I got a taste of some heavenly culture yesterday. There was a free Baroque music concert at the large and locally-well known Concordia Mennonite Church, so I made the special hour and fifteen minute trip for a rare but glorious showing of classical music. I wasn’t disappointed by what I found, either. Although completely out of step with the current Lenten season, the choir performed Johann Sebastian Bach’s Ascension Oratorio, a beautiful piece that portrays through musical composition the full range of emotions experienced by Christ and his disciples as the Lord ascended into Heaven. I myself was carried away in my imagination by the magical arrangement to one of the great concert halls of Europe, or perhaps the National Cathedral that I already know in Washington DC. Either way, the concert, with music some three hundred and fifty years old, was a tremendous gift in a country where pop music and pop everything is ever and always the rage.

It was a great gift to be in a place, too, where I didn’t look or feel so out of place. The Mennonite Church is full of Germans or Germanic-looking people-- folks of tall and proud stock with blonde hair and freckles and crystal blue eyes. There were even a bunch of older men who wore plaid and khakis, like me and my own people from Midwestern Ohio. For once, I was normal and fit in with a group of folks who looked just like me.

On the Paraguayan street, everyone always stares at me because I’m not Paraguayan or mestizo-looking. In the Mennonite church, though, I felt like my presence and my Germanic traits were expected. Rather than being an object of cultural curiosity, I was just a person among other blonde-haired and blue-eyed persons. An older fellow even tried to start a conversation with me in German, to which I responded politely in a mixture of Spanish and English. It might sound strange because I’m a fourth generation American, and I’ve even been wondering since yesterday if I have some secret and primal racism hidden deep within me, but I was really content and really peaceful to be among a bunch of German folk.

I’d be neglecting a very important detail about the concert, too, if I didn’t mention the fact that the most powerful person in all of Paraguay was in attendance. Yes, that’s right-- the American ambassador to Paraguay himself was at the church. There was an entire CIA security detail there to protect him, too: men with cool ear phones, super-sharp suits, and buzzed haircuts that looked like they were ready at a moment’s notice to karate-chop or shoot any one who messed with their American diplomat. They looked very out of place amid the simple and pacifist Mennonite congregation, but they made me feel safe and happy that there were a bunch of other Americans nearby. After the concert, the diplomat was quickly whisked away in a dark black Cadillac with police escort like many I got to see in DC. I never imagined I’d see an American diplomat in Paraguay, and you might even say I came here to escape some of the power and politics that I saw everywhere in Washington, but hey, what can I say? It’s hard to avoid smart and powerful people, and the things that smart and powerful people like to do (like go to Bach concerts in Paraguay), when you seem to yourself to be a smart and powerful person.

After the performance ended and I saw my diplomat leave, however, I was gently humbled and brought back to reality once again. There was no Cadillac escort to take me away, but a big dirty public bus that I waited nearly twenty minutes to catch. I then headed back to my three room, rents-at-less-than-$100/month-with-only-one-fan-and-a-stinky-toilet apartment, and put my folded clothes away in improvised drawers of old fruit crates. The sounds of Bach and high culture continued to swirl around in my mind and lift my spirits to the highest levels of the heavens, but everything else around me testified to the fact that I was very much a part of the lowly earth. Still, on a night like last night, I wouldn’t trade my place for any other in the entire world. I’m pretty sure living my young life on purpose for God, along with all the adventures and difficulties of living it in another country, is about as close to Heaven as I’ll ever get.