Coffee and Connections

“... ‘a person becomes a person through other people’...”

- Fr. Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart

Ever have those days when your mind is just all over the place?  Well, that’s me today.  I laid down to take a sunny siesta and couldn’t sleep despite how tired I am.  It could be the Coke and two cups of strong coffee I’ve had today, or it could be the thoughts racing through my head.  So I decided that rather than lay in bed and stare at my ceiling, I should write. Normally I have some sort of a plan for my blog posts, but I’m calling this one a free-for-all.

Let me start by explaining that I am listening to one of my all-time favorite Peruvian songs, Lejos de ti (you should listen to it too...video below!) and I am sipping coffee #3 from my big, red, ceramic Peru mug and looking out my bedroom window at the sunset mostly hidden by mountains and clouds and that red, terra-cotta roof that defines the architecture of this city.  Soon it will be dark, and Cristo Blanco will shine brilliantly from His place on the hill.  In twenty minutes, I will go out with the family to run some errands, but for now I am leaving you with what my friends so eloquently call “word vomit”.

I can’t stop thinking about how much fun I had this weekend at Lake Titicaca with Shauna and our new friends from Arequipa, Peru.  There was so much laughter in those 24 hours that I was almost too distracted to fully appreciate the views of the gorgeous lake surrounding me.  More details on the trip to come, but yet again, meeting new people and making friends has given me that natural high of loving life here in Peru, the kind that keeps me smiling for days.

Over the weekend, I had the chance to soak everything in when Shauna and I spent some time on the beach just silently watching the sun glimmer on the water.  The sound of waves lapping on the shore was so familiar, as was that of the child laughing down the way.  If the Andes were sand dunes, I could easily have been on Lake Michigan. (Well, the donkey crying in the background would have also been a bit out of place).  Still, I was amazed and comforted by the familiarity of somewhere so foreign and so far from home.  

Lately, I have been fascinated by the similarities of humans around the world (or at least from the US to Peru).  Like the lake, there is something familiar about the human race no matter where you are.  It seems we all simply long to connect with one another.  In the big eyes of a small child, you can see a certain longing to reach out to you.  It’s the same precious look in a child on the floating islands of Lake Titicaca as in a child of Flint, Michigan.  Believe me, now I’ve seen both. There is something endearing about a brother’s head on your shoulder, whether he’s biologically related or not.  It’s that physical sign of a connection, a way to express one’s comfort around and care for another person.  This connection can also be found in something as silly as when a new friend ‘likes’ a facebook photo of the two of you together.  It’s a sort of validation that he or she enjoyed that moment with you.

Laughter is one of the greatest ways we know to span distances and remove barriers.  The sound of a mother laughing with her toddler is pure and beautiful no matter the culture or language.  I was struck by this thought today on my walk home from work as I passed a woman and her child sitting on the sidewalk next to their little stand of pop, candy, cigarettes and other goods.  Their clothes were dirty and as the mother laughed her full-belly laugh in reaction to the babble of her two-year old, I couldn’t help but notice that less than half of the woman’s teeth remained.  But more powerful was how beautiful that laugh was, so full of joy and love for her baby.  It’s the same laugh my mom laughs when she and I are up late at night in the kitchen just talking and being ridiculously silly.  And I imagine its the same laugh God laughs when She is totally and completely happy with us.  Indescribably beautiful.

I recently realized that this is my last summer book-ended by school years.  Next year I have no idea where I’ll be or what I’ll be doing, but hopefully I will have graduated smoothly and be partaking in other exciting adventures.  For now, though, I can’t help but be so thankful for this amazing final summer.  I have many people to thank for helping me get to this place, this culture, this world away from my own where I have been able to better understand this concept of connection and where I continue to fall more in love with the human race.

In the preface of Tattoos, Fr. G notes an African saying, that we become people through other people, and here in Peru I am realizing more how true this really is.  We long to connect with and validate each other, to love and be loved, for it is through one another that we become who are.

~~~~~

(P.S.  Now I’m back from errands with the family, it’s been dark for hours, and I’ve moved on to tea as I finish this post.  I just want to end with a 'Happy Fourth of July' to all of my American friends at home and afar!  Missing you all on my first Fourth out of the USofA.)