My Preaching

I am in Rome for a few days for a meeting, and had a chance to have wonderful lunch in a beautiful Roman piazza with Bruce WIlliams, an old Dominican friend.

Returning to Ohio for just a few days, I look out the window as evening falls. It is Spring outside, and the daffodils are up.

For Easter, I and two Dominican friends-John Allard and Mike Fones-headed out to the Navajo Nation in the American Southwest. We helped out at mission parishes. They can always use the help, especially at Easter time. I always enjoy going out there and spending time with the Navajo.

This is a photo of Window Rock, a huge hole in an otherwise daunting sandstone wall. Enough said.

Today I am leaving Nepal. It has been a long time since I have been so sad.

Chandra, as he finally catches sight of his father's house. The pace quickened, the conversation stopped, I could feel the anticipation.

A woman in a smoky kitchen, taking a break by the door. 

She is one of three working here to make Rakshi this morning. Rakshi is the local alchoholic drink, made from distilled millet wine. In Nepali kitchens, cooking is done with a wood fire, and there is never a chimney. When something large is cooking, like a vat of rakshi, the room fills with smoke.

Two nights before we arrived in Kapilakot, Chandra's younger sister had her first child, a beautiful little girl who was still awaiting a name. 

The birth highlighted the complexity of village life. Everyone came by to visit and pay respects. It is traditional to offer the family a piece of cloth or a little money when first seeing a new baby, and many people stopped by. The mother was giving birth at home, but had a difficult pregnancy. The nearest clinic is a four hour walk, so a group of men were recruited to carry her that distance (while she was in labor). Everything worked out well, and now mother and baby were back in the village.

We finally arrive at Kapilakot-Ratmata-Marin. I am the first foreigner to ever come here, and I suspect it will be a while before another comes. In our hike we passed scores of other villages, and could have stopped at any of them. My digital camera was quite the hit, especially when I turned the screen around so that people could see themselves getting their picture taken.

Every so often in the riverbed are little thatch huts housing water powered grinding wheels. They are communal property and well maintained.

A family planting corn in their small plot of land.

In front of a small roadside cafe next to a military checkpoint somewhere in the Terai (the lowlands in the south of Nepal), the proprietor stands in front of her god-stone.

Spring has come to the Terai.

I had forgotten
how beautiful 
the forest in the spring.