversation. Oh well. The class periods eventually came to end. The workouts ended. We will try again with renewed strength. And I can honestly say I gave everything I had until there was no more to give.

This evening I had planned to have dinner with a couple of the volunteers with the Mennonite Central Committee who were students earlier this year. They live several blocks south of Convento San Francisco, south of La Cancha. Alas, one of the housemates is sick, so it is prudent for them not to have company tonight. That vegetarian chili will have to wait a while. We will reschedule this social event; hopefully we will come together a couple of weeks from now. With travels to La Paz and Oruro lined up, next week is spoken for.

Viajes

Off-week plans are beginning to come together. I spoke to Brother Leo, then Padre Juan Carlos, about staying with the Franciscan friars in La Paz while visiting the city for a couple of days. Padre Juan Carlos made a call to the guardian at the convent in La Paz; the guardian had just stayed here at Convento San Francisco this weekend with the Franciscan bishops. We are now set to have me stay for two nights, next Monday and Tuesday, at the convent in La Paz. I will return to Cochabamba on Wednesday evening. The next day, Thursday, I will go to Oruro for the pilgrimage to La Virgen del Socavón with Joshua and our Maryknoll colleagues. On Friday I will meet Brother Scott at the airport with Brother Leo. In all, a full week is in store. I have sent a request for funds to my home province. 

This morning at Maryknoll: mastering the future tense with Profesor Ósvaldo, and conversation with Profesora Vicky about mission and attitudes appropriate for successful intercultural encounters. The weekly conference featured the geography and culture of southern Bolivia. Silvia Martinez, the communications and public relations manager for the mission center, and a native of the department of Tarija, the southernmost province of Bolivia, was the presenter. Most of her focus was on the department of Chuquisaca, or Sucre, and the department of Tarija. This presentation had a show-and-tell component, too. Silvana welcomed two friends who modeled the traditional clothing of the Chaco and Chapaca cultures of Tarija and danced the cueca for us. (They lured Joshua and Profesora Liliana into dancing in couples with them.) She also presented several instruments common to the region, including the bombo, guitar, and violin of the chacareras, and a six-foot cane horn or caña that Joshua gamely blew for us. If you are looking for fine wine, delicious fish, 15 varieties of potatoes, and a land of smiles and flowers (or so they boast), then go to Tarija. A very respectable and competent presentation, comprehensive even for a single class period, but I confess my mind was wandering.

This afternoon at Nuestra Casa: we began a new art project with five of the girls, two of whom are new residents at the shelter. I assembled a still life using ordinary objects from the kitchen: cups, glasses, bowls, a teapot, and so on. I chose items whose shapes were simple (cylinders, half-spheres, etc.) and were lacking ornamentation of any kind. The aim was simply to draw what you saw using a plain graphite pencil. I joined the girls in the exercise, too. I learned a couple of things from the experience. First, the still life was too busy. There were too many objects in the arrangement. It was hard to know what to emphasize, what objects to accent. Nothing stood out. My still life had no focal points. That leads to the second realization. The girls have trouble concentrating. They do not focus easily or narrow in on a perspective. Their drawings reflected this total lack of perspective. Objects were floating and never came to land. They did not exist in any discernible relationship, one with another. They were lacking in emphasis of light and dark or the texture of the objects. I think that if we repeat this drawing exercise on Sunday, we will arrange far fewer objects and remind the girls to look carefully, draw slowly, and fill in all the small details. 

Still getting accustomed to the new medication for sleeping. Woke late but felt alert until mid-morning, when drowsiness and distraction set in. I will pay attention to this. I will be watching my moods, too. Sadness came over me late in the morning and hung heavily during the afternoon. I pray to shake it off. I’m doing what has worked before, which is to write a song with irreverent lyrics. Presently, I’m leaning on the surrealist style of Bob Dylan. It has helped whenever God and my humanity give me the blues.

Somnolencia

Last night I slept like I had not slept in a long time, for perhaps the first time during my Bolivian journey. I slept too well, perhaps! I woke only at the sound of the second morning bell, just before 6:30 a.m. That’s the call to morning prayer at the convent. I lingered in bed instead until it was time to shower and dress for school. I regret missing morning prayer, but I do not regret getting over eight hours of sleep. My thanks to Doctor Siles for meeting with me Monday and prescribing a very strong medication for sleeping soundly throughout the night. I cannot recall waking at all until I heard the convent bell. Sleeping without waking during the night? That never happens. Thank you, Doctor Siles. 

There may be some side effects to the medication, such as increased drowsiness and an increased appetite. I felt the drowsiness into the early afternoon; it will take some time, I imagine, for the body to acclimate to the drug. I did not feel an increased appetite, however, but then I have always had a healthy appetite, except in the event of a stomach virus or some other intestinal bug. If I gain weight, it will be because I took extra helpings of rice and yuca, not only from an altered metabolism! 

This is the final week of this six-week term at Maryknoll. Next week the students have a recess; classes resume on Monday, May 20. This gives me the opportunity to take something of a “vacation,” but what I really mean is that it is an opportunity to break out of the routine of studies at Maryknoll and fraternal life at Convento San Francisco and experience more of Bolivia according to my own rhythm. A week to rest, a week to explore, a week to renew and relax. The week is a blank slate, but I think I can find more than enough activities and recreation to replenish my soul. 

One excursion is already in the works. Joshua and I would like to visit Oruro to the south and west of Cochabamba and make pilgrimage to La Virgen del Socavón, of whom I wrote weeks ago during the time of Carnaval. This would be a day trip to Oruro and back to Cochabamba. It is also possible that I could make an overnight trip to any city whose culture and history attracts me. There is La Paz; there is Copacabana on Lake Titicaca. There are so many options near and far. Even right here in Cochabamba, there are still a number of museums and landmarks I have yet to visit. There remain other churches where I can pay tribute to the faith of the people. 

Do you have any suggestions, dear readers? Send me an e-mail with your thoughts. In the meantime, I wish to thank you for stopping by the blog, whether daily, weekly, or occasionally. I haven’t acknowledged you formally in a while, but I want you to know how much I appreciate your presence here. I carry you with me on this journey of faith, and I hope you will continue to carry me as well. As fellow sojourners, as friends, as folks of good will, and as sisters and brothers in faith (Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and many more), we walk this road, sometimes known, often unknown, by day, by night, together or apart, in parallel or on diverging or converging paths, until we arrive … wherever we arrive. Wherever that is, whenever that is, I hope we recognize ourselves and each other and the place where we stand.

Oración

“ ‘But I told you that although you have seen me, you do not believe’ ” (John 6:36).

Dear God, 

You are the God who sees. You are the God who knows. Everything comes from you, and nothing that was made could exist without you. You are the God of history. You are the God of eternity. You are spirit, you are the Word made flesh, you are love. 

Because of this, you are the God who shows. You are the God whose wisdom gives light. You made me. I could not exist without you. You put me into history. You draw me slowly, mysteriously, back to eternity. You have given me your spirit. You have showed me Jesus. You have showed me love.

You have showed me so much. I have been saturated by your beauty, love, power, and truth. And although I thought I knew what you wanted, now I do not know anything. I am thrown into ignorance and confusion. Did I ever know anything? 

Who am I, dear God, and who are you? 

What are you doing? What are you up to? 

What do you want of me? Where do you want me to go? What do you want me to say? What do you want me to do? 

I understand only a little; I understand less than yesterday. I love only a little; I love less than yesterday. 

You did this, dear God; I do not know what you have done. 

I ask you—I demand of you—not to judge those who saw Jesus and did not believe. They, too, were thrown into ignorance and confusion. They did not know what you wanted. They did not understand what they were receiving. Repent, and believe in the Gospel. What does that mean? They did not know it was time for a change. If they did, still they did not know what to change or how to change. They did not know how to be changed. 

I do not know what is changing. I do not know how you are changing things. Is it any wonder I do not know how to trust you? Is it any wonder they did not know how to trust Jesus? 

Jesus, I trust in you, even though everything else is uncertain. Dear God, through Jesus I ask you to help me trust, to help me to believe, even though the signs are unclear and the road is rough. 

Forgive me, dear God, for not being satisfied with you. You are the God of creation and resurrection. You sent Jesus. How could I not be satisfied? Nevertheless, I want more. I want your life in me. I want your love in me. I want to decrease and I want you to increase in me. Is this not what it means to give myself to you and be the person you want me to be? Then be clear. Be decisive. Don’t just show me signs. Live in me. Love in me. 

Hear my prayer for the sake of your beloved Son. May the Holy Spirit carry this prayer to you at this very hour. May my prayer be true and may it change me. Amen.