Returning

One Sunday this past November in Cochabamba I attended Mass at the Hospicio in Plaza Colon. I don't always automatically feel tranquil when I enter a cathedral full of people. I sometimes have to settle in. That was not the case that Sunday. Hermano Martin presided over the induction of new members into the children's missionary organization Infancia Misionera. The children, from about six to ten years old, stood before the congregation and repeated a vow to be good examples of Christ's love. Some seemed self conscious, others super serious, and others gleeful, but all seemed to want to be there. The congregation applauded, approving their commitment.* 
When the new members of Infancia Misionera returned to their seats, the congregation sang Pan y Vino:

POR LOS NIÑOS QUE EMPIEZAN LA VIDA
POR LOS HOMBRES SIN TECHO NI HOGAR
POR LOS PUEBLOS QUE SUFREN LAGUERRA
TE OFRECEMOS, EL VINO Y EL PAN

It was a moment of simple hope. I wasn't thinking about the life circumstances that must come about between the children starting life and perhaps some of them later struggling as adults wandering the streets, or struggling with their indifference to other adults wandering the streets. I was just rapt, and maybe that was good for that moment. However, I was also only a few weeks from leaving Bolivia. My wife, Lynn, had already returned to the US. My thoughts were focused and confused: focused on the dismantling of another household, this time in my host country, and confused about what I was returning to.

In the preceding month I had already begun reading a little more news from the US. Sensational headlines were fueling some dread. The violence was more frequent, especially the type when environments from everyday life--offices, colleges and high schools, movie theaters, and political rallies--are employed as stages both for magnifying self and increasing destructive potential.

I felt even more agoraphobic. In Bolivia I questioned the necessity for the amount of coca grown there, and I wondered if that compared in some way to the number of guns sold in the US. I didn't question coca chewing, but I felt that the cultural right to chew it had become a rationalization for growing quantities far too great for chewing (my opinion). So responsibility was disrupted or challenged between growing the base product, transforming it into an illegal drug, and subsequent addiction and crime.  In the US maybe the constitutional right to bear arms had become a rationalization for unrestricted sale of arms in great quantities. One result of this has been the easy equipping of armies of one, some of which are apparently self-lawed to the detriment of American society. The responsibility was disrupted or challenged between manufacturing, selling, and using the arms in criminal acts. Apparently American society was now hostage to the right of individuals to enact pre-suicide reigns of terror, and unfortunately these had become more frequent, possibly more popular. 

My apprehensions about returning to the US heightened my appreciation at Mass for the new young missioners. I hoped the children would work to decrease homelessness and war, and that others would look on their innocence with hope. Regarding gun ownership in our society, I believe that compromise can balance the responsibilities along with the rights of ownership. Even then we will not have dealt with the urge to kill large numbers of innocent people. Our challenge is to understand the cause of disregard for community and self and how we can disarm that.
__________

*I recalled my own induction three years earlier into Franciscan Mission Service lay missioner Class 25, before the congregation of Saint Camillus Church in Maryland. At that time my own feelings ran the gamut of self-consciousness, super seriousness and gleefulness.