2008, the year of the conuco?

Consciousness of wealth:

On Christmas afternoon a group of children in La Canoa held a real baseball bat and ball for the first time in their lives. They had been used to making substitutes in order to play their favorite sport. They touched the bat the way an antiquities art collector will touch a priceless crown of gold, covered with huge diamonds and rubies. It resonated within them as an object that gave them extraordinary pleasure.

In the eyes of the beholder:

We discover that the appreciation of beauty requires a prior cultivation... a learning process. These very same children would not be impressed with a brand new professional soccer ball or a four hundred dollar Big Bertha golf club.

The beauty of saving a place for future generations:

The countryside in the Dominican Republic is undergoing a profound change. When the Old Testament speaks about the sacredness of caring for a farm or a range as a God given inheritance, the beauty of that awareness is lost to contemporary Dominicans. Today´s youth have yet to discover the wonder of cultivating a sacred trust.

Food wars:

Staple foods become profane ...things whose price is manipulated by wealthy government subsidies. Local farmers lose the energy to compete with the beans of powerful agribusiness. Little holdings pass into the hands of migrant workers who have no rights to the land. They work it as a "thing" ... rather than as a living trust for the benefit of a family that extends its reach into the future.


General Candalier:

For a few years, General Candalier fought against deforestation. He used strong methods to inflict pain on those who would chop down trees without planting more of them; paving the way for soil loss. But those policies did little to foster a spirituality of the land. Eventually his harsh policies won him many enemies who used political power to marginalize his efforts. From his experience we learn that force alone will not teach people to love the land and want to protect it for the future.

2008, the year of the conuco:

When the slaves fleeing Egypt arrived in the "Promised Land" they found all of the best properties occupied by walled city dwellers who lived close to rivers; so they moved up into the mountains and began the laborious process of transforming wild lands into "conuco" or self sufficient farms that soon became capable of feeding more than the immediate families. They went from wandering in the desert to marveling at the growth of food close to their homes. Today´s modern generation of Dominicans wander in a desert of materialism. May 2008 be the year when more people flee from this slavery and discover the simple beauty of food growing close to home.

Mayra in silence

The woman of silence:

Mayra lives beyond El Maniel, in the high plateau of Laguneta. It takes two hours from Paraíso to reach the farm where she cooks for a living. Not only is she in the precarious situation of being an undocumented immigrant from Haiti; she also responds each day to the challenge of not hearing anything... of living in perpetual silence.

Bringing forth fruit:

Because she spends much of the day alone, Mayra can focus in an uncomplicated way upon the basic needs of the people who let her live on the farm: preparing the food and washing dirty clothes. She thrives like the plants in an environment that does not strain her ability to communicate. The garden plants grow in an setting well suited to their needs. They grow effortlessly in all their glory... much like the lilies of the field that Jesus so admired!

Contrast:

Mayra´s adopted farm nestles in a habitat above the precipitous mountain flanks which fall steeply towards the ocean. The earth escapes the forced growth patterns of migratory extreme slope production. Imagine Mayra being yelled at by a group of twenty people, each clamoring for her to do this or that... when she has no way of hearing the commands. Such is a metaphor for the mountain slopes which are required to produce food, even as they lose topsoil to erosion. They are like a Mayra forced to do tasks that go beyond her abilities.

May the plants grow where they can:

In a few decades, the steep slopes will be left alone once again... as they have been for most of their millennial history. They will respond to the unrelenting demands of human beings until they have precious little nutrients left. The people will then move on and the slopes will bring forth an aggressive weed grass that knows how to fight for life. Long gone will be the delicate ornamental plants that used to grow freely beneath the canopy of shade trees.

The wisdom of Earth:

God gave us a round planet, with finite distances, when He could have placed us within a creation that extends in infinite directions. In this creative act, He placed us upon a path to learn the wisdom of restraint. We slowly and painfully learn that each bio region has a unique ability to nurture human families. When we reverence the God given requirements of this or that land, we enter a spirituality of stewardship. When we treat the land the way those around her are treating Mayra, we live in harmony.

Natural

The right place:

This home happens to be at a perfect altitude and has just the right amount of moisture to give flowers an ideal environment. Those who tend flowers and labor earnestly to produce a few blooms can only look on in amazement at what can happen naturally.

Above Riosito:

The home used to have children and many visitors. They now live in the town or in Santo Domingo. An occasional visitor comes to stay for the coffee harvest. Many environments exist for raising of children. This one appears blessed with stunning vistas, quiet nights, cool breezes and a responsive soil for crops. Yet the lure of city life draws people away. In the process, young Dominicans exchange a hoe or a pick for a life of sitting on a motorcycle, waiting for the occasional passenger. Which environment tends to produce responsive, alert young people?

First Century Nazareth:

God has his pick of any environment in any century. He can not be lured by what seems attractive to people in one age or another. There is no way to influence the choice that God makes for his son, except through the prayers of humble people who longed for the Messiah.
So God chooses Nazareth over every conceivable human environment. Why did he do that? What did he see in the tiny country place that we miss?

Nazareth, where the flowers of prophesy grow naturally:

Could it be that Nazareth offered the Son of God an environment where he could learn naturally the correct way of imaging God his father? Might Nazareth have been free from the kinds of distractions which might block or diffuse the insights of Mary and Joseph as they communicate with their son? Not every environment can produce wild flowers in profusion. It takes a special set of conditions; a convergence of blessings. Will humanity find the path that leads to cultivating the Nazareths of our modern world? Will we sense when a place and a time are particularly blessed for the bringing forth of wise children?

The stable of El Ingenio

Little Bethlehem manger:

People have stopped by to spend the night in this humble dwelling. The earthen floors and vine covered walls show how close to returning to nature the structure is. Was the manger that Joseph found much different from this?

The beginning of mystery incarnate:

The little baby who comes into our world also comes forth from it. The elements in his tiny hands did not come down from heaven but rather emerged from our mother Earth. But we believe there is so much more to this child than simple elements or even a blessed, living planet. More than any other day we are drawn to contemplate the closeness of this child to highest heaven and humblest earth.

God comes to Earth:

With our emerging consciousness about interplanetary space (let alone intergalactic space), the vastness of God the Almighty can leave us feeling impossibly tiny or even insignificant. In the knowledge of countless mega galaxies, each with over two trillion stars, the thought that the Creator of all this would send his Son to a tiny part of the whole... to just one blue dot in the vastness of space... seems incredibly arrogant -- one more tragic fruit of the boundless ego of human beings.

We believe:

But we do believe that the little baby in Mary's arms is God born among us. In quantum physics we learn the astounding fact of the unbreakable link between the smallest subatomic particles and the largest structures in the Universe. Everything is related... so the baby is inseparable from the Universe. The Creator sustains all living as well as inanimate things in this Universe as well as any other parallel universes. This ultimate mystery wants to be known as a baby who looks into Joseph's eyes and likes to be held in his arms.

Is that snow on those reeds?

The baby does not see Christmas lights nor fancy decorations. Perhaps he sees something like the glow of sugar cane as it reflects the sunlight. Few people would expect to find sugar cane growing on the top of a mountain. We presume that it must grow only on the big plantations close to sea level. Yet there are the reeds bending in the wind at three thousand feet. The ultimate surprise is God blessing us with the sweetness in the eyes of a little baby who finds pure delight in the gaze of his mother Mary.

Father John's Angel

Father John's roof:

When tropical storm Noel battered our area, the parish clinic in Leonardo became a miserable place to live in, due to the many little holes in the roof. There are three levels of zinc roofing that can be purchased in the D.R.: numbers 34, 29 and 26. The thinnest material is number 34... the material on Father John's roof.

Accident:

We make plans and other things happen. Father John decided to come down out of the mountains as soon as the road reopened. He planned to offer his services in the Barahona area, where temporary shelters had been set up to deal with the families with submerged homes. But he made one trip to the airport to see if he could find zinc material to fix the clinic roof. Upon leaving the airport facilities, he had an accident and ended up being one of the few patients who had to be driven by ambulance from Barahona all the way to Santo Domingo. At the time, the local doctors thought he might have a blood clot on the brain.

Recovery:

Father John spent all of November with a nephew, south of Miami. His broken ribs began to heal and he regained enough strength to desire a fast return to the clinic. But his eyesight took longer than anticipated to recover. Still he pressed his on with the desire to return and be of service.

All lawyers are greedy and self interested?

Father John has never worked without his partner. He's there now... an angel hidden from view.

When he and his brother Mike finished high school, they each took a different direction in life. Mike entered law school and moved on to become a very successful lawyer. Along the way he developed a strong commitment to his brother's ministry. Father John could never have accomplished all the service to the poor that marks his life...had it not been for the financial support of his "wealthy" brother.

Mike to the rescue:

No sooner did Mike receive news that his brother had an accident, then he dropped all scheduling and flew down to Santo Domingo. He took charge of getting Father John up to Miami and in to see various specialists. He paid for a new vehicle for Father John and for new roofing materials for the clinic. In the picture you can see Alejandro unloading the new zinc.

Sunday:

Father John rode up to the clinic yesterday. He entered the newly roofed building and began the process of reactivating his work to serve the sick. You can still see the big gash on the left side of his head. The scabs have not healed and he is back looking to help people. Lots of people in the U.S.A. support different charitable causes. Mike has the unusual path of donating to a cause that is very efficient and self sacrificing...with practically no bureaucratic costs: his brother's ministry to the sick. Together they make a remarkably solid team that has blessed countless poor people.