About a week back . . .

In Santa Vera Cruz I share some time with people who are terminally ill and living at a hospice operated by the Missionary Sisters of Calcutta. R, one of the residents, asked if I could show a particular movie there, Codigos de Guerra (Windtalkers).  I found a copy and scheduled a show time.

At the hospice six residents and a few others wheeled or walked in to watch as the little pharmacy transformed first into a theater and then into the horrors of hand-to-hand military combat between Japanese and American soldiers on Saipan in World War II. Soon the narrative centered on internal suffering from struggling with close relationships that survive when the people you shared them with have been destroyed. A part of that daily struggle becomes whether it is possible to allow oneself to get close to anyone or anything⎯regardless of whether it seems worth our while. In that, we may find ourselves aggressively practicing a philosophy of avoidance, or maybe just more generally wondering what part we might play if we found ourselves in the Samaritan story. Or in the future would any of us live in any way other than as a memory?

The movie affected each of us.  One or two dozed. Several left, maybe looking for early lunch, maybe too upset by all of that very real seeming exploding and hacking and burning. I found myself back in a bar in Bloomington, Indiana, in 1975, splitting a pitcher of beer with B, a Navajo code talker during World War II. B was working with the Linguistics Department at the university. He was also drinking a lot. That was when his battle memories rose up and his stories started flying like bullets. They seemed real enough to wound him again, and part of him even seemed to want that. I hadn't thought of B in several decades, and there he was, eyes burning with memories that wouldn't go away. The trail led on to memories of other veterans that made it home from that conflict⎯JY of the Pacific theater and TH at Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge. I met them when they were older, with their eyes sometimes burning, sometimes like lead.

R was rapt through it all, quiet, but intense, losing focus on the movie only when pain dissolved his expression.

The movie ended. The lights flipped on, restoring the black plastic-draped windows of the little pharmacy, the chairs and wheelchairs crowded together, the medicine cabinet. R thanked me for showing the movie.  Someone wheeled him away, and the others went away as well. I disassembled the equipment for showing the movie, winding up the electrical cords, packing speakers and projector and tripod into my backpack.  As I locked down the wheels of a gurney so I could use it as a ladder to take down the plastic curtain, I heard intermittent wails of pain. They went on as I lowered the curtains and folded them away.  Eventually they subsided, and the following silence was rich.  I hoisted the pack up onto my back and with a wince settled it into place. A nurse came in.

"Who was wailing?" I asked.

"R. Not so good."

I nodded. "Will he be okay?"

The nurse looked at me in the way that my question deserved, then said, "Sure. Can you stay for lunch? You're invited."

I had a class to teach at Carcel Abra in less than an hour. I was glad. "Can't.  I'll be back on Tuesday."

We nodded and went on.

Farewell Gregorio Iriarte

Gregorio Iriarte's faith in education to transform the political state does not depart with him and still may advance peaceful international relations in Bolivia during the decolonized age.

http://m.lostiempos.com/diario/actualidad/local/20121013/homenajes-marcan-la-partida-del-padre-iriarte-luchador-de_188682_400984.html

http://m.lostiempos.com/diario/actualidad/nacional/20121013/evo-ataca-a-eeuu-y-genera-polémica_188691_401002.html

Passing-the-baton moments...

As Lynn and I complete the final months of our tour of service here in Bolivia, we see new missioners coming (Franciscans like Kitzi and Michael, Maryknollers, and others), and we hope that they find good relations both with their mission organizations, with the service sites where they choose to volunteer, and with the communities where they live.  I know this doesn't always happen, but part of being on mission seems to be a willingness to work with less than perfect situations. I suppose we are all on mission, and in that sense I take seriously the adage on posters in the churches here, toda mi vida es mision. We also find ourselves saying goodbye to those missioners who must leave—I have yet to encounter anyone saying, "boy am I glad to get out of here"—and in doing so we see the time for our own farewells approaching.

A common metaphor for all of this to-ing and fro-ing is passing the baton.¹ It implies an orderly transition in which the present momentarily unites the past and the future as that all important objective—whether a stick, or a water project, or the education of a group of young children—carries on. There may be more of these moments lately, or maybe I am just more conscious of them:

• F, an advanced English student at the carcel, teaching English to the basic-level students at the carcel. He was doing a good job, providing just enough direction in Castellano to lead them in to English pronunciation, giving examples, but not losing sight of the components he was teaching, greetings and farewells. During this class a new young inmate poked his head through the doorway to see what was going on.  He watched and listened, then started to leave. F called him back and asked if he wanted to learn some English.  He nodded and took a seat in the back row.  F encouraged him to move forward so he could see the whiteboard. He did, and soon he had a borrowed text, a pencil, and a sheet of notepaper. I hoped this would make some of his time there easier.  
• A and her husband E: leaving the Eco-tourism program at UAC-CP before she could finish because she had become pregnant, reminding me of JC and L, who similarly restructured their plans about 35 years before.
• Visiting the Maryknoll Language Institute with A and E just to walk through the quiet gardens and see the photos of the people who taught Lynn and me and to say hello to a few of the current students there, missioners from the US and various European countries, working to acquire that critical ability to communicate.
• Munching on a sandwich at Globos on the Prado as the 5-year-old campesino steps in to your gaze and begs for food, his plastic food bowl exactly the same as the one we have for Kitty, our domesticated stray cat.
• The Cochabamba woman who worked cleaning houses in Arlington, VA, until she was forced to return to Cochabamba with her three children.
• M and B, a young couple from Cochabamba that just returned to Arlington, VA, struggling to find work and some way to become legal residents this time.

I'm reminded of a line from today's reading from the Book of Job: The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD!"
__________

¹ I remember receiving and passing the baton during relay races: my teammate rounding the turn, referees adjusting lane assignments by place in preparation for the handoff, both teammates looking for a blink of eye contact amid the strain and stride of that leg's final paces, the stretch of two arms, one forward with the hand clenched around the stick, one back with the hand outstretched, palm up, legs already striding as the tiring runner plunges into the zone.  Despite the pain of racing, it's a blessing when the mission is as simple as getting the stick around the track as quickly as possible.