persons becoming persons.

My dear ones,

This email has been sitting on my desktop for a few months now. The document
title keeps getting changed – what was once “Mass email November 2010” has
become “December,” “January,” and finally “Mass email February 2011” – but please know that
its tardiness in reaching your inbox is in NO way indicative of how much I think of and miss
you all. Once again, it’s been too long since I’ve written, but I guess soon enough I should stop
apologizing for that in every update and just admit that it’ll probably be another three (or four…
or five…) months before you hear from me here again. Don’t worry, the length of this email
makes up for my silence :) So very much has changed in my very humble life at the Farm that I
hardly know where to begin, but I guess NOW is good of a place as any – so here goes!

Today I write to you from the cinderblock apartment I share with two young women – Marina
(15) and Dalila (17), who make up 2/3 of the Farm’s adolescent program here in La Ceiba,
Honduras, about 3 hours away (or 4… or 5…. depends on your bus) from my last year’s
beach-side home just outside Trujillo. Alisha, my partner-in-crime/other-half/co-parent/fellow
volunteer, and Arturo, the teenage boy entrusted to her care, live in the apartment just next
door here in Barrio El Centro, where the sounds on the street - taxis beeping, homeless men
yelling, generators buzzing, and the occasional musical presentation in Parque Central next door
– float through our open windows day and night. The name of my new role at the Farm this
year is “encargada,” which literally means “the in-charged” or “entrusted”. That’s a pretty good
definition, I think, but I’m not sure it encompasses quite everything we do here… so I decided to
write my own definition for you, which goes something like the following:

encargada: n., adj.: doctor’s-appointment-setter-upper, dish-washer-reminder (“Please don’t
use that fork in the non-stick pan!”), parent-teacher-conference-attender, curfew-enforcer, live-
in social worker, “make-good-choices!”-sayer, financial-counselor (“Remember to save at least
75%…”) homework-helper, gratitude teacher, drain unclogger and cockroach killer, “are-you-
SURE-you-have-to-fry-that?”-asker, loaf-of-bread and pot-of-beans maker, turn-the-other-cheek-er, patient silence bearer and giggle-sharer, Settler’s-of-Catan-player, prayer-planner, boyfriend-approver (“Is he REALLY good enough for you??”), fundraiser and connection-seeker, music-and-movie censorer (Dear Mom and Dad, now I TOTALLY get why you didn’t let me see all PG-13 movies when I was 13), hospitality director, tutor, volunteer, bill-payer, grocery-shopper, advice-giver… and the list goes on. Usage: “She’s my encargada.” See also: parenthood (sort of).

As anyone who has parented teenagers knows well, sometimes they can be… well, frankly,
ridiculous. (Please consider this my official apology to parents everywhere, especially my own,
for being sixteen once myself. Um… sorry about that.) However, lately, the days I go to bed
feeling like I’m actually building relationships with these girls are far outnumbering the days
that I go to bed feeling like I want to wring their necks… which is obviously, you know, a grace.
Or something like it. And lately, too, I’ve been really surprised by how, out of nowhere, it just
hits me sometimes how much I really, really care for these young women – how proud I am of
who they are (most of the time), how much I want to see them succeed, how much I love their
laughter and their stories and to hear the hilarious things they talk about when they think I’m not listening. (“Oh my GOD, did you know Selena Gomez has received death threats over Twitter because of her relationship with Justin Bieber?! Why won’t they just come out and admit they’re dating already?!”) It’s not by nature of anything I’ve done, I don’t think, that that’s happened – it’s just kind of a natural effect of the fact that we try to share our meals, our home, and our lives with each other in an intentional way. Overall, without a doubt, my biggest joy here is found in these kids – and it’s definitely not always a feel-good joy, a “can’t wipe this smile off my face, how-can-I-keep-from-singing” type of joy – but it’s joy all the same, sometimes frustrating and messy but also deep and beautiful and true. I believe in them, and I want so much to see them become happy, loving, successful adults – and I believe deeply in this work, that it is good and meaningful, and that there is goodness and grace in being faithful in the small things that are asked of me here daily, even if it’s just killing cockroaches, making lunch, changing lightbulbs and helping with homework. I’m pretty sure that I, too, and being shaped and molded and formed by my time with these girls, that I’m learning from them things I never even thought to ask… and I think I’m growing in what Dorothy Day called (quoting Ruskin) our “duty of delight” – the duty to delight, that is, both in the hilarity and strangeness and beauty of our lives, and also in one another. Because that is what we’re meant for, I think – to be “persons becoming persons through other persons,” just trying to reflect for each other a little bit of the light that we have received.

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This past December, I’m in a taxi in San Pedro Sula, heading to the bus stop to get back to
Ceiba after a very quick trip to the States before Christmas. After the typical negotiating of
the taxi fare, answering the driver’s so-predictable-it’s-almost-funny question of “So… are
you married?” (the answer is always yes, if you’re wondering)… I, for some reason still
unbeknownst to me, wipe off the “do NOT mess with me” tattoo I usually have stamped on my
forehead when I’m traveling alone and begin to chat with my taxi driver a bit. He asks me about
life in the States (like almost every Honduran I meet, he’s either been there or has family there
himself), why I’m here, and what I think of Honduras, and we talk about “volunteer culture”
and why it just doesn’t exist so much in Central America. Finally, he asks me the unanswerable
question – how my time here has been. I fumble around for the words, and finally settle on
telling him that it’s a really challenging experience, but I know that I’m being formed here and
that I’m growing and learning a lot. Usually that would suffice for anyone, but this guy prods a
bit. “¿Y qué es lo que ha aprendido?” he asks me. What is it that you’ve learned?

I stay quiet for a minute.

“I am learning,” I tell him, “about humanity, and myself, and what exactly is my part to play
in this strange, beautiful mess of a world.” I go on to tell him what it is I love about Central
America – which is, I mean, a lot of things, but more than anything that it forces my very
humanity upon me, in such a raw, human way that there is literally no escaping it. I go to the
market here and am ambushed by vendors yelling at me, “¿Qué desea, mami?” The woman who
sells me cheese every week won’t let me go without giving her an update on Jennie, last year’s
encargada, who finished her time in December and is now back in the States. Ride on a public
bus, and there’s a good possibility you’ll end up with someone else’s small child sitting half
in your lap for a good part of the journey. Go on vacation with one of your teenagers to visit
the family members she lived with before coming to the Farm, and see that the well you draw
water from to bathe yourself with a bucket each morning is more than just a source of life – it’s
a gathering place of the community where stories are swapped and a commonality is established
through the act of doing something together. Central America demands from me a sharing of
lives and hopes and dreams and struggles, a recognition of the other, an acknowledgement of
something shared, deep down, that holds us all together. Persons becoming persons, right before
our very eyes.

This whole persons-becoming-persons stuff is messy, and I think we’re all tempted at times to
want our space, to NOT want to be ambushed at the market or have someone’s sweaty elbows
touching us at mass or to end up holding someone’s smelly child for a three-hour bus ride. But I
also believe it to be blessing and grace to be asked to recognize myself and others in this way, to
acknowledge our finitude and our giftedness and our common call to delight in one another.

But back to December. My taxi nears the bus station, and as the driver comes to a stop, he looks
at me and says, with all the cariño in the world, “Que Dios me la cuide y me la bendiga.” And
the thing is… in the non-creepiest way possible… I think he meant it. In Spanish, when you
throw the optional “me” in there, what was before just a kind wish (“May God care for you and
bless you”) becomes personal – it’s something like “May God bless you and care for you – for
me” or “to me.” In the course of that fifteen-minute ride we shared together, something was
revealed to each of us – something shared that runs deep down. Humanity, maybe. God, even,
I guess. A connection was made – and we were both changed. Persons becoming persons, right
before our very eyes.

To all of you, who continually show me your love and support in my journey to become more of
myself… thank you, as always, for your patience and kindness and your prayers. I have learned
so much from you all and carry you with me wherever I go, and promise that I hold you always
in thought and prayer, sending you love and light when I think of you – which is often. So until
my next five-month-delayed, excessively long email…

sending you light,
and grace,
and all the Justin Bieber gossip you could possibly want, from my chaotic Barrio El Centro…

que Dios me los cuide,
Erin