Saturday, March 5, 2011

Nostalgia

I will bow and be simple,
I will bow and be free,
I will bow and be humble,
Yea, bow like the willow tree.

I will bow, this is the token,
I will wear the easy yoke,
I will bow and will be broken,
Yea, I'll fall upon the rock.

This hymn recently came back to me. I learned it while I was staying with the Quakers. Sometimes in the evening after we had finished our chores for the day, we would retire to "the chapel," which was really a big room on the second story of the barn with high windows and lots of books and musical instruments, and we would read or sing together. One night I pulled out my little pocket-sized hymnal, and Joanna pulled out a few of their own hymn books and we shared our favorites. This one is simple (fittingly) and it fills me with all sorts of nostalgia.

Speaking of nostalgia, I also came across this trailer recently and was immediately swept away, back into the high sand mountains of the Atacama, back into the never-ending gray-brown, back to Arica and to the comfortable lulling rhythms of the Spanish language. I still miss it sometimes.