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.

Moments of Grace

On Monday all of us visited Rachel and my praxis site, San Ramon. Our first stop was Anita’s house, home base of the Christian Base Community that we will be accompanying this semester. We sat down with Anita, Gustavo, and Hector (who is also one of the night guards at Casa Romero) so that they could explain the principles of their community and a little bit about what they do. They started to talk about how the Gospel is central to their work: they strive to live out its message and follow Jesus daily with their actions. As they began to speak, I could feel myself start to tear up. It was nothing in particular that they said. Their work and their mission and their ideals are beautiful, but I don’t think that was it. As they started to talk, I had this unbelievable feeling of peace and of certainty. In that moment I knew that I was exactly where I was supposed to be. As a junior in college, faced with all of the overwhelming questions about what the heck I’m going to do with my life, this was an incredible moment of grace.

Throughout the day, the feelings of peace and certainty persisted. We hiked up the volcano to Las Nubes and La Valencia, two very rural communities served by the Christian Base Community. The hike up was beautiful, with stunning views of the volcano and the city of San Salvador. In Las Nubes and La Valencia we visited a couple of the older women in the community. Their strength, sense of humor, and faith are unbelievable. I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to accompany these communities and these women this semester. Although I was really impacted by the first praxis site that we visited, this one really felt like mine.

On Sunday night we had a tribute to Dean Brackley at Kevin and Trena’s house. Dean was one of the Jesuits who volunteered to replace the Jesuit martyrs in El Salvador during the Civil War, and Casa de la Solidaridad was largely his idea. He died two years ago after battling pancreatic cancer. We watched videos with some of his lectures, pictures, quotes, and some testimonies about his legacy. He seemed like an incredible person, someone who really lived his faith. The thing that impacted me the most about the night was one of the stories that one of our professors, and his dear friend, told us about Dean. He said that when Dean was in the seminary studying to be a priest, he struggled a lot with his faith. He wasn’t even sure that he should be ordained because he had so many doubts. He confessed these doubts to his good friend (and fellow rockstar) Dorothy Day. She told him, “Read your Hegel, read all of your philosophy, continue your intellectual pursuit of faith, but never allow that to become all that your faith is.”

Wow. Lately I have struggled a lot with my Catholic faith. Since I started studying Theology in college, I’ve found many more questions than answers. The more that I learn about God and the Church, the more I realize how much I don’t know. I’ve been getting really frustrated lately. It’s hard to transition from being so absolutely sure of my beliefs in high school to now having a lot of uncertainty and doubt. Dorothy Day’s advice was so important for me to hear. My faith is not solely the sum of my doubts. I can continue to question, continue to study and continue to seek the Truth, while also realizing that my faith is much more than that.

In San Ramon I was reminded that to have faith is to live it out. They do this every day by showing God’s love to the people in their community. I hope that I can really learn how to do that this semester.

Bienvenidas a San Salvador

This semester I’m participating in a study abroad program called Casa de la Solidaridad. The program focuses on accompaniment, which means that rather than trying to do service or “fix” something, our goal is to walk with people, to get to know them and to understand how they live. I’m living in community with five other US students, six becari@s (Salvadoran scholarship students participating in the Romero program), and three community coordinators. We live pretty simply: no hot water (surprise!), no internet, and we wash our clothes by hand. Everything is really comfortable and pretty though. Our house is in Antiguo Cuscatlan in San Salvador and is in walking distance of the UCA (the Jesuit University where we take our classes), the grocery store, the Casa program directors’ house, and lots of little shops and restaurants. San Salvador is gorgeous. We’re completely surrounded by mountains and trees. As I write this I can see the sun set over the mountains. So beautiful.

One of the coolest aspects of the program is the Praxis sites. We’ve been assigned in pairs to different sites that we will be visiting every Monday and Wednesday from about 8 am to 4 pm. Each site is different, but the goal of each is to practice accompaniment and to grow in understanding of what it is to be a Salvadoran. El Salvador is a country that struggles with violence and poverty. We’ve been learning especially about the Civil War that took place in the 80s. Many of the people who we will be accompanying suffered a lot from this war and continue to suffer and struggle for survival today.

Yesterday we visited Annie and Alivia’s Praxis site, Tepecoyo. We were dropped off in the town of Tepecoyo and hiked up to the small village of Zacamil. There we met Yovani, a young man who became a paraplegic in a working accident several years ago. We spoke to Yovani and his mother about their experience and the struggles to continue to provide care for Yovani, as well as to afford basic necessities, like food. Then we traveled back down to Tepecoyo and had lunch with Angelica, a Salvadoran woman who runs a comedor out of her house for poor children in the area. She spoke to us about the founding of the comedor, describing how even though her family struggled financially, her heart broke to see the young mothers who could not even afford any food for their family. She opened a comedor where she feeds many of the poorest children in the village.

After visiting Angelica, we traveled to a couple of the houses in the village to visit with people. One of the women, Ana, talked to us for a long time about her experience. She lives with another family because they can’t afford to live separately; building materials are too expensive. She told us that when she was growing up, she wasn’t able to receive much of an education. Her parents didn’t encourage her to get an education, and teachers were rarely available in her village. Sometimes teachers would show up, but it was very sporadic. Because she was denied an education, she tries very hard to make sure that her children can go to school. One of her children hopes to become a nurse, but Ana told us that she is doubtful that they will even be able to afford for her to go to high school. Ana was incredibly open and generous sharing her story with us.

A few things really struck me about our experiences in Tepecoyo. The first is the incredible faith that these people have. Yovani and his mother have undergone incredible hardship, yet throughout their testimony they continued to say “Thanks to God” for this, and “God willing” about that… They never once blamed or questioned God for their struggles. Talking to Angelica and Ana was a similar story. Trena, one of the program directors, asked Ana how she was surviving. The coffee crop was extraordinarily poor this season, so people were unable to earn money harvesting it. Even in a good season, people might earn $10 for a full day of harvesting with a large family. Ana replied that they were praying, and they had to trust that God would take care of them.

In another story, Ana told us that her oldest daughter was working in a factory. She had only gotten up to third grade in school, and even basic things like counting are difficult for her. One day, she was told that she would have to start numbering things at her job. She came home in a panic, sure that she would lose her job because she wouldn’t be able to do the tasks she had been assigned. Ana told her to pray, and God would carry her through it. She came home the next day completely amazed. God had indeed taken care of her; somehow she was able to do all of the things she had been assigned.

I’m in awe of their amazing faith. So often I struggle to trust God in my life, and I haven’t faced anything close to the struggles that these people have gone through. It’s incredible and inspiring to see how strong their faith and their gratitude to God is. Even when it seems that they have nothing, they find the strength to praise God for the blessing of being alive.

The second was the idea of my own privilege. I don’t understand why I was given so much, why I was born in the United States, free from the fear of violence, free to study whatever I choose, free to voice my opinions… I’ve been blessed with so many things, so many opportunities. Talking to Ana about her struggle to provide an education for her children, the struggle to afford food, and the daily fight for survival was heartbreaking and confusing. How could she respect me for standing in front of her, full from eating lunch at Angelica’s, confident that I knew where my next meal was coming from, and carrying with me all of the other certainties and privileges I’ve been given? No matter how poor I choose to be, no matter how much I try to be in solidarity and to accompany these beautiful Salvadoran people, that will always be something that I choose, and something that I can return from. It’s hard to understand why, and I’m sure it’s something that I’ll have to continue to confront while I’m here. I hope that through reflection I can find a way to carry this experience and the experiences of all of the people that I meet with me when I return.

A Full Moon In Each Eye

With That Moon Language

Admit something: Everyone you see, you say to them, "Love me."

Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise someone would call the cops.

Still though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect. Why not become the one who lives with a full moon in each eye that is always saying, with that sweet moon language, What every other eye in this world is dying to hear?

-Hafiz

This is one of my favorite poems and something that I've been reflecting on a lot lately. Often times I think I'm afraid to love people or to be open and vulnerable. I almost forget that all people want to be acknowledged, cared about, and loved, and that I have the ability to do that for every person that I encounter. As I start my semester in El Salvador, I hope I can take to heart this idea of living "with a full moon in each eye." I hope that I can love and accept and learn about every person that I meet. 

Throughout my semester in El Salvador, I'll be posting reflections and updates here. Thanks for all of the prayers, and know that you're all in my thoughts and prayers as well!