In one sense, it’s entirely appropriate that Winds of Peace would take on the field of education as one of its priorities, since there is so much education to be had from our interactions with the rural populations in Nicaragua. Each and every visit for me has revealed perspectives that I might never have known but for my visits with a wide range of Nicaraguan “teachers.” In some cases, I think these educators know that they are teaching the gringo something new; in other cases, the teaching moment may pass with no recognition of impact or import. In either case, I have been the beneficiary of a graduate degree worth of lessons at the feet of some incredible professors. One such lesson emerged a couple weeks ago on the final day of a two-day workshop with rural coffee cooperative members.
The workshop process- facilitated by researchers Rene Mendoza and Edgar Fernandez- has been chronicled at this blog site in previous entries. The workshops have sought to create new understandings and alliances among the various participants in the coffee growing and commercialization chain of a given territory. It’s valuable technical information that is shared, but there is also ample opportunity for participants to become eloquent about the other factors which play into the success or failure of the rural producers. They broach topics such as strategic strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. They talk about the political and cultural obstacles that impede their progress. On this occasion, they also articulated dozens of myths- assumptions deemed true by many but false in fact- whose acceptance often stands in the way of positive change.
The list developed by the participants was long and impressive in its inclusiveness; brown butcher paper with the entries covered two full walls of the meeting room, nearly surrounding all of us with fictions as diverse as the participants themselves. It’s really rather amazing what we will allow ourselves to believe. And among the 115 citations was this one which stood out to me: “God made the poor and the rich, and he made me poor.”
I stopped reading the list of myths for a while when I reached this one. Of all the untruths and misrepresentations on the wall, this one struck me as the most egregious on many fronts: it invoked the presence of God as an entity which deliberately targeted these people to be poor; that in God’s judgment, they would never be anything except poor; their poverty was irreversible; that for whatever capricious reasons, the peasants’ poverty was simply “meant to be,” while the wealthy were ordained to live comfortably. The implications of this one myth contained enough defeat and sorrow to keep simple, rural families in their places forever. It implied a finality which takes away all sense of hope for the future, the one lifeline to which all people must cling if they foresee a future at all. The hopeful news was that the participants had recognized it as the lie it was. The sorrowful news was that there were likely to be many more in the countryside for whom this notion rang true.
I took my place around the workshop table and for two days listened to presenters and participants envisioning their futures. The dialogue created a hopeful atmosphere, one in which participants could muse, at the very least for a while, about a better way of existence and offer reasons for their optimism. Their ideas, plans and laughter combined to form an antidote to that sobering myth I had read earlier. But as if to leave no doubt in anyone’s mind as to such resolve, Don Edmundo, president of one of the participating cooperatives, took the floor and offered an even stronger repeal of the myth of my notice. “We are not poor,” he offered. “We have an abundance of many things. We are wealthy.”
Now, I have heard many courageous things said in Nicaragua. I have observed many courageous people who have refused to break under the yoke of extreme poverty which they have born. There are nearly endless stories of personal bravery by rural peasants simply trying to survive a nearly endless barrage of injustices, natural disasters and man-made misfortunes. But this was the first time I ever heard anyone from the impoverished countryside tout wealth as part of their patrimony. Don Edmundo went on to enumerate the sources of wealth which gave merit to his claim: family, community, land, communion with the environment, and belief in the very God implicated in the fickle injustice of the myth. He itemized these gifts as though tallying the treasure of a counting room, weighing each talent in his words like they were ounces of gold, only more precious.
I’m not sure how his classmates felt about the pronouncement. There were nods of assent across the room, but who knows whether the affirmations came from recognition of reality or courtesy for the speaker. Just maybe, some recognized the same truth which I heard. That truth had little to do with riches as we in the west have come to think of them. It did not address the romanticized ability of the poor to regard the little they have as more than it really is. The truth spoken in that classroom revealed that deep within each of us is both the longing and the instinct to have created something of value, to have struggled for a measure of dignity through our lives, and to have achieved some semblance of that. That does not diminish the pain, anxiety or loneliness of the poor, but it just might render the truth less obscured for them than for those whose lives are filled with the distractions of western-style riches.
In an ironic twist, the impoverished and disenfranchised may live closer to understanding that truth than most, and therein lies a portion of the wealth of peasants….
I spent some time last week with the Founder of Winds of Peace, Harold Nielsen. As usual, we had plenty to talk about: what’s happening in Nicaragua, the state of the global economy, progress on several Foundation initiatives, the presidential campaigns here in the U. S., and more. It may not seem unusual for two people to engage in conversation about such items, but I always regard my discussions with Harold as somewhat unique opportunities to learn, since he is now 96 years of age. The breadth of his experiences and perspectives grows more valuable every day, and his views of the world and human behaviors in it are lessons rich with insight. Whenever I’ve had the chance to sit with Harold and engage in such discussions, I find myself speculating about where Harold gained all that wisdom. I’m reminded of how infrequently we in the U.S. look to our most seasoned citizens for wisdom. All too often we see our elders as being out-of-date. out-of-touch or irrelevant to modern-day issues. Too bad; there’s a lot that we need to learn and in many cases they’re just the ones to teach us.
There were any number of perspectives that Harold shared with me last week worthy of reflection and consideration. But perhaps the most valuable of all came not from something he offered, but rather from something he asked. (It’s not unusual for Harold to bring me to a salient realization by asking a question rather than stating an opinion.) We had been talking about our education initiative in Nicaragua when he quite unexpectedly changed the subject. He asked me to describe what it had been like to work for him over the years, what his strengths and weaknesses had been, what he could do in the future to be a better leader, mentor, and influence, and how he could become better at seeing those characteristics in others.
I was startled for several reasons. First, I wasn’t prepared for a question that required such a personal, candid response. Second, even though Harold and I have worked more as collaborators than as employer-employee in recent years, my response required me to think back to his earlier roles in my life, when he was company owner, CEO, foundation patron, and I was his employee. Third, in my work experiences, Harold turned out to be, by far, the easiest and most effective “boss” I ever had; analyzing his weaknesses and areas for improvement never occupied much of my thought. While I am rarely at a loss for words, his questions left me speechless for the moment as I tried to formulate a response that was both candid and useful. Unfortunately, I doubt that I offered him anything that he regarded as helpful.
Long after our time together, I was still thinking about those questions and wondering what there was about them which continued to hold my attention. I’ve been asked the same such questions many times over my managerial career, but never before did the query strike me with the same degree of surprise as this time. But I finally figured out what was so different. The difference was that the question came from a 96 year-old man who, well after most people have ceased to breathe let alone ask piercing and introspective questions, still seeks to learn about himself, still aspires to know more about his relationship with others, still wants to know how he might become better at life. What startled me was the recognition that his questions revealed the source of the wisdom that I have respected for all of these years. That source lay in the unquenchable thirst for learning that Harold has had, a never-ending curiosity about himself and others and the world around us.
Far more than simply a function of advanced age, true wisdom is cultivated in the continuous drive to ask and understand, not only for one’s own edification, but for application to the circumstances of the world at-large. Wisdom eschews the notion of retirement of any kind, giving no quarter to withdrawal, forbidding us to stop the flow of natural inquisitiveness that spurred the younger versions of ourselves. The answers to the contemporary questions facing the youth of today might well be discovered in the curiosities of their elders over a lifetime of seeking. And those of us in-between are in the best position of all to benefit from the realization if we can allow ourselves to do so. Maybe all of this is well-known to psychologists and gerontologists, but it’s a first-hand observation to me.
How does a 96 year-old man expect to effect change in the way that he is perceived by others, the way in which he interacts with them, the extent of his positive impact upon them? I’m not sure of the answer, but I love the question. And I may have unwittingly affirmed a secret to real wisdom….
2012 has been designated by the United Nations as The Year of the Indigenous People, a recognition of their cultures and connections to sacred places, as well as their forced disconnections from those places. I am coming to understand them.
I write this posting while visiting Madeline Island on Lake Superior. My parents once owned the house I’m in and the land on which it sits. It was their home for ten years, establishing what was for them a place of beauty, rest, inspiration and spirituality beyond their imaginations. Returning to this spot after an absence of almost thirty years has yielded an entire range of emotions: excitement at the return itself, to re-visit the place my mother and father regarded as home; curiosity in seeing how things have changed over the course of a generation; wonderment at the still-pristine forests and cliffs which constitute the Island; a sense of awe at how changeless the land has remained, even after decades of pounding from the lake and sky; wistfulness in recalling the Island as the honeymoon destination for my wife and me, some forty years ago; sadness in recalling my parents’ decision to leave the property with the advancement of age; joy in reliving the memories of the site I always regarded as my favorite place on earth.
Reflecting on these things, I have discovered a new dimension to them, a new feeling about both their meaning and their importance. I have always understood the natural beauty of the surroundings and the value of stealing away to such a place of retreat. I have felt the spiritual renewal inherent in the forest and lakeside. But what I have begun to recognize is my connectedness to this place that extends well beyond its physical dimensions. There is a sanctity about it, something that reaches far beyond immediate senses, a sacredness which doesn’t simply please or soothe the soul, but actually becomes part of it. Sciences may posit that cohesion between place and person exists in poetry alone, but experiences teach a very different conclusion. In a real and physical way, I find that I am actually part of this place, and it is a part of me. Portions of my life are here. Portions of my lineage are here. I have taken from this place and I have given to it. Neither the land nor I can ever be quite the same after we once connected.
It occurs to me that this is also the foundation for the centuries-old claims of disenfranchisement by Indigenous peoples in Nicaragua and throughout the entire world. Losses of language or land constitute egregious diminishment whenever they may occur; it is no less profound a loss than the extinction of an entire species of life, evolution which we often fight with tenacious resolve. But for the Indigenous, the resistance is not simply about loss of land, but the loss of an entire identity, of connectedness, of culture, of the soul itself.
In our own ways, and often without conscious effort, we all seek to discover access to the wholeness of life, that part of our existence which ties us into the fabric of the universe, a place where we belong, where our presence makes sense of our being. We share a deep longing for such connectedness, to help make sense of a world that often feels very disconnected and senseless. Loss of a people’s sacred places destroys such ties. The injustices suffered by the Indigenous extend far beyond the value of lands; their more important claims articulate the unjust destruction of their essential values and patrimony.
It is likely an unfair comparison to make between a small parcel of woods that once belonged to my family and ancestral Indigenous lands; one relationship was forged over a mere forty years, while the other has been developed since the dawn of Indigenous existence. But the importance of walking where my father walked, of knowing the places that my mother held as precious, and retracing my own footsteps as a young man- all within the context of this inland sea and its grounded blemishes- has clarified something elementally important to me. We are part of the whole, each with our own linkages to this cosmos we inhabit. And those links are our lifelines, our context for living, a portion of what defines us and makes us both importantly unique and universally the same. Removing the links weakens the chain of all of our lives.
Yesterday I worked on the wood perimeter fence that my father built. I split wood from trees that my mother may have planted. In the evening we sat quietly in the room where my entire family gathered decades ago. At night I heard the gentle lapping of the lake water against the foot of the cliffs and I gave thanks for the sacred places in my life….
It seems as though most of us spend much of our lives looking for some special key to happiness. In the choices we make about education, spouses/partners, career, where we live, what we buy, how we recreate, there is a relentless search for experiences that will somehow validate and reward us to peace and contentment. It’s the universal search, really, and there is an entire industry that has been built around helping us to identify the keys and unlock the doors. Man’s search for meaning and happiness is as much a part of our makeup as DNA.
But like many puzzles that we encounter in life, the answers may be a lot less complex than we make them out to be. Sometimes the solutions are right in front of us and we simply need someone or something to lift the veil which prevents us from seeing clearly. The lyrics from a song by The Eagles have always underscored this truth for me:
Just remember this my girl when you look up in the sky, You can see the stars and still not see the light.
and
So oftentimes it happens that we live our lives in chains, That we never even know we have the key. (“Already Gone” by The Eagles)
So when I received a translation of comments made by Father Fernando Cardenal, I was confronted again with this puzzling reality. Father Cardenal is a revered figure by nearly all who know him, and each time that I have been privileged to hear or read his words, I have been moved to both reflection and action. (I have referenced and quoted him here previously.) In these newest comments, he addressed his words to “the youth of North America,” a frequent audience of his in Nicaragua whenever they travel there. Within his words, I was reminded once again about a universal truth which remains agonizingly difficult for most of us to embrace. It conflicts with the pursuits of our daily lives, it is counter-intuitive to our inclination toward self-protection, and it carries an irony almost too frustrating to contemplate. The truth that Father Cardenal presents so gently yet profoundly is that what we seek for meaning and fulfillment- happiness- in our lives is absolutely, positively within our reach. It is found in acts of giving.
I offer Father Cardenal’s words here for your own consideration and reflection. Like any words spoken or written, they can be absorbed or rejected, embraced or ignored. But they are offered here from a man who, over eight decades of life, has experienced as many dimensions of life as possible by one man. Sometimes the sheer weight of experience and wisdom commands our attention, despite whatever message we may prefer hearing:
Message to the young people of North American
For 30 years I have been giving talks to young university students here in Nicaragua and in the United States. Because of that, I know you very well, but above all I have a lot of love for you, and that is why I want you to be very happy.
Reality teaches us that in your youth you freely choose to lead either a joyful life or a miserly life. You surely know examples of both cases. This is the dramatic reality about human freedom, and is one of the great attributes inherent to the human person. But it is also a dangerous attribute. We always have to make decisions about our lives.
The distinguished Greek philosopher Aristotle, before the time of Christ, in the first book that was written in humanity about Ethics, said that the purpose of ethics was happiness. In other words, that an honest life leads as a consequence to a happy life.
Jesus of Nazareth said one day that “there is more happiness in giving than receiving”. He did not say that it was bad to receive, in no way, because receiving is something that is very good: receiving appreciation, understanding, love, a Christmas gift, all this is very good. What Jesus said is better, is that giving produces more happiness than receiving. In the act of giving to others, be it support, understanding, love, solidarity we will always find more happiness than in just receiving.
The great Indian poet and mystic Rabindranat Tagore wrote this poem: “I was asleep, and dreamt that life was happiness. I woke up, and I saw that life was service. I served, and saw that service was joy. “
After reflecting on these three statements of very wise people, you need to be very intelligent, to choose very well the path of your life, to build into your existence a great, authentic and profound happiness. In your life you have before you two paths: a happy life or a ruined life, lost forever. You have to choose.
If I use my watch to hammer a nail, I will completely destroy the watch. The watch is not made to do the work of a hammer. If I live in a selfish fashion, I will destroy myself just as the watch is destroyed. The human being is not created to be selfish, centered only in consumption, in the purely superficial pleasures that do not reach the soul. Only in love are we able to fully fulfill ourselves as human persons, simply because we are created for love.
In Boston College they told me that cats have nine lives. If we were cats, we could use the first lives to do stupid things, even to get involved in drugs and alcohol, it would not matter that these lives were destroyed, because other lives would come afterwards that I could live intelligently. But we are not cats. We only have one life. Let us live it with a lot of intensity, because it goes by quickly, and above all let us live it intelligently, in order to us build ourselves a life of happiness all the way to the end.
When I was studying in Mexico preparing for my ordination as a Jesuit priest, a classmate told me that he had visited a friend of his in the hospital who was seriously ill. The youth in the bed was looking at his hands and was rubbing them. His mother told him, “they are clean, don’t worry, we just cleaned them for you.” So the young sick man said to his mom, “that isn’t what I am concerned about. What really concerns me is seeing that I’m dying with empty hands, I haven’t done anything important in my life.” How sad it must be to die like that! You are young, but whatever day death comes for you, I hope it doesn’t find you with your hands empty. You have time to be filling your hands with very beautiful, important works, to the benefit of your families, your communities, your country, and also why not consider the entire world. Remember that joy is found in service. But never forget to serve the poorest, those excluded from society, those who have no future and their permanent state is hunger, pain and sadness without hope. Remember that the test on the last day of life, the great exam, the only subject matter it will have will be what we have done for the poor (Gospel of St. Matthew, chapter 25:31 and following).
In the Gospels the Greek word “ochlos” is used, which means: “poor or the poor multitude”. In the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke this term appears 126 times. This shows us the intensity of the work of Jesus with these people. We never see Jesus conversing with the high priests and priests of the Jewish religion, nor is he seen talking with the large landowners, he never appears in the cities of Sepphoris or Caesarea, the largest and most important of Galilee. He is only found walking through the towns of the poor peasants of Galilee, receiving the “Ochlos”, the poorest, those excluded from society, those who no one cared about, but Jesus taught them with his word and with his life that they were important for God, that he is merciful, compassionate and a forgiver of sins. He taught them that the best friends of God are the poor and the sinners. Jesus called this message “Good News”. The translation of the Greek word for this is “gospel”. This God incarnate in Jesus said, as a synthesis of his conception of life: “I have not come to be served, but to serve.” And he also said: “I tell you these things so that my joy might be in you, and that this joy might reach its fullness in you.” We will always find service united with joy, with happiness.
There is an experience that could happen to you in more or less 15 or 20 years from now. An adolescent son or daughter might come up to you and ask, “dad, mom, where were you in January of 2015?” “Where were you in May of 2017?” How sad it would be for you that if on that day you would have to say to your son or daughter, “I was not there!” And how sad that you would then hear from that son, that daughter, “what a shame dad, mom, it makes me sad to hear you. Were you not aware of anything, when on those dates there were thousands of young people struggling to build a more just, more human, more beautiful world?” In contrast, how marvelous it would be if that day you can tell them, “I was there with all those young people working for a better world” And how beautiful and nice for you it would be to then hear your son or daughter say to you, “wow, I feel very proud of you! How I admire you!” This marvelous moment that could occur in a few years you need to be preparing for now.
Three years ago while presenting the book of my memoirs in Spain, that had also been edited in Madrid, I was asked this question by a person in the auditorium in the city of Granada: “how can you be a man of hope after all the political disappointments that you have had in this last stage of your life?” I told him that my hope was not based on theories, but it was based on the youth. I have worked with them for 45 years, and I know very well all the enormous interior strength and great wealth that exists inside a young person. What I have to say comes from real life experiences, not stories, I have been there with them for years, and I have shared with them the marvelous works that they have done, on many occasions, even heroic works, for the transformation of society, in seeking a more just and caring world. And I told him this phrase, “My hope is that the youth will take to the streets again to make history.”
This phrase was published in a newspaper in the city of Granada, Spain. Later El Nuevo Diario published it in Managua. Later on the Jean Paul Genie Avenue in Managua a billboard was being prepared for commercial publicity – the frame was up with a sheet of flat zinc on it – and someone with black spray paint wrote on it, “my hope is that the youth would take to the streets again to make history. Fernando Cardenal.” It remained there for a year and a half. That is a very busy avenue and so thousands and thousands of Nicaraguans were able to see it. A friend of mine took a picture of the sign, framed it and brought it to my office. A young Canadian painter from Toronto, who left his steady job with Greater Toronto Painters, worked for two years as a volunteer in the University of the Jesuits in Managua saw the picture, returned to Madrid and some months ago wrote me an email that said, “I am in the streets of Madrid with the “indignados” making history”. We know that in many cities of Spain and in many cities of Europe and in many cities of the United States there are young people in the streets protesting over what the bankers are doing, making themselves even wealthier millionaires while the poor are losing their jobs and their homes. It is in youth like these that I have placed my hope.
Given that in a year and a half I will turn 80, I want to tell you that these things that I have been talking about are not highly worked theories from my brain, they come from pure living, it is my own life that I have placed before you, and I testify that in these 60 years I have of being at the service to others as a Jesuit, and in the 42 years I have of being at the service of the poorest of society, the “Ochlos”, I have found pure happiness. This has not been something passing, occasional, but for many, many years, it has been an ongoing experience! I want you to be very happy, with a profound and ongoing happiness, just as I have been happy. The issue at the heart of all my words in this message is happiness, this is the testament that I want to leave you: “my happiness”, that you might be very happy.
I say good by with a strong embrace full of respect and love, as well as a lot of hope.
Fernando Cardenal, S.J.
As is true in many aspects of our lives, the difficulties of the truth lie not in the knowing, but in the doing….
