Roomies mine and I flew back Saturday, meeting in Atlanta, where it was hovering right around 30 degrees Fahrenheit. My teeth clattered wildly together as I shivered in cold and shock, even in my three layers and a scarf. It was hard to come back. It is always hard for me to slip with aeronautic ease in 3 hours from one of the richest countries to one of the poorest. Where people wear their wounds oftener on the outside. The blanket of comparative Central American warmth enveloped me as I left the airport, and I felt no comfort.
I'm writing because I'm a writer, and it calms me.
We were briefed today on Missions Day, which is supposed to be bigger than Christmas, than any other day at this school. There will be no normal classes that day (the first Monday in February); instead, each group of students will pass from classroom to classroom, learning about the persecuted Christians (specifically, children) in countries like Pakistan and Burma. They will identify the flag, sample a native dish (Elsy and I are cooking up some Pakistani taffy for the 4th grade room), hear some cultural and historical facts rattled off, and drink in some real stories. I'm translating two into Spanish: a girl who was imprisoned briefly by her employer for wanting to go to church on the Sabbath and a young man who took Bible studies by secret correspondence and later joined a terrorist camp. I forget what happened then. Must have decided mass-murder planning was on the creepy side and there was something to the Jesus stuff.
Can I tell this earnestly? Do I believe it?
I really hate living here sometimes. It's hard. It's uncomfortable. Teaching freaks me out. People get in my way and break my heart and scare me.
But I get eyeball-to-eyeball to God here, or as close as I can get. Away from my safe hometown where nobody will tell anybody else they need anything. I cry a lot here, because I miss the people I love. But I don't miss the noise, the chaos, the clamor. When I'm there I miss the quiet here.
I think I long for a place that doesn't exist 'round these earthly parts.
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PS: Immediately after completing this entry in a thoroughly glum mood, I picked up C. S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters, which I have been meandering through for about a week, and read this, which made me laugh, as I had just been ranting on noise: "Music and silence--how I detest them both! How thankful we should be that ever since Our Father entered Hell--though longer ago than humans, reckoning in light years, could express--no square inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise--Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile--Noise which alone defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples, and impossible desires. We will make the whole universe a Noise in the end. We have already made great strides in this direction as regards the Earth. The melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down in the end. But I admit we are not yet loud enough, or anything like it."
So dear readers, until we meet again, prize good music, gentle silence, and a regular good belly laugh, and think about hitting up a 3rd world country, for it might be very good for your soul. -Z
