I once heard of a town in which everyone remained indoors at all times.
God, wanting to stir things up, kicked a pebble down a snow-covered mountain.
As it descended, the pebble grew into a great ball of snow, which upon hitting the wall surrounding the town, exploded, and buried absolutely all the houses and everything else in three metres of white.
When the people of the town realized what had happened, they emerged from their homes and started shoveling.
Sometimes, God works this way – She makes a holy mess of our lives in order to piss us off enough that we actually get up and do something about it.
When we had finally sat down to tea on the corner of Aroma and Ayacucho, I began to realize how right I was.One of the four young girls we were seated with was the same who only weeks ago had betrayed her true identity as the Christ. Now, as clefa fumes filled our lungs (which was most unavoidable since the half of us were inhaling every moment the police were out of sight), this was confirmed.
When we arrived at the Terminal, two gringos and two middle-class Bolivians, we certainly did not blend in.We met up in an area generally not frequented in the evening hours by people like us and crossed over to a corner where cleferos and cleferas could be found around this time any night.That is where we found three of our new friends, the forth met up with us conveniently as we sat down for tea.They were evidently quite high courtesy of the clefa they had been sniffing since early that afternoon (clefa is glue used by shoe repairmen, looks like liquid honey, and smells like rubber cement).We started up some awkward conversation.They responded as longtime friends and made us feel quite welcome on their corner of this world.
So, back to sitting for tea, which was when it dawned upon me that these four girls would never be so welcomed into our homes as we had been welcomed into theirs (and I dare not speak of our churches!).Thus, Jesus confirmed.I have heard that he was one to welcome all, to interact with those around him indifferent to their differences, loving all the same.
I returned that night (only four days past) and thought about how they would have undoubtedly all invited my company for the rest of the evening and night if I should have accepted such an offer.I thought, too, of how though I had pondered it a moment, I decided I could would not have invited their company, even though I am sure they would have, indeed, accepted such an offer.
I am not sure what I ought to do with this realization.
I met the Christ two weeks back.She was sprawled out on a worn-out strip of grass in front of the Coronilla, sniffing glue out of a small plastic container that once held Tolavi sour cream.It seems a rather outlandish thing that she should be doing something so unbecoming now that I write it out so plainly, but at the moment it seemed perfectly expectable.She was lazily awaiting dusk, the time when the vocation of those young girls at the Terminal generally begins, when I encountered her.
This isn’t the first time for me.Once, I sat with her late into the evening on the curb of Cordova in downtown Vancouver talking about a strange church where street kids hang out and shoot up in the bathrooms before the service.Another time, in Kitchener, I followed him to the house of a widow from Czechoslovakia where I changed a light bulb and heard a heartbreaking tale in a language I did not understand but in tears I knew too well.
Each time, sadly enough, I left the Christ where I had found him (or he had found me) and I moved along.For some time I have seen these encounters as moments of turning or change meant to direct my path or something spiritual like that.Now I am questioning this.The problem is, when I go, Christ stays.
Tonight, if you would believe me, the Christ is walking the streets here in Cochabamba, glue in hand, along the same route she has walked these past seven years.Tonight, she will feel again the Passion that has been inflicted upon her all this time, and drift off to sleep alone, cold, hungry.And tonight, as always, I will fall asleep with effort trying to not think of her lest I Awake and do something Foolish.
a very dark hall, much like that which alice must have seen upon finding the bottom of the rabbit hole, but darker, with many doors and looking around i see that i am alone now, lacking the supportive arms i had only moments ago. silly thing, how supportive can invisible friends be, but they let us think so, and the human brain is a powerful thing, you know, capable of almost making us think we know that this way is this and that way that and our reflection is actually something close to what we look like. but alone, this feeling, is not quite so bad. it is a quiet place that really is quiet and that is a quite hard thing to discover these days. but the doors, oh so many and so pretty. i find it odd in this darkness i can see, but then darkness can take on lots of meanings and perhaps it is not so dark in that i cannot see the doors that surround me. what is most frustrating about being here is that i am always here it seems. it is a strange place, like a home, that every so often one walks into and wonders if it really is their life they are living or if perhaps they have gotten the address wrong again and… there are no rules either. i have been into many of these doors, and it is not that i must choose one and all-to-not with the others. no, that is the problem, choice, and that thus far every one has opened up to the same pretty place which within moments turns grey in my sight and causes me to fall asleep, after which i wake up here again to the same decision, which thus far has proven to be no decision whatsoever! and so today i am not sure what silliness i must do next in order to break this nonsensical cycle i find myself in. i have an idea, but it only makes me laugh, and then i find myself in a dark hall laughing to myself and forget all about what i am doing here anyways.
