Costa, Sierra y Selva

Walking back from a solitary lunch today, I fell deep into a state of introspection. The polished concrete pavement of the plaza glared up at me accusingly, and the groupings of people about the place on polished concrete benches seemed perplexed by my existence. Then, a little girl in a marshmallow blouse and navy skirt jumped nervously into my view like a little bird. She was crying Mamá! Mamá! ecstatically and her mother, several yards ahead, was pulling that mysterious invisible line that connects children to their mothers.  The little girl bouncing along and laughing distracted me from myself and a warm, swelling feeling inside announced the presence of joy and the goodness of the Creator. All was well.

Joy, it seems, is the appreciation of who God is and what He has done. And the difficulty of joy is this very same thing, appreciating God with thanksgiving when the heart clamors after the Baals of this age. This is how I can explain the dissatisfaction that gnaws at the heart of the wealthiest of men, and why our deepest cravings in our quiet, most honest moments are so at odds with the outward signs of prosperity and the self-realization the World calls happiness. The absence of true joy can never be filled by the offerings of Mammon.

Surveying the roaring reach of a magnificent waterfall, or an evening sun being liquefied by a hungry tide, the presence of God is so close that humanity has no choice but to listen to His song. A well-known atheist once said that Beethoven’s 5th symphony proved to his heart the existence of God, despite the efforts of his elegant philosophies to drown out the overpowering message. In these moments, it is as if the grandeur of God is so bright that it distracts us from ourselves long enough to give us a peek into eternity and glory. We are thrown on our backs and must either cower or rejoice.

But what about the still, small voice of God? What when the waterfall ceases to crash so magnificently or the sun to set so beautifully?

Last night I was sitting in an old movie theater in a very small town about an hour outside of Trujillo. The orchestra was playing a true criollo festival, complete with walzes and marineras and tonderos. You may wonder whether it is appropriate to write about Beethoven and popular band tunes in the same post. But there is a connection here, I believe. The sensation the atheist felt at hearing Beethoven’s symphony brought him, momentarily at least and perhaps in a very small way, to his knees. It is also probably, judging by his ultimate rejection, that his power to experience joy at hearing the symphony might even have proved food for the demon Pride in him. I myself certainly did not expect what I was to find in Casa Grande. In the dimly lit theater with the stains on the walls and the straight-backed, waxed wooden benches, I turned to look at the audience. This is what I saw:

Farmers and farmers’ sons, their wives, sisters and daughters, too. Men in their best suits, unkempt children still in their school uniforms, ladies with hair and sweaters neatly arranged. These were people from the provincias of La Libertad, the hearty, untamed and lively. Here they all were, gathered to hear the visiting orchestra from the City. I did not have to interview a one to ask how they felt. It was on the wrinkled, leathery faces of the men and on the made-up faces of the women. It was in the toothless grinning of a little boy and in the tapping toe of an elderly woman. It was in the boisterous standing ovations. It was  exuberant, unrestrained joy!

In one of my favorite books, The Wind in the Willows, the carolers sing Joy shall be yours in the morning! It shall be, every morning in the light of the rising Sun.