Hospitality, resistance, the Catholic Worker

On Monday and Tuesday, we visited the Guiseppe Conlon Catholic Worker House in Harringay, North London, and the Catholic Worker Farm in an old farmhouse on the outskirts of London.  Both the House and the Farm take in guests - the House offers shelter, food and community to about 17 men who are refused asylum seekers - men from all over the world.

Guiseppe Conlon House is at the back of an old church in a Turkish neighborhood, almost invisible from the street.  Father Martin Newell welcomed us, told us a bit of the Catholic Worker history, talked about the grounding of their work in Catholic Social Teaching, and led us in a Eucharistic celebration.  As a community, they are "ecumenical, pacifist, communitarian and anarchist in the spirit of gentle personalism."  They fed us with the same generosity and community spirit that they offer to their guests - and at least we did help with the cleaning up: Father Terry Moran, CSJP-A on the left and Katrina Alton, CSJP Candidate and soon-to-be novice on the right, with one of the core community members.  Katrina has been part of the Catholic Worker community and has participated in some of their acts of resistance, including a protest at the Ministry of Defense headquarters for which she was arrested (see the posting of September 5, 2012)

At the farm, we met with Scott Albrecht, who shared with us some of the ways his history has led him and his family to choose life as Catholic Workers.  The farmhouse and a couple of acres are leased from the farmer who raises cattle on the farm; the Catholic Worker community has a grand vegetable garden, with plenty of kale, zucchini, chard, beans, tomatoes and potatoes for the community dinners.  Their guests are women and children, again women who are not easily able to get asylum. We were wonderfully fed on lamb stew, tomato soup, and green salad, and we returned home - in sunshine at last - full of admiration for the work of these Catholic Workers, work without salary and with many worries about having money to pay the rent and the light bill, work shared joyfully with friends and guests.

In the top photo above, Scott in front of the fireplace in the 14th century farmhouse; below, the vegetable garden.

London rain

There's a theme emerging - I last wrote about getting caught out in the rain in Suchitoto, and today all 35 of us were caught out in the rain in the London Wetland Centre, an event totally appropriate to being in the wetlands.

The glorious swans and colorful ducks found it all delightful, but for me it was a rude reminder of just how cold and wet rain can be in a cold climate.  Getting back to St. Katharine's in Limehouse meant riding across almost the entire breadth of London on various Tube lines, but then we were warm and at home, inside, which is the only perfect place to be in a rainstorm.

I am loving the double experience of being in this great city of London, with all its delightful and bewildering variety of peoples and languages and being with my Sisters and Associates of St. Joseph of Peace community, whom I miss greatly when I'm in El Salvador.  Our times of prayer and deep reflection are powerful - and so are the times of laughing over card games and counting noses on the Tube.

It's about time

I'm in New Jersey for 5 days this week, for a meeting of the editorial board of Living Peace, our Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace magazine, and I can't help noticing that everyone here is on the same time.  Check the clock in my room: 1:50.  And my cell phone: 1:50.  And the computer: 1:50.  And so on and on...we are always clear about what time it is in the United States.  You might say we're as obsessed by it.

It's not that way in El Salvador.  I don't quite understand it, because I always assumed that all the electronics set themselves automatically to some electronic beam of perfect timing sent out from Greenwich, but there if my cell phone shows 1:50, the computer is likely to say it's 1:58, while the clock on the wall says 1:49, the iPad claims 1:53, and the clock in the car pushes ahead to 2:03.  Every once in a while, I try to reset everything so it's all pointing to the same time (blindly choosing one of those possibilities as the correct, true, Greenwich, gringo time).  Works for a few days, and then they drift apart again. 

Time is just a more flexible concept in El Salvador.  The electronics know it.  After about a year in El Salvador, I stopped apologizing if I was 5 or 10 minutes late for a meeting, because I slowly realized that the meetings usually started about half an hour after the stated time.  Here, as in so much, for Salvadorans relationships matter more than efficiency.  It's hard for a gringa to accept, but I've come to like it that way.  Whatever time it may be in El Salvador, it's always time for a greeting, a conversation, a connection.  In the U.S., it's too often time to run off to the next urgent event.

Bienvenidas

I was alone in this huge house for a short time after Margaret Jane returned to New Jersey, and I felt like a small marble in a very big box, just rattling around.  Peggy O'Neill introduced me to Maria del Carmen, who wanted to move to Suchitoto and was looking for a place to stay, and I am so glad that she's moved in.  Here she is in the patio, in the shade of the lemon tree:

A Salvadoran, Maria del Carmen was once a Hermanita de Jesus de Carlos de Foucauld (Little Sister of Jesus of Charles de Foucauld), has been a peacemaker and community organizer in Chalatenango, and supports herself by creating beautiful cards with dried flowers and leaves.  She's my new Spanish teacher - and it makes a great difference to be speaking Spanish at home.  She'll also be volunteering with children at the Centro Arte para la Paz.  And she has amazing stories to share. 

We're going to be joined tomorrow by Melinda from the University of Santa Clara, an artist who's also volunteering at the Centro Arte para la Paz over the next couple of months and who will live here.  Happily she speaks Spanish - I understand her parents are from Mexico - so that will be the language of the house.

Que alegría, what happiness, to share the house with Maria del Carmen and (prospectively) Melinda, to create a new community in this beautiful space.

Hasta luego, Margaret Jane

I'm taking Margaret Jane to the airport tomorrow for her plane ride home to New Jersey, and this time I don't expect to see her back here until late November.  She's acquired some new responsibilities on a Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace committee or two, and as a new member of the Board of Directors for PeaceHealth.  These meetings come just a little too often for her to come down to El Salvador for the six-week stays that have been her pattern for the last three years.

It's been three wonderful years of sharing household and community in Suchitoto, while I worked on our PazSalud missions and Margaret Jane taught English at the Centro Arte para la Paz.  Her connection with El Salvador is much longer than mine - she was first here during the civil war in the late 1980s - and she has taught me a lot over the years - what to expect, what's reasonable, how to be prepared for water shut-offs and electricity disappearing, how to survive scorpion bites.  Gracias, Margarita, por su compañerisma, sabiduría y por sus grandes historias - thanks for your companionship, wisdom and for your wonderful stories!  Here she is last Thanksgiving, with Peggy and me:

As she flies home, I'll be getting the house ready for Kathy Garcia, who arrives Sunday night: she and Darren Streff and I will be working together through next week.  After that, I'm anticipating a new housemate, Maria del Carmen, who will be doing some volunteering at the Centro Arte para la Paz and working at the house on some artesania - a connection through Peggy O'Neill.  So I won't be too lonely!

And that reminds me to say that Margaret Jane and I have been praying with the Leadership Conference of Women Religious through this week of meetings, and we have been very proud of the clarity, vision and strength they have shown in their public statement today.

Living in a village

One of the very good things about living in a village - well, really a small town - is that it's pretty clear who can do what.  Need an electrician, un electrista?  Felix would be your man.  For minor plumbing problems and any other small things that crop up, Alcides can handle it.  Chamba is the guy to call for car trouble.  And when the refrigerator goes on the blink, as ours did, quite predictably, on Good Friday?  It's time to call the other Chamba, Martha's cousin Chamba Rivera.  Here he is, at work (and as you can see by his striped shirt, he is a Barçelona football fan, like just about every other Salvadoran):

He spent about two hours, repaired the motor driving the fan that sends cold air down to the refrigerator from the freezer, cleaned out the refrigerator from top to bottom, and charged us all of $25.  Priceless!  The ice cream and roast for Sunday even stayed frozen in our ice chest. 

And, as a special bonus, I learned that Chamba is a nickname for Salvador - go figure!  I have no idea how anyone gets to Chamba from Salvador, but I'm glad to know the connection.  Nicknames here are often surprising to the anglo ear, like Chepe from José or Chui (Chewy) from Jesús.  But then Chuck from Charles or Jack from John aren't so obvious either. 

I'm just glad that Chamba, Señor Salvador Rivera, is so very good at his work, and glad to live in a village where it's easy to find out just who to call for any likely disaster.

Gracias, Hermana Paquita

It's been a very long week - I've been restocking groceries, getting the car serviced, working on arrangements for our February health mission, and visiting people who get scholarships or family support from PeaceHealth staff. Every errand means a couple of hours of driving time, so the days have been long.

Today the driving time was even longer, but for a couple of very good reasons. In the morning I went to San José Villanueva - our February mission site - with Clelia Estrada from the Caritas office in the Archdiocese. We had a good meeting with Padre Mario Adin, parish staff and volunteers, then stood in the back of the church, standing room only, while lots of beautiful girls and boys made their first communion.

Then I went on to the Bajo Lempa area where a very special Despedida (farewell) was in progress. Providence Sister Fran Stacey, known to her community in the Bajo Lempa as Hermana Paquita, was getting a full-hearted Salvadoran thank you and farewell. Fran retired to Seattle about six months ago, but has returned for a few weeks to visit her many friends, and they - being Salvadoran - decided to put on a full-scale despedida. There were speeches and proclamations and thanks for the remarkable work Fran did during her 16 years in El Salvador, which included founding the Fundación Tierra y Esperanza para el Campesino (Earth and Hope for the Farmer Foundation), working to provide scholarships for local students, and helping raise funds for health emergencies. It seems like she's been a key part of much that's happened in the coastal zone for all those years, and now it was time to say "thank you!"

I had to leave while the thanks were still being spoken, so just got a chance to talk briefly with Fran and tell her thanks also from the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace. I didn't manage to get a photo of her, but here's one of the dancers getting ready to delight everybody.

Just for the enlightenment of you norteamericanos who may be reading this: the despedida began at 1 PM (more or less, I think it was really just getting under way when I arrived at 2) and was scheduled to go on until 4 PM, with pretty much all that time filled by speeches and presentations. Now that's a serious thank you! Gracias, Hermana Paquita!

Instructions from a master teacher

When we finished our week of clinics in San Rafael Cedros last February, we gave 80 Sawyer Point One water filters to the community, in care of Iris Alas. Last week Iris invited me to a meeting at which she was handing over about 15 of the filters to women who had completed the necessary steps - they'd come to a first meeting where they had learned about the importance of clean water, and about how much it would save the family in medical costs, someone in the family had been tested for parasites and bacteria at the local health center, and they were ready to spend $5 or $10 (depending on means) to defray the cost of the buckets, which the municipality had purchased.

We met at Iris' house, and for the next hour I had the pleasure of watching a master teacher at work. First, Iris went over the details: starting the treatment for parasites once everyone in the family is using the clean water; using the clean water to wash hands and food; keeping the bucket of clean water covered and off the floor; sending the kids to school with bottles of clean water; making refrescos with clean water; backwashing the filter regularly to keep it clean. That's Iris at right in the top photo, and also in that photo, because I couldn't resist, is the family cat, occupying, like every good cat, the exact center of the space. Everyone, I'm here to tell you, carefully walked around the cat, who took this as her due.

Then three CIS volunteers showed how to put the filter and buckets together, and we watched the tap water flow into the bottom bucket, and then each of the women handed over her family member's lab test and the money, and each received two buckets and the filter kit.

It was a joy to see this being done so carefully because, as Iris says, otherwise the filters wouldn't be well used, or they might be sold or be forgotten. These women had to go through some work and pay some money to get their filters, and because of that they're much likelier to use them for the health of their families - and Iris and the local youth who get scholarships from CIS will be checking up in six months.

An empty place in our hearts

Today in Bellingham, Washington my Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace community said a sad goodbye to Sister Geraldine Collins, who died early in the morning of December 27th in Swedish Hospital. St. Mary-on-the-Lake is going to seem empty without her Irish presence, her friendly ways, her beautiful and distinctive voice. Geraldine loved the morning and evening prayers in our chapel, and she had an "O" at the beginning of many prayers, both lilting and fervent, that I always listened for. She loved getting her exercise, and even after she had to do her walking with the assistance of a walker she would go around and around our meditation garden every day. She has lived at St. Mary-on-the-Lake all the twenty years that I've been in the community, and I can hardly imagine the community without her. This small, gentle and godly woman took all the difficulties of aging with grace and now, with grace, she is freed to walk with God. No walker will be needed.

Celebrating the Incarnation

Now that the feast of Santa Lucia has been duly celebrated, we are beginning the celebrations of Navidad in Suchitoto. For the last two nights, Korla and I have joined the community for Las Posadas, part drama, part pilgrimage, and part celebration. For Las Posadas, we gather at the house that was the destination on the previous evening, and all walk together with the priests, singing Christmas carols, carrying candles (which mostly blow out in the December winds) and blowing on pitos (little ceramic whistles which make quite a piercing shriek) to the next house, in another neighborhood. When we get there, the door is opened just a crack, and a long sung drama begins. On behalf of Mary and Joseph (represented by children, along with shepherds and angels), the priest asks for shelter. Those inside sing in reply, first denying entry - and this goes on, back and forth, for quite a while - but finally the "innkeepers" relent and open the door. Mary, Joseph, shepherds, angels, all of us pour in to see the Christmas tree and the nacimiento, and our hosts bring out hot chocolate and cookies.

I'm trying to catch on to the words of the Christmas carols here - some, of course, have familiar tunes, like Silent Night and the Little Drummer Boy. I remember a few from last year, among them my favorite, La Virgen está lavando. As best I understand it, this song tells about the Virgin washing Jesus' diapers in the river and hanging them up on a rosemary shrub while the angels are singing and the rosemary blooms. And the chorus says:

Pero mira como beben los peces en el río
mira como beben por ver a Dios nacido.
Beben y beben y vuelven a beber,
los peces en el río por ver a Dios nacer.

But look how the fish in the river are drinking,
looking how they're drinking to see God newborn.
They drink and they drink and they keep on drinking,
the fish in the river, to see God being born.

Think for a minute about those diapers being washed in the river, and what are the fish drinking with such ecstasy? What a marvellous, and very Latino, image of the fullness of the incarnation. ¡Beben y beben y vuelven a beber!

Fiestas patronales

For the whole of this wonderful week, Suchitoto has been given over to preparation for Santa Lucia's day, December 13th. Each of the central town's seven barrios, or neighborhoods, has a day, and ours was today. Korla and I got up when the firecrackers started at 4 AM, got dressed and walked out into a chilly (for El Salvador: the temperature may have gotten down to 65, and everyone but us was wearing caps and sweaters) and dark morning. We sat on the sidewalks drinking coffee and turning our styrofoam coffee cups into candle holders (it's an art) as everyone gathered. At about 5:15, candles were lit, and the whole neighborhood, I think at least 200 of us, joined in a long slow candlelight procession to the church, singing "Santa Lucia, mi corazon," with four women carrying a statue of Santa Lucia. The pastor, Fr. Carlos Elias Echevarria, met us at the church door, told a little of Lucia's story, and invited us in for Mass.

The rest of each neighborhood's day has some special events - for ours, there was a parade of masked characters (mostly children, who do a version of trick or treat) and a children's festival, as well as a special day for seniors, but this senior was away in the city, doing some essential shopping. And in spite of the fact that everyone in the neighborhood was pretty much up and out by 5 AM (no sense trying to sleep through the firecrackers), there was a parade with the neighborhood's float showcasing our candidate for Queen of Suchitoto at 7 PM, fireworks are going on now, and a Noche Ranchero has just started up a couple of streets over. It's a lot of fun, a combination of civic pride, neighborhood togetherness, loud music, fireworks and religion that would not happen many places in the U.S., but is part of the life of every town in El Salvador.

Don't Pay the Rent!

I've been wondering about a poster that recently appeared, draped modestly over the front of El Salvador's famous "La Chulona" statue on Boulevard Constitucion (La Chulona is a statue of Justice, portrayed as a beautiful naked woman carrying a sword and scales. There's also an El Chulón elsewhere, but that's another story). The image of this wild-eyed man saying "I'm not paying the rent" was a puzzle until I read Tim's El Salvador Blog, and realized that this is an initiative to get people to refuse to pay extorsion money (known here as la renta). I won't retell the story, but recommend you follow this link to Tim's telling.

It's a beautiful grassroots movement, and it's what is most necessary for a change from the violent conditions of today - may Don Ramon's face and this slogan be the beginning of a new day in El Salvador.

A visit to El Bario

Yesterday Alexine, Margaret Jane and I visited El Bario, a village that is part of the Suchitoto municipality. Many people from El Bario lived in the Calle Real refugee camp in the mid-1980s when Margaret Jane and Andrea Nenzel worked there - walking in with Margaret Jane is a bit like being an escort for a star! Lita, who once travelled to a Geneva conference on refugees with Margaret Jane, showed us around her beautiful and well-organized village. In the top photo, Lita (in pink) stands with her mother, Margaret Jane and Alexine. Other photos show the village chapel, Alexine with two very delightful young girls, an older girl with a hen on the way to market, and a mother watching over her daughters who are embroidering panels for baby dresses. The panels end up on clothes in the United States; the girls get two dollars for each panel, which is pretty good pay in El Salvador, especially for work that can be done in a friendly group of girls.

El Bario was organized as a cooperative in the 1970s. They were forced off their land during the Civil War, but were one of the first communities to return in the late 1980s - in part because they feared that if they did not return they would lose their land. This is a very well organized farming community, with a school, a community center, a corn mill, a small store and the chapel; it feels to someone from the United States like an extended family, and so it is. Lita sent us home with embroidered handkerchiefs and a recently published study of El Bario's history and present life - great memories of a very special day.

Giving Thanks

Five gathered around our table for a Thanksgiving feast today - Margaret Jane, Alexine, Peggy, and Shrade, a new friend from Seattle who has been giving singing classes at the Centro Arte. I got to make the feast, which was great fun, if sometimes challenging (it appears that sage, an essential ingredient in the way Thanksgiving should taste, can't be found here). I did find fresh cranberries, of all wonderful things, in PriceSmart, the local version of Costco, and a Butterball turkey, which spent the morning soaking in brine. A San Salvador bakery made the pumpkin pie, and I created stuffing with Italian seasoning instead of sage. It was all good, but the stories were better. Between Peggy's stories of her father and mother dancing around the kitchen and Alexine's story about blessing an engagement ring for a stranger she met on the George Washington bridge we were enthralled. And we ate lots and lots of turkey and gave thanks for the joy of our lives.

Welcome, Alexine!

Yesterday Margaret Jane and I happily drove to the airport to pick up Sister Alexine Anderson. Alexine is part of our UK community - born in Scotland, lives in London - but for the last year she has been part of the novitiate community in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. That put her close enough to El Salvador to make a trip down, and here she is for the next two weeks. With Margaret Jane from New Jersey and me from the West Coast, we're a pretty complete geographic representation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace.

Alexine spent many years teaching in the Cameroon, so being in the tropics is familiar. And she's eager to learn about El Salvador and about the various projects that Margaret Jane and Peggy O'Neill and I are involved in. Today she joined a delegation from California to get an introduction to the Centro Arte para la Paz, and we got one of the delegates to take our photo (that's Alexine in the middle). Many other plans and possibilities are being discussed - trips to the city, to the campo, to San Juan Opico where our February Medical Mission will be held - and meanwhile we've had some good time to talk and catch up with each other.

Welcome, Margaret Jane!

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Yesterday I very happily drove to the airport to pick up Sister Margaret Jane Kling, who is joining me in Suchitoto to create a CSJP community. El Salvador is familiar ground to Margaret Jane, who ministered here in refugee camps and urban communities for five years during the Salvadoran Civil War. She's been back several times since, but this time she's here to stay for awhile, and I couldn't be happier! Patti Moore kindly took this photo of us relaxing in the patio.

Our return had a little extra drama to it: on the way back, I got a call from Patti, telling me that Marta had fallen off the stepladder and hurt her ankle. She had been trying to do some touch-up painting to cover the handmarks left by the electricians; instead Marta and the ladder and the paint all ended up on the floor together. Patti discovered that 911 doesn't work in Suchitoto, and since her Spanish is very limited, managed to find my cell phone number. I called Peggy O'Neill and Peggy got Marta in touch with her sister Orbelina and we hurried back. When we got to the house, we found Patti and Orbelina hard at work cleaning paint off the floor and Marta sitting with ice on her swollen ankle. A trip to the Suchitoto hospital for an X-Ray revealed that - thankfully - this was a sprain, not a break, so now Marta is back home recuperating and the handmarks are still on the wall.

Then I cooked dinner for Margaret Jane and Patti and Peggy O'Neill, and I have to say, as someone who thinks she's a good cook, it was the worst dinner I've ever put together - the steak was as tough as young shoe leather, the rice was soggy, the broccoli got overcooked. Only the salsa, which Patti made, and the watermelon, prepared by God, saved the meal. But everyone ate and was happy....sometimes it's enough just to be with friends.