Hudson River Clergy MissionTrip to Nicaragua.
Friday, April 11 2008, 08:22 PM EDT
Contributed by: kfnealand
Written by the Rev. Leslie Mott, and the Rev. Richard (Deke) Spierling
Hudson River Clergy Mission Trip 1
Prepare the way of the Lord. Make God’s paths straight.
For 10 pastors and one elder, the way to Advent was neither straight nor level. The road to the rural village of Los Conchitas, where we would live for four days and help to build two cement block houses, was wide enough so our bus could move slowly along. But the rainy season had left ruts and holes in the narrow dirt road, half of which was sometimes in the ditch made by water long gone.
One of the first things we noticed was the garbage everywhere—loose pieces of litter, some piled in heaps with leaves and grass, smoldering. Why is there trash everywhere? The gate at the school compound where we ate and slept was kept locked at night and a guard was present 24/7 just to keep the curious, or the dogs or chickens, or occasional pig, from the suitcases under the cots.
Thirty times thirty times
before the sun steps into a new day
roosters crow in Las Conchitas
We have not come to betray our Lord.
but in some small way to follow.
The first morning in Los Conchitas came finally, after a restless night. We were unused to the sounds of a Nicaraguan night-- animals snarling, roosters, honking of the bus at 4 am, grinding gears, spinning tires out of the crevasses of the road, and loud music from a drunken neighbor, “welcoming” us to the neighborhood.
When the sun was well up, our hosts, Jim and Bonnie Gordon, honked the horns of the pickup trucks, and we climbed in the back for the jolting, 15 minute ride to the construction sites. The road is not straight or smooth. Shifting weight to hands, arms and legs so the tailbone doesn’t get smacked any more than necessary. More garbage along the way—but also cows, and a skinny horse with a frayed rope around its neck, pulling long grass through some strands of barbed wire. And banana trees, plantains, unknown green fields, and blossoms—lush and tall.
“Prepare the way of the Lord!” Isaiah cried, and John the Baptizer echoed. Neither Isaiah nor John the Baptizer ever rode on the back of a truck on a road in Las Conchitas.
At lunchtime, on the road again, hot and tired. It actually feels good to balance, to “sit,” on 2 inches of a side of a truckbed. Bounced and groaning, passing running children shouting
“Adios! “ or just “yo!” Rice and beans never tasted so good. A siesta in the heat, then on the truck again to the afternoon’s work.
Blue Sky
hosting striations of peach-hued clouds
evening begins to creep in
dinner soon including rice and beans,
I bet bodies tired, minds too
from exercising the alternate homiletics
of shovel and rebar cement and cinder block
energized by hints of incarnation
glimpsed in shared tasks
in the smiles of children
and answers to the persistent,
calling-into-being question,
¿Como se llama?
What do they call you?
Coming home at day’s end, the sky over the volcano at Masaya forms its own weather pattern, mysterious and ancient. A 10 second rainshower settles the dustcloud, temporarily. The smell of the refuse fires—so similar to leaf piles set alight in the fall in the Hudson Valley. A goat in a yard, a farmer raising his arm in greeting.
Building a House
There's no snooze button on a rooster
when at three a.m. he proleptically
heralds the-dawn-yet-to-come
no resetting the time as canine barks
and bays announce news, sports, and weather
the rhythms and repetitions of pop tunes interspersed
And now a word from our sponsor....
the blaring horns and guttural mufflers
of busses - that used to ferry school children
in el Norte and now beckon neighbors to
sweatshop or market
to the kitchens or laundries of the rich
Sleepers awake!
Stretch aching gringo muscles
and arisethe time is coming to greet the
bridegroom or a mason
with a heart of gratitude
and hope who smiling
and with extended hand says
come let us build together
Every day there is something new on the road. The pointsettias (named for an ancestor of our compañero Jim Poinsett) are eight feet and blooming. The 302nd and 303rd houses are becoming for Luis and Cruz, Amelia and German, homes for their families. We pass the baseball field again. The same dog rushes out to yap at the oxcart ahead again. We wave at the bus to Masaya, the pickup leaning precariously in the ditch as it passes us, again. We do not see the garbage anymore.
We see young Roberto who, having been given a small portion of a granola bar, does not devour it himself, but shares even smaller fragments with other children, whose next meal will be rice and beans, as will the one after that. . . and the one after that. “Take, eat. This is broken for you.”
We see the Eskimo man (whom some of our colleagues “kidnapped” as he walked long distances along the rutted roads), the jingling bells on his card heralding ice cream bars for the children, young and old. We see the sky change. We feel the cool breeze of evening. We anticipate the buckets of water to wash the dirt and sweat away.
We are hungry again! Rice and beans, and fruit, and juice. Delicious.
We are with our friends and colleagues every day on this road. We go to work. We see change, slowly, as we work with people new to us, becoming friends. We break bread together, and laugh, and make mistakes, and fix them. We are tired together, and triumphant. We have joined hands and hearts and minds. Preparing the way of the Lord.
Friends we met.
It was not the russet dust of
Los Conchitas (from which,
having sniffed it on my sneakers, Lori’s cat
nonplussed scampered away)
that covered the earth
when the clock radio crowed me awake Sunday morning
but a patina of snow blanca
marking many degrees of separation
A cloud of witnesses accompanied me to worship
the Hudson River eleven Bonnie, Jim, David
Ruth, Carlos, Cruz, German, Mara, Amelia, Luis, Conchita
what more should I say
for it would fail me to tell of Roberto, Wilford, Maria, Angel, Petrona.
who remained together in a community
of shared work and prayer and affection,
hunger and thirst struggle and accomplishment
brokenness and beauty
memory and hope
in the hands of a comforting, cajoling
grace a cosmic cognitive dissonance
the Word become flesh
the flesh become Word
with no degrees of separation
“Prepare the way of the Lord! Make God’s paths straight.”
Perhaps it is not the road that needs to be straightened out so much as it is we, who journey together, companeros all.. . .
FUNDING FOR THIS TRIP CAME FROM METRO NY PPG FUNDS.
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