Chacocente Christian School

I am teaching in a Christian school after all. There are about 50 students and it is a primary school, preschool to 6th grade. First grade has almost 20 students and by 6th grade it has tapered off to 2 or 3, so that fifth and sixth grades are combined for a total of 6 students. Half the school has been built and they are currently finishing the other half, although classes have been offered for around 3 years by now. Construction happens during school time, so the other day a table was moved out of the cafeteria so that welding sparks wouldn´t fall on students while they ate. Right now they are finishing the walls, smoothing concretish stuff over the cinder blocks. My preschool class meets in a little makeshift room in what used to be the house of the family who farmed the land that is now Chacocente.

Here are pictures of: the pits that are Chacocente´s mini dump (rather than trucking out their trash), Melvin and someone else working on the walls, a fifth grader named David standing in the hallway between the finished half and unfinished half of the school, another room whose walls have been finished, my preschooler Eva watching Nelson work on a bike tire (might be mine actually!), another of my students, named Adrianna, with her foot on a wheelbarrow of cement, her father JuanCarlos, a group of students and teachers in a totally finished room (the man is Xavier, the school´s director), the cafeteria (see the pile of wood on the ground with a grate on top? that´s the stove), Tatiana (preschool) with Adison (1st grade), and a view of the whole school with my friend Nancy (another volunteer, from Texas) in the foreground.

Nicaragua 3: Volcan Mombotombo

On my very first day in Nicaragua, Wednesday January 10th, I hitchhiked with my Mission of Peace friends to Granada and Mombotombo. Here are some lovely pictures of the view over one of the extinct craters. The islands you see were formed by the lava flowing down and spattering. Now it´s all jungly.

Nicaragua 2: my house

I should probably say that I got to Nicaragua on Jan 9 and I´m planning on living here til mid December. I´m living with a host family in Sabana Grande, Managua, and I´m teaching preschool for free at a school in rural Masaya. The school is at Project Chacocente, which you can learn more about at outofthedump.org
Short version of very long story: the families living at Chacocente moved there from the Managua dump.

Here are pictures of my house, my clean laundry which I washed myself in the tub pictured below, a barrel of water for using when the running water isn´t, shall we say, running, the purple church pastored by my host dad, and the bus parked often in our little area. There is a gate opening onto a driveway/yard which leads to a little nook of about 7 or so houses.

Nicaragua 1: palm tree and basketball

Here are three pictures taken from the plastic chair I dragged out to the patio this morning. I was reading With Open Hands which Emily sent Beth who sent it to me. I looked up and saw that my host brother Isaac had dragged his chair, and little Derek´s little chair, over to have a better view of kids playing basketball in our yard/driveway. It was so cute to see the normal chair and the little chair carefully placed at a good viewing angle together that I went and got my camera. And while I was at it, I thought I would share the beautiful view of trees and sky from our patio. By the way, it´s possible that Derek is related to Isaac in some way, but the kids around here pass from caretaker to caretaker pretty fluidly, so as far as I know, Isaac was just hanging out with him for a while. :)

Dungeons and Dragons Theology

I'm a little embarrassed (but not very) to say that I've been playing D&D again. However, it has recently given me a profound and powerful theological insight, and it's only fitting that I share it with the internet.

So, in Dungeons and Dragons, one person tells the story of what happens to you, and you decide what you want your character to do. It takes place in your imagination, and in your friends' imaginations, but you roll dice to see how well you do at a given task.

You get to roll a 20-sided die. When you get a "1", you do really, really poorly at a given task. When you roll a "20", you do really, really well. For example, I tried to hit a giant ant with my mace, rolled a 1, and knocked myself out.

So, our party of adventurers, "played" by myself and a couple of friends, found ourselves at the end of our two-night adventure. We were facing a huge monstrosity, namely "PRAETOR, TITAN OF THE UNDERDARK!" This guy was like, 25 feet tall, had crazy magical powers, and wielded a giant, flaming battle-ax. Whoa. I was pretty sure that we were all going to die. Which would've been a real bummer to finish a couple of nights of great adventuring.

In the first round of combat, my character ran madly towards the giant beast, foolishly trying to him him with her mace.

I rolled a twenty. It hurt him a lot. Huge, angry mace to the abdomen.

Then, my friend rolled a twenty as well, and it hurt him even more. Crossbow bolt to the face.

Then, it was his turn to attack. The first time he attacked, he took hurt us all with a magical wall of un-dodge-able fire. He tried to hit me with his fire-ax, which would have probably killed me.

He rolled a one. And hit himself in the leg.

We defeated him within, like, thirty seconds, and the crowd of rabble we brought with us surged over him with their pitchforks and hoes.

That was not supposed to happen.

So, here's the important theological point, and I think the reason why I woke up this morning feeling pretty darn happy.

In the struggle against the forces of evil and oppression and empire, it often looks like they have the upper hand. Indeed, it seems that when I and my allies go in against the forces of empire, we often, well, lose.

But sometimes.

Every once in a while.

When you dare to confront the forces of empire and oppression, on behalf of liberation and justice:

You roll twenties. And they roll ones.

And that's all it takes.

And things come together in ways you didn't expect, and your crazy ideas work, and their old ideas fail, and the Spirit moves, and walls crumble and people change, and transformation happens.



May you roll twenties.

David

Communion

I got to do the "words" part of communion for the first time on Sunday. At a lot of churches, those words of institution are reserved for ordained clergy, so though I have helped serve communion many times, I've never done that part. In fact, in some traditions, that part is seen as the sacramentally significant part; once those words have been said by a clergy-person, the now-ontologically or symbolically changed bread can be served by anybody.

Fortunately, (in my mind) Grace Baptist Church is serious about the priesthood of all believers, so the folks organizing worship invited me to help with communion. I emailed that pastor, Jacki, to see what I should say. (In many traditions, those words are pretty strictly scripted.) Jacki said I could say whatever I wanted to, up to a minute long.

Whoa.

I thought about it quite a bit, and finally wrote decided. I was influenced by the week's liturgy (the baptism of the Lord), and a conversation about relationships with Nate Dannison. I was also inspired by this essay, from "Days of War, Nights of Love": http://crimethinc.com/library/english/join.html. And Episcopalian liturgy.

I decided to speak in a loud, clear, excited voice, as if what we were doing actually mattered. And was potentially dangerous, and a whole lot of fun. Here is what I said, for my first words of institution, on January 21, 2006, while raising the bread and tearing it in half, and making a crummy mess on the floor:

"Sisters and Brothers: You are the beloved children of God, in whom God is well pleased.

Come join the revolution!

Come fall in love!

Come keep the feast!"




Hells yeah.

David

MLK Day etc

so, I spent Martin Luther King Jr. Day playing Nintendo. At first, I was a little bit ambivalent about this: shouldn't I have gone to one of the many rallies/ memorial services around?

But then I remembered that Dr. King was happy to spend a day shooting pool in a bar. And that immediately before his assassination, he had a pillow fight with his friends. So, I think he'd approved.

Plus, I pretty much figure that a lot of my education now is about getting better at pursuing justice and undermining empire, and I am therefore entitled to a day of playing. Because what good is anti-imperial work if it precludes play? (This goes back to a conversation I had with Emily, about unionizing workers needing time off too!)

Besides, we played cooperative Mario Soccer. It was lovely.

This week I've been in a course called "Legal Issues in Contemporary Parish Ministry." It was a great, praxis-oriented course, taught by the general counsel for the UCC. I did learn a few disturbing things, among them: there seems to be no constitutional basis for defending conscientious objectors. The former interpretation of the freedom of religion clause has been updated, and under its current understanding, it would probably not defend the rights of CO's.

I'm going to prison!

Keep your eyes out for the ent-wives,
David