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| If He didn't die, he can't be raisedI realized over Easter weekend that the resurrection, as glorious as it is, is utterly empty without the crucifixion.
My Bolivian church has many good points, but their Good Friday service isn't one of them. I sign up for the Passover dinner expectantly, but my shy hopes were thoroughly dashed. Instead of a true Jewish Cedar meal, or even a thoughtful reflection on the darkness and horror of the crucifixion, we ate pita and lamb, had a hurried Communion, and left the church laughing and joking. No candles. No "It is finished." No reflection on what it might have been like to have no hope.
Without awareness of death, there is no joy in life. So Sunday morning, when we all got up at 5:30 to watch the sunrise and praise God, the singing bordered on dirge music. People stood in a circle shivering and staring at the ground, croaking praise-songs half-heartedly. My friend Kathy turned around to a few friends and growled, "COME ON, people! We might be dead, but Christ is risen!"
In fact, Good Friday was only "Good" for me because of what happened after the uncerimonious lamb. A few of us visited a friend whose mom is dying of cancer. Since her mom couldn't make the service, we brought prayer and worship to her. While we read psalms and prayed with her, we all cried and passed tissues around like popcorn. Death sat down and joined us in our little circle. But he didn't scare us.
Because something in this imminent death makes me appreciate Christ's resurrection even more than usual. I'm always most joyful when rising from sorrow.
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| Yesterday, during my tango lesson, I got maybe closer to movie life than I ever have.
My elegant teacher was showing my a particularly fancy toe twist when....
BOOM!!!
She never flinched, never lost eye contact, finished showing me the move and then shook her head slowly: "Those Ponchos Rojos. (sigh) They're always so dramatic. They've taken the Parlimentary building to demand that Congress makes a decision on autonomy soon. They're setting off dynamite to make people nervous."
Nervous? "Ponchos Rojos? That violent Communist anarchist group that lynched up those four dogs last October and cut their throats to threaten their opponents? The group against the autonomy decision?" Heck, yeah I was nervous.
She sighed politely again. "Yes."
"They're in the Parliment building that's half a block from here?"
BOOM!!!
"Yes. Now take these two steps backwards, dragging your left foot softly behind you..."
"They're throwing dynamite, and we're dancing tango?"
She stopped dancing and looked me straight in the eye. "Cara, when tango stops, everything stops."
BOOM!!! Ba-BOOM!!!
"Now try the Americano and two figure eights with your partner..."
And we danced the night away.
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| Gift Givers/Life FillerMy Servant Team is finally here, after a brief snafu involving the left engine of the American Airlines Miami-La Paz flight bursting into flames.
This Servant Team involves a first. Two actual, genuine genetic males! Both emphasize the fact with their impressively bushy beards.
The other night, we were all heading home on a crowded bus, and I hear a precocious Bolivian girl ask one of our bearded boys,
"Excuse me sir..."
"Yes?"
"Are you Papa Noel (Santa Claus)?"
"No, sorry, I'm not."
"Well, then, are you Santo Cristo (Holy Christ)?"
Bearded white men in Bolivia can evidently be only one of two people: A jolly materialistic gift-giver who chortles for the rich, or the Savior of the world who asks for your life and cries for the poor.
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| I know only what other immigrants have told me. That no matter how much money and how beautiful the life and the city and the weather it never quite feels like home, and why one piece of ground smells different from another no one knows, but it does and no matter how familiar it gets it will always be ground, never grounding. You get there--the other place--only to discover that home is deep in the innards and can only truly be removed by surgery, complicated emotional surgery, and nine times out of ten there are unforeseen complications and there is haemorrhaging and scarring and a dull ache like a cramp that flares up on cold damp days or hot days, beautiful summer days when everything is pleasant enough except when the wind blows. And even the trees speak a different language.
--Alison Wearing Honeymoon in Purdah
But when home is African rain
and explosions of crape myrtle in Charlotte
injera be wot
the Southern Cross and Cassiopeia
Banyan
guavas
my old Saturn
Grandma's Jewish coffee cake and blueberry muffins
the combination of rock and chalk
most of all my family
things that have disappeared and things that have grown
there is no special ache
just restlessness.
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| Flight of the CondorsLast weekend, a few of us went to the mountains.
January is the worst time of the year to climb. Lots of rain and sleet and snow and avalanches and other things you don't want falling on your head. But we went, because one of our Kiwi interns teaches mountain climbing, and I rarely pass up free instruction.
So on Saturday we got there and set up camp. It rained. Sunday morning we got up at 3am and climbed a cute little glacial peak. It snowed all 9 hours we were climbing. That afternoon it hailed.
Monday, Sal and I let the boys climb their own killer peak, while we went off and did one of our own. Theirs was taller, but we got the better deal, I think. Because after we summitted, as we were rounding a (wrong) corner, two massive condors lept off a rock a couple meters away and soared off.
I have never seen condors in the wild. They're stunning.
I briefly thought about darting after them, jumping up to grab their clawed feet, and letting them drift down the mountain, me in tow, back to camp. They were that big. You know in Rescuers Down Under, when that cute Ozzie kid gets to ride on the golden eagle's back? Ok, they weren't quite that big, but Monday was the first time I thought, "Hmmm, I should try that some time." =)
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