Today I thank God for vivid dreams that re-enchant my life with resonances to the mythological narrative that has been unfolding in my soul all along.
"Thanks," he says. "What is this made out of?"
I jump up and walk along beside him to tell him the story of chuño. We walk outside of the Candler building and into the yard of the farm where I was born.
"After the potato harvest in the cold months of the altiplano," I tell him, "they pick out all the potatoes that won't sell at the market—if they have bad spots, say, or they are too small—and then they spread them out on the bare ground and let them freeze overnight."
He gestures to the old metal swing set by the chicken coop and suggests we sit down to swing and eat our chuño there.
I don't make it to the part about how the hot altiplano sun cuts through the icy potatoes each morning, and they stomp on them in their bare feet for several days in a row until they get all the moisture out. I become distracted, because I have never tasted chuño so delicious. It is salty, meaty and dense, but it melts in my mouth.
Instead I explain to him the magical properties of chuño. "It's worth eating this right now, even though we are full, because it's like this compact morsel of energy and nutrition. It absorbs all these vitamins and minerals from the dirt as they stomp it. It's as good as eating a peice of steak, and it fills you with all this energy and inspiration."
"Yes, I think I can feel it!" he says. Then he asks me if I've read any Reinhold Niebuhr. He always has some theologian to recommend. He pontificates for awhile on the relevance of Niebuhr's work to our lives, but I am not listening. I am looking over at the black walnut tree by the sandbox and remembering how we used to climb it as children.
When my attention returns, he has finished his discourse and I have nothing to say but, "Yeah, I should read some Niebuhr." I could argue with this person who makes my heart speed up about how sharing the substance of chuño, which connects us to each other and to the feet that stomped it and the earth that enriched it, is a more profound revelation of God's truth in this moment than thousands of years of theological tradition. When we share chuño, we are prophets. But maybe I'll save that argument for waking life.
"We should probably go catch the North DeKalb bus," he says, and hops off his swing.
"Yes, let's go," I agree, and try to stuff my remaining chuño back into the jar. Whenever I take it out, it seems to expand exponentially, like the loaves and fishes multiplying to feed the five thousand. Chuño works its own miracles.
But I do get it back in, and then follow after the person who makes my heart speed up, across the barnyard of my childhood to the shuttle bus stop of Emory University.
When I wake up, I am grateful for longing. I remember my deep longing for Bolivia, where I found a new home for my soul. And I remember this song:
"Don't say that you've forgotten the land where you were born
They say you're returning / You will return / As the river flows to the lake
They say you're returning / You will return / When the chuño blooms"
