U.S.A.

Dear Readers:

I am in the United States of America right now, touring the great state of Iowa and talking to churches and other groups about the work of Our Sister Parish in El Salvador. In other words, I am a) quite busy, and b) cannot report on what is going on in El Salvador, seeing as I am not there.

But I did not want to leave you all with no El Salvador-related thoughts for 2-3 weeks, so I will be posting links here to the sermons I will be preaching. The first one should be posted here in the next few days: http://www.newton1stpresbyterian.org/listen_to_a_service.cfm. Many thanks to the people of First Presbyterian Church in Newton, IA for letting me take over their pulpit today and preach about Revelation 21 and the people of El Salvador. That was quite brave of all of them.

Peace,

Katherine

It Is Always The Pueblo Who Pays

Old North Church, Boston, MA. It was here, on April 18th, 1776, that lanterns were hung in the steeple to warn the patriots across the river in Charlestown that the Brittish were on the march. The order to hang the lanterns was given by a certain Paul Revere, who you may have heard of, who then quickly embarked on a ride to Lexington and Concord, which you probably have also heard of.

On Tuesday morning, I was driving on one of the back roads of El Salvador with Alejandro, a young Salvadoran man who (bless him) is teaching me to drive our truck. We had this conversation about the events in Boston on Monday.

Alejandro: “Your country has many problems.”

Me: “Yes, we do. We don’t exactly treat the rest of the world very well, do we? No one knows who caused this or why, and it might have been one of our own crazy people. But some of the violence we see as Americans…I worry that as a country, we ask for it.”

Alejandro: “Yeah, but the people who got hurt didn’t deserve this.”

Me: “No, of course they didn’t. People I know were in that crowd when the bomb went off. They have done nothing wrong. And neither did the people who were hurt or killed.”

Alejandro: “No, they were completely innocent. That’s the problem. The people in your country who cause trouble are the people at the top, the powerful ones. It’s the same way here. And they are always protected. They always have guards. They never get hurt when these things happen. It is always the pueblo that pays.”

This, I think, is a remarkably nuanced response from a young man who grew up in one of the poorest parts of the world, who has memories of a terrifyingly bloody and completely catastrophic Civil War which was partially funded and supported by our own government, and who still sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night to the sound of armed robbers roving around his village.

I am not a Bostonian by birth, but rather by adoption. As such, there are plenty of things that I did not inherit from the place, and part of me will forever be a Wisconsin girl.[1]  But there are plenty of things that I did come to love: the seemingly contradictory but in practice seamless love of both history/tradition and political progressivism, the fact that Boston is one of the few places in the world that I can ask for a bubbler and people know what I’m talking about, some of the oldest and best universities in the country and the love of erudition and knowledge that comes with that, the number of passionate young people working for good causes, the fact that it’s as easy to find a good church as it is to find a good craft beer, the fact that people will do anything to protect their parking spaces in winter, and yes, the sports fans. I could never get hooked on your teams, Boston, but man oh man do I love you for your love of them.

The thing that I love most about Boston, however, is the people. Boston is the first place I have ever lived where every community I was a part of—the city, my church, my school, my group of friends—made me feel like I was at home. Actually, it’s deeper than that. Boston is the first place that surrounded me with so much support and love from all of these communities in my life that I felt like I could really be myself.

Consequentially, it is also the first place that, when something terrible happened there this week, I panicked because I had so many people I was worried about.

It is the first place that, when something terrible happened there, I was filled with a kind of grief and rage I had never before experienced, the kind of grief that you can only feel in connection to a place when it has become your place. It is the first place that, when something terrible happened there, my first thought was: not my pueblo, you b*stards.

I was sad and terrified on 9/11. I was sad and terrified when a man shot and killed six people and wounded four others in a Sikh temple just miles from where I grew up. And when a man with a gun walked into a spa in my hometown and killed three, I was distraught, thinking of the people I knew who could be there or might have been there.

But this was something different. This was my pueblo. I was beyond angry. I was enraged. I was beyond sad. I was brokenhearted.

Yes, there have been plenty of arguments that this was a relatively small attack, that the American military takes far more innocent lives on a regular basis than were lost a few days ago, that the world was never safe to begin with, that this is the kind of thing that people in Syria and Iraq put up with every day, that the whole media and government response has been to use this tragedy as an excuse for fear-mongering, racism, and scapegoating, and that America brings this kind of violence upon herself with the acts of evil she commits towards the rest of the world.

Then there are the calls you would expect to hear from Bostonians themselves: you messed with the wrong town, this changes nothing, I am running this race next year, terrorists or no terrorists, we will find you and bring you to justice, this is a massive tragedy that cannot be politicized, and we must, must, must stop this from happening again, even though nothing will ever make up for the lives lost, including the life of an 8 -year-old boy who will forever be remembered as the kid who made a sign saying, “Stop hurting other people, peace,” and then died because someone hurt him.

And then, of course, there are the calls to see God and the greater humanity in this: the people who took care of strangers and helped them into ambulances, the cops and other officials that diverted thousands of runners out of the way in a manner of minutes.  Some of the runners, after running 26.2 miles, ran another two to get to a hospital to give blood.

I think these opinions are all correct, even as they seem contradictory: this shows the worst of humans and the best of humans. We can see both Evil and God in this. This is unusual for America and usual for other places. The crowd, police, and FBI were wrong to (literally) pounce on the first Saudi Arabian citizen they saw. The world was never safe to begin with, so get over that right now. And this is so, so, so sad. Three innocent people died, including a child. How can you talk about geopolitics at a time like this?

And no, you should not mess with Boston. When the cradle of liberty swings, it is wise to get out of the way. [2]

But I think that the Salvadorans I work with, who have known their share of terror and violence and loss themselves, have hit it on the head: there have always been people who decide that something is so wrong with the world that they must take it upon themselves to correct it, and correct it with violence. Sadly, it is almost never the people responsible for the problems that the violent see as needing correction that get hurt. It is always the pueblo who pays.

Yes, America as a country, and America’s leaders, have hurt and killed a lot of non-Americans. That is wrong.  America has hurt and killed a lot her own people, and that is wrong, too. (Furthermore, we do not yet know if this was the work of someone who was responding to these very real problems or not.) But even if the powerful people responsible for America’s violence in the world and within her own borders deserved to have the kind of violence seen on Monday enacted on their own lives—and they don’t, because no one does—they are never the people affected by said violence.

It is always the pueblo who pays.

In other words, the world is complex and tragic and calls for nuanced responses to terrible and terribly complex events. On the one hand, yes, America has done things wrong, both to her own citizens and to others. On the other hand, no one deserved this. No one deserves violence, and violence is never an appropriate response to violence. This is a tension that we have to live with. Because tragedy is not a competition. And even if it were, all the innocent people of the world would all be losing said competition together.

Because no matter who we are or where we are from, it is always, always, the pueblo who pays. It is the innocent that pay. It was the Salvadoran campesinos who paid in a war that everyone claimed it was about them, when in truth it wasn’t about them at all. It was the marathon runners and spectators who paid. It was a peaceful Nazarene carpenter who paid. And that is why, as Christians, we work for the end to violence, wherever or whomever we are. We work for a world where all our pueblos–mine, Alejandro’s, all of them–no longer pay.

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[1] I will never trade in my cheesehead hat for a Pats jersey. Sorry, Boston.

[2] Not that there is any “right city” to bomb. There is never a right city, person, or place to bomb. That is my point. But I think that some commentators  are fair to point out that Boston was a particularly poor choice.

The Mustard Seed

Balmore (left) and a farmer discuss beans.

He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” [Matthew 13v31-32]

This was the parable that Balmore, our resident Delegate of the Word, preached on last week when we had a Seed Exchange at the Pastoral House.

This Seed Exchange was quite an event. If you aren’t familiar with Seed Exchanges, the basic idea is fairly simple: farmers and agriculturalists come together to exchange knowledge and wisdom about the crops grown in their area, as well as the seeds that they plant in their own fields. In our case, people came from all over the country to meet with one another, discuss Salvadoran crops and agricultural practices, and trade seeds.

Before this exchange, however, we listened to a talk from Caesar, a professor who came from a university in San Salvador to talk about how important it is to defend native agricultural practices in this country.[1] He warned those present that global climate change, pollution, international mining corporations, and other forces were threatening their livelihoods as farmers. He reminded them that the land that they are using to farm is overpopulated, overworked, and abused, and the chemical fertilizer that they are using to make it yield crops is making people sick.

Caesar talks to the group about farming practices.

Speaking directly about the importance of Seed Exchanges, he explained that El Salvador’s native seeds are being squeezed out in favor of imported ones, which is bad for crop diversity. Crop diversity is a good thing, he said, because genetic diversity in crops helps protect farms against pests and diseases. In fact, many native seeds have proven to be more resistant to climate change, pests, and other maladies than imported seeds and GMOs. [2] Diverse crops are good for farmers.

Many communities from the Berlin area participated in this Exchange. People came from Tablón Cerna and Centro, San Isidro, Casa de Zacate, Talpetates, and other cantons. But people also came from cities and cantons in other departments: Apopo, Tinteral, Jicaro, Cabañas, and others.  They shared their knowledge and seeds with the people of this area, who in turn shared their knowledge and seeds with them. One group even brought products exclusively made with ojuste,[3] a highly nutritious native fruit that can be processed into a powder to make all different kinds of foods: horchata, cookies, chocolates, tortillas, and others. Another brought organic shampoo made with all-native products. It was beautiful to watch people from all over El Salvador who never would have had a chance to meet one another otherwise talk about how strong one particular seed is, or how sweet this breed of corn, or how this bean will not die, even if your field floods.

Farmers from Berlin discuss their favorite corn seeds.

Around 80 people came to exchange seeds and knowledge.

Caesar exchanges seeds with a farmer.

Some women from San Isidro-Izalco share their ojuste products. They even gave out free ojuste cookies and horchata. Yum.

As I was walking around, taking pictures and listening to these farmers talk, I couldn’t help but think that Balmore could not have picked a better parable to frame the experience. These Salvadorans, most of them subsistence farmers, have the agricultural, environmental, and economic deck stacked against them. All of Caesar’s warnings are true. Chemical fertilizers are poisonous. Imported seeds may be cheaper, but they are bad news in the long run. Mining corporations are poisoning the water supply. These folks have a long way to go before their lives and livelihoods are secure, and even if they do everything they can, some of the forces that Caesar warned about are outside their control. Especially global climate change.[4] It will not be easy to change the ways they farm, to walk away from chemical fertilizer, or to maintain what they have kept: the seeds their families and communities have grown for generations, and the knowledge about how to grow them. They have a long way to go with regards to achieving food security and solidarity.

But as Caesar was talking about how important farming was to El Salvador, how important it was to change some practices and maintain others, how important it was to share the seeds, relationships, and knowledge they do have, there was nothing but nodding and affirmations coming from the people present. These planters of seed have had a seed planted in their own heads and hearts about resisting the world’s assault on their livelihoods. It’s a small seed, to be sure. But just like a mustard seed, small things can become big things. Jesus tells us that the Kingdom of God is like that. Resurrection is like that.

And I think that this Seed Exchange is like that, too.

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[1] Shout out to our friends at Joining Hands El Salvador for making this possible.

[2] Beware of Monsanto.

[3] I didn’t know what it was, either: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brosimum_alicastrum

[4] Don’t believe in climate change? Talk to a subsistence farmer. Really, I’m serious. I’ll set you up.

Holy Week (In Words): He is Risen

Friends, seeing that Easter is actually 50 days long, I prefer to think that this post is on the early rather than the late side. This will be the first in a series of Easter Season reflections in which I will think through what Resurrection means, both for the people with whom I serve, and for all of us. 

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. ²They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, ³but when they went in, they did not find the body. ⁴While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. ⁵The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen…” [Luke 24v1-5]

Easter has always been powerful for me. I loved it when I was a child, both for the candy and for the amazing stories. I also loved it when I was a college student falling in love with Liberation Theology. Since then, I have always connected deeply with this Liberating Christ who stood with the poor, the oppressed, the outsider, those forgotten and dismissed and trampled upon by empire, by capitalism, by greed run amok, and by those who desire power at the cost of life. Since then, I have loved this Christ who died as one of these wounded people, beaten down by an emissary of the imperial government acting at the behest of His mislead and equally power-hungry, insecure, and cruel religious authorities, who with His last words forgave with total nonviolence those so corrupted by their own unjust social systems that they would spill innocent blood to maintain the status quo.

In this way, Easter is not a simple symbol of God’s gift of eternal life to us, of the simple overcoming of physical death and the promise of an eternal, painless existence on a beach in the sweet-by-and-by somewhere else. It is a proclamation that all forms of death will certainly die, whether those deaths be literal, figurative, or as is often the case in abused parts of the world like the one I live in, both. It is a notice, nailed on the door of the universe, that nothing that destroys will live, no one who loves will die, and that there is no power of government or religion, no bully big or small, no market force, nor anything else in our broken world that can come between us and God. Absolutely nothing.

And all the evil in the world? It always loses. Oppression loses. Hate loses. Violence loses. Injustice loses. Empire loses. Every. Single. Time. Always.

I still believe all that. And living in a country where Oscar Romero, a man who died to stand up for this pacifistic, non-partisan Christ who loved the poor, the oppressed, and the victims of cruelty and violence, it is hard not to see that Liberationist gospel as still relevant. I do not want to oversimplify: not everyone here sees Jesus, sees his message, sees the world that way. But many people do. The Pastoral Team certainly does. And so do I.

But, funny thing…as many years as I have spent working with the people Romero and others have stood up and died for: “the poor,” “the oppressed,” “the disadvantaged,” I never quite caught on to the fact that the Easter message, that the journey from death to resurrection, a sealed-up and guarded tomb to an empty one, also applied to me.

Don’t get me wrong: I know that the Liberationist understanding of the cross and the resurrection, the Liberationist space between the trial and the he-is-not-here, serves to remind me, a white middle class American[1], that my role in the Gospel is to use what privilege I have been given to help others out of whatever form of oppression they are suffering from: racism, poverty, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and yes, all of the intersections between those oppressions. In other words, my own liberation comes from my participation in the liberation of others. Resurrection is indeed, on the one hand, a practice of living out the Kingdom of God a the macro level, at fighting big systems and big corporations and governments and organizations and attitudes and yes, sometimes churches when they hurt and torture and ignore and deal out all manner of literal and figurative death. Entire nations and peoples have been brought low, crushed under the weight of imperialism and colonialism and avarice and greed and lust for power, just as Jesus was. Jesus stands and falls and dies right along with them. He thirsts as they thrist, bleeds as they bleed, and hangs there asking why, just as they do.

But Resurrection is also a micro event. It started with one cross, one man, one tomb, one morning of Light. And sometimes it happens within each of us in the same way.

The thing that is remarkable about Holy Week is that we have all probably had one.

The real Good Fridays of our lives are deaths, big and small: a certain event, or illness, or problem, or trauma. And we have all had them. We lose a job, or fail to get one. We graduate with a degree we’re proud of and wake up the next day with nothing to show for it. Plans fail. Dreams die. People die. Godawful terrible things happen. Our lives contain a thousand tombs.

And worse, what follows is a thousand Holy Saturdays. Dark spaces that leave us no hope for a future, spaces filled with what was that leave us seemingly without a what’s next. The sun comes up and goes down and seems to have nothing to do with us. Then that happens again, and again, and again. We find the point beyond the why that looks and feels like total absence, total emptiness. Which is less a real absence and emptiness and more the presence of something quite present and quite dead.

Jesus walks out from his own dark, empty space and declares that our own dark spaces are consecrated, too. That life has been breathed into them again. That those million little tombs are no longer shut. That those places, once so full with all that death and absence, are now full with the presence of light and new life and God’s abiding love.

That’s the easy part of the Good News. Here’s the scary part: I am actually talking about you.

Yes, you. The GOOD NEWS IS YOURS, TOO.

I am especially speaking to you activist types, you organizers, you citizens of the Kingdom, you people that pray on the street corners, you seekers of tikkum olam, you hopers and dreamers and lovers and people who rage against the dying of the light, and yes, to you who cannot bear to bear the weight of the broken world on your heart any longer, and the most that you can do anymore is read the front page in the morning, sigh deeply, and move on: THIS MEANS YOU.

But really, I am talking to every single one of you.

If there is any part of you that does not believe that what happened to Jesus actually has something to do with you, if you do not believe that God loves you unconditionally today, tomorrow, and yesterday, whether you spent the last three days in jail for civil disobedience, answering email, or actually really just screwing up your whole life, if you do not believe that you are forgiven for what you have done and not done, if you carry a voice inside you, born of abuse or bullying or trauma or your superego or yes, or own oppression that is telling you that maybe God loves me, but not like God loves everyone else, because there is no way God would love this broken sinner that way, then you need let that go. Because it is only killing you. And a dying you is not a living you, and a living you is what Jesus wants.

Furthermore, did you actually think for a second that you could go preach resurrection to other people if you don’t believe in it yourself? Did you actually think you could preach forgiveness to people if you don’t believe yourself to be forgiven, practice healing if you have not been healed, or love if you do not feel worthy of a love that considers everyone worthwhile?  Were you actually going to try to convince the oppressed of the world that they deserve better because Jesus loves them enough to place His own body between them and empire without believing that the same God actually cares about you, too? Because I warn you: you won’t make it very far carrying that whole planet on your shoulders if you don’t believe Someone else is holding you up.

Yes, God has a preferential option for the poor. I totally believe that. But it wasn’t until the day I woke up several years ago, realizing that I was about to preach a sermon about forgiveness of self and others and did not believe that God actually loved or forgave me that I broke open, rolled away the stone, and crawled out to find a world where the love I felt for others was grounded in a belief that I was loved, too, where the Stories I told were not just about freeing others, but freeing myself that I could free others.

This Easter, I hope you find that freedom, too.

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[1] “Ah, yes,” I hear you say. “But you’re a woman, and feminist liberation theology would note that you are also oppressed.” True. As a woman, I cannot walk down the street at night without the threat of violence and I know that the churches that hire me will probably pay me less than they would pay a man with the same qualifications. But just as there are complicated intersections between oppressions, straight white women like myself stand at a very strange intersection of privilege and need for liberation. This is not the post for that important discussion.

Holy Week (In Pictures)

Holy Week is a big deal around here, especially for the religiously and socially dominant Catholic community. They take it seriously. As such, I am still processing all that a Salvadoran Holy Week brings: beauty, pain, weightiness, joy.

This was also my first Easter as a pastor. Considering where my life was a year ago during Holy Week, I am considering that a miracle. A kind of Resurrection, really. So I am still processing all the feelings that come with that, too.

As such, I have yet to form any unique, witty, or even remotely cogent theological, philosophical, or even personal thoughts on the past week. My apologies for that. But I did not want to deprive you of a few little windows into this world as it remembered the strange and powerful events that occurred in a little city called Jerusalem, an insignificant little Roman-occupied backwater on the economic and geographical periphery of a vast empire, two-thousand some years ago.

So for now, here are some pictures.

Palm Sunday. Complete with donkey.

All Glory, Laud and Honor. Only they don’t sing that here, sadly.

Good Friday. Small groups of people, mostly teenagers, make these beautiful paintings with salt in the middle of the streets. There were at least 20 of them throughout Berlín.

The procession walks right over all the salt drawings that people worked hours to make. Delicate, detailed creations are reduced to a blurry mess in seconds.

Then comes Holy Saturday, and the Great Vigil of Easter. It starts with one light…

And one light becomes many…

And so it All Begins. 

He is not here. 

Hallelujah. 

On the Limits of Cultural Tolerance

When you leave the country of your birth and rearing and attempt to live in a culture that is different than yours, certain adjustments must be made.

There are the things that you love instantly and know will be good for you (the people). There are the things that you love instantly that you know will be bad for you (the food). There are things that you come to love deeply, but also grate you, challenge you, or even enrage you at the same time (the language, Roman Catholicism). There are the things that bother you at first, but that you adjust to with time (bucket showers, the lack of potable water, doing laundry by hand). There are the things that break your heart and make you angry every day, but that you understand may take generations of passionate love and commitment to fix (poverty, corruption, machismo).

Then there are the things that, no matter how hard you try to adjust to, to accept, and to refrain from being judgmental about, test the limits of what you thought was your limitless cultural tolerance.

Cultural integration, meet your match: comedic toreros.

No, I did not make that up.

The Fiesta Patronal, or the annual festival to honor the city’s patron saint, San José, came to an end just a few days ago. The religious celebrations are beautiful. The carnival rides are fun. The fireworks that people set off at 4am are a bit irritating, but knowing that some people just a few years younger than me are having fun somewhere is usually enough for me to giggle myself back to sleep. I can also totally get behind the food. Especially the booths stocked with all manner of traditional Salvadoran treats, candy, and artesian crafts:

Mmm. Sugary goodness.

But the bullfighting event was a bit much for me.

For those of you unfamiliar with this cultural tradition, here is how they do it in Berlin[1]: They take a bull, usually a big one with long, sharp horns, and lock it up in a cage just outside a large, enclosed metal ring. Sometimes, a man mounts the bull before they release it, attempting to ride it. Sometimes, they release it by itself into the ring. In either case, it is always met by one or more toreros[2], men who carry brightly colored (traditionally red) capes. These toreros try to irritate the bull as much as possible so it chases them around. The idea is to provide a great deal of entertainment without the bull doing serious harm to one of the toreros or to the audience. The toreros we saw were particularly unique in their methods of entertainment, wearing clown makeup and doing rather…suggestive dances with their backs turned to the bulls.

The gentlemen to the far left and far right are the toreros. The gentlemen with the cowboy hats are the bull riders.

This man stayed on this bull for an impressive amount of time.

A torero getting a little too close to the bull for my comfort.

A torero, on the ground, teasing the bull in front of him.

In Spain and other parts of the world, a bullfight usually ends one of three ways:

1. The bull (or bulls) is hurt or killed.

2. The torero (or toreros) is hurt or killed.

3. Both the torero(s) and the bull(s) are hurt or killed.

This seems to me like a lose/lose/lose situation.

In El Salvador, however, the bull is not usually killed. So the largest risk is usually borne by the toreros, and not the animals. In the particular fight we saw, one of the man was attacked by one of the bulls and thrown at least 10 feet, landing on his head. Luckily, he was not seriously injured. 

This still seems like a losing situation.

Of course, there are plenty of Salvadorans who also dislike bullfighting. Several members of the Pastoral Team have told me they do not like it. One of the people with whom I watched the fight, a young girl, was as frightened and turned-off as I was.

Perhaps it’s my people loving sensibilities. Also my animal loving sensibilities. But I am having trouble seeing the point of all this. I know that it’s tradition, and tradition is a funny thing. I can except that in most circumstances, but it is difficult to see this as anything other than a combination of thrill-seeking and needless cruelty. It’s like watching NASCAR,  only with bullfighting, both the driver and the car are sentient beings.  It makes me cringe.

But in a rather difficult act of solidarity, I stayed. And I watched. Perhaps there are times that my tolerance can carry me no further. I know that part of my job is to open my heart and mind to new experiences. But it is moments like this that test my cultural-exchange resolve and resilience.

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[1] Which is very different than how they do bullfighting in Spain.

[2] N.B. The word “matador” is generally not used in Spanish. 

Habemus Papam

You have probably heard that the Roman Catholic Church has a new Pope.[1]

This Pope is the first-ever Pope from the Americas. More specifically, he is the first-ever Pope from Latin America.

As you may have guessed, this is news down here. The Pastoral Team has certainly been talking about it. So asked them, “What do you think of this new Pope?” These were their answers:

1. They can’t have much of an opinion on him until we see what he does.

Blanca: “Often people change when they get elected to an office this high.”

Me: “So, I should ask you in an year what you think of him?”

Blanca, laughing: “Yes. Ask me in a year!”

2. They do appreciate that he is from Latin America.

Blanca: “We like that he’s from ‘our land,’ of course!”

Me: “But I should still ask you what you actually think in a year.”

Blanca: “Yes.”

Just to note this here: there has been a lot of (good and relevant) discussion amongst some commentators, journalists, and friends of mine in the United States that while Francis I was raised in Argentina, his parents were Italian immigrants. He is not ethnically or racially Argentinian or Latin American. In other words, the College of Cardinals did not elect someone who was really from Latin America.

However, most people down here seem to be referring to him as “an Argentinian” without much further conversation. It will be interesting to see if that changes. This raises some important questions, I think, about what different human beings from different cultures, ethnicities, races, and countries mean when they say someone is from somewhere.[2]

3. They are excited that he seems to be a humble person that values simplicity.

Cecilia, reading from the newspaper: “’When living in Argentina, he always took the bus’…oh, look at this, saying that he wanted to ‘set an example,’ he even carried his own bags and paid the bill at the hotel…”

Me: “And refused the papal car! After his election, he rode in a minibus with the rest of the Cardinals.”

Idalia: “I also heard that he lived in a small apartment in Argentina. And cooked his own food, and everything.[3]”

Blanca: “Interesting…”

4. They are hoping, more than a little, that Francis I will be the one to (finally!) make Oscar Romero a saint.

Anyone who has spent more than five minutes in El Salvador knows that Oscar Romero’s beloved pueblo has already canonized him, and they’re pretty much just waiting for the Vatican to catch on. His face is on the side of more than one parish church, you’ll find photos, murals, and paintings of him everywhere, and they make candles, crosses, jewelry, posters, and purses[4] with his likeness on it.[5]

The Team tells me that there have been some “serious political issues” with making Romero a saint, because some people (especially people in the Vatican, but also some people here) feel that he has been co-opted by the political left, and to canonize him would be to endorse this set of political ideals, in some sense. So they are worried it will never happen. But they desperately want it to.

5. They like his name… 

More than anything, however, the Pastoral Team is hoping that this Pope will care as deeply about the poorest of the poor as they do. So they were quite excited that he took the name Francis, after the saint who left his parent’s wealthy household to live in solidarity with the socioeconomically disadvantaged people of his time.

Blanca: “He took the name Francis…have they decided that he’s named for Francis of Assisi? Or the other Francis, who was a Jesuit?”

Me: “Apparently, it’s for St. Francis de Assisi.”

Blanca: “Hmm…St. Francis was such an advocate for the poor…”

6…And his face.

Cecilia: “Blanca likes to analyze the faces of the Popes.”

Me: “Really?”

Blanca, sliding her glasses up her nose and staring at the front page of the paper: “Yes, I like his face. He has a nice, warm smile. I think he looks a little bit like Romero.”

Cecilia: “Blanca wasn’t so sure about the last one’s face.”

Blanca: “Yes, well…we weren’t so sure about that last one in general…”

In other words, they feel that it is too early to form an opinion about Pope Francis I. But they are hopeful that he will take the church in new and important directions. We are all watching and waiting to see what kind of pope he will be.

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[1] Unless you’re a hermit. Which I will not judge you for. So in that case: the RC Church just elected a new pope, FYI.

[2] The United States is relatively unusual in that, when you ask an American where they are from, or where their family is from (in certain contexts, at least), they will give you an answer akin to this: “Oh, from Ireland, Germany, Scotland, France, and Poland.”  When I once asked my Ecuadorian host family this question, I got this answer: “Uh, here? Also Spain, I guess?” Just one of the many ways in which our ways of looking at ethnicity, and its relationship to heritage and place, differently.

[3] Seeing as Idalia cooks a lot of the food around here, I can see why she would (rightly) appreciate this.

[4] Kid you not. I have one.

[5] Seriously, his face is on at least two things hanging in my office, and I’m the Protestant in the house.