Chewing on El Salvador

I quickly became tired with the way people asked about my trip.

I walked around for days, hearing people excitedly asking me: "how was your trip? Was it wonderful?"

And I cringed.

I cringed because I had spent a week in El Salvador, doing nothing but learning about what life was like for Salvadorans. I didn't come back feeling all warm and fuzzy. I didn't have pictures of homes I built or churches I renovated. I didn't have stories of offering hope or respite or really even something to eat. I felt no sense of entitlement or even the feeling that I had anything of worth to offer a hurting world.

For the first time, maybe ever in my life, I couldn't (and still can't) hide behind any physical accomplishments that improved the quality of life for another, or the ways I influenced or enhanced the spiritual lives of others.

I cannot pretend like the lives that these "others" lived were really any better for meeting me and experiencing my timid and broken Spanish.

I cannot pretend like I have anything to offer that can do much to affect the fear and pain that so many of these people experience daily.

I cannot pretend like I did anything to lessen the weight that these people carry daily--the weight they live and breathe and love under.

Instead, I have been left with the weight of their suffering. As we walked around some parts of El Salvador, the pain was so thick I could taste it.

I spent my week cracking jokes because that weight was just too much. Looking through photos of Jesuit priests, murdered in their pajamas. Gazing upon gardens planted on top of the sites of massacres. Speaking with people who feel abandoned by the world. Listening to people talk about the Church as something to be avoided rather than sought out. Watching young girls divert their eyes from my gaze because they have been taught they are worth nothing. It was just more an I could swallow. More than I could wrap my mind around, and more than I cared to.

So...I cracked jokes. I made silly faces at my new friends, and skipped down the sidewalk, and danced on the bus, and did my best to love the others in my group. I did everything I could to offer joy (which included the above, in addition to belching, singing, climbing trees, and pretty much anything goofy and over the top) so that our hearts could take a break from breaking. These actions aren't atypical for me--I'm usually bubbly and energetic--but I didn't always feel that way in El Salvador. 

Why is it that I hid behind humor? Why is it that I kept making light of such gut-wrenching reality? Why did I keep changing the subject and trying to make people laugh and smile?

I didn't realize that I was doing it at the time. I really thought I was making things better.

But what if I wasn't making things better at all? What if I was just continuing a cycle of indifference? What if my offering of joy was contrary to that which God was trying to offer our group?

So often we find things--anything, really--to hide behind. We see pain and fear and heartache and suffering and we run away. We turn our backs because it's too hard to face the fact that we live comfortable lives where our fears are limited to disease and loneliness and failure when there are real people who live in fear for their lives and the lives of their loved ones at the hands of unmerited and inhuman violence (in addition to our first world problems). It's too upsetting to really wrestle with the dark places in life: the places where pain bubbles to the surface and it cannot be ignored. It changes the taste of life; it's no longer light and sweet. Instead, it is thick and difficult to chew.

Today, I'm chewing. Two weeks later, I'm still chewing. Knawing. Pulling bits and pieces out of my teeth as I try to swallow the reality of this life that I find so easy to spit back on my plate and give to another to clean up.

I'd rather not wrestle with the realities  of femicide and patriarchy and gang violence and poverty and fear and manipulation and social/economic/gender/racial inequality. Do I have to face this?

Do we, as blessed people, have to face this?

The obvious answer, of course, is yes.

Dang. 

But I'm still searching for my "how" because let's face it: anything I can do isn't enough. It's something, but it isn't enough. No amount of money, no supplies, no building, no home, no lecture or book or website seems like it will ever be enough. I can't tell enough little girls that they are world everything, or enough little boys that their worth isn't measured by the fear they instill in others. I can't heal the sick or raise the dead or even speak calm into the hearts of Salvadorans. 

But I'm going to do something. I'm going to figure out a way that I can help inspire change. It's already happening without me...slowly...but there is progress being made. I just want to be a part of it.  I have to be a part of it. 

Because the bite of El Salvador that I took was heavy and tough, but it was rich and full of flavor--a history rich with self-sacrifice for the good of others, deep ties to community and relationship, and a commitment to a God who not only suffered for others, but suffers with them still today. 

If I'm to be like Christ, I've got to figure out how to suffer better. To walk beside those who have nothing and listen. To feel the ache in my feet and my heart, and to sit with it. And sit with others. And chew. And chew. And chew. Until eventually I can swallow again, and take another bite. 

I don't want  El Salvador to eat alone.