Beautiful Medellín

Transcript

I was thinking about the first time I went to Medellin, a beautiful Medellin. What a city.

Sometimes its like you walk outside the front door, I was staying in the hill and walk up to the street and look out over the city with mountains all around surrounding the city, in this valley. Its like you’re looking into a painting.

It looks like a painting when you look into the scenery. I had a great time there with wonderful people, people are very hospitable and kind for the most part.

You have to watch out but people were extroardinarily kind.

I remember one day I went down town. I wanted to buy some sage to smudge my room a bit.

I got off at San Antonio station with the overhead train of the metro. I’m walking down the steps and I look around me and see this big plaza with so many people.

And I think wow, maybe there’s some beautiful women I can talk to in this plaza. Its Columbia after all.

I walk down and I notice a lot of the people in the plaza, they aren’t beautiful women. A lot are homeless people, people with severe maladies. I walked along the side of the plaza and say this man with boils and strange bumps all over his body.

I was so alarmed, entered in this state of cultural shock, I didn’t know what to think.

Later, much later I reflected on this experience. I had to see that to really understand Medellin.

I had to notice staying in el poblado thinking everything was fine in this nice part of the city where tourists come and drink in cafes and go to nightclubs and everything like that.

What about the rest of it? What’s goin on in the rest of the world? If I had my blinders on I would have never went down town to see what it was like or having seen it I could have denied having seen it.

Or I could have said Medellin is just brutal, the humanity of it is heart breaking.

In some form it is, that’s the reality of the situation.

Despite all that or perhaps because of it in some way I still love Medellin.

I love that city, its an amazing city.

Now of course, I’m just speaking literally here.

This is a parable.

Sometimes people say “how can you think there is a god with so much suffering in the world?”

I’m sure that a lot of you have heard that argument or question and here’s the thing.

Just like with Medellin, we don’t understand the universe’s purposes. We don’t have the big picture, we don’t really know what’s going on.

That’s why people say things like “God works in mysterious ways” because we have to do our best to try and figure out a plot of land and what’s going on there.

Now as I said, despite the suffering, brutality and humanity of the situation I love Medellin.

It’s the same with the world.

I would say you can’t really love something until you see the brutality.

When you see the dark side, maybe the side we try to shy away from, that is when you really know the meaning of love, of heart.

My friend Luis said, I don’t know who he quoted, said “Your heart must be broken many times before it breaks open.”

Who among us has the courage to love completely even when our hearts have been broken so many times?

Who would take that leap?

Who would move that deeply into beauty?

That’s all I have to say, thank you for listening and thank you for doing your best to love even when its difficult, even when it’s strange, even maybe when it’s senseless.