Goodbye Argentina!

Here are a few farewell images from the bittersweet process of saying goodbye to Argentina. “To make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”
— T.S. Eliot

This is a difficult end for me to make. It is painful to say goodbye to Congregation San Juan Bautista and Comodoro, Argentina. I am leaving this community that has nurtured and loved me and I do not know when or if I will return. This internship experience has opened up new places inside of me that I did not even know existed. I had no idea that there was a part of me that would grow to love Patagonia. That in some crazy way – despite language barriers and misunderstandings – I would become part of this place and that it would become my place, my community. I never knew that I had within myself a space the shape and size of Patagonia, Argentina. But now as I am just beginning to learn this, I am being called 9,000 miles away – not knowing when I will be able to return. This newly discovered space inside begins to ache with loneliness the size of Patagonia, Argentina.

Although I never knew this space existed, God knew. God knew because God created me with that
Patagonia-shaped space. God created me with way more space and capacity to love and to be in
relationship with others of God’s creatures and with God’s world than I can imagine. God has created me with more capacity than I realize to connect with my neighbors, to hear their stories, to give and receive love and forgiveness, to work for justice on a global scale. God has created all of us with more capacity to be fully human – to be fully alive – than we are able to imagine.

I am grateful to Congregation San Juan Bautista — and to all my family and friends in the United States and in other parts of the world. I am grateful for all the (sometimes) mysterious ways in which we support one another’s endings and beginnings.