July 22, 2001
Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
Psalm 137
How can we sing,
sing the Lord’s song, in a foreign land?
The plane flew
in over Managua, the capital city of Nicaragua. Alongside a huge lake, the city
lights were orange against the night darkness of this unknown place. I took
deep breaths, trying to prepare myself for what I would see, what I would hear,
what I would feel in the weeks to come - but it was too late to prepare. There
was nothing left to do but open my eyes, my heart, my ears to the experience.
We arrived,
eighteen Northern Californians in Central America, on July 5. Here we were,
gringos and gringas or chellas as we would be known - not cruelly, simply
descriptively. We had come with Seeds of Learning, a program with its U.S.
offices in Sonoma, to build schools and learn about life in Nicaragua. And, as
we landed in a country where I didn’t know the language, the currency, the
customs, the geography - well, I didn’t know much . . . I wondered what I really
had to offer. What song could I sing? I took those deep breaths and resolved
to stop, look and listen and to focus on the construction work where my lack of
Spanish wouldn’t be such a big deal. I figured I could just carry heavy things
around and that would be fine.
We drove from
the airport to our hotel in the back of pickup trucks, and we had our first
tastes of what Nicaragua might be like. There were brick buildings and trees
with shiny flat leaves. We saw people socializing at outdoor cafes with big
Coca Cola signs. I saw a group of young men, running along and pushing their
friend’s stalled car. There effort made no sound in the warm night air as we
rushed past in the trucks.
One of the
wonderful things about staying at the Seeds of Learning headquarters in Dario a
city of 20,000 about two hours north of the capital, is the onsite Learning
Center. At the Center, there are classes for small children and young adults,
including music. The perk of staying in the Learning Center is that the guitar
choir, which is wonderful and is all young adults and youth, comes and practices
several times a week. Most of their songs are either instrumental or in Spanish
naturally, but they also have one really popular number in English. It’s a song
based on Psalm 137.
By the
Rivers of Babylon,
where we sat down,
hey, hey we wept,
‘cause we remembered Zion
Bob Marley sang
that song. So did Sublime on his acoustic album. We sing it sometimes at
summer camp. And of course, the Psalmist sang it 2500 years ago. It moved us.
It spoke to me and I think it spoke to our entire group about the experience of
being a foreigner in a foreign land. The lyrics capture the specific plight of
a nation exiled to Babylon, of people without power, forced from their homes,
forced to entertain the oppressors with their sacred songs, for their tormentors
mirth. This song is not merely wistful, it’s really the ultimate insult. It’s
kicking someone when they’re down and, on a symbolic level, it’s kicking a whole
nation when they’re down. It’s saying entertain us. Use your most holy of
songs to entertain us because we said so.
Nicaragua is a
place that has been kicked when it’s down. I was talking with the onsite
program director, Patrick Rickon and he joked with me, saying “people always go
on and on about the ten plagues of Egypt, the hail and the frogs and the boils,
but hey, at least they only had ten!” The last century in Nicaragua has been
marked nearly every imaginable sort of trouble: dictatorial rule, revolution,
counter-revolution, civil war, trade embargoes and economic depression, crushing
poverty, high infant mortality rates, mass unemployment, hurricanes, volcanoes
and earthquakes. In comparison, Egypt’s plagues might look slightly
attractive. At least they finished. Being U.S. citizens, it was especially
awful knowing that the U.S. has often taken sides against the Nicaraguan people;
that we represented a nation that has used its considerable power and resources
against the very people we sought to work with.
The thing is, no
one we met mentioned the US’s role in any of their troubles. There was no sense
of resentment about our presence in their communities. We had been told that
Nicaraguans were graciously able to differentiate between the past actions of
our government and the individuals that we are. But I was deeply surprised and
deeply grateful to find this to be genuinely true. In my cynicism, I didn’t
expect to see any forgiveness. I didn’t expect to see in their healing process,
room for us to come in. And this is my question, perhaps one to which there is
no definitive answer, but the question nonetheless: In the wake of mighty
suffering, of tremendous adversity, how do people survive to sing again? When
they are carried away to a strange land, when there is no rest, there is no
peace - how do we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?
I know it’s not
a new question, and I don’t think that there is one single answer: Faith?
Survival instincts? Hope or knowing what we’re surviving for? I don’t have an
answer, and humans are so extraordinarily diverse, I don’t suppose that there
could be one universal answer to such a large question. But there, in Nicaragua
there was music, live guitar music and voices singing by the rivers of
Babylon. And nearly every night we heard the sounds of bottle rockets
popping off some celebration or another. What was there to celebrate? We don’t
know, but all around us was a sea of humanity, people made of the same stuff as
ourselves, people subjected to and shaped by experiences far different from life
in Sebastopol, year 2001. But there we were and that prompted my second
question - the question that ran through my mind that first night in Managua,
that ran through my mind as we touched down on the airstrip, the question that
ran through my mind when we saw children selling iguanas on the side of the
highway (not as pets, but as dinner). The question that came up everytime I
knew, within the core of myself that I was not planting the seeds of learning,
but that the seeds of learning were being planted in me. What song could I
possibly sing in this faraway land where the things I know and have been trained
to do are about as practical as a nice new snow cone machine at the North Pole?
Then it came
time to do some reflection during the week. I had brought a book with me and I
read through and was trying to find a good reading to help us discuss what we
were seeing and what we were experiencing. This is one I found from a book
called, “Life Prayers”. This is from a section of the book called “Prayers for
Solidarity and Justice.” Solidarity is a word that I hear thrown around a lot
in school and I don’t always know what it means, but I thought this was a good
definition. The authors say: “Discovering now to pray with others we do not
know, who are different from us, or who suffer in ways beyond our comprehension,
is an essential and profoundly spiritual task. When I stand in solidarity with
all life my experience of living changes. I am no longer a private person
concerned only wit taking care of me and mine. Solidarity means recognizing
that the well-being of those with whom I share this planet - all people and all
species -- is also my own. It means that whatever situation my come before me I
will try to do no harm, to relieve suffering, and to offer love. This is the
compassionate heart of all religious traditions and the spiritual basis for all
social action.”
To offer love.
What a simple and profound thing. When we arrived at the work site in the small
town of San Pedro, there was far less construction than I had anticipated and I
knew that my sneaky plan of hiding out with a hammer and nails and avoiding
people was not going to work. So I found myself, (in spite of the fact that my
entire Spanish vocabulary could be taken off a Viva Mexico menu), playing games
with the children, talking with young women and having stories endlessly read to
me in Spanish. I now know how to tell the story of Clifford the Big Red
Dog in Spanish - Paro Grande Rojas! And I learned some Spanish from
these endlessly patient and forgiving children. Once again, I was not planting
the seeds of learning. The seeds of learning were being planted in me and the
offering of love was to me.
Coming home from
a trip like this can always be a bit of a jarring experience and this time I
didn’t come home with answers. I came home with questions. How do people
rebound from experiences of suffering and what is it I can do to be in
solidarity with that? So I asked Patrick. I said, “Patrick, I know it’s a
cheesy question, but what do people do when if it’s not war, it’s a hurricane or
if you’re not hungry, you’re sick. What do you do in the face of that?” And he
replied very generously and I think very honestly, “What do people ever do?”
And I knew that for all of the experiences which divide us and all of the
abundance which characterizes our life here in Northern California and the
dignity which I saw in Nicaragua, I knew that the common experience that we may
all stand in solidarity with is that when we are allowed and when we allow
ourselves, we can stand together and offer love.
So at the end of
two weeks we came home. In another month we will hear other stories, other
perspectives, other ways in which people were touched and learned. But that is
still my question. How do people keep faith and keep singing their songs.
Perhaps there is nothing else we can do in the face of a crazy and unjust
world. Just like all those bracelets and T-shirts say: “What would Jesus have
done?” To simply and profoundly offer love and to allow love to be offered to
us.
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