"K'uxa - elan?" {"How is your heart?"}

      "K'uxa - elan?" he said to me in his native Mayan tongue.
The interpreter said the shaman is asking, "How are you?"
I discovered later that "K'uxa - elan?" was more than a simple, "how ya doing?"
Translated in English it would stand out more poetically as:
     "How is your heart?"
My response should have been:
     "My heart is at peace."
Instinctively, I replied in Spanish: "Nunca mas' mejor. Estoy caminando con mi alma!" (literally, "Never better. I'm walking with my soul.") He smiled. Across the boundaries of language, in a brief encounter, I felt connected through a new interpretation of time and space.
     In our modern day culture, we seem to hunger for connections. We are so interconnected with our technology that at times, it feels as if we are more distant from each other. A simple sentence: "How is your heart?" gave me an incentive to remember a different time.
     In the southern Caribbean where I grew up, whenever my great-aunt Eunice inquired, "how am I?" she was in fact urging me to speak with my heart. This ancient Mayan expression brought me back to her loving memory. In fact she would be asking me: "I really care about you and want to know how you're doing?" She could so easily read my soul and said to me, "in time, you will receive the gift!" I loved her for her joyful spirit, never complaining, always with a smile even when life's burdens weighed her down. She had a hard life. It seemed to get harder as she grew older especially when my life took me to other places beyond our world. I can still hear her voice like the Mayan shaman asking me: "how is my heart? What is hurting your soul? Why do you walk so tired and without joy?"
     Moments like these remind us we need to pause and listen to each other. Today's technology is wonderful in bringing us together. But are we truly connected? Do we lose our human touch? How really is your heart today? Another ancient wise man, Isaiah in the Hebrew Scriptures reminds us: "Fear not ... I have called you by name; you are mine ... you are precious in my eyes and honored and I love you." (sic. Isaiah 43.)
     Perhaps in this season of Lent, we too can pause and ask: " ... so, how is your heart?"   +Don Ronaldo, Lent 2015.