THERE’S A PRICE TO HAVING A CONSCIENCE
A voice comes from the darkness
of the sky as I walk back to the house
after relieving myself. ¿Está
en solidaridad
con la Guerra en Iraq?
Are
you in solidarity
with the war in Iraq?
A soft voice, unseen.
Antonio Ramírez, 60, calls from a scaffolding
on the other side of a wall below a palm tree.
The ex-guerilla combatant works with concrete
blocks before sunrise adding a room
to the house of Juan Carlos Perdonmo
in the repopulated community of Rutilio Grande.
No. Ojalá
soy un luchador por la paz.
Pero, es
verdad qué yo soy un soldado.
Estuve con
los medicos en Viet Nam.
¿Por qué,
me preguntaste de la guerra?
Quisiera
saber más de la semilla de su pregunta.
Creo qué su
pregunta es parte de su testigo.
I believe that his question is part of his witness,
and can give no man greater honor than this.
Antonio descends after permitting the camera.
He tells me he couldn’t work for ten years
after the armed conflict in El Salvador, tremors,
that a politician bought him the tools,
and he was the one on the hammock last night
when I arrived. He waited all night to ask his question.
Nuestros
heridos son la misma Guerra, I say.
Our wounds come from the same war—I have tremors, too—
Paises
diferente, pero la misma guerra.
We sit with the notebook in the kitchen
while he
sings. ¿Puede escribir las palabras
de su
canción en mi cuaderno? He takes my pen
and says, We sang this song every day
during the war. It was one of our popular
songs of
liberation: Se al soya nuestra roja
vandera
abenser o a morir ya maya por la patria
y el mañana
sosialista El Pueblo Armado vensera.
He sings the dream of the two little girls.
One daughter is bourgeoisie—burgesas.
One is campesina. He sings in the same quiet voice
that he called to me from the scaffolding.
The campesina dreams of bread for her pueblo
to heal the dolor and sickness of her people.
She dreams of work, and better crops.
The rich girl dreams of being a princess.
The poor girl promises to become a guerilla.
Cuesta para
ser entender a la gente
que tome conciencia. Having
a conscience…
Jim Bodeen
March/April 2006
March/April 2006
AFTER MASS IN THE RURAL CAMP MADE OF OF DEMOBILIED
GUERILLAS,
AFTER TWO HOURS OF TALK ABOUT FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS,
WALKING BACK OVER THE DUSTY PATH, I TURN AROUND AND LOOK
AT THE CAMPESINO BEHIND ME WEARING THE WHITE BASEBALL CAP
WITH BLUE BILL AND LETTERING, AND READ THE THREE BLUE WORDS:
AFTER TWO HOURS OF TALK ABOUT FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS,
WALKING BACK OVER THE DUSTY PATH, I TURN AROUND AND LOOK
AT THE CAMPESINO BEHIND ME WEARING THE WHITE BASEBALL CAP
WITH BLUE BILL AND LETTERING, AND READ THE THREE BLUE WORDS:
Alaska National Bank
Jim Bodeen
March 22—March 31, 2006 Suchitoto,
El Salvador—Yakima, Washington
March 22—March 31, 2006 Suchitoto,
El Salvador—Yakima, Washington
BIRDS NEST HERE, HOW TO SAY
ebrio/a: ciego o dominado por un
sentimiento
o por una pasión fuertes:
El
poeta, ebrio de amor,
compuso extraordinarios poemas.
Clave: diccionario de uso del español actual
Poets are
God’s drunks.
Cuesta para
llegar
a esta edad
como nosotros.
Lago Nawalapa
The lake is an inheritance
the government wants to privatize.
The lake can be a menace too.
It is a wall of water.
The cause, the caller, the call itself.
Poor land, poor farming.
Sweatshops outside the community
Demobilized people.
Look for the perfect moment
in the day, and ask your question.
Ayer
memorias, mañana justicia.
We’ll be
gone.
You will never leave.
The work here is finding wood.
The corrido
of Rutilio Grande.
Questions for Jon Sobrino.
A poem for Marvin.
Sal y Luz.
Rutilio
Grande tuvo sal y luz.
He spoke with salt and light.
A day in the life from all over.
El
predicaba la palabra.
He enjoyed
himself.
Music comes from next door.
Purple banner on white table cloth.
Random assassinations.
We have a house
beside a field of sugarcane
at the table of creation.
They made this one-way street.
It was news to me.
The government said we had water.
Show me the faucets.
We were on the other side
of the volcano.
Walk the trail of the combatants.
Houses of adobe.
Chairs of blue plastic.
Jim Bodeen
April 19, 2006
April 19, 2006
QUESTIONS AND ANSWER MONOLOGUE WITH DEAN BRACKLEY, S.J.,
PARISH PRIEST OF JAYAQUE, (WHO REPLACED IGNACIO “NACHO”
MARTIN-BARO, ONE OF THE SIX MURDERED JESUITS,) AT THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY IN
SAN SALVADOR, THE DAY OF THE XXVI MEMORIAL MARCH FOR OSCAR ROMERO
This is my good friend Mary. She was here five years.
I’ve been here since 1990. You’ve been to the Jardín
Botánica?
That must be the way the country was—a paradise.
The new archbishop—very conservative—inflexible.
He’s struggling with Romero.
Like the country itself, the Catholic Church is polarized.
So is the Baptist Church.
What do you do with the poor?
The poor are the crucified vicars of Christ
who set the agenda for the Church.
Now the war is…
I subscribe to anything Gene Palumbo says.
He’s in touch with reality. I’m in the university.
Globalization of the South Bronx—that’s
what’s happening here. I spent the 80’s in South Bronx.
I’m feeling more and more at home in San Salvador.
We’ve had crack for about nine years.
We have drugs and gangs and organized crime,
and maybe the Extreme Right’s behind it.
If we can destroy people through drugs
they won’t be protestors. What you saw
of my colonia driving by—that all filled with water
last year. There’s no land to absorb the water
because they build these spectacular shopping centers.
Diez y ocho—pandillas—cut their teeth on Bloods and Crips.
Hard line approach: a crime to belong to a gang.
You can be arrested for having your head shaved and a
tattoo.
It’s unconstitutional, but…they have guns and grenades.
They show you their guns. They want to control their turf.
They change so quickly we can’t keep up.
Local gangs have been subordinated by gang members coming
in.
They’ll come in and take over a house. Climate of fear.
This is not Cancun. Let’s face it. What are we doing here?
Main agenda in El Salvador: Come, fall in love,
get your hearts broken, and go back ruined for life.
And we’re from the fix-it culture.
We’re not going to fix this.
Sometimes fixing things is the distraction.
What happens inside us has the most lasting effect.
See the Bush Administration with new eyes.
Put your pilgrimage in context.
You’re about the 18th group I’ve talked with this
month.
And only a part of the people see me.
El Salvador
has no local solutions.
Traditional politics isn’t going to solve anything.
We’re in a new time.
If we tried to have a voice—we’d be the Axis of Evil.
Saddam has saved Chávez in Venezuela.
Cháves is sitting on a sea of oil.
Bottom up, top down. Micro initiative
up against macro power. That’s where you come in.
Alone, this country cannot pull itself up by the bootstraps.
Globalize the practice of love. Globalize solidarity.
That’s the key mission.
We’re discovering vocation—and the good news—
no bishop can stop us.
Your part is humble, but you’re part of a growing movement.
G-7 countries are aware of your numbers. This is a sign of
hope.
Fight the politics of intimidation and politics of fear.
What does El Salvadoran reality tell you about the U.S?
The median age is 19. Women wear jeans.
They say, Anywhere but here.
I do not want to spend my life in front of a comal.
They know more about Britney Spears than Romero.
On a slow day 700 people leave here for the North.
The U.S. deports about 100 people a day.
Within a generation and a half, a majority
of El Salvadorans will be in the U.S.—
locked in unholy and uneven matrimony
in which divorce is not possible.
The news from Puerto Rico is in.
The most generous diaspora in the world
sends enough dollars to make up 1/6 of the economy.
Before they went to the guerillas. Now they go to Houston.
Your question is my question.
Have you seen the U.S. Embassy? It’s huge.
They now have tourism police.
Nationalize the government.
The government has been privatized.
The government will give you a cop to ride in your bus.
The government is giving big tax breaks to its usual
buddies.
What poor people don’t want is trouble.
Mothers and servants vote for Arena.
Voting for FMLN is dangerous because
it will bring the government’s guns.
The Church doesn’t want social problems.
They want to save souls.
The Commandment of Love is Priority Number 6.
Sacraments are important. Get them baptized.
You have been listening to the Minority Report.
Politics is crucial. You’ve got to denounce the crooks.
Cardinal Mahoney said last week,
If they pass this bill on immigration
I’m instructing my priests to commit civil disobedience.
You’re important because the people believe they count
when you listen to their stories.
They think enough of
us to come visit..
Stories is all they have.
Jim Bodeen
March 26, 2006
March 26, 2006
EL
CORRIDO DE LA CRUZ SUBVERSIVA
Voy
a contarles la historia,
qué
en el Salvador
a
una cruz de madera
qué
llevaba a la prisión.
Fue
en el año 89
a
seis Jesuistas mataron,
y
la policia fue en busca
del
Obispo pa’ matarlo
El
Obispo pidió exilio
y a
Guatemala
pero
la cruz de madera
en
su iglesia la dejó
La
policia y el gobierno
estaban
muy enojados.
Mandaron
traer la cruz,
y
la carcel la mandaron
Tomaron
quince personas
y a
la carcel los llevaron.
Esta
cruz es subversiva
igual
qué la de Calvario
Los
errores del
y
los crimines qué llevó,
nos
enseña a todo el pueblo
qué
la cruz nos liberó.
La
cruz parece pasiva
pero
aquí no demostró
qué
el Obispo con su iglesia
a
esa cruz la liberó.
Qué
llevaba en procesión
de
la carcel qué sacada,
y
hasta el palacio llegó
y a
su iglesia regresada.
Esta
cruz fue subversiva
nos
invita a caminar
nos
enseña la justicia
y a
los pobres a verdad.
Regino
Våsquez
Aldea
de Holden
Escribió
desde el poems por Jim Bodeen
Written
from the poem Two Crosses by Jim Bodeen
STARTING THE MORNING IN SAN SALVADOR
Three children
sit barefoot
on the curb
drumming
plastic water bottles
against their knees
The older boy
lays back
on the sidewalk
watching
His little sister
lays across his chest
The boy
in the orange t-shirt
clasps his hands.
Jim Bodeen
March 22, 2006
March 22, 2006
TALKING WITH THE CARMELITE NUN
STANDING UNDERNEATH THE PHOTO
OF OSCAR ROMERO IN THE CHAPEL
AT DIVINA PROVIDENCIA, SHE SAYS TO ME:
Every body is walking to Heaven.
Monsignor touched your heart.
Go and help him,
and he will help you.
We are all walking to Heaven.
We are Carmelites.
We started walking in Spain
with Teresa of Avila.
Now we are Central American Nuns.
We started in Mexico.
We started in Houston, on the North Side.
I am from Honduras.
We are several families.
Nice to meet you.
And we are going to Heaven.
We must start every morning.
It is necessary.
El ULTIMO EXILIO
You’ve met the journalist
who left the country to get the story
and the singing pastor of a small church
has given you a book of poems
by a
Honduran poet concerning
El Ultimo
Exilio.
You think you’ve been outback
but it’s been come and go.
Things were said that day,
and they were said later,
and I want you to know.
La última
palabra nos golpea las puertas.
We must start everyday, the Carmelite says.
It is necessary.
Maybe the only conversation we can have
is the one about transnational companies
stronger than any government.
The story was El Salvador,
the journalist says.
The story was here for 15 years,
from 1979 to 1994.
Now everybody has gone home.
The New York Times has one reporter
for all of Mexico.
Maquilas were a way for a while.
The multi-fiber agreement expired.
Everyone knew what that meant.
What they say happened is a lie.
I felt safer during the war.
But this is the basket we put our eggs in.
The poor, in whose name we fought,
are not better off.
Opting for forgotten peoples
is a prophetic stand, of course.
The ascendancy is in the descent Dr. Williams says.
One practical step after another.
Jim Bodeen
March 22, 2006
March 22, 2006
CASA DE SOLIDARIDAD
If one turns aside from Him
to go towards the truth,
one will not go far before
before falling into His arms.
—Simone Weil, Spiritual Autobiography
Sometimes the house that holds the people
is a story. Talking into the night a man forgets
himself for truth larger than the war from any side.
“I came here for the first time in 1980.
I had read about a meeting of bishops in Puebla .
They had met earlier in Medillín, in Columbia .”
He has been doing the telling for a long time,
following the story of power and God and the poor.
People called him on the phone in his hotel room.
We know you’re there.
His room is never
on the street. His bed is against an inside wall.
Still, he felt safer during the war.
He tells it from his dreams, from a jeep driving to San
Vicente.
Some say he is more Salvadoran than the Salvadorans.
He is not random, but after years of telling,
he has learned the damage of lies,
and lists them among bullets and earthquakes.
Simone Weil stays with him wherever he walks.
“One can never wrestle enough with God
if one does so out of pure regard for the truth.
Christ likes us to prefer truth to Him,
because before being Christ, He is truth.”
Two small notebooks in his shirt pocket
record the week’s observations.
He has found the lie but remains uncertain
of the truth that will replace it.
During the Romero march to remember
he walks out of darkness to find his friend.
They talk briefly. He turns back to the street.
The story was here for so many years.
Everything from that volcano
remains in his shirt pocket.
—for Gene
Palumbo
Jim Bodeen,
HOMILY OF FRANCISCO ORELLAWA
STANDING BENEATH THE CROSS
AT COMUNIDAD RUTILIO GRANDE
I come from the time of Romero.
I was formed in his time.
He was part of the church
that denounced injustice.
We were slaves of the rich.
We were paid the salary of hunger.
I am one of the combatientes.
‘In the name of God,
don’t kill your brothers and sisters.
No soldier has to obey the law of another man.
Only God can decide.’
These were Romero’s last words
in his last sermon.
I was in San Miguel when it happened.
Write his words because he brings the word.
His story is accurate because it froze in his throat.
We were in shock.
This is the story that is reality.
We live here seeding corns and beans.
We go up into the hills
to gather wood
to make pesos a day,
less than a dollar.
Looking into the camera
Francisco is on the cross.
This is a developed community.
We have this church.
We have a school.
I am the president of the parents.
I’m busy.
I have my beans and corn as well.
Rutilio Grande vive.
We were in Nicaragua.
Your country didn’t want to let us in.
They said we were guerillas.
They stopped us.
We decided to make an activity
to stop the cars.
We put sticks and stones in the street.
The police got us and put us
in this dry, hot place.
Engineers came.
We grabbed him by the neck
and called him a troublemaker.
They kept us thin
and then we started getting fat
because we weren’t doing anything.
Then the plane came.
LINES FOR MARY CAMPBELL, OUR GUIDE,
ON HER BIRTHDAY, IN COMUNIDAD RUTILIO GRANDE
That you would bring us here
to this vision of Christ’s love
which you helped build—part truth,
part guerilla, a place that defines
solidarity, the gift that one can’t imagine,
taking first steps. Last night I slept
in the house of Juan Carlos Perdonmo, 33,
his wife Ana Delmi, 31, and their two children,
Alex, 10, Jenny, 8. Mil gracias. We took photos,
they told me their stories. Thank you, Mary,
for this common day in Comunidad Rutilio Grande,
a day so commonly uncommon, I want to call it
milagro. It’s your birthday, and this weekend,
it’s the birthday of Rutilio Grande, too.
The community celebrates 15 on Saturday.
Quinceaños. Happy Birthday to both of you.
Rutilio Grande vive. He looks so young
on the murals beside the cross. It makes me cry
for young people anywhere dreaming freedom.
Unmasking assassins’ bullets through accompaniment
and metaphor—that’s our work. This morning,
walking in community, your son Ricardo
walked by me with a buddy, arm in arm,
confident and comfortable in the security
of his pueblo protecting him. The community
you believe in, running police checkpoints
at midnight a dozen years ago to make it happen.
Lawyer vision armed with justice. Earlier
this morning, walking to the bathroom,
a voice I couldn’t find, asked me,
¿Estas en solidaridad con Iraq?”
Antonio Ramírez, ex-combatiente,
already at work on this house, was reeling
me towards peace, calling for what you call for,
wanting to give his testimony. I’m on school steps
with children in blue uniforms. Pilgrims
you brought from the Midwest jump rope
with kids encouraged by laughter and delight.
God applauds in hands of children,
smiling for cameras and eating M&M’s.
Happy Birthday, Mary. How many birth
moments can one person have in one day?
The boy looking over my shoulder
could be Ricardo turning bystanders into parents.
That’s how things happen with the camino.
Who knows what’s going to happen when God’s
in charge? This afternoon, Jon Sobrino will say
only the poor can save us, offering salvation
from below, from yet another room
in the imagination. Where is God?
He’s already answered:
Not in the empire. You walk us to Radio Salud
run by young people, an intercom announcing
buenas noticias through trees into houses.
You were the first delegate to walk into Rutilio Grande
in November, 1991. Chickens, scholarships,
electricity, followed, all on a piece of abandoned
land. People arrived in March, just out of tents,
moving into wood houses. We’ll be gone Saturday
when soccer teams arrive. You will never leave.
Love,
Jim Bodeen
March 25, 2006
Rutilio Grande/San Salvador
Rutilio Grande/San Salvador
LISTENING TO JON SOBRINO, WRITING IN MY NOTEBOOK
WHILE LISTENING, AFTER RETURNING
FROM THE REPOPULATED COMMUNITY OF RUTILIO GRANDE
Birdsong at sunset turns up the volume
as the solitary speaks. “…reformulated for the poor?
Can you see the young man?”
Un mundo salvado
Podemos hablar de esto.
The forgotten ones. Believers. Saved from below.
To admire a man who repeats
what needs to be repeated relentlessly.
Maybe it couldn’t be done
if it weren’t for Jon Sobrino
and the few like him,
talking to power,
talking about power,
relentlessly—los pobres traen salvación—they mirror Christ.
Among us, the question is not
how to do theology ‘after’ Auschwitz,
but doing it ‘in’ Auschwitz,
that is, in the midst of a terrifying cross…
It would be so easy to bring flush toilets,
dentists, and doctors, to places like Rutilio Grande.
We need a critical mass.
Yesterday the world from above said no.
The world from above doesn’t have the humanity.
Flowers are important.
No sabemos sus nombres.
We don’t know your name
en este mundo de abajo.
God of the life of victims
…bringing us into a God different than the God of thought.
Saved from below
we don’t even know your name.
The university can’t save the world.
The poor teach hope. No one else can.
Y los pobres creen en Dios,
en algo tantos basico.
Participate in the risks
and change your life.
Jim Bodeen
23 March 2006, San Salvador—19 April 2006, Yakima
Note: This poem is a compilation of notes, of visual and aural observations taken in an altered state. Notes are external and internal without citation. The italicized lines do come from Jon Sobrino’s book, Jesus the Liberator: A Historical-Theological View. jb
SABADO 5 DE MARZO 2005
María Louisa taps on the door
of Casa de Huespedes this morning
when I am doing my daily devotions
in my room. We were all running
a bit late. I sat at the patio table
and finished while she made breakfast—
fried egg, sausage, cheese—
queso de baca, and rolls, with coffee.
And cane sugar. I finished my devotions.
It is early and I am waiting for Medardo.
I walk to the barber where
I get my hair cut for two dollars.
Medardo arrives with Paco
driving the pickup. Efraín, René, Chucho,
and I together. We are going
to the small Lutheran Church
in a canton—little village—
where there will be a baptism,
confirmation and first communion.
We pick up two Lutheran pastors,
a married couple, Elias and Margarita.
Their church is a small one
in their own pueblo.
Maybe room for 30 charis.
The church in the canton.
The canton of Tepeagua.
A Nahuatl word Medardo tells me.
Los hijos de los dioses de agua.
The children of the gods of water.
There’s a town in Salvador named Zonzante.
Medardo tells me this is where indigenous
keep their language, and university professors
help them keep it. When Eliseo and Margarita
get in the truck, Efraín and Margarita
get in the back. It is a good drive
and I relax in time and timelessness.
Counting time, too. Breaking the day
into smaller parts. I’m trying to stay
present, to give what I have to give,
to take the love that’s given—
and there’s lots, and I’m full.
Has ungido con perfume mi cabeza;
has llenado mi copa a rebosar. —
Me guía por sendas de justicia
por amor a su nombre.
The Lutheran Church of Peace.
Discovered—for me—in a little village—
La Iglesia Luterana de la Paz. Nearly full,
with the two confirmands, girl and boy,
about ten, in new dress, and shirt and tie.
Strong, beautiful, tough young mothers.
I’m invited to photograph, and I do.
Pastora Margarita deferring to the men.
Pastors trained in Brazil to liberate.
Medardo in deep bishop purple leads us in song.
This rural church is smaller than the one
that baptized me in Bowbells, North Dakota.
Yes. But not more isolated. Not now.
Like photographing a wedding.
But only here.. After the service,
everyone with a child lines up for photographs.
The Bishop is first choice, then Margarita.
I’m the last one out of the Church.
Medardo addresses me as the visiting poet.
Clapping hands urge me to write better poems.
And eat these sandwiches, walking around,
circling the church where red meat
comes from carbon, grilled for the men—
aguacate, tortillas, Coca Cola.
Back in the truck, driving again,
dropping off Elias and Margarita
at their church, early afternoon,
and on to Fe y Esperanza,
the Refugee Camp where the Bishop
would talk about Perdoner—
forgiving. ¿Qué quiere decir
sobre perdoner, Jim?
Forgive others so you can forgive yourself.
Medardo is all love.
All critical discussion falls away
before his great witness of love.
Love surrounded by poverty.
Come to El Salvador where you can
kill yourself with work or alcohol
or praising God. Those are your options.
For a man like me these are good choices.
What do you want to do with your life?
At Fe y Esperanza, I listen. We eat pupusas
and sit before an open fire.
Medardo made a congregation out of 1300
war refugees here. He gave his life
to the poorest of the poor. He’s giving it now.
I’m walking with him.
That’s what I’m doing. It’s this easy.
On the ride home I tell Medardo:
I want to be a member of your church,
that I’ve talked with Karen. I know how
to belong to two places. That’s fine.
That’s how it will be, he says.
Belong with responsibilities I say.
Pertenezco con responsibilidades.
We talk driving through the dark.
It’s all good. Back at the Bishop’s Office
at dusk. A 12-hour day in El Salvador.
I’m right at 60 hours left in country.
Medardo picks me up at 8 in the morning.
I become a member of the Lutheran Church
of the Resurrection, a church of the poor,
a church that serves the poorest of the poor,
in San Salvador, El Salvador, before
flying home on Tuesday.
I talk about Karen through it all,
how we carry each other.
Casa de Huespedes
Concordia
Iglesia Luterana
San Salvador, El Salvador
5 de marzo 2005
5 de marzo 2005
THE CRITICS SMASHED WHILE DOGS PROTECT ME
Confused in mid-sentence,
where I’ll go—
am I writing or reading?
What day is it?
Devocional cotidiana en una mano.
I don’t even know what language I’m in.
I started by looking for the day.
Just the day.
And I’ve lost track
de mi libro de gracia también.
I find a word I circled yesterday.
I think it was yesterday.
Desampararé—
Escucha su voz—
I didn’t know the word desamparar,
and I come across Medardo’s name
in my notebook, along with Rosa Parks’
and Martin Luther King Jr’s—
they belong together.
I’ve got an article on Bukowski
in the New Yorker open.
I’m going to put some lines
in the notebook. All of this
is for poetry—stretching
to go wide and deep—to the breaking
point where it all folds
into the poem. This is our only process.
Some days this is all one can do to resist.
Some days all one can do
in the notebook is this.
Jim Bodeen
16 March 2005
16 March 2005
WE WERE ON THE BOAT
We were on the boat going to Holden Village, The Lady of the Lake, crossing water, sitting on the deck, in the sun, my wife and I. My wife and I were with a group of Latinos on our way to a weeklong retreat called Abriendo Caminos, opening paths.
My friend said, I want you to meet the Bishop.
When she introduced me to Medardo Gómez, he looked at me and said, “If you want to write the best poems of your life, come to El Salvador.”
Crossing water is always a conversion experience. Literature teaches us this. Still, I was caught off guard. It would take me two years to get to El Salvador, to be with Bishop Medardo Gómez, to understand more fully what had happened to me in that first encounter. We would teach together at Holden, and every word and feeling went into my notebook full of meaning. Still I didn’t understand.
Medardo Gómez is the Bishop of the Peace in El Salvador, and Central America. Teaching us that week in Holden, we would know none of this. We would feel his presence, a, but he was there to teach Scripture, not to tell his story. The glimpses we would get into his story came as they pertained to the story of El Salvador, and his people.
The day I arrived in San Salvador, at the Casa de Huespedes/guest house at the Obisbado where Bishop Gómez begins his day as spiritual leader of the Lutheran Church in El Salvador and Central America, I was a beginner, un principiante, and Bishop Gómez, in greeting me, was giving me his hand, to walk with him, as he walked with his people. He was inviting me, as I was able, to participate fully in his work with his people.
Medardo’s walk with his people, his walk with God, accelerated and slowed my understanding. He assembled the poets from San Salvador to meet with me. He invited me to travel with his team of pastors. He took me into his office to meet with his people in desperate daily situations. He screened me from nothing. I was included in a daylong workshop of more than 70 pastors discussing the deepest problems of the Lutheran Church in El Salvador.
At some point I realized two things. Medardo Gómez, the other candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize eventually given to Rigoberta Menchú, from Guatemala, walks, not only in the footsteps of Archbishop Oscar Romero, but of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr.; further, Bishop Gómez’s work and mission, more than ten years after a tenuous, and questionable peace process, remains the same. He works with the poorest of the poor. His Lutheran Church, while proclaiming a prophetic ministry, struggles daily to minister to the poor and marginalized people of El Salvador. His wife, Abelina, a wonderful pastor in her own right, works alongside, and helps in the ministry to Fe y esperanza, the Lutheran Refugee Camp outside of San Salvador.
Bishop Gómez and the people of El Salvador need our help again. They need working relationships with North American Lutheran Churches, and they need money. Medardo Gómez is the Bishop of Peace because he led his people through the time of war. In the middle of a peace process that has left the country, and its people, impoverished, it is difficult to maintain commitment. That’s what is needed now.
Medardo Gómez changed my life on a boat ride. Walking with him and the people he loves and ministers, shows me, that we need what they have as much as they need what we have. We’re stronger when we do it together.
Jim Bodeen
March, 2005
March, 2005
LISTENING TO JOSE “CHENCHO” ALAS IN A YAKIMA
LIVING ROOM, AFTER RETURNING FROM THE PEACE MARCH
IN WASHINGTON, DC, THE PEACE TRAIN STILL IN MY HEAD,
TRAVELLING AND DREAMING DEEP FUTURES IN LISTENING
Chenchito, my mother told me, when I was starting my ministry,
if you don’t have enemies, you’re a bad priest. I was born in Chalatenango,
one of 12 children, in a poor family, and all but one of us,
have careers. Romero was unsure of himself. He wanted a theology
where he wouldn’t make any mistakes. I met Father Romero
in 1965. His church was the Church of San Miguel. His father
was a carpenter, and the little Romero wanted to be a priest.
As a person, he was shy, timid, uncertain. He wanted to maintain
status quo. This theology said, It’s great to have a child.
This theology was steeped in obedience and authority,
all of the necessities to get to heaven. Romero was a man
of prayer, and he had a beautiful heart. In February 1977,
the new archbishop was named. The bells rang.
My mother said, We have a new Archbishop.
I said, Mommy I know him. His name is Arturo Rivera.
No, m’ijo, it’s not. His name is Oscar Romero.
I didn’t want him. I was disappointed. When he was ordained,
I remained in the corridor. But when he came out, he walked
to me and said, Chencho, I want to work with you.
Then Rutilio Grande was killed on March 12.
He was one of the prophets in our country. I can never
forget his words: The very violence they create unites
us and brings us together even though they beat us down,
because we bring love against their anti-love.
Father Grande was on his way to El Paisnal to say mass,
and read Romero’s letter offering his friendship to the priests.
He was shot before he arrived. When Romero heard
he didn’t know what to do. He came to my room
that night crying. and asking for advice. What will we do?
There was the problem about a memorial service for Father Grande.
We asked him if we could vote. Romero said yes.
That vote was the first act of democracy.
Go pray to Jesus, I said.
When he came back, he had decided. Chencho, we will have
one mass in the cathedral tomorrow for Father Grande.
The anuncio began looking for him that afternoon, Where is Romero?
Where is Romero? he asked, and nobody knew.
Doctrine or message? Romero began inarticulately,
but he became a prophet by listening to the message.
If you need to give the life, ok.
He became the prophet that we needed.
The pope is dead, and maybe he’s in heaven.
But Oscar Romero is alive and he’s with the people.
·
We need peacemakers now.
How do you get to be a peacemaker?
A university student asked me this.
Learn the meaning of spirituality.
The campesinos became my best school. I learned
by listening to them. The problem now is food.
To become part of the meso-American movement
you need to say, I am a peacemaker.
We must start with the earth.
We are earth, eating earth.
In the spirit of peace we must stop
putting poison in our mouths.
We need globalization that comes from the bottom.
It never works when it comes from the top.
A man in Yakima asked me,
Chencho, do the fourteen families still have all the money?
How do I answer him?
No. There are only three.
The Central American Free Trade Agreement
is 2500 pages long. Let me tell you.
A treaty follows international law.
The agreement says your country
can change its mind whenever it wants.
In our country we receive corn from God.
That is our spirituality.
Washington DC is not important.
We will build our peace with the American people.
I come here to be with you.
I see your face smiling.
And there is something different in my body.
·
Little by little, this coffee became power and poverty.
The companies became a state within a state,
with more power than the state. Does that make sense?
I came from Chalatenango, a humble place,
and studied in the Gregorian University in Rome.
That was in 1956. We were 2000s students and one teacher.
I learned liberation theology. Now I am learning theology of peace.
They come from the same inspiration.
After Independence in my country, in 1821,
Anastacio Aquino, a Pipil Indian, wanted land
returned to the Indians. He crowned himself
with the crown of St. Joseph, and named himself
the King of the Nonualcos, saying:
Land for those who work it.
The matanza by the government in 1932
was a real genocide, killing 30,000 indigenous people.
It only took them 15 days to do this.
From this time on, indigenous people quit wearing
native clothes, gave up their land and language,
and the government began to brag,
There are no indigenous peoples in El Salvador.
Now globalization is a sin in your people’s name.
In your name the president of the United States is killing children.
You need to participate in foreign affairs.
The peace accord our people live with is the same as war.
Peace that comes from the poor to the poor
must be given a chance. Transform conflict.
That is what we can do. We cannot resolve anything.
That is a lie.
Liberation theology is no more than lessons for reality.
When I was a young priest, we prepared our lessons
for the people every 15 days. That was our program.
Rosa mistica. Of course you must read between the lines.
We learned Christian based communities from Brazil.
Some women went to the bishop and said,
We don’t have a priest.
He gave them a Bible
and said, Go teach yourselves.
And that is what they did.
The poor are closest to God, you see.
Medellin is more important for theology than drugs.
Your newspapers miss the important things.
I studied for a year in Quito, Ecuador
and returned to El Salvador in 1968.
Justice and Peace is what I studied.
Once a man came to me to confess.
I have sinned against love, Father.
That is what he told me.
We priests have minds for the flesh, you know.
I have sinned against love
because I am not organized.
It’s a sin, father, because if I am not
organized I cannot help my people,
I’m not in solidarity.
I was young and new in Suchitoto.
These days were intoxicating for all of us.
I spoke for the campesinos
from the pulpit. I didn’t know
about the Doctor’s Wife or the Justice of the Peace
listening in anger from the pews.
You can read about that in my story.
They left me naked and tortured
on a mountain to die.
There is a photograph of my brother Higinio
holding a death threat from the White Guard.
Now I work with 86 communities.
These are ex-combatants from the war.
We have established Local Zones of Peace
to take care of the gardens and cultivate the land.
Now you must do in North America
what I did in Quito in the 1960’s.
You must learn how to be prophets.
First you must have a historic mind.
You need to know what happened.
Then you need to denounce it.
Structures of sin are in the social fabric.
The sins are invisible at first.
When you see this and denounce it,
you can participate in the kingdom of God.
Build structures that favor justice.
Listen to the people.
They bring the messages and questions
that will help you make the way.
The Europeans are mad because they didn’t invent this.
We are in a dark cycle at the moment,
but the seeds of justice, they are beginning to take hold.
El Salvador is about the size of Yakima County.
We have five acres of beach front.
Education is more important than televisions.
We don’t have enough water for golf courses.
The Arena Party is the one that killed Romero.
They have four consecutive terms in power.
The beauty of the Mangrove Tree is this:
They protect against tsunamis.
They are tropical and tidal.
First removed for development,
they correct our mistakes and save us at the same time.
They stabilize the sand and mud.
This day is an adventure with God.
No one knows what will happen.
No one knows what will happen.
What about Chencho, they asked?
Tell him to leave the country as soon as possible.
I was in exile for 15 years.
Our people can sustain themselves
if they have tools and seeds.
We can plant trees together.
Mangrove trees, not Japanese tourist hotels.
Jim Bodeen
Yakima—Olympia
19-28 October, 2005
19-28 October, 2005
DRIVING DOWN THE BACK SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN,
“…the side of the mountain never photographed.”
Thomas Merton
—for Andrew Willis
Each one of us carrying, each one charged—
the old station wagon pulls out of Usulután
where we built the house, a habitat team
in another country. We are five workers,
loosely bound from the same town,
pulling away from the work site
newly mixed with sweat and story.
Questions mixed with cement.
What each of us carries is too new to talk about.
Putting down tiles for the floor
on the final afternoon, José, our crew chief,
one of two skilled workers
on the house this week, asks me,
¿Cuantan se pagan en los estados unidos
por este trabajo? How much would I get paid
in the United States for this work? I pause
for direction and truth.
José makes 15 dollars a day,
builds ten houses a year. No sé,
más, cierto. Pero no sé cuanto más.
More, but I don’t know how much more.
En mi familia, mi esposa y yo, nosotros
trabajamos. Ella gana más que yo.
In our family, my wife and I both work.
My wife makes more than I do.
She works in a bank. She’s a boss.
She works long hours. I’m a teacher.
I make less. But I make more
than teachers in El Salvador.
We work hard. We have a house
with two bathrooms. We have a garden.
We both have our own cars.
I have two dogs. They are expensive dogs.
We have good lives. We work hard.
Our three kids each speak Spanish, have jobs,
live on their own. Their lives will be more difficult.
Mis hijas, como maestros, casados también,
viven en su propias casas. Mi hijo,
el mismo edad de usted, su vida es más difícil.
My son’s life is more difficult.
but he chose another path. He works
hard, for less. Eso es nuestra vida.
That’s how I answered as we finished the floor.
José, the skilled worker, had been my boss
this week. I carried buckets of cement,
tried to do whatever he asked, as I learned
his Spanish, and about his life.
Bruce & Ann Willis put this together.
Andrew, their son, 24, works for Habitat in El Salvador.
He’d been there eight months when Bruce called,
trying to put together a team to build a house,
wanting to see his son, to see this work.
He and Ann carried their own questions.
Two years ago on a boat crossing water,
I met a man who said to me,
If you want to write the best poems
of your life come to El Salvador.
I’ve been with him for more than a week.
Where he walks, I walk.
Any poetry is gravy.
I came early to be with him, the one
whose story called to me, and I’m going back
for ten more days of listening.
When I met Medardo Gómez,
the Lutheran Bishop of El Salvador,
we were at a retreat center, above a lake.
Another couple from Yakima,
Ron and Helen Riehl, met the bishop, too.
Sitting under the sun in a kiosk,
I took their photographs, and Ron said,
Maybe we ought to go and see
what’s happening down there. I don’t know
the last time I heard a good sermon.
Ron and Helen have been all over the world
on bicycles, in canoes. Helen says
our best fights were in that canoe.
With a new hip Helen mixed more cement
and did more heavy lifting than I did.
She managed the stretching
I needed to do for my back.
We’re not children. We’ve been broken.
Bruce and Ron are dentists. The best.
We’re from a church, nation, culture,
gone soft in the gums, addicted to oil
and turned against the world.
We’ve been to the places of the martyrs.
We’ve stood in the rose garden
at the Catholic University where the bodies were found.
We’ve added our names to the book as witnesses,
and been to the small chapel where Romero
took the assassin’s bullet at the cancer hospital
of Divine Providence. We’ve looked
into each other’s eyes and said
what we did and what we didn’t believe.
Leaving Usulután, Bruce wants to see
this coffee plantation. Andrew has picked us up
in his old car. We turn off the highway
towards San Salvador, and drive past
the municipio of Ozatlán,
and then past the turnoff to El Palmital,
the cantón surrounded by banana and cocanut trees,
where we built the house under a green mango tree.
Alegría is the name of the town where the coffee’s grown,
where the plantation is. And why not? The dream
of the hacienda has it all, great view and the best
collection of fighting cocks in Central America.
This is a pleasure house. Birds are bred
for beautiful feathers, bred to fight and die.
Coffee and beer a mile above the ocean.
Bruce isn’t sure his son’s car can get us down.
The drive to the plantation has not been
without cost. Father and son put a gallon
of water in the radiator, look at the map
for another way down the mountain,
a shorter ride into San Salvador.
Out of Alegra then, through Berlin, Buenos Aires,
San Agustin, towards Angela Montaña.
Thomas Merton gave me the final steps
to seeking God: practicality, extreme sobriety,
and courage. Be careful with all three.
Practicality means neither useful or safe.
The Trappist monk is in a festival of rain,
slipping away from any abbott.
Rain is free and meaningless.
Those who price rain to give it value
are already trying to bring it to market.
Merton’s cooking oatmeal on a coalman stove.
It’s wet and he’s under a tree.
My mother says, You don’t have to go
to El Salvador to find God.
Merton agrees with her, laughing
under wet trees, eating oatmeal.
I’m coming off this mountain still looking.
Merton listens to Philoxenses,
6th Century hermit, putting words
on the lips of Christ, I will make you
rich men who have need of nothing.
To be a contemplative is to be an outlaw,
like Christ, like Paul. Like Merton, I add.
I found Merton the year
I came back from Viet Nam, in 1968.
The year Merton died. I wouldn’t put that together
for 30 years. It would take me longer than that
to get here, to this mountain, and now we don’t know
if we’ll make it down. We stop for cattle.
We stop for rocks. We stop for dust
so thick it comes through the floorboard
through our clothes into our bodies,
all the time listening to the groaning sounds
of our wheels in the old station wagon.
Coming on a road construction crew
wearing orange tshirts, they look like
they might be a work crew from a prison camp.
Their smiles are braver than ours.
Nothing is like what you see on tv.
Workers everywhere make less.
Now corporations have
more power than the government.
Ron breaks the collective silence,
recalling days bicycling America:
One night Helen and I lay
in our sleeping bags with our arms
around each other holding on for dear life.
We couldn’t shake the fear of those
trucks passing us at 70 miles an hour.
Andrew drives us off the mountain, his parents
beside him in the front seat. We stop
in a village for fresh quesadilla—
a sweet cornbread—
and a stop that allows us to stretch
and dream. Now our faces,
almost real, almost empty,
begin to shine.
Drinking bottles of water,
our handkerchiefs wipe away
dust and what’s left of our masks.
We smile at one another, resting.
Ahead is one more wrong turn.
Looking for the refugee camp
we will take a road into rockfilled Tierra Blanca,
mistaking it for Angela Montaña,
where all but Andrew get out and walk.
The old car can’t travel this road
with us in it. Finally, when told by natives
to turn around, we will understand
their intent, not their language.
Then the Sister of Providence
will tell us her good news.
We will find her
and she will swing from her hammock
in her garden patio and tell us
about the poor. She has been with them
for ten years. Children will gather
at her door, smiling. We take their pictures.
This is what Merton promised.
This is how to open a church, or family, or village.
This is the ride we came for,
the ride off the mountain, from the other side.
This is the parable of the house,
The young woman had told us,
Van a ver lo mismo personas
pero no lo mismo.
Now we can listen to almost anything.
We’re not as afraid
of what others have to say,
or even our own words.
We stand with a new way of seeing
with newly resonant voices prepared to speak.
Jim Bodeen
February—March—1 April, 2005
Yakima—San Salvador—Usulután—El Palmital—Alegría—
Angela Montaña—San Salvador—Yakima
Angela Montaña—San Salvador—Yakima
EATING BREAKFAST WITH BISHOP GOMEZ
LISTENING TO HIM PRAY WITH HIS PEOPLE
Te pedimos que nos oigas,
que escuchas el clamor de tu pueblo
Medardo Gómez rezando
después de desayunar
I eat like a king
but the day the Death Squads
came to get me,
I hadn’t eaten breakfast.
Before I got out of jail
I saw people eating termites.
Jim Bodeen
February 28, 2005
San Salvador
San Salvador
POEMS SENT IN ADVANCE
BY THE SINNER, TO THE PASTOR,
SO AS TO MAXIMIZE WHAT MIGHT BE
TALKED ABOUT DURING THEIR HOUR ON FRIDAY
—for the Reverend Ronald f. Marshall
In the negative essence of God,
what I hear is music. Doubt is not
so much swept away as rendered absurd.
All I hear is music. That’s how
I hear your essay, an offering
of song. Love for a person goes
bad when applied to the self.
Children understand that—
build a fence! Were you listening
when the pastor came by to talk
about the abuse of language?
I’d pointed out some things in the Church
bulletin before I left for El Salvador.
That’s how I found you, quoting
Romero. Was it this:… must spoil
what is miscalled prestige. Or this:
A word of God that doesn’t get under anyone’s skin.
It went ok. I guess. I’m not in trouble here.
Being in front of the text I am run over.
Your image in my mouth makes me sing.
I have no trouble with my excess,
speaking here to a man I’ve never met.
I feel completely holy in your sentence.
At some point the pastor turned to growth.
You might know Ron Marshall,
I say, Deathly Evangelism sitting
between us. I point with my finger,
Don’t write off the work of the empty pew.
At the end of our two hours, I ask
the pastor. Has this been prayer for you?
It has been, he says, and I walk him
up the hill. Where is God? Jon Sobrino
asks, quiet while all of my friends take turns.
Alone, I open him at random: We have
touched bottom, one often hears in El Salvador.
Personally I would say the same about
the powers of this world, their indifference to truth,
and interest in oppressing it. Such talk
that has been in this house today—when
footnotes become part of the poem,
a world this age does not
suspect, permit or credit.
I will see you Friday morning,
Pastor Whose Preaching Must Meet Conflict.
Jim Bodeen
5 April 2005
FRAGMENTS FROM THE NOTEBOOK
AFTER THE POETRY READING IN EL SALVADOR
DURING A CONVERSATION ABOUT POETRY
La tinta más débil es major qué
Cualquier memoria brillante,
The man begins, standing
In the back of the room.
I catch this much, and miss
What comes next
In order to be certain of this:
The poet who is not a voice
For his people, no matter
How beautiful or skillful
His words and poems,
Regardless of his gifts
As a poet, if he doesn’t speak
For el pueblo, he will only
Ever be a canary.
Jim Bodeen
THE TROUBLE WITH CROSSES
All my life I’ve been a man of the cross.
It was resurrection I couldn’t understand.
Now I’ve gone and joined that church,
La Iglesia Luterana de La Resurrección,
San Salvador. Church of the Resurrection.
Sign me up, I told Medardo Gómez,
the bishop who pastors the church,
the refugee who ministers to refugees.
I went to Salvador for one reason,
to walk with the Bishop, to be with the poor.
To walk with him until I could be
more like him. Two days before
I was to leave, a guard at the university
was killed. Medardo said it wasn’t only murder
It was the death squads, Los escuadrones de la Muerte.
Medardo sent an email. He was wailing,
and I felt helpless. I read all the stories
on the Internet. That’s where I found out
about la cruz subversiva—the subversive cross.
Medardo told the press it was just like 15 years ago,
when he was forced into exile
and the government took his cross to prison.
A cross in prison, imagine that.
It was chaos, he told me later.
The 16th of November 1989. The war
had intensified, Guerillas were on the move
in San Salvador. Terror and confusion.
The six Jesuits and two workers were killed.
They burned the typewriters.
Then they came to get me. There were pastors
from Europe and North America
acting as my shields. I went into exile
in Guatemala. They bombed my church
two times. When they couldn’t find me
they took people in the church. 15 of them.
They took them captive. 12 foreigners,
and three people from my church.
They took my cross to prison.
This cross is subversive.
The cross, together with the 15,
were taken to the police.
They committed a great error here,
carrying this cross and those people to jail.
This abuse of power manifested itself
on the cross. The nation’s sins were written
on the cross to teach us and to make us
a prophetic church of liberation.
With this error of imprisoning the cross‑-
which was only apparently passive--
the cross teaches us of the crimes committed
against the pueblo by the leaders.
Two months passed with me in exile.
Other pastors from other countries came
and accompanied me to the police.
The North American ambassador came to see me.
I saw this as an opportunity to liberate the cross.
The ambassador talked to the president
who had it delivered to the Presidential Palace.
The President then brought it to me at the Church.
I’ve got a photo of him giving it to me
pinned to the cross itself. See for yourself.
The pilgrim cross made the journey
from the carcel to the Presidential Palace
before coming home. Por eso ledecimos ahora
la cruz subversiva.
That’s the story I carried with me to El Salvador—
the story of the subversive cross,
wondering all the time, who I could tell,
who would understand. This—
and how can they get some help,
now that nobody remembers what happened
to the poor, or to the refugees.
Nowadays, even Medardo’s been forgotten,
By all but the people he serves.
Medardo gave me this cross to bring back,
a cross made from wood from the terremoto.
Medardo told me, Esta cruz es la cruz de la vida.
No es una cruz de la muerte.
So I’ve got this cross,
and I’ve got all these stories of crosses,
but the one that got me, the one that gets me
everytime is the story of the cruz subversiva.
WITH THE HABITAT FOR HUMANITY TEAM
LISTENING TO FRAN STACY, SISTER OF PROVIDENCE
A LA COMUNIDAD ANGELA MONTANA—
THE REPOPULATED COMMUNITY
OF THE MUCHACHOS—THE BOYS—
BETWEEN USULUTAN AND SAN SALVADOR
AFTER BUILDING THE HOUSE
This was an ex-combatants desert,
all bombed out. Ex-combatants
were given 3 manzanas to farm
and one parcel to live on.
Angela Montaña was the first casualty
in the war, a nurse with the guerillas.
She was the first one killed.
If you fix up a committee
we’ll bring you a well.
Every 2 houses has a spigot,
Every house has a tap.
You’ve brought me a letter
from Sister Georgette in Yakima?
Hand carried it? Oh my.
We’ve been Sisters of Providence
for more than 40 years.
Here we work in pastoral teams.
We’re 114 Christian-based communities.
Cells make up our bodies.
Every cell has the capacity
to make a body its own way.
Formation, service, and celebration.
See, judge act.
Did you ever do a marriage encounter?
We gather weekly.
We’ve been working two years
to get land registered. Two years
is how much time they give you.
The government’s trying to take it
away in the name of national heritage.
They see those resort hotels coming in.
This government won’t give land titles to some.
That’s part of my work.
The government works to make certain
some people don’t get it and they do.
Canasta basico.
Romero era la voz para los sin voz.
Romero was the voice for those
with no voice. The new Bishop?
Saenz, he’s a slap in the face
to all who work with the poor.
He’s an Opus Dei man.
Need I say more?
He reassigns the clergy
who talk liberation.
Your Supreme Court Judges,
Scalia and Thomas, they’re Opus Dei.
Every man for himself
in a personal fight to get to Heaven.
Our first young man from here
made it to California two weeks ago.
Mauricio.
So disadvantaged they maintain a faith—
they know God is with them.
They are my teachers.
They have to go illegally,
borrowing what they can
to pay the coyote his 5000 dollars.
It’s a better bet than paying 100 dollars
to immigration for a 3-minute conversation.
Being illegal has its advantage for both sides
but what it does to the human spirit
can’t be measured.
If there’s an upturn in the economy
it won’t be for the poor.
I’ve been here ten years.
I have a whole new vision of Jesus.
I have interior freedom
to give what I have.
There are three categories here.
Ones who can take care of themselves.
Ones with a few chickens.
And people with nothing.
We know the families with nothing.
Corn, beans, rice.
Elderly, poor and handicapped.
This house has a floor.
This house has a hammock.
We who have more
hang on to it more.
Here the poor give to the poor.
I’m learning from the generosity
of those who know
what it means to suffer.
Play a simple card
in a complex world.
I’ve found my call to learn Spanish.
I studied in Valparaiso, in Chile.
It’s the only place in the world
where the poor live up high.
Yo puedo defenderme.
I can defend myself.
Oh, those children at the door.
Aren’t they beautiful!
Jim Bodeen
Feb—March 2005
Angela Montoya—San Salvador—Yakima
Angela Montoya—San Salvador—Yakima
BEGINNING OSCAR ROMERO COMMEMORATION
WEEK IN SEATTLE AT WALLINGFORD UNITED METHODIST,
WHAT THE PEOPLE HAVE TO SAY
Sistering with Salvadoran communities
en la buena lucha is a good thing to do.
Moses was the nation builder.
Jesus of Nazereth is the champion of the poor.
I speak for people who think their church is irrelevant
but don’t have the courage to quit or look elsewhere.
Going empty is the most important qualification.
Compañeros is the name of our project.
Be helpful, but wait for your cue.
El Salvadoran women have to be aggressive
and proactive. Most of their men were killed.
I hadn’t thought about the world. I didn’t make
the connections. It took me three trips.
Having good friends in another country
makes you think about things differently.
Those sweaters in our department stores
are more difficult to buy. I don’t really know
what happened to me. I thought to myself,
I should be doing something to make a difference.
It’s changed our church. We’re more connected.
Guys want to do something. Some people
want to hug. Relationship is what it’s about.
I started teaching on the street. The priest
was going to Spain. There was going to be
no teacher. I said, I want room and board
and school supplies for students. My son,
my wife, and I. My son wants to be a Jesuit.
I think my wife wants to be a nun.
We were a sanctuary church in the 80’s.
We needed to take the next step.
Mesa Grande, Nueva Trinidad, Share.
There are ups and downs in any relationship.
When they released him from prison,
they said, You must have lots of friends in Seattle.
Our church wrote 300 letters.
My son did not want to leave.
We learned about the critical need for water.
We built a soccer field. When Arena
wanted to land a helicopter on it
to campaign for elections, people threw rocks.
There is no money. There is nothing
we can bring. There is only relationship.
There are pictures of our children
on their walls from ten years ago.
Romero didn’t have hairs on his tongue,
as they say. He could only speak truth.
This cuts across ages, cuts across divisions.
These are the lessons of being present.
The lesson for today was the risen Christ
going into the room with the apostles. Thomas
wasn’t there. For some of us, the way we come
to believe, is to touch the wounds. Focus of life.
Jim Bodeen
April 4, 2005
ACKNOWLEDGING THE GIFT FROM HELEN
AT OUR HABITAT FOR HUMANITY TEAM DINNER
AFTER BUILDING THE HOUSE IN EL SALVADOR
for Helen Riehl
The clay Nativity Scene
stands no more than two inches
at the base. An inch high,
maybe, creating a proscenium arch
in green and gold that
turns it into a shrine
of Guadalupe more
than a Christmas story.
Red roses on each end
confirm. It’s Guadalupe.
The roses rise from plants
¼ inch tall on both sides.
A sheep and donkey,
Mary & Joseph
and Baby Jesus
all fit into this tiny stage
painted by Indians
in Ilobasco. It’s Easter,
now, not the time
for a Nativity Scene,
and all of the Christmas
ornaments have been put
away in the basement.
I lay sleepless in my bed
night after night
acknowledging this gift
of wakefulness.
We’ve lost
this seminal image
of Christian faith.
The children know
it makes us poor.
JESUS OCCUPIES THE BOUNDARIES
That’s the key in understanding
the alternative world, my friend says,
warming and warning my body.
That’s quite a verb, occupies.
Whose Jesus? This notebook
cuts out on a morning bus
when access gets difficult.
A different world opens in the smaller book.
Last night ended listening to Harry
talk about monitoring elections.
Vigilantes on both sides.
Guards, not outlaws, a false cognate.
But who knows which eyes witness truth?
Volunteers trying to see.
No middle ground and
no middle class.
Company owners work employees on Sunday
so workers can’t vote. Contrast that
with the love clap: once hard
with both hands. Kiss your fist,
circle the heart and open the arms.
During the election time
the person making Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises
contemplates the lip of Christ,
begging to love him more deeply
in order to follow him more closely.
Mornings, too, are marginal, Karen says.
Poems occupy the margins.
I’m certain of this.
I’m ready for what morning brings.
Jim Bodeen
20 March 2006
LINES FOR MARY CAMPBELL, OUR GUIDE,
ON HER BIRTHDAY, IN COMUNIDAD RUTILIO GRANDE
That you would bring us here,
That you would bring us here,
to this vision of Christ’s love
which you helped build—part truth,
part guererro, a place that defines
solidarity, the gift that one can’t imagine,
taking first steps. Last night I slept
in the house of Juan Carlos Perdonmo, 33,
his wife Ana Delmi, 31, and their two children,
Alex, 10, Jenny, 8. Mil gracias. We took photos,
they told me their stories. Thank you, Mary,
for this common day in Comunidad Rutilio Grande,
a day so commonly uncommon, I want to call it
milagro. It’s your birthday, and this weekend,
it’s the birthday of Rutilio Grande, too.
The community celebrates 15 on Saturday.
Quinceaños. Happy Birthday to both of you.
Rutilio Grande vive. He looks so young
on the murals beside the cross. It makes me cry
for young people anywhere dreaming freedom.
Unmasking assassins’ bullets through accompaniment
and metaphor—that’s our work. This morning,
walking in community, your son Ricardo
walked by me with a buddy, arm in arm,
confident and comfortable in the security
of his pueblo protecting him. The community
you believe in, running police checkpoints
at midnight a dozen years ago to make it happen.
Lawyer vision armed with justice. Earlier
this morning, walking to the bathroom,
a voice I couldn’t find, asked me,
¿Estas en solidaridad con Iraq?”
Antonio Ramírez, ex-combatiente,
already at work on this house, was reeling
me towards peace, calling for what you call for,
wanting to give his testimony. I’m on school steps
with children in blue uniforms. Pilgrims
you brought from the Midwest jump rope
with kids encouraged by laughter and delight.
God applauds in hands of children,
smiling for cameras and eating M&M’s.
Happy Birthday, Mary. How many birth
moments can one person have in one day?
The boy looking over my shoulder
could be Ricardo turning bystanders into parents.
That’s how things happen with the camino.
Who knows what’s going to happen when God’s
in charge? This afternoon, Jon Sobrino will say
only the poor can save us, offering salvation
from below, from yet another room
in the imagination. Where is God?
He’s already answered:
Not in the empire. You walk us to Radio Salud
run by young people, an intercom announcing
buenas noticias through trees into houses.
You were the first delegate to walk into Rutilio Grande
in November, 1991. Chickens, scholarships,
electricity, followed, all on a piece of abandoned
land. People arrived in March, just out of tents,
moving into wood houses. We’ll be gone Saturday
when soccer teams arrive. You will never leave.
Love,
Jim Bodeen
March 25, 2006
Rutilio Grande/San Salvador
Rutilio Grande/San Salvador
SABADO 5 DE MARZO 2005
María Louisa taps on the door
of Casa de Huespedes this morning
when I am doing my daily devotions
in my room. We were all running
a bit late. I sat at the patio table
and finished while she made breakfast—
fried egg, sausage, cheese—
queso de baca, and rolls, with coffee.
And cane sugar. I finished my devotions.
It is early and I am waiting for Medardo.
I walk to the barber where
I get my hair cut for two dollars.
Medardo arrives with Paco
driving the pickup. Efraín, René, Chucho,
and I together. We are going
to the small Lutheran Church
in a canton—little village—
where there will be a baptism,
confirmation and first communion.
We pick up two Lutheran pastors,
a married couple, Elias and Margarita.
Their church is a small one
in their own pueblo.
Maybe room for 30 charis.
The church in the canton.
The canton of Tepeagua.
A Nahuatl word Medardo tells me.
Los hijos de los dioses de agua.
The children of the gods of water.
There’s a town in Salvador named Zonzante.
Medardo tells me this is where indigenous
keep their language, and university professors
help them keep it. When Eliseo and Margarita
get in the truck, Efraín and Margarita
get in the back. It is a good drive
and I relax in time and timelessness.
Counting time, too. Breaking the day
into smaller parts. I’m trying to stay
present, to give what I have to give,
to take the love that’s given—
and there’s lots, and I’m full.
Has ungido con perfume mi cabeza;
has llenado mi copa a rebosar. —
Me guía por sendas de justicia
por amor a su nombre.
The Lutheran Church of Peace.
Discovered—for me—in a little village—
La Iglesia Luterana de la Paz. Nearly full,
with the two confirmands, girl and boy,
about ten, in new dress, and shirt and tie.
Strong, beautiful, tough young mothers.
I’m invited to photograph, and I do.
Pastora Margarita deferring to the men.
Pastors trained in Brazil to liberate.
Medardo in deep bishop purple leads us in song.
This rural church is smaller than the one
that baptized me in Bowbells, North Dakota.
Yes. But not more isolated. Not now.
Like photographing a wedding.
But only here.. After the service,
everyone with a child lines up for photographs.
The Bishop is first choice, then Margarita.
I’m the last one out of the Church.
Medardo addresses me as the visiting poet.
Clapping hands urge me to write better poems.
And eat these sandwiches, walking around,
circling the church where red meat
comes from carbon, grilled for the men—
aguacate, tortillas, Coca Cola.
Back in the truck, driving again,
dropping off Elias and Margarita
at their church, early afternoon,
and on to Fe y Esperanza,
the Refugee Camp where the Bishop
would talk about Perdoner—
forgiving. ¿Qué quiere decir
sobre perdoner, Jim?
Forgive others so you can forgive yourself.
Medardo is all love.
All critical discussion falls away
before his great witness of love.
Love surrounded by poverty.
Come to El Salvador where you can
kill yourself with work or alcohol
or praising God. Those are your options.
For a man like me these are good choices.
What do you want to do with your life?
At Fe y Esperanza, I listen. We eat pupusas
and sit before an open fire.
Medardo made a congregation out of 1300
war refugees here. He gave his life
to the poorest of the poor. He’s giving it now.
I’m walking with him.
That’s what I’m doing. It’s this easy.
On the ride home I tell Medardo:
I want to be a member of your church,
that I’ve talked with Karen. I know how
to belong to two places. That’s fine.
That’s how it will be, he says.
Belong with responsibilities I say.
Pertenezco con responsibilidades.
We talk driving through the dark.
It’s all good. Back at the Bishop’s Office
at dusk. A 12-hour day in El Salvador.
I’m right at 60 hours left in country.
Medardo picks me up at 8 in the morning.
I become a member of the Lutheran Church
of the Resurrection, a church of the poor,
a church that serves the poorest of the poor,
in San Salvador, El Salvador, before
flying home on Tuesday.
I talk about Karen through it all,
how we carry each other.
Casa de Huespedes
Concordia
Iglesia Luterana
San Salvador, El Salvador
5 de marzo 2005
5 de marzo 2005
THE CRITICS SMASHED WHILE DOGS PROTECT ME
Confused in midsentence,
where I’ll go—
am I writing or reading?
What day is it?
Devocional cotidiana en una mano.
I don’t even know what language I’m in.
I started by looking for the day.
Just the day.
And I’ve lost track
de mi libro de gracia también.
I find a word I circled yesterday.
I think it was yesterday.
Desampararé—
Escucha su voz—
I didn’t know the word desamparar,
and I come across Medardo’s name
in my notebook, along with Rosa Parks’
and Martin Luther King Jr’s—
they belong together.
I’ve got an article on Bukowski
in the New Yorker open.
I’m going to put some lines
in the notebook. All of this
is for poetry—stretching
to go wide and deep—to the breaking
point where it all folds
into the poem. This is our only process.
Some days this is all one can do to resist.
Some days all one can do
in the notebook is this.
Jim Bodeen
16 March 2005
FRAGMENTS FROM THE NOTEBOOK
AFTER THE POETRY READING IN EL SALVADOR
DURING A CONVERSATION ABOUT POETRY
La tinta más débil es major qué
Cualquier memoria brillante,
The man begins, standing
In the back of the room.
I catch this much, and miss
What comes next
In order to be certain of this:
The poet who is not a voice
For his people, no matter
How beautiful or skillful
His words and poems,
Regardless of his gifts
As a poet, if he doesn’t speak
For el pueblo, he will only
Ever be a canary.
Jim Bodeen
WITH THE HABITAT FOR HUMANITY TEAM
LISTENING TO FRAN STACY, SISTER OF PROVIDENCE
A LA COMUNIDAD ANGELA MONTANA—
THE REPOPULATED COMMUNITY
OF THE MUCHACHOS—THE BOYS—
BETWEEN USULUTAN AND SAN SALVADOR
AFTER BUILDING THE HOUSE
This was an ex-combatants desert,
all bombed out. Ex-combatants
were given 3 manzanas to farm
and one parcel to live on.
Angela Montaña was the first casualty
in the war, a nurse with the guerillas.
She was the first one killed.
If you fix up a committee
we’ll bring you a well.
Every 2 houses has a spigot,
Every house has a tap.
You’ve brought me a letter
from Sister Georgette in Yakima?
Hand carried it? Oh my.
We’ve been Sisters of Providence
for more than 40 years.
Here we work in pastoral teams.
We’re 114 Christian-based communities.
Cells make up our bodies.
Every cell has the capacity
to make a body its own way.
Formation, service, and celebration.
See, judge act.
Did you ever do a marriage encounter?
We gather weekly.
We’ve been working two years
to get land registered. Two years
is how much time they give you.
The government’s trying to take it
away in the name of national heritage.
They see those resort hotels coming in.
This government won’t give land titles to some.
That’s part of my work.
The government works to make certain
some people don’t get it and they do.
Canasta basico.
Romero era la voz para los sin voz.
Romero was the voice for those
with no voice. The new Bishop?
Saenz, he’s a slap in the face
to all who work with the poor.
He’s an Opus Dei man.
Need I say more?
He reassigns the clergy
who talk liberation.
Your Supreme Court Judges,
Scalia and Thomas, they’re Opus Dei.
Every man for himself
in a personal fight to get to Heaven.
Our first young man from here
made it to California two weeks ago.
Mauricio.
So disadvantaged they maintain a faith—
they know God is with them.
They are my teachers.
They have to go illegally,
borrowing what they can
to pay the coyote his 5000 dollars.
It’s a better bet than paying 100 dollars
to immigration for a 3-minute conversation.
Being illegal has its advantage for both sides
but what it does to the human spirit
can’t be measured.
If there’s an upturn in the economy
it won’t be for the poor.
I’ve been here ten years.
I have a whole new vision of Jesus.
I have interior freedom
to give what I have.
There are three categories here.
Ones who can take care of themselves.
Ones with a few chickens.
And people with nothing.
We know the families with nothing.
Corn, beans, rice.
Elderly, poor and handicapped.
This house has a floor.
This house has a hammock.
We who have more
hang on to it more.
Here the poor give to the poor.
I’m learning from the generosity
of those who know
what it means to suffer.
Play a simple card
in a complex world.
I’ve found my call to learn Spanish.
I studied in Valparaiso, in Chile.
It’s the only place in the world
where the poor live up high.
Yo puedo defenderme.
I can defend myself.
Oh, those children at the door.
Aren’t they beautiful!
Jim Bodeen
Feb—March 2005
Angela Montoya—San Salvador—Yakima
BEGINNING OSCAR ROMERO COMMEMORATION
WEEK IN SEATTLE AT WALLINGFOR UNITED METHODIST,
WHAT THE PEOPLE HAVE TO SAY
Sistering with Salvadoran communities
en la buena lucha is a good thing to do.
Moses was the nation builder.
Jesus of Nazereth is the champion of the poor.
I speak for people who think their church is irrelevant
but don’t have the courage to quit or look elsewhere.
Going empty is the most important qualification.
Compañeros is the name of our project.
Be helpful, but wait for your cue.
El Salvadoran women have to be aggressive
and proactive. Most of their men were killed.
I hadn’t thought about the world. I didn’t make
the connections. It took me three trips.
Having good friends in another country
makes you think about things differently.
Those sweaters in our department stores
are more difficult to buy. I don’t really know
what happened to me. I thought to myself,
I should be doing something to make a difference.
It’s changed our church. We’re more connected.
Guys want to do something. Some people
want to hug. Relationship is what it’s about.
I started teaching on the street. The priest
was going to Spain. There was going to be
no teacher. I said, I want room and board
and school supplies for students. My son,
my wife, and I. My son wants to be a Jesuit.
I think my wife wants to be a nun.
We were a sanctuary church in the 80’s.
We needed to take the next step.
Mesa Grande, Nueva Trinidad, Share.
There are ups and downs in any relationship.
When they released him from prison,
they said, You must have lots of friends in Seattle.
Our church wrote 300 letters.
My son did not want to leave.
We learned about the critical need for water.
We built a soccer field. When Arena
wanted to land a helicopter on it
to campaign for elections, people threw rocks.
There is no money. There is nothing
we can bring. There is only relationship.
There are pictures of our children
on their walls from ten years ago.
Romero didn’t have hairs on his tongue,
as they say. He could only speak truth.
This cuts across ages, cuts across divisions.
These are the lessons of being present.
The lesson for today was the risen Christ
going into the room with the apostles. Thomas
wasn’t there. For some of us, the way we come
to believe, is to touch the wounds. Focus of life.
Jim Bodeen
April 4, 2005
ACKNOWLEDGING THE GIFT FROM HELEN
AT OUR HABITAT FOR HUMANITY TEAM DINNER
AFTER BUILDING THE HOUSE IN EL SALVADOR
for Helen Riehl
The clay Nativity Scene
stands no more than two inches
at the base. An inch high,
maybe, creating a proscenium arch
in green and gold that
turns it into a shrine
of Guadalupe more
than a Christmas story.
Red roses on each end
confirm. It’s Guadalupe.
The roses rise from plants
¼ inch tall on both sides.
A sheep and donkey,
Mary & Joseph
and Baby Jesus
all fit into this tiny stage
painted by Indians
in ILobasco. It’s Easter,
now, not the time
for a Nativity Scene,
and all of the Christmas
ornaments have been put
away in the basement.
I lay sleepless in my bed
night after night
acknowledging this gift
of wakefulness.
We’ve lost
this seminal image
of Christian faith.
The children know
it makes us poor.
Jesus is the missing person
in our faith. We want
him in the manger
at Christmas time.
We’re less certain
whether we want him
riding with us in our SUV’s
at 30, listening to us talk
on cell phones
on the way to the mall.
We prefer things the way
they are. Let’s put Baby Jesus
on the kitchen table
and see what happens.
What will a turned away
family hear at our table?
Jim Bodeen
April 1, 2005
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment