Abruptly

I think what she meant was that I am most likely cancer-free. As far as she can tell. Not that she would actually say it. Not that there are any guarantees. From the pathology report of what was removed during the surgery, my breast surgeon said that I had had “a very good response to the chemo treatment.”  In other words, as the chemo coursed through the blood vessels, it ate away at the cancer until there were only six small spots left, the largest only a half centimeter thick, and there was no sign of malignancy in the margins around the original mass, the lymphatics, or even the nodes, which had shown malignancy in the original biopsy. So (hopefully) that’s that. (Although I still have radiation and more drug therapy to make sure the monster doesn’t come back, and I have several years’ wait before anyone says the words cancer free.) So it looks like God has answered so many prayers, and I feel thanks welling up inside me for the good news I have gotten so far.

Hierve el agua, Oaxaca

The only thing was that the doctor’s news was so abrupt after such a long process. There is all that time in the chemo chair, all those stays in the hospital, then surgery and the weeks to heal so the stitches could come out (no one has said anything about taking out the nine inches of stitches, which seem to have disappeared on their own—maybe it’s a miracle--and if they haven’t, I’m taking them to my grave), and then I wait 45 minutes in the doctor’s office while other women come and go, and my little niece that we’re babysitting for the day gets restless “reading” Maclean’s, and then I go in and change, and get examined, and then…there it is. “You’ve had a very good response to the chemo treatment. You’re free to go.”

It’s so sudden, so abrupt. There is still uncertainty, but this pathology report is the only news I’m likely to get during this year of treatment, and the news is good. I wonder at how abrupt news comes to us, news of any kind. Like a cliff. Like the earthquake in Chile. Or when you found out you were pregnant (ok, not the same kind of thing). Maybe all the momentous things of life are that way. I think of a certain wedding I’m helping to host. All these months of planning and anticipation, and then it will be over in a few hours, and the couple will look at each other and think, “We’re married. We’re really married.”  I think of Philip, leaving home a year early, changing his graduation date abruptly, from one day to the next. I’m still getting used to it, having him gone. Good news. Bad news. It changes things radically, so abruptly, sometimes like an invisible tornado dropping Dorothy in Oz.

Hierve el Agua

The people that Jesus healed must have felt that way, too, and that’s why he always assured them that it was true, yes, they were healed, and they could pick up their mat and just walk away. And maybe Jesus felt that way himself, knowing that his Father had been setting up his plan of redemption for thousands of years, since the fall of the first couple, and His promise to them, and since the calling of Abraham, too, and His promise to him. And Jesus would fulfill that plan in one microsecond on a Sunday morning, in a cave. I bet, because he was human, it amazed him, too, as it did all of the rest of us, with the abruptness of it. The disciples must have felt that way when Jesus’ ministry was so suddenly cut off after just three years, and then again when he came back to them, and then again when, after a few days, he disappeared for good. His return will be like that, you know. Sudden. Abrupt After all that time, just… done. “You’re free to go.” We won’t have to wait any five years to see how things turn out.

And some day, abruptly, we will be with God, for death is the ultimate sudden good news, and we will be looking back on all of this, and the feeling will switch, and all of this that we live now will feel sudden while our time with God will seem like what we’ve always been waiting for. But strangely, it will feel like a constant surprise, like constant good news, just getting better and better as we grow.

Fiesta in Canada

Put fourteen Mexican guys, one fruit farming family, two missionaries, and some good food together on September 15^th, and what do you get? Yes, El Grito. The Yell. Those of you living in Mexico made your way to the nearest public plaza (or downtown to the zocalo, if you’re into crushing crowds), where after some ceremony, the municipal president (or the governor, or the president of the country) walked out onto a balcony before midnight and gave a short, rousing speech that ended with the triple yell, fists held high, “¡Viva Mexico!” to which the entire crowd responded in kind, with all the patriotism in its communal soul. I was yelling “Viva Mexico” myself last night, startling the staid Canadian fruit farming family. They noted quietly, “That was quite dramatic. Is it always this way?” Yes. It is always this way. Mexico is nothing if not dramatic.

The Grito commemorates the struggle for Mexican Independence. In 1810 the Catholic priest Miguel Hidalgo was involved in a plot to overthrow the Spanish colonial government and replace it with one run by the Mexican born criollos.  When rumors reached him he was about to be arrested, he sent his brother with armed men to free his fellow revolutionaries who were already in jail, and then he rang the church bells to gather his congregation in the square. There he gave them what is now Mexico’s most famous speech. The exact words are lost, but the sentiment kept the revolution going for over a decade until Independence came over a decade later, in 1821.

This is what we were celebrating on the back lawn of a Canadian fruit farm, surrounded by now barren peach trees. Sadly, the short season is over, and the men are going to other jobs or back home. The food was hamburgers and sausages, potato salad and iced tea rather than enchiladas and taquitos de pollo, tostadas and cerveza, but they all disappeared just as quickly, and the spirit was the same. These guys had worked in Canada long enough to be bi-culturally ravenous. They delegated one of their number, Everardo, as the yeller, because he was from Guanajuato, the same state as Miguel Hidalgo. When dark fell, the fruit farmer led him through the back door, up the stairs, through his bedroom, and out onto the balcony. Someone shone a strong flashlight on him (I wonder who would have one of those) as a spotlight and all fourteen guys erupted into cheers and yells. They knew what to do.

Everardo waited for silence. Then he raised his fists high in the air and gave “the speech.”

Mexicans!

Long live the heroes that gave us the Fatherland!

Long live Hidalgo!

Long live Morelos!

Long live Josefa Ortiz de Dominguez!

Long live Allende!

Long live Aldama and Matamoros!

Long live National Independence!

Long Live Mexico! Long Live Mexico! Long Live Mexico!

And the fireworks started. Yes. Fireworks. I didn’t even know that was legal in Canada. And as they exploded over our heads in bursts of sound and color, the men yelled even more. It was a grand celebration. And the dogs went crazy, and the Canadians laughed, and everyone realized it’s good to celebrate a bit of home together, even when it’s someone else’s home. 

People I admire

If I were teaching in Oaxaca right now, I’d be preparing my seniors for their SAT tests which, for 2015, still has the essay attached. I would shoot a topic at them, put the timer on for 25 minutes and watch them scramble. Then when the timer dinged, we’d talk about how they could do better on the test date, where there’s even more pressure. We’d talk about a hook at the beginning, a solid theme, imagery to support the theme, and framing right through the conclusion to bind the thing together. In and out in 25 minutes. Hopefully when they sat down to take the test for the last time, they’d have practiced enough that the quotes, themes, and facts they’d used before would come to mind quickly, and they would write well. By the time I return to teaching, the SAT essay will be optional, take twice as long, and will be an analysis of a passage rather than an opinion essay. I look forward to the challenge.

I’d also be looking over my seniors’ college application essays. Hopefully they’ve put more than 25 minutes of thought into these. A favorite topic for these essays is: Describe a person you admire. Here’s someone I admire, a someone and his wife.

The very first Mixtec I ever met was Pedro Marquez. Years before, he had migrated from a Oaxacan village to Culiacan, Sinaloa, to work in the vast harvests of cukes and peppers and tomatoes there, had fallen in love with a Hispanic woman named Guille, and had settled to raise his family in a town of dirt streets and makeshift housing 45 minutes outside the city. He no longer made his living picking vegetables but had become a vendor in the camps where the migrant workers stayed during harvest. Every weekend he would pack up his truck with clothes he bought at a wholesale market a day’s bus ride away, bread Guille made in the beehive oven in their back yard, meat they dried on a clothesline, pig fat fritters he fried in a huge tub, and Guille’s pozole (corn kernel soup) prickling with chile. All the kids helped. This was a hard-working family.

While he made his living selling in the camps, Pedro also pastored a church of other Mixtecs who had settled in Villa Juarez as well. This is how we’d come to know him. When we drove into Mexico, someone we met along the way had given us his name as someone working with Indian migrant workers from southern Mexico. And so he was. We showed up at his doorstep and said we wanted to learn Mixtec and learn from him. He took us in, and he and Guille became our family. They found us a place to live, a one-room store front lacking even an out-house, and we slept, between the concrete counter and the wall, on a bed that Robert had built into the back of our pick-up truck that folded into a bench and table during the day.

Pedro introduced us to Mixtecs in the camps where he sold his wares, and everyone loved him. Sometimes the Hispanic vendors were harsh with the Mixtec workers, barging into their tin and cardboard rooms without asking, and rudely demanding payment for things they’d bought on credit without respectfully waiting until the homeowner broached the subject first. Pedro would rather forgive a debt than show such disrespect. Pedro knew people’s names and cared about what was happening in their families.

But he wasn’t just a good salesman. It went much further than that. He genuinely cared about people and was generous to a fault. Many of the people in the church he pastored were there because he had helped establish them in business. He would teach people his own trade, taking them to his own clients, and when they had secured their business, he was the one who would move on to new camps, new sales items, and new relationships. He did this over and over with people who needed his help. Many of them, like us, he helped find places to stay until they could establish themselves. Some lived in his home with him for a time.

And these were not family, not necessarily even believers at first. Pedro and Guille were just very generous people, some of the most unselfish I’ve ever met. Their church was full of people who had seen what God does practically through those he touches with his love. And we watched how they, too, took on this quality of their pastor and became helpers for others as well. I have met many Mixtecs suspicious of all outsiders and closed to the idea of trusting anyone outside their tribe. I’ve also met Mixtecs who have been generous and open-hearted. But the first to show me how God marries evangelism with social work so that the gospel of grace has hands held out to help, were Pedro and his wife Guille.   

Humor me

Today I had another MUGA scan. The receptionist hands you a piece of paper with a list that says, “You are here for:

X-ray – a technologist will come for you…

Ultrasound -  a technologist will come for you… etc. etc.

And you can tell they are a little embarrassed about the MUGA scan because they don’t call it an immediately recognizable name like X-ray. They say, “You are here for nuclear medicine!” Hmm.  At least it’s better than some of the other options for names out there: cardiac blood pooling imaging (as a human and an English teacher, I have several problems with this one) or better yet, radionuclide ventriculography (ok, just try to imagine telling the receptionist you are here for this). That mouthful actually means they put a radioactive tracer in your blood and track its progress through your heart so that they can see if the chemo is damaging anything in there.

The nurse that came to get me was young and petite and quiet-spoken, and she had trouble finding my veins. Well actually she found my veins all right, but she poked (that is the word they use for it. Let’s be honest: it’s more like stabbed) around them, through them and not far enough into them, or something, (she couldn’t get the tracer into my veins; it was like my veins were rejecting it—pushing the stuff right back out or something. It was for a MUGA scan, after all). All the while she kept turning to me and asking, “Are you feeling all right? Are you feeling all right? Are you feeling all right?” Maybe I was turning pale, but I have to admit the questions were making me feel as light-headed as the multiple stabs. I did feel a bit sorry for her—she looked about as old as Elai—but I felt more sorry for me! I now had a purple lump welling up on the back of my hand, and the tracer wasn’t even started! She gently held my hand in both of hers, looked into my eyes (maybe she should try being a chaplain) and said I had fragile veins. Fragile veins? I casually mentioned that I had had dozens of IVs by now, and no one had mentioned that I had fragile veins. Fragile just doesn’t sound promising, does it?

To her eternal credit, when she surmised I was uncomfortable with this operation (!), she said, “Let me go get a colleague.” An old guy came in, sat down, and in went the tracer, first try. Whew. He commented, as if to cover her, “Those veins can sure move around a lot, can’t they.” I must say I had never noticed before. Then my gal came right back in and escorted me to the big machine and did a fine job, I assume, cardiac blood pooling imaging me. I was quite proud of her.

I thought I would be able to go home and recoup my good humor before the next trial (I told you I am a wimp—absolutely no pain tolerance whatsoever), but I had to go to clinic here in town (it’s in the back of a basement of a nursing home next to the getaway stairs. Why would anyone put a nursing station in a basement? I get the getaway stairs) and get stitches pulled so the drain tube could be pulled that was snaking all the way from under the surgery scar up to my collar bone. It didn’t help that when I showed up at 1:00 the nurse said I was supposed to come at 1:30, and when I showed up again then, she said I didn’t actually have an appointment; I had ceased to exist in half an hour. I protested as nicely as I could, holding onto my side which stung from the tube, and she smiled. I think she’s Russian or Ukranian. Every time I’ve gone to this clinic, the nurse is a different ethnicity. Jamaican, Persian, Russian. Kind of cool. I’d like to work with them—just not in the basement. The stitch-pulling hurt. The tube-pulling did not. Robert was kind enough to wait until after the process to tell me that his stitches had hurt like the dickens. And this was just stitches for the drain. We haven’t mentioned any other stitches. Maybe those are self-dissolving. Let’s hope. If they are not, all you nurse friends of mine, don’t tell me!  I need some time to recoup my good humor.

a tattoo I will not be getting

Guess who asked if he could take the scissors home when he found they aren’t reused…

The Good Lie

Last night we watched a movie called The Good Lie. It’s about the South Sudanese children orphaned by war and forced to walk hundreds of miles to safety in Kenya, where they lived (still live) in refugee camps until they were relocated. They are called the Lost Boys of Sudan. The movie shows the Africans adjusting to US culture: watching how others are eating their meals with plastic forks on the plane, wondering what to do with the plate of quivering jello on the kitchen counter, assuming the telephone ring is some kind of alarm, walking into someone’s house without waiting for them to open the door. At one point they try to communicate to their American hostess what is really bothering them (they were separated from their sister), but the woman keeps moving from room to room, showing them how to flick on the lights.

I have a friend here in Canada who is a lost girl of Sudan. When she was very young, she lost her family to war in South Sudan and was saved from death when a bullet knocked her into a shallow hole in the ground, out of sight of the gunmen. She also fled to Kenya and lived in refugee camps. Later, a visiting Canadian fell in love with her and married her, and now she lives here. She brought me cookies and helped me weed my garden. She says she had lots of practice at that in Africa before she came. She is tall and slender and beautiful and bends at the waist when she works the ground, and I can imagine her in a field with other women like a stately flock of cranes moving slowly through shallow water. But I cannot imagine what she has gone through. I can’t. I’m glad she is happy here now with her family.

In the movie The Good Lie, one of the Africans goes to school, and his teacher is having a discussion about the book they are reading, Huck Finn. In the book, Huck lies about Jim to save him from being punished as a runaway slave and sold down the river. The question is, of course, are there times we have to lie in order to save other people from harm? This question comes up in the movie as the South Sudanese lost boys (and girl) try to hold their little band together. I won’t say more in case you haven’t watched the movie.

The title is a figure of speech called an oxymoron. The word means “pointedly stupid” because it looks like a contradiction, the two words crossing each other out—like jumbo shrimp, civil war, good grief, devout atheist, recorded live, or unbiased opinion—but it points toward a paradox. I’m reading a book called The Promise of Paradox that explores the paradoxical nature of Christianity, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks. How do you explain: “If you save your life, you will lose it, but if you lose your life for my sake, you will save it,” or “I form light and create darkness; I make weal and create woe”?

Nothing puts a harsher spotlight on the paradox of Christianity than suffering: the suffering of Canaanites killed by genocidal Jews, the suffering of Jews killed by genocidal Nazis, the suffering of God killed by everyone, the suffering of children lost from Sudan, the suffering of people ravished by malaria, AIDS, famine, cancer. These aren’t things to be explained away. These aren’t issues we resolve with words. But somehow, we have this hope, this seeing of what is invisible, that this suffering is a good lie.

Long shadows

As my students would tell you, words cast long shadows called connotations. Some words cast longer shadows than others.

That word. Missionary. It can be a dirty word. When Robert and I first went to Mexico as missionaries, we lived in an isolated Mixtec village. Coming into town for groceries one day, someone told us there were fellow Canadians in town, a rare thing in that part of the country, so we looked them up and invited them over for coffee. We knew they worked for MCC, a Christian organization promoting community development in the area, so we expected, as fellow travelers and workers among the indigenous of the area, a pleasant chat and a comparing of notes about home and work and what had brought us to this corner of Mexico.

Unfortunately, the conversation began something like this;

Us: “So what do you do here?”

Them: “We work in such and such villages as development workers helping people build clay stoves.  And what do you do?”

Us: “We work in such and such villages as missionaries helping people learn about God.”

At the word missionary, the room chilled, and the faces of our guests froze in shock. I watched as the woman tried to draw words into her mouth. I could see a muscle twitch in her temple as she clenched and unclenched her jaw. She finally spit the words at us as she got up to leave, “How dare you try to change their ancient spirituality.” (She never caught the irony that she was trying to change their ancient way of cooking.) To this couple our task was an abomination.

Or it can be an empty word. You’ve all heard the sermon, “We are all called to be missionaries right here at home. There is no need to get on a plane.” The people preaching these sermons don’t see how foreign missionaries effectively bring Christ to those who don’t know him. They expect the job to get done through more natural channels. A church I know went through a leadership change and preached an entire series on this topic, questioning the idea of any missionary calling at all beyond the call to reach your neighbor. They printed in their literature that missionaries who travel afar to plant churches in other cultures are expensive and  ineffective, and revoked their funding. Ouch.

Or it can be a treacherous word. When Robert and I first worked in a Mixtec village in Mexico, we were the first outsiders to live there. And still, a group of teachers stopped us on the path to challenge us. “We know who you are,” they said. ”We know why you are here. We know what you will do. You will come into our village bringing clothes and food. You will buy people with your money. Just like the politicians. And you will divide the village and undermine all our ways and customs. You should leave.”

We should know why we go to far off places and challenge people’s ancient spirituality. We should know how we’re called. Perhaps most importantly, we should know what we are meant to do when we get there—and what we are not. This has to be the hardest question to answer. How do we make that ambiguous word missionary an inspiration? How do we make one connotation stick when we all own the word together?

The Great Sherlock Holmes

I know someone who writes novels. Suspense and romance. Series, even. They are set in this area, and you can walk into the library here, or Walmart, and get a copy. We were driving in Texas a year ago and found one on a used book shelf there. Her next one is Emergency Reunion. This is Sandra Orchard, and we’re related!!! Sadly, I don’t write novels. Sigh. I just read them.

Everywhere we drive, Robert stops at garage sales, pawn shops, and thrift stores. I always keep a book in my purse so I can wait patiently in the car if I need to, but occasionally I go in and find treasures. First I look for clothing with certain perfect colors and am always puzzled when I can’t find any. I think I should start a clothing line with those perfect colors no one carries. Surely everyone would buy them. I would. Then I move on to art puzzles (just as rare as perfect clothing) and, of course, great books. I found a copy of Little Bee to send home with my friend Sandy on my last treasure hunt, so I’m motivated to keep looking. Orphanmaster’s Son  is still top of the list. I’d buy every two buck copy I could find just to give it away.

I’m not going to make fashion statements here, so let’s move on to puzzles...and books. Puzzles that are books. Detective novels. If you are keeping a list here are some ideas.

If you are interested in early stuff, here goes. It was an American who invented the genre in English: Edgar Allen Poe with his Murders in the Rue Morgue, his influence sailing across the pond to inspire a Sherlock Holmes.  But English speakers weren’t the first to use detection. In“Susanna and the Elders” from the Apocrypha Daniel cross examines two witnesses accusing a beautiful young woman of sexual misconduct. He uses detection to prove them false, saving her life. The Greek, Oedipus Rex, uses detection when he uncovers his wretched past (he has killed his father and married his own mother, bringing fate down on his head) by examining witnesses. In the Arab One Thousand and One Nights, a fisherman finds a locked chest with the body of a woman cut up inside, and someone has to solve the mystery in three days. The Chinese preferred the inverted mystery story, introducing the criminal first and then having a wise local magistrate explain the crime with help from ghosts, a great deal of philosophy, and hundreds of extra characters. Chinese mystery stories were long. I’ll be honest. I’ve only read knock-offs.

Back in England, Dickens tried his hand with a mystery in Bleak House, where an Inspector has to figure out which of the many suspects who visited a conniving lawyer’s office one evening murdered him there (you can watch the BBC series, if you prefer). Dickens influenced Wilkie Collins, who wrote The Moonstone, the first detective novel, and a masterpiece. Next, the queens of crime Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers (powerful Christian apologetic making a living on superb crime fiction) ushered in a Golden Age of detective fiction. Today I’d add P.D. James, who invented a poet detective, Adam Dagliesh, and has just added a Jane Austin mystery, Death Comes to Pemberly, recently made into a movie. And please try her Children of Men, an apocalyptic view of what happens when we aren’t kept alive by having children around. I think part of the trouble with our aging churches in North America is that they don’t have baby churches around to keep them young, so I use this book as an illustration of why starting baby churches is so important. Sorry, nothing to do with detectives, but well worth adding to the list.

I like detectives that rely on their knowledge of local culture to solve crime:

Precious Ramotse, the Botswanan in charge of the No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.

V.I Warshawski,who delves into the subcultures of Chicago

Jim Chee, a Navajo cop

John Rebus, a Scottish detective investigating the underside of Edinburgh.

And how could I forget G. K. Chesterton, the Father of Paradox who created Father Brown, the mild, quirky priest who paradoxically uses reason and his intuition about human nature to catch his man? He explains his method: “You see, I had murdered them all myself.” This, too, is an author worth reading, so if you find him on a two buck sale shelf, pick him up, read him, and pass him on.

God made us to love solving puzzles. The greatest puzzle, the greatest mystery of them all, of course, is the conundrum of a thousand years: how to save the world. And the greatest mystery writer of them all is still writing. He’s hit the climax and is deep into the denouement, ready to head into that final grand conclusion, the end of the world. And we are the characters and the witnesses of his glorious resolution. I love how he does this, my favorite mystery writer.