What would the world be like if we all pulled together?

What would the future look like if all of our cities and towns used the global pandemic as a chance to pull together? How would the world change if we truly understood that we’ll all succeed, or we’ll all fail?

The community of Bijagua, Costa Rica, is showing us part of the answer. Its families have spent decades building an ecotourism industry that protects rainforest and wildlife in a critical biological corridor. Their latest effort, a new fundraising campaign, seeks to help those families keep food on their tables during the worst crisis Costa Rica’s tourism industry has ever faced. And it’s pursuing that goal with a relentless fairness, making sure each community member has a chance to chip in with whatever skills or resources they’ve got.

“The thing is, this crisis is like a river,” rural tourism entrepreneur Donald Varela told me a few months back. “Everyone in this town is standing on one side of it. And if we’re going to get to the other side, we’re going to have to cross that river together.”

As an old friend of Donald’s and his family’s, and in my role as an impromptu emergency fundraiser during the pandemic, I’d been proposing that Donald get some support for his extraordinary rainforest conservation project, Tapir Valley. His response, in effect, was: “Not without my whole community.” As president of the Río Celeste Chamber of Tourism (CATURI), he wanted to make sure that any emergency fundraising in Bijagua was shared equally, across the board.

This was, of course, the right approach. But given the intense strain every single rural entrepreneur has been under in Costa Rica since the total suspension of its tourism industry in March, I find that kind of solidarity rather breathtaking. “Solidario” is an essential adjective in Costa Rica, and one without an exact English translation; maybe there’s a reason for that. At any rate, it’s the adjective that describes every aspect of the campaign that the community launched this past week through the U.S. nonprofit Amigos of Costa Rica: Río Celeste Forest Stewards.

CATURI’s board and affiliates worked carefully for months to come up with a campaign that would benefit as many community members as possible. You might be familiar with the concept of payments for environmental services, where, for example, landowners who protect forest are paid by the acre. CATURI sought to do something similar in terms of rewarding local families for forest conservation, but without excluding anyone – without leaving anyone behind on the side of that river.

Large landowners receive the same amount as a family protecting a few acres of forest. That family receives the same support as a naturalist guide who’s helping monitor species (and essential activity to help sound early alarms on poaching or logging). If you don’t own any forest, and can’t do species monitoring, you can receive support for working to create a tribute to conservation at the heart of town. They’ve made sure there’s something for everyone.

To provide all this urgently needed support, they’re asking for U.S. tax-deductible donations on the Amigos of Costa Rica site. This support will keep a town afloat. It will send them a message that their hard work and sacrifices – their choice to protect their forests rather than turning a profit through logging, hunting or development – have been worth it. And it will help them continue to protect their ecosystems until the rest of us can visit them in person to enjoy them once more.

Throughout this terrible year, we’ve witnessed terrible acts of selfishness, recklessness, hatred, and divison. If we’re lucky, we have witnessed extraordinary acts of selflessness and teamwork. To me, the Río Celeste community’s approach to emergency fundraising is right at the top of that list. Despite each family’s individual suffering, they’ve kept their eye on the big picture. They’ve remembered that they must all cross this river together. That’s not just smart, and right, and realistic. It’s also the foundation for a whole new world, don’t you think?

I hope you’ll check out what they’re up to, here. Not just because they need and deserve our help – but also because the rest of us need and deserve this kind of inspiration.

What would the future look like if we all pulled together like Bijagua?

Let’s find out.

I run the virtual volunteer community Costa Rica Corps and am the co-founder of the new, bilingual media organization El Colectivo 506. I also work as a freelance grantwriter, fundraiser, and communications coach, and write essays, articles and books. I live in San José with my husband and daughter. Sign up at top right to receive an essay in your inbox each Sunday morning: a chance to dominguear together (a lovely word that literally means, “to Sunday,” and describes a leisurely trip or ramble). We’ll explore a project, changemaker, community, or idea I’ve come across, or just watch the world go by. See you next Sunday!

‘The gift that is our lives must be let out’

I think I have written more about my father in recent years than about my mother. This is partly because, with his upbringing in Guatemala, his love of Central America, Spanish, and Costa Rica have played such a big part in my own adult life. It is also partly because his death in 2018 left a huge void in our family that all of us – led by my mother with grace, courage and humor – are still figuring out our way around.

The last reason is that my mother’s voice is so much a part of my own, in my head, that it sometimes goes unnoticed. When I say something my dad might have said, I generally ask the room, “You know what Grandpa would have said?” When I say something my mother might say, it usually just comes out of my mouth. For some three-generational bonding during the pandemic, she and I read “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” together to my seven-year-old, alternating paragraphs. It reminded me once again how much I sound like her, how many of my verbal tics, little asides I make in passing, and, yes, my potty humor comes from the person who read me my nightly stories for so many years.

What an honor to have your code written in this way by a woman who, for example, delivered the invocation before President Obama strode onto a Portland stage, as pictured here. (My mother was a teacher for many years, before becoming an Episcopal priest.) What an honor to wake up at the age of 37, eyes opened by the election of forthright misogyny to the presidency, and discover that an overlooked feminism was poured right into your bones long ago by a mother who didn’t talk about it much, but just blazed the trail and Did the Thing. Poured into my bones, as well, by the flat-out awe in my father’s voice whenever he described his wife’s strength and talent.

She was my first and best writing teacher. She still is. Her own writing – or, perhaps more to the point, her own thinking – never ceases to amaze me. That is to say, it’s always quite extraordinary when this voice you think is practically your own comes out with a perspective that is startling in its depth and freshness, reminding you how much you have to learn. I am already getting glimpses of what it is like when your child plays this same trick on you. Someone who lives within your same rhythms and patterns – someone who, in this case, learned to speak from you – drops wisdom to which you are not privy. When our closest relatives school us and stun us, it’s like a door suddenly opening within your own house, exposing a space beyond that you didn’t build, didn’t paint, didn’t even know was there.

This past Sunday, I attended “Zoom church” and listened to my mother preach a sermon; she has retired, but will sometimes step up to the plate when asked. She talked about a passage (Matthew 16: 21-28) in which Jesus tells his disciples about the fate that awaits him, and Peter is none too happy about it, arguing that the flock needs a strong leader and can’t afford to lose Jesus.

My mother offered up her own take on leadership and, well, the meaning of life. I can’t help but share some of it. Here are my excerpts, with her permission:

What about us? How do we fit into this narrative? Do we, like Peter and his friends, yearn for invincible leaders who will shelter us from some of the horror around us, or at least help us get rid of uncertainty and settle us on the right track? Some of the pablum dished out in current speeches is, I think, designed to do just that, to make us feel good.  To forget the hard stuff. To get us over the hump. So things can be more or less normal again, or maybe even better than whatever “normal” used to be.

But then Jesus said, “What will it profit you if you gain the whole world but forfeit, that is, give up, your lives?” Basically what that means is, to trade your life in for what you gain.

Gain the whole world? What do we gain? What do I gain? I was thinking about that last week. I looked around my house. I checked out my domain, my possessions, all that I have accumulated, all that I’ve managed to gain, and collect into my world. Good Lord! There’s the house I own, yay for me! Chairs, bureaus, desks, books and more books, pictures, rugs, tubs of old journals and letters, my two beloved dogs, dishes, tables, beds, on and on and on. Things I’ve acquired, things handed down through the years from one attic to another until here it all is! All here in my very own house. I live in a museum, I said to myself. What do I actually need? Have I forfeited my life for all of this? A trade-off?

And then there’s the rest of my gain: my achievements, the jobs I’ve had over the years, my status and various job titles, my privilege, my life! It’s all mine! I own it all!

Or do I?

Jesus’ orientation was not about self-preservation and hoarding. Jesus’ orientation, Jesus’ focus, was outward bound…. Right away Jesus let Peter know that Peter’s focus was all wrong. Peter, you see, like so many of us, myself included, was trying to savor what he had, his gain, and leave it at that. There was equivalency between his gain and his life.

…The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor, Episcopal priest and author, has written about this possession-obsession, how even our very life is a gift, a gift to be savored but not owned and hoarded as if it’s a baby bird we’ve found so we rescue it and put it into a nice clean shoebox and store it away to be safe on a closet shelf. I’ve been thinking about that little bird and how it needs to be nurtured, but I also know that in time it must be released to fly away, or it will end up with nothing to show for its life but a pile of very still feathers.

The gift that is our lives must be let out, too, released and given away, shared. Such life-sharing is happening all over our country – people taking risks large and small, to speak up and to help one another. I suspect that each of us in church today can look at our gallery Zoom screens and see people there who have already found a way to let loose into the world at least a portion of their life.

[Here my mother paused, smiling at the Zoom screen full of faces: faces of people who sat at their computers just a few blocks away from her, faces of people tuning in from far away. People who have donated and volunteered and surely done all sorts of things, big and small, to help others during this time. She seemed to look each of us in the eye. “Take a look!” she urged us again. And we did. I still am.]

And that is Good News indeed!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What’s hard and what’s easy

The other day, as I left the supermarket and lugged my groceries to the car, I passed by a bookstore. The sign outside said: “Let’s take care of each other! In compliance with the regulations from our Health Minister, the use of a mask is required inside.”

A question suddenly popped up in my mind. Why is it that my home country, the United States, seems to be so good at some very hard things, but bad at some easy things? And Costa Rica seems to have trouble with hard things, but is good at easy things?

What I mean is: Making a rule that you have to wear a mask in a shop. Going to the supermarket without shooting someone or breaking someone’s arm. Taking a few minutes here and there to doctors and scientists in the middle of a pandemic. Making a rule that all people need to get health care, and no one should die in the street because they don’t have a terrific job. These things seem pretty basic, and Costa Rica makes them look easy. The United States makes them look hard. Very, hard. And these aren’t the only examples.

Building infrastructure that, in some parts of the country, looks like something out of “The Jetsons”? Now, that sounds very challenging to me. USA: handled. Costa Rica: juuuust a bit tougher. My home country has managed some incredible feats in its history, from putting humans on the moon, to winning world wars, to writing a Constitution that became world-renowned for its brilliance. Certainly, Costa Rica has done amazing things, too, but I guess what I’m saying is that I can’t think of a challenge facing this small country that seems easy to me. Fixing its despairingly tangled city traffic; addressing its drastic inequalities; staying safe amid the relentless flow of drugs from South to North America; these are real head-scratchers, don’t you think?

Maybe the problem is that my definition of “easy” and “hard” is all wrong. Maybe what we’re seeing in these two countries – both afflicted by serious problems, but with very different governmental and popular reactions – is that the basic things in life, the things that seem easy, actually rely on a set of simple values. When members of a society are fairly aligned in terms of what matters, those “easy” things fall into place. When they disagree about the basics, what should be easy becomes unbelievably complex.

Even when all that’s asked of us is to admit that, say, black lives matter, too.

Even when all that’s asked of us, to save a life, is to put on a mask.

I’m a writer in San José, Costa Rica, on a year-long quest to share daily posts on inspiring people, places and ideas from my adopted home as a kind of tonic during a rough time in the world. Sign up (top right of this page) to receive a little dose of inspiration every weekday in your mailbox; tell a friend; check out past posts; learn how to join my Overwhelmed Writers’ League, every Saturday at 1 pm EST; and please connect with me on Instagram or FacebookTo learn more about how to support Costa Rica during the crisis, visit my COVID-19 section – or for ways to enjoy Costa Rica from afar, visit Virtual Costa Rica.

The city awaits

In case you were worried, I went to check for you: Barrio Escalante is still here.

The eastern San José neighborhood that constitutes Costa Rica’s hipster capital is quieter and very masked than usual (I can’t resist giving Saúl some product placement here, because – well, who can resist a masked zebra?). But man, it feels good to stretch your legs on those sidewalks. It feels good to buy something, ever so carefully, thinking to yourself, “We’re OUT in the WORLD!” In my case, it was a pastry at Franco and a bar of Sibú Chocolate and a few books at the Librería Francesa, which looks out onto an empty, closed-off Parque Francia. I cast plenty of wistful gazes at the mostly-empty restaurants.

The small businesses of Escalante, like others around the country, are hanging in there and waiting for us. Whenever we can get there. They hope it’s soon.

I’m lucky to have been able to work from home – so, so lucky – but boy, have I missed chepeando, that perfect word that describes the experience of being out and about in San José. It’s a troubled city, but with so many hidden marvels, all of them best experienced on foot.

I hope we’re never separated from it for quite this long again.

I’m a writer in San José, Costa Rica, on a year-long quest to share daily posts on inspiring people, places and ideas from my adopted home as a kind of tonic during a rough time in the world. Sign up (top right of this page) to receive a little dose of inspiration every weekday in your mailbox; tell a friend; check out past posts; learn how to join my Overwhelmed Writers’ League, every Saturday at 1 pm EST; and please connect with me on Instagram or FacebookTo learn more about how to support Costa Rica during the crisis, visit my COVID-19 section – or for ways to enjoy Costa Rica from afar, visit Virtual Costa Rica.

Open the ocean

I love sharing music on Fridays, when I can. Here’s a recent recording from Costa Rica that’s emblematic of our times.

“Open the Ocean,” released this week by Earthstrong, pleads with the Costa Rican government to fully open the country’s beaches. Whether or not you agree with the lyrics, the song – like so much of the art being created now – will be an interesting reminder, in the years to come, about what 2020 was really like.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend.

How to put on pants

Happy news: I’m proud to be launching a short-term interview project today. From here through December, I’ll be asking the same five questions (some in phone interviews, some through an online survey) of people from all walks of life who want to share their experience of this global crisis. I’ll then be shaping their answers into short first-person narratives and sharing them on Medium.

In this, the first installment, I turned the questions on myself. Please check it out; share it; follow the Five Questions magazine on Medium, or on Instagram @fivequestions2020:

View at Medium.com

 

You can also follow the project on Instagram @fivequestions2020, and, of course, please tell me about people you think I should interview! The project is partially funded by the Costa Rican Ministry of Culture and Youth. Thanks to their support, I’ve been contacting community leaders to identify women leaders to interview about their experiences in the San José neighborhoods that have been hardest hit by the virus and the economic crisis. I’ll be sharing their pieces in both English and Spanish over the coming months.

Thanks to the Culture Ministry and to all those who are joining in as readers or interviewees!

I’m a writer in San José, Costa Rica, on a year-long quest to share daily posts on inspiring people, places and ideas from my adopted home as a kind of tonic during a rough time in the world. Sign up (top right of this page) to receive a little dose of inspiration every weekday in your mailbox; tell a friend; check out past posts; learn how to join my Overwhelmed Writers’ League, every Saturday at 1 pm EST; and please connect with me on Instagram or FacebookTo learn more about how to support Costa Rica during the crisis, visit my COVID-19 section – or for ways to enjoy Costa Rica from afar, visit Virtual Costa Rica.

Costa Rican scientists rule!

Today’s Boost is what yesterday’s should have been, had another piece not distracted me:

COSTA RICA’S SCIENTISTS ARE AMAZEBALLS.

I’m sorry, that’s not particularly professional. But can you believe this? Scientists from the University of Costa Rica-affiliated Clodomiro Picado Institute (read more about the institute here) have found a way to use purified serums made from horse plasma in the treatment of COVID-19. Tests carried out at George Mason University in the U.S. confirmed that two different versions of the serum prevents the virus from infecting cells as effectively. The serum could improve Costa Rica’s results with hospitalized patients, and the Clodomiro Picado Instistute is ramping up production as it enters critical trials.

Costa Rica has having much tougher times with COVID-19 than it was just a month ago, but there are still so many reasons to be hopeful and proud. Let’s hear it for the world’s nerd heroes, and for governments that respect and support them! Here’s one of the scientists in charge, Gabriela Solano Blanco. (This image and the featured image are from UCR online posts sharing the news.)

I’m a writer in San José, Costa Rica, on a year-long quest to share daily posts on inspiring people, places and ideas from my adopted home as a kind of tonic during a rough time in the world. Sign up (top right of this page) to receive a little dose of inspiration every weekday in your mailbox; tell a friend; check out past posts; learn how to join my Overwhelmed Writers’ League, every Saturday at 1 pm EST; and please connect with me on Instagram or FacebookTo learn more about how to support Costa Rica during the crisis, visit my COVID-19 section – or for ways to enjoy Costa Rica from afar, visit Virtual Costa Rica.

We’re back, baby. Almost

Usually, a video about airport protocols doesn’t fall into the “deeply inspiring” category for me. But today, it does.

Costa Rica is getting ready to welcome tourists back, little by little, thus providing at least some kind of lifeline to the many families who have been struggling without any income for months.

Here’s how they’re planning on doing it. Stay tuned and fingers crossed.

When the going gets tough, the tough ride horses

I have zero verification that this photo is real or, if so, that it is actually from Costa Rica, but it’s so funny that I don’t care. The text, written as Costa Rica experiences strict vehicle circulation limits because of its spiking COVID-19 cases, reads: “No vehicular restriction. She decided to be part of the solution, not part of hte problem.”

That’s all. Because how can you follow that? See you tomorrow.

I’m a writer in San José, Costa Rica, on a year-long quest to share daily posts on inspiring people, places and ideas from my adopted home as a kind of tonic during a rough time in the world. Sign up (top right of this page) to receive a little dose of inspiration every weekday in your mailbox; tell a friend; check out past posts; learn how to join my Overwhelmed Writers’ League, every Saturday at 1 pm EST; and please connect with me on Instagram or Facebook! To learn more about how to support Costa Rica during the crisis, visit my COVID-19 section – or for ways to enjoy Costa Rica from afar, visit Virtual Costa Rica.

Good luck, don Gustavo

I generally write my Boosts with you in mind, not Cabinet ministers, but this week I’d like to send all the energy I can to Costa Rica’s new Minister of Tourism, Gustavo Segura Sancho.

It’s quite something to take charge of an industry when it’s having its worse year in history. I honestly can’t think of any time when I’ve seen a public servant sworn in with such an immediate need to provide results – in this case, to families who have lost their income completely because of the suspension of tourism, and for whom existing government subsidies are not gonna cut it. Those families need practical, quick action, decisive leadership, and creativity.

Costa Rica’s public health situation worsened significantly this week, and its economic challenges are just as massive. It’s a lot of pressure. I send my sincere good wishes to the new Minister. I hope he knows that while there are many eyes on him, that also means there are many, many people all over the country and world, who are wishing him every success.

I’m a writer in San José, Costa Rica, on a year-long quest to share daily posts on inspiring people, places and ideas from my adopted home as a kind of tonic during a rough time in the world. Sign up (top right of this page) to receive a little dose of inspiration every weekday in your mailbox; tell a friend; check out past posts; and please connect with me on Instagram or FacebookIf you want to learn more about how to support Costa Rica during the crisis, visit my COVID-19 section – or for ways to enjoy Costa Rica from afar, visit Virtual Costa Rica.