CPTnet
January 10, 2003
COLOMBIA REFLECTION: Upon the palms of my hands

by a CPTer, name withheld

[Note: The following is an excerpt from a longer biblical reflection.
People wishing to see the entire piece made send their requests to
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"Upon the palms of my hands I have written your name" Isaiah 49:16

The man in the river that day was only the first. By the end of the month,
there were six people dead and one disappeared. Two lived in the
communities we accompany on the Opon river. The others just died there. I
got used to scanning the river for chulos (vultures) and corpses.

The first man lacked a face. The chulos had eaten it. We thought, at
first, that he was a community member who had disappeared not long before.
His family came out to try to identify him but were unable to recognize him.
It's awful what floating in water for several days does to a human body.
Later tests in the city proved the corpse was not him.

A teammate told me they never found out who he was and have buried him in
the public cemetery.

I want to visit his grave. I want to tell him I'm sorry for what happened
to him, for the way he died . I have read that human beings, like other
animals, have a mechanism that kicks in during trauma and shuts down the
part of your brain that registers pain. I hope that happened to him in the
moments before he died.

I want him to know that I didn't think the smell was too terrible. I want
to tell him that the way his body floated on the current was graceful and
gentle and that I wasn't horrified or repulsed by him.

"Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
When you pass through the waters I will be with you;
And when you pass through the rivers,
They will not sweep over you." Isaiah 43: 1-2

We lit seven candles for the six dead and one disappeared man on the day we
found the last body. I made name cards for the lost men and on the one for
the man without a face I wrote, hombre desconocido. Unknown man.

He floated in the river and now is buried in the earth and none of us ever
knew his name. But he is not lost. Not forgotten. His eyes were once wide
and bright on the day he was born. Someone once held his hand as he learned
to walk. He grew into adulthood and someone kissed him. Someone loved him.
And right now, someone is missing him.

And even when his body is bloated and waterlogged, when his skin is gray or
just gone and his bones shattered, I see the Christ stepping into the water
with him, wrapping his arms around what's left of his broken body and saying
"This one is mine." He is claimed, his name etched on the palms of God's
hands.