Dance. For Joy!
February 2022: Dance. For Joy!
A journey to a faith community of resistance in Texas offers an opportunity to renew my Childlike Spirit, and remember our collective, deeper purpose
Recently a good friend asked me to describe a moment, in the whole long scope of my work with the Dominican people, that has brought me great joy. A wonderful, and surprising question, since I sometimes get so mired in the day to day of directing an organization I can feel distant from the deeper, long-term value it has had. Also an impossible one— impossible to pick just one moment, since over the years I’ve been blessed with a treasure chest full of them.
But I’ll tell you the first thing that came to mind: el baile. The dance. The improbable, yet inevitable, dance that has concluded every home stay component of every service-learning immersion group I’ve led since I began this mission and work nearly 25 years ago. Rarely lasting more than an hour, it is an event that is at once awkward, goofy, and at times hilarious, as well as sublime, profound, and one of the “results” of our work I’m most proud of, even if it’s not one that fits naturally into an annual report. Every time, with every group, after I’ve danced a while myself, I need to step out of the circle, not only to catch my breath, but to simply marvel at the scene. For me, it’s a drink of sacred water, a genuine, momentary glimpse of God’s kingdom, alive on earth.
To my surprise, wonderfully, I was given a drink from this cup while visiting a church community in Texas in December, reminding me of just how thirsty I’d been, and just how nourishing that sacred water can be, for so many.
But before I tell you that story, let me tell you what el baile looks like in these moments in the D.R.
* * *
In point of fact, in the Dominican communities, the occasion is known as la despedida, the farewell. Many times it falls on a Sunday, at the end of a week of staying with host families, and collaborating on a project that community leaders have identified as important and urgent— often a new cinder-block home or latrine for a family lacking a humane one, or one at all. On Sunday, in keeping with the community’s Sabbath practice, there’s no construction work at all. In the morning, we celebrate liturgy with the community; at mid-day, a big meal; in the afternoon, el baile and the many speeches of gratitude and appreciation that are also part of the community’s culture (“thanks for the memories, dude,” as some of the US teenagers might be inclined to depart with, just won’t cut it). But of course all of this, for as fun as it is, is in fact another kind of work, just as vital as construction projects— perhaps even more so— even if it doesn’t give you a sexy metric for your annual report.
The dance usually takes place in a small community building, one that might double as a chapel on occasion (or in one case, was the chapel, before a new and larger one was built). If it’s scheduled to start at 2 o’clock, you can expect to see the US group there in full at that time, each accompanied by one or two members from their Dominican host families. The community leaders, the band (three or four musicians, who will belt out the lyrics while playing acordión, guira, and tambora, all unplugged), and the remaining community members… they’ll be along… soon. Dominican time: It’s part of the experience.
In the neighborhood of 3 o’clock, most of the mules, horses, and motorcycles will have arrived, bearing the residents who will in fact be present. The others will have been detained by worries of a rainstorm (so often a possibility in summer), failed transportation, illness, or a family farm problem that’s either just popped up or is so chronic that it demands their Sunday afternoon, or just, for some reason we’ll never really know but probably comes down to the raw unpredictability of life on the margins, the person “se quedó.” They stayed behind.
On the best days, the band will now get fired up, and a community leader will pull me into the room’s center (if she’s female, like Felicia), or pair me off (if he’s male, like William) with a not-necessarily-enthused dominicana, “para dar el ejemplo,” to set the example of how to dance merengue. Or more importantly, how to simply be present, and surrendered, to this special opportunity for solidarity, strange as it may seem to call it that. (On the days when the band itself “se quedó,” and we’re simultaneously challenged by a brownout, whoever has the 4x4 with the best sound system in the community (there might only be one or two to choose from, and the speakers will probably work better than the suspension), will pull it up alongside an open window of the building, and crank it up full-blast. Mejor que nada, ¿no? Better than nothing.)
El baile is fun, in part because it can be hilarious. One of the great gifts the service groups bring to our communities in the D.R. is humor: Someone to laugh at, yes at times, but most always in an endearing (not scornful) way. More often, someone to laugh with, who creates more opportunities for humor— especially if those arise naturally, unbidden, from their authentic self. Many of our volunteers are adolescents, though some are adults who double as chaperones. All of them are invited to enter the experience with a Childlike Spirit, no matter their age: an intentionally open mind and heart, a willingness to trust rather than control, to wonder rather than fix. Sort of like “Beginner’s Mind” from the contemplative tradition, paired with a Fred Rogers spirit of compassion and gentleness (he was a Presbyterian minister, by the way; and he could also be fierce, paradoxically, in his commitment to this gentleness). The vast majority know just a smattering of Spanish, at most (as I did when I first moved to the D.R.), and so there are the inevitable, hilarious mispronunciations, improper usages, and elaborate charades sketches in the attempt to communicate; the Childlike Spirit gives them permission to make these mistakes, to laugh joyfully with the Dominicans caring for them (not at themselves in shame), perhaps even recognizing that this gift of laughter is a cool cup of water, even if not one they’d intended to provide.
And el baile, in this respect, is a showcase of mistakes, a banquet of connecting and healing humor. It helps solidarizarnos— a verb which lacks a precise equivalent in English, but perhaps is best translated as “to bring us together in solidarity.” Despite my efforts to give them a few quick merengue lessons as part of their preparation process, you simply can’t squeeze blood from a stone: some folks just aren’t given the gift of rhythm. The beautiful flow of tight-swinging hips, gliding feet, and precision spin-shift-twirls of well-danced merengue becomes, in some earnest students’ bodies, a tottering, staccato, side-step march in a small circle, over and over again… again, to the delight of their Dominican dance partner and many looking on. Among the onlookers are usually a passel of pre-pubescent boys, ages 8-11 or so, who see el baile as their sanctioned chance to dance with one or more of the female students from the service group, high school or college age, their moment to believe they have una novia americana, a North American “girlfriend.” Watching their approach, the students’ reactions, and the dances themselves (although some of the boys are already skilled dancers), also brings forth that graceful, connecting, healing laughter— sometimes, for some of the dominicanos, to the point of tears.
* * *
An additional gift the service groups bring to the community, again inadvertently but no less powerfully, is that of empowerment. But not necessarily in the way often thrown around strategy meetings, vision plans, and grant applications, of “teaching a man to fish”; this power is spiritual, and thus more subtle, equally necessary, and in some ways more profound.
It’s a fair criticism of many US service programs to say that, in trying to fulfill the important and necessary goals of providing a safe and genuinely meaningful experience for the visiting volunteers, the needs, goals, and priorities of the visited communities are glossed over, or not considered at all, much less given equal value with the group’s. To be blunt, the community residents just aren’t seen as being as human as the volunteers… though I don’t doubt that is due to socialized blind spots (the belief that a person’s importance and value equates to their degree of privilege), rather than malice. One of the things I’m proudest of in my work is the truly wonderful balance we’ve been able to achieve in creating these programs and refining them year by year, group by group, so that the groups’ visits are mutually and authentically beneficial to all involved, Dominican and North American alike. The key is taking a holistic approach, as you would for anyone you cared about, and intentionally addressing needs of body, mind, and spirit. The Dominican communities, extremely vulnerable, benefit from concrete, pragmatic projects which the groups must finance as part of the experience: latrines, homes, scholarship support, school supplies, etc. And they are given a myriad of opportunities to be generous, in the areas in which they are in fact more powerful, and the volunteers are more vulnerable. Such as taking in a student for a home stay and caring for them generously, as for their own child: cooking meals, washing clothes, walking them to and from the worksite, offering a non-judgmental hug at the day’s end even if the student is covered in sweat and construction grime. And teaching them: some words of Spanish, how to put up a mosquito net, how to swing a pick, and a host of other practical tips for campo living; and more profoundly, offering a living example of how to faithfully endure, to simply get out of bed in the morning despite having suffered a lifetime of systemic oppression, take a breath and then a step, and maybe even smile as you do. And yes, how to dance.
These moments of caretaking and teaching, as well as the moments of laughter, the shared meals made more bounteous by the program’s funding, the bailes— these and more are all co-created opportunities to celebrate. The work of a good service program, in this spiritual vein, is to find ways to gently make them possible, and allow community members to embrace them intentionally, on their own turf and their own terms. When the world’s powers, principalities, and just plain hard luck have beaten you down like they have many of my friends in the D.R., celebration is not a luxury, it’s a need, as essential as access to clean water, decent housing, and other bodily needs. A good service program will always be attentive to, and trying to answer, that need, and only then, trying to build achievements in more tangible ways upon that foundation.
So when I step back, to observe el baile and breathe in its gift, I’m seeing and feeling many things at once. There’s Pentecost, the unleashing of the Holy Spirit, which like a good bandleader whips up the energy in the room, transcends the language barriers, and invites all of us to feel and flow with it in our feet, in our bodies. There’s resistance to oppression, the audacity to turn the other cheek to the inhuman powers that seek to kill you daily in body, mind, and spirit, the courage and faithfulness to stake a claim to joy in this moment, and to hope for the future, even though a careful calculation of the odds would have you place your bets otherwise. There’s the Body of Christ, acting for a few moments in this remote, improbable place and way, like it’s supposed to: each part important, each part playing its part, all of us taking care of and truly belonging to each other as the members of a family— the holy Human family— are always called to do.
When I’ve witnessed these moments, and even when I remember them, I’m humbled, aware that I’m a truly rich man.
* * *
This December, in the days leading up to Christmas, I found myself in Texas, to my great surprise. In Houston to be exact, invited by a dear Dominican friend of more than twenty years, to visit the Episcopalian community in which he is a priest. Surprised by my good fortune, since I’d been brought there not only to present my Sancocho book as the “main event” of their Las Posadas novena experience, but to start forming a partnership between that community and Education Across Borders, all while sharing life for a few days with my friend and his family (and enjoying their fantastic Dominican cooking, I might add).
And surprised too that I’d find myself not only remembering, but experiencing in yet a new way, this marvelous gift I’ve been reflecting upon, el baile.
My friend and I first met toward the end of my first year living in the Dominican Republic, while making a visit to Port au Prince, Haiti. Before marrying and having children, he’d been in a high leadership position within the D.R.’s Roman Catholic church, directing its ministry to Haitian immigrants. He knew both Port au Prince and the Kreyol language well, so he was hired for the week to serve as our group’s guide, leader, translator… okay, let’s just say it, guru. The group of US undergrads from Creighton University I was chaperoning quickly put him on a pedestal— and not without merit, I came to believe. We quickly realized we were spiritual kin, and remained close friends for the remainder of my years in the DR.
Fast-forward twenty-some years, through a series of moves, professional shifts, family crises, and vocational seekings for each of us (including his ordination as an Episcopalian priest), and we found ourselves chatting by phone this past summer about the possibility of me visiting his family for the first time since they’d moved to Houston seven years ago, as a guest of his church. Like almost everything during this pandemic, the plans had to be tentative—especially when you’re talking about Texas, where adherence to public health recommendations (already watered down by the governor) was scattershot at best, and they had the hospitalization and death counts to prove it.
The tradition of the Las Posadas novena is a rich, deep one, and I can’t do its history and significance justice in this space. (If you’ve never experienced it, or heard of it, keep your eyes open next December, and follow what you see.) Novenas, in one form or another, have been practiced and offered for centuries, across cultures and languages, and even across faiths— if you’ll stretch with me a bit— since the practice of a multi-day prayer ritual (the novena happens to be nine) can be found in various religious traditions, even if the particulars vary. Like many cradle Catholics, I was introduced to novenas the old-fashioned way, by a nun with a rosary in one hand and a yardstick in the other, leading our classroom of uniformed grade-schoolers in five decades of Hail Mary-Our Father-Glory Be cycles, for some need the parish monsignor had dictated was immediate and urgent. Later in life I met others who breathed new life into the practice, releasing it from those original (and frankly, unnecessary) strictures, and opening it to a multitude of possibilities, from how to pray it, to (most importantly), why. What it’s boiled down to for me now is this: we try to enter humbly into Mystery, guided by tradition and a ritual; we walk alone at times but somehow, physically and/or spiritually, in community with others praying simultaneously; we weave our prayers together to ask for some movement— not necessarily a solution, though I’d never look too closely in that gift horse’s mouth— on some profound need, individual or familial or communal or worldwide, that feels overwhelming, impossible, intractable, and has led us to our knees. And so from our knees, we try to get up— almost always needing the hands of others— and take small steps into the darkness, trusting that some Light will, in God’s mysterious ways and time, be revealed.
For the nine days preceding and culminating on Nochebuena, Christmas Eve, the Las Posadas novena invites pilgrims into the story of the Holy Family as they wander in the darkness, looking desperately for someone to offer welcome and provide a place for Madre María to give birth. Person by person, community by community, this will look differently, of course, depending on a variety of circumstances. In many places, groups of pilgrims will gather at the same time each night, process around a church or a neighborhood singing songs that capture the spirit of the lonely quest for a place to call home, knock on doors but be turned away (with folks prepared in advance to be “the bad guy!”), and finally meet a willing soul who opens their door, offers a place to celebrate Mass or a brief liturgy, and share food and drink (yes, even during a pandemic).
In my friend’s parish and its sister parishes in Houston, I encountered a community making this journey in a full, embodied way. Not as a nice spiritual experience to acquire, but something lived, day after year after generation. I probably don’t have to tell you about the prevailing stance toward so-called “others” in Texas. From its long history as a slave state that kept news of Emancipation from the enslaved, to the current shenanigans of the sitting governor and state legislature on voting rights, the dank waters of “us versus them” trickle down inside communities and homes, creating a soul-infecting mold that can rot and eventually destroy the hater as much the hated, unless actively resisted. And thank God for the many who resist, even if their numbers and power have not yet tipped the scale. This novena was largely celebrated in Spanish— in its processions and Masses, with their readings, sermons, and songs— and largely directed and joined by Spanish-speaking members of the parish, the majority of whom are of Hispanic origin. During each day and each event for which I was present, I experienced a moment of awe, looking around me, considering the amount of hatred those in my midst have inevitably endured, and marveling at their witness, just in being present, of vulnerability, solidarity, and hope. This was a turning of the cheek—a conscious, empowered choice for the nonviolence and forgiveness of the Eucharist— practiced in community and somehow joyfully, night after night.
Perhaps it helped— it never hurts, in my experience— that the meals were so wonderful. Admittedly, I’m not impartial in this matter, but the best Eucharistic celebration didn’t happen during any of the Masses, but following one, when I was invited to read The Good Stanger’s Sancocho Surprise to a gathering of 100 or so children and adults, and then in its spirit, we feasted on two huge pots of authentic sancocho cooked up by my Dominican friend’s family. A Liturgy of the Word, and then of the Eucharist, creatively expressed. And the most adventurous of us stayed after the meal… to dance.
* * *
You might also say that those of us who danced were were those who needed it most, rather than the most adventurous. Or that we were those comfortable enough with our vulnerability to try applying a little creative energy to the wounds. Of course, I don’t have any proof for this, and you might rightly say it sounds pretty half-baked. But let me tell you about the Three Wise Women (not men), and Grandma Mary, and see what you think.
Immediately following the story time, as the sancocho was brought out and people began to queue up for it, I went to sign books for parishioners. As wonderful as the meal smelled, I was delighted to do this; more than a year after the publication date (November 2020), I still hadn’t had such an opportunity, given the pandemic’s obliteration of in-person author events. For me, it’s another piece of heavenly treasure to chat with someone who has read, or will read, your book, or is buying it as a gift for another. However, the moment we wrapped up, I dashed for the serving table, got myself a nice big bowl, and looked for a place to sit.
At one table sat three women whom I now recognized. During the story time, as I sang a verse from an old Latin American church hymn that appears in the text, they had sung along. Qué bueno es vivir unidos… en comunidad y bien comprometidos. I gestured to one of the empty chairs and asked if I could join them.
We spoke in Spanish. All three had greeted me in English at the book-signing table, but now felt comfortable enough to talk in their native language. And all told me that they were buying the book for one or more grandchildren. One even beamed, “¡Con este libro voy a enseñar a mi nieta leer en español!” With this book, I’m going to teach my granddaughter to read in Spanish! The child had not been warm to the idea previously, she told me, but her grandmotherly intuition told her that with this book, things would change. (Another nugget of heavenly treasure? You bet.)
All three women had come to this country from elsewhere, including one from Venezuela, and their faces bore signs of long suffering about which I could only speculate. Especially la venezolana, who at one point said, “When you see your country destroyed like that, and you want to be there, but you know you cannot— it just breaks your heart, time after time.”
Our conversation ran the gamut: from the plight of children during the pandemic, to some inside stories of their parish life, to our favorite books and authors, to immigration politics in Texas, to just how delicioso es este sancocho— just how delicious this sancocho was, and the whole evening by extension. All the while, a marvelous quartet played “church music,” but with an energy, creativity, and sabor— flavor— that I’ll wager you’ve not experienced the like of before, if you grew up with the kind of milquetoast church music I experienced in white suburbia. (Later, I was blessed to experience Gospel music when I moved to Seattle; thank you, Shades of Praise choir, Kent Stevenson, and St Therese Parish for that gift that keeps on giving.) The group had infectious rhythms, strong keyboarding, bright sax flows, creative interpretations of old classics, and above all, strong soulful voices. It was una música de vocación. Vocational music, called out from these four souls as gifts to the rest of us, and evident in every tune.
“Juan, ¿vamos a bailar, no?” one of the women inquired, as the others nodded. It was clear there was not a choice being offered, but a command issued. And who was I to say no to these three wise women? Anyone who could still smile, laugh, and dance after having endured what they have is worth listening to, in my book. “Claro,” I said, “Es justo y necesario.” It is right and just. (Yes, a church joke, which I hope you get— and forgive. At least these women found it funny.)
None of us was a particularly good dancer, but that was not the point. The point was joy. Both to experience it and to create it, with each other and for each other. A way of loving our neighbor as ourself. Joy of intention, rather than reaction; bucking the current of logic, fueled by hope that transcends a calculated optimism; a turning of the cheek to the many enemies of the world, and daring to smile. Even Jesus was an utter realist when sizing up the world and the odds stacked against our quick-fix-to-feel-good solutions; he reminded us that, even back then, the powers and principalities had long since given their destinies over to “the ruler of this world,” i.e., the prince of darkness, and that the poor would always be with us (because of the persistence of individual and systemic sin). And yet he himself knew, and embodied radically, that true liberation needs to start deep, in the freedom of heart and soul that the Creator made us for and constantly calls us back to. In that place within where we can surrender, safely, to joy, to healing ourselves, and through that, offer healing to others.
Where better to look for reminders of this freedom than in Creation itself, which demonstrates daily how to live, die, and create new life? And who better to help us pay attention in this way than Grandma Mary— dear Mary Oliver? Many of her poems speak to this— it’s a major theme across her entire oeuvre— but let me share one that blessed me recently, “Poppies,” from her New and Selected Poems, vol I (1992).
The poppies send up their
orange flares; swaying
in the wind, their congregations
are a levitation
of bright dust, of thin
and lacy leaves.
There isn’t a place
in this world that doesn’t
sooner or later drown
in the indigos of darkness,
but now, for a while,
the roughage
shines like a miracle
as it floats above everything
with its yellow hair.
Of course nothing stops the cold,
black, curved blade
from hooking forward—
of course
loss is the great lesson.
But I also say this: that light
is an invitation
to happiness,
and that happiness,
when it’s done right,
is a kind of holiness,
palpable and redemptive.
Inside the bright fields,
touched by their rough and spongy gold,
I am washed and washed
in the river
of earthly delight—
and what are you going to do—
what can you do
about it—
deep, blue night?
As in so much of her work, Oliver here celebrates the quiet, sublime beauty, to be found in the small details of the natural world, and the profound joy genuinely available to us when we can notice it, and surrender enough to allow it to penetrate. At the same time, she fully acknowledges the huge, dominating reality of darkness, suffering, and death: “loss is the great lesson.” And somehow (it’s part of her great gift) she allows us to find, remain with, and walk away from the poem with joy anyway, in spite of it all.
This poem spoke so clearly to me after my visit to Houston, in part because it reminded me of a conversation I had years before with one of my mentors in the D.R., explaining why his NGO, focused on human rights and education, had created an arts and crafts workshop that sold candles internationally. “We need money to buy flowers and ice cream sometimes,” he said, “But our big funders won’t support it. They think those are extraneous expenses, because they don’t fit into any of their categories.” But the funders were wrong, he said: for the work of a mother’s club to go well— to say, figure out how the hell to keep businesses from dumping garbage into the community river, or how to demand the state finish paving the nearby road that’s sat unfinished for two years— the room in which they gather needs fresh flowers, it needs that living, breathing color and scent right in their midst to remind them they are human. For children who are “at risk” and perpetually food insecure—who have never eaten in a restaurant, and who may only eat once or twice a day— they need to experience what it’s like to go get an ice cream cone, a pure extravagance in their daily lives, and feel that cold sweetness on their tongue and the sun-melted drips on their chin, to have a new experience of joy the world has told them they were not worthy of.
In each baile I’ve been blessed to witness, I’ve seen campesinos dancing and singing and laughing despite incalculable suffering—a failing crop, a mountain of debt, a medical condition for which treatment is simply too expensive or too remote, and worse. Dancing not only despite that suffering, but through it, thus living Vivian Greene’s adage, “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain.” In this sense, dancing, like other expressions of joy, is a practice, something intentionally chosen, embraced, and engaged, on a regular basis, not as a hobby or a band-aid or cuddly comfort, but as a necessary, indispensible part of staying alive.
El baile speaks deeply to the true purpose of the mission I’m honored to help carry out, one I never would have suspected when I first arrived in the D.R. twenty-five years ago. Of course, had I been paying attention more closely, both to the model of Jesus in the Gospels and to my previous experiences working with the poor in the U.S., I would have already known.
I’ve written previously about how important the experience of mutuality is to an authentic service program, and beyond that to a successful organization. Many wise writers and teachers have expressed this across times and traditions. The three who have touched me most deeply are Thich Nhat Hahn, and his expression of interbeing and interdependence; Lilla Watson, and her articulation of Australian aboriginal wisdom, “If you have come to help me, then you are wasting your time… But if you have come because your liberation is bound up in mine, then let us work together”; and St Paul, writing in 1 Corinthians 12 on the concept of the Body of Christ. To be truly authentic and potentially transformative, service— call it ministry, charity, justice work, or something else— must be holistically and mutually engaged, involve some kind of shared vulnerability or need, and aspire to some common good. It must begin and end with the belief that everyone involved is human, a Child of God, a vital (if small, and fragile) part of the web of life, the holy human Family.
I’ll never forget the first time I heard a Dominican friend talk about how much his family enjoyed hosting some of our volunteers, and his hope that they would repetir la visita, as he phrased it, repeat the visit. “Deben de volver, Juan,” he said. They must come back. But next time, “solo para compartir.” Literally, “just to share.”
Compartir has to be one of my favorite words in the language, at least as I’ve experienced it used by Dominicans. I’ll also never forget the first time I heard it in conversation, years before hearing it in reference to the volunteers. It was during my first month living in the D.R., while I was still very much learning (and struggling with) the language. I was sitting on a wall, shooting the steamy tropical breeze with three new friends from the neighborhood, and one of them said, “Me gusta compartir contigo,” I like to share with you. I paused, vaguely remembering that compartir meant share, but wondering, “Share what? We’re just talking.” I kept quiet though, trying to absorb more context, hoping I’d eventually figure it out (a strategy I’d adopted to spare myself the embarrassment of endlessly asking someone to repeat or explain what they said. Sometimes you just want to nod, fake it, and say, Sí, sí, sí!). I heard it again that evening, and many times thereafter; finally, I realized it had a dimension here that it didn’t in English. Yes, one can share things, feelings, opinions, just like the transactional usages in English; but in español, compartir can also connote a deeper sense of sharing, especially through conversation, and even more basic than that, an intentionally shared moment in life. “Hanging out,” you might say in U.S. English, or “spending time,” but the flabbiness of the former phrase and the economic flavor of the latter make them both poor fits. If you and I take a walk, or chat over a soda at the bodega, or talk on the phone, or simply inhabit the same moment together intentionally… we are compartiendo, sharing. Sharing life.
So when this man, a campesino living on the edge of desperate poverty, said that the volunteers should return solo para compartir, without a construction project attached to the visit, I was incredulous, to say the least. I already knew him well, and respected him deeply, but I instinctively doubted his sincerity (one downside, perhaps, of being a lawyer’s son: you too often think you sniff a lie). This isolated, impoverished community still needed so much, materially: basic sanitation, decent homes that were not made of scraps of wood and tin, access to education and medicine and electricity, for God’s sake. He himself still needed all these things! How could he possibly be serious, talking about another visit, one that would require all the same hospitality from his family—cooking, cleaning, and tending to all the needs of these high-maintenance, Spanish-challenged students— if it lacked the possibility of meeting some of that need?
In my ignorance, I was blind to another need, even two, that a visit simply for the purpose of sharing life would in fact satisfy.
* * *
Mother Teresa at times spoke of her stark encounters with a great festering sore in rich nations, different than in her India or other countries of the Global South, terrible in itself but also dangerous for being hidden: the wound of shame, especially among the poor. Of course, humans of every social class, around the world, can suffer from this, and I’ve certainly witnessed it widely in my experiences in impoverished communities in the D.R. Through my conversation with this man insisting that “his children” come back for a “family visit,” and many subsequent conversations like it, I’ve learned that one of the best salves for that wound is compartir. Especially in the basic, simple ways Jesus practices when meeting the various outcasts he encounters or who are thrown into his presence: lending attention, inviting to come close, touching, eating a meal, calling one by name.
It’s also fair to say that a certain healing power can reside in the opportunity to teach, guide, and protect someone who is in some way vulnerable. In the way (I’m proud to say) my organization has designed our service programs, the Dominican families who host visiting U.S. volunteers are in the position of power, relative to the students, when in their own communities and certainly within their homes. They are the experts, the wise ones, and the fixers; they know how to kill and cook a chicken, how to make and mix concrete by hand, how to walk the steep muddy hillsides without breaking their neck… and much more. And the visiting volunteers, who often hail from privileged families and elite schools, are in this context relatively powerless and vulnerable (but still safe). They depend upon these families, like a young child would their parents, older siblings, or another trusted elder, to take care of them, and to teach them the story of life from their perspective, experience, and hard-earned wisdom.
As the years went on, and I witnessed this phenomenon over and over, in baile after baile as well as flowers and ice cream and many, many forms of play, I began to realize that this version of empowerment— creating genuine human occasions to celebrate and share life, to up-end the typical server-served dynamic, and to practice joy in communities of resistance— that this was part of our true mission as an organization, even if, again, it didn’t fit neatly within a list of metrics or an annual report. Without this level of connection, this rock-solid foundation in genuine human relationship, the results you achieve will be fragile, even hollow, and like the house built upon sand, will eventually be washed away once the right storm comes along.
For various reasons, including the pandemic’s arrival, I have not been able to visit the D.R. since summer 2018. Despite my best efforts, it’s been an enormous challenge to keep my spirit fresh, to feel that sense of intimate connection with my friends there, the landscape, and the reality itself, across so much time and distance. It took going to Houston, getting thrown some curveballs while there, and letting the children lead me to finally dance, to re-kindle the fire.
Arriving, I was preoccupied with the pragmatics: how would the presentation be staged, how would the slide show be projected, how many books would we sell, and what level of connection could I forge between this parish and my organization. But day after day, as I was invited (and could not really say no) to improvise— offering on the spot reflections in both languages for some Masses, adapting to the collapse of the slide show, and generally just being available to whatever a particular day would hold— I found myself energized, enlivened, and lightened, shedding some of the heaviness of the pandemic’s grind, isolation, and despair, and surrendering into occasions to celebrate, simply for its own sake.
At one point a piñata was presented, and the children present flocked to it. As the music played, and each child took a turn whacking the hell out of that poor papier mâché donkey until it surrendered its sugary treasures, I found myself clapping along, laughing, and singing too, until finally I danced. You would have too. These children, with the Spirit flowing easily through them, pulled us all in. They, and especially their parents, would have had thousands of reasons not to celebrate, but to despair, given the current political climate in Texas. And yet here was an intentional, community choice to turn the cheek, an option for hope, a decision to celebrate. Celebrating the gift of life, and beyond that of shared life, especially one of mission.
The feasts after each community celebration during Las Posadas in Houston not only reconnected me to that heavenly treasure from the D.R., they made me freshly aware that it can be available anywhere, and depends less upon the food than upon the orientation of spirit. The simplest of meals— such as arroz y habichuelas, rice and beans, which forms the foundation of the Dominican plate— can be a banquet, like the loaves and fishes. Donde comen dos, comen tres, as I’ve heard many Dominicans say: where two can eat, three can eat. If the meal, however it appears on the table, is approached with a Childlike Spirit, a sense of abundance (not scarcity), it becomes Eucharist, an occasion for all to eat, to celebrate, and find nourishment in both. Creating occasions for joy, in a world hammered daily by suffering and tragedy— this is our true, deeper purpose and calling.
May we embrace it together, always. May we take God’s hand, and our neighbors’, and dance.