Together we walk

“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

I had heard this quote many times, and my, is it beautiful. In fact, it is painted on the entrance to Casa Silvia where I lived these past four months. And I walked passed it everyday. But now I have defined it for myself. Now I carry it with me. It bursts forth from me. It is the story that I have to tell. This is the story I have to tell, the story of my liberation.

I arrived in El Salvador heavy. I had developed my knowledge of the country over the past five years, starting first with my knowledge of the U.S. involvement with the civil war. The more I learned the heavier I walked. Internally and externally seeking liberation. How could I lift this weight, and begin to live? How could I withdraw my consent to those injustices, and work for a world more just?

I wanted more than books. I wanted more than protests. I wanted people, to know them, to learn from them, to live with them.

I found more than books. I found a deeper heaviness. I found the faces of those facts, the homes, the children, the people who lived, who are living those struggles still.

I met a newfound unity, a deeper sadness. The unity of the heaviness I carried in the United States and the weight I discovered in El Salvador. That heaviness defined by injustices that I knew from a distance, from what I had been told, what I chose to believe about how other people live combined with the weight I discovered in listening to first hand accounts of massacres, of visiting humble homes with dirt floors and tin roofs.

With that deep sadness, I spent much of my time reflecting on my own complicity in these realities. I felt it. I refused to ignore it, to pretend that I wasn’t contributing to the inequality, benefiting from the injustices. At times I couldn’t concentrate in class, or in group reflections. I had to walk away, feeling heavy and profoundly preoccupied.

With that deep sadness, I began my time at Mariona. I was met with open arms. I was invited into homes, really and truly invited into families. I was met, above all else, with love. And in that deep sadness, I wrested with that love. I rejected it often. I didn’t think I deserved it. How could they forgive me? What could I ever give to them? They share and share and share with me, and how is it that they welcome me within that context?

Within that context, I listened. I learned of new realities. We began with stories of the civil war. But eventually those stories were replaced by stories of the daily reality in Mariona today. Soon the reality of the gang violence and domestic violence, though in whispers, emerged. Soon I was told that this current reality of violence for some is even worse than the time of the civil war.

The sadness I felt began to transform. I still felt heavy and profoundly preoccupied. But this time, when I needed to walk out of class to take a break, it was the reality in Mariona that I carried with me. My father there saw another murder yesterday. The gas subsidy that his family depends upon, was taken away this month. His health is a constant struggle. And I couldn’t change any of these realities. I loved this man, and could do nothing to change his situation. At times, I could hardly stop thinking and worrying about him.

And throughout all of this, I never told those families in Mariona about the weight I was carrying with me. It never seemed appropriate. Who was I to add another struggle to their reality? Who was I to ask them to care for me, to acknowledge my struggles?

I went every Monday and Wednesday and continued to listen. I felt the weight becoming unbearable. Holding my complicity in their struggles and utterly perplexed by my inability to change those struggles, I needed help. I was invited by a coordinator to share my weight with the families in Mariona, to be honest with them and to trust that they know better than I do what they can and cannot handle. I was invited to allow the relationship to finally become mutual, to enter a space in which I share my struggles as well.

I was afraid of this. I needed to do this.

The following day at Praxis, we were seated with the father of my family in Mariona. We were evaluating our experience this semester together. Much faster than I had expected, there was my opportunity to engage my struggles that I genuinely wanted to share, though afraid.

As I began to share, trying to be as honest and straight forward as possible, tears began to stream down my cheeks. And my father in Mariona listened intently, looking at me, listening. As I struggled to continue through those tears, my father held out his hand. He held me hand, empowering me to continue. I told him I had never experienced this paralyzing feeling before in which the people I love are living in a reality so violent and at times hopeless, and not being able to do anything to change this for them. Over again I told him, “Me pesa mucho”, or “It weighs on me a lot”.

When I finished, he continued where I had finished. With tears in his eyes, he explained that the day that we students arrived in Mariona, the moment we walked in through his front door, we were baptized. He told me frankly, “To the rest of the world, we are like trash, disposable. But to you, you have treated us like kings.” He told me that together we were creating the Reign of God on Earth. The Reign of God on Earth.

I began to breathe more deeply, still with tears. I began to breathe in, holding his hand, I began to lift the weight I had been carrying with me for so long. I felt that lifting, that breathing with God, in communion with this father in Mariona.

I could love.

My father in Mariona, poor in so many ways, feeling like garbage and I poor of spirit, sure that I did not deserve God’s love or the love of these families, together we found liberation. In the love that we shared, in our presence with each other those two days every week, we showed our father that in no way was he garbage. By our actions, we showed him that he is a person to be loved and his life, his spirit are to be celebrated. In the love that we shared, he showed me that I was more than my complicity, more than my privilege. By his words and his loving hands, he showed me that I am a person to be loved, that my spirit has the strength to overcome the ugliness of these realities, to create the Reign of God on Earth, more hopeful than any ugly reality, a love more beautiful, more full of light and life, than any darkness.

Every time I saw my father until the Sunday when I said goodbye to him, I hugged him more fully, and held his hand when I could. We sang and laughed together. We talked and smiled with each other. We walked together. In the midst of the most paralyzing realities, we walked together. Saying goodbye to him, he talked to me about bringing the light we have shared with each other wherever we go. We walk now with that light, with the memory of our hands held together. With the weight on our spirits lifted by the hope and the love that we found in our shared liberation, together we walk.

The weight that I will carry with me 4.30.11

When I speak of celebrating life here, I mean celebrating life in the midst of a culture where death is present everyday. And when I say death I really mean murder. And murder can mean domestic violence and other crimes, but most often, it means gang violence.

Every week I accompany families in Mariona through my Praxis site experience. I ask questions. I listen. I ask more questions. I listen again and I hold with me the stories that these families share. I love these families. I feel this weight, this paralyzing weight in my body when I remember their stories, when I retell them. In sharing their stories, in sharing what I know of the reality of insecurity and violence in Mariona, I carry that weight with me.

To talk about these stories is delicate. Delicate because these stories are of real people, people I have spent time with, playing with their kids and sharing meals, listening to their love stories, the stories of their weddings. I know their identity; they are not statistics nor case studies. They are my family here as well. And together, in sharing their stories, I begin to carry the weight of being connected to the reality of insecurity and violence in Mariona.

I am entrenched in their reality primarily as an observer, as someone who accompanies them. However, coming from my home in the United States, I accompany these families from a position of wealth and security. My experience of accompaniment and therefore my perspective and analysis of the reality in Mariona is affected by the utter lack of violence that I have experienced in my life. My experience of security rests in stark contrast to the insecurity and violence that exists in the lives of these families.

Not far away from where one family in Mariona lives, there once lived an abusive husband. Just a block away, that abusive husband killed his wife. She was left in the house dead, some even say hanging, her body mutilated, breasts cut off, skin bleeding, not unlike the torture stories people tell from the civil war in this country. The husband who murdered her told the police it had been a crime of delinquency, essentially blaming it on the gangs. He was not punished. That man moved and is now an evangelical pastor in different neighborhood.

And sometimes, for this family in Mariona, the violence is even closer than a story, closer than a block away from their home. Just a few days ago the mother in this family passed by the location of a fresh murder, noting it for the way the blood still smelled. Everyday after picking up her daughters from school, she calls her husband to let him know that they made it home safe. And when it is her husband’s turn to pick up the girls, sometimes he sees dead bodies too. Twice in the last month he has seen men murdered.

And the daughters in this family own bicycles. They rarely ride them. Those bicycles sit by their front door. Their older daughter asks her dad to play outside. She wants to go the park. She wants to ride that bicycle. She is seven years old. One day, after a long while of begging her dad, he took them to the park; he decided to let them play outside. Together with her dad and her little sister, they walked to the park, towing their bicycles. Once they arrived at the park, her dad found what he feared. A man with tattoos was holding a box. Another man was counting out twenty-dollar bills. The man with the box took the money. The man with the money took the box. Her dad told her they had to turn around. As soon as they had arrived, they needed to leave. It became a game for her little sister, making one big circle with their bikes. But the older daughter knew better. She wanted to know more about that box. She wanted to know what that money was buying. She asked her dad. Her dad told her, “I don’t know, my love.” He knew. He wasn’t smiling anymore. So she didn’t ask again. They went back to playing inside.

And this same family has a house made of mostly cement, the floors, the thick walls, and the stairs. One night a few years ago, their youngest daughter fell and broke her head. She began to bleed, a lot. Her parents were worried, she needed help, she needed to go to the hospital. But there was an enforced curfew then, after dark the gangs wouldn’t allow anyone to enter or leave Mariona. Her mom and dad try to stay far away from the gang leaders. They stay inside when they can. But this time they couldn’t stay inside, her dad called their neighbor. And their neighbor called the gang leader. The situation was explained to the gang leader. “There was this girl, you see, less than five years old, who was seriously injured. She needed to go to the hospital.” The gang leader let her mom and dad take her to the hospital. For the next three days while their little girl remained in the hospital, her mom and dad never went home. It was hard enough to leave once.

Physical, mental and emotional insecurity and violence are an integral part of the reality in Mariona. It seems to be everywhere people turn. The smell of blood on street corners. The sound of bullets down the block. The presence of bodies. The horror and the trauma of hearing stories of murders and domestic violence almost daily. On the bus, on the sidewalk, in their neighbor’s houses, the people by the playground, the cars in the street-violence is part of their life. Gangs are the face of that violence.

After we had the opportunity to speak to the head of Catholic Relief Services in Latin America, I better understand this reality. The gang situation has increased in the past twenty years. The aftermath of the civil war favored impunity over reconciliation. The traumas of the war created a culture of fear that has yet to be remedied in many parts of the country. Those traumas and that fear eat away at social cohesion thus destroying the sense of community necessary to combat the spread of the gangs. In Mariona, an area that was once rural and become largely urban during and after the war, lack of sufficient social cohesion contributes to the fear and insecurity, which makes it ripe for the infiltration of the gangs.

Money is intertwined in all of this violence, but it is not the cause. The cause of the insecurity and violence has more to do with the lack of social cohesion in Mariona than it does with the reality of poverty. The gangs share money fairly amongst members, needs are generally met. The appeal of gangs is not wealth but the identity, protection and empowering social inclusion that they can offer to alienated youth.

The gangs make the decisions in Mariona, not the police. If something changes, the gangs are involved. If someone dies, the police sweep up the body, promise to investigate and rarely does anything come of it. People who witness murders do not dare share what they know with anyone in authority for fear that their identity may get back to those responsible for the murder. The police and the general population in Mariona do not make the important decisions because they do not have the power or the control; instead they are ruled by fear of the gangs.

For some, gangs offer security. For others, gangs affect the lack of security in their homes; security means maintaining as much distance as possible from the gangs. It means whispering whenever they talk about the gangs or the police, even within their home, because people are often walking by their doors, listening and watching.

This is the reality that I am accompanying with the families in Mariona. It is not my reality, I am not unsafe in Mariona. I am not threatened by the reality of violence nor am I directly affected by the violence, but I am connected to it through the stories that I hear. It is the reality of these families, and when I leave they will still be living in Mariona. They will still be hearing about and seeing murders as often as I fill up my gas tank back in the United States. This is the weight that I will carry with me. Knowing that their little girls hardly ever play outside. That their parents sometimes lay awake at night wrestling with the fear of gangs. Resting myself with the knowledge that the civil war in this country, that our country largely funded, is tied up in this mess, is tied up in this new war today. I will walk with the memory of what it means to accompany a violent reality, even for only four months. In this short time I know the fear that I have felt with them, the deep sadness, at times the hopelessness, and most certainly the weight, the heavy weight of living in the midst of that darkness, of carrying that darkness together as we chose, as a bold act of resistance, to keep living everyday.

Celebrating Life 3.24.11

I miss my family back home. My family back home is my mom and dad, my brothers, Joe and Patrick, my sister-in-law, Mary, my many aunts, uncles and cousins and my beautiful Grandma Erb. My family is also my close friends and mentors in Chicago, my friends across the U.S. who are studying at their respective colleges, and my dear friends studying in foreign countries this semester. And if all I could do is hold them each in a hug right now, I could rest content. Instead I hold them in my heart during this Easter season. Instead I honor the love that they have taught me by seeking out family here in this country.

For it is a strange place in which to stand, nearly four months passed. All at once there is this desire to soak up every last experience that I can encounter during my time in El Salvador. Staring longer at the mountains, breathing in deeper the air, noting the people, the places, the sounds, smells and moments that I love most about this country and these people. Attempting to relive the presence of mind that I walked with during my first weeks in this new place. Yet at the very same time, the very same time, four months feels like a long time. I feel physically so very far away from those that I love most in this world, and I can feel my heart tugging in their direction.

But that tugging, necessarily, could not lead me back home to Minneapolis quite yet. Instead it led me to my Praxis site and to the house of another Salvadoran friend. As Easter approached, all I could think of was family, family, family, family. My mind and heart were preoccupied thinking of all of those that I love.

Here in El Salvador, I have grown into another family. I have two in Mariona, with three little children. And humbly, if not uncertainly, these families took me in on Good Friday. I called on Thursday, stumbled awkwardly over asking if I could sleep in their home, and felt a great relief when they welcomed me happily. And the visit wasn’t exactly perfect, Holy Week does not exempt these families from their reality. I still worried them when I lingered too long by the taxi cab outside their door, attracting questions from little children who seemed a little too curious to know the name of this foreign white woman in their neighborhood. I knew better than to attract attention to myself like that, and so did my driver. These worries are constant. So necessarily we moved on, carrying them with us the rest of the night, eating dinner and playing card games.

After dinner, we reflected with the Gospel for Good Friday, starting with the reflection of their young six-year-old son named after Archbishop Romero. When it came to me, I was able to express honestly what it meant to me to be with them, to be with family. I felt this great lifting after sharing my thanks, now they understood why I had come. They understood and the mother of this family took my hands in her familiar way and looked again into my eyes. After the reflection, we stayed like that for a while, holding hands. We talked about simple things, still holding hands. Like my mother back home, this Salvadoran woman knows the power of that loving touch. She shared it with me generously.

That night I slept in the meditation room above their home. Made primarily of tin walls and tin roof, it is a sacred place. This is where we practice meditation every Wednesday. This is where the mother practices meditation with her friends and family when we North Americans are not around. This is the space she intentionally uses to recall the memories of the martyrs during the civil war and the daily struggles and traumas she and her family live today. This is where I was able to fall asleep during a rain storm that night, with the heavy sound of rain pouring down on the tin, sitting with God, recalling the sacred memories in that space.

On Saturday I traveled with the Salvadoran student who lives down the hall from me in our community. We went to the house where his family lives in the mountains to the West of us. We had visited his house one other time and I immediately fell in love with his home. Not only do they live close to a flowing river under canopies of mango trees, but he also has two little brothers that love to play soccer and go searching for crabs under rocks in the river. And again it wasn’t a perfect visit. My Spanish often fails in the more rural areas of El Salvador where the accents are different, the words are cut shorter and North Americans are few and far between.

I struggled to communicate with my friend’s parents and felt heavy in my strangeness as a foreigner, but content nonetheless just to be with his family, just to be near to his parents who worried about my cough, just to be near to his brothers who stared at me curiously most of the time and took care to show me every last page of their homework and drawings. And still Holy Week does not exempt this family either from their reality. On the radio we heard over and over again of the murders throughout the country, as crime seemed to spike during the week of vacation. As my friend had told me of his country, so many people head to the beach and murders rise, therefore there is not more peace during this week but less. And so in the safety of their home I celebrated Easter. We did not read the Bible but we walked through rivers, greeted cows and played soccer. We did not talk of Jesus but we celebrated life.

My life here is different from my life at home. This is obvious. But I am reminded of it in almost every moment. Even among family here, life is different, therefore we celebrate it differently. And one of the gifts that comes with that change is a whole new perspective on practicing Lent and celebrating Easter. If there is meat to eat on Ash Wednesday or Fridays here, we eat meat. These families sacrifice meat most other days of the year because their pockets can’t afford it. If there is a week of vacation as Easter approaches, with that vacation comes more crime, more murders. And so sometimes it is enough to be together, even if not at a mass or attending the processions at night when the walk home is less safe. Life, sacred as it is, is celebrated here in being together. Whether reading the Gospel or searching for crabs, either way, we are alive and celebrating with family.

Encounters to Remember Pt. II

I looked at the calendar today.

I have one month left. In fact less than one month left here in El Salvador. I have a ticket waiting for me on May 11^th to return to Minneapolis. I am at this moment standing with my whole body here in this country and still a great deal of my heart and mind back in the States or throughout the rest of the world as I try and often fall short of staying in touch with friends and family that mean the world to me.

And how do I communicate all that has passed? What do I do when the experiences I am having here became normalized, seemingly less profound? How do I continue to share my experience with those that I care about without simply sharing a laundry list of events, listing the dates and the significance?

But to share nothing seems worse. And so has the heat of the semester passes and I venture into the last month of my time here, I am going to try and express where I have been in the past few weeks as life has begun to move a little more quickly...

“Ex-COPPES”

One night in March, we had a social event where we invited an artisan cooperative to sell their crafts. We had made jewelry before with this cooperative, and I had bought many gifts for friends from the woman teaching us her craft. Specifically, I had bought several of the same necklace. On the necklace was an image of a fist with a shackle around the wrist. Above the wrist flew a dove, and in the midst of a sunset, that dove was breaking through the chain attached to that shackle. On the back of the necklace was written, “Ex-COPPES”, which I learned was a self-organized committee of political prisoners formed during the civil war here in El Salvador.

Nearly a month after that initial purchase, at this social event in March, I found myself chatting again with the woman who had sold me the necklaces. She introduced me to her husband, one of the two members of the cooperative that were political prisoners during the civil war and who had painted those necklaces. Instead of participating in much of the social event, I stood talking to this man and his wife. We talked about his experience of being tortured in jail during the war, the formation of this committee of prisoners, and the symbolism within the image of the dove and shackle on the necklaces he had painted. We talked about the struggles that started and fueled the war, how those struggles have changed in their reality today, and what it means to him to have solidarity with North Americans. Today him and his wife have many children and work together with those children sustaining their cooperative, they are living and fighting with the memory of the traumas of the war and the hopes and fears of their lives today.

“Divina Providencia”

The week before the anniversary of the martyrdom of Archbishop Oscar Romero, we visited Divina Providencia. Divina Providencia is the location of the chapel in which Romero said his last homily before he was assassinated. We sat in the pews listening to the story of his assassination. We stood behind the altar looking out over the chapel, seeing the last scene that Romero saw in this world before he died. We stopped briefly in the spot where he fell near the altar after having been shot, in the spot where he died. We were asked to think of one word in our reflection of the life of Romero, my word was “calling”. We were invited to place our hand on the altar and take a moment recalling that one word.

“Romero Vigil”

The Saturday before the anniversary of the martyrdom of Romero, we attended the Romero vigil with thousands of other Salvadorans. All of the students of the Casa along with the Salvadoran scholarship students in the Romero program traveled together to the vigil. We chanted together and sang songs. We marched from a large roundabout three miles from downtown to the Cathedral for an outdoor mass. As the sun went down, the moon shown bright and the candles that each person held created an orange glow under the white light of the moon. All around us Salvadorans were reminding us that in that moon, closer that night to the earth than it had been in almost two decades, was the presence of their beloved martyr, their Saint Romero.

"Anniversary of the Martyrdom of Romero"

On March 24^th, the anniversary of the martyrdom of Romero, a few students and I woke up early to make it to the 7AM mass at Divina Providencia to celebrate the anniversary. We stood in the back when there was no more space left in the pews. We listened to recitations of quotes from Romero’s homilies and we listened to testimonies about the visit of Obama to El Salvador the two days before the anniversary. We listened to commentaries about the U.S. relations with El Salvador. We felt the tension that exists today. What are my country’s intentions with this small nation? What does Obama say here to the reporters that he may not say in our country? To follow a Liberation Theology, we have learned to think critically about structural sin and historical context. We have become accustomed to hearing commentaries about the political reality in many of the masses here, the U.S. influence being among the most common topics. After mass I united with the two families from Mariona that we are also there. As I looked around the crowd for them I suddenly felt people tickling me. It was the husband and wife from Mariona, they had found me. We then drove back from Divina Providencia in a taxi just in time for our 10:15 class. At that class we had a guest speaker, Juan, Archbishop Romero’s personal taxista before he died. Juan shared stories about Romero’s moments of great fear as well as Romero’s favorite jokes and favorite type of pupusas.

"Silent Retreat"

The following weekend, we were invited as a program to participate in a three-day silent retreat at Centro Loyola. Loosely structured, with the greatest time devoted to space for reflection, the retreat allowed me to step back and look at where I have come from and where it is my heart is leading. In reflecting on my life, on my calling, on my vocation, on my relationship with God, I was filled with a great calm. I was filled with a great comfort. It was a time to rest in gratitude for all that had been and for the great gift of life that I have left to live. In that great calm, I finally felt empowered to confront deeper struggles that I had been carrying with me. I needed that calm to return to the fear and pain that I hold still in my muscle memory, that I held as I looked to the future. I took time to listen, to sit with God, to let prayer come to me. My prayer, each time with a different ending and accompanied by one deep breath in and another deep breath out, began with the same repetition, “Lifting my pain. Resisting my fear…”

And here I am today, a sum of these experiences and so many more. Sometimes overwhelmed, other times calm and content. But each day living, with flaws and aspirations, falling into humility and rising again through the love of others.

I looked at the calendar today.

I have one month left here to be present. I have one month here to live in that love.

Learning to Live

When I called this process “study abroad”, I was referring to my classes. I was referring to the courses I would be taking about the history of the civil war in this country, the sociological analysis of coffee production and population growth. I was referring to the theology course that was scheduled for every Friday morning.

And all of these courses have given me homework, and I have studied for each of them. I have read the lectures and written the papers. I have learned the reality of this country through these books and taken notes on these lectures.

And I have also learned so very much more. Everyday here, every moment spent with my friends who call this country home, I am learning how to live.

When I chose this study abroad experience, I chose it because I wanted to know the people of this country. And with that desire came expectations, assumptions. I expected to learn about the history of the war. I assumed I would learn more about our country’s role in that history, our role in the funding of those massacres. I expected to hear many stories. I expected to have my heart broken. I anticipated a revolution of my heart.

When I thought of this study experience, I recalled the images I had always seen associated with El Salvador, most of them, if not all, from the time of the civil war. I thought of black and white faces of the disappeared. Face upon face, each without a smile, each with a cold stare. There was little warmth. There was a great deal of curiosity in my mind and in my heart. I recalled the stillness of dead bodies piled high during the war. I imagined soldiers, with tall boots, black hats and young complicated faces. I recalled words from the books I’ve read that described death and destruction and so very much pain. I analyzed our collective history, between my country and El Salvador, and I was disgusted by the role my country assumed in those images, those words, and that pain.

But I have learned so very much more than those images, those words and that pain could have taught me. I have learned, in the midst of that history, in the midst of that very tangible pain that exists here, what it means to live.

I have formed friendships with the families in Mariona. I have held their children, tickling them until their laughter chases their breath. I have washed their dishes. I have let them serve me food at every lunch meal. We have sat together in silence, a silence that feels very comfortable in a space that is shared with friends. We have hugged each other every time we say hello or say goodbye. We have talked about what does and does not work about our work and time together. They have seen me vulnerable in my broken Spanish and tired mornings. I have seen them vulnerable in their struggles with health and the exhaustion of living in a violent reality.

In learning to live, I have learned that these people here do not need my pity. They need my company and my respect. They need my listening heart and mind. They are living. They are living with the memory of their civil war. They are living with the pain of the traumas of that war. They are living with the murder that they witnessed last week on the way to meet their daughters at school. They are sharing these stories, inviting me to better understand their pain. And then, as living breathing loving people do, they share an embarrassing story from their childhood. They laugh in the midst of everything I struggle to grasp. They invite me to laugh with them. They invite me to live with them.

And live with them I have. I have sat on the crowded public buses and sweated through the afternoon heat bouncing my head to the beat of reggaeton. I have swam in the ocean at a public beach with the family of the Salvadoran student who lives in our home here. Swimming with his cousins and nieces, we were knocked down by waves and filled our swimsuits with sand. We looked at the private cabanas and walked past them, knowing they were not for us. I have spent a week in a home stay in the rural areas of El Salvador with a host family. We watched telenovelas, ate candy and played cards for hours. Time passed slowly. But we passed it together.

This is living. This is obvious. And yet in preparing for my time here, none of this was obvious. The people of this country, in sharing their stories and sharing their lives with me, even their friendship, have invited me to open my eyes. They have held my hand as I walk through the deep darkness of their reality and they have opened my heart, in a way I could not do on my own, as I walk through the joy of what it means to be alive with them, together.

And what it means to serve them is to live with them. What it means to live with them is to acknowledge their struggles and their joys. I have learned to listen. I have learned to follow their lead. I have learned that to serve them, to live with them, is to work with them for justice. And to be fulfilled in that work, to give that work and the humanity of these people their due value, I need to be alive with them, actively learning from them, actively living with them, and actively loving as they love.

Wrapped in a grace that I cannot fully articulate

I could not have anticipated blessings such as these during my time here. I could not manifest revelations such as these on my own. I am feeling a love divine. I am wrapped in a grace that I cannot fully articulate.

It was Saturday evening of our weekend at our praxis site in Mariona. The same evening that I struggled with the exchange of money between this Salvadoran woman and I, I also shared a bond with her strong enough to overcome any awkward exchange.

In preparing for our weekend stay in Mariona, our program suggested that we pack photos of our friends and family to share with our Salvadoran host family. In the rush of packing my bag it didn’t occur to me that I could be selective with which photos I would share. Instead I simply threw my photo album in my bag and boarded the microbus in the direction of Mariona.

On Saturday evening, my Salvadoran host and friend invited me to share my photos with her. She was very excited to see them and excited to show me her own album as well. I was a bit nervous. I quickly realized that I had brought nearly thirty photos. I didn’t want to overwhelm her, or bore her. But we opened the album anyways and the stories started to rush out.

She loved the photos of my family and enjoyed the photos of my friends from Minnesota. Soon my photos transitioned to my friends and experiences at Loyola Chicago. The very first photo was of one of my best friends and I holding signs together at a vigil against militarization. It was obviously a photo quite different from the rest. It was time to do some explaining.

I explained to her that this vigil was outside of “La Casa Blanca” or the White House. Immediately she smiled. I waited to see how she might react. Then my fellow student in the room interjected, “¡Anamaria es una revolucionaria!” We all laughed; I laughed timidly. And she smiled even bigger and put out her fist to me. She was inviting me to a fist bump; she was affirming me. I gladly returned the fist bump, and we all laughed a little harder.

As we continued through the pictures, a theme began to develop. It became clear that vigils such as that depicted in the first photo were reoccuring. Then this Salvadoran woman asked a question that I was simply not prepared to hear. She asked if we had heard of the School of the Americas Watch vigil because she knew many Casa students that participated in the vigil.

I breathed deeply. Time seemed to slow. My mind raced. Was this really happening? Did this Salvadoran woman really just ask me that? And it may seem trivial. It was a simple question, but for me it carried a great weight. In processing my decision to participate in civil disobedience this past November at the School of the Americas vigil, I wondered what my experience in Georgia at the vigil would mean to my time in El Salvador. For a time, I was even unsure if I would be able to study in El Salvador because of my pending state charges from the direct action in Georgia. And I refused to entertain any illusions that our direct action would be relatable to the Salvadoran people that I met during my time here. I didn’t want to assume anything, especially not that the people that I met would know about the vigil.

And yet there I was. And this friend of mine, this Salvadoran woman was the one asking me about the vigil. I told her that, yes; I knew of the vigil and had traveled to the vigil the last so many years. I breathed again. I thought back to the fist bump. That exchange seemed to go well. And so I told her that I participated in civil disobedience at the vigil this past November. I explained that I held a sign and blocked a highway. I told her that I was in jail after I was arrested.

We were all quiet for a moment. Or at least it felt as though we were all quiet. I quickly assured her that I was only in jail for one night. I was released the next day. All was well.

She smiled at me again. But this time, we weren’t laughing. Her eyes stared so deeply into mine, and her smile spread so calmly across her face, that without moving, she touched the depths of my heart. She told me she had been arrested once as well. She too had spent one night in jail.

This was really happening.

Throughout the rest of the night I learned a little more. I know that she was active as a religious sister throughout El Salvador’s civil war, and thus she had many dear friends martyred. I assume that her arrest was tied up in her work during the war. She assured me gently that I needed to have “orgullo” or “pride” in being a revolutionary. I had clearly had hesitation in claiming my identity in the photos that I had shared. She sensed this. This woman who had lived through the repression and violence of the civil war, told me to have pride. She looked into my eyes many more times that night, telling me that we had a lot in common. This Salvadoran woman nearly my mother’s age, she said, had a lot in common with me.

I could not have anticipated blessings such as these.

Later in the week, we were back at Mariona. Wednesdays are the days that we spend learning meditation and massage techniques with this Salvadoran woman. Wednesday was the day that we learned how to give each other hand massages. Soon I found myself sitting cross-legged with this Salvadoran woman at my side, massaging my hand. She smoothed each wrinkle and touched each worn joint from my twenty-one short years of life. Each time we finish these massages, she encourages us to send each other a verbal message. She held my hand in both of hers and out loud recalled the bond we had formed during the weekend past. She spoke of my being young and of having “compromiso” or "commitment" and what it meant to share this with me. Being told that I am someone with “compromiso” was an incredible gift, because this concept of commitment is one that she and many others use in telling stories of resistance and faith during the civil war.

Her hands holding mine, I was wrapped in a grace that I cannot fully articulate.

As we took time to reflect together after we had each finished the hand massages, I was able to share with her what this relationship with her meant to me. Using Spanish as best as I could, I told her that I had dealt with a lot of fear in jail. I told her with tears in my eyes that this time with her, her words, and the touch of her hands with such dignity, care and deep love was a part of my healing process of dealing with that fear.

She was sharing a divine love with me.

There I was, in El Salvador, in a small room in the top of this woman’s humble home. I was sitting across from this woman who had lived through a civil war that I have only known through stories, who has lived through death and great fear, love and great faith. And there was this connection tangibly moving between us.

And here I am, overwhelmed by these experiences. I cannot manifest revelations such as these on my own. Here I am and God is with me. If I was unsure before of God’s presence in my life, and I can say firmly that many times I was, I need no longer to be unsure. After following what I believed was my calling to civil disobedience, I experienced a fear that shook me to the core. I wavered. I was afraid. I have been broken and vulnerable. And in the weight of that brokenness, in the confusion of that vulnerability, God has carried me through the hands of this Salvadoran woman. I have now seen that in the times when I do not know my own strength, when fear and confusion cloud that strength, God enters and does the rest. I need not fear, God’s love is with me, in the very hands of this Salvadoran woman.

"The same world"

The closeness in a friendship. The exchange of the dollar. The distance of our systems. The friendship, the dollar, and our systems. I felt the power in each of these this past weekend.

Friday through Sunday, I stayed with a Salvadoran family in their home. I have visited their home twice a week since I arrived here, but this time I stayed longer and became closer. The friendship between this host family and I grew stronger. We ate every meal together as a family and dissolved the barriers of culture, language and age. We laughed a lot. We shared stories. We asked simple questions. “Do you have siblings?” “How old are they?” “Do they live far away?” And, “What is your work during the week?” We felt the weight of awkward silences. We shared photos together of our families and friends. We looked at each other in the eye. We smiled when all else failed.

On Saturday night, those smiles defined us. After a long day of working at our friendship, I found myself closer than I had expected to be. I found myself closer, not only to this Salvadoran family, but to the reality of our broken economic systems. That reality came between us in their humble home, just off of the busy moving streets in Mariona.

On the walls of their home hang posters of Oscar Romero. I have long admired posters such as these and was eager to share that admiration with them. They were eager to tell me the history behind these posters. I found out that they sell these posters, as well as shirts with images of Romero. The mother of the house told me that, if I wanted, she could show me some of the posters and shirts in case I wanted to buy some. I could sense hesitation in her offer. She seemed uncertain of how I would react. But I had no uncertainty; I wanted to buy a poster and maybe a shirt as well. I assured her that I would love to look over her collection.

Before she took out the posters, she explained to me that she sells the posters and the shirts for the organization that creates them. When looking over the options, I quickly found a poster and a shirt that I wanted to buy. Her six-year-old son then asked her to show me the lotions and shampoos that she had. She again seemed hesitant. But her son asker her again. She smiled. I smiled and assured her again that I would be happy to look over what else she had. And so she opened another box with the lotions and shampoos. She took out each soap to show me and explained to me how she had become involved with selling these products as well. She kept referring to her “situation”, which I took to be a way of expressing her economic situation. Soon I became aware of my being the customer in this exchange, and she the vendor. These are not roles that she meant to introduce in our friendship. This is not a role that I realized I had entered. And yet there we were. And a new closeness formed between us, a more uncomfortable sort of closeness. That lack of comfort is not inherent in trade; but accompanies an exchange in which there is great disparity between my wealth and hers. We had managed to become friends beyond that great inequality, until I took out my wallet.

It cost nine dollars for the shirt and the poster. I had a ten-dollar bill. I was not about to wait for change. I gave her the ten-dollar bill. And she looked at me unsure of how to respond. I told her to keep the change. And I can hardly imagine what my face must have looked like to her in that moment. I have never been a good liar. My emotions are my expressions. And I know what I was feeling in that moment. I was feeling the uncomfortable closeness of the inequality in that exchange of the dollar. I was feeling the power in that exchange and the inequality of that power.

In that pause, after she took the bill and before I told her to keep the change, our eyes connected. I tried to share a smile with her, but my smile failed because it could not cover the tearing confusion in my heart. Yes, confusion in my heart, not my head. My head was not confused, my head knew exactly what was occurring, but my heart did not know how to compensate for the brokenness of that exchange. That painful confusion, which is lost in the distance of every other purchase I make within the global capitalist system, was brought close with that one purchase.

Going to my backpack to grab that ten-dollar bill meant that I had a wallet filled with money. That money meant that I had enough to spend in this country without much thought. While this Salvadoran family cooked meals for me all weekend and told me how expensive milk and cheese are to buy, I had money in my wallet. I had money in my wallet for posters and shirts. Milk and cheese are some of my favorite foods. They are not too expensive for me to buy and my body does not ache from the lack of their nutrition. I eat and drink them without much thought.

And in that pause that she and I shared, with the failed smile and confused sadness, I tangibly felt power in my hand. I felt power folded in that ten-dollar bill. I had the power to buy another shirt from her and maybe then she could put milk or cheese on their table at their next meal. I had the power to buy only what I wanted, thus giving her what was convenient for me to share, not nearly close to what she needed. And this woman, this friend, this Salvadoran mother of mine, waited in that pause with a failed smile of her own. In that smile she tried to communicate that she would return my change if I wanted it, but her smile also failed. It failed to cover the need that that extra dollar could only begin to fill.

Neither of us was being wholly honest. Me with my guilt. Her with her innocent wanting. How disgusting it felt for me, at twenty-one years old, having suffered nothing like the suffering of this woman, to hold a monetary power that she will likely never have. How uncomfortable it is when I can no longer pretend that we have nothing in common, this Salvadoran mother and I. How painful it is to feel at once close through laughter and painfully closer in the disparity of our monetary wealth.

And in that closeness, I am the one who returned to my wallet that night to find twenty dollars remaining. Twenty dollars left in my wallet, not hers. Twenty dollars in my hands, not hers. None for milk nor cheese. None for nutrition. None for her only six-year-old son. All for me.

But this is not about me and my suffering. This not about my guilt alone. And this is not about her and her suffering. This is not only about her reality. In the exchange of that dollar, it is not only my guilty reality nor her reality of poverty. Instead, my reality and her reality became our reality. Her reality is a part of my reality. In my college classes and my peace loving meetings and potlucks, I can do my best to prove the interconnectedness of humanity. I can use big words. I can create beautiful dreams of hand holding masses and pray for the unity of all people. But this closeness is no theory. This kind of closeness is no prayer. This closeness is not always a beautiful image. This closeness is our reality in a world defined by globalization, where the women of this country often make the shirts that I buy, and where my wealth is their poverty. This a reality that I hide from and dodge with every material comfort and distant purchase that I make choosing instead to hold my privilege closer than relationships with these people.

This global capitalist system, whether I believe in it our not, is alive in the uncomfortable closeness that I felt in the reality that this Salvadoran woman and I share. As Juan Luis Segundo S.J. said, “The world that is satisfying to us is the same world that is utterly devastating to them.”