Ready For Jesus

Ready For Jesus

The missionary is only 20.

He's telling us that the people in Honduras have nothing---

he describes a family of seven

who live in a mud hut

with a dirt floor and a doorway

with no door so the animals wander in

and out.

They are ready for Jesus...

he says,

Their existence is painful,

so they're

looking for some meaning.

He tells us that they are the other race

in Honduras,

not the Latinos.

Hundreds of years ago,

a slave ship wrecked

off the coast,

they washed ashore

and never left, kept their language,

their culture,

stayed separate.

In my high school geography text,

a map demonstrated

the movements of the tectonic plates,

how the continents had once fit together as a single

mass called Pangaea.

I wonder if the Honduran coast

would match up

against the original home beach

of these people like

if it weren't for time, this

transplantation

would have been nothing

more than

a hike across the grassland.

The young man's eyes are wild

as he tells us he's broken

off his plans for Law school to do this.

I pick up my notebook,

and am about to write something

about how pain comes in going

from one thing to another

too suddenly,

being jolted even

half-a-foot

by a car from behind;

or smooth skin made in an instant,

two bleeding halves

by a blade:

the abrupt imposition

of a foreign object

disrupting the order..., when he

asks for money.

The woman across the aisle from me

begins to dig in her purse

for the piece of Jesus she will

send.