Hello everyone! Here is a video with the Pinnacle Line Dancers. I have been dancing with them off and on this year. My mother is a regular in the group. Hope you enjoy the Christmas presentation!
DURHAM, N.C. — It is familiar, the outrage and alarm that many Americans are feeling at reports that Russia, according to a secret intelligence assessment, interfered in the United States election to help Donald J. Trump become president.
I have been through this before, overwhelmed by a similar outrage and alarm.
To be specific: On the morning of Oct. 22, 1970, in what was then my home in Santiago de Chile, my wife, Angélica, and I listened to a news flash on the radio. Gen. René Schneider, the head of Chile’s armed forces, had been shot by a commando on a street of the capital. He was not expected to survive.
Angélica and I had the same automatic reaction: It’s the C.I.A., we said, almost in unison. We had no proof at the time — though evidence that we were right would eventually, and abundantly, surface — but we did not doubt that this was one more American attempt to subvert the will of the Chilean people.
Six weeks earlier, Salvador Allende, a democratic Socialist, had won the presidency in a free and fair election, in spite of the United States’ spending millions of dollars on psychological warfare and misinformation to prevent his victory (we’d call it “fake news” today). Allende had campaigned on a program of social and economic justice, and we knew that the government of President Richard M. Nixon, allied with Chile’s oligarchs, would do everything it could to stop Allende’s nonviolent revolution from gaining power.
The country was rife with rumors of a possible coup. It had happened in Guatemala and Iran, in Indonesia and Brazil, where leaders opposed to United States interests had been ousted; now it was Chile’s turn. That was why General Schneider was assassinated. Because, having sworn loyalty to the Constitution, he stubbornly stood in the way of those destabilization plans.
President-elect Salvador Allende, of Chile, arriving to pay respects to Gen. René Schneider, who was lying in state, killed by a commando.Robert Quiroga/Associated Press
General Schneider’s death did not block Allende’s inauguration, but American intelligence services, at the behest of Henry A. Kissinger, continued to assail our sovereignty during the next three years, sabotaging our prosperity (“make the economy scream,” Nixon ordered) and fostering military unrest. Finally, on Sept. 11, 1973, Allende was overthrown and replaced by a vicious dictatorship that lasted nearly 17 years. Years of torture and executions and disappearances and exile.
Given all that pain, one might presume that some glee on my part would be justified at the sight of Americans squirming in indignation at the spectacle of their democracy subjected to foreign interference — as Chile’s democracy, among many others’, was by America. And yes, it is ironic that the C.I.A. — the very agency that gave not a whit for the independence of other nations — is now crying foul because its tactics have been imitated by a powerful international rival.
I can savor the irony, but I feel no glee. This is not only because, as an American citizen myself now, I am once again a victim of this sort of nefarious meddling. My dismay goes deeper than that personal sense of vulnerability. This is a collective disaster: Those who vote in the United States should not have to suffer what those of us who voted in Chile had to go through. Nothing warrants that citizens anywhere should have their destiny manipulated by forces outside the land they inhabit.
The seriousness of this violation of the people’s will must not be flippantly underestimated or disparaged.
When Mr. Trump denies, as do his acolytes, the claims by the intelligence community that the election was, in fact, rigged in his favor by a foreign power, he is bizarrely echoing the very responses that so many Chileans got in the early ’70s when we accused the C.I.A. of illegal interventions in our internal affairs. He is using now the same terms of scorn we heard back then: Those allegations, he says, are “ridiculous” and mere “conspiracy theory,” because it is “impossible to know” who was behind it.
In Chile, we did find out who was “behind it.” Thanks to the Church Committee and its valiant, bipartisan 1976 report, the world discovered the many crimes the C.I.A. had been committing, the multiple ways in which it had destroyed democracy elsewhere — in order, supposedly, to save the world from Communism.
This country deserves, as all countries do — including Russia, of course — the possibility of choosing its leaders without someone in a remote room abroad determining the outcome of that election. This principle of peaceful coexistence and respect is the bedrock of freedom and self-determination, a principle that, yet again, has been compromised — this time, with the United States as its victim.
What to do, then, to restore faith in the democratic process?
First, there should be an independent, transparent and thorough public investigation so that any collusion between American citizens and foreigners bent on mischief can be exposed and punished, no matter how powerful these operatives may be. The president-elect should be demanding such an inquiry, rather than mocking its grounds. The legitimacy of his rule, already damaged by his significant loss of the popular vote, depends on it.
But there is another mission, a loftier one, that the American people, not politicians or intelligence agents, must carry out. The implications of this deplorable affair should lead to an incessant and unforgiving meditation on our shared country, its values, its beliefs, its history.
The United States cannot in good faith decry what has been done to its decent citizens until it is ready to face what it did so often to the equally decent citizens of other nations. And it must firmly resolve never to engage in such imperious activities again.
If ever there was a time for America to look at itself in the mirror, if ever there was a time of reckoning and accountability, it is now.
This is from "Center for Action and Contemplation" <Meditations@cac.org and expresses my prayer and desire for these times.
Faith is not simply seeing things at their visible, surface level, but recognizing their deepest meaning. To be a person of faith means you see things—people, animals, plants, the earth—as inherently connected to God, connected to you, and therefore, most worthy of love and dignity.That’s what Jesus is praying for: that you could see things in their unity, in their connectedness.
I will go so far as to say that the more you can connect, the more of a saint you are. The less you can connect, the less transformed you are. If you can’t connect with people of other religions, classes, or races, with your “enemies” or with those who are suffering, with people who are disabled, with LGBTQ folks, or with anyone who is not like you—well, to put it very bluntly, you’re not very converted. You’re still in the kindergarten of faith. We have a lot of Christians who are still in kindergarten, walking around the world with their old politics and economics. They have not allowed the Risen Christ to fully transform their lives. Truly transformed individuals are capable of a universal recognition. They see that everything is one.
Gateway to Silence:
We are already in union with God.
On my first morning in the bunk room
at the Institute for Intercultural Study and Research (INESIN), the organization I will be working with in the city San
Cristobal de las Casas, state of Chiapas, México, a familiar buzzing sound
greets me on my way to the bathroom. I
veer off course, hunting through the flowers, my eyes flicking back and forth
as I know I will only catch a glimpse of the sound-maker. It is there and then in an instant,
gone. The sound disappears. A hummingbird has welcomed me to the city and
to this new life.
As I seek to get my bearings in a
maze of narrow streets with sidewalks so thin that they disappear at intervals
where the lamp posts sprout, I wonder and wander: new sounds of Mayan people
chattering in tseltal or tzotzil, comforting childhood smells of
"tortillerías" (shops where corn tortillas are made), sights of tiled roofs superimposed on
memories of similar roofs in rural Paraguay or Chile. One moment I feel right at home; the next I
speculate that I must have arrived on a different planet.
On Sunday I attend a tiny church on
the edges of another tourist town, Chiapa de Corzo, which was founded in 1400
before Christ. It was a center of
commerce for the Olmec and Mayan people, two of the oldest known pre-Hispanic
civilizations. Today the town is best
known for a January festival with both pre-Hispanic and Colonial roots where
male dancers wear white masks and fuzzy yellow mushroom like hats, and there is
music, food, and crafts. The women wear
dresses made from black netting and elaborate embroidery. In the midst of the flood of new information
as I walk through the town, I am again comforted by the familiar. I know every song in the worship service by
heart; we sing to the tune of a guitar as we would in a small semi-rural church
in Chile.
Monday morning, the administrator at
INESIN, takes me to visit a house he has scouted out for me to consider as I
hunt for living quarters. I don´t like
the house. It is dark and has empty lots
on three sides. "Patience,"
says Brother Natanael. "We have plenty of time and many options to look
at." On our way back to the office,
we spot a "for rent" sign on a house only a block away. We call the number and early Tuesday morning
we go look at the house. Over the wall,
in the neighbor's flowering bushes, I hear the familiar sound: Hummingbirds welcoming me home! This house has plenty of light, the kitchen, living room and dining room are all in one big downstairs space with a
bathroom off to one side, and two rooms
upstairs with another bathroom. And the
cherry on the cake is wifi and telephone already installed! Natanael has already warned me that it could
take up to three months to get telephone and wifi service. My house hunting ends after one day and
after looking at only one other house. I
know that this is God's answer to the
prayers of many! The last few days I have
been tracking down furniture and appliances, washing windows, cleaning, and
trying to make this rental house into my home.
Everyone here is talking about the
US elections. Most people have been
understanding and gentle in discussing the results while at the same time
remembering the saying that goes, "when the US sneezes, Mexico catches
pneumonia." I have already been
warned never to visit an indigenous community without a guide. US, Canadian and European mining companies
are known to be scouting out the region looking for new mineral deposits. In Mexico, according to an old Spanish law, people
own what is on the surface of the land, but if a company buys the rights, it can legally extract the minerals even if
it means ousting legal land owners or communities. Native communities are resisting the mining
companies as best they know how. Many
people in Chiapas have either traveled to seek work in the US or have family
members who have immigrated. Yesterday my cab driver stated sadly while solemnly shaking
his head, "if new policies cause more Mexicans to be mistreated in the
US, I don´t know if we will be able to
keep people from mistreating US citizens living in Mexico."
I want to thank each of you for your
prayers on my behalf in this new ministry.
After one week in San Cristobal de las Casas, I know I have a lot to
learn. I am grateful for my new
colleagues at INESIN for all the ways that they have made me feel welcome
(fresh bouquet of flowers in my room when I arrived, a set of keys to the
grounds and main rooms, and my own office space with a computer!) Please continue to pray for me as I settle
in, build relationships, and find my way
around.
As I finish this letter, I can hear
the hummingbirds even though I can´t see them on the other side of the
wall. The Guaraní people of Paraguay
believe that hummingbirds indicate the place and instant where heaven
caresses the earth. I am reminded of Psalm 85:10-13 "Love
and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other. Faithfulness springs forth from the earth,
and righteousness looks down from heaven.
The Lord will indeed give what is good, and our land will yield its
harvest. Righteousness goes before him
and prepares the way for his steps."
I pray that my new home, with
hummingbirds as neighbors, might be just such a place.
It is a good word, rolling off the tongue; no matter what language you were born with use it. Learn where it begins, the small alphabet of departure, how long it takes to think of it, then say it, then be heard. Marry it. More than any golden ring, it shines, it shines. Wear it on every finger till your hands dance, touching everything easily, letting everything, easily, go. Strap it to your back like wings. Or a kite-tail. The stream of air behind a jet. If you are known for anything, let it be the way you rise out of sight when your work is finished. Think of things that linger: leaves, cartons and napkins, the damp smell of mold. Think of things that disappear. Think of what you love best, what brings tears into your eyes. Something that said adios to you before you knew what it meant or how long it was for. Explain little, the word explains itself. Later perhaps. Lessons following lessons, like silence following sound.
