Several folks have asked whether Sydney and I will be sharing experiences from our sabbatical with you in sermons, and the answer is, yes, of course. This morning I invite you to consider an episode from one of the books we read, Caramba!, by Nina Marie Mart nez. The book is a wacky tale written in Spanglish about the goings-on in a fictional town named Lava Landing, in California’s central valley. It tells of Mexican immigrants, rodeo riders, drug dealers, fortune tellers and mediums, transvestites, white entrepreneurs, a ghost, Mexican music and food, a Spanish language version of Dear Abby, a volcanic eruption, and the hazards of great fortunes. Some of it is strange to the point of being bizarre, some of it is strangely touching, and all of it is very funny. The episode I want to share with you presents a time when Lulabell hosted a fiesta. It’s a story that has stayed in my mind for months.

First I have to get into character: [minister dons apron, sits at kitchen table]

Well, Cousin, it’s good to see you. I’m glad you came by. Sit and talk for a while. Did you get an invitation to Lulabell’s fiesta? No? Well, consider yourself invited anyway. You know how fiestas are – we always assume that three times as many people will come as were invited. I feel especially honored this year. Not only did I receive a formal invitation, by Lulabell asked me to help with the preparations. That’s an unusual privilege. Usually only Lulabell and her closest friends prepare the food. I got guacamole detail.

You don’t know Lulabell? You must have seen her. She’s hard to miss, beautiful and ageless. Tall, long black hair, about 45 but passes for 25. Drives an old black Cadillac she got from her late husband. You’ll always find her at Bingo Night at the Catholic church. She’s very lucky at Bingo, maybe because she’s a major bruja, a witch, does love spells and enchantments. Anyway, whenever she has built enough winnings, she throws a fiesta – usually two or three times a year. It’s a big deal. She sends out about 60 or 70 invitations to people she knows will spread the word, and plans on feeding 300. Most of them work on the farms or as ranch hands or at various building trades.

As I said, she and her girlfriends usually do all the slicing and dicing and mixing and fixing, but this time she’s spreading the work around. I think the other girls are living complicated lives these days, so she can’t get as much work from them as in the past. I know Natalie just returned from a long visit to Mexico, and I hear that Lulabell herself has a new boy friend who is taking up a lot of her time. Anyway, the honor falls to me to make the guacamole.

There’s a trick to making good guacamole, you know. The avocados take on the flavor of whatever you mix with them, but you have to be careful. Too much garlic or cilantro or onion or lemon juice, and the whole thing turns bitter or sour. The flavor of the avocados gets overwhelmed. It is possible to have too much garlic, in spite of what some people say. The secret is in maintaining a balance, so the flavors enhance one another and none of them takes over. I’ll let you try it when I’ve put all the pieces together.

The fiesta will be a big party, lots of food. Lulabell usually roasts two whole pigs and sets a long table with huge bowls of beans and rice, salad, and tortillas. There will be case after case of beer, and the tequila will flow freely. She sets up dozens of tables in her back yard and decorates them with flowers. There will be colored lights draped everywhere, and the music and dancing will go on all night.

Lulabell’s son, Javier, is a mariachi, quite handsome in his traje de charro, you know, the snug pants, short jacket, and ankle boots, a big, floppy tie and an enormous sombrero with little balls hanging from the brim. I’ve tried to wear a sombrero like that, but the balls bobbing around was too distracting. Anyway, Javier’s kind of an unusual mariachi. He had a religious conversion a few years back so now he calls himself a Gospel mariachi. He uses his music to spread the word about Jesus. His banda, Mariachi de Dos Nacimientos, (the twice-born) plays familiar hymns in mariachi style, you know, Jesus Loves Me, sung Tex-Mex, or Just a Closer Walk with Thee, as a bolero. They also rewrote popular mariachi songs to give them a Christian message. In their version, El Rey de los Caminos, which started life as Roger Miller’s King of the Road, has been reshaped into a song about accepting Jesus as your guide as you walk the road of life. They play for weddings and birthdays, parties, cinquea os, and when they can get a gig, in clubs. You may have heard them a few nights ago at the Big-Five-Four.

Javier is the youngest member of the band. He’s 26. The next youngest player is 66, and the ages go up from there. They all joined the banda after conversion experiences. Javier is always torn between playing music about God and being a traditional mariachi. The balance is about 51% to 49%. So when he’s asked to play for his mother’s fiestas and she says specifically that she doesn’t want any of his God stuff, the members of the band always argue with him about whether they can take the gig with integrity. God wins the argument by reminding Javier that scripture says, “Give unto them that asketh of thee.” So Los Dos Nacimientos plays for Lulabell’s parties as an act of charity, giving comfort when they would rather be evangelizing. They have to let the name on their banner tell their story and carry their evangelical message when Lulabell is footing the bill.

Everybody understands that only men are invited to these fiestas. Three hundred men and only four women, Lulabell, Natalie-and-Consuelo, who are best friends and were classmates of Javier in elementary and high school, and for whom Lulabell has been a sort of adoptive mother, and Tru-Dee, the hairdresser, who is actually a transvestite and whose beauty and glamor men find captivating and disturbing. During the evening, the four women will dance with each and every man at the party. It’s something to watch. Something to experience, actually, ‘cause when one of those ladies is dancing with you, you would think there was no one else in the world as interesting as you are. It doesn’t matter if you’re graceful or awkward, tall or short, old or young, handsome or homely, prosperous or penurious, everyone gets a dance and as far as the ladies are concerned, you’d swear that every one of us was fascinating, utterly fascinating.

Javier used to resent his mother’s behavior at these parties. He was sure that she used them to pick up her new boyfriends, and he knew that she always took advantage of the occasion to buy a new dress and new shoes. He didn’t like having his band treated as accomplices to his mother’s lustful urges. But he got it wrong. You see, except for her few close friends, Lulabell intimidates most women, she’s so beautiful and has such a powerful presence. Women just bristle whenever she comes near, expecially if shecomes near one of their men. So she doesn’t invite them to her fiestas, both as a kindness to them and so that she can be free to give the gift of her attention.

Men, on the other hand, adore her to distraction. She has to be careful to mute her charms whenever she goes into the Taco Loco here in town, or the boys taking her orders will get so flustered that they get things mixed up and serve her a chimichanga when what she ordered was tacos, or a jamaica when she wanted horchata.

So Lulabell just invites men to her fiestas. It’s her way of thanking them for their adoration and of honoring the male principle. It’s a question of balance, like the flavors in the guacamole. Three hundred men and four women is just about the right balance, as far as Lulabell is concerned. Those four certainly have enough female principle between them to balance the scale. The men come from all over Mexico, although more come from the northern states. And some come from Central and even South America. They have different accents and different features, but they are all hard workers who send most of what they earn back home to their families. Mostly they do manual labor, hard, sweaty work. Most of the time they are at the bottom rung of the social ladder, so they really enjoy it when they have a chance just to be men among men at Lulabell’s fiestas, compatriots rather than immigrants, men of honor and respect rather than outcasts.

So while Lulabell and Tru-Dee and Consuelo and Natalie are occupied being hostesses and dance partners, the men mingle and talk about home and cars and f tbol and Mexican politics, and they shout out gritos of encouragement and appreciation to the musicians, and it’s as though for a few hours they are real people who count for something in the world. That’s Lulabell’s gift to them. By treating them with dignity she reminds them that dignity is their inherent right.

Javier told me recently that he has come to see Lulabell in a different light. I think he may be growing up some. He is escorting his first girlfriend around these days, and I think that has helped him separate from his mother. He used to think of her as a sinner so far gone that she could never turn toward salvation, but he had watched how the men behaved at Lulabell’s last fiesta, and he saw how gentle and gracious she was with them. She may have flirted, but she didn’t try to seduce anyone; she left them feeling that they were attractive but she didn’t get anyone excited . What impressed Javier the most, though, was that at the end of the evening the men cleaned up the yard, stacked the tables and chairs, hauled the trash out to the alley, took down the lights, wrapped up the left-over food and left the yard in better condition than before the party. They pruned the trees, weeded the garden, fixed the fence posts, fertilized and seeded the back lawn in the places where the dancing had worn it thin. It was as though they were returning hospitality for hospitality, gentility for gentility. Something clicked for Javier when he saw that – he had suddenly realized that when his Lord had said to feed the hungry he had meant more than that. And he meant more than visiting the sick-and-imprisoned and clothing the naked, which was the part Javier felt called to do. That night, as he sat there hot and sweaty with his traje de charro itchy against his skin, it occurred to him that Lulabell knew that there was more than one kind of hunger, hunger not only for food but also for self-respect, companionship, a place to belong, a common language, an opportunity to relax and just be oneself, a sense of tradition. Javier couldn’t understand how his mother was able to feed all these hungers without the Lord’s guidance, but clearly she could, and a new respect for her grew in his heart. She wasn’t in the least pious, but she was doing holy work. It was as though God was walking beside her and she didn’t even know it.

Well, the guacamole’s all done and I’ve come to the end of my story. Would you taste it for me and tell me if it needs anything?...A little salt – that’s easily done.

It’s time to get this into the refrigerator and let the flavors get acquainted. I’ll see you at the fiesta. By Javier’s understanding something holy will happen when we all come together. I suspect the food will be sanctified by our presence and by the good wishes of our hostess, so by this time tomorrow night, this will probably be Holy Guacamole. Come and share in it. You may discover that hungers you didn’t know you had are being fed, and you will probably go away feeling that you have been blessed. Hasta luego.