Dreams in the Time of Fear

In 1998, Zapatista women in Amador Hernadez demanded daily that the Mexican military leave the village communal landholdings. (Photo by Tim Russo)

Dreams in the Time of Fear

The sterility of the bourgeois world will end in suicide or a new form of creative participation.  This is the “theme of our times,” in Ortega y Gasset’s phrase; it is the substance of our dreams and the meaning of our acts.

Modern man likes to pretend that his thinking is wide-awake.  But his wide-awake thinking has led us into the mazes of a nightmare in which the torture chambers are endlessly repeated in the mirrors of reason.  When we emerge, perhaps we will realize that we have been dreaming with our eyes open, and that the dreams of reason are intolerable.  And then, perhaps, we will begin to dream once more with our eyes closed.               --  Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude, 1961

I am probably way out of my depth here, but I am going to plunge ahead, anyway.  After all, I am in Mexico, I am a Zapatista and a kind of Catholic, and despite everything, I am a believer.

Believer in what, I expect you to ask.  Well, not in only reason, certainly.  It has its place, I am sure, in the scientific laboratory.  But as Octavio Paz said almost 60 years ago, this path of reason we have been on since the Enlightenment has not brought us to a better place in terms of our social structure, or happiness, or well-being, or ability to simply live without destroying ourselves and the planet.  That’s a pretty monumental failure in my opinion.

I don’t really care who is to blame, and thank god I am not an academic or a philosopher so I don’t have to say all of this is a certain way which will be convincing to someone who will write articles and books and then maybe we will all come to understand this.

No, that is not my job, thankfully.  I am a simple person, highly educated in a certain way, but I know that I know nothing, really, except what I feel in my heart.  And that’s OK with me.  

One of the joys and afflictions of aging is memory loss.  I can’t always readily call up to mind the word or fact I want.  I’m not really interested in debate though I like to hear others well-thought out arguments.  I detest being lectured to, but enjoy giving my opinion to those who are truly open to listening.  I try to understand what my heart is telling me, and work with my shadow self, all while trying to stay present in the Now.

I am a minister by training and experience and calling.  It is what I do and who I am anymore.  I can’t imagine anything else.  And what I do as a minister is listen; I travel and people tell me things; I work as a chaplain and people tell me things; I do what I can for social justice and people tell me things.  And what they say is that we want a better world for ourselves and our children.  That is universal. 

We want adequate food, water, clothing, housing, education, healthcare and the ability to make a living.  We want to have hope for the future.  We want to worship in our own way, and live free from fear of oppression and bodily harm.  We want our children to live and thrive.  We want to fall in love and have a fiesta or two.  We want to laugh from time to time.  

Is that so much to ask?

It seems that it is, for the many people who struggle in poverty conditions in the United States and elsewhere.

Impossible Dream

Me at Mass at La Parroquia, San Miguel de Allende

On Dreams and Democracy

In San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, I am a kind of Catholic, attending mass and a funeral.  The priest speaks simple Spanish slowly enough that I understand some of it.  But mostly I enjoy the music and wonder what the old people are praying about to the Virgin of Guadalupe.  Health and prosperity, most likely.

I say “old people” though I am quite aware that I am probably older than most of them.  That came home to me in the rain yesterday.  I don’t feel confident walking on these wet stones, slick with rain and soap, and so I go quite slowly, prompting everyone to pass me in the street, and even one gringo to ask me if I was OK.  Pretending not to speak English, I smiled wanly and walked on.

In truth, I wasn’t OK yesterday, having lost my faith in the Mexican weather and US democracy.  The weather was a new disappointment; the democracy, sadly not.  Still the culmination of all the atrocities of the last three years weighed down on me, and I collapsed, exhausted, after the news at 6 pm.

Today is better.  I got a lot of sleep, my headache is finally gone, the sun is out and will be for the foreseeable future.  I am having a gracious lunch at the best hotel in town, The Rosewood, a beautiful seared tuna on organic greens.  I swing wildly from eating with poor people to now this.  People in town are getting sick from food poisoning and bronchitis, but after my cold in Chiapas and last night’s sleep, I feel on top of the world.

Knock wood.

Everyone, including the Canadians, is disgusted by US politics.  And so fearful.  I know there are many people whom I do not know personally – with the possible exception of my mother and brother - who are celebrating the president’s “victory” and could well elect him again.  But I refuse to go down in fear and hopelessness.  My energy now is going into the mass movement to end runaway inequality (www.runawayinequality.org).  It is a tall order but worthy of my time and effort.  Yours, too.

But beyond my “to dos” and actions that I can and will take on, Mexico reminds me that I must keep open to dreams and visions, especially the ones that seem the most impossible.  My life already has been a testament to that, achieving things that no one thought me capable of, or possible, and surviving things that no one should have to go through.

So for me, death comes only when I can no longer dream.  I now understand that the reason I love Mexico so much is because despite conquest, corruption and cartels, the dream has not died here.  And no matter what you think of religion, or the Catholic Church, or faith, there is something much deeper and more powerful going on here than the cold exercise of reason.  And I am grateful for that, to have come home to that.

[next post, more on the Mexican dream]

Copyright 2020 Constance B. Yost. All rights reserved.

Love from Oaxaca

Blessed in Oaxaca, Mexico

January 15, 2020

updated January 19

One thing leads to another on the internet and I may have an explanation for what is happening to me here in Oaxaca, but maybe just in general, too. “Jerusalem syndrome” or in my case, “Oaxaca syndrome” or maybe “Goddess syndrome,” where suddenly people become overcome, even psychotic, while visiting foreign places of holiness and great beauty, or in the case of the Goddess, being a person in whom she sees an opening to “play and create” (in the words of Octavio Paz) with me and boy, does she ever go to town.

This could explain why I can suddenly understand more of the spoken Spanish, and as the days go by, I even am able to speak it better and better. Also, this could explain why I seemed to merge into the flow of humanity during the Saturday evening paseo around the zocalo, though I was sitting on the sidelines, and why this Zapotec necklace leaped out at me and now everyone comments on it, though only one person, an old man at a restaurant, knew the symbolism.[1] Why I stumble around and have the most fantastic time.

This is the fourth time I have visited Oaxaca, but it is really the first time I have experienced it on a deeper, personal level. That is probably due to the fact that I was with other people on the other three trips, tending to their needs and even having to play tour guide which was a complete distraction from experiencing my own feelings about the people and the place.  

Now that the air has cleared, I find that I really love it here.  I love Mexican colonial cities which is where I want to spend my time in Mexico anymore, avoiding the beach scene which I find mostly obscene and soulless, unless there is a quiet little place somewhere that someday calls to me. 

Oaxaca is much bigger than another of my favorite colonial cities, San Miguel de Allende.  Oaxaca has many more indigenous people and a more authentic Mexican feel as the norteamericanos and other tourists are far outnumbered and tend to disappear in the crowd, except for the tallest ones who tower over these short people.  

It is a life of exquisite privilege for me to be among them.  My hotel, Las Golondrinas, The Swallows, is gracious with small, basic and clean rooms clustered around the lush inner courtyard.  We have our breakfast under a roof of bougainvillea, with colorful birds darting in and out.  It is quiet and serene; the other guests do not speak loudly if they speak at all, and for that I am grateful.  I am not in the mood to chit chat so after the first courteous Buenas dias, I sit by myself and write.