March - April 2009

Once again we’ve let two months slip by without posting a chronicle. This time it’s not because there’s little to report. On the contrary, it’s because so much is happening. For example, there were many extra things during Holy Week, as if the usual round of services every day wasn’t enough. The choir in which we sing, Arpa Evangélica, gave three concerts. A couple who’d been wanting their new apartment blessed suddenly decided that Palm Sunday was the time to do it. The mother of a church member died and was buried on Good Friday. And of course we couldn’t let Easter go by without coloring eggs, even though we are without children to do it for. And all the while, this time of year, a surfeit of mangos keeps falling at all hours from the huge tree in the courtyard—bam! plop! crash! We go out and harvest them for breakfast. All this busy-ness didn’t keep Holy Week and Easter from being the high point of the past two months. The feel of this season is affected by the fact that it’s one of the main times for vacationing. Around the middle of Holy Week stores begin to close, and by Good Friday nearly everything is shut down. There is very little traffic in the usually clogged streets because much of the population has left for the beaches, and the city seems almost like a ghost town. The church’s high holy days occur in the midst of this lull, with the same surge in holiday attendance that characterizes these services in the US, but also with a sizeable portion of the regular members absent. They’re at the beach, too. This context gives the services a distinctive tone. The Palm Sunday procession is a bright dot on the otherwise neutral background of our unusually quiet neighborhood.

Arpa Evangélica begins one of our Holy Week concerts	Director Richard de la Cruz with soloists	The auditorium where we performed at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música

The house blessing starts in the kids' bedroom	Palms waiting to be blessed and carried in procession	Newly dyed Easter eggs

All glory, laud, and honor, to thee Redeemer King...	Epiphany's Spanish congregation hits the streets	Sombrillas protect from the fierce sun

From this angle, looks like Christus	From this angle, looks like Christa

Our commemoration of Jesus’ passion has been colored by the discovery of a hitherto unnoticed crucifix in one of the seminary classrooms. There’s nothing remarkable about the quality of the craftsmanship. In fact, the unusual effect of the piece is probably due to its not being a very good example of the design that it intends. In any case, from certain angles the body appears to be a woman’s. From other angles what appear to be full breasts are instead the exaggerated protrusions of a man’s ribcage. This unintentional ambiguity makes it quite different from “Christa,” a bronze sculpture of a crucified woman that created quite a furor when it was exhibited several years ago at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. Our homegrown crucifix isn’t so assertive, but insinuates in its own humble way a reminder that Christ’s death is representative of all human death.

The pre-school where April works, Ovejitas de la Epifanía, continues to enjoy growing enrollment. The number of children has outstripped the size of the staff, and searches are underway for new teachers and assistants. The logistics of field trips is now much more complicated, but they continue to be an important part of the curriculum. During March the children learned about zoo animals, and of course this called for a trip to the zoo. Unfortunately, some of the animals they had studied could not be visited without walks that were too long for little legs. They had to settle for distant glimpses of some larger beasts, but they were nevertheless impressed.

Keeping rein on the herd of ovejitas	Dominic is evidently impressed by the flamingos	They're glad the big snake is behind bars

An escapee from the monkeys' cage adds to the excitement	Sebastian rides the bumble bee in the children's play area	Ovejitas de la Epifanía at the zoo

The weekend after Easter we got to experience an important part of Dominican reality that we would normally have nothing to do with. All-inclusive resorts, where you pay a fixed fee for a total program of food and drink, recreation and entertainment, are the mainstay of the Dominican tourism industry.  And they’re an increasingly popular site for weddings. These resorts are too expensive for us, and they are not our idea of a vacation anyway, but we got to visit one for the weekend because Michael was invited to preside at a wedding in Punta Cana. It was a privilege to share this personal occasion with the very nice Canadian couple, and it was a relaxing break for us. But this brief splurge of luxury got us thinking about this type of travel. For those who come to such resorts, the only locally distinctive thing they experience is the beautiful tropical beach. They live in a self-contained world that includes very little of the local culture. The only Dominicans they meet are the service staff who speak to them in their own language. They don’t buy coconut water from the sidewalk vendor, risk the traffic, taste mofongo, see the trash problem, walk through stick baseball games played in the street, get approached by beggars or hear merengue blaring from the corner colmado. If travel is limited to this—for the Canadian couple this was not the case—how can it broaden one’s horizons?

The wedding gazebo and sumptuous grounds at the Dreams resort, Punta Cana	Michael blesses the newly married couple under the resort's wedding gazebo	Michael and April with newlyweds Craig and Lisa the day after the wedding

On the street that we usually take when we walk down to the Malecón (the walkway that runs along the edge of the Caribbean), we pass by a building that houses The Federation of Families for Peace and World Unity and The Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace. We’ve often wondered what this is all about, but when we take our Sunday walks there is little going on there. We recently discovered that the man who does most of the church’s repairs—and we’ve had a lot of them lately—is involved in these groups, and he invited us to a big event that they were sponsoring at the University of Santo Domingo. The event was entitled “One Family under God: A New Vision of Peace in the Twenty-first Century.” April couldn’t go because it conflicted with her Spanish lesson, but Michael decided to go in order to find out more. He was a bit surprised to discover that he was listed on the program as giving the invocation. He headed a list of introductory speakers, from both the government and the university, that preceded the main addresses. At the beginning they pinned a corsage on him, and at the end he was honored with a framed certificate making him an Ambassador for Peace!

Michael sitting next to the Vice-Rector of the University waiting to give the invocation	Receiving the Ambassador for Peace award

It turns out that these groups are offshoots of the Unification Church headed by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. They are the means by which this religious group, based in Korea, extends its efforts into almost every country around the world. The event was well-planned and impressive, with video and sound effects. The message was appealing—build world peace by strengthening the structures that make for peace, from the level of the family all the way up to international organizations like the UN. They were very open about the sponsorship, featuring a message from Rev. Moon’s son and a video about the Church. The video showed some of their unusual practices (like the mass marriage ceremonies that they are famous for) but did not include some of the more controversial beliefs (like Rev. Moon’s status as Messiah). Michael is waiting to see what being an Ambassador for Peace entails. How should he relate to the efforts of a new religion from Korea, attempting to inculturate its work in Latin America by inviting a gringo religious leader into its plausible-sounding program for world peace?

Fielmente,
Michael & April