Conmemorando

My Dear Friends,

In just a few days we will be celebrating Thanksgiving--a holiday that reminds us of family, friends, and all that is dear to us.  The older I get the more the holidays seem to evoke paradoxical emotions within me.  Certainly I am grateful and there is an obvious joy and happiness, but Thanksgiving was the time of year I lost my daddy. That first year we "celebrated" the holiday only 6 days after his funeral.   So, with that joy and happiness there is emptiness--an emptiness that will never be filled, nor should it be filled. Dietrich Bonhoeffer eloquently puts it:

“There is nothing that can replace the absence of someone dear to us, and one should not even attempt to do so. One must simply hold out and endure it. At first that sounds very hard, but at the same time it is also a great comfort. For to the extent the emptiness truly remains unfilled one remains connected to the other person through it. It is wrong to say that God fills the emptiness. God in no way fills it but much more leaves it precisely unfilled and thus helps us preserve -- even in pain -- the authentic relationship. Further more, the more beautiful and full the remembrances, the more difficult the separation. But gratitude transforms the torment of memory into silent joy. One bears what was lovely in the past not as a thorn but as a precious gift deep within, a hidden treasure of which one can always be certain.”

It seems appropriate that this year, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, I will be traveling to El Salvador with SHARE to remember the churchwomen who were martyred in 1980 .  Just last night on the evening news the State Department issued a world wide travel alert.  It reminded me of 2003 when George Bush told the nation that Americans should not be traveling to foreign countries as he announced the war with Iraq, a month later I was on a plane to Mexico.  I've never been tripped up by fear in my expeditions.  In fact many of my travels have begun with "travel alerts", "Under no circumstances should Americans travel to Nepal."  And yet in ignoring that message I found that  Kathmandu quickly became one of my favorite cities, and the Nepalese some of the most beautiful people I've had the pleasure of encountering.

And so despite terrorist  threats and fear instilled by the media I will go.  That sounds so cavalier of me, but let me assure you, there is a little piece inside me (as there was on all those other occasions) that says, "but, what if?"  But in that moment of doubt I am drawn into Jean Donovan's written words home expressing her own fear and discernment with it.

"The Peace Corps left today and my heart sank low.  The danger is extreme and they were right to leave . . . Now I must assess my own position, because I am not up for suicide.  Several times I have decided to leave El Salvador.  I almost could, except for the children, the poor, the bruised victims of this insanity.  Who would care for them?  Whose heart could be so staunch as to favor the reasonable thing in a sea of their tears and loneliness?  Not mine, dear friend, not mine."

She wrote this weeks before she was killed by a Death Squad.  I do not expect to be martyred, nor do I anticipate any issues in our travels--I would like to assure my family and friends that I am traveling with people who know the land and people and have created the safest environment possible for our pilgrimage. What I do hope to express to you all is that we cannot let fear hold us back from building relationships with the rest of humanity.  We should be tearing down walls, not building fences, and we should learn to love more deeply because it is through encountering the other that we learn something profound about our own human experience.

I do not know what the "connection" possibilities will be upon arrival, but as is possible I will update you here as I travel and grow and remember the Churchwomen of El Salvador.  Paz y bendiciones!

Con Amor,
Sara