Sorrow and Joy

Rantastic #1: "Anybody that thinks we're not born losers in a game of attrition is just kidding himself."  I'm quoting one of my own bleak attitudes when circumstances seem to take life in the wrong direction for no apparent good reason.  In my best-of-all-possible worlds people who intend to help others do so and their efforts are on the mark and the ones who are helped get better somehow and they're really glad about that and so they thank the people who helped them and then they begin trying to help other needy people with their own efforts that are on the mark or even if they've already been helping others, one by-product of the help they received is that somehow now their own perceptions and efforts are sharpened so that the quality of their help gets even better and so in this vision (I usually glaze over with joy while I'm locked onto this one) the whole universe starts dancing with 'no-problemo' harmony. And despite whatever age of aquarius reverberations flake about in this snow-globe vision, I think it's still healthy despite that nagging attitude on the sidelines, that raw aftertaste in a fabulous too-good-to-be-true dish:  maybe this just precedes something terrible happening to rebalance life into an inscrutably gray mediocrity of random chaos. In fact, it's always there at the feast, that devilishly complex postre of when-bad-things-happen-to-good-people dish, and we struggle to recover from our own hard knocks or watch and try to help others struggle to recover from theirs. That too is mission, and that was the pie on my face when I heard recently that one of our compañeras at the Maryknoll Language Institute here in Cochabamba had taken a hit.

Damnificados: So what could be more absurd than a nun on mission getting mugged while walking to Mass on a celeste Sunday morning? Okay, how about the probable take--one black bag containing an umbrella and a Bible. (True, there's priceless stuff there, but you gotta know how to work with it or it just gets all over you, and it probably will get all over you anyway.) Or better, how about the method for this intended property transfer--a snag from behind bag-jacking in which one guy drives the car and his buddy leans out to grab the shoulder strap. Or even better, how about the outcome--enmeshed Sister (bag is strapped courier-style from shoulder to opposite side) is whacked on the head but struggles to keep pace with accelerating car, falls against the car and then elbow down into the gutter, bag still at her side as the white taxi (it's always a blanco taxi they say here) speeds safely off toward...what? But, of course, there's always the impact on the victim--eleven days in the hospital to deal with cuts on the head and elbow requiring stitches, bruises and road rash, five broken ribs, one of which punctures a lung, necessitating a drain tube to evacuate the blood, and, of course, that's just the physical stuff.

It's no surprise that after further healing she will complete her Spanish language training elsewhere. I'm amazed that she still plans to serve on mission in El Salvador.  I hope that when she feels better she will lead others with her clear voice as she did when she concluded our prayer service with the City of God:

Let us build the city of God. May our tears be turned into dancing!  For the Lord, our light and our love, has turned the night into day!

In the quiet times between my amoeba infestations, between earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, I think about these things.