An Experience of Death and Resurrection in Central America

Sorry its been so long. I was in El Salvador working with the Iglesia Episcopal and then in Guatemala for Holy Week. That was certainly an interesting experience. Something of a carnival of death, the processions and crowds bring to life the experience of watching an execution. Hundreds of men in purple and black robes and dressed as Roman soldiers carry statues of Jesus carrying his cross (and in the case of the last processions on Good Friday, lying dead) with the Virgin Mary following in despair. At various points during the week, we saw processions pass by, and were thus unable to escape the impending climax of the passion narrative.

I'm not sure how secular visitors (and there were thousands of these) viewed the spectacle, but at noon on Good Friday, while we stood huddled in a doorway and perched on some stairs to get a better view, an effigy of Jesus was placed on the cross in front of the cathedral as the procession passed by. With loud dirges playing and incense clouding the air, the experience of looking at that symbolic crucifixion with the vast crowd transmuted into something else. It was a heartrending sort of experience, being part of the festival of Jesus' humiliation. I'm sure that's why this tradition has lasted since the arrival of Spaniards in the New World. One of the statues of Christ is from 1655, and they certainly have practiced this drama over and over.

We arrived home at 2 in the morning on Easter, so we missed the celebration of the resurrection in Guatemala. Like most tourists, we fled after the height of the gory spectacle to our safe homes. Strangely, though, as I sat in church in Brattleboro that morning, I was aware that we had experienced resurrection on our trip, but much earlier. In El Salvador they don't have much of a tourist industry, but they do get visitors to holy sites. We were there to help in a bakery project we're working on in El Maizal, a village not far from the Guatemalan border. The people there were affected terribly, as were most Salvadorans by the civil war of the 1970s-1990s. The village was rebuilt by Episcopal Relief and Development following and earthquake, but not many people could move there as there was no economy to support them. In short, the church is now working to create opportunities for business and agriculture as well as building a community from scratch.

Last year the community was barely surviving. It has grown tremendously since then, with soccer leagues for children and adults, all of the houses occupied, and several new plantings of trees and vegetables. We are working on the next phase, which will take some time and resources, to build a sustainable bread-baking business with our Salvadoran partners, whom we met on this journey. The community is reviving, as the nation is.

During the civil war, the Archbishop of El Salvador was murdered. His name, Oscar Romero, is well known. Travelers visit his home as a shrine, and he and other martyrs of the war are given exhaustive museum displays. But it is not in these sites that he is resurrected, but as my priest put it on Sunday "in the hearts of his people." Romero gave his life for the least of Christ's people, and those who killed him were unable to kill the Christian he was. I learned something in the resurrection of the community in El Maizal: that however painful and hopeless a situation, however we are crucified, we can rise up in Christ and continue the work of Love.

Hitchens gets it Right about Huckabee

I have often criticized Christopher Hitchens. He is a ridiculous blatherer most of the time, but in this piece about Mike Huckabee's approval of the Confederate Battle Flag flying over the South Carolina statehouse, he gets it right.

Specifically, Hitchens points out:

So slack is our grasp of history and principle that we seem unable to think of the Confederacy as other than "offensive" to blacks. But there are two Republican candidates in this election—the absurd and sinister Ron Paul being the other—who choose this crucial moment in our time to exalt those who attempted to destroy the Union by force, and those who solicited the help of foreign powers in order to do so, and whose treason led to the violent deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Should their patriotism be questioned? I would say most definitely yes, and questioned repeatedly, at that, perhaps especially if they are seeking the nomination of the party of Lincoln.

Huckabee, though he came in fourth in SC, still has some appeal in the South. He is still alive in the race for a major party's nomination. That this should happen in the party of Lincoln is more than appalling. It appears even rabid Englishmen have more sense than some American voters.

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Best reason yet for not allowing the Book of Revelation into the hands of the mentally ill.

They may try to cut them off. In an attempt to rid himself of what he thought was the "mark of the beast," a clearly delusional man cut off his hand and cooked it in the microwave. You can read about the dangers of interacting with apocalyptic literature at CNN.com.

I hope this man receives the help he needs, and does not receive any of these tracts from Armageddon Books.

Why don't basic women's rights in Saudi Arabia get more attention?

That's the question asked in this article. The author points out that it has been a long time since women in the US or in Europe had to worry about basic suffrage and human rights issues. I hadn't thought about it this way, but I have found it somewhat strange that so many Americans, women and men, who are concerned about women's rights are afraid to speak out against the corruption of Islam for the subjugation of women. I am not Muslim, and I do not pretend to understand all of Islam's precepts, but I cannot imagine tolerating a Christian state that continued to promote slavery or the beating of women for being raped.

Why don't we start campaigning against this as we do against genocide, human trafficking and other forms of human brutality and oppression? Why are we so afraid to criticize a legal system that isn't even the consensus view of Muslims?

To get your strength up, remember nearly every great moral debate has religious overtones. It is in these issues where our humanity fails to measure up to God's desires.