FCA
6/21/97
The Meeting began with Mike saying that service is
like a pair of shoes, in order to use them, they have to be gotten dirty. In
order to serve you have to get into the mud. For the members of the Meeting who
didn’t go to Trigo Moreno, Mexico, who didn’t get literally covered with mud,
this was a metaphor. That service requires an active participation, getting
involved, is not such a remarkable notion. It’s what you have to do. If you
want to serve your fellow man, other species or the environment, you have to
get out there and do the work.
Service can take many forms. The bottom line
commonality is that you are working for something larger than yourself. Rather
than pursuing your own personal things, you have compassion for others who are
more needy than you and you help them out. Maybe not everyone can serve out of
a complete selflessness. Service meets a
deep need to be interconnected and to be a member, to belong.
In the AFSC project in Trigo we dug a lot of mud out
of a draw and helped the locals make forms and make a larger cistern for the
village water supply. I shoveled a load of mud into Drew’s boot, which
precipitated a big mud fight after which many of the young people were entirely
covered with mud. A lot of the work involved getting into the water and mud to
hammer forms together or place various pipes. In order to complete the work
sometimes somebody had to get in the mud and do that stuff.
In between real experience and metaphor about that
experience is a zone of imagination where people can plug in their own related
experience. One person spoke at Meeting and felt conflict. He was relatively
affluent even while living simply. He could see and feel the suffering of
people in the world. He raised a doubt: how could he feel happy and content
surrounded by such suffering? Is it wrong to be content when others suffer?
A woman then spoke about the story of Buddha, and
expanding on the mud metaphor said that you can go in the mud but that doesn’t
equal having your own happiness muddied. To serve others in a suffering world
doesn’t necessarily imply that one’s own consciousness has to be dragged onto
the metaphorical mud. To serve doesn’t mean that you have to reduce yourself to
the level of or become identical with the suffering of others. In general the
Meeting following our return from Trigo precipitated a very creative and moving
testimony. Rather than being a run of the mill popcorn Meeting where people are responding to the last thing said, this
particular Meeting was like a grand improvisation on a theme. The comments held
together with a logic and sense that seemed to reinforce the significance of
the over all experience for me.
In spite of the revelatory nature of Meeting the
members were really responding to our experience as a metaphor and they
projected that suffering out there and got a little off track. When we were in
the mud it was fun. The villagers were in the mud. Our mud was not the stuff of
suffering but of joy and involvement. We were working together to improve their
water system and everyone contributed a share of work to that goal. Through
working together we gained a commonality which everyone appreciated. There were
people in our group who never actually got in the mud but they made it possible
for those who did by cooking and taking care of
the home front. For everyone who jumps in the mud
there is a network, a group of people behind supporting and doing related
tasks.
At Meeting, others spoke of a universal humanity. It
is the Quaker idea of there being that of God in every man and revelatory
forces as much at work today as at any
other time. Every human is at once the same and different, so when you see
another you see yourself. In this way when a person helps another they are
serving themselves at the same time by virtue of being able to identify with
the universal threads of humanity. Love your brother as you love thyself. At
Meeting this idea was expressed as: to love god is to love your brother. This
is one of the reasons why Quakers want to get out and do service projects.
Also in Trigo I was impressed by Indolfo’s bull, cow
and calf. Ganaderia or livestock ranching is something highly valued in Mexico.
You could see that he took very good care of his animals. The animals had a
look of contentment and of innocence, a strikingly different appearance than
livestock I’ve seen in the USA. I was invited into Adele’s kitchen and remember
the hospitality, the warm bread and sweet coffee and the looks of amazement at
a real live gringo. They appreciated us helping them out.
In Hermosillo I was impressed by the murals in the
Palacio del Gobierno. Depicted in bold color and form was the whole history of
Mexico, from the beginning of time, innocence, pre-Colombian civilization,
conquest, change, assimilation, birth of the new, revolution, stagnation, lofty
ideals and human frailty. The mural ends right by the door to the governors
office and there up on the wall is a man faced by the choice to go with a whore
or not. Nearby is a set of scales. It couldn’t be more ironic, politicians
always torn between fidelity to constituents and big money pay offs.
With Mexicans there is at the same time force and
innocence. Mexicans are at once the conqueror and the conquered. They are the
ancestors of Cortes and Cuotemoc. In Magdalena people lined up to pray to the
patron St Francis Xavier, (Kino’s patron
saint) in the church. Father Kino’s
bones are seen across the square. There is a sense of living history and
continuity that is lacking across the border. It is real, you can taste, smell
and hear it.
To return to the USA, with the spotless restaurants
and impeccably manicured lawns with no one outside socializing lends a feeling
of artificiality and pretense. Somehow the USA is just not as real as Mexico.
The USA is removed from itself. Where is the sense of history when all is new
and plastic? There are positive aspects
of a fatalism born out of generations of poverty. It is the sense of undaunting
optimism. A Mexican friend and I agreed
that lo importante es la manera de vivir. The important thing is how you live.
Actions do speak louder than words.
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