Pieces and Fullness

This is the first time I have sat down and truly devoted a good amount of time to write since I arrived last Saturday.  It might have something to do with the Internet being currently unavailable… but I think it has more to do with fear.  For me, there is something beautiful and fulfilling about describing a thing through the written word.  But it is as if I am only able to describe the pieces or the edges of a thing, and often clumsily, yet fail to capture its complete essence.  And even if I write in a way that makes me happy (which is when I know it is something worthwhile), I fear that no one will enjoy it, or that the truthfulness of my voice will falter.

As Frances and I walked to the school for Bingo on Saturday, we talked a little about Volcán Poas and how it cannot be captured in a photograph.  (I tagged along with the Tropical Agriculture and Mission class on their field trip to the nearest active volcano to the Varablanca area.)  Although I was irritated to upload cloudy photos that cannot even begin to show the swooping depth or sheer rockiness of the volcano, I was also glad.  Because to see it as it truly is, you must stand there at the edge, breathe in the slight saltiness of the sulfur and dirt, turn your face into the cold wind sweeping up from the basin’s stream, and feel your stomach drop hundreds of meters down to the core of the crater.  Writing tries to bring the reader to this core and all of its surroundings, but just as my photographs fail to depict the volcano, words too, merely act a symbol or a flimsy copy.

Maybe God created it to be this way.  You cannot perfectly paint, or photograph, or write about His creation; you must experience it.  Perhaps in our humanity, just as we cannot pin down the fullness of its beauty, we can only experience the fullness of our God in pieces.  We cannot see Him face-to-face, but we feel his spirit moving through creation, people, and in His love.  And maybe by being in His love, we can begin to experience the fullness of Him. 

It makes me think of what the Lord tells Moses in Exodus 34: “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence… But you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live."  And later in the chapter when Moses walks down from Mount Sinai after speaking with God, his face is “radiant.”  We cannot see the face of God, but when we are with Him, our faces reflect His glory.  How curious but yet how lovely, that we cannot directly see His face, but His glory can pass into us and glow through our faces.  Perhaps we are unable to look full on into the Lord’s face or completely express who He is through written word because He is so pure and powerful that we can only hold on to the edges, the mere gleaming, of Him.

Let the blogging begin

I’m one week in, one tenth of the way through this journey and God has already shown me so much.  I’ve been to a Spanish-speaking church filled with clapping and the Holy Spirit (just don’t tell the Presbyterians about all that clapping), to the rushing and spitting La Paz waterfall, to Cinchona, the epicenter of the earthquake from January 2009.  Each adventure is charged, sometimes with wonder, but oftentimes with heartache because the earthquake cannot be separated out from many things that have happened here.  It is still very present in the lives of these people, just as April 16^th still resonates strongly with the Virginia Tech community.

For example, Eugenia, a girl from the colegio (the high school), still lives in temporary housing after over two years when the Cinchona earthquake destroyed her house.  Another mother must daily walk by what is know as “The Hole,” a steep drop-off where the tremor ripped apart the road and buried homes, as well as her twelve-year-old son.

As I began to right this first blog entry, I honestly didn’t know what I was going to say.  That’s the funny thing about writing.  You sit down, tenderly draw out your thoughts, like crab meat from its claw, and try to create some sort of coherent piece from all the different ideas that want to be pulled out.  I thought I would talk a little bit about the culture and my home stay, the ADE staff, and the children from school, all of which have blessed me and filled me.  These are key, but the thing that seems to strings them all together – the thing that cannot be overlooked and will be pulled – is the earthquake.

After it struck Cinchona and surrounding areas, Tomás felt that the Lord was calling him back to his home town in San Rafael, where he grew up and where his father owned many acres of farm land.  He created the non-profit organization, ADE, (the Association of Development through Education), with his wife, Chelsea, as a response to the tragedy and an opportunity to use the existing resources to build up the community.  The ADE staff works closely with the high school (20 kids between the ages of 9 and 17), teaching English, Spanish, Civics, Social Studies, Math, and Science, as well as a morning Bible study.  (I will be helping Lindsey teach English and am starting a creative writing class next week.)  I am eager to see what God has in store for the Varablanca area and just ask you all to keep praying.