Life from Canada to Latin America, one word at a time.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.Just keep going. No feeling is final.Don’t let yourself lose me. Nearby is the country they call life.You will know it by its seriousness. Give me your hand. –Rainer Maria Rilke On July 9, 2011, two armed men shot Facundo Cabral in Guatemala City. I had been in Colombia
It’s been a month of physical distancing here in Ottawa. I have spent a lot of time on my couch eating gummy candies and watching Betty la Fea, while feeling overwhelmed by the need to act urgently and effectively in response to a crisis, with no idea of how to do so. As the days
My facebook feed is full of politics, but you would barely know that Canada is in campaign mode. A number of Colombian community leaders are running for local political office. Gabriel Pulido, a community leader from Mampujan, is running for mayor of Maria la Baja. Jorge Montes is in the race for council in El
My first night in Mampujan, the community leaders came to Juana’s house to meet me. The evening turned into an impromptu meeting about community events. Voices were raised. I didn’t understand everything, but the tone felt was harsh. I went to bed that night convinced that I had witness the fragmentation of leadership. I woke
The last time I lived in Ottawa, the Arab Spring was just beginning. I would come home to my mansion to watch the Al Jazeera live feed for hours. I had studied nonviolence for social change; here was nonviolence for social change taking place right in front of my eyes. I moved to Colombia and
It is an understatement to say that coming back to Canada has been a change. A panel I attended in November with Kate Hennessy, Dorothy Day’s granddaughter, was a space for calm. Kate shared lessons and memories of growing up in a Catholic Worker home. Surrounded by anarchists, in the audience and on the panel,
I once bought a pair of yellow wax eyes at the bottom of the walking trail up to Monserrate in Bogota. As I climbed the stairs, I kept noticing vendors selling wax body parts. Arms. Legs. Torsos. Pregnant bellies. Pilgrims carried them with them and left or burnt them at the top. Rather than placing
When people greet each other in the Indigenous language of Tsotsil, they ask “How is your heart?” To respond “My heart is blooming,” means that all is well. To be healthy, to be well, is to be rooted and blossoming. As we open the public day of meetings in southern Mexico about disappeared migrants, Flori,
My post-accord Bogota feels pretty much the same as pre-peace accord Bogota. My neighbours all go about their daily routines- grocery store, walk the dog, go to work- and so do I. When I have a conversation with a friend in public, even in English, we still instinctively lean in closer, lower our voices, and
If I actually had milk and butter in my house, I would be eating pancakes for dinner tonight. However, it appears, at least looking in my fridge, that I have already given up grocery shopping for Lent. Truthfully, besides facetiously giving up everything I don’t have or like- this year, vaccum cleaners and salsa dancing-
