A few years ago, when I started to work at Centro Emmanuel, my first impression was marked by the fact of entering the place riding my bike.
Only 500 meters of unpaved road separates that farm from the rest of Colonia Valdense. For me, that simple stretch is still a preview of the dreams and hopes that the Centro Emmanuel has treasured in sixty years of work. For that trip one only needs to unfold the senses, take a deep breath, savour the sloping path and ride uphill up to reach the peak. Walking that path is better than any presentation video, because it summarizes in only one experience the dreams of the Centro Emmanuel, cradled by an ecumenical spirituality, rooted and aware of its harmony with the Creation.
The History
The Centro Emmanuel was created by Yvonne van Berchem's initiative as an ecumenical place for retreats and biblical-theological formation. Yvonne and her husband Emmanuel Galland were Swiss, they were raised in the Reformed tradition and their ecumenical commitment took them to South America.
Thus, when Yvonne conceives the emergence of the Centro Emmanuel, she thinks about the importance of the formation of lay people and the cultivation of a spirituality similar to the European experiences of Grandchamp and Taizé.
When the years passed by, the needs of the churches that were part of the Centro Emmanuel were getting it closer to the popular education and the popular reading of the Bible until the 80's, when people began to think about social-environmental justice. This is the way in which the Centro Emmanuel came to be what it is now: a retreat and an agroecology and ecotheology formation center, an agroecological farm that establishes ties with other farmers. It is a place that looks for fairer ways of production, a place that tries to bring the ecotheology closer to the churches and that cultivates a spirituality connected with the Earth.
Nowadays, the Centro Emmanuel is formed by representatives of the Methodist Church, the Waldensian Church and the Evangelical Church of the Río de la Plata; but the activities are opened to everybody. The only condition is to fulfil the commitment we have called "a culture of life-care".
A Network, A Ball of Yarn
Agroecology and ecotheology are two fields that can generate much more horizontal, democratic and cooperative networks. That is why it is difficult to number the activities in which the Centro Emmanuel is involved every day. It is difficult to do it for an institution that has tried to create ties at many different levels with the civil society and with the churches.
"The Center is like a network, like a ball of yarn." Carolina told me some weeks ago. Like any ball of yarn, the Centro Emmanuel seems to be something simple and compact; a construction on a hill, water conservation system, some crops, a chapel and twenty milk cows. Simple--like a ball of yarn.
But when that ball of yarn is unwound, it can connect with other yarns and generate unexpected ties that can enrich our fiber and that can hold and help others. Initiatives like accompanying small family producers, working with other organizations to raise awareness, involving young people and adolescents so that they feel owners of a theological reflection centered on the defense of life, of a spirituality linked to Creation, organizing workshops and seminars to train lay people with academic strength are small knots that make the Centro Emmanuel not an isolated ball of yarn, but part of a large network.
A Seedbed
I am sitting gazing at the sunset. Next to me, Gabriela, Federico and Raquel are doing the last-minute preparations for a workshop they will have the next day. Their objective is to train people to receive guided tours which are intended to inform and make visitors aware of the importance of the socio-environmental issues.
And that makes me think of the breaking news: the terrifying impression of the fire in the Amazon rain-forest, the story of close families who experience in their own bodies the aftermath of agrochemicals, the call of social organizations that question the setup of new industries by a river that is at risk of collapse.
"The Centro Emmanuel is like a seedbed," says Gabriela metaphorically, taking into account her own experience. She continues: "because many things grow here. This place is so powerful that many projects, ideas, dreams are grown. Here they can sprout and grow."
I write that idea down so I can develop it someday. I like to think about this place. This is a place where one can be warm and protected, a place of hospitality where dreams can germinate and grow. Perhaps tomorrow these sprouts will pass to other soils, to beautify other gardens, to be exchanged with other seeds or to be savored in other kitchens. We don't raise dreams to serve them only at our own table.
One Path
The sun has already left these lands to light up other soils of this same latitude. Maybe now some brother in Australia or New Caledonia is experiencing some form of gratitude for the same rising sun that I have just seen setting in the horizon.
I have to go back to my bicycle to return home, to do my little daily pilgrimage. As my bicycle wheels spin, the world is spinning at a pace that has been given by God. These are the cycles of life, those that sometimes the human being forces violently to make them fit in with profit cycles.
Some years ago, Marcelo and Nicolás created a brief video in which they presented the Centro Emmanuel's work. In their documentary the testimonies of people who have been involved in the Centro are alternated with images of hands harvesting tomatoes, bare feet walking through the grass, a wheel's movement in a bicycle workshop. They are not the perfect hands, or feet, or bicycles that would be displayed in the advertisements we are used to seeing on TV. But they are the tools we have at the Centro Emmanuel to open humble paths.
We will not do it with the modern machinery that the world offers to produce more and more. We will not do it with the hands and feet that model the products that everyone wants to buy. With our tools, with our gestures, we dream and maintain the hope of a world and a renewed humanity. That is our hope: weak, humble, human. A hope that also travels by bicycle.
Hope is a letter we write,
to our children and our children's children.
Hope is a tree we plant,
a path that you open with your hands
and others reach the sea."
("Let's go!"
Guido Bello and Pablo Sosa. 1988)
