Monday, September 04, 2006

Finding God in All Things



Finding God in all things. It´s an ideology so often heard in my days at LMU that it almost became that which it most seeks to avoid: merely a phrase, and not an everlasting and unfolding part of our every day lives.

Sunday I found God in the eyes of children who took to the streets of Cochabamba on a day when all autos except police and ambulances were forbidden on the roads, city wide. Saturday was my first day of reckoning with the reality of ínevitable boredom´. And so Sunday, bike riding along what are usually crowded and hectic streets in this large city, playing with my three host neices: Carolina who is 9, Natalia who is 6, and Ceci who is 5, I could not help but think about the loneliness and even sadness I had felt only one day before, as I lay in a strange bed in a strange house in a strange country with a strange language. If Saturday was difficult, Sunday was perhaps God´s subtle way of finding me in the midst of frustration and letting me know, it is part of the journey.

And so it is. I was thinking about that ever so popular Jesuit phrase about finding God in all things when I came across a Jesuit book here at my language school, entitled Seeking God in all things. And it got me thinking: we may at times fail to find God in all things, but perhaps what is more important still is to hold securely to the knowledge that God finds herself in all things, and only asks that we seek, even if at times we are unable to find. And so with the right amount of patience and faith, I discovered that there is little need for us to search, because God is revealed in that which we sometimes overlook as ordinary. And so it has been that kind of experience my friends, there are indeed no lightbulb moments, only little moments of grace, moments like that bike ride, or that first successful Spanish conversation or teaching salsa to kids when you yourself do not even know salsa. This is my vida loca aqui in Sur Americana

And yeah, I am safe, with my host family, and today, I start one on one language lessons! Miss you all... Wnat to see more, check out the photo bar and click to the Flickr site with all my photos...

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