Dance. For Joy!

February 2022: Dance. For Joy!

A journey to a faith community of resistance in Texas offers an opportunity to renew my Childlike Spirit, and remember our collective, deeper purpose

Recently a good friend asked me to describe a moment, in the whole long scope of my work with the Dominican people, that has brought me great joy. A wonderful, and surprising question, since I sometimes get so mired in the day to day of directing an organization I can feel distant from the deeper, long-term value it has had. Also an impossible one— impossible to pick just one moment, since over the years I’ve been blessed with a treasure chest full of them.

            But I’ll tell you the first thing that came to mind: el baile. The dance. The improbable, yet inevitable, dance that has concluded every home stay component of every service-learning immersion group I’ve led since I began this mission and work nearly 25 years ago. Rarely lasting more than an hour, it is an event that is at once awkward, goofy, and at times hilarious, as well as sublime, profound, and one of the “results” of our work I’m most proud of, even if it’s not one that fits naturally into an annual report. Every time, with every group, after I’ve danced a while myself, I need to step out of the circle, not only to catch my breath, but to simply marvel at the scene. For me, it’s a drink of sacred water, a genuine, momentary glimpse of God’s kingdom, alive on earth.

            To my surprise, wonderfully, I was given a drink from this cup while visiting a church community in Texas in December, reminding me of just how thirsty I’d been, and just how nourishing that sacred water can be, for so many.

            But before I tell you that story, let me tell you what el baile looks like in these moments in the D.R.

* * *

In point of fact, in the Dominican communities, the occasion is known as la despedida, the farewell. Many times it falls on a Sunday, at the end of a week of staying with host families, and collaborating on a project that community leaders have identified as important and urgent— often a new cinder-block home or latrine for a family lacking a humane one, or one at all. On Sunday, in keeping with the community’s Sabbath practice, there’s no construction work at all. In the morning, we celebrate liturgy with the community; at mid-day, a big meal; in the afternoon, el baile and the many speeches of gratitude and appreciation that are also part of the community’s culture (“thanks for the memories, dude,” as some of the US teenagers might be inclined to depart with, just won’t cut it). But of course all of this, for as fun as it is, is in fact another kind of work, just as vital as construction projects— perhaps even more so— even if it doesn’t give you a sexy metric for your annual report.

            The dance usually takes place in a small community building, one that might double as a chapel on occasion (or in one case, was the chapel, before a new and larger one was built). If it’s scheduled to start at 2 o’clock, you can expect to see the US group there in full at that time, each accompanied by one or two members from their Dominican host families. The community leaders, the band (three or four musicians, who will belt out the lyrics while playing acordión, guira, and tambora, all unplugged), and the remaining community members… they’ll be along… soon. Dominican time: It’s part of the experience.

            In the neighborhood of 3 o’clock, most of the mules, horses, and motorcycles will have arrived, bearing the residents who will in fact be present. The others will have been detained by worries of a rainstorm (so often a possibility in summer), failed transportation, illness, or a family farm problem that’s either just popped up or is so chronic that it demands their Sunday afternoon, or just, for some reason we’ll never really know but probably comes down to the raw unpredictability of life on the margins, the person “se quedó.” They stayed behind.

            On the best days, the band will now get fired up, and a community leader will pull me into the room’s center (if she’s female, like Felicia), or pair me off (if he’s male, like William) with a not-necessarily-enthused dominicana, “para dar el ejemplo,” to set the example of how to dance merengue. Or more importantly, how to simply be present, and surrendered, to this special opportunity for solidarity, strange as it may seem to call it that. (On the days when the band itself “se quedó,” and we’re simultaneously challenged by a brownout, whoever has the 4x4 with the best sound system in the community (there might only be one or two to choose from, and the speakers will probably work better than the suspension), will pull it up alongside an open window of the building, and crank it up full-blast. Mejor que nada, ¿no? Better than nothing.)

            El baile is fun, in part because it can be hilarious. One of the great gifts the service groups bring to our communities in the D.R. is humor: Someone to laugh at, yes at times, but most always in an endearing (not scornful) way. More often, someone to laugh with, who creates more opportunities for humor— especially if those arise naturally, unbidden, from their authentic self. Many of our volunteers are adolescents, though some are adults who double as chaperones. All of them are invited to enter the experience with a Childlike Spirit, no matter their age: an intentionally open mind and heart, a willingness to trust rather than control, to wonder rather than fix. Sort of like “Beginner’s Mind” from the contemplative tradition, paired with a Fred Rogers spirit of compassion and gentleness (he was a Presbyterian minister, by the way; and he could also be fierce, paradoxically, in his commitment to this gentleness). The vast majority know just a smattering of Spanish, at most (as I did when I first moved to the D.R.), and so there are the inevitable, hilarious mispronunciations, improper usages, and elaborate charades sketches in the attempt to communicate; the Childlike Spirit gives them permission to make these mistakes, to laugh joyfully with the Dominicans caring for them (not at themselves in shame), perhaps even recognizing that this gift of laughter is a cool cup of water, even if not one they’d intended to provide.

            And el baile, in this respect, is a showcase of mistakes, a banquet of connecting and healing humor. It helps solidarizarnos— a verb which lacks a precise equivalent in English, but perhaps is best translated as “to bring us together in solidarity.” Despite my efforts to give them a few quick merengue lessons as part of their preparation process, you simply can’t squeeze blood from a stone: some folks just aren’t given the gift of rhythm. The beautiful flow of tight-swinging hips, gliding feet, and precision spin-shift-twirls of well-danced merengue becomes, in some earnest students’ bodies, a tottering, staccato, side-step march in a small circle, over and over again… again, to the delight of their Dominican dance partner and many looking on. Among the onlookers are usually a passel of pre-pubescent boys, ages 8-11 or so, who see el baile as their sanctioned chance to dance with one or more of the female students from the service group, high school or college age, their moment to believe they have una novia americana, a North American “girlfriend.” Watching their approach, the students’ reactions, and the dances themselves (although some of the boys are already skilled dancers), also brings forth that graceful, connecting, healing laughter— sometimes, for some of the dominicanos, to the point of tears.

* * *

An additional gift the service groups bring to the community, again inadvertently but no less powerfully, is that of empowerment. But not necessarily in the way often thrown around strategy meetings, vision plans, and grant applications, of “teaching a man to fish”; this power is spiritual, and thus more subtle, equally necessary, and in some ways more profound.

            It’s a fair criticism of many US service programs to say that, in trying to fulfill the important and necessary goals of providing a safe and genuinely meaningful experience for the visiting volunteers, the needs, goals, and priorities of the visited communities are glossed over, or not considered at all, much less given equal value with the group’s. To be blunt, the community residents just aren’t seen as being as human as the volunteers… though I don’t doubt that is due to socialized blind spots (the belief that a person’s importance and value equates to their degree of privilege), rather than malice. One of the things I’m proudest of in my work is the truly wonderful balance we’ve been able to achieve in creating these programs and refining them year by year, group by group, so that the groups’ visits are mutually and authentically beneficial to all involved, Dominican and North American alike. The key is taking a holistic approach, as you would for anyone you cared about, and intentionally addressing needs of body, mind, and spirit. The Dominican communities, extremely vulnerable, benefit from concrete, pragmatic projects which the groups must finance as part of the experience: latrines, homes, scholarship support, school supplies, etc. And they are given a myriad of opportunities to be generous, in the areas in which they are in fact more powerful, and the volunteers are more vulnerable. Such as taking in a student for a home stay and caring for them generously, as for their own child: cooking meals, washing clothes, walking them to and from the worksite, offering a non-judgmental hug at the day’s end even if the student is covered in sweat and construction grime. And teaching them: some words of Spanish, how to put up a mosquito net, how to swing a pick, and a host of other practical tips for campo living; and more profoundly, offering a living example of how to faithfully endure, to simply get out of bed in the morning despite having suffered a lifetime of systemic oppression, take a breath and then a step, and maybe even smile as you do. And yes, how to dance.

            These moments of caretaking and teaching, as well as the moments of laughter, the shared meals made more bounteous by the program’s funding, the bailes— these and more are all co-created opportunities to celebrate. The work of a good service program, in this spiritual vein, is to find ways to gently make them possible, and allow community members to embrace them intentionally, on their own turf and their own terms. When the world’s powers, principalities, and just plain hard luck have beaten you down like they have many of my friends in the D.R., celebration is not a luxury, it’s a need, as essential as access to clean water, decent housing, and other bodily needs. A good service program will always be attentive to, and trying to answer, that need, and only then, trying to build achievements in more tangible ways upon that foundation.

            So when I step back, to observe el baile and breathe in its gift, I’m seeing and feeling many things at once. There’s Pentecost, the unleashing of the Holy Spirit, which like a good bandleader whips up the energy in the room, transcends the language barriers, and invites all of us to feel and flow with it in our feet, in our bodies. There’s resistance to oppression, the audacity to turn the other cheek to the inhuman powers that seek to kill you daily in body, mind, and spirit, the courage and faithfulness to stake a claim to joy in this moment, and to hope for the future, even though a careful calculation of the odds would have you place your bets otherwise. There’s the Body of Christ, acting for a few moments in this remote, improbable place and way, like it’s supposed to: each part important, each part playing its part, all of us taking care of and truly belonging to each other as the members of a family— the holy Human family— are always called to do.

            When I’ve witnessed these moments, and even when I remember them, I’m humbled, aware that I’m a truly rich man.

* * *

This December, in the days leading up to Christmas, I found myself in Texas, to my great surprise. In Houston to be exact, invited by a dear Dominican friend of more than twenty years, to visit the Episcopalian community in which he is a priest. Surprised by my good fortune, since I’d been brought there not only to present my Sancocho book as the “main event” of their Las Posadas novena experience, but to start forming a partnership between that community and Education Across Borders, all while sharing life for a few days with my friend and his family (and enjoying their fantastic Dominican cooking, I might add).

            And surprised too that I’d find myself not only remembering, but experiencing in yet a new way, this marvelous gift I’ve been reflecting upon, el baile.

            My friend and I first met toward the end of my first year living in the Dominican Republic, while making a visit to Port au Prince, Haiti. Before marrying and having children, he’d been in a high leadership position within the D.R.’s Roman Catholic church, directing its ministry to Haitian immigrants. He knew both Port au Prince and the Kreyol language well, so he was hired for the week to serve as our group’s guide, leader, translator… okay, let’s just say it, guru. The group of US undergrads from Creighton University I was chaperoning quickly put him on a pedestal— and not without merit, I came to believe. We quickly realized we were spiritual kin, and remained close friends for the remainder of my years in the DR.

            Fast-forward twenty-some years, through a series of moves, professional shifts, family crises, and vocational seekings for each of us (including his ordination as an Episcopalian priest), and we found ourselves chatting by phone this past summer about the possibility of me visiting his family for the first time since they’d moved to Houston seven years ago, as a guest of his church. Like almost everything during this pandemic, the plans had to be tentative—especially when you’re talking about Texas, where adherence to public health recommendations (already watered down by the governor) was scattershot at best, and they had the hospitalization and death counts to prove it.

            The tradition of the Las Posadas novena is a rich, deep one, and I can’t do its history and significance justice in this space. (If you’ve never experienced it, or heard of it, keep your eyes open next December, and follow what you see.) Novenas, in one form or another, have been practiced and offered for centuries, across cultures and languages, and even across faiths— if you’ll stretch with me a bit— since the practice of a multi-day prayer ritual (the novena happens to be nine) can be found in various religious traditions, even if the particulars vary. Like many cradle Catholics, I was introduced to novenas the old-fashioned way, by a nun with a rosary in one hand and a yardstick in the other, leading our classroom of uniformed grade-schoolers in five decades of Hail Mary-Our Father-Glory Be cycles, for some need the parish monsignor had dictated was immediate and urgent. Later in life I met others who breathed new life into the practice, releasing it from those original (and frankly, unnecessary) strictures, and opening it to a multitude of possibilities, from how to pray it, to (most importantly), why. What it’s boiled down to for me now is this: we try to enter humbly into Mystery, guided by tradition and a ritual; we walk alone at times but somehow, physically and/or spiritually, in community with others praying simultaneously; we weave our prayers together to ask for some movement— not necessarily a solution, though I’d never look too closely in that gift horse’s mouth— on some profound need, individual or familial or communal or worldwide, that feels overwhelming, impossible, intractable, and has led us to our knees. And so from our knees, we try to get up— almost always needing the hands of others— and take small steps into the darkness, trusting that some Light will, in God’s mysterious ways and time, be revealed.

            For the nine days preceding and culminating on Nochebuena, Christmas Eve, the Las Posadas novena invites pilgrims into the story of the Holy Family as they wander in the darkness, looking desperately for someone to offer welcome and provide a place for Madre María to give birth. Person by person, community by community, this will look differently, of course, depending on a variety of circumstances. In many places, groups of pilgrims will gather at the same time each night, process around a church or a neighborhood singing songs that capture the spirit of the lonely quest for a place to call home, knock on doors but be turned away (with folks prepared in advance to be “the bad guy!”), and finally meet a willing soul who opens their door, offers a place to celebrate Mass or a brief liturgy, and share food and drink (yes, even during a pandemic).

            In my friend’s parish and its sister parishes in Houston, I encountered a community making this journey in a full, embodied way. Not as a nice spiritual experience to acquire, but something lived, day after year after generation. I probably don’t have to tell you about the prevailing stance toward so-called “others” in Texas. From its long history as a slave state that kept news of Emancipation from the enslaved, to the current shenanigans of the sitting governor and state legislature on voting rights, the dank waters of “us versus them” trickle down inside communities and homes, creating a soul-infecting mold that can rot and eventually destroy the hater as much the hated, unless actively resisted. And thank God for the many who resist, even if their numbers and power have not yet tipped the scale. This novena was largely celebrated in Spanish— in its processions and Masses, with their readings, sermons, and songs— and largely directed and joined by Spanish-speaking members of the parish, the majority of whom are of Hispanic origin. During each day and each event for which I was present, I experienced a moment of awe, looking around me, considering the amount of hatred those in my midst have inevitably endured, and marveling at their witness, just in being present, of vulnerability, solidarity, and hope. This was a turning of the cheek—a conscious, empowered choice for the nonviolence and forgiveness of the Eucharist— practiced in community and somehow joyfully, night after night.

            Perhaps it helped— it never hurts, in my experience— that the meals were so wonderful. Admittedly, I’m not impartial in this matter, but the best Eucharistic celebration didn’t happen during any of the Masses, but following one, when I was invited to read The Good Stanger’s Sancocho Surprise to a gathering of 100 or so children and adults, and then in its spirit, we feasted on two huge pots of authentic sancocho cooked up by my Dominican friend’s family. A Liturgy of the Word, and then of the Eucharist, creatively expressed. And the most adventurous of us stayed after the meal… to dance.

* * *

You might also say that those of us who danced were were those who needed it most, rather than the most adventurous. Or that we were those comfortable enough with our vulnerability to try applying a little creative energy to the wounds. Of course, I don’t have any proof for this, and you might rightly say it sounds pretty half-baked. But let me tell you about the Three Wise Women (not men), and Grandma Mary, and see what you think.

            Immediately following the story time, as the sancocho was brought out and people began to queue up for it, I went to sign books for parishioners. As wonderful as the meal smelled, I was delighted to do this; more than a year after the publication date (November 2020), I still hadn’t had such an opportunity, given the pandemic’s obliteration of in-person author events. For me, it’s another piece of heavenly treasure to chat with someone who has read, or will read, your book, or is buying it as a gift for another. However, the moment we wrapped up, I dashed for the serving table, got myself a nice big bowl, and looked for a place to sit.

            At one table sat three women whom I now recognized. During the story time, as I sang a verse from an old Latin American church hymn that appears in the text, they had sung along. Qué bueno es vivir unidos… en comunidad y bien comprometidos. I gestured to one of the empty chairs and asked if I could join them.

            We spoke in Spanish. All three had greeted me in English at the book-signing table, but now felt comfortable enough to talk in their native language. And all told me that they were buying the book for one or more grandchildren. One even beamed, “¡Con este libro voy a enseñar a mi nieta leer en español!” With this book, I’m going to teach my granddaughter to read in Spanish! The child had not been warm to the idea previously, she told me, but her grandmotherly intuition told her that with this book, things would change. (Another nugget of heavenly treasure? You bet.)

            All three women had come to this country from elsewhere, including one from Venezuela, and their faces bore signs of long suffering about which I could only speculate. Especially la venezolana, who at one point said, “When you see your country destroyed like that, and you want to be there, but you know you cannot— it just breaks your heart, time after time.”

            Our conversation ran the gamut: from the plight of children during the pandemic, to some inside stories of their parish life, to our favorite books and authors, to immigration politics in Texas, to just how delicioso es este sancocho— just how delicious this sancocho was, and the whole evening by extension. All the while, a marvelous quartet played “church music,” but with an energy, creativity, and sabor— flavor— that I’ll wager you’ve not experienced the like of before, if you grew up with the kind of milquetoast church music I experienced in white suburbia. (Later, I was blessed to experience Gospel music when I moved to Seattle; thank you, Shades of Praise choir, Kent Stevenson, and St Therese Parish for that gift that keeps on giving.) The group had infectious rhythms, strong keyboarding, bright sax flows, creative interpretations of old classics, and above all, strong soulful voices. It was una música de vocación. Vocational music, called out from these four souls as gifts to the rest of us, and evident in every tune.

            “Juan, ¿vamos a bailar, no?” one of the women inquired, as the others nodded. It was clear there was not a choice being offered, but a command issued. And who was I to say no to these three wise women? Anyone who could still smile, laugh, and dance after having endured what they have is worth listening to, in my book. “Claro,” I said, “Es justo y necesario.” It is right and just. (Yes, a church joke, which I hope you get— and forgive. At least these women found it funny.)

            None of us was a particularly good dancer, but that was not the point. The point was joy. Both to experience it and to create it, with each other and for each other. A way of loving our neighbor as ourself. Joy of intention, rather than reaction; bucking the current of logic, fueled by hope that transcends a calculated optimism; a turning of the cheek to the many enemies of the world, and daring to smile. Even Jesus was an utter realist when sizing up the world and the odds stacked against our quick-fix-to-feel-good solutions; he reminded us that, even back then, the powers and principalities had long since given their destinies over to “the ruler of this world,” i.e., the prince of darkness, and that the poor would always be with us (because of the persistence of individual and systemic sin). And yet he himself knew, and embodied radically, that true liberation needs to start deep, in the freedom of heart and soul that the Creator made us for and constantly calls us back to.  In that place within where we can surrender, safely, to joy, to healing ourselves, and through that, offer healing to others.            

            Where better to look for reminders of this freedom than in Creation itself, which demonstrates daily how to live, die, and create new life? And who better to help us pay attention in this way than Grandma Mary— dear Mary Oliver? Many of her poems speak to this— it’s a major theme across her entire oeuvre— but let me share one that blessed me recently, “Poppies,” from her New and Selected Poems, vol I (1992).

The poppies send up their

orange flares; swaying

in the wind, their congregations

are a levitation

of bright dust, of thin

and lacy leaves.

There isn’t a place

in this world that doesn’t

sooner or later drown

in the indigos of darkness,

but now, for a while,

the roughage

shines like a miracle

as it floats above everything

with its yellow hair.

Of course nothing stops the cold,

black, curved blade

from hooking forward—

of course

loss is the great lesson.

But I also say this: that light

is an invitation

to happiness,

and that happiness,

when it’s done right,

is a kind of holiness,

palpable and redemptive.

Inside the bright fields,

touched by their rough and spongy gold,

I am washed and washed

in the river

of earthly delight—

and what are you going to do—

what can you do

about it—

deep, blue night?

            As in so much of her work, Oliver here celebrates the quiet, sublime beauty, to be found in the small details of the natural world, and the profound joy genuinely available to us when we can notice it, and surrender enough to allow it to penetrate. At the same time, she fully acknowledges the huge, dominating reality of darkness, suffering, and death: “loss is the great lesson.” And somehow (it’s part of her great gift) she allows us to find, remain with, and walk away from the poem with joy anyway, in spite of it all.

            This poem spoke so clearly to me after my visit to Houston, in part because it reminded me of a conversation I had years before with one of my mentors in the D.R., explaining why his NGO, focused on human rights and education, had created an arts and crafts workshop that sold candles internationally. “We need money to buy flowers and ice cream sometimes,” he said, “But our big funders won’t support it. They think those are extraneous expenses, because they don’t fit into any of their categories.” But the funders were wrong, he said: for the work of a mother’s club to go well— to say, figure out how the hell to keep businesses from dumping garbage into the community river, or how to demand the state finish paving the nearby road that’s sat unfinished for two years— the room in which they gather needs fresh flowers, it needs that living, breathing color and scent right in their midst to remind them they are human. For children who are “at risk” and perpetually food insecure—who have never eaten in a restaurant, and who may only eat once or twice a day— they need to experience what it’s like to go get an ice cream cone, a pure extravagance in their daily lives, and feel that cold sweetness on their tongue and the sun-melted drips on their chin, to have a new experience of joy the world has told them they were not worthy of.

            In each baile I’ve been blessed to witness, I’ve seen campesinos dancing and singing and laughing despite incalculable suffering—a failing crop, a mountain of debt, a medical condition for which treatment is simply too expensive or too remote, and worse. Dancing not only despite that suffering, but through it, thus living Vivian Greene’s adage, “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain.” In this sense, dancing, like other expressions of joy, is a practice, something intentionally chosen, embraced, and engaged, on a regular basis, not as a hobby or a band-aid or cuddly comfort, but as a necessary, indispensible part of staying alive.

El baile speaks deeply to the true purpose of the mission I’m honored to help carry out, one I never would have suspected when I first arrived in the D.R. twenty-five years ago. Of course, had I been paying attention more closely, both to the model of Jesus in the Gospels and to my previous experiences working with the poor in the U.S., I would have already known.

            I’ve written previously about how important the experience of mutuality is to an authentic service program, and beyond that to a successful organization. Many wise writers and teachers have expressed this across times and traditions. The three who have touched me most deeply are Thich Nhat Hahn, and his expression of interbeing and interdependence; Lilla Watson, and her articulation of Australian aboriginal wisdom, “If you have come to help me, then you are wasting your time… But if you have come because your liberation is bound up in mine, then let us work together”; and St Paul, writing in 1 Corinthians 12 on the concept of the Body of Christ. To be truly authentic and potentially transformative, service— call it ministry, charity, justice work, or something else— must be holistically and mutually engaged, involve some kind of shared vulnerability or need, and aspire to some common good. It must begin and end with the belief that everyone involved is human, a Child of God, a vital (if small, and fragile) part of the web of life, the holy human Family.

            I’ll never forget the first time I heard a Dominican friend talk about how much his family enjoyed hosting some of our volunteers, and his hope that they would repetir la visita, as he phrased it, repeat the visit. “Deben de volver, Juan,” he said. They must come back. But next time, “solo para compartir.” Literally, “just to share.”

            Compartir has to be one of my favorite words in the language, at least as I’ve experienced it used by Dominicans. I’ll also never forget the first time I heard it in conversation, years before hearing it in reference to the volunteers. It was during my first month living in the D.R., while I was still very much learning (and struggling with) the language. I was sitting on a wall, shooting the steamy tropical breeze with three new friends from the neighborhood, and one of them said, “Me gusta compartir contigo,” I like to share with you. I paused, vaguely remembering that compartir meant share, but wondering, “Share what? We’re just talking.” I kept quiet though, trying to absorb more context, hoping I’d eventually figure it out (a strategy I’d adopted to spare myself the embarrassment of endlessly asking someone to repeat or explain what they said. Sometimes you just want to nod, fake it, and say, Sí, sí, sí!). I heard it again that evening, and many times thereafter; finally, I realized it had a dimension here that it didn’t in English. Yes, one can share things, feelings, opinions, just like the transactional usages in English; but in español, compartir can also connote a deeper sense of sharing, especially through conversation, and even more basic than that, an intentionally shared moment in life. “Hanging out,” you might say in U.S. English, or “spending time,” but the flabbiness of the former phrase and the economic flavor of the latter make them both poor fits. If you and I take a walk, or chat over a soda at the bodega, or talk on the phone, or simply inhabit the same moment together intentionally… we are compartiendo, sharing. Sharing life.

            So when this man, a campesino living on the edge of desperate poverty, said that the volunteers should return solo para compartir, without a construction project attached to the visit, I was incredulous, to say the least. I already knew him well, and respected him deeply, but I instinctively doubted his sincerity (one downside, perhaps, of being a lawyer’s son: you too often think you sniff a lie). This isolated, impoverished community still needed so much, materially: basic sanitation, decent homes that were not made of scraps of wood and tin, access to education and medicine and electricity, for God’s sake. He himself still needed all these things! How could he possibly be serious, talking about another visit, one that would require all the same hospitality from his family—cooking, cleaning, and tending to all the needs of these high-maintenance, Spanish-challenged students— if it lacked the possibility of meeting some of that need?

            In my ignorance, I was blind to another need, even two, that a visit simply for the purpose of sharing life would in fact satisfy.

* * *

Mother Teresa at times spoke of her stark encounters with a great festering sore in rich nations, different than in her India or other countries of the Global South, terrible in itself but also dangerous for being hidden: the wound of shame, especially among the poor. Of course, humans of every social class, around the world, can suffer from this, and I’ve certainly witnessed it widely in my experiences in impoverished communities in the D.R. Through my conversation with this man insisting that “his children” come back for a “family visit,” and many subsequent conversations like it, I’ve learned that one of the best salves for that wound is compartir. Especially in the basic, simple ways Jesus practices when meeting the various outcasts he encounters or who are thrown into his presence: lending attention, inviting to come close, touching, eating a meal, calling one by name.   

            It’s also fair to say that a certain healing power can reside in the opportunity to teach, guide, and protect someone who is in some way vulnerable. In the way (I’m proud to say) my organization has designed our service programs, the Dominican families who host visiting U.S. volunteers are in the position of power, relative to the students, when in their own communities and certainly within their homes. They are the experts, the wise ones, and the fixers; they know how to kill and cook a chicken, how to make and mix concrete by hand, how to walk the steep muddy hillsides without breaking their neck… and much more. And the visiting volunteers, who often hail from privileged families and elite schools, are in this context relatively powerless and vulnerable (but still safe). They depend upon these families, like a young child would their parents, older siblings, or another trusted elder, to take care of them, and to teach them the story of life from their perspective, experience, and hard-earned wisdom.

            As the years went on, and I witnessed this phenomenon over and over, in baile after baile as well as flowers and ice cream and many, many forms of play, I began to realize that this version of empowerment— creating genuine human occasions to celebrate and share life, to up-end the typical server-served dynamic, and to practice joy in communities of resistance— that this was part of our true mission as an organization, even if, again, it didn’t fit neatly within a list of metrics or an annual report. Without this level of connection, this rock-solid foundation in genuine human relationship, the results you achieve will be fragile, even hollow, and like the house built upon sand, will eventually be washed away once the right storm comes along.

            For various reasons, including the pandemic’s arrival, I have not been able to visit the D.R. since summer 2018. Despite my best efforts, it’s been an enormous challenge to keep my spirit fresh, to feel that sense of intimate connection with my friends there, the landscape, and the reality itself, across so much time and distance. It took going to Houston, getting thrown some curveballs while there, and letting the children lead me to finally dance, to re-kindle the fire.

            Arriving, I was preoccupied with the pragmatics: how would the presentation be staged, how would the slide show be projected, how many books would we sell, and what level of connection could I forge between this parish and my organization. But day after day, as I was invited (and could not really say no) to improvise— offering on the spot reflections in both languages for some Masses, adapting to the collapse of the slide show, and generally just being available to whatever a particular day would hold— I found myself energized, enlivened, and lightened, shedding some of the heaviness of the pandemic’s grind, isolation, and despair, and surrendering into occasions to celebrate, simply for its own sake.

            At one point a piñata was presented, and the children present flocked to it. As the music played, and each child took a turn whacking the hell out of that poor papier mâché donkey until it surrendered its sugary treasures, I found myself clapping along, laughing, and singing too, until finally I danced. You would have too. These children, with the Spirit flowing easily through them, pulled us all in. They, and especially their parents, would have had thousands of reasons not to celebrate, but to despair, given the current political climate in Texas. And yet here was an intentional, community choice to turn the cheek, an option for hope, a decision to celebrate. Celebrating the gift of life, and beyond that of shared life, especially one of mission.

            The feasts after each community celebration during Las Posadas in Houston not only reconnected me to that heavenly treasure from the D.R., they made me freshly aware that it can be available anywhere, and depends less upon the food than upon the orientation of spirit. The simplest of meals— such as arroz y habichuelas, rice and beans, which forms the foundation of the Dominican plate— can be a banquet, like the loaves and fishes. Donde comen dos, comen tres, as I’ve heard many Dominicans say: where two can eat, three can eat. If the meal, however it appears on the table, is approached with a Childlike Spirit, a sense of abundance (not scarcity), it becomes Eucharist, an occasion for all to eat, to celebrate, and find nourishment in both.  Creating occasions for joy, in a world hammered daily by suffering and tragedy— this is our true, deeper purpose and calling.           

            May we embrace it together, always. May we take God’s hand, and our neighbors’, and dance.

Ask for the Fire

9 October 2021: Ask for the Fire

A reflection on Sister Helen Prejean’s spiritual memoir, River of Fire

I’ve only been lucky enough to see Sister Helen Prejean speak in person once, nearly twenty-five years ago, and I still remember that evening. Some details are pretty fuzzy, frankly: An auditorium of some kind at the University of Iowa, where I was a graduate student, with only so-so lighting and sound, filled probably beyond capacity. What I remember clear as today was her voice, and beyond that, her presence. Yes, she has the Louisiana accent, and sure, it’s part of her charm, as is her capacity to spin yarns with self-effacing humor and salt-of-the-earth flavor. But beyond that, much deeper down, she’s got fire. That’s what I felt that night, even at the back of that auditorium. She told us to pursue our vocation: that place where the deepest part of you, your great gift, meets some deep need in the world, and finds great joy in trying to respond to it, even if mixed with heartbreak. It was the best articulation of vocation I’d heard, from the most convincing, walk-the-talk person I’d ever heard it from, and in that way she has guided me ever since.

            At that time, she was riding out the marvelous wave of Dead Man Walking, her story of accompanying death row inmates to their executions, which Susan Sarandon convinced her husband, Tim Robbins, to adapt for the movies, and which won a truckload of awards. Prejean claimed that night that she was currently trying to figure out how to actually look like Sarandon (who played her in the film) on an everyday basis, not just on screen, but still hadn’t quite found the right combination of hairstyle and make-up… but she’d keep trying, prayerfully of course.

            I’d been waiting a long while for Prejean to write something like River of Fire, her spiritual memoir of 2019, so when I finally heard about it (a couple years late; blame it on the pandemic), I eagerly jumped in. Unfortunately, I didn’t encounter that same presence, that fire, in the book itself, except occasionally. When it appears, mostly in the last quarter, it’s wonderful, and worth the wait. And the wait is helped along by her humor, her historical perspective on US Catholicism in general and nuns’ vocations in specific, and the oh-so-tempting notion that she’ll reveal something juicy about a priest she became romantically involved with decades ago (spoiler alert: she narrates the blossoming and withering of the relationship without revealing anything juicy at all). Anyone interested in or nostalgic about the life of a cloistered nun in the pre-Vatican II days will find much to enjoy in the book’s early chapters, even if you feel (as I do) that, for as much as Prejean extols her love of and gift for writing, she’s a much more powerful speaker. That presence—it’s just not quite there, for a good long while.

            She starts to hit her stride when writing about how Vatican II upends the apple cart, liberating her and her sisters from their onerous habits, and challenging nuns and priests alike to liberate lay people to have more confidence, more voice, more presence in engaging their faith and in shaping the Church. We see her struggling admirably to understand how best to use her nun’s power (though still much less than a priest’s or bishop’s) wisely, generously, first by gathering ordinary lay people for frank, hard, but hopefully fruitful conversations about how they do, or don’t, feel part of the Church. We also see her challenging Church authorities, not only the Mother Superiors of her Josephine order, but even Popes, on the Church’s alienating, hypocritical, and life-draining choices to turn a blind eye on capital punishment and to deny women priestly ordination. (The appendix, a copy of her 2016 letter to Pope Francis on the latter, is also worth the wait. She really socks it to him— again, prayerfully. Of course.)

            But the heat starts rising from the pages when she takes us into the spiritual and social territory she encountered when she began to walk with the poorest of the poor in Louisiana, especially at the St Thomas Project. You feel the river building speed and power.

            Of course, looking at her now, at her fire and focus and influence, we might say that she was born for her vocation as “the death penalty nun,” and that her journey must have been a straight shot, a destiny fulfilled day by day. But that’s one surprisingly wonderful thing about her, and this book: how open she is to showing us her missteps, stumbles, and outright blunders. It reminds me of something I’ve only been able to appreciate as an adult, that the saints whom we deify, sanctify, and frankly sanitize with years or centuries of distance, were real flesh and blood, people who went the wrong way, sometimes fiercely and obstinately until something both within and without them finally recognized and responded to God’s radical love.

            In her telling, she finds herself on her own road to Damascus in 1980, listening to (in fact, resisting) a simple yet radical interpretation of Jesus’ teachings offered by a fellow nun who rankled her on the regular about social justice, which at that time, Prejean still considered “too political” and distracting, not essential to her work as a nun, or even to Christianity.

            In the chapter she titles, “Lightning in Terre Haute,” Prejean slows things down and really lets us inside, where we can see her soul wrestling with Sister Marie Augusta, and beyond that, with God. It’s best to excerpt at some length here, to hear some of that struggle playing out.

            The first day of the conference… [Marie] lays out all the sad statistics of how unfairly the resources of the world are distributed…I’m listening and saying to myself: I know that life isn’t fair. I know that children are starving and women and girls aren’t educated and are being abused. I get it. All bad, sad stuff. But what—tell me, what is one lone person like me supposed to do about such gigantic world problems?

            Sorry, but misery statistics, even about little kids starving in droves, roll right over me. I feel bad for them but in a sort of general way. I don’t personally know anyone starving to death. I figure the big problems of the world are where God comes in. Planetary problems are God’s problems…

            Marie Augusta says: “Jesus preached good news to the poor.” And I’m thinking, Yeah, yeah, I know those words by heart… I’m sure about what’s coming next, what the good news of eternal salvation must be for poor people…the great, shining, glorious reward that will be theirs in heaven…

            But that’s not what Marie Augusta says.

            She says, “Integral to that good news is that the poor are to be poor no longer.”

            Poor no longer?

            There it is, the lightning that strikes unsuspecting Helen, and continues to strike her— the rest of that day, and the rest of her life. It wakes, shocks, and moves her to reconsider her vocation, and really, to change her life. If the poor are truly to be poor no longer, the systems that keep people poor, marginalized, and otherwise oppressed must be changed; and the people most privileged by those systems must change too, from the inside out. She understands in a visceral, lightning-struck way now that she is called to accompany the poor on a personal, vulnerable, relational level, and fight like hell for just laws and policy changes in the corruption-soaked state of Louisiana, and far beyond.

            The lightning doesn’t shock her in a purely singular, one-and-done way, however, and Prejean admirably shows us her conversion as a process, with plenty of false starts and ridiculous assumptions to be worked through and cleaned out, as she shifts from savior mode into a listening, accompanying, walk-the-talk pilgrim still open to learning, still hungry to understand the real stories of the most oppressed, still thirsty for God’s presence in her daily quiet prayer and in her friendships. We truly feel that the book’s epigraph, from St Bonaventure, has guided and shaped her: “Ask not for understanding, ask for the fire.”

            She receives it again, and again, in the months and years to come, and reading about just how that happens— feeling the rising of the river, the warming and sparking of the fire—is the true pleasure for me of this book, so I’m loathe to spoil much more of it for you. Suffice it to say that it is the power of personal story, told by the suffering person himself or herself, that humbles and holds her heart, and leads her to St Thomas housing project and the many injustices residents there suffer in flesh and blood, including the projects-to-prison pipeline that lands some folks on death row. She ends this book precisely where Dead Man Walking begins, with the invitation she received to correspond with a death row inmate, and the first lines of her first letter to him. Not only beautiful literary symmetry, but an invitation to us to read or re-read that book, and consider it and her broader vocation in a wider context, within a deeper river.

            She receives the fire she asks for, that’s clear. She keeps following it, and in this book, she shares it with us. Lucky us, who need the light and warmth of that hope, especially in these times.

            Now, the only question is: What will we do with it?

The Audacity of … Tomatoes

22 September 2021: The Audacity of … Tomatoes

What can a tomato teach us in a time of great suffering?

A few summers ago, when most of us would never have imagined the pandemic that has swallowed our world, my family was plunged into our own health crisis. Like this pandemic, it was sudden, dangerous, and terrifying; it involved frequent hospital visits, emergency treatments, and vacillating and even contradictory medical advice; it caused us to hold onto the family member teetering on the edge of death as tightly as we could— for an indefinite, and thus seemingly interminable, length of time.

            Thank God, we ourselves were also held tightly, by family from afar, and our church community close to home. On one weekend when the rollercoaster had temporarily slowed, I called a couple of friends, who came over with shovels, compost, and vegetable sprouts, and they helped me create a little garden. Not just for flowers, which we’d been growing for years (tulips, roses, and a few irises and peonies). For food. Something to eat, to actually put into my body, and before that, to tend, watch grow, and now and again take my mind off all but this little piece of Earth, which, for all its devilish bindweed and sneaky snails, seemed far more stable, manageable, controllable than the crisis we faced.

            Gardening also connected me to where I’d expected to be that summer, the Dominican Republic. Many of my family and friends there are farmers— for their livelihood, that is, not amateurs like me. And even among those who are not, I can’t think of even one who doesn’t at least have a conuco (a Taíno word for vegetable garden adopted into Dominican Spanish). When everything began to implode for us, I was just weeks away from heading there to spend two months leading various service groups, as part of the work for my organization. A series of small miracles transpired to allow the programs to continue, including remarkable personal sacrifices by the three people I trusted most in the world to do that. I then had the space to devote myself to caring for this family member for the better part of three months. And in moments here and there, like the moments I’d try to take to pray, write, and exercise, I’d go to the garden. Day after day, it provided a way to get by.

            And to heal. Or try to. A big hole had been blown in my heart by this tragedy, one too often rubbed raw by what my family member was enduring, hour after hour, because of the severity, complexity, and mystery of the illness, one on the level of a heart attack or major cancer. This would change our lives, because even in remission the illness required vigilance to keep at bay, lest it return just as suddenly and perhaps more violently than before.

            There was another hole, not as big, that also needed care. All of a sudden I doubted my future path, vocationally. Spending summers in the D.R., leading these faith-based service programs— which felt more and more like pilgrimages—year after year for 15 years, had come to shape and even re-define my life. It granted me a profound measure of fulfillment, a deep sense of purpose: I was a bridge between rich and poor, helping meet real and dire health needs for the indigent, while opening up paths of spiritual formation and new justice-oriented professional aspirations for the privileged. I felt called, deeply, to this work, and well-used by God. Therefore God— went my logic— in her mysterious ways, would keep defying the odds, making a way out of no way, providing for the program’s indefinite survival, and my family’s.

            As it happened, God did provide. Just in utterly unexpected ways, which initially felt like betrayal, and later disaster.

            The same thing happened in the garden. Most everything failed— the lettuce quickly bolted, the melons never ripened, the peppers refused to play ball altogether. But the tomatoes, they were a marvelous gift.

            Now, let me be clear: not every single tomato was marvelous. Some fell off the vine early, some got squirrel-nibbled or bird-pecked, and some were struck with that maddening killer, bottom rot (the tomato looks wonderful from the top and sides, inflating your hopes, then draining them when you pick it and the underbelly collapses like wet newspaper. Now I know better, and add some calcium to the soil every spring.) But those that do come to full fruition made up for all that, at least to me and my family (a professional grower might not have been so easily contented). Deep rich, soft but never mushy Beefsteaks; jazz-smooth and fragrant Romas; full and firm Cherries whose skin and intense flavor would pop wonderfully between your teeth.

            (All this, mind you, is according to my wife, whose pleasure at eating a plateful of these beauties daily in August and September has been the unexpected best part of this whole garden experiment for me. Ironically, as much as I love Italian food, chili, barbecue, and most all things tomato-based, I don’t love the actual whole, raw fruit itself. Kind of like how I love coffee farmers and café culture, but will take my black tea over a cup o’ joe nine times out of ten, thank you very much. Yup, I’m weird like that.)

 * * *

The Parable of the Sower has been a vital story to me as a writer, teacher, and activist, perhaps more so as time goes on. Jesus tells us about a farmer, who—perhaps rushed, distracted, or desperate for even the slightest opportunity and thus thorough to a fault—scatters his seeds everywhere. Considering the first three places Jesus tells us the seed fell— among thorns, on rocky ground, and even on the path where people and animals would walk— we might not be faulted for wondering what the heck this farmer is thinking.

            I’m not enough of a historian or Scripture scholar to know exactly how his listeners might have heard this. But I do know something about language, and I’ve learned something from my Dominican friends about farming, and about God’s abundant, hidden-in-plain-sight small miracles. And it all makes me wonder if perhaps this farmer isn’t such a crackpot after all.

            “The seed fell,” “los granos cayeron…” The various translations I’ve consulted in English and Spanish, across all three Gospel authors’ versions, all employ an active verb construction, with the seed (not the sower) as the subject. This is a quick, deft narrative shift— another brilliant stroke from the Master Storyteller-Healer. (Not to say that my research has been exhaustive… but hey, give this English major the benefit of the doubt for a minute and let’s see what happens.)

            Farming land, working with it, depending on it for your sustenance, you can get to know it pretty well. You can, in truth, develop a relationship with it. Down to its particular elements and details. In fact, it’s extremely pragmatic to do so. The earth becomes very alive, highly intelligent and purposeful— very active, not passive— and you’d better try to work with this energy rather than against it, if you hope to eat.

            So, “the seed fell” is emphatically not the same as “the sower planted.” The seed is active, the subject of its own life’s possibilities, and of this parable. In fact, it almost feels to me like a bait and switch, to call this the Parable of the Sower, when it’s so focused upon the seed and the soil it finds. But maybe that too is the genius of God, knowing that we humans need to be pulled in with self-interest, to get us to sit up straight and actually pay attention.

            In this light, the Sower strikes me as shrewd, wise. He scatters rather than plants. She sets life loose, lets the seeds find their way… or not. Some, unfortunately, don’t find it at all: they fail to make a lasting, fruitful life, or get choked by worldly worries, or wither from lack of a nourishing faith.

            And so for us humans, children of God. God lets us loose, to find our way, and sometimes— far too often— we get lost, over and over again, not only within our lifetime but within the same day, if you’re like me. Because let’s face it, life is hard, withering, and rocky, and sometimes relentlessly so.

            But sometimes, we do find our way, and marvelously so. Sometimes, in tiny moments or even stretches of hours or days—or who knows, even longer— we find that deep, rooted, rich place within us where God speaks to our heart, and we let that word in, and it nourishes us again and again and again. Modern psychology has come to call this “flow,” a beautiful image with natural resonances, connecting us to rivers, breezes, even our very blood. In a spiritual sense, we might also think of alignment, or a participatory—not enforced—surrender. An intentional stepping into the river’s depths, a falling into— not away from— our God. (Richard Rohr’s wonderful book, Falling Upward, illuminates this marvelously.) When we do the math, it may look like scarcity, especially for capitalists indoctrinated in productivity. When Jesus does the math, however, it’s a different equation: the fruits of these “one-fourth” of the seeds the sower scatters “produced fruit a hundredfold.” They more than make up for what was “lost,” and Loaves and Fishes style, provide more than enough to share.

            Here’s the thing: Only God knows our true depths. It’s part of our work as humans to discover them over time, with God, with a patient impatience (or an impatient patience). Anyone paying attention can see the jutting rocks and thick thorns already above the surface, but only by really digging in, with God, will we know what’s truly down in there, how fruitful we might be for ourselves and our world. And if we dare to think of our life as an on-going, co-created project with God— rather than a puppeted enactment of God’s pre-formed plan—things just might change a bit along the way, and even God might be surprised. (Free will, after all, holds worlds of mysteries.) So God sows in every little possible and “impossible” nook and cranny, hopeful the seeds fall into good, rich, multiplying soil, even against all odds.

 * * *

About a year ago this time, I was feeling overwhelmed by, even despondent about, leading my organization into the fall and winter. The public health prophets of doom were warning we steel ourselves for the pandemic’s fierce rebound (wisely, we know now), which meant at least several more months of isolation and separation from everyone dear to me beyond the walls of my home (of whom, for as much as I love them, I was getting pretty weary). Except now in the Pacific Northwest we’d add the prospect of depressing weather, since November through February is the darkest, coldest, wettest time of year. I was home-schooling my 8th grade son (or trying to), which was wonderful in many ways but still draining, and therefore trying to work my job and occasionally exercise or write and read during the bookends of the day and in snatches of time that popped up and vanished whack-a-mole style. My organization was looking down the barrel of a year ahead like none other: no possibility of directing service groups in the D.R., which are part of the life-blood of our mission, vitality, and sustainability; no possibility of meeting the dire new needs in the D.R. for food, employment, and even basic water, sanitation, and medicine, because our annual dinner fundraiser of March 2020 found itself standing in just the wrong place at the wrong time, absorbing the full power of the pandemic panic when it exploded in Seattle and shut down all such events for months; no reasonable possibility of re-scheduling that event for later in 2020 or even 2021, given the precipitous rate at which people were getting sick, filling ICU’s, and dying across the country and world— with vaccines at that point still only in the “promising” stage, far from a reality. And as if for good measure, my dear friend and co-founder Papito had entered an ICU himself and wasn’t guaranteed to emerge, as I’ve written about in this journal previously.

            In a quiet pre-dawn moment that fall, awake at my desk and practically throbbing with anxiety, I stumbled upon some words from dear Dorothy. “Every Catholic faced with a great need starts a novena.” And I thought, why not? I’ve got nothing to lose…

            Of course I had heard of novenas, as a life-long Catholic, and especially given my time living in the D.R., where for many people I’m close to they are a part of life’s fabric. And I’d prayed them too, in conjunction with important feast days or church rituals. But I’d never gone into one on my knees, from some visceral, aching, awake-deep-in-the-night need like I had now.

            This felt different. Which, strangely, gave me some hope.

            It was a profound experience, opening a new dimension in what I’d already felt was my rich prayer practice. Like the way a parent’s heart can grow larger with the birth a new child. Before the nine days were complete, I knew I could not stop. At the end, I’d begin another, but in community.

            I kept it simple, inviting just a few members of my birth and spiritual families, including my two co-founders in the Dominican Republic, themselves people of profound prayer. Separated by distance, we could not meet in person, but over nine days exchanged voice messages and phone calls and emails, sharing the personal, community, and global-level needs for which we prayed and asked the others to pray for as well. This was November, and when we concluded on Thanksgiving, I felt closer to all of them than I had nine days before. And I felt genuine movement, however subtle; some of the things I’d prayed with had felt stuck for years, but now I sensed a shifting, a loosening, some small difference being made, starting with how I felt about them. And I had an intuition that somehow, beyond the nine days, like a seed begun to sprout, with the right nourishment, that movement could continue. So I wondered about expanding the prayer circle yet again.

            At this point, my organization was launching its holiday and year-end campaign, and my gut-churning feeling of desperation, lightened during the novenas, was tightening its screws again, not giving up quite so easily. Charitable giving at year-end is extremely important for most organizations; estimates vary, but 33% or more of all donations nationwide are made at this time. Yet throughout the country and across the charitable sector, this giving had been deflated the past two years because the new DdT-GOP tax law, by raising the standard deduction amount, had drastically reduced the number of people who could now actually count their donations as tax-deductible, and this, sadly but undeniably, reduced overall giving. So I wondered, would EAB’s giving drop yet again— or even drastically, because of the on-going pandemic’s clobbering of the middle-class economy? And if so, what then for us? Program cuts? Salary slashes, or even staff layoffs? The screws tightened, the anxious thoughts throbbed and grew.

            “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that…” Martin Luther King’s words came to me as I prayed day after day in the literal dark of pre-dawn. They helped me push back on the gang of goblins in my gut, to keep them at the door of my mind as mere visitors, rather than giving them the run of the house (to borrow a wonderful metaphor from Buddhism). It was time to bring this into the light.

            I invited a few dozen very loyal supporters, and many answered the call. Over nine days, timed to end on Christmas Eve (inspired by the Latin American tradition of Las Posadas), I invited us all to pray daily with one of the stories of Jesus’ birth, and offer intentions for ourselves, our families, our communities, and our global family— human and non-human. We met three times online— I made a fire in my family’s hearth and “hosted” from there— to share reflections and intentions. Some participants asked for their intentions to be written down and placed in our collective prayer bowl. On Christmas Eve, I offered those little pieces of paper to the hearth’s sacred fire, and on Christmas day scattered the ashes in my family’s fallow garden.

            And I waited, through the remaining days of December, and kept praying, trying my best to keep the gut goblins from taking over. As my wife and children know all too well, of all the things I find difficult about my job, perhaps the hardest is the fundraising. In December it makes me particularly sad, and in recent years bitter, because I’ve struggled to keep my anxiety about it from smothering my Christmas spirit. As a boy, and even into my early thirties, I would anticipate and celebrate Christmas— all twelve days— with great joy. But once it became clear that EAB needed to try raising funds during the holidays, and expectations about the amounts began to build, I’ve found that joy diminishing year by year, and at my worst, souring to bitterness and resentment.

            My deep desire to change this was my secret agenda for this December novena retreat. On the surface, it was a creative and hopeful way to practice the conventional wisdom about nonprofit “donor relations,” by offering something personally meaningful and mission-centered, with the potential to also be very pragmatic. Participants were not charged for access to the video and written reflections I created, since I wanted them to be freely available, not tied to any kind of transaction. But I’d be a big fat liar if I said I didn’t also hope they might inspire supporters to feel a bit more generous when they considered making their donations. Hidden to all but me was my hope that, by putting my best energies into the creation and leading of this novena, I’d have something active to look forward to, rather than something to passively and fretfully wait upon. In both cases, I’d need to try letting go of the results, but at least with the novena, I knew the process could bring me joy.

            The results, I’m delighted to say, were even better than I’d hoped. Christmas giving was our highest in several years, almost 30% more than the previous year. And I got my Christmas joy back, especially on the morning of the 24th, when some members of the Dominican staff joined the virtual gathering, connecting me to the kind of salt-of-the-earth community in which Jesus actually lived his life, and reminding me in flesh and blood of why I started doing this work in the first place.

            Like the Sower’s seeds finding good soil, I believe that our organization’s achievements in the following months came to bear in some small (or large, who knows?) way because of the novena, early evidence of the hundredfold harvest. I’ll tell you what happened; you can decide for yourself.  

            In addition to supplying many vulnerable families with food baskets and basic medicines, we were able to take a chance on an idea I’d previously set aside as impossible: hiring some recent Dominican college graduates— degree in hand but without a job, given the Dominican schools’ hiring freeze— to tutor young students struggling mightily with virtual schooling and on the verge of dropping out, who desperately needed the kind of help their parents (themselves denied schooling as children and thus barely or not at all literate) could not give them, even if they had the time. In January, we hired two of these new teachers (beneficiaries of our college scholarship program) to give weekend enrichment classes, in an outdoor environment complying with all public health recommendations. The experiment— the seed— was so successful, so quickly, that demand overwhelmed the teachers. After all, what parent would not want their child to receive compassionate, personal attention instead of being taught by a device? So EAB organized our spring fundraiser around expanding the project. For this, I offered— you guessed it— another novena, this time only with the Dominican community members— for nine days concluding on the fundraiser’s date itself. That seed also seemed to fall in good soil…

            The event, though virtual, was still a mountain of work, and I wish I could say it went off without a hitch. Computers crashed, software hiccupped, but eventually, like shoots breaking through the soil, the evening found its rhythm, and the dollars from supporters (even some new ones) started coming in. Our net income still came in below an in-person event, but it was more than in 2020, and that made some new projects, also thought to be pipe dreams, much more imminently possible. We built some desperately-needed latrines for families with no access to sanitation. And helped by a grant we hadn’t expected to get, we could initiate an ambitious program to provide dozens more families with clean water filters and even more latrines. It also allowed us to open up more scholarship slots to aspiring college and high school students, and to expand the enrichment program, in the year to come.

            Little by little, that pie-in-the-sky hundredfold began to look more and more like reality.

 * * *

In May, my family finally got around to the garden. The school year, for all its gifts, had been so hard, and felt interminable, not to mention exhausting. Each weekend starting in mid-March, my wife and I looked at the yard, then at each other, and said, “Maybe next weekend.” But by mid-May, we knew our window of time to plant was almost shut, so we forced each other out the door, dragged our son with us, got some starter plants and fresh compost and new gloves, and dug in. We filled more bags than I care to remember of early spring weeds (which proliferate here even more than espresso pop-ups) and finally, by Sunday evening, got to the fun part— the planting. Strawberries, peppers, greens, basil, and of course, tomatoes.

            Ever since taking up gardening, I’ve felt increasingly connected to this little piece of Earth we’ve been gifted to steward. This year, that has deepened, with the inclusion of the novena prayers’ ashes into the soil. In quiet moments when I’m truly present, I feel the company of all those people, and all of their spoken and silent prayers: joyful gratitude, anguished pleadings, and brilliant hopes.

            Now, don’t get me wrong: Not every plant took, or bore great fruit, or did so for very long. We had our share of failures, including some bottom-rotted tomatoes and quick-bolting greens. But for the first time, we got peppers. And the strawberries burst forth for four weeks straight, almost as fast as we could eat them. And the tomatoes that did make it were (again, judging by my wife’s beaming smile and juice-dripping hands) divine. Truly.

            The same could be said for my organization, Education Across Borders. We are still too lean: We need funding to bolster current staff salaries to full-time and livable-wage levels, and to hire additional staff as well; we need funds for two offices, in Seattle and in the D.R., and for people to help me run them more expertly than I can myself; we need a larger base of support and accompaniment, to truly fulfill the beautiful mission God has called us to, Dominicans and North Americans together.

            Yet autumn, the season of releasing and harvest, arrives and settles in, I try to give thanks for the fruits of spring and summer, and keep sowing, in my life and work, even if not right now in our garden. After all, when we’re humble— literally, “of the earth”— enough to admit it, that’s about all we can control. Just the practice of sowing, tending, and stewarding, as best we can… and waiting to see what the harvest brings.

            The Earth has a deep intelligence. As do her plants, animals, and other creatures. And the earth can respond to our needs, if we live with a humble, mindful practice of paying attention, and responding with love, sometimes softly, sometimes fiercely, sometimes in pure elation or anguish or surrender. Our task, as Mother Teresa taught us, is to focus on faithfulness to our practice of sowing, tending, and waiting lovingly. That itself is success.

            The harvest, always beyond us, always mysterious, may not always satisfy our worried wants, but always, I believe, our deepest needs.

Drones don’t smile, they only follow orders, relentlessly

July 2021, “Drones don’t smile, they only follow orders, relentlessly”

(Why do we keep killing ourselves to support businesses that kill us?)

One evening some years ago, at the beginning of a late supper, in the middle of a long, hot summer I was spending in the Dominican Republic, Felicia, my comadre, dear friend, and companion in mission for two decades now, told me that the beans we were eating that night and had eaten at midday with close to twenty people, had come from her field.

             This was the early 2000s, and we’d been talking on and off for weeks about how the global coffee crisis was beginning to asphyxiate her community and others, family by family, as each suddenly saw, in a matter of months, the price of their crop drop through the floor.  So upon hearing about the beans, I put down my spoon, stunned. (Yes, it’s more common to eat with a spoon, and only a spoon, in poor families there.)

            Before I could even finish my sentence— expressing my shock and concern at this extraordinary sacrifice, reminding her that the program we were running that summer was supposed to cover all food costs, to avoid this very eventuality in which poor farmers would impoverish themselves even more— Felicia cut me off, wagging her finger.

            “No, Juan, no es un sacrificio,” she said. “It’s not a sacrifice. I give it with love.”

            “But, you can’t!” I said, stupidly.

            “Is that an order?”

            She had me on that one. “Well, no, of course not—”

            “Ah, good,” she said, then smiled slyly. “Even if it was, you know I can sometimes be a little disobedient.”

            Her son, Cristian, and I both got a good laugh from that one, knowing the power of this woman’s will. Then he spoke too, which was rare for him at the table. “I picked these myself, Juan. For you and all of us. It’s a way I can help. We can all give something.”

            That night, Felicia, a widow herself, taught me once again how to understand the Gospel story of the widow’s mite. Time after time over the years, I’ve been taught (sometimes against my will) by her and others in similarly precarious states, what it truly means to give, what constitutes true generosity in God’s eyes.

 * * *

The coincidence could not be ignored. On the very same day last month that The New York Times ran its latest exposé (a brilliant, devastating piece by Jodi Kantor, Karen Weise, and Grace Ashford) about the abusive business practices of the e-retail behemoth that co-opts its name from the world’s most voluminous river— this time focusing on operations during the first months of the pandemic within JFK8, a 15 million square foot warehouse on Staten Island, NY— yet another intelligent, good-hearted, value-centered and well-meaning friend whom I greatly respect asked if my organization was registered to receive donations from that corporation’s “smile” program. I responded as I always have, politely and neutrally: the program fails our test of return on investment, and presents ethical difficulties. But I feel compelled to finally dig into this decision (or at least some of it) on the page, add my tidbit to the growing and groaning shelf of books, reporting, and scholarship about the mother of all e-tailers, and quit my awkward tip-toeing around.

            Nonprofits, charities, NGOs, for-purpose orgs… whatever your term of choice, we are a delicate balance of mission and business, of pragmatism and idealism, trying to survive and even thrive within a system we seek wholeheartedly to change. You could call it crazy-making, or living with paradox, or Cross-bearing, or a holding of creative tension. Let’s face it, like life in general for most humans, it’s a challenge, and a tough one at that.

            So let’s look at the pragmatic side first, just for the heck of it, lest someone’s neck hairs pre-emptively shoot up at the prospect that I might drown the page in socialist or even communist invective. Or that, as another good-hearted person claimed, I’ve taken this stance because I “don’t like amazon.” It’s not at all a question of liking or not liking; this is about what best serves the mission of justice, and the interests of the poor and vulnerable. Let me show you.

            To begin: The math, my friends, for the organization I lead and I daresay for many others, just does not work. When you strip away the warm and sticky stuff that am-a-drone’s ads bathe you in, you realize that, for every dollar you spend with them, they will donate the magnanimous sum of one half cent to the charity of your choice. Yes, they’ll split a whole penny right down the middle, and toss it in the make-a-wish fountain, just for you. Because you know, all those pennies— excuse me, halfpennies— do add up. Every little bit helps, right? I mean, if I drop two grand on some sweet Bluetooth speakers and new jogging tights and a flat screen and whatever the heck else I “need,” and then some wonderful charity gets ten bucks—hey, that’s better than nothing, right?!

            Am I dating myself here if I ask who remembers the Muppets singing “The Christmas Song” with John Denver? “If you haven’t got a penny, then a ha-penny will do. If you haven’t got a ha-penny, then God bless you!”

            Actually, it’s not “better than nothing.” But God bless you anyway.

            At least for my organization— I can’t speak for others. I’ve had first-hand experience setting up and maintaining more than a dozen versions of these “we’ll donate a percentage of sales” programs, and am-a-drone’s “smile” is, by far, the worst I’ve seen. Here’s how these things really work— the short version— from inside an NGO: First, you spend time setting up an account, which often involves collecting and submitting various financial and legal documents, and the submission and approval process can often experience technical glitches and be rather drawn out. Then, there is the on-going maintenance: chiefly, promoting it to supporters (which involves strategizing about how to most effectively and efficiently do that, and then actually creating and publicizing those promotions), and trying to keep them engaged in it; if folks actual participate, there’s the inevitable responding to emails and phone calls about “did you get my donation yet,” or “why didn’t they consider my purchase a qualifying one,” and many others. Then, there’s the labor of trying to actually collect and deposit those donations, which often take weeks and months to arrive, and lack clarity about which supporters’ contributions they correspond to. It goes on from there, but the general rule of thumb is: The better the company’s customer service, the less maintenance the account needs, and vice-versa. I don’t have to tell you how wretched the big-a’s customer service is, especially when it comes to third parties, since you’ve probably experienced it for yourself.

            The benefits am-a-drone has and will derive from all of the advertising that charities do on their behalf far outstrip the minimal sums they have smilingly re-directed to those organizations. Not only do the charities motivate customers to purchase there, they do so by pairing the purchasing experience with the strong emotional connection the organization has built with that individual, sometimes over decades. If you’re getting back 10 or 20 percent, and the company’s values align with yours, then it can be worthwhile to invest some time and moral equity into such a program; SERRV and Bookshop.org are the best ones I’ve seen out there, and my organization partners with them. But to get tossed a ha’penny?  No, thank you. At that rate of return, this is nothing more than an ethical photo-bombing operation: am-a-drone jumps into the picture your school, church, or organization has been arranging, with its big bald head all polished and shining, and walks away laughing. (Like its execs were surely laughing when they saw city after city publically prostrating itself back in 2017 and 2018, with op-eds and ad campaigns, for the chance to give away tax incentives the company could easily afford, impoverishing and imperiling their populaces, just so big-a’s HQ2 could plop down on their turf and start taking over.) As of this writing, according to their website, “amazon has donated more than $215 million globally to charitable organizations through the AmazonSmile program since its launch in 2013.” On another page of the site, they claim it’s $283 million; I’m not sure what accounts for the discrepancy. For perspective, consider that the company’s profits (net income) for the 12-month period ending March 31, 2021 came to $26.9 billion. So yes, over nine years, am-a-drone has donated the equivalent of .79% (hey, that’s more than a ha-penny!)… of what it profited (not grossed) in the first twelve months of the pandemic. Yes, the world’s most vulnerable people were being crucified by the hour, the corpses piling up, and am-a-drone was tossing ha’pennies in the ocean, forcing ground-level employees to work in hazardous conditions and firing them via robot (as Spencer Soper reported recently for Bloomberg), and Bezos was building both his $500 million yacht and his precious rocket ship.

 * * *

Now let’s treat the cultural question— again, only in brief, since others have written much more in-depth about this alone (most recently, Danny Caine, owner of The Raven Book Store, in Lawrence, KS, and author of How to Resist amazon and Why). As a writer and the director of an organization whose first name is Education, this comes up quite a bit.

            Some folks, once again all well intentioned, are puzzled by my big-a abstinence, given my love of literature. “But amazon has every book under the sun! What’s not to like?” My friends, let’s get something straight, please.  As George Packer illuminated in The New Yorker years ago, Bezos founded his company—which he nearly named “Relentless,” no joke— because when he looked at a book, he saw not a sacred, potentially horizon-opening and life-changing jewel containing an artist’s blood, sweat, tears, and don’t forget money (and often those of their closest relations too, carrying the Cross of living with a writer); no, he saw a commercial good whose rectangular shape and light weight per volume would make its shipping cost relatively low when sold within a country that had a well-functioning, government-subsidized postal service and a strong infrastructure of roads. He set up shop in Seattle not because of an affinity for its literary culture or natural beauty, but because of Washington State’s regressive, pro-rich and pro-business tax policies (especially in the mid-1990s). And he chose the internet because he had a couple of really, really good hunches: first, that because it was a totally uncharted commercial frontier at the time, he’d be able to juke and dodge sales tax liabilities for a long while, until Congress got its crusty-eyed, bed-headed, rotary-phone-and-abacus-using body up to speed on this whole new-fangled “world wide web” thing (and even longer, actually, as evidenced by the company’s entrenched, fight-to-the-last-man legal crusade to avoid taxes by any means necessary); and second, that the sexiness of internet commerce would intoxicate Wall Street to such a degree that he could get deep pockets to subsidize— oh, excuse me, invest in— his business far beyond the edge of the cliff, tolerating year after year of net losses while gobbling up more and more market share (by under-selling competitors), which would in turn swell stock value (since “the market” is ultimately about the hunches, fears, and proclivities of its “insiders”), all of which would eventually make him king of a scorched-earth, devastated economic sector. It was a purely calculated, hedged-bet move, and only his ruthless—Relentless— pursuit of its success, and his investors’ knowing or unknowing greed, made it successful. Because of its success, yes it’s true, you can buy almost any book you like and have it delivered quickly. But in doing that, you also have supported, directly and indirectly: the closing of scores of independent bookstores and all the jobs and interactions they created, the proliferation of counterfeit books that undermine the genuine author’s original work and livelihood, the squeezing of public library budgets, and the narrowing focus of the literary market toward best-sellers and books that the publishers (unwillingly locked in am-a-drone’s death grip) believe would most likely become best-sellers on the web.

            So please, let’s put that nice little story, about am-a-drone being a boon and a beacon for literature, education, and the public good, to rest forever. It’s a big fat lie. (Don’t believe me? Then try a little experiment: Try to engage the owners of some independent bookstores— the ones that have not already been devoured by am-a-drone, that is, since it’s established fact that that has happened en masse— in a real conversation about the big-a, face to face if you can. First, when you’re there, just breathe in the scene, and notice how having an actual physical space to browse, read, talk about, and buy books makes you feel. Second, find five of these owners who will give am-a-drone two thumbs up, and see how long that takes you. You may need to be Relentless.)

 * * *

If “smiles” seems pretty frowny as either a pragmatic or a cultural question, it makes even less sense as a question of the heart.

            Organizations can’t only define themselves in terms of what they are not, or what they stand against. In this light, the prevalence of the term “nonprofit” is quite sad, and I’d say far too unexamined. You have to represent who you are, what you are, and with whom you stand. “For-purpose” has not really caught on, and it might never; “charity” is acceptable, but problematic for certain missions, especially those concerned with systemic justice, which charity too often has no patience with or vision for. “Mission” works for me, but I recognize that it may connote religious affiliation or belief for some, and thus also be problematic. Whatever your preferred term, it comes to this: people over profit, with your values both grounding it all and coming before all, even when times get very tough.

            The corporate world has made a business in recent decades of appropriating some religious, spiritual, and other moral language to its own self-interested capitalistic purposes, to the point where “values,” and even to some extent “mission,” have been squeezed— at least in highly capitalistic cultures— of all their ethical juice, and draped as pretty window dressing for any goal or objective, no matter how base. You can say that maximizing profitability is a core “value,” that you have a “mission” for machine-like efficiency, and not cause an eyebrow to rise. Hell, you could say you really value a bacon-cheeseburger at the end of a long week. As if the point were to simply have things you call values, to simply proclaim your mission, as opposed to reflecting deeply and self-critically, regularly and over time, on how your values, mission, and everyday actions will affect the people you work with and the world you live in, far beyond your self-interests and your little moment on the earth. To be taken seriously, “values” and “mission,” when it comes to the work of an NGO or a profit-based company, must be ethical, morally sound, and contribute to the long-term, common good.

            In the NY Times exposé, the reporters captured the dark heart of Bezos’ deeply cynical vision of humanity. A former H.R. vice-president who’d been with the Relentless big-a for 17 years agreed to be interviewed for the story, and it’s worth quoting the piece at length here. The big-bad-B

“didn’t want hourly workers to stick around for long, viewing a ‘large, disgruntled workforce’ as a threat…Company data revealed that most employees became less eager over time, he said, and Mr. Bezos believed that people were inherently lazy. ‘What he would say is that our nature as humans is to expend as little energy as possible to get what we want or need.” That conviction was embedded throughout the business, from the ease of instant ordering to the pervasive use of data to get the most out of employees.

            “So guaranteed wage increases stopped after three years, and Amazon provided incentives for low-skilled employees to leave. Every year, Mr. Palmer [an hourly worker at the JFK8 operation in Staten Island, focus of the investigation] saw signs go up offering associates thousands of dollars to resign, and as he entered JFK8 each morning, he passed a classroom for free courses to train them in other fields.”

 * * *

            It’s not hard to see how this kind of “mission,” this set of “values,” would lead company executives to carpet-bomb the first sproutings of labor unions. Workers at an Alabama operation came the closest any facility ever has to forming a union, but ultimately could not win against am-a-drone’s vast resources and power. It’s also not hard to see, when you read that a current H.R. executive claimed the big-a was “proud to provide people short-term employment for the ‘seasons and periods of time’ they need,” how we’ve arrived at an economic landscape where companies like Uber can become fabulously rich by manipulating the stated needs of a very few employees who in fact do need only a part-time, stop-gap job, and claiming that all their employees actually need that (even when they scream and march and organize that they don’t), and therefore they are conveniently not employees—who’d be entitled to benefits like sick and vacation pay— but rather “independent proprietors,” or some nonsense like that. Yup, it’s all about freedom, right? The freedom to exploit whomever the hell you want, and call it good because you’ve created a job, and heck, we all value jobs. Right?

            And finally, it’s not hard to see, when you dig into the data as Kantor, Weise, and Ashford have so admirably done, how am-a-drone’s vision for hourly workers perpetuates and deepens the systemic racism this country and our whole world struggles with— and which so many organizations fight heroically to heal and transform. The bottom-rung workers within big-a’s US operations are 68% people of color (specifically 33% Black, 32% Hispanic, 8% Asian, 5% others), and 32% White; at the executive level, it’s 74% White, 2% Black, 3% Hispanic, 19% Asian. In Relentless am-a-drone’s vision and practice, Black and Hispanic folks are essential cogs in the machine which should be used as relentlessly as possible, and when they break down (or when, by your calculations, they are statistically due to break down, or start losing efficiency) should be replaced with another, cheaper cog, so that the machine can keep producing, keep competing, keep amassing more profits for the folks at the top to enjoy. (Or some of them, anyway; the managerial and executive level workers at am-a-drone are also pushed relentlessly, as has also been well-documented.) And hell, you can even program computers to do that messy business of firing those depleted and broken-down workers, so they absolutely cannot appeal to you on an emotional level. Even better, you can practically prevent them from appealing on a legal, logical, or factual basis too, as long as you construct the appeal process to be so labyrthine that they eventually just say the hell with it, despite the injustice, because they’ve calculated that their chances of survival are actually better if they just move on than if they dig in and fight. If planned obsolescence can work for electronics, automobiles, mobile phones, and software, why not for your company’s employees! Right?

            Of course not. And of course, many of those same hourly workers feel absolutely compelled to take the job they can get, like it or not; many customers, especially with unemployment having exploded as it did early in the pandemic, feel similarly compelled to buy whatever’s cheapest, lacking the luxury to look beyond the price tag. But we know there are plenty of consumers— I count myself among them— who are not as pressed, who do have a choice, and can buy something from a different, less destructive business even if it is more costly or less convenient in the short term to do so, or can simply do without it, in reality. But in US consumer culture we have made idols of ease, low prices, and “convenience,” and we make excuses and spin false stories in order to serve them: about how busy we are, how we “need” that convenience, “need” the low price, then shake our head oh-so-compassionately while reading a story like the Times’ (again, there are tall stacks of these by now, awaiting your attention), or worse, ignore it altogether, and go on click-consuming at great long-term cost to our planet, our humanity, and yes, our values.

            I know so many very good, ethical people who would never deliberately buy clothing from exploitative sweatshops, or pour toxins into their garden, or treat people who earn less than them as a lesser human being. Yet somehow, am-a-drone, which does the equivalent of all this and far more, gets a pass, because the addictive convenience of click-shopping and quick delivery either outweighs their qualms about Relentless, or blinds them to them altogether. Even though it’s been well-documented that, in addition to treating hourly workers like disposable diapers, this company’s predatory, deceptive, and myopic business practices, its steadfast avoidance of tax responsibility, and its indifference toward civic engagement and philanthropic duty has wreaked havoc for: independent bookstores, their owners and employees, and literary culture generally; the affordable housing market, here in Seattle especially but also elsewhere; countless vendors and creators, whose products have been counterfeited; and independent businesses of all kinds and sizes (but especially small businesses) crushed in the tidal-wave of big-a’s artificially low prices (which they later raise, once the earth is sufficiently scorched)… none of this seems to trump the “need” to consume as quickly, frequently, and conveniently as you want.

 * * *

As it does for workers and consumers living on the knife’s edge, my heart aches to see so many excellent organizations, so many deeply moral charity and justice missions, feel forced to align with Relentless. Or with any corporation that undermines their work in some form— but especially am-a-drone. (Hell, when you’re the biggest, you’ve got to expect the scrutiny.)

            I get it. Or at least, I’m in a position to get it. I can’t count the number of times I’ve looked at dwindling funding in the face of urgent needs (like right now in 2021), and wondered how the hell my organization would stay alive. I’ve dealt with the apathy and ignorance, the arrogance and condescension, that some middle and upper class folks can hold and even spout (with neither reflection nor compunction) about charities and truly mission-based organizations. I’ve wondered at times how one can possibly turn down any source of revenue, no matter how odious its source.

            So about the organizations, I cannot judge. All I can do is issue a plea, to ask you to consider doing the math, reading the stories (slowly, to let them sink in), and going for a long walk with your values and your mission. Maybe that math would really add up— maybe you have a crack squad of volunteers who could do all that promoting and bookkeeping and administration of “smiles” gratis. Maybe the stories would not convince your head, move your heart, or stick in your gut.

            But on that long walk, I ask you to consider the possibility that by aligning with “smile” you may be feeding the very wolf that seeks to eat you. In fact, it’s drooling to eat your whole village. As Greg Bensinger, who has covered the big-a for a decade for The New York Times, recently summed up in his recent piece marking Bezos’ transition from CEO to space cadet, “Bezos has made online shopping addictively easy and obscured the very human cost of his rapacious juggernaut.” Despite your best intentions, you may be helping to perpetuate and grow a cynical, amoral, destructive vision of humanity that is antithetical to your very mission, a ravenous corporate machine that churns Relentlessly, 24-7 and around the world, to see its vision realized. Your mission, organization, or charity— your heart’s work— may ultimately, as a consequence, be devoured.

            Please consider how much your values and mission are worth. I daresay they are worth more than a pile of ha-pennies. They are your treasure, where your heart resides, and the heart of those you walk the long road with and for. They are your hope, and all of ours.

            In the Judeo-Christian scriptures, the notion of hope is always expressed as belief despite, or in the absence of, the evidence. To paraphrase St. Paul, the belief in things not yet seen, and the strength to endure the wait. In that sense, it’s quite different than optimism, which is about analyzing the situation based on its known or knowable elements, and placing a calculated bet. Hope, my friends, is what mission work is all about. It’s what helped Nelson Mandela endure his unjust prison sentence, what marched Martin Luther King, Jr into LBJ’s office to make the “unreasonable” push for voting rights, what fueled Gandhi as he “foolishly” marched to the sea to make salt, and what moved Dorothy Day to pick up both bread and pen every day and offer both in service of the “hopeless and unworthy” poor in her midst.

            Hope is what true generosity— the widow’s mite— is all about. The faith that if you sow, sow, sow— that if you work as if it’s all up to you, then pray as if it’s all up to God (and the other hearts God is trying to move into action)— though not every seed will bear abundant fruit, some will. And those fruits will provide a harvest you can eventually bring to the table, perhaps with great sacrifice but also with great love, for all to share and be filled.

 * * *

When I reflect upon that night years ago in the Dominican mountains, I realize hope is what made it possible. Once I finally shut up, ate my food, and allowed myself to enjoy it, I was both humbled and proud that Felicia and Cristian had stood their ground. They did not accept the money I tried to offer them for the beans, nor my contention (embarrassingly condescending, in retrospect) that they could not afford to make such a sacrifice. By strict, capitalistic calculations, they could not afford it, it’s true. But they had hope that if they offered their beans in a truly generous way—sincerely, vulnerably, just as the Earth had offered them herself— God’s calculations would come out differently, making a way out of no way, escribiendo derecho en líneas torcidas (writing straight on crooked lines). They had beans, and they had hope. And they were determined to share both, because they knew that true generosity opens the gift of life.

            I too have hope, thanks in no small part to my long friendship and partnership with Felicia, Cristian, and many others living on the knife’s edge with what I can only think of as Spirit-fueled resiliency and endurance. I have hope that my organization does not need am-a-drone’s ha-pennies, and now we have some evidence too. (We’re still standing, eighteen months into this pandemic, among other things.) I have hope that, despite this recent union defeat in Alabama, the people power of unions will eventually win the day, there and elsewhere; and in Seattle, where workers are stirring forcibly, some early evidence is starting to emerge.

            I invite you to walk with me and many others, as we try to follow the prophets and saints who have led the way, on this pilgrimage of hope.

            You know what? I think you’ve already begun. Welcome. I look forward to our journey together.

What Will Save us Now?

24 May-7 June 2021: What Will Save Us Now?

(Beyond vaccinations and governmental aid, a deeper healing is still needed, a truly global transformation, toward solidarity and interdependence. The children of the world are watching.)

            The woman walked toward me carrying the girl, two years old, and stood much closer than my comfort would have allowed. Having heard of this girl’s suffering, I very much wanted to meet her and offer help, but I had not expected this: a deformity so shocking it was all I could do not to turn away. The child’s eye was bloodshot, and bulging— but beyond bulging even, it seemed as if it might literally pop out of her head, pushed right into the face of whomever she looked upon. I’d walked with the people of this Dominican community for more than a decade at that point, but I still had moments like this one— of feeling cut to the quick, overwhelmed, both sensorily and in my heart, by the suffering of the people. My aspirations to help this girl now seemed laughable at best. (I am not a trained medical professional, and I get queasy real quick about most anything involving blood and guts.) I turned in on myself and, rather pathetically, felt almost as sorry for my own helplessness as I did for the girl.

            Somehow, a breeze of grace stirred, reminding me to simply ask a question. An open-ended, simple question: How can I help?

            Asking the question did not end up solving the problem, at least not right away. But it was the critical first step, taking me deep inside the girl’s pain, into her humanity, where she was a person, not a problem. A person whom I was invited to accompany— not fix— with compassion and hope, taking as my model the person who carried her, an aunt who had brought the girl from across the border in Haiti, more than one hundred miles away.

            This question is one of those that started me on my journey in the Dominican Republic, one I’ve tried to teach every student I’ve worked with to ask. And it’s the question we need to hold onto as we continue this arduous pilgrimage, as a global human family, on which this pandemic has sent us. We may think that we’re “so done” with it, but we still have a long way to go. And the way starts with re-defining “we.”

***

There is of course another urgent question we have been asking around the world since the pandemic erupted: What will save us?

            And of course, the majority of our planet’s people are still not only asking that question, they are shouting it from their knees, either being ravaged by the coronavirus (India, Brazil, and several other South American countries), or still waiting for its true fierceness to strike (many countries in Africa). Our brothers and sisters in the poorer nations of the world are still dying by the minute, or enduring severe illness on top of already wrenching poverty; we’re lacking vaccines and the public health systems to administer them, we’re lacking oxygen, ventilators, and medical professionals to treat those who fall ill, and we’re even at a loss to find places to bury or cremate so many dead human beings. This pandemic is most assuredly not “done.” Any thoughts to the contrary are simply naïve, short-sighted, self-absorbed, or flat-out delusional.

            Let’s be clear: though the situation may be greatly improved generally in the U.S., it is still critical for many— especially for the most historically marginalized— and absolutely urgent from a global perspective. As of this writing, 75% of Covid-19 vaccinations worldwide have been administered in just ten countries, and the economic, educational, and social “recovery” is on a similar trajectory. Rich and destitute nations are being pried even further apart, erasing decades of progress in creating more global equality. The aplomb with which the typical Westerner views the extreme parsimony of the world’s wealthiest nations towards the poorest— hoarding vaccines and dollars by the billions—is nauseating. Frankly, it shakes my faith in humanity; when this pandemic began, I thought, surely this will change us. These 18 months have shown us, viscerally, that our every breath connects us all. So why are we not paying attention, and letting what we notice shape our beliefs, policies, and definition of “we”? What will save us?

            The powers and principalities of the world moved heaven and earth to save “their own people” when the pandemic hit, turbo-charging vaccination development and distribution, putting cash in citizens’ pockets, bailing out businesses. That is admirable, to a point— to the point that the definition of “our own people” become geographically, religiously, or culturally exclusive. This particular crisis, because it was affecting enough privileged people in enough privileged pockets of the world, was deemed urgent enough to demand full global attention and resources. Why, for heaven’s sake, can we not muster the collective will globally to decide that the crises which affect only marginalized people— say, malnutrition— are equally urgent, equally deserving of full attention and resources? Because we make the mistake of thinking it “only” affects others.

            If we act urgently, we have a chance to prevent millions of needless, senseless deaths— a chance to save lives, and save our collective soul. If we don’t, more of our brothers and sisters will continue to die, and we’ll be proving everyday that they’ve died in vain, since we stubbornly refuse to change.

            We need massive investments in global public health, global education, and the welfare of the neediest in all respects. We need them made quickly, to make up for lost time, and we need them made lavishly, like the woman who anoints Jesus’ feet with precious oil. If we juxtapose the fervor and determination with which the US government set and then achieved its vaccination goals for “its own people” with its stance toward the pathetically low and slow COVAX goal of administering 2 billion doses by the end of 2021, we should weep. When it comes to “us,” let’s be idealistic, let’s smash all barriers and let money be no object.  When it comes to “them,” well, let’s be reasonable, cautious, prudent, and realistic, because after all, something is better than nothing, right?

            This kind of stark inequality of mercy and justice illustrates that, for all this time and all this pain, for all we’ve learned about the coronavirus, we seem not to have learned much at all about humanity.

            If we need the science to lead us, to give us permission to act more like human beings, so be it. This virus has been telling us, teaching us at great cost day after day, that we are interdependent, not independent, that we are one holistic Body, not many separate nations.

            We need to ignore the conventional wisdom of prudence and caution, and practice an almost reckless, “irresponsible” compassion for the suffering, placing faith in the Divine that the loaves will be multiplied and satisfy and leave twelve baskets full still to enjoy. And as in the Parable of the Sower, not every single seed will germinate, or last, but those that do will provide fruit abundantly, more than making up for those that do not.

            In fact, the data tell us this is true: investments made in public health now will reap eye-popping returns, just as is the case in early education. And our heart does too. Just listen, it will tell you.

 ***

Our heart tells us something else as well. I heard it again recently— where else?—in the writings of dear Dorothy.

            “[The] social order [is] accepted by the great mass of our Catholics. Even when they admit it is bad, they say, ‘What can we do?’ And the result is palliatives, taking care of the wrecks of the social order, rather than changing it so that there would not be quite so many broken homes, orphaned children, delinquents, industrial accidents, so much destitution in general.

            “Palliatives, when what we need is a revolution. Each one of us can help start it. It is no use saying we are bored with the word. Let us not be escapists, but admit that it is upon us. We are going to have it imposed upon us, or we are going to make our own.”  (Dorothy Day, By Little and By Little, p. 217)

              One of the most wonderful things I experience when leading service-learning immersion programs in the Dominican Republic is the tangible sense that, person by person, and then collectively, the group has started to feel they want to make this kind of a revolution “our own.” To arrive at that moment, they’ve had to walk a few steps with the people they’ve encountered, on the path of pain, to a deep and despairing place.

            There comes a point with every group I’ve led when they (or frankly, we) hit bottom. Usually it’s during the second half of the experience, once the participants, whether students or adults or both, have truly settled in and “landed,” created enough distance from the reality they left at home, and enough connection to the one they find themselves within, to be truly present.  The chatter of the first few days, batting around gossip and shop talk particular to their school or job, eventually fades, replaced by a deeper-toned conversation about the very humble Dominican campesinos who have invited them into their lives for this short time.

            And then it happens. The bottom. We find it, or it finds us, usually through an encounter with someone enduring extraordinary suffering. Suffering rooted in injustice and oppression, that cannot be rationalized in any way, including the hollow notion that “it’s all part of God’s plan.” What kind of God, I shudder to think, would actually plan for any of Her children to endure the torments of hell— like an aggressive retinoblastoma cancer turning the eye of a sweet little girl into a grotesque horror and popping it straight out of her head?

            As it happens, that’s what afflicted that child I met, that’s what pushed her aunt to carry her those long, hot miles from Haiti, sometimes in a vehicle and sometimes on foot, to a Dominican community to which some of her family had already immigrated, where she felt she might find a shred of hope to grasp.

            I remember feeling, in my own body, that very same feeling of the bottom, the same feeling I’d had when first walking through this community more than twenty years ago and seeing child after child who was hungry, naked, and sick, witnessing scores of adults seemingly shackled not only to poverty but, deeper down, to despair. That vast emptiness, that expansive numbness, a pain in the gut as if my very heart had dropped down into my stomach and was being slowly churned into a pulp and every last bit eaten away.

            When I feel this happening in the group, when I see it in the participants’ slumped and sluggish bodies, I secretly rub my hands together and feel a jolt of joy. The channels are now open, I think, and I wait for what will happen next. Because it always does.

            How can we help? What can we do? What do you need?

            Some version of the question comes forth, from the heart. Asked with humility, openness, even vulnerability— a willingness to truly listen, with an open heart, and allow the heart to lead the mind and body in responding.

            Sometimes the path to this question is a bit rocky, and false versions of it emerge all the time, questions that are in fact just academic ponderings or ego-trips disguised as noblesse oblige: “What if we got Bill Gates to visit here, or the Mariners?” “Why don’t we set up a bunch of Little Free Libraries?” “My uncle owns a construction company, how about we build everyone a new home! And pave all the dirt roads!” On and on, for hours or sometimes days, all no doubt proposed with sincerity, with some part of the heart, but none grounded in the deep listening necessary to make the whole heart, and thus God’s full creative Spirit, available to work its mysterious, miraculous ways.

            Because the questions that come from the whole heart are more beautiful, brave, and creative, and they come as a gift— to the asker as well as the asked. Sometimes I’ve passed on that gift, by suggesting that participants ask this question, but sometimes they’ve received it another way, from another teacher, their own reflections, or the Holy Mystery herself.

            This question has been answered in different ways over the years, depending both on the context and of whom it is asked. But when it’s asked of those I consider the wisest, those who are most steeped in the problem— people like Felicia and William, who have lived it or are still living it, who know the history as well as the broader context of it— their answers often boil down to this: Oración, sudor, y fondos. Prayer, sweat, and funds. That’s what we need.

            Prayer: Because nothing worth doing will happen without relinquishing some degree of control, to a Higher Power and to others’ gifts, efforts, and imaginations. And nothing done without love will truly last (and neither will you).

            Sweat: Because nothing worth doing will come easily, without some failures. And nothing done without any sacrifice (offered lovingly, not compulsorily) will last.

            Funds: Because we live in the world as God gave it but humans made it, and we can’t expect everything (or anything) to be given for free, whether that’s concrete or college credits, and those that have must give funds to and for those who have not, the more lavishly the better, from a sense of mutual need, not paternalism or self-interest.

            Nothing done on the cheap, whether in dollars, sweat, or love, will truly change anything, or really last.

            This is a hard word to hear. What we want to instead is something specific, simple, and self-contained, a snap-in-place quick fix that can be accomplished, put on a shelf, and admired. Something tangible, measurable, achievement-oriented, for which we can produce compelling data and poignant photos about metrics, outcomes, and the almighty “impact” (perhaps the most over-used, and frankly bizarre, word in the nonprofit sector, unwittingly revealing a cultural bias toward the enduring myth of redemptive violence. But I’ll stand on that soapbox some other time.)

            But this word is meant to be liberating. The invitation, and the hope, in offering it in this broad way is to leave plenty of room for individual creativity (as long as you’re still listening humbly, not on an ego-quest), collaboration with others, and the Holy Mystery. The invitation, and the hope, in envisioning it holistically is to communicate that we’re asking you to be fully engaged, fully present… and that that is all you need to do. You already have all you need, within you, since we all can pray and sweat and give resources in some way, on some level. No special preparation, degree, or training is required. Just start walking, join the pilgrimage, settle in for the journey.

            It’s not always possible to pinpoint the exact moment when this shift happens in an individual or in the group, but like a runner’s second wind, it’s easy to spot once it has kicked in. There is a certain buoyancy of spirit, a lightness of laughter, even a courage to cry. And, on a language level, and a heart level, there is a shift from “they” and “them” to specific names of the Dominicans with whom these volunteers have been sharing these two weeks of life. There is a shift to a genuine relationship, as unusual as it may be, on a truly human level. As dear Dorothy wrote, “We truly serve the poor when we can call them by name.”

 ***

During my first year in the Dominican Republic, my mentor, Paul Burson, pulled me aside to work on some planning for a retreat with the group of students from Creighton University we were teaching that semester. A few weeks into the term, though some students were demonstrating a keen awareness of the depth of Dominicans’ and Haitians’ suffering, a majority were still clinging to the simplistic “these people are so happy and joyful even though they have nothing” stage, and it was time for a wake-up call. Some, we knew, would need not just to be called, but to be pushed.

            It was time for a ghost story.

            That’s what the story sounded like to me, even though Paul claimed it came from Luke’s 16th chapter. The parable of Lazarus at the gate of the rich man: If you haven’t read it, or read it recently, you need to. As usual, Jesus, the master storyteller and teacher, demonstrates his particular genius for hitting us right between the eyes, in the solar plexus, and through the gut, all at once— and miraculously, with love.

            It’s a story in part about blindness to human suffering. The rich man ignores the destitute, sore-covered Lazarus, sitting day after day just outside his gate, because he does not see him— perhaps not literally with his eyes, but certainly with his heart. For that blindness, which we’re led to believe is at least somewhat intentional, the wealthy man condemns himself to an eternal, fiery prison, with no chance of parole. Frankly, it scared the hell out of me when I heard Paul read it—it felt like I’d never heard it before, even though it’s right there in the Scriptures— and its power continues to reverberate.

            We need to read this story right now, today, especially at the highest levels of power. We need to listen to it, with our heart, be moved by it, woken up by it. We need to remove the scales from our eyes, kneel down to embrace Lazarus and ask forgiveness. And then ask, “How can I help?”

 ***

One hope I have, for myself as much as anyone else, is that this question will lead us to others: Who and what am I blind to now? How can I see (or first, desire to see) more clearly? Where does the God who loves the most vulnerable and poorest among us with special tenderness want this seeing to lead us, all of us as a human family?

            The pilgrim’s path, the walk of faith that does justice and helps create deep and lasting transformation, asks us to stay with these and other beautiful, open-ended, courageous questions.

 ***

I try to pass on dear Dorothy’s wisdom to anyone I have the opportunity to teach: That we truly serve the poor when we can call them by name.

            But I will not pass on the name of the little girl who looked at me with her cancerous eye. Nor what happened to her. She is on the island of Quisqueya (Hispaniola) and you can go there, ask around, and find her yourself, letting the questions lead you.

            But before you do, I’ll be arrogant enough to say you should first look around you, spot Lazarus where you’ve been blind to him, and really try to see, from the heart. I need to do this, in a renewed way, myself too.

            Take a good look, and really see Lazarus. Kneel down, shoo away the dogs licking his sores, clear away the scraps tossed all around him from the rich man’s table and give him some real food instead.

            Look outside your own gate. And look around in the world, especially in those places the U.S. media doesn’t deem quite as worthy of column inches and air time, the poorest places around the world where the next bigger, even deadlier, wave of the pandemic has begun to hit. Look, and keep looking, and encourage (en-hearten) everyone you know to do the same.

            Listen to Lazarus’s story, deeply, with your whole human heart. It is the story of this girl, and of so many more of our brothers and sisters in this short, precious life we live and breathe together. What you see, hear, smell, and feel will change your life.

No Somos Iguales (We are not equal)

Ash Wednesday: 17 February 2021

Sitting shoulder to shoulder, arm to arm, the student and the young child turned to each other, and the lesson began, albeit unwittingly.

         During my first year living in the Dominican Republic, I led a weekly reflection group for college students, as part of my job with Creighton University’s semester abroad program there. Most of the students were from Nebraska, and not only was this their first experience outside the U.S., it was their first time getting to know, in a genuine way, people who were not white, English-speaking, and middle-class.

         At some point mid-semester, one student shared an encounter she’d had with a young girl in a batey— a Haitian-Dominican community systematically marginalized in the manner of a Brazilian favela or a South African township. The group’s purpose was spiritual, but I encouraged them to bring the real stuff of their everyday experience to our circle, as honestly and vulnerably they could, and let that guide all of us in our prayer and our community living experience that semester. Often, there were tears, and this particular student had that gift. But tonight she spoke with the hushed, flat tone of having had her wind knocked out.

         As she related it, she was sitting with one of her favorite children, a girl of eight or nine. As other children had also done frequently to me, fascinated by my somewhat shaggy arm hair, the girl brushed her fingers back and forth over the student’s forearm. Her own hair was much less prominent than mine, but still felt smooth, the child said, as she continued back and forth.

         As it happened, the student also had a cut on her arm, maybe her elbow, for some reason I can’t remember. Like almost every child I’d met in that community, this girl lacked adequate nutrition, housing, and sanitation. She was barefoot, and her feet bore several scabs in various stages of healing, or worsening, part of the price kids there pay just simply to run around and play.

         The student sensed an opening, and admirably, tried to draw attention to the similarity of her scab, and the child’s. La sangre es la misma, she said, putting her Spanish to work. Somos iguales. The blood is the same, she said— meaning they both had red blood. We are equal.

         No, the girl said, gently placing her arm diagonally atop the student’s, then pointing to each with the patience of a veteran teacher. In an instant, the student related to us, she got it, and felt herself redden, embarrassed at her own blindness. Her arm not only had hair; it was Midwest plump and pale white, especially compared to the girl’s, which was thin with very dark skin.

         No, the girl repeated, this time shaking her head. No somos iguales.

         Not at all.

That was more than twenty years ago. And I can’t think of another year since that time in which we’ve seen this scene play itself out, on a global scale, more so than in 2020. In no other year in recent memory have we had quite the same opportunity not only to see, but experience, these two arms, side by side, even entwined, similar in some basic ways yet radically different in many crucial particulars, because of accidents of birth and intentions of injustice. Those of us with the fatter, whiter arms, have too often been lying to ourselves the past eleven months, since the pandemic began its chokehold on our human family, denying that that little girl’s arm is any different than our own, content to sing platitudes about how “we’re all in this together” but in reality not doing a damn thing, or very little, to put that into practice in any significant, sacrificial way, and even undermining it, mocking it, by hoarding and hunkering and “taking care of me and my own.” Our sense of self, and of “my own,” speaks to the fundamental problem.

         I’ve been following the news of the Covid-19 vaccines’ rollout rather compulsively, in spite of myself. I thought that, since a new and much more sane, administration entered the White House (the sensation of being taken on a joyride by a raging-drunk, myopic fool is finally fading), I’d quickly adopt a more contemplative relationship with the news. Alas, I find myself still pulled into the headlines first thing in the morning, as if I’d walked by a meat grinder and accidentally snagged the drawstring of my hoodie. (I’ve been meaning to remove the dang thing anyway.) Now, rather than trying to temper my outrage at the latest tweet or detonation of a progressive achievement— or, in the case of the Capitol insurrection, the latest victory of nihilism— I search for any hope of healing and transformation, while keenly aware that the damage, like an oil tanker that has cut its engines but still glides on momentum, will continue for some time.

         In story after story, day after day, it’s the same: No, no somos iguales. Oh no, we are not equal.

         We know this, if we are honest, if we’re paying attention. We’ve been squandering, right from the get-go, one of the precious golden opportunities this pandemic, for all the heart-shuddering suffering it has created, has offered us. The chance to realize, in our very flesh and blood, that we are all One Body, that we all breathe the same air, and our hope of emerging from this pandemic—frankly, of surviving it— depends less upon vaccines or relief packages, than upon how well, human to human and country to country, we take care of each other, all of us.

         The evidence so far is a gut-shot, and too few seem willing to scrutinize it, or to do much that might inconvenience them in order to help mop up the blood, and bandage the wounds. Rampant defiance of simple, unobtrusive, common sense public health mandates and recommendations, on individual, group, and corporate levels, fueled by greed (hello, NFL and NCAA) and conspiracy theories (the DdT-Limbaugh cabal). Unremitting selfishness masquerading as patriotic political martyrdom (“I’m going maskless to save my freedom— and yours! And if I get sick and die, that will show everyone how terrible Obamacare is!”). Unbridled capitalist dog fights between nations at the doors of the pharmaceutical giants, and then secret backroom deals giving sweetheart vaccine prices to the rich victors while poker-skewering the vanquished poor.  Vaccine line jumping by the most privileged and savvy.  Judgment with neither real understanding, nor significant and just action— of teachers and other, even lower-paid, essential workers who don’t “step up,” especially by the most privileged and least likely to themselves work high-risk jobs. Disproportionate infection and death rates among the most vulnerable populations— the very people who, in disproportionate numbers, stock the groceries, drive the buses, haul the garbage, and, in disproportionate numbers, fear going back to school or work, or even the grocery store or church, and fear the vaccines that might— if they had access to the damn things— might help, but who do not show up to offer their arms to the needles because, in disproportionate numbers, they’ve been told lies about such “helps” before (y’all remember Tuskegee?) by the very governments buying, and corporations getting obscenely rich selling, the message.

         The Body, it’s heart-shatteringly clear, is very broken.

         How can we— how will we— heal? I don’t know. What’s the path forward in our families, communities, and most importantly, our world? Not sure. But I suspect that if we reflect upon this one child, who so tenderly and unequivocally pointed out the obvious, we may find our first steps.

To se this child, to put our own arm— of whatever color, size, and degree of privilege— beside hers, we have to get close. Yes, physical proximity can be dangerous now for some of us, but not for all of us, especially if we’re willing to spend the extra time (and even money) to take the necessary precautions. In these encounters, when we get close enough to see, listen, and feel, we try to receive prayerfully what we experience, at whatever distance is safe for us, and in the times in between, to think creatively about how to close that distance more. And why it’s there in the first place. (A quick clue: it may have something, if not everything, to do with inequality.) In my case, I need to get back to volunteering at the food bank, where I meet those in my neighborhood who don’t have enough to eat, and see them bundled in frayed clothing as they endure the long line (with its own travails and risks) or hear them say hello when my son and I leave a bag at their door those weeks we make home deliveries. Or when I hear or see nothing during those drop-offs, the family behind the door either too busy to answer, or too embarrassed. I need to stop telling myself I don’t have time, and can’t take the risk, and simply schedule the time on my precious calendar, don a second mask, and show up with a spirit of gratitude and availability. I may not be hungry now, but many people are.

         Second, like that student, we need to be humble and courageous enough to tell ourselves the truth about these encounters, or the lack thereof, and the truth about the widening separation happening (if we continue to do too little) in our communities, countries, and global family. Yes, we are all children of God, but we’ve done a pathetic job, as a whole, of treating each other as such. Not all these children have a seat at the table— hell, not all of them have a seat in the room, or are even being recognized as human. And not all of this happens overtly, either: the unrelenting US-centric coverage by the mainstream media right now— in which it’s simply assumed that any subject within a pandemic headline or story (e.g., infections, deaths, lives, jobs) is defined, were they to bother to attach the adjective, as “American,” (as if people in the other countries in the North, Central, and South Americas are not also Americans), and every mention of “our,” “us,” or “we,” comes with those same, implicit geographical parameters. I wish I was above it, but I have found myself, when reading about the latest infection or vaccination rates, skimming first to my local county, rather than looking at the global picture first.

         Third, we need to cleanse the temple, as Jesus famously did. This story, recounted in all four Gospels, seems largely misunderstood, either manipulated by violent egoists seeking “holy” justification for their very unholy ends, dismissed as an aberration by pedantic ivory-cathedral dwellers, or assiduously avoided by just about everyone else, because the paradox— seeing this destructive rage burst forth from history’s most merciful human— is simply too much for us to handle.

         It feels important to notice why and how Jesus did this— for what purposes, and with what spirit. He did use blunt instruments— biting words and (as related in John 2) a multi-corded whip he braided on the spot— but only because he sought to cleanse, to clear out, and thus make room for something else, namely God’s love and God’s justice. Such sharpness and force were needed because of the sheer size of the market for sacrificial animals, the strength of its monetary leverage, the deep and embedded nature of the corruption that created and sustained such a system, which in one fell plunge of the knife, simultaneously killed innocent animals, gouged the common man (and his family), and enriched and deified the religious elite. Jesus’ teachings always took dual form, words and actions, and these always danced with each other, to teach us to do the same. Some dances were very tender, or joyful; this one was a frenzy, a slam, a Russian kazotsky or Bronx break dance. But in every case, the dances outraged the most privileged and comfortable, and they were always filled with, practically bursting with, love.

For me, if not for all of us in the reflection circle that night years ago, the young girl tenderly danced her way into our hearts through this student’s story, and cleaned them out. None of us could continue to believe, if we had before, that lovely little white lie that white people tell ourselves and each other, “I don’t see color.” Wake up. No somos iguales, that girl told us. I see color, and don’t tell me you don’t, or that there’s anyone who doesn’t. If we don’t see color, then why are things the way they are? Why am I in this god-forsaken slum, practically naked and starving, and you have all the food and clothing and education you could ever want? Tell me, do you see color now— and do you see how our powers and principalities see it? And… what are you going to do about it?

         The world is most certainly seeing color right now, and continuing to make choices that perpetuate and deepen inequality. So, as the girl asks us: What is our response? How might we enter into this Lent as a way to start creating a new story— a new way of seeing, and responding? How might we see the ashes of all that has been destroyed— from jobs and health and lives lost, to forests burned and oceans polluted— as compost for growing something new, watered with humility, shined upon by compassion?

         What if we could imagine that our capacity to survive this pandemic, individually and collectively, depended less upon vaccines and government relief packages, and more upon treating each other and our planet as if we were all part of One Body? And what if we could put that into practice, individually and collectively?

         At this point, based upon what I know, I would sign up for a Covid-19 vaccination. I’m not suggesting otherwise. But it would be a mistake to think that being inoculated against Covid-19 can restore me, or any of us, back to “normal.” That “normal” was destructive in some fundamental ways for the majority of our planet’s people, and for Mother Earth herself. The most privileged are finally getting a clue about this, finally hearing the music of the dance.

         Will we join the dance, take each others’ hands, link arms of all colors? Will we take the small, courageous actions that can lead to changed hearts and just systems, the kind Jesus and the prophets constantly challenged us to imagine and create, and gave their lives struggling for? How highly will we prioritize the most vulnerable, and those caring for, feeding, and educating them, as the virus is teaching us to do, beyond the vaccination queues, in the new “normal” we have the opportunity to create together? And how deep of a commitment will we make, each of us, now that we’re crystal-clear that we all breathe the same air, to living as if we are actually one Body, one Family?

         Time will tell. I pray to do my little part, and to get back into the dance whenever I inevitably stumble. I have faith that, when I find myself down-on-the-ground discouraged or despondent, I’ll look up and see that girl, see her arm and her opened hand reaching down to mine with as much forgiving freedom as Jesus had for Peter. I pray that I’ll lift my own hand to seek hers.

A Little Story, for all of us

24 November 2020: A little story, for all of us

         Every book has a story or two behind its creation. The Good Stranger’s Sancocho Surprise / El sancocho Sorpresa del Buen Desconocido is being published today, and its story goes back to 2012. But in reality it goes even farther than that, nearly twenty-five years, when I first lived in the Dominican Republic.

         On Fathers’ Day 2012, I found myself in the D.R., missing my five year-old son terribly, so in some ways I began writing it for him. I kept at it for the kids I’d also grown close to over the years in the D.R. And I finished it, in part, to win a bet with my wife.

         When my son was little, my wife and I had a habit of reading to him at bedtime, like many parents, or basically anytime we needed to get him calm. The kid was just (and still is) kooky for books, and he loved snuggling as we read. For many years in my work for Education Across Borders, I spent long stretches of every year in the D.R., often in the summer, running service programs to build homes and stronger communities. In 2012, when my son was five, my assignment coincided with Fathers’ Day. I got all weepy that night, and made it worse for both of us by reading to him over the phone. He kept asking me why I didn’t come home. A few days later, tired of feeling blue and still with several weeks to go in my stay, I thought I’d try to write a story that I could one day read to him, so he could understand the amazing place I was spending so much time in.

         At first, I thought it would be easy— after all, I’d published a novel and was working on two other books at the time. But when I returned home and showed the draft to my wife, she grimaced. “It’s nice but… no kid will read this.” (She would know, she teaches literacy to small children.) And then she smiled, a bit devilishly, and said, “Writing for kids is actually hard, Mr. Big Writer For Adults. I bet you can’t actually do it.”

         Thankfully, she was willing to help me win the bet—it was only a dollar after all. And she proved to be my best editor. After more than a dozen drafts, she finally said, “You got it.” (But she still hasn’t forked over that dollar.)

         In the writing, I often had in mind the kids I knew in the D.R. The year my son was born, and we started reading to him, I connected the dots— finally— on a deeper level about the work I needed to do with EAB in the D.R. Too many kids there have scarce access to books, if any, and along with that, very little experience of reading aloud, of falling under the spell of a story spinning out in the air before them, especially while safe and warm in the embrace of a loved one. Or even experiencing a story time circle with their friends, something offered with marvelous (and privileged) frequency at every branch of the Seattle Public Library system, even in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods. (SPL just simply rocks my world.) So I started collecting children’s books en español, taking them to the D.R. whenever I could, and asking others with EAB to do the same.

         Felicia and William, my Dominican co-founding partners, suggested that I do something more than simply give away the books—I should gather the children, and read to them.

         I started reading to groups of kids during the siesta hour, and I was surprised by how much we all enjoyed it. It was a gift I hadn’t anticipated. I felt a little less lonely for my son, and much more connected to these kids.

         With Sancocho, I wanted to write a book they would relate to, and enjoy reading and listening to. That’s why the curly-haired girl sings those “silly” rhymes, and why it doesn’t shy away from the tough stuff of tragedy, poverty, prejudice, and oppression. Their world is not one of blond princesses in sparkly dresses; it’s rice and beans, bachata, and pine board homes, as well as crumbling schools, gutted hospitals, and the long festering wounds of colonialism and dictatorship. My hope has been to celebrate the cultural richness of the D.R. —and really the Caribbean in general. Not only the tangible elements— landscape, food, and language— that are easily swapped in as part of many re-tellings. I sought to go deeper, to illuminate the Child-like Spirit I have found there, and been transformed by, since the first day. The spirit of radical compassion, like the Good Samaritan practices; a spirit of generative generosity, like the apostles experienced when they set those few measly loaves and fishes before the Teacher. A spirit that is available to joy, free to be both vulnerable and generous, and lives with deep, abiding hope rooted in faith and inseparable from suffering, that produces a despair-resistance resilience, even in the worst of times.

         This is the spirit that Education Across Borders has always tried to live, teach, and cultivate. Service, in this spirit— whether it be in offering a greeting, building a home, or cooking a big pot of sancocho with visitors— draws one to living in community. Not just in physical proximity, but in spiritual communion and interdependence. That’s perhaps more easily learned when life is so fragile it forces you to ask for help on a regular basis, just to survive; that’s the reality of most of my friends in the D.R., and one the wealthier sectors of the world are perhaps finally waking up to in this pandemic. Life is simply too fragile, too unpredictable to go it alone… and, what you receive from giving to others is too rich to ever seriously think about hoarding it for yourself. You can’t help but want to share.

         This is why the D.R. has become a second home for me, why I’m so proud of the work of EAB, and why I hope Sancocho will help more folks experience it for themselves. Our work, I’d daresay, has something wonderful to offer the world, and will grow even richer as more people come and add their ingredients to the pot.

         Some of the best children’s books speak equally well to children and adults. This book invites children to see the value of generosity, and of withholding judgment of “the other.” My hope is that the adults who share this book with their kids or students will also be touched— and challenged— by it. It’s a joyful story, but not a simplistic one, because it invites us to understand that sometimes those we are quickest to reject are those that hold the most precious gifts for us. Joseph Campbell often taught that our enemies can be our best friends, spiritually speaking, teaching us what no one who likes us would actually dare to.

         We are in a critical moment in history now, where many powerful interests are eagerly scapegoating immigrants, racial minorities, and many kinds of “others” for political and financial gain. As adults, we need to see this clearly, and take an active stand against it, and that starts at home with our kids, and within our own hearts.

         Take a little time, on your own if you’re brave enough, to read this story and let it sink in.