Guatemala, Dad and God

When you wake up early or even late and you have this thought in your head, some idea, well you really need to get it down. Get it down on paper, or as we do in today's world, capture it in some form of electronic media.

I woke up thinking about my being here in Guatemala, my dad and God. Yes all these thoughts they are all connected. My dad was good man and a man of God. I was born the son of a Presbyterian minister. My dad was truly, in all senses of the word a man of God. His humanity was intact in that he had doubts. It is in those doubts he had, that I hold him in great awe.

I did not then, nor now share his religious beliefs. What my dad and I did/do share is that connection to something far greater than man alone can be. The existence of God within.

Many faiths introduce their children to their beliefs at an early age. The children are conditioned to believe in something that they have no capacity to understand decide or otherwise. 

This is conditioning. 

They grow up as adults believing what they where told to believe and do so without question. They have been conditioned to believe.

But have they traveled down that road of  uncertainty? 
Have they questioned what has been told to them?
Have they come to their own conclusions? 

The rote system of learning has conditioned them not to do this, not to question. The have been indoctrinated.

My personal experience of God is that God is within me. 
To get to this personal conclusion I struggled.
I went through doubts. 
I questioned.
I challenged.
I disbelieved.


My belief in God is recent. 
It is also beautiful, pure and free of other thoughts. 

I feel a connection to God. 
I need no church or edifice to worship or connect with God. 
I need no priest or minister to be that middle person.

My father shared this great connection as well. 
He also had his doubts, his period of disbelief.
It was within his journey that he needed to share this experience with others. He did what he believed in and became what he was, a teacher in the ministry of God. He was really good in what he did.


I came to Guatemala to learn a language and that is ongoing. What happened on my journey, my quest, was that I found my heart. What I also found was a greater connection. A greater connection to God. 

I would like to share a short personal story to illustrate what I mean.


In 1997, when I was still placing paint to canvas I had this uncontrollable urge to paint some pyramid shape with small box like structures in the foreground. I could not get it out of my mind. 

So as I always did, I built a frame and over it I stretched a canvas. 

I had this painting table I had built. I am tall and like to paint a canvas standing up where the canvas lays semi flat. I prefer it that way as I liked lots of washes and I could could control the flows easily.

I sized the canvas with a mix of white paint and glue. If you paint you know this makes the canvas tight, just like a drum. It also gives you something to paint against. Otherwise bare canvas will suck your paint away, lines undefined blotched irregular.


I had made some sketches of this shape that I wanted to produce. 

My usual condition when painting something new was that I would stare at a canvas waiting for something to happen. It was like a sculpture waiting to be released from the stone.

This time this was very different. 
This time the shape had captivated my being, my very existence. 

I had made some sketches to follow, but used none of them. It was like something else was in control, something greater was placing the paint to canvas. The whole thing was completed so very quickly. It was finished without changes. 

When I finished it I felt relieved and I put it somewhere and forgot about it entirely.

**********

In 2010 on my first visit to Guatemala I thought I was coming to learn a language. Guatemala being the least expensive and easiest place to learn Spanish all I needed to do was find the right location and the right school. I chose Quetzaltenango or Xela (Shay-la) because of its elevation (2330 metres) and because it was that cradle of culture. That focus on learning and a large population of indigenous people where all factors I felt I somehow needed and where important.


I remember sitting in a bar within Pasaje Enrique, enjoying a cervesa and reviewing some of the pictures I had taken on my tiny point and shoot digital camera. 

I remember one that made me say "what's that?" 

I remember moving the frames backward to see it again. 

The image startled me beyond reason. 

There captured in the tiny frame was something totally impossible. There captured was my picture, the one I had painted some 13 years before.

I remember saying out-loud to myself feelings the shivers running down my spine, "this can't be." I was visible shocked.


When I painted that picture back in 1979, I had absolutely no knowledge of Guatemala, except it was some place on a map.

I had never seen any picture of the Volcan Santa Maria before.

Yet there it was on my camera and there is was somewhere in Canada as a painting I had done some 13 years before. 

This was truly impossible. 
Yet now it was very real and yes very possible.
It happened.

So what does this all mean? 
Well whatever your conclusions are, I believe that I was meant to come here. I believe that the seed was sown within me back in 1997. It was a hint from something greater. My connection to God was now becoming very real. It was scary.


What I do here in Guatemala is help people. I do not belong to any organized group to do that. I have several projects on many different levels and that seems to be expanding.

I prefer to find the people that I feel need assistance in some other way. Something far greater than I am is guiding me.

I was meant to come here to do this. Not to save souls but something far greater.

Now I know. 
God is within me and so is my dad.