a glimpse of a day

dear friends and lovers,

so i have gone from random updates to weekly updates to no updates. where is james? egad! so says my mother and father who only partially mockingly let me know that they were glad to hear i'm alive. so i've been mia for a bit, but we have had electricity problems and my school had internet issues and then i went on retreat. enough excuses. frankly i find a blog hard to update. maybe it is my perspective that is skewed, but my life is not an adventure. i am not motorcycling through europe or climbing volcanos in asia. my life is, believe it or not, quite boring. i wake up before 7am, i get dressed, read some daily reflections from merton or the psalms, take a half hour long bus ride to work when i either read or journal about the previous day and my thoughts. i then take another half hour 3 wheel moto taxi ride to get to my school where i fear for my life because of the poor quality of the road. i get to school, sweep my classroom, make sure i'm ready for class, realize its 10:05 and still no students. i go around the school looking for and rounding up my students so that we start by 10 after or so. i teach them for about 40 min. english phrases and words that most are able to forget in mere minutes much less remember anything from the day before. i repeat this 2 more times until lunch time comes around. i eat lunch, usually in silence (me, not the students) and then i return to my classroom. i might sweep again, i might read a little. i might check my email at this time or maybe plan some things for my afternoon classes. at 2:00 my level 2 english students start to wander in and i usually am asking them "what did you do last night" or "what did you do this weekend" to practice the simple past tense. sometimes, however, with these students i will forego english class to discuss more pertinent things. take, for example, the other day when a fight broke out between 2 students. punches thrown kicks etc. the director and another teacher were in the street outside of the school and stood there watching the fight from the other side of the fence, so i was the first teacher there as the students were breaking it up. the director threw both of the kids out for the afternoon, and they were both back the next day. so with my english level 2 students we talked (in spanish) about why there was a fight, why do we fight, is it right to hit people when they hit you etc. etc. 3:00 and i teach my level 1 english class which has changed from 20 students to 1 student to 30 when they re-registered for the class to now when i have about 8, only one of which was in the original 30 and the others that have showed up and said "profe, can i be in your class?" and me saying, sure, why the heck not. we will be doing foods soon. 4:00 comes, i get on the school bus with 100 roudy students who will throw spit balls and food scraps at each other, will flick me in the ears, play with my hair, and hit each other as i generally try to ignore them as they try to annoy me and try to intervene as they hit each other, both with only moderate success. we get to where i catch my other bus between 4:30 and 5:00 depending on our bus driver and the daily quality of the road. and then i take another bus where, if i get a seat, i read until i get home... usually between 5 and 6 depending on traffic and other sorts of things. i sit in my house until we eat dinner. i sit some more with my community until i brush my teeth and go to bed. other things i may do depending on the day are play guitar, cook dinner, meet about our community, meet about our faith. and that, my friends, is pretty much every day. jvi, for me, has been a lot more about accepting the slow repetitiveness of the days and accepting how helpless i am in the face of such great need and poverty. i pass a man on the street. he is high on glue and hungry. gosh, maybe i'll teach him english. nope, i'll just smile and nod and carry on my way. so this is why i don't usually update my blog because 90 percent of my life is lived in the same day after day way. i could, i guess, write about my thoughts but those are even starting to sound pretentious to me, so i write in my journal, and i'm sorry you aren't able to read that, but it might not interest you either. please do not write me saying you think i'm doing wonderful work and please do not worry that i am despairing. neither of these are true. i am not doing "wonderful work." i teach english for a non-profit that wants to teach kids computer and english skills so that they have an opportunity to succeed in a business world that doesn't value human beings but only human skills. it is not glorious, it is not horrendous, it just is. it is not attempting to address injustices in the current capitalistic value system in order to bring more freedom to those suffering from oppression and it definately isn't trying to revolt against the current system by embracing holy ways of living and being human. it is giving kids a chance to make it in the system we have now that requires that many many suffer so that a few can succeed, so some of mine may succeed but countless others will continue to die. and i do not despair. i find happiness in sunday morning breakfasts and saturday night hide and go seek, 15 year old students that are still ticklish enough for me to use that maneuver during a game of soccer and farmers that love moonshine. so i live in joy, but i do not feel any desire to write about it. so do not be surprised if this is updated only rarely, when something shareworthy happens, because things do happen, but most of the time reading a blog of mine would be as exciting a reading a blog from your own highschool english teacher or spanish teacher. not fun. so be blessed and have a lovely life enjoying the simple things that cannot be expressed or written about and keep writing about them anyway so that you may grow wise about yourself and the world around you.

james

a reflection in 3 parts. part 3

But there are so many blocks to us forming any sort of community where vulnerability, compassion, and service are considered values. The most obvious would be our dominant culture that we were raised in that values strength, dominance, individualism, wealth, and power among other things like donating money to a non-profit each year so that our wealth looks like a means to helping the world when our wealth is what is sucking it dry. I think wealth is one of those things that creates divisions between people. I'm not saying that poverty doesn't, but most people don't choose poverty, although a few come to mind…, but when people choose poverty the divisions that come are usually between them and those that feel threatened as if a choice towards poverty is somehow a challenge to a choice towards wealth, and it is, so they are correct. But anyway, I see it here around me so often. There are families that have divisions between themselves and their neighbors. Take Doña Nieves who tells me the other day that she is just worked to death. She is 62 and her husband has left her recently, who knows why or where, but he didn't do anything before anyway, and she cooks and cleans, and sews things to make money… she's a great seamstress, and on top of this she offers help to poor children in the area and visits an old lady that has no friends or people to buy her food. Sweet. But when she asks her old friend Doña Adelia for a little help with some of the visiting and volunteering and giving time, Adelia just offers some money. Her little hotel has taken off and she doesn't really have time to give of herself anymore, but Nieves doesn't want her money, just her time. Why did I tell this story? I have no idea. But it reminds me that in communities people look after each other and offer themselves to each other, but when money, or better, Capital, comes in, so often people fall out of the way of offering of self and into the way of offering money. And nieves doesn't tell adelia that she feels hurt or offended, she just keeps trucking along. So these two old friends can no longer be honest or vulnerable with one another and somehow I'm sure that adelia's new found wealth has something to do with it. Have you ever read the brothers Karamazov? It's fantastic. You should read it. There is a great section on the temptations of Christ in the desert. He rejects using the magic of the devil, then rejects a miraculous sign of the tempter, and finally rejects political power… I don't remember all the symbolism right now, but the Grand Inquisitor was pissed because he rejected all of the means of controlling people to ensure their happiness. And that's another example of our breakdown in community. People with power that want to control to ensure happiness. Long ago I signed onto the power corrupts bandwagon. Lots of people say it, but only a few really try to live it. And historically we have had many powerful that gained their power through military conquest, or kingly inheritance, but it wasn't until relatively recently with the development of capital—money for wealth's sake, not for trading's sake—that power through business has even been an option. And I think this is somehow at the roots of many of problems of self destruction today also. We live in fear of what tomorrow brings instead of hope and so we work really really hard to save up money for all of those just in cases and we never stop and realize that we are standing on sacred ground and that all those around us are vessels of the divine spark and sometimes when we wake up from a nap, or on Tuesday afternoons when we freak out for a second there is that deep knowledge that our way of living is somehow drastically disconnected from the roots of humanity, and a deep realization that we are moving further away, not closer, but there is no guide on how to get closer and we feel lost. But there are guides and people throughout history and prophets of an age to come, not our own, that have moved closer to our roots in their own way and function as a sort of light for our path, not the path itself, as we journey together. So I think there need to be some radical changes. Some good examples of those changes, for me at least, are catholic worker movements or sustainable farms. Its just difficult because as I look at all the problems around the world, and feel more and more as if a revolution is what is needed, I still see the man down the street that needs my attention right now. So where do we find ourselves between reform of a way of destruction and a revolution of life. It is obvious for me that I cannot force my way of being or perceiving on others, because to do that in the way of the socialists or the capitalists de-legitimizes my ends through violent coercive means. If you are familiar with Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand thought that the rich and powerful supported all of the poor and weak, but she had it backwards. And what the world needs is for the poor and weak to shrug off the oppression of governments and militaries and police that exist to protect the interests and the property of the powerful… but they (and maybe we) are poor and weak and shrugging off the weight of the world is so much. People must oppose those forces of power and wealth and form communities that are small and local and not huge, distant, and bureaucratic. So for me, I feel only small pangs of panic as I see the world I love dearly spiral down and wonder how I stop it. And only small pangs of pain as I realize that the life I live so often is not in sync with my dreams and understandings of how one should live to transform one's own life and thus invite others to follow. I think, though, that regardless of whether or not the worlds structure as it stands now collapses due to oil, or water, or hatred, or foolishness, that I will try to live my life as one that watches the lights and looks for my path. I will probably try to live in some Catholic Worker house that has a farm connected to it or live on the farm that has a house connected to it and try to work on addressing immediate problems while at the same time participating in and encouraging a way of life that is more sustainable and holistic. And I will do foolish things that people will see such as stand in front of large marble buildings holding signs that quote from a 3000 year old text with quips like swords into plowshares when nobody even knows what a plowshare is anymore, and I will stay in my house to play with children or plant some seeds on election days and people will ask why I've given up on reforming the government—call me hopeless or a quitter—and I will smile, and questions myself if they are right, and maybe… but no. I have more hope, and I am trying all the harder to be one that lives as the Lord is calling me. And the master that I serve has some serious issues with large organizations that take money at the threat of violence from the workers to give to the business owners to build better bombs to kill women and children wherever they may be if they oppose our system of taking money (or oil, or trees, or water) at the threat of violence. And maybe none of this will happen. Maybe someday without looking I will step out in front of a car and the lord will take me and give me rest from all these questions that have no answers and all of this searching that has only one goal, which is "on earth as it is in heaven." But I guess until that day I'll keep exploring things and wondering and hoping hoping hoping and praying praying praying.

a reflection in 3 parts. part 2

It doesn't have to be spoken of so mystically. Its something that farmers are very familiar with, especially those that still plant with their hands, harvest with their bodies, and eat to survive. There is no question about the connection between the grain of rice and the body which it nourishes. But there has come about such a disconnection between most people (western civilization especially) between our food sources, our life sources, and our every day lives that we forget that the fresh mozzarella cheese and tomato basil on rye sandwiches that some of us may miss so dearly come tomato farms, and cows, and basil plants, and fields of rye that were harvested, and milked, and picked by other human beings, put on trucks by other human beings, stocked on shelves by other human beings, bought, and sold, and washed and cut, and combined, and salted and flavored by other human beings. Its just so simple to give 5 dollars and get the sandwich… but the process… its somehow worth so much more than 5 dollars. How do I pay all those people that have done all that work with just so little. And of course it works cause there are lots of tomato mozzarella sandwiches being bought, and they use tomatoes in other delicious things like papa john's pizza. But what are we losing be being only consumers and not producers. What has disappeared from the human experience when the majority of us consume but do not draw forth any sort of life. We call it a "division of labor" so that some can be teachers, and others basket ball players, and others rock stars, and others stay at home moms, and we can still eat hamburgers, and rice, and lentils, and fish. But this division of labor, I think, has gone to some sort of bizarre extreme that leads to some division of worlds. The world inhabited by the Mexican tomato picker is not the same as the world inhabited by the tomato grower or eater. Well shoot. So along with all of the other problems that come from this including bursting populations that are still somehow starving, an elimination in the diversity of food that exists and that is cultivated, a reduction in general holistic health etc., we get a division of worlds. There are so many divisions between people that we almost think that we are supposed to see another as the other. There is a movie called "I heart huckabees: an existentialist comedy" and at one point a psycho-therapist (or something like that) is talking about the imaginary divisions we have between us, and that they don't really exist, and in the movie the particles of his nose and the main characters nose start free flowing in the air and mixing until the main character snaps out of it pointing out the endless holes, spaces, and divisions that exist between everything, even within the smallest atom. And he's right. But he is looking at it too fundamentally and not mystically enough. We are all one. Our struggle is all one. I'm sure Jung or someone else would say that we stop believing that sometime around when our mothers had a younger child and we realized that there is a competition for attention or something sexual. And they are probably right in most of the western world. But let us remember that our cultural perspective is just one of many cultural perspectives and that the heart of humanity lies much deeper. Where? I think somewhere in the relationship between people. In community and communities. Outside of this an individual is lost, but within a community an individual is given the chance to freely become that which God desires.

a reflection in 3 parts. part 1

this is something i wrote in response to a question by a good friend, and as that i have been failing in updating you on anything actually going on in my life, i thought this would be a legitimage thing to share. more or less about any thoughts I might have on the pressing matter of the self-destructive mindset of the human race and if only I even thought of other things once in a while I would be saner. But as that it is close to all that I think about, it really depends on the day in which one catches me as to how optimistic or cynical I am… how much it's the individual or the institution… and some days I contradict what I have thought and said on other days. As a self-aware hypocrite, I find this the best way to be (don't we always) and I rationalize it by saying that I am constantly learning, growing, changing and trying, like nhat hanh says, to be aware that I can learn from all life (rain to republicans) and that my perspective is never ultimate. But from all of this confusion, a few themes are rising to the surface as I write to you. They are the lack of community and communities, the human disconnect from our sources of life: food, water, shelter, work, etc., and the loss of the sacred. These are all, of course, interconnected, and in a probably confusing manner I will scribble my way along some of these lines of thinking, starting from the end and working my way back there, and ignoring all contradictions and gaps in thinking.

How often do we stop and realize that the ground that we walk upon is sacred? This is a thought that Margaret has triggered in my head and that I can't get out. Annie Dillard tells me that some 70 to 90 BILLION people have died on earth. wow. Here's the issue. I believe that humans are sacred beings. Vessels of the divine spark. And while I'm not sure what happens when a person dies my religion teaches me that at the end times we'll be resurrected body and soul. My only confusion is who gets the dibs on the carbon particles that first made up their body? Because when I think about it, I realize that some 80 billion dead people have disintegrated, broken down, turned into dust, soil, been taken up as nutrients in grass, wheat, apple trees, eaten by worms and rodents, and then birds and bigger eater things like people. So I'm pretty sure that within my constantly changing body are particles that once made up other human beings. Wow. We get so reverent around graveyards and then I look at the back of my knee and wonder how many of those little hairs once existed as teeth somewhere in Africa. And the whole world of interbeing (to continue stealing from hanh) flows out and all around me and I see that the paper used to print the national geographic that I so thoroughly enjoy carries not only clouds and trees and sunlight and dark matter (maybe) but also my ancestors from long long ago whose bodies will someday be taken in the second coming, or so I'm told. Which makes me hope that it happens person by person and I can watch books and couches start disintegrating as these temples of the holy spirit are called back by the one who breathed and spoke life. And I'm only being half serious. But seriously, to recognize the sacredness of all 'things' and beings and "no-things" all around us and within us is a part of being human.

happy ammon

hennacy day...

well not exactly, but according to robert ellsburg's book "saints" today was the day that ammon came up as the day that we remember him. he died on jan. 14th which coincides with my little brother's birthday and only missed by 17 years. i write today because he is another one of my "dead heroes" (i have been asked before if i have any living heroes and the answer is yes, but that's another tale). ammon is someone that i consider a spiritual companion. he was a young radical, spent time in prison for political action and there in solitary confinement went through the beginning of his conversion, seeing others as subjects to be loved and carriers of the kingdom of god... the sermon on the mount. eventually he fell into the catholic worker movement and decided to become baptized a catholic; dorothy day was his god-mother. there with the catholic workers he organized public opposition to new york city air raid drills refusing to live in fear and refusing to assume the inevitability of war. he eventually left catholicism because he couldn't reconcile his personal radial commitment to jesus with bishops and other members of the hierarchy that supported war and what we would call today the "culture of death." and these problems still exist in the church... hypocrisy is a convienent friend in times of desperation. ammon founded a catholic worker house in salt lake city called the joe hill house and lived out his days as a christian anarchist--a follower of christ and one who "doesn't need a cop to tell him what to do." this one man revolution believed that the revolution of god must begin in every individual and then invite others, sometimes with one's actions, to join this radical view of human community, but never should it be forced on others through government, policy, or violence.

so here in nicaragua? well, i wouldn't say that i'm living out the one man revolution, but slowly, day by day, i am trying to transform the way in which i relate to god and to those i meet every day. it is oh so slow to the point that i am usually a failure but i have others to help and support me with good food and good music. and we remember to support each other and a life of service to others rather than service to oneself is a revolutionary way of being in and of itself. so pray for us as we continue our journey deeper into the spirituality of jesus and share our time and commitment to a radically different world that assumes and invites justice, sharing, community, and love rather than inequality, selfishness, individuality, and indifference. peace to you.

james

http://www.catholicworker.com/ah_jh.htm

well so it turns out

that i'm actually not that good at keeping any sort of regular updates on my life. there are a variety of things that affect this. one is that we lose electricity often at my school. another is that i sometimes come to school using a different bus that charges less but leaves later cutting out my time in the morning to update. and thirdly, no offense to those of you that check for updates, i just always seem to have something that i would rather be doing at the moment when i think about updating... so its something i still feel is important but i'm gonna have to come up with some ways of scheduling into my life a time when i just do it. there.

what's been going on lately? well not much different stuff for me. i teach 5 days a week. i grade papers, i plan classes, and i try to convince students that their low grades aren't really my fault since they don't study, or pay attention, or come to class that often. one of my recent challenges is realizing that with the majority of my students i truly value their own education more than they do. today one of my students told me he wouldn't go to school if we didn't have soccer. and if we didn't offer any classes? he'd still come to play soccer. of course. so now at least i see that my english classes are just getting in the way of his soccer time. that's always a good feeling.

i have learned how to ride a motorcycle. (don't tell my mom)... (if you are my mom and are reading this, don't worry too much, i wear a helmet) i don't ride it for any real purpose. i take it 20 minutes one way and then 20 minutes back. wasting probably a dollars worth of gas, maybe less. and i think to myself, how can i simultaneously work against the destructive tendencies of humans to manipulate the world around us to our own detriment through hunger and injustices etc. while at the same time enjoy so much the feeling of getting on a motorcycle, and just going. i guess thats another way in which i'm a hypocrite. so be it.

the other day a man came to our house. said his name was henry jr. call me junior. he was looking for some money. spoke perfect english. had been deported from the states for being an illegal a while back. has aids. so does his wife. so does his 2 year old daughter. he told me he had cheated on his wife, gotten aids, passed it on to his wife and now their daughter has it. he needed some money for the medicine for his daughter... and maybe a few diapers also. we walked down to the pharmacy and i got him the stuff he needed. he might have been lying to me, but i tend to trust people who speak english more (prejudiced) and he bought 3 pampers also. i ran into him later that day near a gas station where i was waiting for a bus. he sat with me for a while, told me it wasn't safe where i was and asked me for a little more money... i gave him 10 cords, about 55 cents. i'm so hesitant to give out money and i used to be a lot less so. i think its the budget that we are on here, but i could just take out my own money from the bank to give to people who ask. and then some people say we shouldn't give out money at all. people point to systems that create these injustices and say to work against them or say we are supporting a lifestyle of begging and handouts. to that i simply respond, well, all my life has been a handout from god to my parents to my education to my time here in nicaragua. but when we give money to someone of our own class its called a donation, and to a lower class a handout. and as far as the systems of injustice, i agree entirely, but lets not pretend that we're all revolutionaries overthrowing the current system and that that gives us a free pass to ignore the immediate needs of our brothers and sisters right there... if we start ignoring those around us we will forget why and for whom the injustices need to be confronted.

this weekend we might go to a solidarity conference. they charge 175 dollars for americans to go. we are going to try to sneak in. solidarity is just too expensive these days.

i hope you too are living a life worthy of reflection and that you are sharing yourself with those around you. let me know how life is going in your area.

j

oops

for those of you that have checked this recently, i'm sorry that i haven't been able to update it more often. today is the first day that my school has electricty since about 2 weeks ago, and updating from the school is usually the easiest. so what has been going on?

well, i've been working a little bit on the farm for the last several weeks, only about 2 hours a week, but i really enjoy it. for those of you that know me, you know that i used to live on a farm and never really liked it, but since reading more catholic worker writings and thinking more about the way in which things are produced and consumed in the world, i guess my catholic guilt got to me, being just a consumer of food and not a producer... so i dig holes and plant seeds. literally. and it is nice.

classes have been getting easier and i have been getting better at teaching, but even so, i am realizing that i don't really like teaching english all that much. its an interesting place to be in, because i was thinking that if i got better, it would be easier and i would enjoy it more, but really as i get better, plan better classes, and commit myself more to my classes, i find myself still not enjoying it. maybe it has to do with my ideas about fabretto as an organization, or teaching english in general, or how i see myself now compared to how i used to understand my role in the world. there are a lot of things i struggle with, including living off of the money of other people, not feeling like i'm actually working in general, or working towards justice specifically, feeling like i need to live more radically the good news of jesus and life in sharing communities, feeling like i need to be denouncing more injustices, wondering how it could ever be possible to build the kingdom of god here in the world and especially here in nicaragua when i'm unclear on my role here as a human being. normal things.

my mom's birthday is coming up and that gets me reflecting on the gift of life and all my parents did for me, struggling to give life to their children.

and there are so many mothers that struggle here, so much, every day, to give life to their children, and they pray for changes so that their kids can go to school and raise healthy grandchildren and learn to sing and dance and play and work. and who hears these cries of the poor?