Is There Still No Room in the Inn?

Debbie Blow, OP

Perhaps the best way to break open the Word with you during these traditional times of gratitude, nurturing, hoping, and waiting, is to share the following:

The Time: August 2002 – early afternoon

The Place: Managua City Dump, Nicaragua, where hundreds of children and their families struggle to survive.

Image wild cows, turkey vultures and young children all fighting for the same piece of garbage. Image the acrid smoky air, the miles and miles of decay, a searing mid-day tropical sun, and rickety old garbage-hauling trucks adding to the mounds of refuse.

Imagine the face of a young Hispanic woman, bent down in the midst of the waste and smoldering ashes﷓a modern day exile of sorts﷓a woman on the margins. Meet the dark-skinned young woman, whose name most assuredly would have Maria as part of it. Meet the woman thrust into circumstances beyond her understanding or control.

Meet the woman who cradles her precious baby as breathed its last breath, and too weak to cry, surrendered its spirit. In that precise moment, when my eyes locked with her dark, pain-filled, yet resigned, eyes, my life would be forever changed. Seemingly insignificant people can change us in an instant. Uncontrollable tears fell from my eyes, and in the tragedy of that moment, I could only utter: “Oh, my God! How can this be? What can I do?”

This “Mary” was not unlike another Mary﷓in another century﷓who could not find “room in the inn,” where she could give birth to her baby. One mother settled into a stable﷓another into a garbage dump. One mother wrapped her infant in swaddling clothes﷓the other in an old rice bag. One held and nurtured her baby while the shepherds gave honor﷓the other held and nurtured hers while the dump community gathered ’round in a moment of honor and silence. One watched her child die a violent, painful death. So did another! One child died in his thirties, and one in the first months of life. In both cases, death was redemptive for others. Both were women whose compassion was forged out of the untimely, cruel deaths of their children. I have grown to understand, in recent weeks, that the intensity of the pain and anguish of the young Hispanic mother could only be matched by another Mary, whose own child died at the “hands of inhumanity.”

Is there still no room in the inn? When will justice be birthed out of these deaths? What is the piece of truth that this most recent experience will etch on our hearts? Scripture phrases such as: “Parched, lifeless, and without water”…Ps. 63; “Be still and know that I am God”…Ps.46; “God hears the cries of the poor”… Is. and “God will lift the needy from the ash heap”…Ps.113, unexpectedly take on a whole new meaning as well as the need for a different and more passionate response.

Another truth may be the implicit challenge we find in one of Anthony Padavano’s works. He reminds us: “Nothing worthwhile in life is sudden. We wait for birth. We wait for love. We wait for life – to reveal its meaning, year-by-year, experience-by-experience. Waiting is the law of life, the measure of love.”

I watched as the mother wrapped her child in the old dirty rice bag and walked slowly to a remote section of the dump where the infant was be laid to rest. It has taken me weeks and hours of prayer and reflection to be able to write about this life-altering experience.

I believe that this young mother’s life, the death of her child, and the “eucharistic” gathering of the dump community, all transcend time and space. We, too, know her story, in some aspect:

· Relationships, choices, suffering, loss

· Emptiness, grief, anger, despair

· Compassion, healing, forgiveness, integrity

· Hope, Wisdom, Wholeness, life!

Aren’t these pieces of our own stories﷓indeed, of the human story? Can we not all resonate with these descriptive aspects of humanity?

The invitation for me is to listen attentively to God’s Word and to somehow become that Word in both the good and bad times of our lives: a word of compassion or of challenge, a word of life or of hope. The wisdom experiences of life cannot be planned or controlled. We must move through them. I have frequently found my prayer centering around the events of that day, praying that my voice would tell her story, and thus, honor the memory of her and her child.

Gloria Ulterino tells us “giving birth leaves its mark. We are never the same again. And we learn soon enough that this precious new life does not belong to us.” Somehow, the young Hispanic woman knew this truth all too well. I believe that she was a just and wise woman. She speaks not a word, but her eyes, her arms, her heart, and her actions reveal the mission of this woman.

From the margins of Managua, this Madre is commissioned as a wisdom woman. Possibly it is worth remembering that the personified wisdom of our Scriptures emerged out of heart-wrenching loss. She took a prophetic stance, crying out for justice at the city gates. Indeed, she is a “reflection of eternal light… a breath of the power of God”. (Wis.)

I cannot help but think that the young Madre of Managua is a wisdom woman for our day. The prophets tell us that God is to be found in the cries of the poor. Is it not true that as we celebrate the seasons of gratitude and waiting, of hoping and birthing, that we celebrate a God who became vulnerable for us, taking on the weakness of human flesh?

There is a beautiful Christmas card, with the words of Sister of St. Joseph Mary Southard, which reads in part: “Give us the mind and heart of Mary that we too may bear Christ to the world.” The question for each of us is how? How do we bear Christ in today’s world?

Perhaps there is a hint of the answer in wisdom woman’s message, in the madre of Managua’s loss, in the birthing of Jesus again in our hearts.

What is wisdom woman’s message in this human tragedy? What is her prayer for humanity? As in Proverbs, we are called to “walk in the way of insight.” “She knows and understands all things, and she will guide (us) wisely in (our) actions and guard (us) with her glory.” (Ws. 9) She asks many questions of us:

· What can we be doing during these Thanksgiving/Advent/Christmas times?

· How can we be nurturing, grateful?

· How can we be about the business of healing and connecting with all of creation?

· What makes us willing to open our hearts during the “giving” season? What is the gift of life that we can give humanity?

· How can we help insure that there will be “room in the inn”?

Each one of us must seek to live out the answers to these questions. And while we walk this journey﷓while we live and hope, we must be reminded that we still wait “somewhere between Promise and Fulfillment.”

When will there be room in the Inn?

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