Romance

From a darkened room I write – the blue haze of my computer screen stroking my face. With the power out, it provides the only light, save a candle that sits by my bedside. Outside, the rain in pouring down, a rare thing for Cuernavaca, la Eterna Primavera (Eternal Spring). My body feels full with contentment, having just returned from the most magnificent dinner.

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Flickering honey-colored lights quiver and skip across white linen table cloths, moving and swaying to the rhythm of a fountain’s falling water. A pink orchid hangs overhead from its earthen basket. A stairwell, painted warm yellow and orange, rises upwards and around the plaza in which I am seated – wine in hand, letting the tastes of fresh goat cheese and apple slices encircle my mouth. And then, softly at first, the music begins. The sound creeps upwards, rising into a crescendo, the notes beginning to swell within my chest. Just as my body feels full with the light, the music, the romance and the beauty, he steps forward and stands at my side. Like releasing the power and beauty of a great ocean wave, he opens his mouth and out swells the most glorious voice – to serenade me.

Never before have I experienced the shear force and power of a voice so close that it caused me to tremble and my heart to falter. Never before has opera music sounded so serenely beautiful. Never before have I struggled so hard to find one word, even one, in Spanish or English, to express my emotion. Never before!

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México is a country saturated with this magic and romance. It is a country full of the richness of love and affection.

Sitting at dinner with friends, there is the constant dance of couples’ hands twisting and turning, entwining themselves around one another. As if simultaneously carrying on two conversations, their hands whisper to one another with assurances of affection while their mouths go on speaking with others at the table.

Their words, too, betray something of México’s romantic sentimentality. The language is full with the richness of couples’ affection – “mi amor” (my love), “mi vida” (my life), “mi reina” (my queen), couples call one another.

A walk through a park is a walk through couples, their bodies curled round one another, lent against tree trunks, reclining on benches, sprawled across the grass. This is not the place for the PDA-wary. Even the car alarms here whistle as if at a beautiful woman passing by.

I enjoy the freedom of love here. I enjoy its taste. I enjoy the shamelessness of affection. And I wonder why we aren’t all so generous in our demonstrations of love, so affirming of our feelings.

Pyramid Stones & Life's Construction

Have you ever wondered whether you should give up on the thing that you have felt yourself made for all of your life? This is where I am tonight.

Since I can remember, working and living in developing countries alongside poor communities has been a defining part of who I am and who I hope to be. It is so much of what makes up my heart, like an undercurrent to my life.

There was a period of my life when I experimented with the idea of white picket-fences and 2.5 children. I tried to adjust my childhood normalcy to that of my American and British friends. I tried to convince myself that perhaps I could be happy and fulfilled in suburbia.

Here in Mexico, the Spanish conquistadors used the stones from pyramids they had demolished to construct churches and palaces. I have tried to do this - to take the materials of my childhood and adult experiences and construct something different, something of the "developed" world, something normal . . . But I can't. The stones in Mexico were made to come together into magnificent pyramids. The stones of my childhood were made to construct a life lived overseas. And yet, in the midst of tiredness and discouragement, I can't help but wonder at how easy it would be if only I could build something different.

I have been trying to find a field placement for the past several months and trying to hold the faith that the Lord that I love, the Lord that has provided for me so abundantly in the past will do so again. And while I believe this, I find I am sapped of energy. After months of trying to convince various NGOs of my infinite value and potential, I am becoming less convinced.

I know many would urge me to have faith in myself. I have never quite understood this. The older I get, the more of a lie it appears to be. Have faith in myself? I am not all-powerful. I cannot control the way the world moves. I am just a woman - wonderfully and carefully made with gifts and talents, yes - but still just a woman and therefore weak and limited. My life and this world are far too complicated and far too dangerous for me to place my faith in this fragility.

I wonder at how the pillars of my faith did it - kept the faith in God's overwhelming love and power despite all that happened to them and around them. The troubles of my situation are so terribly small in comparison, and yet I doubt. The Word says that "... faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Heb 11:1). I am learning that it is not merely a exercise of the mind, but a work of one's will. It is labor . . . and I am tired.

So this is where I remember that while, in all my perfectionistic nature, I long to never doubt, I also belong to a God that has told me, "Cast all your burdens on me, for I care for you." After all, it is He that has been building my life such that I long to be in the field. It is He who created these stones, He who decided what they would make and He who will ultimately construct something magnificent with my life.

First Nights

It is a strange feeling to be in a country for the first night. The air seems to move under a different weight, as if adopting its own peculiar walk. In Mexico, that air walks in circles around me with a heavy fullness. The spaces between people are filled with it. It is as if the air becomes the meeting ground for noises and smells and all that combines to make a place. The air has a feeling to it.

I arrived in Mexico this evening, exhausted. After waking up at 4:30AM to catch my flight, I spent the second half of the trip from Chicago to Mexico sitting next to a woman and her three year old daughter - adorable, but lacking in any understanding of good ol' American personal space. I kept scolding myself after picturing the scene from Dirty Dancing - "This is my dance space. This is your dance space." Oh, I should know better than to be this possessive over air.

From Mexico City, I traveled about an hour and a half to Cuernavaca. The trip south begins in the mass traffic jam that is the center of D.F. (Destrito Federal). Street markets, business people, tourists, buses, taxis, bicycles all collide in a wonderful crash of color and sound. Slowely this wonderful commotion begins to subside into city neighborhoods with houses rather than buildings. Cement walls surround the more expensive homes but do not keep out the gentle roar of the city that is like an undertow that keeps these suburbs tied to the city. And then, finally, the roar of the city dies and is replaced the silent music of the mountains. Jagged rocks rise on either side, lined with fluorescent green moss and grass. Then suddenly a valley breaks and there, nestled in the richness of the green are the familiar corrugated tin roofs of little pueblos. A man's horse plods slowely forward while a child runs quickly buy.

Do we know how fortunate we are? Do we realize the richness of cities and pueblos?

I know that it is on these evenings, having arrived again in a new and familiar place that the fullness of the air and the life that it holds suddenly feel more precious. It is on these first nights, before I am used to all that surrounds me that I realize how overwhelmingly full of life and beauty this world is! And then I think, I want to be a part of this world. I want to live here. And then I realize that it is precisely because it is new that I am struck be it, and that this life does surround us, wherever in the world we find ourselves.

For those in the know - by common demand

I received so many questions as to what it is that I am doing that I am finally deciding to post to add to the confusion.

I left Washington, DC and returned to Boston in mid-September when my father returned from Afghanistan and my sister from Scotland. My family spend a wonderful couple of weeks together.

On October 13, I leave for Mexico for five weeks to continue my Spanish language study and visit with some friends of the family. As some of you may recall, these are the same people that I stayed with for a month in the summer of 2004.

On November 20, I return to Boston from Mexico only to turn right around on November 21 and head California where I will spend Thanksgiving with a couple of my best friends.

When I return from California on November 29, I will continue my search for scholarships, fellowships, etc. In January of 2005 I will begin a blended learning Masters in Applied Community Change and Conservation program with Future Generations. I will be based in the field (though this is a rather large detail yet to be worked out) and will apply all the lessons back into the context of the communities with whom I work. Once a semester, my fellow students will gather together from more than a dozen countries to study in a different field site. In March '05, I will be in India, August '05 in New York, March '06 in Peru and August '06 I will be graduating in Tibet.

I hope this has managed to eliminate some of the confusion, though somehow I have my doubts. Let me know if you think you get it - I could use some of that clarity.