by Lyda Pierce
I get lost a lot, which turns out to be a wonderful way discover new places and to meet interesting people. Sometimes I get lost on purpose.
It's an activity others might call exploring.
When I lived in Nicaragua in the 1980s and early 1990s and would get lost, the common response to my request for directions was allí no más -- "over there a little ways." It was usually accompanied by a finger pointing down the road, or if the person's hands were full of tomatoes or children, pointing was accomplished with pursed lips stuck out in the direction of my destination.
I remember many times when the person would offer to accompany me to ensure I got there. So I'd have company as I walked on down the path, the road, the neighborhood street. It made the journey more interesting, whether I got where I was going or not.
Living in Nicaragua during years of war, there were many days when my Nicaraguan sisters didn't know where they were going. In many ways women were taking the lead in forging a new society. They had come a long ways, the revolution had meant a new sense of self-importance, as both Nicaraguans and as women. Before much of the revolutionary decade had passed, poor women who had been used to shuffling by and always treating the wealthy and foreigners with subservience, were now proud. By the mid to late 1980s, the women lifted their heads and looked you in the
eye as they bragged about how their lives had changed. It was a time of growth.
It was also a difficult time. The war meant standing in line for eggs and milk, but they were rationed so all shared the hardship equally. The war meant too many children left their mothers’ sides to go to the mountains to fight. And too many never returned.
Walking with our Nicaraguan sisters, we weren't always sure where we were going, but we had each other. The journey was more interesting, more bearable because we had each other.
And I'm convinced that we had God, Emmanuel, accompanying us. I can find no other source for the irrepressible hope that kept us going. God, Emmanuel, the Spirit present with us, expressed herself through the sisterhood that made the journey bearable.
In the waning months of the 1990s, the struggles of Nicaraguan women are different. There is no war, no U.S.-sponsored troops invading the country. Yet the challenges are just as deadly: a crushing foreign debt, a globalizing world economy that has made poor women even poorer, a national political culture mired in corruption.
Many Nicaraguan women in the countryside and in urban barrios are part of the great mass of marginalized poor, of those excluded from national and regional economic development, among those who are seen as non-persons by the world's powerful.
If the prominent theological question in Latin America in the 1980s had to do with where and how God acted in relation to the politically repressed, there is a new question as we enter a new millennium, a question that begs:
"Who and where is God with those at the margins of society who are not important to anyone, who have become excess population, who are left outside of development?"
If we'd asked the same question 2,000 years ago, we could have answered it by looking at the face of a poor, young, unwed mother on her way to Bethlehem at the far edge of a mighty empire. God walked with her, accompanying her even if she wasn't sure where she was going.
Look at the faces of the women on these pages and you'll see there the face of María, of Mary. These are women at the margins of Nicaraguan society who are struggling to survive in a hostile world. With the help of two Nicaraguan organizations that receive funding from the Women's Division, they have some small hope that they can find a niche to survive economically, that their crops may prosper, that their small businesses may make enough to pay for eggs for their children. The organizations encourage sisterhood, not as a silly romantic notion but as agricultural cooperatives or women-controlled village loan funds. Because of these programs, the women are accompanied. They aren't alone.
They live at the poor margins of a poor country, but they accompany each other on their journey. And the organizations that work with them are there as well, pointing the way along the road, walking with them as they wrestle with issues from self-esteem to organic gardening.
As you look at their faces, know that you are present with them, not just through the dollars you send to the Women's Division, but also through the common spirit that binds you to them as women. They are not alone. You are with them. God is with them.
The relationship is not one way. What do they mean to you? How can they accompany you? What does their story, their struggle, have to say to your life and your lifestyle? Your political choices? Your supermarket list?
You are not alone. They are present in your life. God is with you. Emmanuel. God is with us.
If we look under the star that shines so brightly over the end of our Advent wait, we find our sisters, God with us, waiting for us to come and know the God-child born among us.
Lyda Pierce is a missionary of the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries serving in Honduras.