“ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength’ ” (Mark 12:30).
A quickie post for today. This was the final day of my first six-week term at Maryknoll. On Monday the 1st, a new six-week term begins, perhaps with new students arriving as well. Otherwise, it looks as though Joshua and I will continue at the same level together, and likely advance at about the same time, too. And we say adios to Profesoras Liliana and Julia for now, to await our new tag team of teachers for the next three-week segment.
This evening I return to Maryknoll to have dinner at the priests’ house and to see a film titled El Profesor (in English the title is Detachment), starring Adrien Brody, with a discussion to follow. I hope to feel good and tired by then, say 9 to 9:30 p.m., because we depart at 7 a.m. from the mission center for Tunari Peak tomorrow morning. Still I am waking in the middle of the night, at 3 or 4 in the morning, never to return fully to sleep. Let’s hope a change of routine tonight, and the thrill of the journey into the mountains tomorrow, reverses the course of my sleeping habits.
I have received good advice from friends and friars. Take the hike slowly. Pause when you need to rest. Stop when you can go no further. Bring your altitude sickness pills or coca leaves and use them. Dress warmly. Keep your hands and head covered. Expect rain. Refresh yourself with food and drink. Remember to breathe, deeply! And pay attention to your body and the beauty around you.
I will also do my best to pester the members of my hiking party who can and will take photos to share them with me so I can share them with you.
To all who are following my Bolivian journey, I invite you to consider your favorite verses of Scripture that relate to the mountains and pray for me and my companions with those verses tomorrow. I am curious: what will the experience of being two miles above sea level, standing on my own feet, bring to my consciousness of God? So many peoples around the world, religious or not, associate the ascent of a mountain with a spiritual quest. What graces will this unexpected pilgrimage bring? Come what may or may not, I hope this experience will help me be at one in myself; and to love the one God living and true with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind, and all the strength that is in my body.
Querido Hermano Anthony
ReplyDeleteMy apologies for not keeping up with your writing. I have read some and attempted to reply while awaiting at a doctor's office, but was not able to. This was when you wrote about el verbo Subir and associated it with your last name.
Let me try to conjugate that Zuba/Subir
Yo Zuba/Subo
Tu Zubas/Subes
el/Ella Suba/sube
Nosotros Zubamos/subimos
Vosotros Zubeis/Sibeis
Ellos/Ellan Zuban/Suben
How you like that.....Jajaja
I figure that since we successfully completed the first six weeks, I might right in Spanish, next time. Que tu cres?
I am pretty sure you will enjoy that hike tomorrow! I be walking to the Polo Grounds for a workshop on tenants organizaning, presenter by Gabriel, from Community Voice heard. He will be a presenter on St. Elizabeth-OLQM workshop/retreat four our 1st anniversary. I have a team of 5-7 people working on that. Also busy with the Lenten Season. We are knocking in our neighborhoods doors to bring God's Word. Also preparing for the summer program.
Te extrano mucho! Abrazos
Rosa Yolanda
T
Mark 11:23
ReplyDelete23 “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them.
God makes mountains; we can move them. Or should I say, it will be done for us?
And :
ReplyDeleteIsaiah 25:6-9 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
6 On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines,
of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.
7 And he will destroy on this mountain
the shroud that is cast over all peoples,
the sheet that is spread over all nations;
8 he will swallow up death forever.
Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces,
and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth,
for the Lord has spoken.
9 It will be said on that day,
Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us.
This is the Lord for whom we have waited;
let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.