I'm Back!!!

Actually, I've been back for more than a week. But I have needed every one of these days to readjust. To reconnect. To rediscover my land legs. To rebound from the nasty virus I brought home with me. And to recover my heart. Truthfully, I hope I never recover my heart. I remember feeling the same way after the trip my daughter and I took to Nicaragua in 2008 and my trip to Haiti in 2012. Heartbreak, poverty, hunger, mixed unrelentingly with hope, resilience, and strength in the stories, the homes, the meals, the hugs, and the faces of everyone we met. Stories of deportation from the United States. Gang violence. Military massacres. Loss of life. But never a loss of hope. Never a loss of joy.

In the face of the worst that people do to people, colors shine bright 

in San Salvador, El Salvador. 

Art emerges. 

 Monsenor Oscar Romero was called an indefatigable defender of 

human rights until his martyrdom.

Oscar Romero said, "A church that doesn't suffer persecution,

but enjoys the privileges and support of the bourgeoisie

is not the true church of Jesus Christ." 

For such statements and convictions, he was assassinated

 on March 24, 1980 - while serving communion.

At the table. Body broken. Blood poured out.

On December 2, 1980, four American nuns were raped and murdered

because they dared to involve themselves in the work of justice

and peace in El Salvador.

The priests and catechists and nuns who famously lost their lives

during those years are far outnumbered by the hundreds of thousands of adults and children

who were burned alive, shot, thrown into wells while still alive,

forcibly "disappeared," and massacred -

during a period of decades.

The stories are horrific.

The suffering continues - there are signs, posters, photos on walls

all over both countries - asking for answers,

seeking for those who are still missing.

But hope remains.

Doors were opened to us.

We were welcomed.

We were fed.

We were honored to stand on sacred, blood soaked ground.

Where shots were fired.

Where lives were taken.

Where blood was shed.

Where power was misused.

Where powerless were mistreated. 

I'm back. 

But my mind wanders back to El Salvador and Guatemala daily.

I wonder about how Esvin and Ana Silvia and Daniel are doing.

I wonder where Emerson and Roberto are.

I wonder what Father Cirilo is talking to his students and church members about.

I remember the women who cooked and cleaned and the men who drove.

I remember the women who walked with impossible loads on their heads and shoulders.

I remember the children in their pristine school uniforms, walking to and from school.

I pray that they are safe, that they are filled with hope, that they are surrounded by love.

On one of the early nights of our trip, as we sat together reviewing the day, talking about what we had seen and experienced, I felt something shift. Literally. My chair shifted and shook. I looked over my left shoulder, at the man who served as our group facilitation, making sure that we arrived safely at all our destinations, called ahead and made hotel and restaurant arrangements, Esvin. He looked at me and said, "That was a tremor." What? A tremor? As in earthquake tremor?

I confess that I spent a significant amount of time every day after that praying, pleading with God that there not be an earthquake while we were there. Then I expanded my prayer requests to pleas that there never be another earthquake there. Or anywhere. Here's how I see it - if I'm gonna pray, I may as well pray big. Ask for big things - never another earthquake anywhere ever.

What I didn't yet realize was that the tremor I noticed that evening was a physical manifestation of what was beginning to happen inside me - the shaking of the foundation of what I used to know and used to understand about migration, the indigenous peoples of Central America, social and legal policies in our own country, and what all of that has to do with the faith I claim to practice. How will what I learned and saw and experienced there affect the ministry I have been called to join at Caldwell Presbyterian Church? (More about that yet to come...) Will those lessons affect my understanding of justice and state-sanctioned violence here in my own country?  May the spiritual and emotional shifting never end - and may I never have to live through a true earthquake.

I'm back.
Barely.
And profoundly grateful.

PS. Here is a reflection I wrote toward the end of our trip. Each member of our class and travel team was given the opportunity to write a blog post for the Union Presbyterian Seminary website.