On the exciting tendency to Change

This past weekend marked the halfway point for my time in Chile, and I find myself eagerly facing the second half as a newly turned page. The first three months were about -- among other things -- learning who I am through experimenting with who I could be. We hitch hiked, we made friends with strangers at hostels, we went to bars and discoteques. I learned how to dress myself up to go out on the weekends, and then how to enjoy a friday night spent in pajamas with a good movie. Within and around all of these little things I learned grew the theme of faith -- a faith that I have spent years talking about but am only just now learning how to live. We were able to try on so many different things that we could be, and now we're taking the wisdom we gained there and stepping into life as who we are with a new confidence and passion.

In many ways the first half was a selfish time, about figuring things out for ourselves, learning, living off of mercy and grace, boldly making mistakes in order to boldly make good decisions. As we traveled through Chile in February and then later as we navegated the social playing field in search of new friends, our needs and our growth were the centerpieces. And it was beautiful. I saw God in so many ways that I would have never thought possible; He is in me no matter what I do, and those moments of true vision or true happiness are God personified. My prayers changed, and often stopped involving words. The faith that I put in Him wasn't a blind faith in a false happy ending, but rather a faith that this greater entity who creates, unites, and distinguishes us all is that which we call Love.
I finally got to stretch my limbs, which had been twitching, cramped up in a plastic tub, starving for adventure to run through their veins. I got to see how my ideals shape up in reality, and to love them for what they are because -- not in spite -- of how they differ from what I could have imagined. Plans fall through, choices turn out to be bad, judgements come back to bite you, but at the end of the day there was always that hot cup of coffee.
Not only coffee, but my best friend. She was always there, never more than a kilometer away from me, sensitive to my heartaches and soulaches (for both heart and soul can ache for pain and for joy). I can't wrap my mind around the fact that not everyone in the world has a best friend in the way that I have Molly. This trip would have been something entirely different had I been without her, and not a day goes by that I don't give thanks for her being here not only in the sense of her physical presence in the same country, but in her being there for me.


And now, the new page.

The second half started all-too appropriately with our new friends, Francisco and Karenth. Perhaps the meaning of truly knowing a country is knowing friends there. And not only these friends, with whom we cook, camp, party, and explore, but a new group of friends who we got to know for the first time over plastic cups of soup on a chilly night. They are the friends whose mattresses are cardboard boxes and whose roof is the starry sky. Monday night we went on our first outing with Hogar de Cristo's nocturnal route, giving out food and sharing in conversation with people living on the streets of Vina del Mar, a city known for its high-rise resort-style apartment buildings and clean, well groomed streets. We don't go because of any kind of necessity, as the meals could certainly be handed out without the help of clumsy gringas, but rather we go to know and to be known. To hear stories. To see life with the lenses off. A man by the name of Ulysses at our first stop told me about his wife leaving him because of the alcohol, but that all he wants from life is to be able to see his great-grandchildren, and that some nugget of wisdom he learned from life will be passed down through his bloodline. He invited me to meet his friends in their home, a mildewey mattress tucked in an alley.
"Here, we're all family" he tells me, "whatever we have we share, even if it means we all only get a little. And we take care of each other. People need that. We're never alone, you know?"

We converse with people living under tarps, people with shopping carts, people in wheel chairs, people who were drunk, people who were in their 30s, people who worked, people who begged, as diverse as the grains of sand in the ocean. The girl who was with us, who has done this route for several years now, was explaining to us their situations.
"Most of them have problems with alcohol. Most of them will never make it off the streets; they will die there. But you don't judge them for that. They've chosen this life, we just do what we can to help them and to make sure they're loved." Nobody has been mistaken enough not to deserve being loved.

I've also started getting to know Ivan, the man who lives on the corner by my house. For two months I passed him every day, wondering at the contents of his shopping cart and avoiding his glance, trying not to see what his face revealed -- that he is a normal person, and no more than 35 years old. But then this new paged was turned, and God told me that it was time to start looking outwards, and I saw him for the first time. I looked him in the face. At first I couldn't bring myself to stop and help him when he was sick on the sidewalk one morning, I was afraid of being that which I know I am made to be, but now that's changing. Yesterday he told me his parents and his wife are all dead and in Heaven, and that he doesn't know why God left him here by himself. But he just loves every day and someday he'll be up there with them. We talked about Jesus, and how he was all about loving people. Ivan knows all about people being afraid to love. They walk by him by the hundreds, day by day, just like I did, looking away. But that doesn't stop him. He's there on that corner every day, without fail, waving at cars as they pass by, singing down the middle of the road when the weather's nice, or even if it's not. He knows a lot about love, and I have a lot to learn from him.


I imagine that now, after 3 months, I've lost several readers. I can't expect my adventures to keep being as exciting to the stationary reader as they are to me. So, I salute you, brave reader, for sticking through to the end -- er, middle. I'd love a comment to know you're sticking with me. But you already knew that.