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.