Community...
i believe that i have learned what true community is...
i believe that true community is a group of people,
simple people, who have gifts, talents, abilities,
as all of us have..
perhaps they have learned these gifts,
perhaps they were born with them..
but that´s not important.
what is important is that these simple people
with these simple gifts,
use them for the good of their community..
its that simple...
yet that revolutionary,
because it goes against the entire
capitalistm, western ethic
which fools us into believing
that our gifts
are for us...
and us alone...
for our wellbeing, for our security,
for our wealth, and our benefit..
but NO!
community is not this...
community, as i have said before,
is like simple people sharing
these gifts for the community..

an example...
it is like oswaldo,
who left his community for 4 years
to study psychology at a big university
filled with professional looking people
in suits and ties and big pay checks,
and then after those 4 years
left those big important people
and the possibility to be like them,
and returned,
in sandals, shorts and cheguevara t-shirt
to the community..
his community...
and he shared with his community
all he learned.
and he wasnt paid much
just enough to be sustained
as a member of a community of equals...
he served them and helped them
and was served and helped in return...

or perhaps community is like
yeli gonzalez
who after 4 years of studying her GED
at the same time of taking care of her family
is studying to become a nurse
and after 3 more years
will be a nurse,
a good nurse...
who will not work in a faceless hospital
but will return to the tin shacks
of the community...
her community
to serve those who are sick
and she will not make much money.,
she will not have a fancy nurse uniform
but she will be a part of her community....

and true community would be made
if all members of a community did the same.
if we all used our knowledge and skills,
for the betterment of community
and not our personal benefit..
and PLEASE dont think that those knowledge and skills
can only be learned at what they call
an institution of higher learning..
no! because a community needs a baker,
a fishermen, a grave-digger...
even a crazy person and maybe even a town drunk...
when we all learn that we have gifts and talents,
and when we all learn that the purpose of these gifts and talents
is to share them with our community
then we will build the reign of god in our community...
and when we learn to do so in our world,
amongst nations and peoples of different colors and tongues
then we will build the reign of god in our world....
and when we learn to do so even amongst
the flowers and atoms, the stars and the trees and the animals and the most distant galaxy,
then, and only then,
will we have built the reign of god in all the cosmos...
and in our hearts....
AMEN!

well, it has been about three months since i last wrote and so much has happened. i suppose one of the first things that i have learned, is the pain of death...
blanca ticas, a woman of about 28 or 29 with 3 young children who was in our hiv program, died last week from aids. it was the first person that has been in our program who has died. and in her death i learned to hate even more the reality of HIV-AIDS. AIDS isn´t like any normal disease. i guess one could say that cancer is like a playground bully that comes up to a small, defenseless child and kicks that child´s ass... unfair? yes. wrong? but of course...
but aids is like a childground bully that takes that same defenseless child and carries to a corner of the playground where there is a hill of ravenous ants and ties that poor child up and leaves it there for the ants to slowly eat away. perhaps that sounds a bit gruesome, but i dont really know of any other analgoy after having watched blanca suffer a slow and painful death of 5 months. where first she went blind and death and then had her face and skull eaten away and grossly disfigured by a horrible fungus, and then to have kidney stones and cancer, and migraines...and to suffer all that for 5 months untill she could atlast take no more and finally passed into death, the only justice in her situation.
and it hurt me to think that all that pain and suffering was due most likely to her husband, a man i never met due to his death to aids as well, who one night, or various nights, found some other women, or maybe man, to have sex with, and then to lie about it to his wife, and infect her and leave their three children orphans. that has made me see how horrible the reality of machismo is in this world. the reality that men are more important than women. since blancas death, my eyes have been opened to the reality of machismo in all aspects of life. it hurts me to have to watch a man who hasnt done shit all day laying in his hammock and telling his sister: "hey, get me some food." that type of stuff was what before made me cringe and feel a little uncomfortable, but now, after reflecting on blancas death, it really, really pisses me off, because i now have seen first hand and experienced how this machismo can lead to so many other things, how it can create so much suffereing, injustice, inequality in the lives of so many people.
another lesson that blanca´s death taught me, was the difficulty of the lives of the other women and men living with hiv in our program. i went to her funeral with lidia, another woman in our program, and when they began to throw dirt on her grave with her son crying as he watched his mother being buried forever into the heart of the earth, lidia cried but with tears of knowing...of knowign that soon that would be her destiny as well...that soon she too would leave her 4 children orphaned to a cruel world...that soon she too would be but a memory to this world. and that was hard for her...hard for me to hold her while she cried. but yet, it ultimately made me respect her and the other people living with HIV so much...
i cant imagine living with a disease knowing that one could die any day yet still living life for the future. its not like cancer where the doctor gives you 2 months to do what youve always wanted to do in life...its like the doctor saying, well..you could die tommorow, or maybe in 15 years, good luck... and then these amazing courageous people live with that knowledge, with that understanding. there is suris, who is taking her GED classes. there is fermin who is planting fruit trees that he may never even see them germinate. there is robert living with his dying wife yet reaffirming everyday the beauty of his life and his responsibility to his 5 year old daughter. there is francisco who has dedicated his life, despite all his pain to working with people to help them see beyond their pain and depression and make their lives better. and then there is nancy, michael, reina, elizabeth, and karla...children who play and live life while their parents must look everyday upon them knowing that one day they may wake up and no more hear their laughter and joy...
yes...this disease is unfair, it is wrong, and it hurts me even to think about an article i read in a newspaper a few months ago saying that the big pharmaceutical companies werent searching as hard as they could for a cure becasue there isn´t any money in finding a cure, there arent enough people who can pay for the medicine they might be able to develop...so they say fuck it, they say by their inaction that the only lives of worth are those who have $ to pay for medicine, and all those millions who dont have money to support their luxurious lives...they may as well just become a statistic...they can die.
but i know that that logic is wrong...its the antithesis of the reign of god, of justice, of what was once perhaps common sense (in a world not dominated by capitalism, greed, and gross inequality). and i know that because i have as my friends suris, and lidia and roberto and francisco and all the rest, and i know that they do matter, i know in fact that they matter much much more than the rich and the powerful who by their silence sentence them to death. i know that they are important and that anyone who says otherwise is blind...blinded by a system that has covered truth...gods truth..