Sweet Honey and Sufficiency

These are stacks of bee hives waiting to be delivered to towns and villages in El Salvador. They are made and delivered by Miguel Ventura's group. I mentioned Miguel before in a post about the work he has done in El Barial.

I am thinking about these hives today as we are finishing up the last of the sweet honey we had purchased in Alegria, El Salvador. The honey there is dark. It is colored and flavored by the pollen the bees pick up from the coffee that also grows here. Coffee is not the only thing that grows in this mountain town. Alegria is also known as the flower capital of El Salvador. It is town that God has blessed with a great natural beauty and gentleness.

I have enjoyed the honey since we got home in August and I am sad to be near the end of my supply. The coffee was wonderful for many of the same reasons but it is long gone. For me, it is not just about the exquisite flavor of the honey (the best I've ever had), or the rich, earthy, mellow taste of the coffee. There is something else going on when I ingest these El Salvadoran goodies.

I am always aware of swallowing a little bit of that country and having it be alive in me on a cellular level. To know that I am taking something into my body that was nourished by land that has seen so much emotion, dedication, healing and hope among it's people is humbling to me. When I consider that this honey and this coffee were grown, tended and harvested by individuals and not a multi-national corporation is inspiring to me. To taste the goodness that can come from such a land and such a people makes me long to return. To know that in some way, the process that God uses to make honey (earth, sun, seed, flower, pollen, bee, hive, colony, honey, farmer) actually runs through us and back to the earth makes me feel deeply and personally connected to the country of El Salvador.

It helps me to see that I am part of the cycle of sufficiency that God designed into the world. He created a system that can sustain itself when we allow it to. Not only can it sustain itself, but it also connects us all.

I will miss the honey as I miss the country of El Salvador. My prayer is that the taste and lessons of both remain in my mouth forever.

Holding Hands Lightly

I absolutely love this picture. It was taken by my friend Valerie as we were leaving the village of El Barrial in Ciudad Segundo Montes. I last wrote about the wonderful people living in this village in my article titled "Breaking Bread With Friends". Check it out if you haven't read it yet.

What strikes me most about this picture is the way Sarah and her young friend Galena are holding hands. They had just met about two hours earlier. They live in very different worlds, economically, geographically and culturally. They speak something less than 100 words in a common language. They would remain together for maybe 3 hours total and then they would separate.

Given all of these differences, and a very small window of time, they became friends. They made great effort to communicate with one another, to find similarities, to share a moment of their lives. They ate a meal of fresh baked bread and cookies, sat and sang Des Colores and Jesus Loves Me and prayed together. They walked side by side through Galena's village and breathed the same mountain air. They laughed at the chickens that would run between our legs. And then... they touched each other.

I don't know who reached out to who first and I'm not even sure they know. The thing is though, at one point in their short relationship one of them felt the need to physically touch the other. One of them reached out in trust and love and said "I acknowledge you as a person and as a friend. I feel a bond between us and I want to offer my hand for you to hold onto. I trust that you will not hurt me and that you will accept this gift of touch and honor my spirit by holding on to me as I hold on to you." And then... they touched each other.

I can only imagine the moment when these two human beings slid physically into one another's space; that space that we spend so much of our time protecting. We are all too used to building invisible walls around our personal space, so afraid of getting hurt or being taken advantage of, terrified of what might go wrong if we trust someone and they end up disappointing us. In this moment though, two young ladies who hardly knew each other broke through those fortresses of independence and isolation and let one another in. There was no more need for verbal communication. It was Galena's village and yet she didn't lead, Sarah was the older of the two and yet she didn't condescend. Neither of them held on so tightly that they risked intimidating the other. They simply held hands... lightly... there was even enough space between their hands in this picture for the light to shine through. If I was one to wax poetic, or think metaphorically, I would surely see that the light is the representation of love, hope, and the Holy Spirit that moves between us all.

I learned so much in El Salvador. This lesson though, is one of the most profound. I needed to be reminded that to hold hands lightly, to let others into my space and to be ready to trust them, to extend myself to others so that the need for language and speech is overcome by the communication of the Spirit is so critical if we are to truly accompany one another. It is important sometimes to not walk ahead, to not squeeze someone for support but to just hold hands ...lightly.

Another Vote for Relationships

I found this article written by an engineering student at Rice University. It was originally published in The Rice Thresher. She, like us, is working on projects with communities in El Salvador. Please read her story and reflect on her opinions about why the success of humanitarian efforts relies on relationships first. I am glad we are not the only ones who have learned this! Click here for the full story.

Beauty and the Bomb

In the small village of Perquin, near the Museo de la Revolución Salvadoreña (a museum filled with exhibits and artifacts from El Salvador's civil war), you will find a peaceful resting place. A spot to sit and listen to the song of wild Parakeets and other exotic birds while you watch the wind move the cocoa and banana trees. If you close your eyes you can quickly be lulled to sleep by the sounds of nature, and of peace.

But stay awake. Look around you. Look at the small artesania where you can purchase bracelets, key chains... and small hand made dioramas of guerrilla encampments as they looked during the war. Those little sculptures of bunkers and armored vehicles would seem out of place in a lot of other bucolic locations, but not so in Perquin.

Look at the small grove in front of you, right on the edge of the forest. Notice how this beautiful little copse of trees seems to be growing around an open circle, a depression in the earth that may have once been a very small lake, or a clearing for a large campfire circle. Had you been standing in this very spot just 20 years ago you would have seen the 500 pound bomb fall from the sky and rip into the earth as it was intended to rip in to the lives and spirits of the FMLN forces and civilians in this town. These trees are growing around a scar on the face of this town, a crater left over 20 years ago from a bombing raid.

In Perquin, remnants of the war and it's destruction are part of the landscape, reminders of a time so tragic and horrific that it can never be erased, either from the earth or the collective memories of the people. Yet somehow, these permanent scars have caused a transformation. This town was once the center of operations for the FMLN fighters and headquarters for the underground radio station radio venceremos. It was often fought over and held by both sides of the conflict. This entire region was once the bloodiest and most heavily bombed area in the country. It now has the distinction of being one of the least violent and most peaceful parts of El Salvador, according to El Mundo.

Even as I stare into this wound in the earth, I am not crippled by the violence or the death. I am enchanted by the growth. I am uplifted to see that the forest is reclaiming this little plot of land. The trees still grow, the flowers still bloom, and the people still live. It feels to me that even though the memory of the war is still visible, the earth and the people who live here are more focused on life. The horror and destruction will not be the last word. There is true Resurrection in Perquin and Morazan, indeed in all of El Salvador.

It is important to this town that they carry the story forward. The people are aware of that responsibility and have opened the museum and other sites that others may see and hear of their struggles and their losses during the war. It is in the teaching of history that we can open all of our minds and hearts to do what we can to avoid war. This place and these people have not let their history turn to hatred or anger though. It feels to me as if Perquin and Morazan have seen so much violence that they have come to know that they can no longer be violent. While parts of El Salvador suffer from one of the highest rates of crime and violence in the world, this battle scarred area remains safe and peaceful. Talk about beating swords into plowshares!

We walked around the town and saw children in school, people worshipping, teens playing soccer. We even met some members of the El Salvador Army as they walked down a hillside. Nowhere in this town did we feel anything other than peace and a definite sense that even though the land and the people wear their scars for all to see, there is not shame. Even though they have seen and felt horror, they have emerged from the other side and are focused on God's consistent ability to bring life out of death, hope out of horror, growth out of destruction.

I hope that I can learn from Perquin that my scars are able to support new life. I pray that I can never again hide the holes left in my own personal landscape but rather trust that God will fill them in. The depressions in the hillsides of this town give it character. It is obvious to me that the same is true of it's people. Thank God for Resurrection.

Hammocks, Horchata, and Hope

We have been back in United States for three days and I feel like I am only starting to come back to reality. As we were driving home from the airport, I was listening to my travelling companions tell our driver (the mother of one of the teens on the trip) what we did in El Salvador. I was struck at how little the words can actually convey. It sounded like "We saw some people", "We visited some villages", "We ate some Pupusa", all very true but it felt like the words didn't capture anything of the essence of the trip. This is my second visit to El Salvador and I am convinced that it is impossible to describe in words alone.

El Salvador to me is more than a place, it is an experience. You can't just see it in pictures, or hear about it in words. You have to taste it, smell it, breathe it in and cry it out. You need to feel dirt floors beneath your feet in a church (as described by my wife). You need to hear the sun rise. It brings not only light, but also dogs barking, roosters crowing, insects chirping, and the whistle of a bird that sounds an awful lot like the first twenty notes of "the girl from Ipanema". You need to feel your clothes soak up your own sweat as you sit in a metal building, baking in the sun and then just as quickly feel it evaporate in the cool mountain breeze only inches outside the door. You need to laugh with the children as you try to communicate in different languages. You need to hug new friends and sit and talk for hours about what you have in common and also how very different your lives are. You need to experience what it feels like to be in the middle of hope and desperation at the same time. Your ears have to ache from the thunder claps in the mountains only to be soothed by the rain on the bamboo and palm leaves.

To know what it is like in El Salvador you need to sip coffee that was off the bush and into your cup before it ever hit a refrigerated storage unit. You need to taste honey flavored by those same coffee plants. You need to sway along to Latin rhythms that are unfamiliar to you yet remind you of something you can't quite put your finger on. You need to be made dizzy by the butterflys that rise up from the flowers as if the enitre flower bed were rising and falling and dancing to those unfamiliar (to you) Latin rhythms.

The experience of El Slavador is impossible to get over. That stunningly beautiful country, those incredible warm and honest people, all part of a sensory experience for me. I am begining to get reacquainted with my life here in United States and working toward bringing the gifts I received from El Salvador into my everyday life here. I am missing some of the experiences though.

I will hang a hammock on my porch and sway to the rhythym of my life here. I will prepare a glass of instant horchata, a flavor not completely authentic but reminiscient enough to stoke my memory of meals shared with friends in El Salvador. I will do these things and I will be filled with hope. Hope for our two countires, hope for our two peoples, hope that I may be able to bring the passion I feel to love and serve others in El Salvador and put it to good use in United States, hope that I will return to El Salvador in March and that God will continue to bless the relationships forming on both sides of the border.