Friday, May 08, 2015

Costa Rica Missions Project - The God in Me Sees the God in You


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Duke Chapel Scholar Lindsey Huth (far left) shares her experience of traveling to Costa Rica on a Duke Chapel Spring Break Trip. This Spring Lindsey coled a house course titled, "How We Do Mission: Sustainable,  Informed, Relational Service Abroad." Read her reflections in poetry form below.

May 8, 2015

The God in me sees the God in you

This life is a tilt-a-whirl 
We find a seat that looks relatively clean, sit down with people we are comfortable enough with, and begin spinning 
Spinning in our own private circle

As we spin the ride moves up and down 
Other people’s circles spin to our front and back
Never getting any closer 
Or further 
Just spinning

We see splotches of color, hands moving in rounds, blurred faces
Words get tangled in wind over a space too loud for more than small talk 
Too small to share a comfortable apathy 
We spin 

Spinning is safety 
It’s a reassuring incoherence 
It’s never knowing too much or asking the wrong questions 
It’s a substitute for meaningful interaction

The plane landed and we found ourselves in a place that felt different 
And somehow familiar 
The air was a little thicker
The sun shone a little brighter
Time moved a little slower
Their world didn’t spin like ours 

Beneath deep green palm fronds 
Over reddish brown dirt 
In the heat of a Costa Rican spring morning 
Our tilt-a-whirl broke down 
And for the first time we saw each other

No longer were we blurred faces but beautiful stories
As our tongues tripped over phrases breaking language left and right we somehow managed to finally speak to one another  
I’d never touched you before but somehow your palms fit perfectly in my hands every time we prayed together 
And we did more than pray together 

 

We began to understand together 
We sang together to open windows in an off yellow bus 
And I heard the culture in their voices 
They found home in a place they’d never seen before

As our shoes filled with mud from construction site trenches 
We finally found our mouths full of meaningful conversation
It tasted sweet and unfamiliar like the crunch of sugar cane atop untrained teeth
Impossible to take in all at once, yet it still left me wanting more

More of this place I’d never seen before
More of this food I never liked before
More of these people I never knew before 
More of this feeling I’d never felt before 
What is it about this place that I’d never known before?

Something about people changed here
It was like looking into the ocean and seeing the sky 
Or is it, looking into the sky you and seeing the ocean?
He spoke English better than I spoke Spanish, but sometimes our words still found themselves bouncing off one another
He told me his testimony and as we read the bible together in two different languages I quit seeing in double vision and was caught by a unity that for so long was unbeknownst to me 
I was the sky looking into the ocean
I didn’t see myself I saw him 
But I didn’t see him
I saw myself
The God in me
Saw the God in him 
And the God in us see’s the God in you
But don’t be afraid 
I assure you, you’re more than beautiful 

The tilt-a-whirl begins again with the start of a plane engine
Buckle your seatbelts
Read the safety instructions 
And begin  spinning at your own pace
We expect you to be at full speed by the time we reach the states
Adios, gracias, mucho gusto 

I hold the image of God in my mind as the spinning begins
Please don’t let us lose this
Dios 
nunca nos olvidemos 
de que encontrar uno en el otro
Dios es amor
Nosotros son amor

By Lindsey Huth, Duke Chapel PathWays Scholar, Trinity '15

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