CHRONICLES OF THE NORTHWEST II

About the Author

Fr. Alberto Reyes is a Catholic priest assigned to a seminary and group of parishes near Camagüey, Cuba.

 This is what I want to teach children, that difficulties cannot be bargained with. That we either beat them or they beat us.  And not only do we have to face our problems, but problems are overcome easier if we face them together.

September 8
            The Feast of Our Lady of Charity is the most important day of September for all Cubans.  This Feast is celebrated everywhere in Cuba. However, there are places and then there are places.
            The parish at Esmeralda, in that sense, is all glamour: mass is celebrated in the courtyard, seating is ample, decorations are exuberant, and although there are many people in attendance who do not regularly come to church, Mass is celebrated in an atmosphere of silence, prayer and respect. You come away feeling happy, serene, connected to the mystery of the Virgin Mother.
            The surrounding small towns are a little different, where all the neural structures responsible for the adaptive capacity of the human being are put to the test. Beyond the adequacy of the place where you will be celebrating Mass, you have to deal with unforeseen events.  For example, lively children in their natural habitat who, in the middle of the outdoor celebration, suddenly interrupt you with bright and happy eyes, and point to the sky, "Look, a hawk, a hawk!!!", and you smile, you stop, you look at the hawk that is freely soaring high in the sky, undocumented and happy, as you imagine yourself with a shotgun, shooting the hawk and then telling the children, with the same gentle smile: "Let’s refocus our attention on our Lady of Charity."
            Sometimes the children are overly polite, and once the celebration has started, they make the rounds around the congregation greeting and kissing all present, while I wonder: "What part of 'we kiss later, now sit down' have you not understood? Or the very generous children who arrive with loose change for the collection basket and whose auditory system is equally immune to: "Not now, at the end."
            But the calamities of the galaxy are not always due to children. Sometimes, after finally manage to focus the attention of the little ones, and you can almost talk about how beautiful it is to be the children of our Lady of Charity, you hear the voice of a neighbor who says, vehemently, "Beleeeeeeeeeeeén, the goats are eating your flowers!!!!!!", and you see Belen run out, stick in hand, to go defend her garden. And I stop again, until Belen returns, smiling and satisfied, and says, "Go on father." And I go on until a flock of baby chicks appears, and everyone begins: "Shhhh, shhhh, bug, bug, out...". And I stop, and then I continue, holding back so as not to kick the cat that has now started to play with my shoelaces and whose game is clearly more appealing to children than my message about love, charity and peaceful coexistence!!! Much later, I arrive at the church and stand in front of the image of Our Lady of Charity and say: "Mother, I did what I could, the rest is all up to you".

Start of the Course
            After September 8th, the relaunch of the pastoral year begins. Everything in the parish that had paused by the arrival of summer and, in this particular year by the arrival of summer and the corona virus, is resumed.
            Baptisms begin once again, which always brings that affective ambivalence between the joy of seeing parents asking for a Christian identity for their children, and the anguish of having to say publicly: "Lierkis, Edianler, Yexon..., I baptize you...". With all due respect, how can a child with such a name be happy?
And why has the family named their cat "Alberto" and their son "Yurislandy"? And why do people insist on dressing children in this hot tropical country in beautiful winter clothes that would make them feel super comfortable in Alaska, but here cause them dehydration and anguish? And why do I have to explain to a mother that it's fine to remove the child from her breast during baptism, in case I christen the breast and not the child?  But well, I guess this is all part of pastoral life.

The Children
            No matter if the children are wild, lovers of hawks, or named Yaniurkys, working with them is beautiful and rewarding. It is working with those who have yet to be prepared for life and teaching them to be good and, above all, to face problems.
           Children should be taught at levels they can relate to.  I've thought about teaching children by telling stories that are engaging to them, starting with a story we’ll call “Bugs”. It’s the story of ants that lived under the rule of grasshoppers. I figure that if I get them to relate the problems they face to the ants and the grasshoppers, they'll understand.
            The story goes that the ants had to serve the grasshoppers and collect food for them.  Not only was the work exhausting but the ants always lived in fear, terrified at the thought that they would not have enough time to collect the required food and that this would provoke the wrath of the grasshoppers, or that they would not be able to collect what they themselves needed to survive.
            But in reality, the grasshoppers had other food sources. There's a passage in the story where one of the grasshoppers asks:
"And why do we have to go back to the ants when we have more than enough food for the whole winter?"
     The grasshopper boss scolded him:
-"There once was an ant that had the nerve to stand up to me."
-"Yes, but we can forget about it, it was just one ant."
To which the boss, angrily, replied:
-"If we let one ant stand up to us, they could all do the same. These ants, even though they are scrawny, they outnumber us.  If they realize it, our way of life will end. It's not a matter of the food; it's all about keeping those ants at bay!"
And it was true, one ant had begun to ask, "Why do we have to submit to grasshoppers, how long are we going to live like this, why don't we stand up to them at once?"
            That ant had challenged the grasshoppers but had achieved nothing because the other ants were afraid and not one supported her. What's more, everyone criticized her, told her that nothing could be done, that it was not a good idea to stand up to the grasshoppers.  They denigrated her, humiliated her and left her alone because they were afraid.  But, in reality, they all wanted to be free too.
            In the story, this ant didn't give up.  She kept asking for help and finally convinced the others that they had to fight. And they fought, and even prepared a plan to beat the grasshoppers. But the plan failed them. When everything seemed lost they realized that, plan or no plan, their strength arose from the unity created in fighting together. And together they beat the grasshoppers.
           This is what I want to teach children, that difficulties cannot be bargained with. That we either beat them or they beat us.  And not only do we have to face our problems, but problems are overcome easier if we face them together.
            I can't teach this lesson to the children with lectures. Children would have a hard time understanding, for example, the story of the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller, who fought against the Nazis and who was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps, and who wrote:
            "First they came for the Socialists, and I didn't say anything, because I wasn't a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't say anything, because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't say anything, because I wasn't Jewish.
Then they came for me, but there was no one left who could speak for me."