Drop by Drop

Placido, Aquilina and Bertrudice in front of the municipality building in Cualac.


Sunday morning at 8am I headed out to find out what President Roland from the neighboring municipality would contribute to the next dry latrine project in Chiaucingo.
I stopped at Aquilina and Placido's house first. They were planning to go along with me. Aquilina wasn't there. She had left and hour earlier to get the mayor to write up another request for help with the dry latrine materials and wasn't back yet. I waited. Finally she came back. She had all the papers she needed and now there were a total of 54 families requesting dry latrines! (The count was around 25 earlier in the week.)
We picked up Bertrudice, another committee member, and headed on to see the President.
I don't remember all the things we talked about in the car, but I had a good time.
We had to wait over an hour to see the President. I'm continually amazed at how patient people are here. When I started to get impatient, they reminded me that everything happens in it's own time.
Finally we met with Pres. Rolando. He decided to donate 100 bags of cement to the project, but we'd have to come back on Wednesday to pick them up. I tried to say thank you and not sound disappointed ....we need 324 bags of cement along with lots of other materials, but it was something. Aquilina could see that I was worried about how to transport the cement and comment about this to Rolando, who immediately offered one of his dump trucks. So three people from the group will go on Wednesday to help load and unload the cement. We said our niceties and headed home.
On the way home, at about 11am, we started talking about how little Rolando is donating to the project, sharing our disappointment but also trying to celebrate the success of getting something. I said something about how each drop of water together makes the ocean and everyone agreed.

Later in the evening when I was talking to my mom, she mentioned something she had heard in church that morning at around 11am. The pastor said something about how each drop of water together makes a flood. But each drop of water doesn't necessarily know it's part of the flood. (Isn't that what you said, mom?)

And soon after that I read the intro to Rilke's Book of Hours - Love Poems to God that Merideth lent me the other day.
From page 10
"be modest now, like a thing,
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you." (II,I)

and the author went on to write,
"it helped me...to put into perspective my own doubt about what I was doing and how my friends and colleagues might judge it. Reading these words, it was a relief to see myself just as one bit of God's creation, no more exalted than a branch, a stone or a DROP OF WATER. Rilke's sense of a God who could reach for me in my barest simplicity - in my most "real" and "ripened" self - pleased me.

And it pleases me too. Thanks too every(one) "drop" that was and is and will be a part of this story.