"Come, and you will see."

Frequently I am too caught up with the details of my own activities¹ to be aware of events that might change my opinions, improve my outlook. This morning I was setting up a couple of pots of water to boil and filter. Someone rang at the outside gate.  It was raining, just as it has been every day for the past two soggy weeks.  I didn't want to go to the gate because I didn't want to walk out in the rain. I didn't want to be diverted by someone selling something. I wanted to complete the simple task of preparing more water for daily use. Then the ringer sounded again--three buzzes, quick and sharp. All right then. I left my task, ready to be just as quick and sharp with dealing with the intruder.  After all, I was busy with . . . boiling some water.

It was Pedro from up the street.  I wasn't expecting to see him.  He owed me 200b. Then I remembered it was Saturday, the day he said he would pay it back.  He was grinning. He handed me 200b and thanked me for the loan. I quickly said "any time," glad that he had repaid me--both because of the money and because I didn't want him to feel awkward for having an unpaid debt.²  His need was honest enough--the day before school resumed for his three children he didn't have enough to cover the cost of fees and books. And now he was covering the shortfall.  We stood there chatting about whether this year we were having more rain than usual, whether the walls and roofs of the houses--especially the adobe houses--could take it, which communities had flooded.³ Then we realized that we were both getting wetter. We started laughing and took a rain check on the chat.

I returned to the kitchen where I noted that the unwatched pots of water were boiling.  Also the sun came out. Apparently it and the rain were doing the vegetable garden a lot of good. Our garden was originally created by the family that lived here before us, the Cuthberts.  We're just trying to maintain their good work and keep the compost heap turned.  We've got tomatoes, chard, spices (sage, parsley, anise, oregano, mint, and basil), and compost.

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  ¹Like the shepherds in the song I quoted in my previous post, I sometimes need a reminder to attune myself to significant events and deeper meanings around me, to look beyond the borders of self for needed answers.  So it was with a portion of one gospel passage, Ῥαββεί (ὃ λέγεται μεθερμηνευόμενον Διδάσκαλε), ποῦ μένεις; λέγει αὐτοῖς Ἔρχεσθε καὶ ὄψεσθε.' (John 1:35-42), which I read very late one night and more or less sailed through without more thought than that to discharge a chore, which was not my intent.  In Mass later that day Padre David urged the congregation to pause and think about the implications of that brief peripatetic exchange between two disciples and Jesus, so I did, running across Socrates' remark again, "the unexamined life is not worth living," and continuing on the road.
 ²He cuts grass in his spare time. In the rainy season the grass grows quickly. He does well so long as the grass is dry enough to cut. Earlier I had been listening to Merle Travis sing Sixteen Tons, reminiscing about the hard life of coal miners that Lynn, Emer, Norbert and I learned about once when we visited Stearns, Kentucky. The thought of Pedro converting to debt bondage on my watch wasn't cheery.
 ³The week before I had been traveling on Heroinas, one of the main thoroughfares in the city, when it had over a foot and a half of water that did abate quickly.  And on another avenue in the city, Suezia, that would mean raw sewage running out onto the street from the overloaded drain system. And life keeps on going.