On a hot Friday afternoon I straggled into the Lindsay Public Library to look for a few movies to check out for the weekend. I’ve already borrowed some of the flicks on their “new releases” shelf, and some of the juicier, older ones in their drawers, so it seemed unlikely I’d find something tantalizing enough to override the heat.
But there it was: a DVD called “All of Me,”* with a Mexican
peasant woman on the cover, smiling and holding out something as a train passed
by. With only a few moments before
closing, I handed it to the librarian, who added it to my stack of books on
hold. I left wondering what all I had in
this bag of delectable offerings.
The title, of course, had set up my
brain for singing the song “All of Me” for the rest of the night. My favorite version is Willie Nelson’s, but
I’ve had that song in my head since I was little, probably from hearing Frank
Sinatra sing it in the 1950’s. “All of
me,” the singer pleads, “why not take all of me? Can’t you see I’m no good without you….” My feet mentally do a little soft-shoe dance
as I mouth the words in my mind.
But the words’ meaning in this
magnificent, true film is really about giving all of oneself rather than hoping
to be wholly received. It is a
documentary, beautifully produced, about some women in a southern Mexican
village who call themselves “Las Patronas.”
What they do with their lives, and have been doing since 1995, is
prepare food and water for the people (mostly men) riding the train (as
hitchhikers) to the North.
Day or night, each train that passes
through their village is met by a crew of women with boxes full of sack lunches
in plastic bags and bottles of water tied together like bolos, which are flung
into the outstretched hands of men dangling between cars of the moving
trains. Life-saving provisions pass to
the high-speed hands of strangers on the fly from the outstretched hands of home-bound
strangers who, unlike most of us, recognize that we are all One.
And those handing off the bags of
food and bottles of water have spent all day cooking the food from raw rice,
dried beans, cold tortillas and dried chilis that must be ground by mortar and
pestle, supplemented when possible with canned tuna and bottled vegetable oil. The
food is then packaged and assembled into something approximating a balanced
meal, and bagged for air-born delivery. The water is dipped from the village’s
well and poured into used, rinsed-out plastic drink bottles scavenged from the
cafeteria of the nearby factory.
The village is poor by most American
standards. It, like so many villages in
Mexico, has been drained of a fair share of its men by the hoped-for
availability of work in the North.
Mostly it’s the women and children left behind who have undertaken this
project, seeing the need. “We share what
we can of God’s abundance to us,” they say, not stopping work to talk.
My mind was blown away by the enormous
effort and the real dangers faced by these women. But what I loved most was their simple
recognition and acceptance of being in service to God. When Jesus said “be like little children,” he
didn’t mean we should use the earth as our playground well into adulthood. He meant this unpretentious, 100% self-giving
as adults, serving the needs of the broader community beyond self.
All of me in service to all of
Us. It’s a powerful witness.
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* Spanish language video with English subtitles, published and cataloged as "Llevate mis amores All of Me".
Trudy Wischemann is a tentative giver who writes. You can send her your 100% stories c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.
Trudy Wischemann is a tentative giver who writes. You can send her your 100% stories c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.
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