Praxis Week

About a month ago I spent a week in Las Nubes and San Ramon for praxis week. It was simultaneously one of the most difficult and most impactful experiences I have ever gone through. Rachel and I spent the first two days together in San Ramon. The first day we spent with Gustavo at his art center, and the second we spent in San Ramon going to the Celebration of the Word, talking to people from the community, and then climbing the volcano to go to one of the community meetings in Las Nubes. For the rest of the week, Rachel and I separated to live with different families in Las Nubes. I spent the first two nights at Delmi’s house with Delmi, her 10-year-old son, her 26-year-old daughter Iberica, her husband, and their daughter Tatiana; and her daughter Patti, her husband, and their kids Stanley and Daniela. Then I went to Ester’s house with Ester’s husband and three kids as well as Ester’s sister, Marta Elena, her husband, and their son.

So much happened during the week that it’s been difficult to process, which is why it has taken me until now to write anything about it. These are some of the events that have impacted me the most out of my time there. So many other things have hit me, and I’m sure I’ll continue to process and write about some of them, but here’s what I’ve been thinking about lately.

One moment that sticks out to me is the second evening when we were walking down the volcano with Gustavo at dusk after the community meeting about the water tanks. The light was at the perfect dimness to illuminate the flowers and the trees, and the air was crisp and cool. We never have the opportunity to see Las Nubes at that time of day, and so we walked in silence for a while, taking in the beauty of the scenery. In the middle of the silence, Gustavo, casually dropping wisdom on us in his own peculiar way, took a breath and breathed out, “Those meetings are Mass for me. That is the true meaning of Communion. The work we do here is evangelization.”

What a beautiful way to look at this work. Sister Peggy, my liberation theology professor, said in one of our first classes that we have domesticated the sacraments—we have defined and regulated them to the point where they are limited. There was something holy about seeing people from the rural community of Las Nubes gathered together, lacking basic resources for so long but finally believing that they have the ability and the right to advocate for themselves. They’ve found their voices. It reminds me of a story told by Greg Boyle, a Jesuit working with gang members in LA. He talks about the moment when “the soul feels its worth.” The Base Community here is helping to facilitate the souls of Las Nubes to feel their worth—to see that although they live in extreme poverty and have constantly been oppressed, forgotten, and looked down on, their voices and their lives are invaluable in the eyes of God. How could that not be evangelization?

Another moment came from Delmi’s house. I was initially really excited to go to Delmi’s. The women are really sweet, the two older kids, Josué and Daniela, were really energetic and excited every time we had visited them, and the two little babies, Tatiana and Stanley, are adorable. I was excited to be with them and to get to know them better. The first day I stayed down in San Ramon at Delmi’s daughter’s house waiting for Josué and Daniela to finish school. Schools here don’t have enough resources to allow kids to go for a full day, so half of the students go in the mornings and half go in the afternoons. After we walked back up the volcano, Daniela asked me if I wanted to go play house with her. We climbed up the hill a bit and got to a place where two drain covers served as rudimentary tables, well balanced sticks functioned as a make-believe stove, and someone had hung a rope from the tree to make a swing. At first everything was fine. The game was simple. I was Daniela’s third grade daughter, and every “morning” I would wake up, Daniela would feed me breakfast, I would walk down the hill to school, walk straight back up the hill, Daniela would feed me more of the rocks and dirt “soup” that she had made, I would go back to bed, and we would do the whole thing over again. As the hours passed, though, I started to get tired. Daniela speaks incredibly fast Spanish, and although I had explained to her that Spanish wasn’t my first language and I needed her to slow down, she would get mad at me when I asked her to repeat things. At one point she even left me and told me she wasn’t coming back until I could answer her correctly. She was just being an 8-year-old, but after three hours of this it started to get to me. After a while all I could think of was the scene from the movie Frozen when the guy looks at the reindeer after he’s been making grumbly reindeer sounds and says, “I can’t understand you when you talk like that.”      

Something that we’ve talked about a lot at Casa has been the idea of feeling useless, or allowing yourself to simply be and observe difficult situations while understanding that you can’t fix them. Believe me, I felt useless during my time at Delmi’s house. When the kids left on the second day, Patti and Iverca watched the babies, washed dishes, cooked and cleaned, but anytime I went out to the porch with them to try to make conversation, I just felt awkward and in the way. I offered to help and they’d shoo me back inside to go relax. I spent the morning reading and journaling, but mostly sitting and thinking, “I am a useless lump.” By some miracle, Trena came to check on Rachel and I that day. Almost as soon as I saw her I broke down into tears. Trena is so good at connecting with people. She had no trouble at all making conversation with these women that I had been awkwardly spending time near that morning. That day I had started to feel like there was something wrong with me because I couldn’t connect with them in the same way. Looking back, I realized from that experience that I had to find a way to be okay with feeling useless while simultaneously believing that I am not useless, and recognizing the huge difference in those two ideas.

After Delmi’s house I moved next door to Ester’s house. I was apprehensive at first. Marta Elena, Ester’s younger sister who lives with her, is fifteen and has a one-year-old son named Angel. Her husband is forty-five and unemployed, which means that he spends most of the day lying in bed while Marta works to cook, clean, and care for their son. It was really hard to be around him and understand that he was the husband of a girl who had been thirteen when he impregnated her, barely older than my baby sister. I think my brain just refused to accept the reality of the situation.

I had been struck by the poverty at Delmi’s house, but when I came to Ester’s I realized that I had had no idea what poverty could look like. Being at Ester’s house was physically difficult and overwhelming at times. I had to continue to remind myself that as hard as it might be for me, these were the conditions that they lived in every day. I got to go home at the end of the week, but they might always live like this. They were so generous while I was there, but their generosity often made me feel guilty. I felt guilty for taking a whole bed to myself when the other beds each had three or four people in them, for using the only eating utensil and the only table area to eat my meals, and for all of the fruit that offered me when it was clear that fruit was not something that they could eat often. I felt guilty in my physical discomfort. Looking back, I’m trying to take that guilt and be grateful instead, to learn from their incredible generosity and strength.  

What breaks my heart is that this is normal for them. It’s normal to have tarantulas in the house and to wake up with cockroaches on your legs. It’s normal to fish insects out of your food and then continue eating it. It’s normal to go to the bathroom in a hole in the front yard, to be kept awake by the noises of the other eight people sleeping in the room, to not have the water to bathe or brush your teeth, to have a roof that keeps nothing out, and to be constantly surrounded by the smoke that floods through the single window from the front porch. I want so badly for them to know that they deserve so much more than this.

On the first night everyone was sitting around the little TV watching soap operas and I was sitting close by reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed for my praxis class. Marta Elena came over and asked me what I was reading. She asked me what it was about, and I told her that it was about teaching the poor and oppressed about their own dignity and about the knowledge that they gain from experiencing the world in their own way, even if they haven’t had the opportunity to go to school. She was quiet for a while, thinking, and then she said softly that she’d like to read it. Marta Elena has the most education of anyone in the house, but after reaching only second grade she had to drop out because she was pregnant. She is the only person in the house who can read. Choking back tears, I told her I would find a copy of the book for her in Spanish. What is heartbreaking is that I know the book is about her situation and contains so many things that she needs to hear, but after only second grade, it’s unlikely that she will ever be able to read it.

Later on that night, Marta was making soup for Angel and her husband. I asked her if she liked being a mother. She looked at me with a tired expression and said, “It’s hard. It’s difficult working so hard every day, and it’s even harder when Angel gets sick. Life is very hard as a mother.” Then she got really serious and turned to me, waving her wooden spoon and said, “Do you go to Church?” Before I could answer, she said, still waving the spoon, “Go to church, read your Bible, and take other people to church with you. God puts you exactly where he wants you, and only God can get you through the struggles you’re up against.”

I don’t think I’ll ever forget that moment. On one hand, I am so thankful that Marta Elena has her faith and the comfort of knowing that God is with her in everything that she is facing. I am confident that God is with her for every second of every day, and I’m inspired by her amazing faith even in her horrible situation. However, I refuse to believe that it is God’s will for a fifteen-year-old child to have a son with a forty-five year old man and to live in absolute poverty. Marta Elena’s situation is the work of society and of the choices of humans. I believe that God wants so much more for her, and it’s hard to think that Marta Elena believes that a God who loves and cares for her would want this life for her. I hope that someday she will know that she deserves so much more than that. I hope that good people will continue to do the work of God by trying to bring justice and prosperity to people while they are living, rather than making some people feel like their time on Earth must be spent waiting to earn those things in Heaven.    

In the end, though, I connected much more with this family than I had with the previous one. There was laughter and joy. I had wonderful conversations about life and God with Marta Elena, Ester, Kevin (Ester’s oldest son) and Nicolas (Ester’s husband). I played with the younger kids and helped Marta take care of Angel. I experienced their generosity, strength and faith. I love this family, and during the week and the weeks since them, they have shown me time and again that they love me too.

As hard as praxis week was for me, I am so unbelievably thankful for the opportunity. Since praxis week, I have felt so much more connected to the community of Las Nubes. Last week I went to praxis to find that Marta Elena, Angel, and her husband were able to move into one of the small, unoccupied buildings on Marta’s brother Daniel’s property. Daniel found a job for Marta’s husband at the hardware store where he works, and he is making more money there than he had been at his old job in the coffee finca. The change has brought good things for Ester’s family as well. The house looks spacious and much cleaner now, and they were able to build a little pen for their ducks and clean some of the trash and debris from the front yard. Ester’s husband no longer has to support all eight of them, which allows them to buy more water. Last time I went there, little Estercita had just gotten a bath. They’re all little things, but I wanted to jump up and down with excitement for them. It’s encouraging to know that life can improve for them, and hope that things continue to get better.

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.