Please receive a very warm and friendly Christmas greeting from Josiah and Katherine in Guatemala. We continue to do very well and feel blessed everyday to be here sharing with the people of Guatemala who have received us with open arms for the past 16 months. We want to thank so many of you for your thoughtful messages and greetings. Please know that you are all in our daily thoughts, and it won't be long before we arrive back in the States for our 6 months of diocesan work. We hope you enjoy this update/reflection.

Guatemala -

As elections close in upon the people of Guatemala much of my reading and reflection recently has been around one key question related to the substance of representative democracy in Guatemala. Given one of the highest ownership and income disparities in the world, with an estimated 2% of the population owning 72% of agricultural land, and over 80% of the population living in poverty, how is it possible to claim democratic authenticity?[1] Taking the root significance of the word "democracy" how is it possible to argue that the majority of people in Guatemala (demos) exercise power in decision-making (craters) politically, socially, economically, and culturally?

Throughout the past month we have been present in two confrontations between the 2% elite and the 80% poor, between two powerful plantation owners and nearby communities. Both plantation owners come from some of the most influential families in Guatemala, one family owning a large portion of the coffee production, the other owning much of the dairy sector. Both landowners have plantations nearby three new Maya communities who in the past three years have, through the San Lucas Parish Land Development Project, abandoned their previous subsistence life on the plantation and received their own land. As the San Lucas Parish has traditionally provided legal representation for Maya communities, we were invited to intervene in the confrontations, which concerned the environmental impacts of the three new communities on the production capacities of the plantations. Citing problems with the waste and noise pollution, and the exorbitant water use of the new communities as negatively affecting the profit of the plantations, both owners threatened legal sanctions and lawsuits against the communities - and both exercise sufficient political power to do so.

This situation, in which the very small percentage of landed elite control and manipulate the political apparatus, constitutes the most serious threat to authentic development in Guatemala and renders the idea of true democracy illusory. It is a reality of historically imbalanced relationships between the rich elite and the poor majority, with roots in the oligarchic structure of power in the country and the amorphous relationship between what constitutes the Guatemalan elite and the Guatemalan government. What is required is a dramatic re-distribution power, a leveling of the playing field so that communities can exercise their right to exist - their right to drink the water. For if it is agreed that true democratic participation and power comes from economic participation and equity, in turn emanating from control over society's resources, wealth and culture, then there is little justification for the claim of democracy in Guatemala.

Maya Theology -

Enumerated since Vatican II, a movement within the Catholic Church has stressed the principle of inculturation, understood as the "...adaptation of [the] universal church to national and local cultures and awareness of the presence of God in other religions," as a guiding principle of its evangelization. This principle is justified in the dignity of all human persons chosen as sons and daughters of God, and the resultant spirituality that is and has been commonly shared between all human nature throughout history. Having ample literature provided documenting the most basically natural human commonality to seek the transcendental experience, this small reflection appreciates the perspectives of the Maya theology and its contributions to modern spiritual thought.

Encompassing all of existence, Maya theology is a spirituality that binds all living things, promoting equal and harmonious relationships. Rather than anthropocentric - centered on human experience - Maya spirituality is cosmocentric, in which one interrelated and harmonic relationship is intimately connected to the order of the universe - the whole of creation. The construction and ordering of Creation, patterns of fourfold markings, cycles of time, duality, mathematical principles, plants, animals, and humans - all emanate from the same origin. Using a metaphorical example which Fr. Greg Schaffer frequently employs, Maya spirituality can be illustrated by viewing a spider's web; all of existence tied together by connectedness, and held together along the exterior - God.

The precepts of the Maya theology are enumerated in the Popul Vuh, considered to be the greatest literary histories of indigenous American peoples and societies, compiled by a Spanish priest in the Guatemalan Highlands confronted by post-conquest persecutions of indigenous customs and knowledge. Upon reading the creation story it is explained that, after being created, the first humans realized that they saw everything under the sky perfectly, that they felt gratitude and gave "double thanks, triple thanks" that they had been formed, had been given mouths, faces, that they could speak, listen wonder, move and know that which is far and near, that which is great and small.[2] Quite beautifully, the first nature and purpose of the creation was to glorify the creator, to give thanks. In further describing the creation the narrators of the Popol Vuh continue: "They were truly gifted people. They were reverent; they were givers of praise, givers of respect, lifting their faces to the sky when they made requests for their daughters and sons." We are grateful to be living and learning from this beautiful culture, the Maya of Guatemala.

Thank you all for your continued support and encouragement. We look forward to seeing you all very soon.

In Faith,

Josiah and Katherine Mooney