My dear ones,
Nearly 6 months ago to the day, I turned in my Honduran residency card, haggled with a taxi driver in Spanish one final time, and boarded one last international flight from Honduras to Orlando as my 27 months of service with the Farm of the Child drew to an end. For six months now, I’ve been living life back in the United States – applying to grad schools and visiting dear friends and spending time with family, learning about smartphones and delighting in new culinary adventures and feeling more grateful than ever for laundry machines and air conditioning and frozen yogurt. For six months, I’ve been trying to write this email – to find the words to express to you, one final time, what it is that this experience has meant to me and how grateful I am for the ways in which you’ve shared in it. And for six months, of course, I’ve remained - at least in the mass-email sense - silent.
Forgive me for getting all theological here, but I promise this does have a point: two weeks ago, the Catholic Church celebrated the feast of Pentecost. It’s the “birthday” of the Church, and the day in which we celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the first Christ-followers – the day in which generous gifts are bestowed upon them, and they are commissioned to go forth and begin to continue Christ’s healing mission on earth. You see, after the incredible, awe-inspiring, course-of-history-changing events of Jesus’ death and resurrection, this rag-tag team of disciples hides away in an upper room in confusion, fear and grief. They’ve witnessed such greatness and grandeur, but they are afraid – and I suppose they find themselves incapable of finding the words to express such wonder and mystery. But then Christ appears to them in the upper room, while the doors are still locked. He speaks peace upon them, and shows them the wounds in His sides, and then God breathes God’s Spirit upon them and they are sent to proclaim the Good News to all the ends of the earth.
In some small way, I think these 6 months of transition have been my own 50 days of Easter – my own 50 days (well, more like 180, but you get the idea) of having experienced something too strange and unfathomable and big for words, and of feeling unable to express the wonder and gratitude and sometimes the confusion and messiness I feel towards it all - how my own life has been transformed by this Easter experience and can never quite be the same again. Like the apostles hidden in the upper room, I’ve needed time and space to sit with the largeness of my Finca experience, and have often been unsure of how to go about sharing it with all of you. What words could possibly be adequate, after all, to describe a very real encounter with the Christ who still moves and breathes on this earth, who still is born and lives, suffers and dies, and is raised from the dead? What words could express the ways in which I have seen the Easter story made so very real in the lives of the pueblo, God’s people in Honduras? What words could make real to you their suffering and their hope, and their belief that in the end, death does not have the final say?
It’s an Easter story, this life… I have to believe this, and cling to it, because if I don’t I’m not sure I have much else left. It is a story of life and death and resurrection played out a thousand times in a thousand faces, over and over – a story that is mysterious and blessed and somehow always touched by the presence of God. And as I turn this corner in my own Easter journey – now being sent forth once more to proclaim what I have seen and heard to a world in need, and to continue to find the hidden treasure of the Kingdom of God among God’s people – I’m struck by how necessary it is to continue to listen for the suffering voices of Good Friday, even as we live in the joy of the resurrection. For even in his resurrected glory, Christ appears to his followers with wounds in his sides – and later in the Gospel, Thomas will encounter the Risen Lord and recognize him only through touching those very wounds. A beloved professor of mine once told me that this moment of conversion is a clue for us as well – that if we want to stay close to God, if we want to find our way – we must stay close to the little ones, to those who are wounded and broken. After all, Christ has many unexpected dwelling places, and is often made most present among those who are small and humble. Could it be, perhaps, that the one we see as only a gardener is actually the very Presence of God? We cannot witness to the resurrection without remembering the faces of Good Friday – without testifying to the voices that cry out in pain. I take great peace and comfort in walking with Christ - the God who puts on flesh and walks among God’s people - in all stages of his human life, because, as an article I recently read put it so well: The wounded Christ helps us to live in a wounded world. The risen Christ can help us to redeem it.
I feel very, very blessed to be so excited about the next season in my life, which will begin this fall as I start graduate studies at Boston College. I will be pursuing a dual-degree masters program, and (if all goes as planned!) will spend 3 years earning my MSW (Master’s in Social Work) and MA in Pastoral Ministry. I feel hopeful that this next step will continue to teach me about what it means to live the Paschal Mystery, and in some small way, will enable me to both experience and be a vehicle of God’s healing for those who suffer. I am immensely grateful for this opportunity, and trust that the God who shows up in very unexpected ways will continue to walk with me on the journey of finding my place in the human family, especially mindful of all those who most share in Christ’s woundedness. I hope and pray that it will be a way of washing feet – a way of deep joy – and, si Dios permite (if God permits), a way of life in abundance.
In the end, I think the final word is gratitude – gratitude for lives intersecting and moments shared, for the incredible richness I have experienced and the generosity that has been so lavishly bestowed upon me, for the little ones (and the big ones) in Honduras who have taught me to be small, for the immense privilege of this humbling, awesome experience. And so it is with an incredibly full heart that I want to thank you for being part of my own Easter story, and for walking with me as I have walked dusty roads and city streets with Christ in Honduras - as I, like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, have encountered Him on the road and in the breaking of bread. I know, beyond a shadow of doubt, that I never could have done this alone, and that in my lowest, most broken moments of the past three years, I was always, always being held in loving thought and generous prayer. Thank you, too, for welcoming me back into your lives so well, for creating the time and space for me to slowly begin to share my experience with you, and for being patient with me as I slowly begin the long process of re-discovering who it is I am called to be back in this country. Thank you for allowing me the privilege of dancing at your weddings and singing at your ordinations, for letting me hold your babies and teaching me about smartphones and getting me caught up on all the funny YouTube videos I missed while I was away, for the endless cups of coffee and frozen yogurt you have bought me… and thank you for the infinite ways in which you have shown me what it means to be the Body of Christ, and for the ways in which you have invited me to reflect on how to live an authentic, integrated, whole life in this country, in right relationship with God and myself and others. As Elizabeth Gilbert says so well… “In the end… maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it's wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.”
In so, so much gratitude for all I have been given
and with every prayer for all that is good,
I say, forever and sincerely -
thank you.
Erin
PS: If you are able, I encourage you to prayerfully consider continuing to support the amazing mission of the Farm in some way. With costs constantly rising in Honduras, we face the challenge of raising more and more money each year to be able to sustain our current level of operations. In addition, I, along with several others, have committed to running a half-marathon this fall in order to raise money and awareness for the Farm. If you are able, I humbly ask that you might consider supporting my efforts financially – the link to the website which would allow you to do so is here. As a team, we’ve set a goal of raising 13.1k for 13.1 miles – I would be grateful and honored if you would consider helping us make this a reality!
PPS: I also have recently begun the ambitious project of organizing and uploading my photos from the past two and a half years! It's not complete yet, but it's a start, if you're interested: http://picasaweb.google.com/
