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?

junetime

dear friends and lovers,

blogging is not my specialty. your forgiveness is appreciated.

sometimes when i am sitting down before i go to sleep, breathing in and out and trying to calm myself so that i can have a little prayer time with god, i start thinking about my classes and the students i teach. they sneak in and i know i'm supposed to acknowledge them and let them go, but they are pretty demanding. and i imagine conversations i will have with certain individuals that i think will help them value education or better understand the grammer dealing with "there is" and on and on. and i stop and say to god, well, its obvious that my students are still on my mind and in my heart so i will try to offer them to you, these thoughts and hopes and potentials. i do this because the more time i'm here, the deeper my understanding is of my own personal helplessness. its just so big and theres just so much. there is the wars and violent conflicts going on all over the world, including iraq and afghanistan. there are the transnational corporations using slave labor in their factories in order to increase wealth and feed consumerism. there is the sex trade that takes advantage of young women and girls--vulnerable because of situations of injustice created by aggressive world capitalism destroying communities and thus individuals. and then once, 4 weeks ago i was standing on a beach staring up at the stars and everything seemed so small. not just myself but all of this. small and pointless. then a few days later at an orphanage i stared into the eyes of a 2 year old girl crying for attention and it all seemed so huge. filled with a world of hope and potential for life and love. and somewhere in the middle of nothingness and everythingness i find myself. i see that i can change nothing around me and am powerless to change even myself. and then i sit. i sit in quietness and ask god to keep driving, and pushing, and burning, and deepening. and maybe someday i will be able to find a balance between nothingness and everythingness and it will exist somewhere close to hereness and nowness and in that place i will be empty of myself to function as a channel of the love of BEING. and as for now i laugh and wonder and work and listen and listen and wait. and i hold my hand out, knowing i am powerless and helpless to take hold of my desires but knowing that simply holding my hand out is where i am right now.

james

mother's day

i've been meaning to update for a while now. i had many topics to cover. one that i still would like to share about at a later date is taking the time to discover our attachments that we think will bring us happiness. but another time. now it is raining. the rainy season has begun. around the same time as the rainy season comes mother's day in nicaragua. and today i had one of those "reality checks" as they are called. it won't be the last as i continually wake up to the world around me. in class today many of the students were not prepared for the english test, so throwing all convention to the wind i offered to put of the test and have a day where we make mother's day cards. it was a great idea. it went great with the first class. okay with the second class. the thrid group of students i had, though, were a little more restless and unsettled about the whole thing. i couldn't put my finger on it. rebecca, a young girl-- 15 years old, was impatiently asking me to draw a heart for her. rebecca is normally one of my best students. strangely enthusiastic and patient with the other students. so it struck me as strange that she was so agitated. i also made the classic teacher mistake of assuming that our best students need less attention than those that are struggling more. so i drew the heart and when she asked me to do something else for her i said i would come back and went to the 15 other students calling out "mr. meinert" "teacher" "come here." rebecca got impatient and left the room while i was asking another student--telling me he "couldn't do it" if he didn't think that his mother was worth the time and effort to draw a card for. riger, rebeccas daily teacher, came up to me. he sits in the english classes and participates regularly. he said to me, "james... the thing is... rebecca doesn't have a mom. she died a while ago. so you gotta take it a little easier on her. and also, carlos (another student) doesn't have a mom either" oh. damnit. i did it again. i got sucked in to caring about assignments and english and accomplishing things instead of enjoying class and being open to students to talking and listening and all those real reasons we exist as people. i know i wasn't created in the image of god to teach english but to be, to love, to listen. and so i sat in one of the desks as rebeca came back to the classroom with a poem she had printed off in spanish. she wanted to color it. of course you can. i sat there as a student played music on the stereo, another student danced, another swept my room because he offered, and rebecca and carlos finished their mother's day cards--two of the most beautiful cards with honesty, openness, and time put into them--and the beauty of it all weighed on me. E.B. White, author of charlotte's web, wrote for the New Yorker and wrote that it is not joy, but beauty that makes us cry. it is the "unexpected gift of sadness--of some bright thing unresolved, of some formless wish unattained and unattainable." and that was how i felt. class had ended and students were coming in and out. i stood up slowly. walked out. and it started to rain. happy mother's day.

cusmapa

so, about two weeks ago i got the chance to go to cusmapa. its a small village up in the mountains of nicaragua. on monday night i was sitting around with the community eating dinner when callie (another fabretto volunteer) stopped by our house. she was in managua with a woman whose daughter needs surgery so that she can walk, and so i decided to head up to cusmapa with her tuesday through friday. its about an 8 hour trip but well worth it. at night i slept with 3 blankets on. that alone makes it worth it to me. we didn't do much while there, but it was a very nice time to see another part of nicaragua, another fabretto school, and another american teaching english. it really is a challenge and i think i just don't know how to teach well, much less teach a foreign language. we'll see. the most amazing parts of our time in cusmapa were watching sunsets from mountainous rocks, walking around this little village and saying hello to all the people, listening to the very talented choir practice, making-hand making- our own scrabble board and playing scrabble twice (i lost both times. damnit) we also visited their lake. which a nicaraguan commented that it was a tourist attraction. this little dirty pond was the furthest thing from a tourist attraction one could imagine, as that it is 8 hours from an airport and one has to ride busses and walk for another 30 min. just to see this little pond. oh nicaraguans. all in all it was a very good time for reflection and focus on myself and my time here. i hope you all have time for silence and solitude to be.

james

where is james

here i am!

well, i have been gone for some time now. quickly i will tell you since my space bar barely works making typing a pain. i will update more soonly. i spent 4 days in northern nicaragua where there is a friend and another fabretto school, it was good to see both. then our community went to northern honduras for a week long retreat. it was really a treat with time on the beach and time camping. well spent. back in the neighborhood i had more special time yesterday. then i saw a man on our street prepping a crack pipe. welp, the realities of living in managua come back full force. i will give more reflections on the time in cusmapa and honduras soon... maybe later today. in case you check twice a day. love!

james

staring

i missed my bus this morning. i couldn't stop staring. a bad habit, i know, but i think averting ones eyes is also a bad habit. i was standing there, waiting for the 105 to come along after one passed me on my walk to the bus stop when a man of 20 years crossed the street towards me holding the hand of a boy of 5 years. they were both wearing chinelas, cheap rubber sandals, and here as much as anywhere in the world one can tell more about a man by his shoes than almost anything else. i was supposed to be watching for my bus, but instead i was watching the man of 20 and the boy of 5. i wondered if the man was his father, in which case i was a little impressed that he was caring for him, or maybe the man was his brother and they took care of each other, but more likely they were street companions--begging together, brought together by common circumstance. the boy of 5 flipped me off. smiled. then cursed and flipped me off again. the man of 20 had not noticed me or had chosen to ignore me. either way, i stood watching still. then the man helped the boy up onto a yellow bus that had pulled up and left him there. maybe the two didn't even know each other and crossed the street holding hands just because. or the man was going to wait at this bustop while the boy begged on the bus and would come back on another... a yellow bus... the boy of five... yellow bus... 8:15... damn. the 105. the boy of 5 just got on my bus and they drove away together. missed my bus. another will come soon. maybe in 8 min. but it will not have the boy of 5 on it, and the man of 20 has already re-crossed the street.

a sunday

sundays can seem so beautiful to me. today is. i have finished 3 books today, each i was quite close to the end, and they were each interesting in their own direction. although, i am still inebriated with reading theology and spiritual books. a theology of liberation, by gutierrez was the first i finished. this is a book that everyone who loves reading overly complicated theology should delve into, but anyone else should just avoid, because it is a little on the dry side. if words like eclesiology and eschatology don't excite you, look elsewhere. the second book was the first book written by leo tolstoy after his radical conversion to the heart of christianity. he titled it, what i believe. it is just that, a summary of tolstoy's beliefs in regard to how we are meant to live, how the gospel and life of jesus enlighten that quesiton and how most people are totally in the dark, especially the religious, when it comes to that question. this is a wonderful little book that i plan on following up with his second book, the kingdom of god is within you. tolstoy was famous for books such as war and peace, but after discovering the true message of the gospel, he transformed his life towards non-resistance, simplicity, and love for others and died with a great following of people fascinated with his life. the third book i finished i began a little under a year ago and had to put it down for a time. it is called the tao of pooh. written to be an introduction to taoist thought and way of being through the familiar character winnie the pooh it is a fun read that reminds me to slow down, do nothing, look deeply, appreciate the birds and trees... essentially everything good in life. which is why i'm in such a good mood and why i will be leaving the internet now--to go love some living. keep on.
james

a house

every day, on my way to work, i ride in small moto-taxi. these european contraptions were designed to hold upwards of 3 people and the driver. i think i have been on one that had 11 people, plus the driver--mind you, some of the people were children, but there were still full grown men hanging off the sides. somewhere during the first 10 minutes of this ride we pass a house under construction on the right side of the road. it is the largest house i have seen in nicaragua. it is around 3 times the size of my parent's house in the states. a mansion. it is slow moving, still concrete, and hasn't changed much in the last 4 months. but there are men there every day working on something. that house encapsulates much of what is wrong with the world. although, i am making some assumptions. i assume the house isn't going to be a hospital, or a commune, or a convent, or exist in some other way to serve the community. given that i am right, and the house is being built as a family's home, this house is just too much to believe. not 10 minutes from the house one could visit people who live in houses smaller than your average american bedroom and here someone has the audacity to build a house some 40 times that size. not to say that the american houses that are so big are any better, but i usually assume that if people see the extreme poverty, maybe they will understand their participation in it and work to a more just society. in reality though, many people think that money and construction, in a word, development, is what the 3rd world needs. but thats not it at all. it wasn't the lack of development that sent many places in the world plummeting into desperate poverty, but rather the development in other parts that required slave labor and stolen wealth and the continued sustaining of this wealth using war, unjust work, and globalization. what has disappeared--and that which is truly killing the people of the world, body and soul--are the communities. people have no sense of 'community' in the sense it would be used to refer to the apostles in the acts where they shared everything in common. or 'community' in the sense i would use it to refer to a small town of 40 families here in nicaragua where all the families have contributed money to send one boy, just one, to cuba to go medical school in hopes that he comes back to serve the community. no, these communities are rarities. rather we think that the problems of the world will be addressed through development and we build giant mansions and we applaud ourselves for giving work to the 20 men that temporarily will be able to feed their families because they are building another wealthy man's home. these men will do all the work and will have no access to the products. and so every day i see this house and see the destruction of communities. people who strive for their own well being and have forgotten what it means to be truly blessed--filled with joy. blessed are the poor... or as gustavo guiterrez says (i paraphrase), in spite of the laws of nature, we must move our center of gravity outside of us so that all of our selves, spirit, heart, mind, body, is drawn to others.

james

visits

i have started visiting some of the families of my students. i'm doing this to get to know their realities a little better and to feel less like someone that comes to school and then leaves without ever being a part of the community that i work in. i live over an hour from where i work, so this is a problem.
the first family i visited was of my 11 and 13 year old students, leimon and ana marie... they are cousins. leimon's house was about the size of my bedroom growing up. dirt floors. chickens and pigs running around. leimon is the oldest of 5 kids and as far as i could tell there was no father around, but who knows. it was very good for me to see this. i want to know better where all of my students are coming from, because some of them are much better off financially than others living in larger brick houses having cars and other amenities. one of my bosses was telling me that the school program that i work with was started this year to serve more of the former, the students and people living in worse conditions, but have gotten a lot more people from urban areas. this is creating interesting class conflicts. as i was riding on the bus on the way home from school, two girls were sitting in a seat, and normally students squish to make room for a third. i encouraged them to scoot over and they made room for me. instead i invited one of my students to sit, he kindly refused, and then another, and then i asked another to sit and the girl, one of the better off students, said to me... "no teacher, not with him. i won't sit with him." she put her nose in the air, literally, and refused to share her seat.
i think what bothered me most was that as the people here in nicaragua have certain "developments" and increased economic opportunities (though not many), those that benefit from them become less community oriented and more individual wealth oriented... as much as it can be called wealth. so the influx of american "opportunity" is destroying nicaragua in a much deeper way dividing people into more class divisions with a growing "middle class." its just kind of depressing sometimes.
2 days later i visited another student with a house 4 times the size of leimon's. but still many many people living in it--one room, dirt floor, 3 beds which are in the kitchen/living room/dining room. it is good to see though. i can better see my own wealth living in managua in a nice clean house and understand how separate and distant my experience of life in nicaragua still is from my student's experience. this bridge may never be crossed. but it doesn't mean we can't keep trying, and if nothing else, swimming is always an option.

james

dear friends and lovers,

i have realized that updating weekly is a problem for me and that they are usually long and rambly about stuff i do and other boring things. so i'm going to try to transition to updating more than once a week and with smaller more focused entries dealing with thoughts and issues. i make this commitment based on my belief that when something is apparently faltering, instead of cutting off energy to it, redouble the energy commited. and so we begin.

holy saturday. i watched judas burn. in the local park, every year, there is a 3 hour easter vigil mass and at the end they hange a large effigy, human sized paper and plastic doll, in the image of judas from a tree, stuffed with small firecrackers, and light him on fire. i'm not sure why. maybe as if, somehow by burning the "betrayer" we no longer associate ourselves with him... a source of purification for easter. it just felt all wrong to me. exploding and burning what looked like a man and was said to be judas, a good friend of jesus, even if, like almost all of us, he betrayed jesus for a little money... but how often do all of us support and prosper from economic and social structures as we allow and encourage the suffering and death of so many people. maybe the burning of judas is a symbol for the nicaraguan people to cast off the ways in which they still benefit from injustice, to recommit themselves to the people and community around them, and not to bags of silver. i hope so. but as we walked away, watching his head still drip flaming drops of plastic, it wondered... what does this really teach the children running around, fascinated by a hung, burning man?

james

this'll be quick...

but this past weekend was a little crazy, so i had to share. this has less to do with me overall and more with a period of time. margaret and i worked around our work schedules, i came in to work early a few days to give tests to students and all that jazz just to take off this past friday... friday morning at 4:40 my alarm went off... out the door by 5:15 and we were headed to the del sol bus station to go to el salvador. it was the romero march. 27 years since the death of the monseñor and his memory is just as strong in the people. we crossed the border into honduras without a hitch except that the movie showing was "the holiday" but one of us was happy with that. as we crossed a nice little river margaret took a picture out the window. that would be ironic later. you see, that river was the one that separates honduras from el salvador so we had to stop to get our documents checked out... there was a problem with mine and i was taken to the office. it turns out that we were illegal, margaret too, but for whatever reason the border lady didn't notice hers right away. we had both passed the 90 days we had on our tourist visas and had yet to get our residency in nicaragua... all we had was our temporary residencies in nicaragua, which is not recognized nor valid for anything in the rest of central america. we were given two choices after being told there was nobody we could call to remedy the situation, not the embassy not the president, nobody. we could turn back to nicaragua from that town without any issues at all or we could pay the fine for passing our 90 days, 75 DOLLARS each, continue on until we reached mexico or belize paying whatever other fines, and return to central america to receive another 90 day stamp and we had to do all that in less than 5 days. we had a day and a half left on our trip before having to be back for work... so we stayed in el amatillo, the border town, on the honduras side. the lady that told us we couldn't enter el salvador was the same that offered to walk us to a hotel. her name was lucy. she explained that the two safe ones were 15 dollars more or less... a little expensive for us and when we asked about anything cheaper, lucy offered her room. a govt. provided room with a few beds in it--she stays there 8 days and some other people stay the next 8 and they switch off. we jumped on the opportunity... we spent the day eating honduran food, drinking chilean "frontera" wine down by the river and enjoying ourselves in a town where apparently not many americans ever get out to stay a while. we were like the circus as little kids stared with gaping mouths. that evening we sat on the bridge enjoying a rainbow, a sunset, a nice rain and then took lucy out for dinner. she told us all about honduras, including the politics and the word for cool... cheque, and we slept in her room. the next morning we caught a bus back to nicaragua to our disappointment and many others... but we will try to go back next year. another adventure will be in store. god bless.
james

dear friends and lovers,

a long overdue update, although i'm starting to have my doubts on how many people read this. yet, for those of you faithful to your high levels of curiosity, i'm back. the long time inbetween was only partially my fault. the other part was that the jump drive that i was using and had a blog update saved on was stolen at my school. so i will start more or less from there and give you the last few weeks more or less.
thursday afternoon a while ago. i had been writing a blog update tracking how i felt at about 12:30 each day after teaching my more difficult classes in order to share with you my feelings and perspectives. to summarize, more tiredness than anything usually. i sleep enough but teaching in the setting that i am in can be exhausting... i will address the small changes i am making currently later. anyway, thursday afternoon, i had some students sweeping and mopping my classroom, then some 6 students came into my room to look at what was written on a desk, which reminded me that i was going to find the student that wrote those things to have him wash it. i went to go find him, leaving the students alone in my room. i came back and a couple of girls were still there, and i through them all out to have my student scrub desks and soon noticed that my jump drive had disappeared. this was disappointing, not so much because i cared that it was gone so much as that i knew other people would care and that i have students willing to steal things. i told another teacher, julio, and he informed me that he had had his jump drive taken also. when i asked our director, don vincente, what we should do, he wanted to have a meeting with the various students on monday. when i asked why not friday he told me, "no school tommorow!" how nobody had managed to let me know this interesting tidbit escapes me, but it is not new. there are some "communication issues" with the padre fabreto staff. anyway, that was really good news, and i got friday off. the jump drive never turned up after talking with various students... none of them saw anything. i have since become convinced that the jump drive evolved to a higher state of intelligence and made a concious decision to leave. so i'm not mad, just bittersweet that it decided to seek out a better life for itself.
with my newfound 3 day weekend i had a splendid time. friday i visited josh in his school. he also teaches english and it was very nice to spend some time with him in his work. we all work very similar hours and thus don't get to see each other in action. it was really cool to watch him teach a lesson that i had taught before and to see the differences and be able to appreciate the things he did better or different. i spent the rest of the day reading under a star fruit tree and then watching batman begins. it was a good day to myself and refreshing. that saturday i walked to the laguna de apollo (apollo lake) with mary. the two of us had quite a day that started out with getting on a bus for grenada and having mary point out that the 20 something girls in front of us were cracking open some cans of beer. oh yes. 8:30 am. at that point i thought that we should drop whatever plans we had and just go wherever they were going... i firmly believe that if someone starts drinking at that hour its probably going to be fun to spend the day with them (as long as you aren't responsible for them). yet we ultimately got to grenada and walked off in a different direction, headed towards the cemetary. from the graveyard its about a 4 1/2 mile walk to the lake and mary and i began the trek. we went through a small community where people greeted us as we went. i got the feeling that not many gringos, some but not many, walk through the area. busses go right to all of the hotels, hostels, and resort places but thats all on one side of the lake, and we were going to the side that was mostly uninhabited. we passed many small houses, made of 2x4's thrown up together with women washing laundry in the yards and children running around. people went by us on bicycles (a dirt road) and with cows pulling carts that they rode on. a little over an hour later as the population thinned we approached the lip of the several thousand year old volcano, long inactive, and filled with blue blue water. it is apparently 250 meters deep (more or less) in the center because it is the old core of a volcano just filled with water. there are no fish so the water is clear. super clear. amazingly clear and gorgeous. mary and i jumped in as soon as got there. it drops off quickly. you can basically dive off the edge into the water because of the quick drop. this, however, makes it tiring to swim a lot for those of us that are weak swimmers (me). the solution? we made a raft. using branches we found and vines we tied them together and floated out into the lake. i then entered into the most relaxing, tranquil, centered moment i've had in a long time. laying just right my ears would immerse under the water and my face would stay above and it was like (this sounds wierd) a womb moment. just feeling safe and warm and wet and content. mary was laying about 2 feet from me on the other side of the raft and i imagine she was having an amazing moment also. we both remarked how perfect the place is. we saw no people for 4 hours. only cows and horses and birds and trees and water water water. the walk back was also nice and peaceful and as we got closer we hitched a ride with a man with 6 large pigs in the back of his truck... we stood on the back but not inside it. we rode back to managua feeling fully refreshed.
this past week of school started after that fantastic weekend and i was looking forward to a positive week. it went downhill. some classes are good. most are rough. i think the students just really don't like have hour and half long classes. that last 30 min. they start getting really antsy and don't want to stay there. those are the hardest 30 min. of my day, every day. i'm trying to get creative but its hard. my mom sent me a highschool classroom management book and i'm trying to slowly implement some of the recommendations... i've started a "you are wasting my time so i will waste your time" system. if they are consistently misbehaving or their cell phone rings or they show up late etc. they have to come back during recess to stay for a while in silence. i'm coupling this with a rewards system for students that behave well and get good grades. i'm trying to do this as sort of a rewards/punishment system. both of these things i hate as that i would rather the motivation come from within instead of the classic stick and carrot system. sadly however, some students don't want english classes their bad behavior coupled with mandatory english classes has been creating an environment where learning becomes near impossible for the handful that do want to learn english. i hope things get better. i just truly dislike myself in an authority position. i get impatient and this past friday i even got angry. my most difficult group of students, group D, i have every friday. they want to go home, its the weekend, they do not like being in my class. the normal stuff happened: students curse at each other, hit each other, yell, throw stuff... but this time it was happening at much higher rate. i felt myself falling apart. i was hitting that point where i just stood there, wondering. looking at them. eventually at 10 min. til the end of their class i said "that's it!" i put their homework on their desks and threw them out of class. i had to regroup before the next group of students. even so it was a hard next hour. i was beat. broken. i had to talk to their teacher and some other teachers. i was reassured by the fact that even the computer teacher has been having problems with the same students, the same group. all of the kids like computers, so if the students are misbehaving there, its bigger than just my class. this is nice to know that there are other teachers working on these things and not just me. the other teachers were also very supportive. today i had group D again, and their teacher came to the class. they behaved much better, but it still worries me that come friday... well, we'll see. pray for me. i think the real issue is that i'm teaching in a second chance school... so many of the students have dropped out before, been kicked out, or failed out. who knows how many have learning disabilities etc. etc. and i'm just thrown in. i have high hopes for this week though as i continue making adjustments to keep them interested and explain things slower.
my favorite times, though, are all of those spent with my community. community living is all i hoped for and more, and for this i love the weekend because its all community, uninterrupted by work :). this past weekend some fellow fabretto english teachers from other nicaraguan cities were in managua in a hotel because one had been sick for a while and needed blood work. they had some of us over to swim and hang out and it was lovely. there is nothing like swimming for free in someone else's hotel pool. and yesterday was sunday. a good day. i cleaned the house. i planned this weeks classes. i welcomed some slu undergrads (jen lay and jess trout) to nicaragua where they are visiting for their spring break while studying in el salvador. josh, mary, and matt got back from a rewarding trek up a volcano and they told us all about that adventure... (check their blogs later for updates on that) and currently the electricity is out while i type on josh's laptop. i am well. work is my biggest stress and leaves me feeling emptiest. community is my biggest blessing and leaves me feeling filled with spirit. so my days fluxuate. thankyou to all who have prayed and continue praying for me. i can't wait to hear about your own lives, struggles, growths. you are all blessed. seek peace.

james

a good evening

dear friends and lovers,
teachers thoughout history have told of how there is absolutely nothing like seeing something click in your student's minds. while this is true, they don't often tell you that there is absolutly nothing like the moment after one of their most frustrating classes leaves and they get to relax for a moment. when my class of 15 to 20 year old's walks out, my whole body feels better. whew. maybe they refuse to learn for whatever reason, but i made it through another day. music. music has a healing power. it pummels one into submission. it exerts a power that drags you outside of yourself and into the realm of the unknowable. those scary places in the depths of one's self where truth blossoms. but normally i just hang on for dear life. and teach english. i've started teaching my level one and level two classes in the afternoon. i can't tell you how enjoyable level two classes were for me. i was able to start and finish the class in almost all english... this is something that i was told was necessary, but in reality, it is just exhausting to try and get people to figure out what i am talking about when sometimes i can just say the word in spanish, and even more exhausting to give the homework in spanish and have them still not understand me... so having a class of students with experience is good. i'm sure they didn't understand everything they said, but they struggled along and it seemed good. i guess we'll see over time. every day i squish onto a yellow school bus with 150 students and teachers. as one of my coworkers commented, every day riding the bus is an adventure. it is true. squished up against students aged 5 to 20. i commented to my co-worker julio today that in the united states it is illegal to have more than maybe 60 or 80 students on a bus. we double that easily though. now this may sound dangerous, and it is, but many modern conveniences are dangerous, even more so when used incorrectly, and that is something we've been doing for a while, sacrificing safety for convenience... i'm not talking about the positive kind of safety sacrificing where one is giving up their safety for the dignity of another human being, i'm thinking more like the giving up the relative safety of walking for a car, because it is faster and takes us further has air conditioning and maybe even a cd player. but its very much an immediate gratification thing. and if we take the short view, say the life span of a human person, average 75 years, instead of taking the longer view... the human persons that will come after us, the human beings that gave us life, and all the humans that struggle for life right now, all around us and around the world, simple things like driving a car are very selfish. i'm not saying global warming is for sure caused by cars, but lets be honest, the exhaust products created by burning fossil fuels is bad for human beings. and whether or not it is a direct link to higher asthma rates, or higher cases of lung cancer, or any other maladies, the fact that it is not good in the long run, but only convenient in the short run, is what makes me so offended by its very existence. just that i am a part of a species that creates things (guns, nukes, planes, cars etc.) that are not respecting the planet or life handed to us and not at all trying to cultivate the lives we are leaving for future people, makes me feel ill that we are so concerned with ourselves, and living the good life, a house on the hill in the burbs, kids in the best schools, and a great looking car. and then some people that live in this way have the audacity to call themselves "liberals" striving for change and betterment of the human situation. at least those whose motto is "get yours now" are honest to their lifestyle. and every day i sidle my way off of that bus of now only 80 or so people to catch a taxi to catch another bus to come home and turn on my gas oven and my lights, take a shower with water pressure and type on this here computer. so what? jenny lewis, the lead singer for the band rilo kiley and recent solo artist, did an album with the watson twins, a small folk duo, recently. on this little gem she puts this line out there, "for the evangelists, the communists, and the lefts and the rights, and the hypocrites the jesuits, and the blacks and the whites." i intentionlly left out a comma in there. i feel as if my life exists in uncertainty. am i a hypocrite? yep. a jesuit? part of the group ideal? yep. so what do we do with our hypocricy? do we live in it? let ourselves experience it? see where it moves us? ignore it? keep doing what we're doing and say for right now its the most we can do? acknowledge that hypocrisy is a sign that we are still connected with our past reality and still striving towards our potential existence? maybe some maybe all maybe none. teaching is a gift that some people are given by a society that (i think maybe) overvalues a certain type of education... an education that rather than empowering and opening, challenging and affirming, we have an education that is more about getting people in line and being able to perform certain pre-decided actions... is math important? of course. is business a good thing? how could it not be? is there value in poetry? only if it can be sold. i'm not sure if i have the gift of teaching or valuing education in the same way. its been a while since i wrote on here, and for that i am sorry. it has been entirely due to business. not just business in the sense that i'm working all the time and have stuff to do (although it has been that some) but also, during my free time i just don't feel like sitting down and typing a bunch. i would rather, honestly, be "busy" hanging out with my housemates, playing guitar or whatever else. so for that, i'm sorry that this form of communication is low on my priorities... but what do you expect from someone who got rid of his cell phone because it took him away from those around him and supported superficial forms of connection. we took a small retreat this past weekend also. it was really good. the beach, the waves, the running, the pain and punishment in the sand (that's for you alex). we all had a good hour or so to talk about our lives, the struggles and blessings that have in some bizarre way brought us all to the same place on the same beach under the same amazing blanket of stars (with several shooting stars!). also i've been trying to write a letter to my friend ellie craft lately, which has taken longer than expected, but i will always try to respond to anything i get (except facebook messages and forwards) for all of you i love you, and i think of you often, even if i have trouble letting you know. i appreciate all the prayers. good evening.
james

2nd month

Last night I celebrated, along with Mary, Margaret, and Josh, our 2 months here. We didn’t do much—squished the four of us into one bed and talked, but it was nice. Then this morning I woke up noticing that my feet hurt a little… I know the shoes I have don’t fit the best, but whatever. Then my belt was broken and it is only day 5 of teaching for me, and I was already like, “really?” so I’m not sure how much it is the teaching or the being here 2 months and starting to feel the time. I’m starting to notice the daily drudge if you will. I think this is maybe what they call the beginning of culture shock. Who knows? It’s that impatience with myself and the whole Spanish language that I’m starting to feel sometimes—like I just want to speak and be understood and be able to understand. Little clues like that. So even if I recognize it, what then? My first instinct was that I would go read about it. As if somehow knowledge about the topic will help me spiritually and emotionally. But that is a solution I somehow want to make often. So, do I just sit with the feelings of discomfort, be aware of them, and allow them to develop. I mean, its supposed to be a process that anyone entering another culture for a significant amount of time goes through. Pues, vamos a ver. I’m just trying to be aware that these feelings can skew my perspective on all kinds of things…

And then sometimes teaching can make it all better. It can be so tiring, but when the students are really really paying attention, and there are the few that come up after class to get a little more help and they put so much of themselves into it—its just so good. I can see how teaching can become addictive. As tiring as it is, it is energizing and forces me to be creative on my feet and aware of how the students are doing… should I slow down and take more time on this, are they getting it, do I realize while doing something that its totally pointless and I should focus on something else? Usually I’m holding my students until 2 or 3 minutes after and some stay a little more… which is a good thing.

Mary asked last night what things about ourselves we are hoping to change and what things we really want to stay the same. Not that I think that any of that is really in my control, but it is a good question to get me thinking. Are there things about myself that I want to hang on to? (the answer is yes) are there things that I want to change? (the answer is probably yes, but that means admitting that I have things to change J)… oddly enough, right now the second question is actually a little easier… I want to be more in touch with things that I already know but don’t necessarily live. How can I make that make sense. For example, I know I should be still and silent and delve into the silence of God more, but that doesn’t mean that I do it. Or being at peace with that which is out of my control. I have this bizarre idea that everything can be solved somehow if only all of the pieces of the puzzle are put together, and maybe I’m right and maybe I’m wrong, but I’ll never have all the pieces nor be able to put them together. I want to be able to listen better… I guess all of these things are live goals and lessons, but what better time to start and challenge myself than where I am now? I lack a certain internal calmness that I’ve had before… I have images of myself and I’m aware that at that time I was more tranquil… that has gone somewhere, and so I’m searching for it still. Now what do I want to hold onto. Maybe because I look at life as something in near constant flux or maybe because I believe that holding onto anything too tightly is foolish, I hope nothing is the same. Although that is foolish and impossible also because I have very little control over what changes or doesn’t change… in a way. If I finish my two years of volunteering and certain things are still the same, all the better, I guess, that I was doing okay before getting to where I am now. I guess I’m more worried that I’ll clam up to everything, or that I’ll think that I’ve already got the world figured out, and that that will keep me from changing at all. And the thought of being that stubbornly insistent scares me, because I know it is within me also.

This weekend I think some of us are going to get out of Managua. There is a way in which a large dirty city starts dragging on you. Or maybe there are other things dragging on us and we are trying to escape from that also. (as an aside, I have 6 kids standing around me watching me type, which is entertaining) I leave you all with love and thanks for your love and friendship over the years. I hope you are well.

james

work begins

Jan. 31st 2007

I sit at the apple computer in my classroom, 30 minutes before the first class I’ll be teaching. Nervous is a good word to describe how I’m feeling right now, but it doesn’t describe everything. I am also a little sad and a little confused. You see, this morning I had to tell the teachers at San Isidro public grade school that I wouldn’t be teaching there this year. That was after spending a week with them; helping clean the classrooms, prepare classes, and just getting to know them in general. They are amazingly fun women and men with crucial insights into the San Isidro community and its relationship with the Fabretto organization. I will still be seeing them, probably quite often, but it is simply not the same. At the end of the movie Shawshank Redemption, after the character Red is released from prison, he goes through various rationalizations for his feelings of discontentment, and finally settles on this one, “I guess I just miss my friend.” That is sort of how I feel. I just met these other teachers, and within a 48-hour period, our relationship was drastically changed. For Mike, the volunteer before me here, he spent much time with the San Isidro teachers, but for me, the program is changing and the schools are changing and I have to change with them…
It all started with Don Vincente at the bus stop. I get off and he is waiting for a taxi. He casually mentions that tomorrow in the morning I have a meeting. This gets me wondering why nobody had told me before (not a big deal) but also would he have told me if he hadn’t happened to be at the bus stop that day? Who knows? That afternoon I was in the Fabretto school and I was given the new Fabretto schedule by one of the office workers that had apparently been put together by the new SAT (tutorial style education) teachers this past Friday. See, Fabretto is going through some changes. Whereas last year Fabretto was just an after school program where Mike taught English, this year they are implementing a program that will allow people to get what in the US would be like a GED—so the equivalent of a high school education. They brought in the SAT teachers, changed the whole program and then a few days later I see the schedule. They had me teaching at 7am and at 11:30… it takes just over an hour every day for me to get to work, if the busses are running on time, so it was really unfeasible, closer to impossible, for me to come at 7 without waking up around 4:45 every day or so. But also, I realized, that if I were to change the times when I was working here, the classes would conflict with the classes that I was under the impression I would be teaching at the public grade school. When I asked the Fabretto English director about this, I was informed that I was contracted to Fabretto and she thought she had me all day. This is, in fact, true, but I was growing attached to the little public school, so I felt trapped. And when I told the public school director, Soledad, that I didn’t think I could teach there any more, she told me I had to put my foot down and tell them what I wanted to do… which I don’t think was really the best advice, but oh well. I thought for a while that I could work it out where I would teach at the grade school, 4 classes a week earlier in the morning and then come to Fabretto for my 10am class. But after talking my community and to the office, it became apparent that I would be trying to do too much, especially considering that I’m supposed to be teaching afternoon classes until 4 also… so, my schedule is basically worked out now, I just have to decide when to do the afternoon classes and for how long, but it has just been interesting navigating the Nicaraguan bureaucrazy (intentional) and losing the opportunity to teach the 5th and 6th graders… of which there are 42 fifth graders and 32 sixth graders (and 32 was referred to as very few, apparently once there was a 1st grade class with 63 or so). I remember Mike telling me that he hoped I had the opportunity to teach there in order to see the drastic difference between the public and private, but also because the teachers are so gang-busters. Pues, no más. So I will be teaching 5 different classes of SAT students twice a week, hardly enough to learn very much English, but oh well, and then the afternoon students, which I have yet to set up their class times, or how much how often I will do it……..
2 hours later, I have taught my first class! It went, well, well, considering that it was their first first first ever English class. I took my teaching teacher’s advice and just started with all English… jumped right into it, no holds barred. And it went okay. I could see that 2 of the students had actually had a little English, as one proceeded to call me over and count from 10 to 20… good for you kid, but I’m trying to teach us how to speak the language, not just repeat things we memorize… and I think that is the hardest part. They are used to their other classes where they take notes and memorize things, but I’m not doing that, I’m trying to get them to listen and repeat another language, read and write another language… so it’s a bit more tricky… but I think they understand “what is your name,” “my name is,” “what is his/her name,” “his/her name is,” and “where are you from,” “I am from” but I’m not really sure… although I think they definitely got the my name is part. I worked on that longer. It was fun, the kids are responsive. One little girl asked me how to say “tus ojos son bonitos” in English, and I told her that we are working on “my name is right now.” Maybe someday kid, but not in my class. It will take some time before I can see how well the students are going to behave on a regular basis… but they were well behaved today, I think the subject matter has them pretty intimidated so that they are trying to listen as much as possible. Oh well. We’ll see.
Community living this past week has been very good for me. I really feel us coming together in unexpected ways. I’m impressed especially by matt and andriana’s commitment to the new community; for whatever reason I thought they would still have more lingering attachments to the old community and have trouble reinvesting themselves. But nope. And, as adri said, we 4 bring in new energy and excitement for every little thing. So one funny little story for you all before this hits 2 pages long…
The other night Margie and I got into a discussion on whether or not the JVI handbook included, referenced, or even implied chastity as the recommendation for our living status. I thought it did, Margie insisted otherwise. So we kinda forgot about it, but last night I brought it back up and we broke out the handbook. Now there has been a running joke about volunteers never reading the handbook but always claiming to be, along with the office always reading it, even on their Friday nights. So imagine our surprise, as we discuss what it means when it says resistance and tolerance when the phone rings, and lo and behold, it is Kristen calling from the office. I’m not sure if she believed us when we said we were just reading and discussing the handbook, or if she wanted to believe us when she found out that the section of interest was on dating relationships and that myself and a community mate were discussing whether or not chastity is expected of us. But oh well. Kri took it well, and probably had a good laugh about it. I hope to hear from you soon. Drop me a line, leave a comment, whatever you like. Delve into yourself and you will discover that the kingdom of god is within you. Find it, follow it.

james

a bit about babies

dear friends and lovers.

saturday. a day of chores. for people who get high off of feeling accomplished, it is a good day, and for the rest of us... well, clean floors are nice. i've been sitting around this afternoon playing a little guitar. it tends to put me in a reflective mode... i play a song and i'm transported back to the time period when i wrote it... what i was thinking, where i was, how i was feeling (and whether or not i was even aware of those feelings at the time). music has a mysterious power like that. when i was graduating high school, i was obsessed with the band Third Eye Blind (not a secret) and in love with my friend erin (sort of a secret) and i remember asking her one day if she thought that lead singers in bands that do national tours are still transported back to where their consciousness was when they wrote a song, even if they are playing it for the 300th time. she wasn't sure. for a while i haven't been sure either, because the few times that i have gotten up and played in front of people, sometimes i am transported and sometimes i'm so damn nervous that i'll mess up the song its like i'm feeling my way through the song, remembering what i wrote mere seconds before i have to say it. i still don't have an answer to my question, except that for me, on lazy saturdays, i am still taken back to different times and places.

wednesday i was feeling a little sad. the day started out great with our 3 year old neighbor calling me out by name, "Jaime!" but later, when we are driving on my way to my teaching class, we pass by a building with the words "Agro-Tech" written on the front. Those two words sent my mind spiraling out of control. i started thinking about monsanto and how they create seeds for plants that don't produce usable seeds, and in this way farmers have to buy new crops of seeds every year and it keeps rural farmers in a vicious cycle. and then i started thinking about how we use and misuse so many plants anyway and how destructive we are to the soil and the earth in general... and it was all getting out of control on how hopeless it can seem to reverse some of the patterns of domination and then i saw a pregnant woman crossing the street. full of life, probably hope. and a little later that day, as we were leaving our class to go eat in the hotel of our teacher who wanted to have a little cake and ice cream to celebrate us finishing the class and also likes to eat very classy meals, we drive by this area where people stand in the streets selling things--from cell phone covers to peanuts to papayas. and this little girl walked right up to our window, she couldn't have been more than 5 years old, holding this papaya half the size of her body the way you would see a little girl holding her favorite doll... barefoot, rags for clothes, ratty hair... and she's trying to sell this large piece of fruit to us. and i just looked her right in the eyes. it was like looking into the most apparently innocent mirror that just happened to be reflecting the horrors of the west; or of capitalism; or of the darkest corners of my soul. either way i saw my own poverty clearly. the light turned green. we drove on.

josh and i did some exploring and climbed up to look at our roof. we have this cool little air vent thing in the middle of the house. wooden beams crisscross the area and we discussed carving all the names of JV's that had lived in the house from 04' to now. we'll see if that ever comes to fruition. we looked through some of the folders that are around but have never been shown to us and discovered suggestions for spirituality nights, old community member's folders, and the illusive map of the managua busses. it is one of the most amazing things, if you have ever used a bus in managua, its kinda like a floo powder (harry potter) in that if you don't take much caution, you won't end up where you're going, or at least not in one piece... but with a map, the possibilities are endless.

another thing i found was a modern day parable. i'll have to paraphrase it here for you... a young man was once standing by the edge of a river, when to his horror a baby came floating down the river. he of course jumped in and saved the baby and quickly alerted members of the town. soon after two babies came floating down the river, crying, and he jumped in and saved them too. other members of the town began to get worried, and formed a small committee. 4 babies, 10 babies... floating down the river... soon people were diving in and out on a very consistent basis. they were organized and they were saving almost all of the babies. but then there was 30 40 50 and they were still saving most of the babies, but often there was too many. some would float by to their obvious peril. a woman, one of the town members, shouted for the attention of the others and said, 'What if we form a committee to go upstream and see who is dumping all of these babies in the river?' 'no, we'll lose too many babies, we can't afford to lose any committed people' so they went on as they had, saving many, but losing some... who then had greater concern for the babies? those looking to prevent them from being thrown in or those looking to keep diving in and pulling some out?

take it for what you will, but sometimes i feel like so many of us struggle to pull out babies and never look deep to see if we are really a participant in throwing them in. maybe this is all getting confusing, and it is definately getting way too long. but before i wrap it up, i've got two short things to share. the other day as i rounded a corner on my way home a woman about 20 yards from me began yelling at me as if she recognized me and was Pissed at me. she started crossing the street (very slowly) so i walked a little faster. mental illnesses pretty much get left to their own here... although maybe she was a shaman and saw an evil spirit within me. yesterday (friday) on the way home from visiting the school where i'll be teaching, a little girl, about 4, was sitting on her mother's lap, and the little girl smiled at me, so i smiled back, and then she got my attention about 5 minutes later. there was a note sitting on the bus seat next to me that read "hi, do you want to be my friend? call me at (phone #) nadir martinez" ... it was tempting since i don't have a lot of 4 year old friends, but i wrote her a note back that said "hola nadir, sorry but i don't have a telephone, but i imagine that you would be a very good friend, my name is jaime, nice to meet you."

i feel like this entry is incomplete, because its all about experiences and not relationships (which i feel are much more important) but oh well. i'll write about those some other day. i love you all. spend a moment in solitude today.

james