Little Things

This is going to be a happy post! Because I want everyone to know that while this is really challenging and while I'm struggling a lot in hearing all of these stories, I'm also having fun!

We leave El Salvador on Saturday. That's crazy because that means we've been in Central America for about 9 weeks!

Here are some things that have happened in El Salvador that have been great and that I hope I don't forget about ever:

• I went surfing! We went to the ocean a couple of times and one of those times I got a surfing lesson and so now I've done that. I fell a few times. (Maybe more than a few). But I also rode a few waves in! 
• During one of our weekend trips, I lived in a host home with my friend Sophia and for dinner one night our host mom gave us papusas and chocobananos.  (A papusa is a tortilla filled with something such as beans and cheese, for example. A chocobanano is a chocolate covered banana.) It was probably the best meal ever.
• During that same weekend, I went crazy one night and started reenacting scenes from Forrest Gump, forcing friends in my group to also participate. So that was fun.
• On Sunday when we got back from that weekend trip we watched Forrest Gump together!



There he is!

• One night a man named Guillermo Cuellar, a musician and song writer (look him up! he's great!), came and sang us some really powerful songs. But also he told a lot of really funny stories. I'd share them, but I'd ruin them if I tried. Lo siento.

• I got a package from Jenny Brockman (who is so great) and it had peanut butter in it!! 
• During our first weekend that we stayed with a family (when I was in the San Antonio Abad community) Leah and I were listening to some sisters in our host family tell us about the war and about family members they lost and then all of a sudden one of the sisters said something really quickly (in Spanish, obviously) and then turned and walked away. So we thought we were supposed to follow her but then the other sisters chased us and told us that she needed to use the bathroom. So that was funny. And embarrassing. 
• I kicked my surfing instructor in the face a couple of times. Oops. Waves are stronger than me.
• As I was writing this, Jillian called my name from outside and so I went to the window and let down my long hair. Actually I just talked to her, but while I was doing that, my friend Julie quietly opened the door and then said my name in a creepy voice and then I was really afraid and I screamed. (She claims she knocked and said my name louder, but I'm skeptical.) Then Jillian came back upstairs and she and Julie started singing "I Like Big Butts." 



Alien.

• One night our room was invaded by "aliens." The aliens happened to be our friends who went crazy and put cups in their hair to make it really tall and said funny things in weird voices. 
•    I ate sugar cane.

See?

•  We went to a soccer game and had a photo shoot instead of watching. Oops. YOLO. (be my friend still, please.) 

 It looks like we were paying attention, but it was totally staged.
We're really funny.

There are other things I'm sure I'm leaving out. But these are some notable moments of joy. I'm thankful to be with a group of people who can be silly but who also enjoy talking about justice and how we can change things. That brings me joy too. They bring me joy.

"So much has been destroyed"

"...My heart is moved by all I cannot save;

so much has been destroyed

I have to cast my lot with those

who age after age, perversely,

with no extraordinary power,

reconstitute the world."

-Adrienne Rich

I think all of the doubts and questions and frustrations that I’ve been wrestling with all month finally boiled over on Saturday while we listened to a man named Rogelio share his testimony about a massacre that he survived which happened near his village in 1983.  He was nine years old at the time and he shared with us multiple stories about his time in the hands of the military.  He talked about how mothers who had their babies with them didn’t have food to give them and so their babies would cry.  The soldiers would tell the mothers to keep their kids quiet or else they would kill them and so many mothers put cloths in the mouths of their babies to try to quiet them, but by doing so ended up suffocating their own children.  He told us that one day the soldiers came in the room and asked the people if they were hungry and when they responded yes the soldiers took a bag of bread out of their backpacks to show the people in the room and then leave without giving them any so that they could go eat it.  Then they came back and asked if they were hungry again and again the people responded yes.  Rogelio and one other child were given permission to find some leaves for the people in the room to eat but because the people had not eaten in so long the leaves caused them all to vomit.  Then the soldiers laughed at them and told them, “You’re going to die of hunger because we’re not going to give you any food.”  Rogelio told us that a few days later he found his sister and aunt and their first thought was, “If they’re going to kill us, at least they’ll kill us together." But then his aunt and his sister were killed and Rogelio was alone again. 

As I listened to his story I just began weeping. I wondered what kind of God would create a world in which these kinds of things could happen.  I started thinking about how life often feels like some kind of sick game where some are winning, some are dying and the rest of us are caught in between.  Are we being tested? Does suffering exist as a test to see if we’ll respond?  When will this test end because I think we proved a long time ago that we fail?  How many more people are going to have to die? 

 Because while so many of the things we are hearing are stories of the past, there are still people dying from hunger and from diseases of all sorts. There are people still being tortured and killed.  Innocent civilians being caught in the crossfire of wars between nations.  And I thought about how I don’t know if it would be worse for there to be no God at all—for this whole world to be an accident.  Or for there to be a God who isn’t weeping at the condition of the world.  A passive God who is sitting in the clouds watching all of this pan out.  And finally I wondered about the faith and unconditional love of the people here. Rogelio told us about one man in the military who gave him a plastic bag and a water bottle and in that moment Rogelio realized that maybe there were good men there too. Even after seeing the horrific deeds done by this man, Rogelio was able to still see his humanity. After Rogelio’s testimony, Mercedes, a woman from the community, had us all stand together in a circle and pray.  How do they still pray? How do they still believe that there is a God and that he is good?

It’s sometimes embarrassing to identify myself as a Christian because so much of what Christianity has been is a justification for oppression and violence and discrimination.  And before this class I often attributed these things to the work of humans, the work of the Church.  But this class has challenged that in multiple ways, specifically through our reading of Native American interpretations of the Bible.  In one article  that we read titled, “Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians,” the author talks about “God the conqueror.”  He writes, “As long as people believe in the Yahweh of deliverance, the world will not be safe from Yahweh the conqueror."  How can we reconcile the God of the Exodus, the God who commands the Israelites to “mercilessly annihilate the indigenous population” with the God who is Love, with the suffering, persecuted Christ?  The day we discussed this in class, we also discussed that because of this, the Native Americans cannot accept the same liberation theology.  And I started wondering if we all have our own theologies and if that’s okay.  Am I creating my own version of God that makes me happy?  Is God thus becoming an idol of some sort for me?  But then I thought about how I don’t know if I want to believe in a God who conquers.  A God who glorifies some and destroys others.  Maybe I'm picking and choosing. Maybe that's dangerous. Maybe it's not. I don't know. I hope I'm just not getting something. 

While I’ve been wrestling with all of these things, I’ve also experienced a lot of hope and a lot of resurrection.  I think that’s one of the beautiful things about liberation theology—it is painful and challenging but it’s only in embracing death that we are able to experience resurrection.  Another article we read titled, "Women and the Theology of Liberation” reminded me that though I cannot understand the God of the Old Testament, I can look at the example of Jesus.  As I struggle with the oppression of women in society, I find hope in the reminder that “Jesus’ attitude toward women was never discriminatory, however radical a break with the traditions of his time he saw this to be."  And again, “Those Jesus calls to build his reign are in the first instance the disinherited, the marginalized, the excluded.  Among them are women, children, pagans, and sinners.  Jesus prefers hem because he discovers unknown, neglected values in them. It is a simple fact, attested by all four gospels, that the good news of Jesus includes women in the community called to build his reign."  And so I have also been affirmed in my understanding of Jesus as a loving, radical human being who came not just to die but to show us how to live.

I worship a suffering God.  A God who was thrown on the cross because of his commitment to love and justice and equality.  This class has challenged this belief while also affirming it and in the midst of my doubts and questions, I’m discovering what it means and looks like to be actively broken-hearted. 

The Chains of Injustice

This weekend we all paired up and went into different base church communities throughout El Salvador. My site ended up being San Antonio Abad which is located in San Salvador, so I didn't have to travel too far. We were kind of just dropped off at our host home without too much knowledge about what we were supposed to be doing or expecting this weekend. The weekend proved to be challenging for a variety of reasons.

The first was that although we spent four weeks taking one-on-one, five hour a day Spanish classes, the language barrier still exists. The accent here is incredibly different than what we heard in Guatemala and our host family was convinced that we were fluent, I think.

This obviously presented some issues. Mostly, I think Lia and I were just frustrated with ourselves. The family we stayed with is so beautiful and they were so generous and hospitable and open. It was really difficult to realize that these women were sharing things that are really, really close to their hearts with us. They were telling us about the deaths of their parents and their brothers. They were telling us about the fear that they lived with as children, simply because their families were involved in the church. Or as our professor put it, “These people didn't have weapons in their pockets, but they had ideas in their heads.”  These women poured out their hearts to us and we were able to pick up some things, but we missed so much and had to just nod our heads and pretend that we understood their stories.

Today we came back to the guest house that we’re all staying in together and we shared our experiences with everyone else. The stories everywhere were so similar. I’m realizing that nearly (if not every) person we've met or are meeting has lost someone due to the internal conflicts of their countries. Every person.

Communities that had populations of 12,000 people now have populations of 3,000.

Families are spread out across the world because people were so unsafe that they had to leave the country.

Nearly 3 million Salvadorans live outside of the country.

I realized, today, how much I've been hardening my heart to the stories and the people.  I've been justifying that by saying that it’s necessary because otherwise I’ll be crying all of the time.

And I think that’s probably still kind of reasonable because I’m not going to be able to do anything if I’m just crying.

But maybe right now, while I’m here to just learn and listen, maybe I should be crying all of the time. Maybe I should be sitting in the ashes, weeping, crying out to God with these people who are teaching me, sharing with me.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m just saying this because I want to feel like there is something I can do.

 And believe me, I can cry.

I don’t know. It’s really, really difficult to try to process all of these stories. I feel heavy. And I’m afraid I’m becoming calloused. And while I’m afraid of that, I kind of desire it. Because it hurts to hear these people tell me about their families and friends who have been murdered.

I guess I’m trying to find hope in the fact that these communities still believe that there is a God and that He is good. I’m trying to find hope in the fact that the people who were murdered in the conflict are not being forgotten but are being raised up as martyrs to inspire communities to continue the fight for justice and change. I’m trying to find hope in the fact that even though the weapons used to kill their family members were very likely paid for by my government, they still are sharing their lives with me.

I’m trying to find hope in the fact that these are the words of my God:

Is this not the kind of fasting I have chosen:

to loose the chains of injustice

and untie the cords of the yoke,

to set the oppressed free

and break every yoke?

Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—

when you see the naked to clothe them, and not turn away from your own flesh and blood?

--Isaiah 58:6-7