As Lost as a liberal Anglo-Catholic feminist goddess-worshipping Anglican in Panama during the Triduum

last night, KRK was working on the last-minute Easter VIgil, which came to be because I bitched so much about having NONE of my spiritual needs met; that I was relying on what I knew of Quakers and contemplative prayer--and had been writing Mennonites begging them to come and send LOTS of volunteers!!!!!!--we heard this SINGING/CHANTING...i thought GOD, it's the Jumpy-Jumpies next door and they sound like R. Catholics..what a GREAT country!! WELL, the chant kept coming and then, in the darkness of one street lamp way down at the other end of the street, we saw all of this LIGHT!! CANDLES!! and a great big ole tony soprano kind of pick-up truck, brand new!! and people walking alongside. THEN there was this glass "coffin'd" and dead as a doornail lily white Jesus being carried in procession by these Ngobe-dressed women and girls--Ngobe dresses of white, trimmed in red (what I use for my cassock and surplice is a black and white dress and for red days, I wear the red one), carrying flowers and singing like castrati angels!! and this whole group of folks, men and women, were carrying this dead Jesus. THEN THE REAL MUSIC came!!!! Santa Maria, REGINA, QUEEN OF HEAVEN being carried in procession by this HUGE crowd of candles and chant and flowers....I fell to my knees as my mouth fell into perpetual gape. I ran upstairs and grabbed the first pair of flip flaps i could find and ran out after. NEVER have i been so gawked at!! i was the ONLY anglo-like person and i am the episcopadre's wife and here i was, singing all this Latin and Spanish Mary stuff and I do not think my eyes ever left the back of Mary's head until they turned her around in the church about forty minutes later, when we all got there...it was long after 10PM and the moon is full. We crossed over this little bridge into "Patois town" where for about a half a second, Almirante looks like Venice, Central America, with all the little boats and houses along the waterside. You only want to live there at night if the wind is right and the smell doesn't get you, but you really want to live there REALLY BAD because it is gorgeous in the moonlight of my romantic Irish, RC'gene'd brain. Have you ever noticed that the same plastic form that makes a Mary is the same one that makes the Jesus. From the back, one cannot tell them apart; well, okay, her hair IS longer and her robes are blue, but that's about it!! Mary is Jesus in drag??? Hmm, I think it's vice-versa; He's the drag-king!! I kept thinking Jesus is dead; he died and was reborn. BUT THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN NEVER DIES: MARY NEVER DIED: she just got zapped "up" whole and intact!!!!! The chanted rosary went on and on and on. By this time, so many folks had dragged back gawking and pointing at me that I was much closer to Mary and even the guards didn't bother me--but you could tell they wanted to--but I kept my hands folded out before me in High Church Anglo-Catholic style and kept my eyes glued to Mary's crown, bobbing along, being carried over the shoulders and heads of the crowd. Jesus' little glass box coffin was all lighted; Mary has cat eyes; she sees in the dark I laughed as I remembered El Hunko Father Eddie's comment of being "as lost as a Jesuit during Holy Week" and I thought that I had my own version of that expression--as depressed and sad as a High Church, Anglo-Catholic, feminist, goddess worshipping Anglican in Latin America during Holy Week!!!! We reached the church and Mary and Jesus were processed in--she forever young and virginal and just a tad bit pregnant--and he, deader than dead. The third white-skinned person of that Trinity was I and it felt really really weird. I wanted bronze paint for their exposed skin and Jesus wouldn't mind. He's dead and really looked it, all Snow White in his glass coffin as if Teresa little flowers' body was being processed. He laid to rest in LILAC and LAVENDER tulle!!!! She lit up by a flashlight that caused her crown, hands and heart to glow. I am serious; it was great RC magic!!! And the prayers went on. By this time, I'd pushed my way to the window and kinda "came to" as I realised I was pushing myself into the church. Thank God, that by then, the prayers and singing were over and people had begun to leave. I was the last person out; Padre and Sister whoever were staring and whispering to themselves, wondering I guess, just who the hell I was. Back across the bridge of a second and a half of Venice and the long walk home. OKAY, MUST GO NOW and die Easter eggs Magdalene red and blow Easter eggs and paint those shells glitter red and gold. I am also making five different flavors of deviled eggs for tonight and for the morning. SInce eggs here are NOT refrigerated, I am going to Changuinola where at least, the grocery store, has a tad of a/c!!!

In love with an inanimate object

I rarely LOVE, have devotion to inanimate objects--particuarly those that are new and mechanical. I've loved only two bicycles in my life--one a yellow French racer, purchased used--and the other Bianchi-red seated and handled Bianchi green bike I bought in Berkeley. I've loved only one car in my life, a school-bus yellow VW convertible. I loved my titanium Mac--now dead. But we just had a new airconditioner installed in the bedroom--and the original a-c moved to the guest room. I LOVE THE NEW AIR CONDITIONER!!!!! It looks nothing like an airconditioner; it looks more like a car's dashboard. It's way up high and out of the way. It's very quiet with a great soft sound like wind or rain. It's got this kinda friendly "look" about it, not unlike some kind of plain but friendly robot. AND it has a remote control!!! Which sent me into peals of laughter when I first saw it. I could not imagine an air conditioner with a remote control! But I lived for the last ten years in a place requiring no air conditioning, so I am definitely up on the latest. I know that I am truly in love with this device's techo-magic of dehumidity and cool. It's little fan flap moves up and down and I do not know why it does NOT remind me of the cameras in Belfast, but it doesn't. When evil Chiquita is running full blast and the newest loved inanimate, technomagic creature cannot talk to me, I feel very sad. and also miserably hot. Too bad solar power cannot run an A-C!! That would be sheer Panama heaven!!!

RC's and Episcos in Panama

Last night, KRK+ was working on the last-minute Easter VIgil, which came to be because I bitched so much about having NONE of my spiritual needs met--I was relying on what I knew of Quakers and contemplative prayer--and have been writing Mennonites begging them to come here for the town and for me--and to PLEASE send LOTS of volunteers!!!!!! We heard this SINGING/CHANTING--beautiful, lots of voices, and LOUD, too!!...I thought GOD, it's the Jumpy-Jumpies next door and they sound like R. Catholics..what a GREAT country!! WELL, the chant kept coming and then, in the darkness of one street lamp way down at the other end of the street, we saw all of this LIGHT!! CANDLES!! and a great big ole Tony Soprano kind of pick-up truck, brand new!! and people walking alongside. THEN there was this glass "coffin'd" and dead as a doornail lily white Jesus being carried in procession by these Ngobe-dressed women and girls--Ngobe dresses of white, trimmed in red (what I use for my cassock and surplice is a black and white dress and for red days, I wear the red one), carrying flowers and singing like castrati angels!! and this whole group of folks, men and women, were carrying this dead Jesus. THEN THE REAL MUSIC came!!!! Santa Maria, REGINA, QUEEN OF HEAVEN being carried in procession by this HUGE crowd of candles and chant and flowers....I fell to my knees as my mouth fell into perpetual gape. I ran upstairs and grabbed the first pair of flip flaps i could find and ran out after. NEVER have i been so gawked at!! I was the ONLY Anglo-like person and i am the Episcopadre's wife and here I was, singing all this Latin and Spanish Mary stuff and I do not think my eyes ever left the back of Mary's head until they turned her around in the church about forty-five minutes later, when we all got there...It was long after 10PM and the moon is full. We crossed over this little bridge into "Patois town" where for about a half a second, Almirante looks like Venice, Central America, with all the little boats and houses along the waterside. You only want to live there at night if the wind is right and the smell doesn't get you, but you really want to live there REALLY BAD because it is gorgeous in the moonlight of my romantic Irish, RC-gene'd brain. Have you ever noticed that the same plastic form that makes a Mary is the same one that makes the Jesus? I am convinced this is so and this is not the first time I've thought it--I had a LONG look at a long time to ponder this Holy Cross-dressing statue bidness. From the back, one cannot tell them apart; well, okay, her hair IS longer and her robes are blue, but that's about it!! Mary is Jesus in??? Hmm, I think it's vice-versa; He's the drag-king!! I kept thinking Jesus is dead; he died and was reborn. BUT THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN NEVER DIES: MARY NEVER DIED: she just got zapped "up" whole and intact!!!!! NOW whos' the real "Queen" in Heaven? The chanted rosary went on and on and on. By this time, so many folks had dragged back gawking and pointing at me that I was much closer to Mary and even the guards didn't bother me--but you could tell they wanted to--but I kept my hands folded out before me in High Church Anglo-Catholic style and kept my eyes glued to Mary's crown, bobbing along, being carried over the shoulders and heads of the crowd. Jesus' little glass box coffin was all lighted; Mary has cat eyes; she sees in the dark! Gato, mee-see queen of the full moon of Pashka. I laughed as I remembered Gorgeous Father Eddie's comment of being "as lost as a Jesuit during Holy Week" and I thought that I had my own version of that expression--as despondent as a High Church, Anglo-Catholic, feminist, goddess worshipping Anglican in Latin America during Holy Week!!!! We all reached the church and Mary and Jesus were processed in (there were nuns with and without knees, all in white polyester which made me itch and the church is gorgeous...all this wood inside where we have only conrete--even the Table is concrete on the Island--it is REALLY a tomb, not a T/table and it drives me nuts!! And there is Mary--forever young and virginal and just a tad bit pregnant--and he, deader than dead. The third white-skinned person of that Trinity was I and it felt really really weird. I wanted bronze paint for their exposed skin and Jesus wouldn't mind. He's dead and really looked it, all Snow White in his glass coffin as if Teresa LittleFflowers' body was being processed. He laid to rest in LILAC and LAVENDER tulle!!!! She lit up by a flashlight that caused her crown, hands and heart to glow. I am serious; it was great RC magic!!! ...And the prayers went on. By this time, I'd pushed my way to the window and kinda "came to" as I realised I was pushing myself into the church. Thank God, that by then, the prayers and singing were over and people had begun to leave. I was the last person out; Padre and Sister whoever were staring and whispering to themselves, wondering I guess, just who the hell I was. Back across the bridge of a second and a half of Venice and the long walk home to boring, horrible singing, ten people at most Episcodom with no statues. At least we have incense. But I was so incensed! I wanted to be back in San Francisco at Christ the Queen, Church of the Advent. I want Jesuits and Franciscans here surrounding me, sitting around laughting and talking and drinking good Scotch. I know Obispo Julio says that "A Jesuit is a totally different animal than any Roman Catholic priest in Central America" and I would somewhat agree. Except they got it "right" last night, just right. None of the black Christ bloody knees but this really glorious and wonderful procession all over town...Loved ones, out walking their dead. I am from the US South; I understand ancestor worship. And I love the Kuna Creation story better than the Genesis one. OKAY, MUST GO NOW and die Easter eggs Magdalene red and blow Easter eggs and paint those shells glitter red and gold. I am also making five different flavors of "deviled" eggs (I wonder how that translates theologically in terms of this Easter business) for tonight and for the morning. SInce eggs here are NOT refrigerated, I am going to Changuinola where at least, the grocery store, has a tad of air conditioning!!! Not Your Usual Missionary Position

For What We Must Answer

The sacred cows of India have been imported here for meat. Does anyone but me find this odd and awful?

Bananas: Why I Hate Chiquita

I feel as if I'm living in "Hitlerville." The trains run at night. I hear their clanking and their whistles. The trucks run night and day and especially throughout the night. I can hear the containers being loaded and unloaded at the dock. The whistles blow from the dock as if we are really a company town; the "Company" moved out of here a few years ago and left folks TOTALLY without work. When I was here in 01, I hated the "Company" because of atrocious working conditions; sucky benefits; horrendous hours; chemicals and pesticides with exposure to the "disposables"--mostly First Peoples who do the very basic work. All this moving of bananas from the community just north of us (where the company has moved its headquarters, complete with luxurious houses and a GOLF COURSE--membership is more exclusive than any country club!) has a really evil feel--perhaps it's that so much of this happens at night, under cover of darkness. One night we happened to be outside and there was this really creepy black train that looked and smelled evil. I've not seen it since and no one talks about it. No one knows what it carries. Workers process bananas without gloves or masks. If one attempts to talk with the workers, the supervisor will send you away--with a guard carrying a serious machine gun--pointed at you--locked and loaded, too!! The supervisors will not talk to you either. No one will identify the chemicals and pesticides that have poisoned our water, air, soil. Crop dusters fly the deadly agents overhead. Our community has a great number of folks with schizophrenia-like behavior and illnesses. Bananas are not indigenous to here. They were brought by another "Company" back in the late 1800's. And the history is a complex one for the folks here. My first look at a banana plantation brought tears to my eyes and I saw red...as far as you can see, there are banana plants/trees wearing blue plastic bags around the bananas--they look not unlike huge, used, blue, condoms dripping from the trees like some fiendish decoration. These bananas destroyed acres and hectares upon acres and hectares of rainforest and jungle. Union is not a nice word here. Remember when you eat a non-organic banana, that it is fertilised by the blood of workers, trying to make a better life for themselves by asking for a union, killed and disappeared into the fields, as a sign to others. Disposable people working 12 to 16 hours a day for several dollars a day, with no health care, and no concern for safety. I'm from the US South and I know a plantation when I see one; I know the evils of plantation life and they are here. The "Company" IS a plantation; its worst fruit is the weird dependency and helplessness of a company, of "Massa" doing "good" for the slave, the poor black man, the poorer brown man. When our first power bill came, it was to "The Company"--Chiquita. I screamed! This is the "Company" who cuts off the power and water to at least two villages and towns--sometimes four hours a day; sometimes for DAYS. One pays as if the power was on all the time. People don't need potable water; children don't need lights for school and study because we gotta get those bananas loaded on those ships to send to Europe...for that's where our bananas go.... As we search for donations for alternative sources of energy; as we all save for a generator for the parish; as we search for ideas for the creation of cottage industries; as we try to educate our children--the power runs for bananas. The "machine shop" and the "power plant" are about half a block from our home. It is as montrous as the Black Train. It looks like The Borg. One rarely sees a human being and usually those humans are uniformed and armed with those ever-present machine guns. The gates are locked and bolted and no one is allowed in, even to see. There is a section of the plant that strikes terror somewhere deep within me. I know I have a vivid imagination; I also know I am an empath and I feel and hear within my body the screams of workers tortured in this place. Really, it looks more terrifying than any image of a concentration camp I've ever seen. It is dark; everything is rusting metal; there is constant rumbling, clanging, echoes, and reverberations--and no people. Cats don't go there; neither do dogs; and only vultures perch on the top of the building. It's perfect for the horror movie that is real life here. Today we had a community meeting to talk about the situation of power, water, work, etc. We were met by uniformed and suited government officials; we were met by militia types, guards, and police all puffed up with their angry dangerous macho'd fingers slipping with sweat on their triggers. I say the meetings have to go underground, into the churches, into homes like in the US during the Civil Rights years. Who will speak for these people? Who will help? Who will put the word out? Who will start the boycott? Because I'm ready to begin daily prayer vigils outside every Chiquita building and production site I can find--and there are many. The Padre says nothing to my suggestion but I know he is worried and concerned and that he is praying and planning. We need Jesuits, Franciscans, Pace e Bene, Greenpeace, and anybody else who can stop this violence. People here want to work. They want decent lives for their children--education, health care, clean air/water/soil, food. This is not the US of endless consumption. This is beyond any Union activity I've ever been involved--The evils of the Marriott look almost decent in comparison. Perhaps it is so ominous and overwhelming because one sees the land here; one sees the water; the soil; breathes the air. One sees the deforestation for even more bananas, growing for The Company and growing a mold that requires more and more toxins. Tyson, the nuclear weapons industries, and the military are equivalent evils. I dream of the Black Train; I have nightmares where I hear the voices from the field crying out. I hear children crying from hunger. I see this community in black and white and gray. It IS a concentration camp.