Revolution of the Shameless Open Heart and Door

It will be Christmas soon. Time for a revolution. I won’t tell you what kind should happen in your own inner kitchen, inside your own bone house. I will only tell you of what happened in mine this past week.

I was in a kitchen in El Salvador, the kind with dirt floors and a wood fire and plastic chairs. *Anna and *Alberto invited us in without shame, with only smiles and grace. Neither was who I expected them to be. I had expected homeless people to be  . … less. Alberto was handsome, articulate, poetic. Anna was warm and self-possessed. They were happy to finally meet me---I am the mother of the gringa they love.

My sons, daughter and I sat in their kitchen with their 6 children, a girl and 5 boys--the exact echo of my own family. My daughter told them we had already eaten, but Anna would not invite us in without feeding us. Under a piece of tin, our feet on the dirt floor with bony dogs at our legs, she  made us tortillas, rice and beans with an egg and a glass of cola---a feast, the most and best and all that they had. 

Sons Abraham and Micah beginning their lunch.

I've known about this family for almost a year, since the flood that filled their pieced-together tin shack with muddy lake water. Alberto used to stay up at night when it rained and would fill the holes with soap, because that was all he had. He sold soap, toilet paper, whatever he could buy cheaply and peddle in a basin with a shout between the cement row houses. There are few jobs here.

Alberto and Anna's former "house"  where they lived with their six children

10 days of relentless torrents sent them  and 60 others into a shelter where my daughter  met them. After three months, she raised enough money to buy them something unthinkable---a house. A 3-room house with concrete walls and a tin roof that did not leak when it rained and that would not wash away in the next rainy season. 

Daughter Naphtali with Alejandro, proud resident of a real house

Alberto was in the army for ten years, fighting in the revolution on the side of the government because they told the soldiers if the guerrillas won they would kill their children or make them slaves to the government. He fought against his own countrymen believing he was protecting his family. 

"I saw terrible things. I slept all night next to a dead man. I saw massacres."  He shakes his head, his eyes penetrate mine. He tells us more, about jail, and an unjust prison system, how his family was alone for 6 years without him. He looks at me and does not turn away for any of his story. I do not take my eyes off him. I give him everything I can right now: I eat his food, I give him all of my ears, my body is still, listening. I want to cry but I know it is better to keep listening, even when my own heart is cracking.

The street where they erected plastic bags on bamboo for shelter.

We go down to the lake that has flooded. he shows us where his house used to be. He shows us where they lived in the street. My daughter would come and sit on their sidewalk shack made of plastic shopping bags and visit with them. 

They offer more soda, more tortillas. Over the door of their 3-room house, where nine of them live, they show us the mural and Scripture verse they asked Naphtali to paint, for all their comings and goings:

             Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace  . . . If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ.”

They have always had nothing, but this year they have a little more than nothing: they have a door this year, they have a door to a house. And that door is open to any who come and to any they can help, rich or poor.

I am moved and shaken still. Here is the revolution I hope for this Christmas, the Revolution of the Shameless Open Heart and Door:

*that we open our doors to those who knock, and those who do not yet dare to knock

*that we sit and listen to one another tell about the hardest and best things that have happened to us, without shame

*that we look at each other with open faces and unblinking eyes and do not turn away

*that we open our cupboards and serve the best of what we were keeping for ourselves

*that we use everything we've been given---our art, our words, our kitchen, our car, our money, our feet, the door to our house---for the good and joy of others                                   

If we can do one of these this season, just one, the Revolution will begin.  

Knowing you, I think it already has . . ..