Temper Resilience of the Soul
by
Elena Huegel
It is six o'clock in the morning, and
Alberto, Enrique and I are loading workshop materials into the tiny trunk at
the front of the car. The things don't
fit, so we fill the half of the back seat behind the driver, and then Alberto
folds himself into the other half, gallantly leaving me the front passenger
seat where my shins bump against the underside of the dash board. As we roll down from the cool mountains of San
Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, to the humid heat of the coastal lands heading
first west and then north, we keep our sense of humor by remembering all the Volkswagen
Bug jokes we can think of...
"Everything in a VW makes noise except the radio..." "How many elephants fit in a VW bug?" We are on our way to Juchitán de Zaragoza,
Oaxaca, the epicenter of the September, 2017 earthquake, 5 hours away in a "normal"
car, six and a half hours in a classic 2002 red VW beetle.
Lesson
1: Temper
resilience of the soul by nourishing a healthy sense of humor.
Besides the VW adventure, this trip was
different from my other travels to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Though we have often seen the light trucks
towing damaged used cars south from the US across Mexico to Central America for
repair and sale, this is the first time we have seen large numbers of people
walking north along the side of this particular highway from Central America
across Mexico to the United States. In
the past, we have seen lone travelers or pairs, but this time there are
families, women and baby carriages, children as young as two, as well as groups
25 to 150 men, all walking in the
blazing sun past the mango groves. Since
the Bug advances slowly, I am able to distinguish the pleading looks of anguish
and despair from the blank glances at our obviously full vehicle. These people are part of the next
"migrant caravan," individual
hopes and dreams herded together into a homogenous mass whose fate can be
discussed and decided upon in political debates from a safe, impersonal,
distance. A woman, nicely dressed, with
a baby in a sling across her front and
two preschool children toting tiny pink and blue school packs clinging to her
hands, stares at me with determination as well as distress when we go by. What can I do? The exchange of recognition is
past in an instant.
Lesson
2: Temper
resilience of the soul by recognizing the dignity in the other, the worth of
God's precious creation, even in the fleeting vision of a passerby.
In less than two hours along the northern
coastal highway, we are stopped four times:
first by the Federal police, then by the Immigration Officials, then by
the National Army and finally by the State Police, and at each stop we are
questioned before we are allowed to continue on. Traveling south, on our way home when we
finish our work in Juchitán, we will not be stopped a single time. All the pressure is on those bound northward to the Mexico - USA border.
Lesson
3: Temper
resilience of the soul with patience.
Under the shade of a bridge, a large group
of men gathers in a haphazard circle.
Several Federal police cars are there, emergency lights flashing. I can hear the wail of an ambulance siren in
the distance. A lone shoe lies in the
middle of the highway. Again, there is
nothing I can do except say a prayer as I turn away from this story, yet
another tragedy that might not even make it into the statistics of those who
have died striving for their northern dream.
Lesson
4: Temper resilience of the soul by pausing to discern
where and when to seek justice, when to
love kindness or when to walk humbly on knowing one is not God.
Over the crest of a hill, electricity
generating turbines stretch out in orderly rows as far as the eye can see. The Federal Electricity Company has decided
that the Tehuantepec Isthmus, which has the greatest sustained winds of Mexico,
would be the perfect place to invested in clean and sustainable energy. Today, the little red Bug is buffeted by
winds up to 100 kilometers (about 60 miles) an hour, and Enrique has his hands
full keeping us on the road. Not all
that glitters is gold and there is disaster even behind this massive project
presented by the Mexican government as an example of its environmental commitment
to lowering greenhouse gases. "The
turbines function optimally with constant wind speeds between 20 and 50 miles per hour and must be shut down
with excessive wind speeds so as to not burn out the motors," explains one
of the locals, "but climate change
is creating greater oscillation between very high winds and very low
winds. The unpredictability is
disastrous for electricity production. If
the trend continues, the production of electricity will not pay back the
millions invested in the project. The water table is the greater disaster, however. Each turbine is between 100 and 360 feet high
and in order to withstand the force of the wind, must have a square block of
cement underground at least as deep and wide as it is high. There are over 1600 generators in about 2000
acres of wetlands between the coast and the mountains in Juchitán. Rainwater can no longer percolate through the
cement to the water table and the fresh water wells in many communities have
gone dry." A local pastor who is
also a high school science teacher tells me, "We have believed the fallacy
that when we create one environmental problem, another technological advance
will save us; hence we don´t have to change our habits, back track from our
"improved" way of life, or implement long range plans to restore and
care for critical ecosystems because some new invention will "correct"
our past mistakes." Neither global
nor local ills are healed with quick fixes.
Lesson
5: Temper
resilience of the soul through slow,
thoughtful care, like the seasonal nurture of garden flowers. Avoid quick
fixes.
The course I am teaching in Juchitán is
"Odyssey of healing: hope for individuals," the last in a series of
four courses before the final facilitation training course in the Roots in the
ruins: hope in trauma program initiated with a group of lay leaders and pastors
shortly after the 2017 earthquake. My
co-facilitator, Pastora Noemí Santiago, the coordinator of the Church of the
Nazarene Seminary, Juchitán Branch, is unable to accompany us for reasons
beyond her control. The day before the
course was to begin, as she was checking on the replacement of the large
windows in a church damaged during the earthquake, one of the frames slipped
and fell breaking her forearm in two places.
When the doctor told her she needed immediate surgery, she said "I
can´t, I have to teach a trauma healing course this weekend!" The mark of a good leader, however, is what
people do when she must step aside. The
course continued on with students and pastors from the Seminary taking over the
organizational and administrative tasks with great responsibility and the
course participants gently caring for each other lightening my load as the sole
facilitator.
Lesson
6: Temper resilience of the soul by creating safe space
where all can thrive and form a counter balance on which one can lean when
bending in hurt or pain.
Final
thoughts at the end of the weekend:
In my life in Mexico, I can´t control what
happens, and most of the time, when my instincts kick in, and I can hardly
control how I react. I can, however,
reflect on the circumstances of a situation, on my actions and those of others,
and on what I can do or can´t do in the aftermath. I, thereby, slowly gain more control of my
feelings and attitudes while accompanying others in their own healing. This process of tempering my soul is at the
core of my resilience.
I have been meditating on the process of
tempering as related to metallurgy in relation to soul resilience. Wikipedia
says the following:
Tempering is a
process of heat treating, which is used to increase the toughness of iron-based alloys. Tempering is usually
performed after hardening, to reduce some
of the excess hardness, and is done by heating
the metal to some temperature below the critical
point for a certain period of time, then allowing it to cool
in still air. The exact temperature determines the amount of hardness removed,
and depends on both the specific composition of the alloy and on the desired
properties in the finished product. For instance, very hard tools are often tempered at
low temperatures, while springs are tempered to much
higher temperatures.
·
Strength:
also called rigidity, this is resistance to permanent deformation and tearing. Strength, in
metallurgy, is still a rather vague term, so is usually divided into yield strength (strength beyond which
deformation becomes permanent), tensile strength (the ultimate tearing strength), shear strength (resistance to transverse, or cutting forces), and compressive strength (resistance to elastic
shortening under a load).
·
Toughness: Resistance to fracture. Toughness often increases as strength decreases, because a material
that bends is less likely to break.
·
Hardness: Hardness is often used to describe strength or
rigidity but, in metallurgy, the term is usually used to describe a surface's
resistance to scratching, abrasion, or indentation.
·
Brittleness: Brittleness describes a material's tendency to
break before bending or deforming either elastically or plastically.
Brittleness increases with decreased toughness, but is greatly affected by
internal stresses as well.
·
Plasticity:
The ability to mold, bend or deform in a manner that does not spontaneously
return to its original shape. This is proportional to the ductility or malleability of the substance.
·
Elasticity:
Also called flexibility, this is the ability to deform, bend, compress, or stretch
and return to the original shape once the external stress is removed.
·
Impact resistance: Usually synonymous with
high-strength toughness, it is the ability to resist shock-loading with minimal
deformation.
·
Wear resistance: Usually synonymous with hardness, this is
resistance to erosion, ablation, spalling,
or galling.
·
Structural integrity:
The ability to withstand a maximum-rated load while resisting fracture,
resisting fatigue, and producing a minimal amount
of flexing or deflection, to provide a maximum service life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempering_(metallurgy)
