Craziest ten days of my life

From September 20th to 29th, I:

Rehearsed, learned, and performed in a native Huititi dance for the parish Youth Day celebrations;


finished studying for and took the GRE;

kept on with all my regular projects like Confirmation, IRFA, choirs in the school, choirs in the parish, visiting the sick, and helping in the Delicias house with Teresa being on bedrest;

and decided, after a very strong, very painful freak-out session, not to be a nun.

It was a busy ten days.

Above: me and the other catechists in our traditional costumes from Arequipa!! Part of the costume is a dredlock-style full head of braids with ribbons tied in. My friend Josie's mom invited me to her house for lunch that day and braided my hair... so nice! Peruvian hospitality.

Left: me with my friend Juan Carlos (aka Juancho). He's holding up his skirt to show that he actually is wearing pants underneath. In this dance, the men wear long skirts over their pants, because in the time and culture that invented the dance, parents kept boys and girls very strictly separated and didn't let them see each other. So, with that crazy bravery that dares a man to do anything for love... the boys dressed up as girls to sneak in and see their girlfriends!

Look how well I fit in! :) I'm practically Peruvian. The guy in normal clothes is our teacher.
So the dance was awesome, plus the fact that the whole three minutes of it is nothing but jumping from side to side in different formations, so I got in really good shape by the end of the rehearsals! The music is with Andean flutes and drums, and you get to hop all around and spin and yell EEY! Fabulous.


The GRE, which I took yesterday at the Institute of American English in Lima, was also surprisingly good. I got a 1420 on the multiple-choice verbal and math sections. I'd been studying pretty dilligently for most of August and September, trying to find one to two hours a day during the week (weekends were too crazy) to study vocab and review math I haven't done since middle school. I got kind of ridiculously excited when the word Perspicacity appeared on the actual test, and a little indignant that not one single right-triangle 1-1-root 2 or 1-root 3-2 question appeared! after I reviewed all those stupid angles and hypotenuses. Oh well. I feel I've taken my first step towards becoming a theologian!

...And I'm glad about becoming a theologian, because, the nun idea... not so much. Last Friday for some reason I was just absolutely flipping out, sitting in my house crying because I felt like I was being torn in two inside--because I like everything, everything about the idea of being an SND... except the part about never being able to have a relationship or a family. All these questions about happiness, love, what one really, REALLY wants in life... sacrifice, leading to true happiness over immediate pleasure... being able to love people and share with them... Luckily when I went up to the school, Estela was there, and she listened to me talk for like an hour, and reassured me that one can serve God just as well as a non-nun. By Sunday I'd calmed down sufficiently to be able to study, and by Monday I was good to go on the test. And after the test, during my celebratory walk around Miraflores (the sun came out! and I sat in the park overlooking the ocean...), I found myself thinking calmly: El amor es uno solo. All love is one. I think if you're living a life full of love, and doing what makes you happy, that's all you can really ask for and all that can be asked of you.

So, as I said. A busy ten days. But good. ...real good. :)

Today there was not one but TWO dogs that wandered into my choir rehearsals in the school. Plus fourth grade behaved like a bunch of wild monkeys. Aah, Peru.

I don't need you to like me, and other thoughts

When I'm not working with people here, I periodically find myself alone in the house. I do my laundry or my cleaning or, these days, study like mad for the GRE which I'm taking on September 29th. But mostly, laundry and cleaning are excuses for me to think like crazy. I sometimes feel like even when I don't want to be thinking any more, my brain goes around in circles until some sort of activity (like working with kids or directing a choir rehearsal or visiting the sick) intervenes to take my mind off... things.


(Disclaimer: these questions usually come up on Mondays or Wednesdays, when I have less to do and more free time, but nobody else has free time to hang out with me. So I sometimes get a little bored, and if I'm tired, bored turns into moody, and voila, we get the following... )


The most frequent question of my alone moments is, What do I want? Sometimes I just feel this sort of longing, for something undefined, for a lot of things, and in frustration I ask, What do I want?? Or put another way--Why do I feel unfulfilled right now and what would fulfill me? Am I complete, as a person, right now, with my life the way it is? If you want to know what it's like to be me right now, think about that for a minute. Are you complete? Or do you feel like there's something lacking in your world, in your life, a hole that needs filling in order for you to be whole?


There is certainly a lot of love in my life here. Tons of dear friends, the sisters who are like my family, the kids at the school, even those annoying old ladies in the parish... But none of them are "mine." They all have their families and I don't; they put their kids to sleep at night, or someday will, and I go to bed alone. Is that okay? Some days I think it is, and some days I know it isn't. Could I be happy as a sister, with a life like this, doing work that I love and delighting in the company of everyone, but never depending on the presence of certain people, a family, for my happiness?

My brain says, Seems doubtful. If happiness doesn't come from the love of your family, I mean nuclear husband-and-kids family--where does it come from? Supposedly, the answer there would be God. And that... is complicated. Some days I think that relationship is not enough to make me happy for the rest of my life. And some days I know it is. Those are the days that scare me most.


But I've realized lately, through talking to a friend who grew up very, very poor in this neighborhood, that people can put anything in that question above where I put "family" (well actually, I'm way far from thinking about families; the word right now would be "boyfriend.") Example, "If happiness doesn't come from having enough money to live comfortably, where does it come from?" My friend had a very dificult childhood and although he now has a decent job and enough to eat in his house, I can tell he's still trapped in the idea that other people look down on him for being poor. He doubts his ability to follow his dreams of being a musician because, according to the way he thinks people will judge him, "that's for people with money." Silly, right? Now that he's getting along okay, why keep feeling ashamed of who he was, or how he was perceived, in the past? ...Heh. Easier said than done. Money for my friend is a sort of beautiful, unattainable dream, money and the respect that comes with it. He never had any, and he had to take some hard treatment from the world because of it, and so he learned to feel unworthy of people's esteem, and when you learn something like that it's very hard to unlearn later. A wound that needs a lot of healing.


"If happiness doesn't come from... (that thing I never had and felt scorned and humiliated for not having), where does it come from??" I realized that I'm exactly the same way about guys. Never had any, learned not to expect them, decided I'd better get used to living without them, and placed the idea of having a relationship up on a sort of pedestal, thinking, That must be it, if I had that I'd be happy. But the truth is, there are people with tons of money who aren't happy. There are people who've had a hundred boyfriends or girlfriends and aren't happy. There are even people in steady, committed, loving, long-term relationships, who aren't happy (although those last probably have a better chance at happiness than some.) So, logically, that can't be it.


Enter Anthony DeMello, a Jesuit from India whose book I read a few weeks ago. The guy's practically a Buddhist, and his perspective, which he sums up in the title Awareness, is literally life-changing, if you take it seriously. He basically says, as humans, we need two things to fully flourish: to be free, and to love. To be free and to love--NOT "to be loved!" Wow. Either he's crazy or he's found the secret to life. He says that as children we are trained not just to want but to need, even to crave the approval of others--our family, our peers, our teachers--but that that approval, that "love," that pat on the back or admiring glance or certificate of achievement, is actually not necessary for our happiness. Think about a two-year-old child: if that child knows that Mom and Dad love her in a sort of existential way, that is, she trusts that they're going to keep her world turning and doesn't live in fear of abandonment--then she won't hang around Mom if she can help it. Instead, she'll go off exploring, delighted to discover more about this marvelous thing called existence. But as soon as fear of abandonment enters in, the child starts clinging, terrified to move out into the world. She becomes more preoccupied with keeping Mom's love than with growing into a fuller, more alive version of herself.

Basically, as I understand him, DeMello says that a lot of what we think is love, is actually just us trying to get our latest fix of the drug called other people's approval. My, how smart you are, Kathleen! How responsible you are! How good and generous you are to others! You look beautiful today! Good thing you got those As in school... good thing you never went to those wild frat parties in college... Good thing you wear those nice flattering tight clothes now, you're turning heads down there in Peru!... Behind every Good thing...! is an Otherwise: a vague, implied Otherwise looming just on the other side of whatever Line the other person doesn't want us to cross. Otherwise, you'd be off the dean's list and you'd end up waiting tables for the rest of your life. Otherwise, people would think you were irresponsible. Otherwise you'd be arrogant and irritating, and people would get offended and feel bad and talk about you behind your back. Otherwise you'd keep living your pathetic, restricted little boy-less life and live in fear of your friends saying, Let's play Never Have I Ever! (a truth-telling game where young people discover who's done what, what kind of experiences everyone has or hasn't had.) Otherwise you might end up as a nun someday, that is to say, end up going around with CELIBATE stamped on your forehead for everyone to stare at.

...Inasmuch as we NEED that drug of other people's approval, we are not free to go off and try something new, to gather up all our love and good intentions, and go out and make stupid mistakes, and then try to do better the next time--to grow little by little into who we authentically are. To breathe free air, beholden to nothing and no one except that which you choose to dedicate yourself to. To be fully alive.

So the lesson I take from Anthony DeMello is, I don't need you to like me. Yes, I'm talking to YOU. I may like you very much, I may even love you, but I don't need you! I would never, as DeMello says, choose your love over my own true happiness and fulfillment. So, I can choose never to go back to school and wait tables for the rest of my life if I want--and I could be happy, as long as I were truly "aware" (that's his Buddhist thing) of reality. Because the marvel of existence, he says, the wonder of entering into relationship with reality (or with God) is enough to keep a human being dancing through her days for a lifetime. I could be a nun, and derisive laughter of American culture be damned--and I could be happy! I could have a family, I could move to Paris and find myself a romantic Bohemian artist lover, I could run a bookshop, I could do whatever the (insert strong language here) I want! and I could be happy.

...I guess that means, going back to my earlier question... that I am "complete." It's just a question of recognizing it.
When I get really good at that, you'll know, because I'll be doing something I like, and I'll be happy for no particular reason.

It never rains but it pours

Literally speaking, this saying is not at all true in Lima. It NEVER pours in Lima and it almost never really rains either. But activity-wise, it seems to be consistently true for my life in Peru... either I have nothing to do, or I barely have a minute to sleep.

For most of August after my vacation, I was in low-key mode. Working with the choirs, doing my parish stuff, even being a good housemate and keeping up with my cleaning, cooking, trips to the market, etc. There was a week when the electricity was going out every evening any time between 7 and 9 pm, for 5 minutes up to an hour. We had our weekly Confi catechists' meeting by candlelight in the parish multipurpose room, and Miriam's goodbye party (she's going back to the US for another semester of English! so brave!) turned into a romantic candlelight dinner. I was even exercising every morning between prayer and breakfast, inspired by Rebecca's brief stay here... until my left knee got all swollen and stiff and I had to go around in sneakers for a week to get the correct knee alignment back.

Then last week, everything started happening at once. I'll try to write this the way it felt to live it...

One Wednesday, I went with the Adelante class to the Museum of Anthropological History. This involved at various moments me trying to control a group of 16 third-graders inside a museum, letting 50 children down off a bus one at a time to buy ice cream from the vendor who wisely parked his cart right outside and then gave me an ice cream sandwich for free because he was so grateful, getting asked like 15 times by Liliana why I hadn't brought a real lunch with me (i.e. no rice and chicken in a plastic tupperware, just three little cheese sandwiches and fruit--silly me! That's not lunch in Peru!) and wandering around the beach in Chorrillos with the kids and teachers (we stopped on the way back because we were running ahead of schedule, of all things.)
Father Kevin the British Priest of Awesomeness left! and his despedida (goodbye party) was sad and happy at once, everybody danced with the padrecito, I helped my girlfriends from the parish serve the snacks and drinks, there was music and pictures and delicious cake. :)
Thursday, Consuelo, BJ, Adrian, Carmen, and I went to a ceremony in rememberance of the 5th anniversary of the Comission of Truth and Reconciliation, which investigated the violence committed by both terrorists and the military during the 80's in Peru, mostly the victims were poor Quechua-speaking people of the sierra, whole villages were killed and the military was often as bad as the Senderistas. so we went to this ceremony and listened to Grupo Siembra (aka Awesome) and somebody gave a long speech and it drizzled (this being Lima in the winter.)
I got back and a friend who another friend says has a crush on me, but unfortunately is only 18 years old, so sad!, invited me to get something to eat, and I was talking with him till like 9:30 pm. Then Luis Alberto calls me and asks me to play guitar at Saturday's Mass for Santa Rosa (Saint Rose of Lima, real famous, big deal, lots of images decorated with beautiful flowers processing into Mass on the shoulders of their devotees and accompanied by blaring brass bands and light-less firecrackers that sound like gunshots... you know the type.) Me: "Ah, it's 9:30 right now... you're there with the choir practicing NOW? Um... (shrug)... okay!" Grabbed the guitar, hopped a mototaxi down to Las Brisas and practiced with them. Friday, was exhausted. Saturday: taught one little girl from my 5th grade choir a voice lesson in Delicias at 10 am, the others didn't show up. Conversation group. Played guitar in the Mass at Brisas. Did not register surprise at the fact that there was a dog wandering around the church, but found its huge head and little stubby legs hilarious. Went with Sara to the house of a friend of her mom's who was doing an actividad (you know, have a restaurant for a day, sell meat and potatoes and lettuce to everyone you know for 7 soles each in order to get some money together... like y'do.) Ate in the house sharing an armchair with Sara; this armchair plus a strung-up sheet was the wall between the kitchen and the bedroom, the floor was dirt and the roof tin and the walls just boards. Went back to my house and chatted with Sara about being 20-somethings and looking for our vocations in every sense. Confirmation group, then Luis Alberto's house for HIS actividad, better than the first one because his mom cooks awesome.
sunday played guitar in Mass, conversed in English with Enrique, went and taught my last IRFA class in the afternoon. Little party to end the semester. Talked to one of the other volunteer teachers who left her family in the selva 4 years ago and hasn't been back since, sweet, tiny, thin and kind of depressed. Choir rehearsal at night in which I sang one of my original songs which Dante helped me translate into Spanish, and then arranged voice parts for Andrea Bocelli's Con Te Partiró.
At least twice during all this wonderfulness, I squished a flea with my bare fingers. little suckers come wandering out from under your pillow like they own the place.