Well, I didn't do so good with the blogging. It turns out that the wireless internet wasn't working so well on the Casa campus, and...well...instead of writing about our week, we were living it! Which is a more excellent way, I think.
That said! We would love for you who had to stay back here in the wintry slog to have a glimpse inside of our experience. If you're local, come to worship at First Church on March 11! All 19 of us will have some kind of role in worship, to try to communicate to you in songs, stories and images just what happened and what it meant to us.
Short of that, here are a couple of my personal highlights:
~Baptizing my sister Emily, who was not raised in church, in the Pacific Ocean, surrounded by (Firsties) Jeff, Jamie, Sophia, Michael, Rebecca, Eva, Celia, Rafe, Carmen, Kate, (Casa kids) Miguel, Vanessa and Isabel--who all blessed her in English or Spanish. Peter and I did the full-immersion dunking (my first such!). We anointed her with oil. Then we had the ceviche you've ever eaten, and octopus, and shrimp, and phat red snapper. THEN we went snorkeling all over a shipwreck in the bay! And played frisbee! I think that day made God very happy.
~Sharing Ash Wednesday service with the Casa kids. Imagine a warehouse-type chapel, gray concrete floors, clean but threadbare altar cloths, secondhand paschal candles burned halfway down, lighting the night. Imagine the hard wooden benches moved into a circle. Imagine two wooden kneelers that have only ever pointed toward the Important People on the Chancel, pointing at each other instead, in the center of the circle.
Imagine small brown busy kids next to Americanos, laps claimed, hushed silence. Imagine us singing the John Bell song "Calma Tu Ser" ("Be Still and Know") over and over, with a little bit of a round, until our hearts are all quiet. Imagine the kids and grownups meeting at the kneelers, facing each other, to tell each other deep secrets, everyone in their own native tongue. Imagine Jeff going up 6 times, to face children who needed a partner (in his own words, "I had a lot to confess!"). Imagine two tiny boys meeting each other, palms in prayer position, earnest as all get out, confessing their sins (what could they possibly have to confess?), while Pinky the dog walked through, howling his own confessions (that mujeriego...). Imagine putting ashes on those sweet young faces, saying, "De polvo veniste, hasta polvo regresaras," over and over. GOD.
~Taking kids to the movie theatre, to see "We Bought a Zoo," dubbed into Spanish. Trying to keep track of 21 kids in the dark. Whose names I didn't all know. While watching a movie about an older boy and a younger girl whose mother had just died of cancer. Wait--did I say this was a favorite moment?
~The American kids on our trip, who did SO WELL. Two redeyes (to get there and back), heat, long meetings, language barriers, big bugs, strange food, long lines...and Eva, Celia, Sophia, Rafe and Carmen were amazing. They made great friends. They ran all over the Casa campus playing soccer, making friendship bracelets, doing art, playing Uno, eating side by side with kids their age without their parents in attendance--there was no cross-cultural barrier at all, as far as they were concerned.
~The American grownups on our trip, who also did SO WELL. So many people spoke Spanish, or tried to. So many people who got sick (Kate!) or hurt (Peter! Others who I am forgetting!) were so eaaasy about it. So many people just laid down their anxieties and jumped right in, to work or play. It was a different kind of trip--with three families with kids, three committed couples without kids, three singles--but everyone got along famously, was inclusive and kind and we worked through all the stuff that came up! because stuff always comes up...
When can we go again?
No comments:
Post a Comment