I call them miracle pairs — the universe’s warp and woof, the very hand of the great weaver, suddenly revealed when disparate things fit together like puzzle pieces.
You think of someone, and a minute later, they call or text. You’re about to say something, and your spouse or friend says it first. Someone asks you how to change a battery in a key fob, and a video pops up in your feed. If I knew anything about Carl Jung, I would try to wedge it into the Jungian concept of the law of pairs. With me, it’s more of a one-two tap on the shoulder from Jesus, just to get my attention. It’s not that God sets things up this way. It’s that creation unfolds this way, at least for me.
This week, my calendar twinned with the headlines. Three meetings I’ve had scheduled for some time, and the news of the day. Since Saturday morning’s raid in Caracas, the Trump regime has made it clear it has an agenda when it comes to the people of Venezuela, Cuba, and Colombia. It turns out that I did, too.
First thing Monday, at our annual Mimi’s gabfest, the Rev. Juan Jimenez, vicar of St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in Anaheim, shared invaluable insights about the fragility of the Cuban government. When we’re not having breakfast, we’re exchanging reading tips. He keeps track of his native land mainly through European news sources. He likes to say he’s lived under four dictators: Batista, Castro, Franco (during his years in Spain as a young Benedictine priest), and Trump. Even if we manage to destabilize the Havana regime, as Trump and Rubio brag about essaying, Juan does not believe the Cuban people will want to swap one dictator from his list for another.
Then it was on to lunch with the bishop-elect of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, the Rev. Dr. Antonio Gallardo. His moving essay describing his mixed feelings about the Maduro raid is the talk of The Episcopal Church, shared thousands times on Facebook and featured by the Episcopal New Service. While Antonio is glad that the people of his native Venezuela, including his mother and other family members, are free of a cruel dictator, he worries about the means we have used and the future we have wrought.
Antonio noticed that Trump has said nothing about the Venezuelan people’s rights to political self-determination. “The image that comes to mind given the U.S. military operations,” he wrote, “is the image of a powerful bully who at the school cafeteria decides to grab the food of the kid whom they know can’t defend themselves.”
My friend Yadira Perdomo knows all about bullies. In 2009, when she was 16, bullies pushed her out of a third-story window at school in her native Bogota, crushing her back. A series of painful surgeries has not crushed her spirit. the Rev. Otto Vasquez, rector of Todos Los Santos Episcopal Church in Highland Park, introduced me to Yadira and her family in 2017. She came to see me this afternoon with her trilingual sister, Hannah, who translates for her (though Yadira’s English is excellent) and is helping set up a nonprofit to support her ministry.
She loves talking to audiences in the U.S. and Colombia about faith, forgiveness, and resilience. Yadira has come to think of bullies as victims, too. During and after her talks, audience members sometimes reveal their most painful secrets. She has learned that people who act cruelly have themselves usually been treated that way. She has met with her chief victimizer from 2009, now well into his career. He hasn’t apologized yet. But she believes at all things are possible for them who are in Christ Jesus.
Last summer, the pain nearly got the better of her. She was rushed to UCLA, where doctors have been caring for her for years, with terrifying heart attack symptoms. Faith and resilience clicked in again, plus some pain management therapies.
Physical therapy has also been a godsend. For the first time in the eight years I’ve known her, with a little help from Hannah, she stood up in my office. Her heart is so strong. All she ever asks for are prayers and ideas about where she might offer her testimony. If you’re interested in meeting or hosting her, let Missy Morain or me know. If Yadira can stand tall in these terrifying days of bullies and victims, so can we.