"Did You Feel It?"

That's the question when we tell people about the earthquake.  Once we establish that our little place is fine, we are fine, and no, the tremor did not physically shake this part of Costa Rica, people move on to safer, more pleasant topics.

But for the people here, it is an ache as if it happened to their own family.  It DID happen to their own family.  This hit deep at the heart of the Costa Rican people, and deep at the heart of how we think of every other person.

That notion first shook me when I greeted Gaby, the cook at our family's hotel/restaurant.  "How are you?" I politely ask.  "Fine - but there is the sadness, of course."  "Oh my goodness - what happened?"  She looks at me with that Emmaus question, "Are you the only one who does not know the things that have taken place in these days? The earthquake."

"Oh, no - Did you have family there?" 

"No - but it's the same."

It's the same.  Surely as an Iowan I should remember that.  Well-meaning friends and relatives asked during the floods, "Did your house get wet? " and moved on to safer topics.  We remember how much we do feel it.  Tornados, immigration raids, floods, earthquakes.  "No man is an island,"  I learned long ago from John Donne.  Pain and loss affect the whole pueblo, village, town, country, church; the whole heart and soul of a people. 

This tiny nation with no army lives by the daily greeting "pura vida" - a saying I only come close to translating by invoking John's gospel.   Jesus assures us that he "...came that they may have life, and have it abundantly."

Pure, peaceful life alongside all other creatures.  But the earth shook and they are all buried - in their grief, their care for one another, in their attention and attending.  They have not forgotten how to name those they love.  Instead of impersonal headlines of "23 dead in earthquake", the deceased are named, their photos shown repeatedly on TV, their information carefully noted.  It does not matter if they are an adult or child or baby.  They are named, as carefully as God names us.

Where the quake hit strongest, it is difficult to reach the dead and injured.  La Nacion, the national newspaper, profiles U.S. helicopter pilots who have set combat aside to help find and evacuate people and bring supplies.  Humanitarian efforts are hindered by the instability of the earth.  Like life, the earth can turn us upside down.  Our spiritual and emotional terrain become unstable, and we need the help of others to dig us out.

We are in the bleak midwinter between resolutions and valentines - our focus on self moves to focus on one special other.  But this event has wrenched my mind and spirit from individuals toward a focus on all other creatures.

It is beyond blood.  It is thicker than water.  It is not in the earthquake nor the tornado nor the flood, but within the silence that remains in each of us afterwards.  The spark of Spirit that touches the same Spirit in another as deep speaks unto deep.

Paul in Romans 8:22-23  "We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies."

What child can possibly be born from such upheaval and suffering?  Perhaps it already walks among us.

Suffrage from Morning prayer

"Give peace, O Lord, in all the world;

For only in you can we live in safety."

It's one thing to pray it.

It's another thing to feel it.

This article was first published in Iowa Connections May 2009:
www.iowaepiscopal.org/news_and_events/iowa_connections.php

Helen Keefe spends a teeny part of each year in Costa Rica to read, write, pray and play.  A research assistant by day and  spiritual director by heart, she belongs to various diocesan commissions.   She and her partner, diocesan missioner Willa Goodfellow, live in Coralville with their mystic wonder dog, Mazie.