A Mostly Merry Christmas Response to Franklin´s Pick Of The Month

¡Feliz navidad desde Uruguay! I am a few days late in writing this, but it´s been crazy around here since last Friday: we´ve had all kinds of guests (from two continents), church asados, stomach illness (not connected to the formerly mentioned ítems), and (imagine this) work. This week, accordingly, you´re getting a Tango Thursday, rather than a Mate Monday, update. Also, this will be part two of my Christmas meditations inspired by the one, the only, Franklin Ishida. This week, I´m tackling the question of the meaning of Christmas in the context of my life and mission here in Uruguay.

I´ve been reading, when I have the patience and energy, Jürgen Moltmann´s The Crucified God. As the title suggests, it is a work devoted to the “theology of the cross,” that often-mentioned, but sometimes misunderstood, branch of Christian theology rooted, to at least a large extent, in the writings of Martin Luther (he originated the phrase). So what is this theology of the cross, then, and what does it have to do with Christmas in Uruguay? Cruciform theology, theology that puts the crucified Christ and, by de facto, the crucified God, at its center demands that we think about that cross and why God found it so important to forever link it, and the shame and suffering it implies, with God´s own identity in our world. It is the recognition that God´s presence is not principally up in heaven, sitting on a fancy gold throne; it is here with us, all of us, and especially in the midst of suffering. God chose to suffer so that we can enter into relationship with God, to bring us into the Kingdom of God. This is meant in more than just the idea of personal salvation; it´s so much deeper than that. It is the call to take up that cross, not to flee from the suffering of the world, but instead to take seriously the burden of stewardship of a world filled with pain, anguish, and misery.

So, what does that have to do with Christmas? Well, that journey to the cross had to start somewhere, and that somewhere was on a night over 2000 years ago in a town that nobody cared about called Bethlehem…Belén to the Spanish-speakers in the audience. Bethlehem was, to talk like a Montevideano, kinda like El Cerro – it was more-or-less just a district of Jerusalem, but one with a very separate identity, a corner of the region with nothing to recommend itself to the rest of the world. In fact, maybe that makes someplace like Uruguay a Bethlehem in the world – you know, that place you memorized the location of once for a geography test, and then forgot about it. You´ll probably never intentionally plan a trip to go there, and even if you do, you´ll probably only hop over to Colonia for a day, or just go straight to the beach in Punta del Este, or stay for a few days to catch both, plus a day or two in Montevideo. It´s not glamorous, it´s not fancy, it´s not the place that conjures up all sorts of exciting images in your mind. It´s just Uruguay, that little buffer state between Argentina and Brazil.

It´s the people, too. Bethlehem, being the forgotten corner of Judea, was not marked by prosperity, or even much hope of prosperity. Its people just tried to get by – keep food on the table, clothes on their backs, a roof over their head. They were a lot like most of the Uruguayans I know – not necessarily poor, but just getting by. The Uruguayan economy is stable, but it´s not strong or likely to become one of those “tiger” economies that pop out of the woodwork every decade or so and surprise everyone until something bad happens – it was Southeast Asia in the ´90s, Ireland right now, but it just won´t ever be Uruguay. There aren´t the natural resources, business infrastucture, the population, or the international interest; Uruguay will likely stay the same, a comfortable, but not First World, sort of place. As for attitudes, they run the gamut from the few wealthy plutocrats, enjoying the easy life in Pocitos and Punta del Este, to fiery-eyed leftists leaving fervent Marxist graffitti on every wall in the city, to the 90% in between, most of whom seem tired, weary, and resigned to the gray skies of living on the razor-edge between comfortable stability and the threat of economic collapse. There´s always the imperialism card to play, too – Israel was under the heel of the Romans; take your pick as to who or what is most worthy of the title of “global imperialists” right now, but chances are high that they´ve got Uruguay where they want it.

And yet into this, into the ignored, depressed, incontent corners of the world, Christ is born. When it´s dark and things aren´t easy or fun, Christ is born. Where there too often isn´t hope, isn´t faith (Uruguay is up there with Europe for letting cold, atheistic rationalism hold the day), and maybe even isn´t love, Christ is born. Where people feast in their beachside high-rises while people on the other side of the city are going hungry, where the rich neighborhoods and poor neighborhoods don´t even feel like the same planet, Christ is born. Wherever people suffer, are prisoners to sin, oppression, and darkness, Christ is born. Christmas didn´t just happen once; the crucified Christ, resurrected and alive, still comes to us in our fears, in our secret longings for abetter way, and brings us, in the words of Marty Haugin´s “Healer of Our Every Ill,” peace beyond our fears and hope beyond our sorrows.

La Navidad, part 1

So, this will be the first of two reflections over Christmas; this is not my Franklin´s Choice of the month; next week´s entry will deal more explicity with the themes he´s asked us to consider. This week, I´ve been thinking a lot of about what it means to have Christmas in the summer.

It´s strange to think, simultaneously, that it is both Christmastime and beach season here in Uruguay. Admittedly, today with rain and temperatures back below 20 C, it doesn´t feel much like beach season, but nonetheless, this is probably the last good, strong cool spell before summer begins in earnest. The amazing thing is that, despite the season, Santa still wears a heavy fur suit, snowflakes are still used for decorations in some places, and the evergreen imagery so much a part of my theology of Christmas (new life in the middle of the dead winter) is still present, even though every other tree, plant, and flower here is blooming as well.

Walking somewhere this week with Wilma (I forget where exactly), I pointed out how many people there are on the streets these days selling jasmine blossoms. She smiled and told me that, in her opinion, the jasmine is the REAL Christmas tree of Uruguay - it blooms in late November and through December, and the city is filled with the scent of fresh-cut jasmine blossoms. The jacarandas, in my opinion, get the silver medal for Uruguayan Christmas Tree; its hard to walk far in Montevideo without seeing at least one or two jacarandas in full purple glory.

It´s also beach time; last night, La Rambla was filled with people drinking mate, playing drums, hanging out in Parque Rodó, and in general enjoying the not-quite-warm-but-not-yet-cool evening temps. The sound of murgas, not carolers, are in the air - singing, drumming, dancing, and joking around with bitingly sharp lyrics. Candombes, groups of African-style drummers and dancers, aren´t hard to find, either, and even the parodistas - street comedy groups, often vulgar but always funny, are starting to crop up.

In some ways, I miss the "in the bleak mid-winter" Christmas I´ve always known, Christmas marked by the joyful, but cold and broken, celebration of the Savior´s arrival in our world. The flipside is that, when you do Christmas in the summer, the brilliant light of the Daystar really DOES inspire a lot of joy and hopefulness. Here´s to new takes on old holidays.

¡Vamos a matear!

And yes, in response to those of you who remember jokes from the last post, we DO have yerba on hand today...none of THAT in this blog!

Anyhow, today´s update is devoted to this blog´s namesake, my new daily habit, and the very Uruguayan thing I will be subjecting a good number of people reading this to once I get back. That´s right, it´s MATE TIME. Yerba mate is a caffeinated tea-like plant grown in Paraguay, parts of Brazil, and northwestern Argentina, and people have been drinking it for thousands of years - right on back to the Guaraní. The Spanish colonists took to the drink, despite efforts by the Crown and the Catholic Church to outlaw it, and Argentines, Paraguayans, southern Brazilians, some Chileans, and especially Uruguayans have been drinking it ever since.

Mate isn´t like coffee or tea in that you just casually brew your own cup of it; if you want that, you have to buy bags of mate cocido, which is a tea made from mate. The real deal is best drunk with friends and family, all sharing the same cup (the mate). The person serving fills their mate (usually made from a gourd and often covered in leather) up with yerba (the loose crushed leaves from the plant) and adds a little room temperature water to prime the yerba (at least in Uruguay it´s like this...given the Uruguayan mate mania, I´m assuming this is the best way to do it). Then, the bombilla, a straw typically made from metal (they range from cheap bronze ones to fancier silver affairs to museum-quality gold ones encrusted with jewels) is put in, and hot (but not boiling) water is poured in, with care taken not to pour water over all the the yerba...just a part of it. The server then takes their turn, trying the mate and adjusting the bombilla as needed. Once things are just right, the server pours water again and passes the mate to the person next to them, and on it goes around the group - each person drinks down the contents, passes it back to the server, and the cycle repeats. A good server can work the same yerba for a LONG time - at least for one liter of hot water, often more.

Mate itself is suspected of having a lot of good health benefits - high in antioxidants, possibly a natural appetite suppressent/weight loss aid...all kinds of stuff. It tastes a little bitter at first, and probably everyone has burned their tongues or lips at least a few times between the hot mate and the hot bombilla (the downside of metal straws is that they heat up awfully fast), but I am convinced that had Ben Franklin been Uruguayan, his famous quote would read that mate is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. So, when I come up to you with a strange looking cup filled with some steaming green stuff and a weird metal straw...drink up - you might just like it!

Strangers on the Bus

Yesterday marked my official three-month anniversary with Uruguay, and it is really quite amazing to think about how much things have changed since September. I remember thinking during my first few days that Montevideo seemed absolutely enormous – not Houston big or Buenos Aires big, or even Accra big for that matter, but still somehow massive and forbidding, a concrete-and-brick giant on the Rio de la Plata…and then I learned my way around the city, how to walk downtown in an hour, how to get to two different beaches in 50 minutes or less, where the parks are, where the fresh fruit and vegetable market in the neighborhood is held every Saturday, which buses go to which parts of town. Suddenly, the previously indomitable Nephelim-by-the-river (so sue me…one of my free-time activities is studying Hebrew) began to feel like a big village. I take the bus to and from work, and I know people – the little girl in her school uniform with her baby brother in tow, the local high school students on their way to afternoon class, the night workers in the food packing plant. The same inspector, blue suit and dark sunglasses, gets on at the same stop almost every day to check tickets, and I have his routine memorized. He gets on at the first stop once we have turned off of Avenida General Flores, chats for about 5 minutes with the driver, and then works his way through the cabin, checking tickets. He prefers to check tickets from his right to his left, always tears off the same corner (upper right), and as he hands back the ticket says “gracias” with an accent that makes him sound more Italian than Uruguayan.

The city itself has changed, too. I got here in the bleak, gray, rainy winter…memories of my first month here are dominated by sunless days, having to wear three layers even while inside buildings just to keep the chill down, and of gray – gray buildings, gray streets, gray skies, and gray attitudes. But then, the sun came up and with it came the spring. It has been, at times, a chilly spring, but a sunny one. Montevideo is beautiful in the spring – the jacarandas bloom and start raining purple blossoms onto the sidewalk, the jasmines come back to life and the whole city smells like perfume from the people selling jasmine blossoms on every street corner, the sky is an intense blue, the tree-lined streets which seemed so drab suddenly become shady, green avenues that are delightful for walks, and those parks and beaches that I discovered are actually worth visiting to sit under the eucalyptus trees with a book.

It has been said before that cities are like people, with distinct personalities, likes and dislikes, ways of life, attitudes, and moods. In my experience, this is true, but leaves out one important detail. For me at least, Montevideo itself is more than just the setting for my year with YAGM; it has become a character in the story as much as any person here. It is, in its own way, a part of my community here. It might not talk to me (I think I would be very concerned about my mental health if the sidewalk one day just decided to start up a conversation with me), but nonetheless, I feel on some level like Montevideo is not just a place, but an active member of my story, growing, changing, sharing.

Of course, it really is the people here that make the community -Montevideo, alive as it might be, is no substitute for friends, and even strangers. My friends and their role in my life here is obvious – they are the people I talk to, have meals with, work with, play with, matear with, and live with. We have been to organ concerts, murgas, and music museums; Bible studies, business meetings, and all kinds of worship services; parks, beaches, fairs, and apartment parties. I could name names, but that would simply not be fair to anyone left off the list – all of the church members, staff at La Obra, folks in grupo de jovenes and choir, fellow residents of Piso 1 in 8 de Octubre 3328, fellow volunteers, and the like have been so integral to my experiences here that I cant not mention someone, and I have too many people to mention.

The most strikingly different aspect of my life-in-community here, though, are the strangers. I don’t know the check-out girls at the supermarket, the UCOT inspector on the bus, the little girl with her baby brother, the liceo students, the night workers, the book seller on 8 de Octubre with books ranging from a bilingual edition of Martin Fierro to The Kama Sutra of Oral Sex, the jasmine sellers, the blind woman with the tin can in front of the hospital next door to the church, or any other of the recurring incidental characters in my story here, but I still feel some odd sense of connection to them. They are a part of my life; I see them all almost every day, and they see me. We ride the same buses and work on the same block, shop in the same MultiAhorro and walk past the same kioscos and statue of Larrañaga. We might not talk, or even know each other, but we nonetheless share so many experiences, small as they may be, with each other every day. I notice when someone is missing, when the little girl doesn’t catch the bus or the book seller decides to take a Saturday off. In our own way, we are a community – not a community of friends or co-workers, but of people sharing the living space and, I suspect, silently watching out for each other when we can.

To close on an extremely anti-climactic, house-keeping note...I am about to go back and add captions to all the photos in the photo entry from last month, so if you have been dying to know the who, what, when, and where of those, now is your chance!

Título

I am not likely to win the original title award this week, that´s for sure. For that matter, I´m not likely to win much sweeping praise for the content, either. Today we have, for your reading pleasure, a Top Ten List!



THE TOP TEN FUNNY LANGUAGE GOOFS OF THE PAST THREE MONTHS



These are not limited to my own, but will be heavily comprised of them.



10. The "du isst" vs. "die fledermause ist" confusion in which I thought Dorothea said I was a banana rather than saying that I was eating a banana.

9. "Sí, la Biblia es de mí." NOT what I meant to say...that implies authorship rather than ownership. Happened in a Bible study, no less...I was corrected VERY quickly for that goof, probably out of fear of a lightning strike.

8. Pronunciation confusion between "the passive voice" and "the Backstreet Boys" which led to a lot of questions on my part about the quality of class content here in Uruguay.

7. "¿Puedo impresar un documento acá?" "¿Cómo?" "Necesito impresar una forma." "Umm...¿necesitás IMPRIMIR algo?" People get confused when you make up words for "to print" and then say them with confidence...

6. My frequently manifested inability to get acá and allá right...I constantly mix them up, resulting in an almost conditioned response on my part to correct myself anytime I use the words. Example: "Sí, tenemos muchos amigos allá...acá. Actualmente, acá y allá."

5. "¿Cuánto tiempo vas a estar acá?" "Dos semanas." No, I´m not going to be here for two weeks; I had perhaps been in Montevideo for two weeks at that point, but yeah...definitely not to the two weeks left point.

4. Anything to do with Kirsten´s name; she has had her name mangled in an incredible variety of ways. My favorite is little Alejandra´s "Kishnaer," personally.

3. This one requires a little explanation. In this part of the world, the equivalent of "asking someone up for coffee" or to "come see my etchings" is an invitation to "tomar mate" followed either by a question about what happens if there´s no yerba (Argentina) or a flat-out declaration that "yerba no hay" (Uruguayans are a little more direct). This topic came up in a work team meeting (go figure), and Dorothea meant to say that "this is something we should know about" so we can get the joke, etc. However, what she SAID was "this is something we should do." For those of you wondering how Uruguay was introduced to Dr. Schnortzelfitz-style laughter, voila.

2. Overheard while Claudio and KD reviewed a powerpoint about major cities in the U.S. when they reached the slide on Phoenix: "Ahhh, sí, yo conozco esta...la ciudad de Penis." I suspect that if Claudio ever gets off a plane in the U.S. on his way to Arizona, he will be grateful that he now knows NOT to tell people he´s trying to find "Penis" in the airport.

1. Naughty word confusions I have made: "mariposa" and "maricon," (butterfly v. f#ggot) "pucho" and "puto," (cigarrette v. male whore/substitute for the f word) and "pene" and "peine (penis v. comb).