Living Words

One day at my praxis site, one of the women, Niña Isaura, was telling us about how they had recently lost a chicken. She described how she and her two younger daughters had been frantically searching everywhere for the escaped hen. This family is one of the lucky ones; they have quite a few chickens. But chickens here in El Salvador are precious for the eggs that they provide. As Isaura was talking about the search for this chicken, I couldn’t help but think about the Biblical story of the Good Shepherd. Imagine if Isaura and her daughters had left behind all of their other chickens and possessions to search far and wide for a single lost chicken. Crazy! But that’s what God, the good shepherd, would do for any one of us.

That same day we talked to Niña Juana for three hours after lunch. The conversation was really wonderful—we were talking about faith, in particular how we live out our faith. At one point my mind started to wander and I started to stress out about all of the other things I had to do: figure out what I’m doing with the summer, finish my reading and homework for the rest of the day, write applications, do my laundry… etc. But instead I was spending the day simply talking to people, relaxing in the shade discussing faith and politics and life. Then the story of Mary and Martha flashed in my mind. Mary chose to sit at Jesus’ feet and listen to him, while Martha worked in the kitchen to prepare the meal. When Martha complained, Jesus told her, “Mary has chosen the better part, and it will not be taken from her.” These people that I am blessed to accompany and to listen to are Jesus. It’s a blessing to be able to sit in their presence and to talk and listen and learn from them. Sitting and listening and absorbing what they have to say is the better part, more so than any “productive” activity I could have been doing.

I took an Old Testament class during my sophomore year and it blew my mind. My professor told us that the biggest problem we have when we read the Bible is that we treat it like a Western book. This becomes a problem when we realize that the Bible contradicts itself all the time. This idea of contradictory stories laid side by side is called parataxis, and resulted because the Bible was compiled from several different sources. The contradictions that exist lead many people to throw their hands up and declare that the Bible can’t possibly be true. However, my professor told us that the compilation of so many different stories about God leads us to a greater, more whole understanding of who God is.

For example, in Genesis there are two different creation stories, one after the other. The first creation story emphasizes the creative power and authority of God. Creation begins when a wind from God sweeps over the waters. Genesis 1:3 says, “Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.” This format continues throughout the first creation story: Gods says, and his command becomes reality. God is portrayed as a transcendent being whose voice commands absolute authority and power. God creates order from chaos. This is an impressive, though admittedly cold, first impression of the Old Testament God. However, this picture of God is complicated as the redactors of the Bible present a second creation story. In this story, God is a more familiar figure. He speaks candidly, rather than in the formulaic way of the first creation story. He uses trial and error to find a partner for the man (Gen. 2:20). He walks through the Garden (Gen. 3:8). He is strikingly different from the removed, far-off God of the first creation story; yet the writers place the two stories side by side. This instance of parataxis shows the Biblical writers’ desire to show that God is transcendent and powerful, but that he is also a God who desires to have an intimate relationship with his people.

Here, I think I’m starting to understand this concept better. My history class is called “Perspectives on the Civil War.” In the class, we hear from speakers of all different backgrounds, political opinions, and degrees of involvement in the war. Through their stories, and the stories of all of the other people we’ve heard from, I’ve started to have a more complete understanding of the complexity of the war. We read a book in History class called Monseñor Romero: Memories in Mosaic. It’s about the last few years of Romero’s life, before and after his conversion. The most remarkable part of the book, though, is that it’s entirely made up of the testimonies of people who knew and interacted with Romero. Through all of their different perspectives, opinions, and stories, I’ve gotten a better understanding of who Romero was.   

I was reading one of Monseñor Romero’s homilies recently, and it struck me how well he was able to relate the Gospel to the reality of the Salvadoran people. He read the Gospel through the lives of the campesinos. This particular homily changed the loaves and the fishes into tortillas and beans, but there are so many other examples. Maybe this is why it’s sometimes so difficult to understand the Bible in the US. Jesus came for the poor, and he invites us all to join in the work for justice for them. In the US, we’ve become so far removed from this reality that the words no longer speak to us. 

One of the biggest questions I came to El Salvador with was how to reconcile the traditional Catholic faith that I grew up with and loved with this new idea of liberation theology and lived religion. Here, the Bible has become so real to me. Jesus came to the world with a message for the poor and for those who walked with the poor. “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” In Salvador, I feel closer to understanding that message than I ever have before.

Stories

I’ve been in El Salvador for a month now. We’ve done so many things—classes are in full swing, I’ve spent a few weeks consistently going to praxis in San Ramon, we went to the beach, last weekend we visited the cooks at their houses, this weekend I stayed with Ana Maria, one of the becarias, at her house, and I’ve eaten my weight in chocobananas and pupusas. It feels simultaneously like I’ve been here forever and for no time at all. I already feel overwhelmed trying to tell people about what I’ve been doing here—it just feels like there is so much to tell, and questions like, “Is it fun?” and “Do you love it?” don’t seem to fit my experience.

Stories are what tie everything together here. A huge part of accompaniment is listening to peoples’ stories in an effort understand where they’re coming from and how that has shaped who they are now. In the past month, I’ve spent a ton of time just sitting and listening to people tell me about their lives—the becarias, the Romero staff, the Casa staff, my fellow Casa students, and the Salvadorans at the praxis sites.

In the States, the phrase “he told me his life story” has a very negative connotation—something along the lines of “Wow, can you believe this guy wasted so much of my time talking about himself?” Here in Salvador, though, my days are filled with life stories. In the past few weeks I’ve spent so many hours sitting on porches, smelling the smoke from the wood fires and the cooking tortillas, watching the dogs and chickens and children run around in the dusty yards, inevitably being offered a banana because it might be the only material thing that our hosts have to share with us, and listening to people talk about their lives. At first it felt really strange. In the States, we rarely show up unannounced to people’s houses just to spend hours talking about life, but that’s exactly what I do at praxis every week. We spend each day stopping by different houses to say hello and sit, sometimes for hours at a time, and listen to whatever people want to share with us.

What a gift it is to receive these stories. Sometimes people will just give us little snapshots or stories about their lives. Niña Aulalia told us about giving birth to all six of her children completely on her own, without even the aid of a midwife. She told us she didn’t want anyone to see the funny faces she was making, so she shut the door and the windows and gave birth standing up in the dark. Holy cow. Niña Tancho usually talks about politics or about what she’s been doing since we last saw her. Don Adrian talked about the dollarization of the Salvadoran economy and the effect it had on him personally. The Santos kids talk about school. We’ve also had the opportunity to hear about peoples’ lives in more detail. We’ll sit down for hours and listen to peoples’ testimonies. I am constantly humbled and awed by the openness of the Salvadorans in sharing their stories with us.

In the US, we value multitasking. I have discovered here that I’m probably not a very good listener. When people are speaking in English, even if I have the best intentions, I often spend so much time thinking about my response to whatever they’re saying that I stop listening halfway through. Other times what they’re saying will remind me of something and my mind will start to wander until I’m unintentionally thinking about the homework I should do when I get back or what I’m having for dinner later.

In Spanish this is a hundred million times more difficult. If I zone out in a conversation in Spanish, the chances of rejoining the conversation are slim. It takes all of my concentration to translate and keep track of what people are talking about. As tiring and sometimes frustrating as this is, I also think it’s a really good opportunity to learn how to be a better listener. I want to be the kind of person who makes every person I talk to feel like the most important person in the world. My history professor told us last week that the greatest thing we can do with our time here is to listen, to take some of the burden from these brave people by listening to what they have had to suffer through. I think this is true across cultures. We all want to feel like we have something to share, like our experience and our struggles and the wisdom we’ve gained from them has been worthwhile. Listening to people’s stories validates that experience in a way. In order to give that gift to people, I need to practice being really present and engaged with what they’re saying.

In addition to simply paying attention, sometimes I find it hard not to let the peoples’ stories just blend together. This is especially difficult for stories about peoples’ experience during the war. So much of what we’ve heard is horrible and hard to hear. We’ve heard about young children being forced to watch their family members being raped and tortured and killed. Lupita, one of the cocineras, told us about how when she was ten years old, she and her younger brothers saved her father’s life by clinging to him to keep the guerillas from killing him like they had two of her uncles. We’ve heard about children being hit by stray bullets and dying in their parents’ arms. So many of the people we interact with lost family members in the war. And I know that as the weeks go on, we’ll hear more. I never want to get to the point where it’s all the same, where I’ve been desensitized to what I’m hearing. I think it’s important to recognize that each person’s story is uniquely their own, shaped not only by the events that happened, but by how they reacted and were formed by them.

And finally, all of the stories I’ve heard from other people have forced me to reflect on my own story. When people here ask about your life, they never ask about what you do. They always ask where you’re from, what your family is like, and what kind of communities you’re a part of. Here, who you are is largely determined by whose you are. To whom or what do you dedicate yourself? Who has shaped you and walked with you on your journey through life? Trena told us on one of our first days here that the Salvadorans don’t care about the degrees that we’re pursuing, the awards we’ve gotten, our GPA… none of that matters. Between all of the applications for college, scholarships, awards, and jobs, it’s easy to get caught up in thinking that I have to prove to everyone I come in contact with why I’m worth their time. Here, it’s enough to be with people and to listen, to share my dreams and what I believe in. It’s a good environment to start figuring out who I am, whose I am. What are the things that really make me who I am? What has shaped me to be who I am today? Maybe at the end of this crazy semester I’ll be a little closer to figuring that out.