February 3, 2006
Dear Friends,
We are preparing to begin our period of itineration next month.
We are looking forward to it and look forward to meeting some
of the people with whom we have corresponded over the past four
years. We hope that the churches, committees, and groups we plan
to visit share that anticipation.
It is February and cold here in Xela, not unlike many places
in the United States. There are still a few vestiges of Christmas
left around the streets, still some sales of Christmas candy bumping
now into the sales of Valentine’s candy. It does appear
that here in Central America the business people have appropriated
most of the holidays we share in the United States. They resemble
greatly those in the United States due to the amount of advertising
we see on television and the programs themselves. Most of the
programs on Guatemalan television are made in the United States;
many of them are aired by Mexican stations and dubbed into Spanish,
but they are U.S. programs and reflect a U.S. lifestyle. Both
ESPN and ESPN 2 air here with Spanish commentators—a mirror
image of the programs in the United States.
I read an article by a social observer who commented on the past
Christmas season. There is a certain logic that says if there
is a season there is a beginning to it as well as an end—much
like the summer season and all the images that evokes in our imaginations—but
it does end. We do find ourselves responding to people in need
at Christmas with far more generosity than at other times of the
year. Retailers rely on the Christmas season to make or break
their business year, as do suppliers to the retail trade. Our
economy is tied to the success of this season. Charities also
find their coffers swelling at Christmas. Most people’s
mail boxes are full of solicitations for this or that organization,
most of them wanting to provide care of some kind to the “needy,”
and some of us spend a day working in a soup kitchen. Those who
look to the spiritual meaning of the season cannot help but respond
in kind to the commercialization of it.
But the truth is: it makes us feel good. We like the feeling
that comes from being generous, from watching a friend or family
member or stranger smile at the receipt of a gift. That generates
some kind of chemical reaction, which sends endorphins coursing
through our bodies that almost make us giddy with happiness. But,
alas, like the beginning of the season we have now come to the
end of the season. It has been over for a month now, which means
we have institutional permission to return to our former ways
of acting, and being, meaning, I suppose, that we can return to
our usual beggarly, miserly, self-absorbed selves. I’m not
sure I can afford to have too many endorphins coursing through
my body except at Christmas.
We know that if people are in dire need on December 25 the odds
of them being in dire need on January 25 or April 25 are equally
great. Here in Guatemala there is a looming hunger disaster due
to Hurricane Stan’s having wiped out so many crops last
October. March lurks as the month when this begins to show itself
in hunger pangs in the bellies of some of the indigenous. We’ll
be in the United States then and at a distance from the immediacy
of it, and so if it happens, it will have more of a dream-like
quality. But maybe it won’t happen, and we’ll pray
that it won’t, but if it does we’ll be supping on
the lush produce found in our local, over-stocked grocery store.
Victims of Stan had the difficult task of generating attention
due to the simultaneous earthquakes in the mountains of Pakistan
and Afghanistan. I remember reports of the winter season coming
in South Asia with the potential for kids freezing to death in
their tents, if they had them, with possibly more deaths from
the weather than the earthquake. That kind of report would have
generated far more charitable donations during December. I read
that donations from the United States for the tsunami victims
swamped the ability of some agencies to handle them, as did the
receipt of goods and services, some of which went languishing
on docks for want of a distribution system.
The tsunami occurred December 26, while we were still feeling
the effects of the endorphins. Many donations went to a specific
cause; designated giving in such an emergency created other bottlenecks.
Organizations, including the PC(USA), are learning to live with
that, however. It is now possible to give online. I have a Directed
Mission Support (DMS) account for contributions from churches
(please give). I have an ECO for contributions for the education
of the indigenous (please give). Presbyterian Disaster Assistance
has a special account for victims of Stan (please give) and a
special account for Pakistan (please give).
But these things have a way of fading into memory, much like
the generous feelings we had only a little more than a month ago.
Those things that were so apparent, so necessary, so worthy, are
now fading from sight. We hear the economy is doing much better
and the stock markets are up, so we begin to plan our summer or
winter vacations and become part of the increase in tourism. But
there is always something lurking like the effects of Stan: fear
still stalks us. Where are those endorphins when you need them?
There is a plan afoot to build a 700-kilometer wall at the border
and although we hear there are improvements in Iraq people are
still dying and we are made to feel guilty if we take a position
that is construed as not supporting our troops. If the endorphins
kicked in due to corporate giving, as evidenced in the giving
of billions of our tax dollars for war machinery, we all would
be smiling, and none of us would ever meet a stranger.
We read that the country is divided, but having lived through
the 1960s, there is nothing resembling that. There seems to be
some other chemical in our bodies that softens and weakens our
sense of concern for those at the margins and also leads to passionless
marches against the war—that is, if there are marches at
all. We have become part of the culture of silence that leads
us to endorse the status quo and seek conformity with it. We seem
to be able to accept questionable ethics in too many of our business
and government leaders and look for the bargain clothing item
that may have been made under other-than-fair circumstances for
the worker, but it fits our budget as well as our body. Last year
Guatemala lost something like 27 clothing factories, which preferred
to close rather than pay fair wages to their workers. The factories
all moved to Nicaragua, where wages are even less. The minimum
daily wage in Guatemala is now Q42, about $5.50 a day, but that
is for a long day, and not everyone pays it. I’d like to
think the endorphins would help these factory owners, since most
of them are foreigners, but they moved the factories prior to
the Christmas season.
It may be that lots of people in the United States do look for
the endorphin surge at non-Christmas times. Drug use seems not
to have abated, and we see that a tunnel under the U.S.-Mexico
border was found along with hundreds of pounds of narcotics. The
search for other than a natural high stains too much of our consciousness
and creates ancillary businesses with a particular attention to
law enforcement personnel and new-fangled surveillance paraphernalia.
But we know Christmas is in the future. We rely on it in ways
we would rather not. We need it to remind ourselves of our humanity,
to know what giving and loving one another can do not only for
our economy but especially for us personally. The love for one
another, in this Valentine’s season, is offset by fear of
the stranger, so we must struggle beyond that. Why it is so hard
to do that is cynically blamed on other people or other systems.
David Bosch comments in Transforming Mission: “Hatred,
injustice, oppression, war and other forms of violence are manifestations
of evil; concern for humaneness, for the conquering of famine,
illness, and meaninglessness is part of the salvation for which
we hope and labor. Christians pray that the reign of God should
come and God’s will be done on earth as it is in
heaven (Mt 6:10); it follows from this that the earth is the locus
of the Christian’s calling and sanctification.”
So we struggle to be more human on this earth, and we know what
it looks like, and we know what it feels like, and we like it.
It is beautiful, and we are called to work to bring that forth
here, now. Kierkegaard commented that “where the eternal
is concerned there is only one time: the present.” We seem
to approach caring for others as a hobby, a thing we do in our
off hours, or when we have time, or at Christmas, and some of
us look forward to retiring when we will have the time to do what
we really want to do—if we aren’t dead yet. We cannot
seem to make what we know we should do compatible with what we
are doing, with the other demands on us; some become nearly incapacitated
in the process while others want to debate the meanings of the
words we use. Moltmann, in his Theology of Hope, said,
“Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality
as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it.”
Ah, come Lord Jesus, we cry. We know the truth of Jesus’
claims; even those who don’t usually respond emotionally
have felt it if not seen it in the eyes of family and strangers.
We do look forward to meeting and chatting with some of our heretofore-unseen
friends. We thank you for helping us to have this opportunity
to serve in Guatemala and to sharing this part of our lives.
Que la paz de Dios sea con ustedes,
Roger and Gloria
The 2006 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p.
64
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