World Communion

(Read at Hamilton Union Presbyterian Church on World Communion Sunday 10/4/09)

Last year, on World Communion Sunday, I took communion for the first time in Peru. And while we didn’t formally recognize that it was a special Sunday, I experienced a very real sense of world communion - to be in one place partaking in a sacred ritual and at the same time imagining our sanctuary here at Hamilton Union and all of you, taking the same bread and drinking the same grape juice and meditating on our shared devotion.

As I bowed my head in prayer in our church in Huanuco, I placed my hands along the back of the wood pew just as I do here and had that indescribable feeling of being in two places at once - a feeling I experienced many times throughout the year.

During my first few months in Huanuco, I tried very hard to be fully present in my new place, to devote all my energies to my immediate environment - to really immerse myself, in the language, in the day to day relationship building among my host family and co-workers. I consciously detached from my world here in order to adapt.

But as the year continued, especially after the celebrations of Christmas and my birthday and January, I started feeling very homesick. I longed for those who really understand me, who have known me since I was little, those who I can vent to in my own language and listen to them effortlessly without the roadblocks of my own translation.

I felt so frustrated whenever I was homesick. In thinking of those I missed and loved, the places I longed to return to, I felt distracted and distanced from the present. But I realize now that during those times of homesickness, I was experiencing the realities of world communion.

Like homesickness, entering world communion is uncomfortable because it calls on us to be present in our own lives and to also care deeply for those that are far from us. It is a state of being that makes one feel torn, even conflicted, causing us to ask where we belong and who do we relate to.

I didn’t see this then, but what a blessing! - The blessing of being part of one community and simultaneously being immersed in another. That I might have a deep feeling of belonging in more than one place. The idea that even while living in Peru, I had a home in another country, belonged to a family in another hemisphere, and shared memories from another corner of the world - feeling connected to others even while they are physically far from me.

And this is, I think, where the idea of World Communion begins - the ability and willingness to physically live in one place but let your heart and soul reside in many places, among many people – to hold hands with someone from halfway across the world through a deep knowledge of their circumstances and a shared belief that we are connected through our relationship with God.

For me, World Communion means sitting down for dinner with my family here in Guilderland and also finding my place at the kitchen table with my host family, Pastor Abdon, Elena and their daughter Carla. One family brings into mind the other, both of which I am part of.

The conversations at each of those gathering places mirror each other, a family sharing about their day, planning for the week, and laughing about the cat and dog as they pace around the kitchen. And while I sit at one table thinking of and longing for the other, I realize that they are in fact the same table.

World Communion is sitting down at the table before me and at the same time sitting down at many tables, and then realizing it is all the same table.

World Communion is also knowing intimately the rhythms and motions of another place - knowing that on any given Sunday in Huánuco the cows at the Granja farm are being milked at 5:00 am. Two hours later, the massive Catholic church in the middle of town will blare praise songs over a loudspeaker. Later in the morning, our pastor will roll up the metal garage door to our newly painted church. And having returned from church and after eating a mountain of tallarines (spaghetti), the entire Camarena household, including me, will retire for a mid-afternoon nap.

World Communion is saying to myself multiple times a day, “If I were in Peru right now, what would I be doing? Who would I be with?"

If I were in Peru this Sunday morning, I would be at church, the Christian Mission Alliance of Huánuco. I would be standing next to Carla whispering together like two little school girls, then singing the opening worship songs nearly drowned out by the electric guitars, drum set and the woman in the front row waving her tambourine. The entire congregation would be clapping to the beat, raising their arms high. And it’s not a question of whether my friends in Peru might be doing this… it’s that they are, right now.

I don’t think we’re called to be in just one limited geographic place, whether it be Guilderland or Huanuco. I think we are called to expand what we name our community and see ourselves as part of a much larger family, sitting at a much larger table.

And it’s wonderful when everyone at that table is having a good day. But what happens when a member of that larger family is facing a difficult challenge? What do we do when a member of that larger family is suffering?

It is difficult to be home and far from those I came to love in Peru and those at Paz y Esperanza, where I worked. It was difficult to leave just as fifteen year old Gladys and her 6 month old baby Luis Migel moved into the shelter on the farm own by Paz y Esperanza. I had become very close to her and I know this transition was not easy for her. How does she feel right now? What is going through her mind?

Accepting the invitation to world communion is challenging because it means acknowledging that the realities at other ends of the table are harsh, saddening and unfamiliar. It is knowing that while I sit down for dinner in my comfortable apartment, with a big kitchen and my own bed, Talia and her brother Eliaquim are going to sleep on an empty stomach because their father didn’t sell enough pop sickles on the streets of Huánuco. The entire family will share two single beds in a closet-sized bedroom.

By entering world communion we recognize that we are from the same community and no longer are others’ struggles a distant concern. World Communion asks us to know intimately the hardships that others have endured and are experiencing at this moment. To listen to stories that are painful and traumatic marked by sexual abuse, domestic violence, civil war, disabling poverty.

By entering World Communion we must prepare ourselves for deep sorrow and ugliness.

But world communion also brings great joy.

World Communion emerged every time I pulled out the piece of orange felt with Ariel’s name on it, another volunteer who I was chosen to pray for while she served in Southern India. While I prayed for her, Celeste was praying for me in Guatemala.

World Communion emerged when I visited a women’s weaving cooperative in Lima that made the bags that were given out at the Presbyterian Women's Gathering in Louisville a few years ago.

World Communion was alive during an evening with my host family, skimming through old hymn books in Spanish, looking for melodies we all recognize.

I think part of me will always reside in Huánuco, Peru. In accepting that, I’m starting to understand what it means to have my heart in two places at once, to live here but simultaneously feel knitted into the daily life and ways of another community.

Having returned home, it is Peru that I am now homesick for. But I have come to believe that homesickness is a holy place, a recognition that while I may never be able to see all those I love in one room, I know that we are indeed at the same table.

Landing

I feel like I’ve been coming home for the past several weeks, months even. In the countdown I began in the upper margins of my journal. In the final letters I sent out to close friends, sealed for the last time with Peruvian postage stamps. In the packing and repacking that I did during my last days, pulling out one more item to give away with each gift or recuerdo I was given.

I knew it was time to leave when all I could talk about was home, my family, my friends, the job I hope to have and the colors I plan to paint my apartment walls. But that did not stop the tears from flowing when I gave one last hug to my host sister Carla at the bus station.

Nor did my face stay dry as I kept in view until the last possible instant, the line of my friends from Paz y Esperanza waving to me from the street as the bus crept around the corner, making its way out of Huánuco. Thus began my longish journey home.

My last ride over the mountains brought me to Lima where I stayed for a week with the other volunteers. We spent most of our time in a quiet Catholic retreat center in the middle of the city, preparing our hearts and minds for “re-entry,” as if returning from outer space.

I don’t think any of us knew what returning would look and feel like, but there was a sense that we might and surely would encounter a sense of the unknown, even in our own home towns.

We took a night plane together to Atlanta, Georgia and then branched off to make our respective flights back home, myself racing through customs only to miss my flight to Albany. With five hours until the next flight, I found I was grateful for the suspended time frame to just sit in the United States and observe the busy airport life.

First observation – how sparkling clean and well-dressed everyone looked, especially children with their McDonald’s happy meals, little backpacks and playing cards.

I sat for a while watching CNN, updating myself on missed news, only to find a repeating loop of three news stories – the investigation into Michael Jackson’s death, Michael Vick returning to the NFL and fortunately something worthwhile to learn about, the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

My sudden interest in current events reminded me of when my brother came to visit in December. I whiled away a long layover in the Lima airport by hungrily flipping through the New York Times he had brought and asking him for a rundown of the state of the economy.

It’s not that I didn’t care about world news during the year, but I did narrow down my focus somewhat. There was so much to absorb and understand in my immediate environment that I couldn’t help but detach from certain events and issues that simply seemed a world away.

I slept most of the way during my connecting flight to Albany, letting go of the anxiety I had been carrying. I tend to become increasingly superstitious when traveling home from far away places, worrying that something terrible might happen at the last possible moment.

As we began to lower over the Hudson River Valley, I trusted that we would in fact land in one piece and I was able to simply gaze longingly and lovingly at the landscape below. I’ve never felt so instinctively attached to a particular patch of earth. The color of the trees, the bend in the river, even the imagined smell of pine.

As we drew closer to the ground, more details of life appeared - elements that proved I was no longer in Peru. Free standing homes with sturdy roofs and turquoise colored swimming pools, a well-paved highway that shot out into the horizon, a parking lot filled with beaming yellow school buses. Markers of affluence and security.

With just a few feet separating the wheels of the plane from the runway, I savored the last instant of this feeling of suspension between two worlds, time held still between leaving and arriving.

And then, I was home, on ground that suddenly carried more significance. I was relieved. There was simply nothing else to do but walk into my mother’s arms and then hug my dad, letting loose the rest of my tears and feeling the joy of being welcomed home.

Imperdible

On my last night in Huánuco my host mother and sister surprised me with an unforgettable despedida. I knew a few close friends would be coming over to the house for dinner, but otherwise I was completely unprepared.

Carla and Elena left the living room to retrieve the “supplies” and returned carrying three plastic bags stuffed with what I dreaded was the guinea pig costume from the office. But then when Carla put on some traditional Huayno music and pulled out a large wool embroidered skirt, I knew just what they had planned.

After taking a few dance classes during the fall and becoming fascinated by the diversity of dance in Peru, Elena had suggested that we rent folkloric dresses one day and have an authentic dance party.

A few local seamstresses stock traditional clothing to outfit local schools for dance competitions. These concursos de danzas are the Peruvian equivalent of homecoming football games, with fans in the rafters whistling, cheering, throwing confetti and rooting for their classmates to win the Marinera from Trujillo or the Saya from Puno.

At home on Tuesday evening, Elena and Carla had pulled out the dress of the Huayla dance of Huancayo, where I traveled during Holy Week. I stepped into two knee-length red and orange skirts, each with a wool border of giant hand-stitched flowers, birds and even pumas from the surrounding jungle of the region.

Elena pulled a black tunic over my head and adjusted the skirts. She then slipped my hands into two decorative sleeves, connected by a string behind the back like a pair children’s mittens.

Over the shoulders is draped a heavy manta, or shawl, usually with a flower pattern square in the middle but sometimes with more personal designs. And, of course, no look is complete without the typical hat of the region.

In Huancayo, the hat is the simplest I’ve seen, a round top low-brimmed felt hat of tan or black with a ribbon that gathers on one side in a delicate fan shape rather than a bow.

This is quite unlike the hats of other regions such as Ambo, for example, a small but busy town just beyond the Granja outside of Huánuco. Here the women take their hats very seriously.

Hats are a bit of a status symbol giving each woman a distinct look, without which the woman look markedly similar, with their dark pleated skirts, knit sweaters and black braided pigtails.

In Ambo, each woman decorates her hat with a mix of bright colored silk flowers, ribbons and even Christmas tree tinsel. Local shops near the market cater to this by hanging all the necessary hat accessories outside their doors, with women coming to refurbish or upgrade their otherwise bland cream-colored top hats.

At first glance the hats seem a bit excessive, but after understanding that these women have few personal possessions, let alone freedoms in life, the hats represent a form of personal expression, identity and artistry.

As Elena continued dressing me in the outfit from Huancayo, Carla tried on a dress from the town of Huacaybamba, a small pueblo near Huánuco. She stepped into a longer black skirt, bordered with a vine of fuchsia flowers. The top was a pink and yellow satin button-up vest with longer panels laying over the sides of the skirt.

Carla then helped Elena put the finishing touches on my Hualya, including a multicolored woven sash wrapped around my waist to hold up the skirt and then a large safety pin to secure the heavy shawl across my back.

She asked Carla for an imperdible to pin the shawl and I remembered how much trouble I’ve had with his word. Sounding nothing like “safety pin,” I had to have my co-worker write it down for me when I was heading out to buy some craft supplies for the office.

Carla, who has been my trusted language simplifier, said it means “unloseable,” derived from the verb pedir, to lose. What an absolutely sensible name for a safety pin!

So, while Elena secured the imperdible and rushed around me making final adjustments for my outfit, I reflected on the new concept of what it means to be “unloseable.” Thinking more during my long bus ride to Lima, it seems this entire year has been a demonstration of what this means.

To be held together, bonded to and constantly surrounded by loving and supportive people.

To work with survivors of abuse who have surely been lost but have arrived at Paz y Esperanza where the message is “You have been found.”

To reinforce my faith and belief in G-d, which tells me that we are all found, already and every day without question.

As it says in Psalms 139 “Oh Lord, you know it [me] completely. You hem me in behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.”

I find this to be so absolutely reassuring, to know that no matter how lost I feel, no matter where I find myself, no matter what happens from here on out, I am unloseable. We are already found, already loved, already assured, already justified and already accepted in every way.

I am re-learning this concept or maybe understanding it more completely for the first time. And I love that what triggered all of this was a tiny pinky-sized safety pin, holding together my shawl so I won’t lose it while dancing in the living room on my last night in Huánuco.

Transitions

Last week left me in a mess of disjointed feelings, somewhat similar to the emotional shock I felt during my first few days in Lima. My mind has been emptying itself with each day and gradually I feel more and more at peace with leaving Huánuco. But it has surely been a process of unlayering and finally surrendering to all that is in me.

On Wednesday, I met my host parents for dinner at a new café in town. On any other evening, I would’ve been thrilled to step into this neat little place, with Peruvian artifacts on the walls and new age Andean music in the background. But on this particular night, I just wanted to be alone with my thoughts.

As we sat down, I couldn’t contain myself any longer and I buried my face in my hands, elbows resting on the woven tablecloth, and cried. I couldn’t explain myself and I realized I didn’t have to when my host mom laid her hand on my shoulder and just let me be.

With all the thoughts and plans, faces and memories washing over me, I become aware that I was at the threshold of transition - a time of change that will take me away from Huánuco… and into the rest of my life.

While I felt a certain heaviness on my heart, others grounded me with reassurance and hospitality.

It was my last week in the office and each afternoon during lunchtime I found myself invited into the home of a different co-worker. On Friday I was invited to almorzar with Elía, a quiet woman who works part-time and has shown me much warmth during the year.

We left the office and took a small mototaxi to the edge of town where the paved roads end and sandy pebble-strewn paths lead to a crowded maze of improvised houses. From the outside, Elía’s home looked more like a square box garage, with layers of plastic sheets and styrofoam serving as a roof.

We walked up her front steps, entered the main room of her house and out popped Benjamin, her nine year-old son and also my most precocious English student. Elía sat me down with Benjamin while she slipped into the back kitchen to finish preparing almuerzo.

The main room was divided into three quadrants by a couple of bookshelves and a giant television set. In the limited space, there seemed to be surprisingly enough room for a seating area, dining room and office. But as I mentally cleared away the few pieces of furniture, I realized that the space was no bigger than my bedroom.

Elía soon returned carrying a deep bowl with a mound of rice, chicken, potatoes and camote (sweet potato), drenched in a green herb sauce. I knew instantly what it was – Pachamanca - a traditional meal in Huánuco, served at weddings, baptisms or any other special family occasion.

Pachamanca means “earthen oven” in Quechua, referring to the unique method of cooking all the ingredients underground on hot rocks, the vapor infusing the flavors. I assume Elía prepared the dish in a more conventional oven or maybe a stove-top pressure cooker like my host mom uses.

We were joined by Elía’s older son and husband, who led us in a soft-spoken prayer of which I could hear faintly “Si, Señor” (Yes, Lord) after each pause.

The way this man calmly entered the room and sat down with his family was very telling of the kind of husband and father he is.

Before sitting down, Elía had accidently tipped over one of the glasses of juice, which spread all over the table as it seemed to be on a bit of an incline. In so many homes in Huánuco, this would have incited some ungrateful hideous reaction from the man of the house.

But the man of this house is something entirely different - peaceful, loving, and respectful - an example for his two sons, who seem equally peaceful, loving and respectful.

We ate together over a lively conversation about local food, music and indigenous land rights. I was left completely stuffed, as it appeared that I had been served a double portion.

After clearing the plates, Elía returned with a giant apple and placed it before me. It was probably the most perfect apple I’ve seen so far in Peru, where apples never quite compare to those in New York.

Elía and her husband repeatedly said “Servite, servite” (help yourself). I was hoping this was to share between all of us, as I couldn’t possible eat it all myself.

However, as I cut open the fruit and offered to share it, the whole family seemed to refuse in unison. It was clear that the apple was intended for me and me alone.

In reserving that shiny oversized apple for their lunch guest, I felt the presence of a startling true generosity. It was only after I managed to eat two slices and force down a third that Elía and her husband allowed themselves the much smaller apples from the kitchen.

As we prepared to leave, Elía rushed back into the kitchen to retrieve something. She returned with what appeared to be one of the left-over sweet potatoes wrapped up in a sheet of white paper. She presented it to me as a small offering to eat later.

It wasn’t until I returned home after work that I realized it was chunk of fresh cheese. Knowing how much of a luxury cheese is for a family of little means, this was yet another sign of the genuine kindness of Elía and her family.

A kindness that weaved all of my anxious unnamed feelings of the week into a single deeply-rooted feeling of gratitude.

Seat 55

I just purchased my final bus ticket back to Lima – as always seat 55, first floor, window side, leaving at 9:15am. After having taken this trip a total of ten times, coming to or leaving from Huánuco, it has become quite a familiar route and one that I enjoy very much.

I tend to be rather busy leading up to such trips and welcome the eight hours of drastically beautiful scenery and absence of conversation. I rarely bring a book to read or music to listen to, and avoid watching the frequent Jean-Claude Van Damme action movies. Instead, the ever-changing landscape outside my window provides the ultimate entertainment.

To ride an omnibus, as they are called, with reclining seats and plenty of leg room, is an unfathomable luxury for most Peruvians. More often, long distances are covered in piecemeal, taking a series of overstuffed mini-buses and dilapidated taxis.

I consistantly struggle with lack of seatbelts and breakneck speed of these vehicles. But I also recognize that passengers need to pay as little as possible and the drivers need to pack in as many people as possible, regardless of the number of the seats. Safety and prevention are absolutely secondary when earning/conserving money and arriving at one’s destination are of upmost importance.

The two-story mega-bus which I will ride, at first glance appears mammoth and indestructible. But in a short time, this giant mass of metal becomes an isolated speck journeying along a ribbon of a road between vertical mountains.

After leaving the lush river valley outside of Huánuco, the trek becomes desolate and virtually unpopulated. There are high altitude lakes, snow-capped peaks, distant views of new mountain clusters to pass and those previously conquered.

At about 1pm, we approach Cerro de Pasco, a distillingly flat altiplano at 14,400 feet above sea level. This is where a dusting of snow made my heart skip a beat returning from our Thanksgiving retreat in November.

It is at this point in the voyage that passengers are served lunch. A small styrofoam box with rice and something else, many chicken or mashed potatoes. Afterward we are offered a cup of Coke or Inca Cola, which are always in competition. I usually opt for sweet tea if only to warm my hands with the sudden chill in the air.

I didn’t realize just how cold it gets at this elevation until our bus broke down on my way to Trujillo in May. We waited roadside for at least two hours while some horrid clanking of metal went on under the back of the bus. The mountain air rushed inside as others swung open the doors and windows to see what was going on.

I sat calmly for the first hour, noting how miraculous it was to never have had any road trouble during my previous trips. I started feeling a little nervous when a woman across the aisle began vomiting in a plastic bag, affected by the lack of oxygen at such high altitude.

I then became officially anxious when I realized that the clock was ticking. We were still four hours from Lima and I had an overnight bus to catch to Trujillo.

In a sudden moment of clarity, I decided to get off the bus with a few passengers, hoping to wave down a passing bus. And as I waited outside, trying to stretch my shirt into a warmer article of clothing, I took a good look around.

I managed to disregard the stress of the situation and remark how gorgeous a spot of earth I was standing on - flanked by snowy mountains, resting above a pristine pool of rain water, in a place that I can only describe as the middle of nowhere.

The benefits of land travel do surpass its limitations. While I will never fully trust the top-heavy lumber trucks that barrel down the opposing lanes, I find I am transported into a quiet state of mind knowing the bends and contours of the land between Lima and Huánuco.

And while this trek is only a fraction of the beastly earthen formation that make up the Andes, it is a familiar glimpse that I have one last opportunity to encounter.

(Having written this before actually buying my bus ticket, I can now say that for the first time, seat 55 was already taken. A little reminder that change is good!)

Re-awakened

I thought I had seen just about all there is to see and experience in Huánuco. I expected to quietly finish out my last month in Peru without any major surprises. But this past week has been one of the most unexpected, eye-opening and reaffirming weeks, reminding me why I came here and what it will mean to leave.

The week involved a visit from members of the River Church in San Jose, California. The group of six included a criminal investigator and a forensic nurse, who came prepared to share their knowledge and expertise yet with a deep understanding about how to work cross-culturally.

Their finalized schedule included meetings with police, district attorneys and judges to reinforce the need to advocate for victims of abuse. Evening seminars were organized for primary school teachers on how to identify abuse. Others facilitated Bible studies in the Potracancha jail on how to break down concepts of masculinity.

Law Enforcement

One member for the River Church Community, Mike, is a retired criminal investigator specializing in sex abuse crimes. I had the opportunity to join him and our team of lawyers for a meeting at the Huánuco Police Department. The purpose of the meeting was to give general introductions and also to provide an overview of Paz y Esperanza’s proposal for a sex crimes investigation unit.

In the States, investigation for sex crimes requires highly-specialized training with separate roles in crime scene analysis and interrogation. Here in Huánuco, there is no such distinction, and with that, sex abuse cases do not receive the level of care and expertise they deserve.

Without specialized police, crime scene analysis is done hastily and rarely results in sound evidence. Furthermore, survivors are often re-victimized during the interview process, enduring interrogation that is hostile and demeaning. Such treatment prevents the survivor from giving a concrete testimony and leaves the survivor doubting his or her own innocence.

While I translated for Mike during the meeting, I observed the uniformed men before me. I wondered how each one might handle a sex abuse case. Would he see it as just another one of the numerous crimes that occur in and around Huánuco every day - a name in a file and maybe a bride to gain? Or, would he give the case and the human being it represents, the attention it deserves?

I see police officials walking the streets, driving about in their trucks and motorcycles, and I wonder who and what they are really protecting. However, advancement may be closer than I initially thought.

With recent concerns over safety, our office has now hired a security guard to keep watch. He stands at the front door, patrols the park just outside and monitors the goings on of our small but busy building. He has a tiny desk in the front lobby with a sheet of all our names and photos, to identify who belongs and who might be an intruder.

One afternoon I noticed him sitting at the desk reading some material. After a closer look, I realized he was reading Pacificado, Paz y Esperanza’s quarterly publication of its ongoing work to confront sexual abuse.

He could easily have been bored and read the closest thing in reach. But what’s important is that he was reading it. And maybe, just by observing and protecting the work of our office, he’ll be able to counteract some of the blindness of others in his profession.


House Visits

Later in the week I joined one of our psychologists and two women from the River Church to visit families in the TAMAR Collective, each with children who are survivors of sexual abuse.

The first house we visited was above the city, entering the cerros or hills, where tightly-packed tin and cement homes look as if they’ll slide right down the mountainside if it rains too much.

I know the children well, ages four and nine. The younger, a little girl with pigtails, jumped into my arms before I could barely step out of the office pick-up truck. The ladies who joined us pulled out a fully stuffed bag of fresh fruits, vegetables, eggs and quinoa to offer the family as a gift.

We climbed up to the roof, which I realized was their entire home as another family lives below. The tiny block room taking up a small corner of the roof is where the family sleeps. Two beds are placed along the wall in an L-shape, and baby chickens scurried underneath a small table near the door.

Along with the two parents and their son and daughter is an adopted nephew whose mother recently passed away. He is four years old, the same age as his cousin, but nearly half her size. He is malnourished and has an abscess the size of an orange, swelling inside his right cheek.

He didn’t say a word, as I imagine it’s painful to open his mouth. He simply sat with us, gathered together in the one bedroom, staring beneath giant eyelashes at the giants before him.

Part of me questioned why we were there. There is something very unsettling about viewing poverty simply to exhibit the conditions and observe how desperate the realities are. But I know our visit was more than that.

I can’t describe how happy and smiling the kids were to see us. And also how deeply grateful the father was after my own host father led a prayer of encouragement and empowerment for the family.

The father knows he is poor, making his living selling ice cream and lollipops. Nonetheless, the family did not hesitate to welcome in their orphaned nephew.

As I walked home that afternoon, I felt as stunned and overwhelmed as I did the first time I climbed up those rocky inclines to meet one of the families back in September.

I remember wondering if I’d ever get used to this - empty potato sacks used to cover windows, a single light bulb dangling from the ceiling, mud brick walls deteriorating after each downpour.

But I was wrong to ever assume that I’d “get used” to the realities of poverty. Because the moment I “get used” to it is the same moment that I forget it exists.

The last thing I would want, after spending a year here, would be to leave feeling desensitized and apathetic. I want to stay shocked and disturbed, overwhelmed and uncomfortable. I want to stay awake and constantly re-awakened.

Independance Day

While people at home in the States celebrate the Fourth of July, I’ll be thinking of another day of independence - July 28th. As Peru’s national holiday celebrating its own independence from Spain, it is also the date printed on my ticket to fly back home to Albany.

It seems appropriate, and no coincidence at all, that I should be returning home on a day that represents self-awareness, identity and freedom.

I do feel like I’m breaking free somehow, much more so than when I left home back in September. I didn’t come here to escape or to adventure out on my own. Instead I came here as an act of stepping into relationship. And rather than seek freedom, I entered into some very serious bonds and commitments.

However, the bonds that have held me during this year, in my family and at work, have not been restrictive or limiting. Instead, they have been fluid and resilient because they have been based in faith and love.

Another bond that I deliberately entered into is with G-d. A huge component of my experience in Peru has been an experiment in giving up control and putting my life in G-d’s hands.

I was tired of over-planning my life and writing its pages before the story even began. So, I chose to let go of my expectations and trust the ways in which G-d might work through me in this new place.

In doing so, I have felt a strong sense of being led. At times, this involved arriving in the office certain mornings and being swept up in a new project or invited to enter the outskirts of town on a home visit.

Other times this meant sitting at the kitchen table with my eyes sinking with exhaustion, but staying anyway because my host father just began to tell a story. And still other times, I found myself crying uncontrollably and accepting this also as G-d moving me along somehow.

In going along with the flow, I have noticed a change in my demeanor. Generally, I have been more quiet and subdued, more pensive and reserved. I have only recently brought out my more silly and lighthearted side, which has felt like a distant voice that I forgot I had.

At times I have held back, resisting the impulse to complain and even ask questions. I’ve felt a myriad of emotions, ranging from utterly frustrated to simply elated, few of which I’ve openly expressed while being here.

And this has led me to wonder whether trusting and following G-d means having to dilute one’s personality or, at times, censor one’s true self.

I learned an important lesson when my brother visited Huánuco back in January. I was anxious about how he might adjust to staying with my host family. I prepped him with what to say, how to say it, and generally how to act. At first I thought I was being helpful, but Carl responded by saying, “Can’t you just let me be myself?”

The question is, have I let me be myself this year?

Maybe… sometimes… I don’t know. It’s hard to tell when my “self” is constantly changing, constantly becoming.

What I do know is that I’ve allowed myself to detach from who I think I am in order to see certain possibilities of who I might become. Letting go of a rigid sense of self has allowed me to be more flexible, more sponge-like, soaking up all the influences around me.

I’ve entered a child-like state while here, one that embraces newness and change and is more intent on learning about myself rather than proving myself.

I think of Peru’s Independence Day as my own declaration of independence because I will be leaving a community and a window of time that has shown me the importance of being me.

As I leave, I will carry a deeper understanding of my own identity in relation to myself, others, and G-d. And this, I think, represents more freedom and independence than what initially brought me to Peru.