After a long and challenging week emotionally and spiritually, Carol our director said I should probably take a personal retreat pronto. So Friday I packed up food, snacks and books and went to the empty apartment in San Benito, the free clinic run by the CFR's, where I'd be staying next to a small chapel. Carmen a nurse we know from the neighborhood excitedly told me just as I was getting nervous about the heat and the cockroach that I had seen in the bathroom that she was going to be taking her vacation there November 3rd. So I figured that if this is someone's idea of a vacation get away I can stay here for 2 days.
Since the words silent retreat don't exactly get me excited, the first thing I did was check if the TV and VCR work: negative. I think God was trying to tell me something and naturally my response to him was simply, "Well I brought the Sound of Music and Sister Act 2, I thought they count as retreat worthy." Instead of being scared that approximately 5 hours of my retreat I had planned were now cut, what I found is that a silent retreat for me meant being in a tank top all weekend (not allowed), praying, dancing to Carrie Underwood by myself, writing, eating only the cookie parts out of cookie and cream ice cream (a skill that comes from discipline), and reading Flannery O'Connor's short stories. At times I didn't know whether I was on retreat in Honduras or at home in Brockton when there isn't a car in the driveway for me to take.
Something I enjoyed so much this week and finished during my retreat was What it Means to be a Christian by Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. I was suppose to read it last year for Fr. Regis' class, and lo siento Fr. Regis! It's a beautiful and powerful book so please keep it on your syllabus, just tell your students to actually read it not like one of your former students with a Boston accent. Anyone who is struggling with faith of any Christian denomination should read this book. Joseph Ratzinger shakes away all of the complications that we tend to clutter around the words faith and religion, and says in reference to the parable of the Last Judgment that God "is not asking about a confession of dogma, solely about love. That is enough, and it saves a man. Whoever loves is a Christian."
Reading this and praying about this has helped me so much when I'm faced with my own helplessness when I can't see results and struggle with why I am here in the first place. I'm not a nurse who can record how many people she stitched up. I'm not a social worker who can see how many families received services because of her actions, but this week I held children who are HIV positive and didn't cringe. I walked into a woman's two room house whose son has cerebral palsy and didn't look shocked or down at her but with honesty looked up to her. She lives day by day, sleeps in the same room with her 3 kids and when she has to leave she carries her 5 year old Sergio because she can't afford a wheel chair. Who couldn't look up to her?
This past week I've honestly learned how sip on a glass of cold Coca Cola like it is a fine wine. I've been shown over and over again what loving simply is. When I went to someone's house the woman told her daughter to get Coke and glasses and when she came back with plastic she sent her back for her nice ones. The 3 rooms in her house are separated by ply wood but she still with love offered us her best. When she was talking about a difficult situation she laughed and said "I live near the church and the hospital I'm doing just fine."
I'm starting to feel that all I say in emails and in blog post is a litany of non sequitors, but I hope it has some value. I really wish I could read the day to day activities of anyone reading this so I don't feel so far away, but I hope in this way you feel closer to me...
Love and prayers,
Hannah .... or
Ana
Ana Maria
Gringita Bonita,
Anita
Fresa (preppy)
No comments:
Post a Comment