echoes of mercy

THIS IS MENTAL FATIGUE:

Yesterday, after 8 blessed hours of sleep, I attended ONE class, completed ONE assignment, then fell on my bed in complete exhaustion and slept 3 more hours. why........?

I spent a lot of time with this book a few years ago, in the immediate wake of my injury. Yes, it's baffling, but here's how I think about it:

The book of Job is not written as if it were an annal from history. No dates are given, or current events, not even Job's genealogy or last name. Historians aren't sure who wrote it, just that it's very old.

To me, it's a piercingly honest musing on the terribly confusing balance we have to somehow accept between 1. God's sovereignty/power/holiness and 2. The injustice and meaningless suffering we see and experience in this world. There is no clear answer given because it wasn't written to "explain" that mystery.

And I think it's brilliant because no cutesy little answer to suffering is ever forced. Of course you're baffled. This stuff is baffling. The story leaves us with as many questions as it answers, but I think that was the intent.

It's just a story written by someone who has thought about this stuff A LOT within the context of his belief in God, saying through Job's story, "WHY. Why does it happen. How could God do this?"

The friends each say, "Ehhhemmm....well....I don't know, maybe the problem is ________."

Job responds to all of them by saying, "NO DUDE, you're wrong, that's not even true, just shut up."

(the message there being: don't judge people who suffer and think you can speculate why they are suffering with any kind of accuracy, because you don't know anything about their lives)

Then Elihu says, "I don't know WHY, Job, but the why shouldn't matter. Worship God."

God says, "Yeah, listen to Elihu, that kid's got the right message."

...and then Job says, "Okay. You're right."

Then it ends.

The restoring of Job's fortunes is like 2 verses at the end, like a quick little addition that I think the author put there because someone told him, "Hey man, you can't just end the story on this depressing note." But I don't think they really belong there, because they are kind of fanciful, and they don't fit with the overall message of the book.

And I think the overall message is this:

“Shit goes down, even for good people. It's not always punishment for wrongdoing, and it just makes you look stupid when you act like that, so quit judging people in pain. I don't know why. Maybe it has something to do with Satan? But you have to keep glorifying God, even when it doesn't make sense, even when it hurts.”

I think the message of the book is reinforced by John 9:3 ("Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”)

...good like relief. Like a conversation in the confessional.

I just had a heart-to-heart with a person on the other side of privilege. You know how your cheap shirt says MADE IN ____________? Well, I just had a conversation with someone who grew up in that blank.

We talked about develop(ed) and develop(ing) countries, about discrimination, injustice, disability, disadvantage, being spoiled...and being proud of who you are and where you come from.

I feel both shame and honor that I was trusted with that topic.

For our ignorance and indifference there was less anger and more grace than I felt we deserved.

An Unmarked Grave for a Stillborn Love

“I’m smitten,” he grinned at the end of our first date. That was our beginning: a laughing, frolicking, insatiable delight.

I kissed him slow and deep. Whenever I peeked, he had been smiling as his closed eyes filled with gladness, like kissing me was the best moment of his life.

I saw bravery, insight, and empathy. I saw responsibility marked with a calm and compassionate ear. I saw dimly, but the view was brilliant. Such a short time we knew each other, yet I already toed the edge of the cliff; I nearly jumped in love. I told him once, “I think I found my soul inside you.”

I went to Canada, and he went to London, and I came back, but that soul of his never did.

He said he’d cut off the hair I thought was beautiful; he said I would work to support his projects; he said he’d couldn’t recall my professional goals; he said he no longer loved his family as he did before. I realized he was a stranger. Perhaps he always was. I said he could take me home.

Here lies my love for him. It died before it was born.

But the question I really ought to ask is this: If I hadn’t had the disability, what would I have done?

I just don’t like it that people come to Madrid to talk to others from their country and get drunk and go to all the “sights.” They don’t even bother to try to learn this beautiful language. It seems like they just want to check Spain off the list of countries they’ve been to. Spain is unspeakably more. You can’t even reduce it to the single unit of Spain. It’s the stone houses of Galicia and laughing at cafeterías in Andalucía and the chilled, smart precision of País Vasco and the coastlines of Asturias that take your breath away. And that’s nothing, y’all. That’s nothing. There is so much more that I don’t know.

This all reminds me of Europeans who travel to New York and Los Angeles and tell me they’ve seen my country coast to coast. It seems the only thing they want is the shallow, stale, pre-packaged view of a place. To reduce the world to kitsch. I love to travel, but not like that. I hardly care about that.

I want to dig my fingers in the dirt. I’d rather learn the dimensions and layers and patched places and reasons and motives and yearnings of a place and its people. 

I know that going to Scotland is the dream of so many back in the States, and here I am only 23, and I just went on a whim, and I didn’t even like it. But it’s true: I didn’t like it. I was aching inside with all of my missing for Spain.

One of the best moments of the trip was when I met a young Spaniard at a bus stop in the Scottish highlands. His name was Fran, and he was from Granada.

We had an easy, natural conversation in both languages for the duration of the half hour bus ride. We were both hikers who had finished the West Highland Way two days earlier than planned because we had awful ampollas and could barely walk. That word means blister. Although Fran’s English seemed pretty perfect to me, I did have to supply that word. He told me that after a year in Scotland (which he didn’t like either), it was refreshing to meet me. When we reached our destination, he suggested a date and asked my phone number. I wanted to go, but it didn’t work out because of transportation issues, and in the end, I had to cancel.

Fran: the Scottish-Spaniard from Granada whom I didn’t go on a date with.

But that bus ride was one of the best moments of the trip. Fran wasn’t even that good-looking, to be honest. But he spoke Spanish to me, y’all, and I was so lonely for his beautiful language and his beautiful culture.

Going to the UK made me miss Spanish culture so much. Wales is almost okay, England is no good, and Scotland is worst of all. Spain isn’t perfect, but it’s very good. Compared to the UK, it´s very, very good. But I’m leaving on the first of July. 

I’m indefinitely going to live in a country that is openly hostile to the Spanish language.

That’s my country. My country hates every country south of them. My country is afraid of international travel. People are going to ask if I liked the tacos people eat in Spain (people don’t eat tacos in Spain). They’re going to ask expectantly if I’m glad to be back home. I don’t know what I’m going to say.

I won’t hear the soft, rolling sounds of Spanish in the cafe anymore. I won’t be able to strike up a conversation with a stranger at the bus stop anymore. I’ll lose the immediate connection I feel to anyone else who lives far away from home. People won’t ask my opinion on gun control at the dinner table anymore. I don´t know that I can ever return to Spain as anything more than a tourist, and I´m going to ache with missing. And I don’t know how I’ll ever meet a Spaniard who speaks to me in both languages on the bus, the kind of Spaniard who asks me on dates because I’m refreshing, because I’m different.  I´m going back to the one place where I´m not different. The year I’ve lived in Spain is the happiest of my life so far, and I’m scared i´m going to go back to America and cry a thousand tears for the place I constantly find myself accidentally calling home.

This morning at Punta de la Cruz, Asturias.