Celebrating Spring with Hugs

 Beautiful "glisinias" (wisterias) in the church patio, heralding the arrival of spring!

Last Friday, September 21^st, was the first day of spring here in Argentina, and I had the unique opportunity to celebrate spring’s arrival with the elementary school in Jose León Suárez, the neighborhood that many of the members of the Santo Sacramento congregation come from.  Alejandra, a friend from the church who works at the school, invited me to share lunch with the staff and then partake in the springtime festivities afterward.  In the principal’s office, I helped prepare little bags of candy while listening to a mix of spring-themed songs.  The bags of candy served as prizes for the games that then took place outside.  In the midst of the somewhat chaotic blur of music, yelling children, candy, and air-borne balls, I got a few curious questions from the kids about who I was and even a few hugs.  I was baffled by their capacity for affection toward me after only having known me for a few moments.  One of the students I recognized from Santo Sacramento, and she too gave me a hug and asked me if I was going to church on Sunday, and she said she’d see me there. 

Later, while reading “Gracias: A Latin American Journal,” a book by the Dutch priest Henri Nouwen, I was reminded of the children’s affection.  Nouwen visited several orphanages in Bolivia in the 1980s, and after visiting one of them, he recorded the following thoughts:

“How little do we really know the power of physical touch.  These boys and girls only wanted one thing: to be touched, hugged, stroked, and caressed.  Probably most adults have the same needs but no longer have the innocence and un-self-consciousness to express them.  Sometimes I see humanity as a sea of people starving for affection, tenderness, care, love, acceptance, forgiveness and gentleness.  Everyone seems to cry “Please love me.”  The cry becomes louder and the response so inaudible that people kill each other and themselves in despair.  The little orphans tell more than they know.  If we don’t love one another, we kill one another.  There’s no middle road”  (Nouwen, 1983, p. 44). 

Wow.  That passage is so powerful and personal for me.  Everyone wants to be loved, and everyone wants to be hugged, including me.  I too crave physical touch, perhaps even more so now that I am on my own in a foreign country.  And I have observed how powerful physical touch can be in my interactions with the children at Santo Sacramento and the individuals at El Arca.  Many of the people I interact with here hunger for affection more than I do because they have experienced neglect or rejection in some way.  By demonstrating my love for them, I hope to quench to some degree their thirst, and in return I have received much love as well.  It has been especially important for me to receive this gift being so far away from my home, family, friends and everything familiar.  And as my dear friend Becki has reminded me, when we love each other, give to each other etc., we also love and give to God.    

El Arca as an organization seems to agree with Nouwen about the power of physical touch.  Of course, it’s no surprise that Nouwen and El Arca should align philosophically considering that Nouwen spent the last ten years of his life (1986-1996) living in an El Arca community in Toronto, Canada.

On Wednesday, the El Arca workshop walked around the neighborhood to offer free hugs, bearing a poster with the El Arca logo.  We stopped passers by to ask them if they would like a free hug and then handed them a candy and a souvenir from the workshop.  A few people were reluctant to play along, but most gladly accepted their free hugs.  One woman even said, “thank you, I need a hug!”

There is also a dark side to Nouwen’s reflection about humanity’s need for love.  The penultimate sentence “If we don’t love one another, we kill one another” suggests that all violence has roots in the absence of love.  Have the most violent crimes been desperate cries from those who seek acceptance, belonging, and love?  In this complex world, nothing can be over-simplified, but I think Nouwen is on the right track, especially in light of what I have learned about the lives of juvenile “delinquents” in Argentine “villas.”  With no educational or professional opportunities available to them, young people in the poorest neighborhoods resort to selling drugs and stealing in order to survive.  These young people, in addition to experiencing poverty, often also experience some form of neglect or violence in their families of origin, and on top of that, they are discriminated against by the larger society. 

Many of them end up in prison, like the youth in “Instituto Almafuerte,” which I recently learned about by watching a documentary at a local museum.  http://www.escribiendocine.com/peliculas/el-almafuerte  The documentary tells the story of a film workshop for the young men in this maximum-security detention center.  During the discussion after the documentary, one of the women in the audience commented that the benefits of the workshop demonstrated that when people feel respected, appreciated, and loved, the best of their humanity comes out.  Oppression, neglect, and rejection, on the other hand, bring out the worst in people.  It’s simple. 

I think the whole world should get together for a group hug.  It would be a small step toward achieving world peace.  :-)

And now (Monty Python style) for something completely different!

Noelia and Maxi with their super-cool sunglasses in the El Arca workshop:

Cookies with a Lisa twist- based on a Betty Crocker chocolate chip cookie recipe but with pieces of apple instead of chocolate chips, with whole wheat flour and with a banana added.  Yum!