The word on the street these days is “leadership.” In the past month, it has come up in scholarship applications, discussions with other volunteers, congregational development projects, and even in my newsletter prompt for the month. It´s a huge theme – really, how does one condense the idea of leadership, even in the specific context of a cross-cultural environment, into a congregation-friendly newsletter essay?
If you´re me, the answer is to talk about work. One of my assorted jobs this year has been assisting, and over the past few months, leading, the Wednesday evening Old Testament Bible Study at the church. I´ve no doubt mentioned the Bible Study, and its distinct tendency towards the less-than-normal, before – this, after all, is the only Bible Study in which I´ve participated that has involved questions about the color of the Holy Spirit, as well as whether or not the creation story in Genesis discusses the seven chakras. As Wilma has said to me on at least one occasion, it doesn´t matter that I haven´t been to seminary when it comes to this Bible study – they just don´t teach classes that prepare you for answering, with a straight face, an honest inquiry as to whether or not the Holy Spirit is a white light or a purple light.
It is, in some ways, impossible to prepare for the study. There is no telling what the participants will bring to the table or, for that matter, who the participants will be. Apart from choosing the text (helped by a guide through the Old Testament) and familiarizing myself with its contents, context, and themes, I can only go in on the proverbial wing and a prayer, ready to be surprised. And I´m the LEADER.
I am finding that the only way to lead a Bible study, and perhaps lead in general, is to engage in dialogue. Without conversation, there is nothing – no safe space is created, nobody shares, nobody grows. It would turn into a monologue as I pour out four years of theological and historical education, and no matter how interesting a monologue it might be, it would nonetheless be just a lecture, a top-down, unilateral exchange of information - Kevin Baker, the learned biblical expert, sharing his knowledge of the Holy Writ. No matter how much I know, I can never know enough to warrant placing myself in that position, especially when it comes to a matter of spirituality. If I were to place myself as the learned master pouring out from the deep well of knowledge for the benefit, then I would do no good to anyone or anything except for my ego.
In my very first month as a student at TLU, I was required to read a selection from Paolo Freire´s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire was a Brazilian educator and champion of social justice who devoted much of his life and work to teaching illiterate adults how to read. He identified two models for teaching, learning, and (I´ll make the extension) leadership – the banking model and the dialogical model. In the former, one person gives knowledge, the other receives, and that´s that. Think about your worst class in high school; chances are, the teacher presented material this way. It had nothing to do with your context, interests, or needs; it was just information to be crammed into your head. The dialogical model takes the opposite approach – the teacher is a part of a circle rather than the exalted master, the community takes an active role in its own learning through questions, contextualization, and…dialogue. It is in the talking about what´s being learned – how it relates to people´s lives and needs, what´s easy and what´s hard about it, why they´re learning and wanting to learn – that the true learning takes place…and learning is, after all, transformation.
It´s transformative for the teacher, too. I´m not so arrogant as to view myself as a fabulous example of dialogical leadership, but it´s something I value and strive toward, and I have yet to leave a Bible study here without coming away with new insights and new questions. In fact, I will go on record and say that this is the first Bible study in which I´ve participated in (in the sense of studies with a group, regular meeting time, etc. outside of the confines of an official classroom) which I have not been bored, felt unchallenged, and been attending for strictly social reasons. And it´s all in the conversation.
So, in Bible study, we talk. We talk about how the cleansing of Naaman the leper relates to social class in 21st century Uruguay; we talk about how Elisha and the widow´s oil gives all of us at Nuestro Salvador a model for ministry; we talk about how the sufferings of the Messiah in Isaiah 53 are repeated every day in acts of domestic violence. As we share, we all grow and learn. I can bring to the table what I know from class, other people bring what they know from their own training and work, and we all bring our life experiences. After an hour or better of talking – about history and geography, theology and psychology, last week´s rough times at work and this week´s concerns about sick friends and family, how we´ve seen God in suffering and how we´ve seen God in life´s blessings – we´ve done something far more important than learn about the layers of symbolism in Hosea´s account of his adulterous wife. We´ve formed a community.
I shy away from calling myself the leader of this group. I am a leader in the sense that I do the official planning, but once we all sit down and start reading, I´m just another person in the circle. Maybe this form of leadership hasn´t built empires or Fortune 500 companies, but it´s built faith, and it´s built relationships. At the end of the day, I´ll take faith, relationships, and the little blessings of life over the empires and stock portfolios and never once think twice about the choice.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Franklin´s Choice, March edition
After a one-month hiatus, we´ll be resuming our ponderance of Franklin´s question-of-the-month, my monthly prompt from Chicago´s own example of pure thought thinking itself. This month´s theme: leadership in a cross-cultural context.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Feliz Pascua
¡Cristo ha resucitado!
Christ has risen!
Que la luz nuestro Señor llene sus vidas y caminos durante este tiempo de esperanza, alegria y vida nueva.
May the light of our Lord fill your lives and paths during this time of hope, joy and new life.
Christ has risen!
Que la luz nuestro Señor llene sus vidas y caminos durante este tiempo de esperanza, alegria y vida nueva.
May the light of our Lord fill your lives and paths during this time of hope, joy and new life.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Paschal Reflections
It is almost Easter; this time tomorrow, we will have proclaimed that "Christ has risen! Christ has risen indeed!" and let the alleluias roll for the first time in 40 days. Tonight in Montevideo, we are gathering to wait together, for a while, in the night, taking up Christ´s call in Gethsemene to keep watch and pray, awaiting the resurrection of the same Lord. However, other things are different. Christ in Montevideo doesn´t burst out of the tomb into a springtime world of budding trees and (for the northerners reading this) melting snow. It´s fall here, and as the new life of the Risen Lord dawns on Easter morning, its light falls on turning leaves and the last of the pink palo borracho blossoms, just waiting for the next strong breeze from the river to carry them away. As Christ comes back to life, the world here is dying.
Saying that life here is seasonally confusing is an understatement. First off, I´m from a part of the world that doesn´t have seasons, per se - life on the Gulf Coast is 8-9 months of heat, humidity, and a fairly high amount of sunshine, mixed in with a little rain and the occasional fresh, cool day. The other 3-4 months flip back and forth between springlike raininess, autumnal freshness, and winter sunlessness, sometimes involving all three in the same week. Here, though, we have seasons - four of them, all very distinct, and in reverse month-wise. Christmas is in the summer, Easter in the fall. All of the carefully crafted Northern hemisphere imagery for the holidays breaks down when its transplated here. Santa should be going to the beach (probably in a speedo if he´s like most old, overweight Uruguayan men I´ve seen at the beach here), and the day of new life comes not as the lilies are blooming, but as the world slowly hemorrages out its color and life as the nights get cold and rainclouds begin rolling in off the Rio de la Plata.
I think we´ve lost our appreciation for seasons in the United States. The migration these days is southbound - life-long New Yorkers and Wisconsinites have started making their way down to Phoenix and San Antonio and San Luis Obispo, because that´s where the sun is, and there´s no winter or snow or ice. It´s summertime, and the living is easy, in the Sun Belt, after all. We don´t like winter - it´s cold, sunless, and unpleasant. Besides, and let´s be honest, half of the spring and fall are just extensions of winter.
As someone from Texas, I am probably not the best equipped to criticize this, and I would be lying if I said that I enjoyed my first month and a half of winter weather in Montevideo - I missed the sun, I hated the rain, and I resented needing two layers of clothing and two blankets just to be comfortable enough to sleep. It was, and I will be honest, a miserable time on the whole....and it´s on its way again. The days are shorter, I need a sweater to go out at night, and the days of wearing sandals to work are numbered.
But...isn´t that life? I´ve never once lived a life filled with nothing but sunshine and fun times in the park. Sometimes, it really IS winter, and the sun´s nowhere in sight. It´s part of the human experience...not a pleasant one, but a part of life nonetheless. We´ve become so obsessed with wanting to be happy (not joyful, or content, but happy) all of the time that we´ve stopped assigning value to the times that aren´t and simply devoted ourselves to getting rid of them - they´re just another inconvenience that should be done away with, like waiting in line or needing exact change.
I think I´m glad to have Easter in the fall this year. It´s hope, not that we´ll be able to live in the sun all the time, but that Christ´s victory is so great that even when winter is on its way, when the days are short and the nights cold and windy, we still have the hope of life, the joy of the Spirit, and the peace of the Risen Lord to carry us.
Saying that life here is seasonally confusing is an understatement. First off, I´m from a part of the world that doesn´t have seasons, per se - life on the Gulf Coast is 8-9 months of heat, humidity, and a fairly high amount of sunshine, mixed in with a little rain and the occasional fresh, cool day. The other 3-4 months flip back and forth between springlike raininess, autumnal freshness, and winter sunlessness, sometimes involving all three in the same week. Here, though, we have seasons - four of them, all very distinct, and in reverse month-wise. Christmas is in the summer, Easter in the fall. All of the carefully crafted Northern hemisphere imagery for the holidays breaks down when its transplated here. Santa should be going to the beach (probably in a speedo if he´s like most old, overweight Uruguayan men I´ve seen at the beach here), and the day of new life comes not as the lilies are blooming, but as the world slowly hemorrages out its color and life as the nights get cold and rainclouds begin rolling in off the Rio de la Plata.
I think we´ve lost our appreciation for seasons in the United States. The migration these days is southbound - life-long New Yorkers and Wisconsinites have started making their way down to Phoenix and San Antonio and San Luis Obispo, because that´s where the sun is, and there´s no winter or snow or ice. It´s summertime, and the living is easy, in the Sun Belt, after all. We don´t like winter - it´s cold, sunless, and unpleasant. Besides, and let´s be honest, half of the spring and fall are just extensions of winter.
As someone from Texas, I am probably not the best equipped to criticize this, and I would be lying if I said that I enjoyed my first month and a half of winter weather in Montevideo - I missed the sun, I hated the rain, and I resented needing two layers of clothing and two blankets just to be comfortable enough to sleep. It was, and I will be honest, a miserable time on the whole....and it´s on its way again. The days are shorter, I need a sweater to go out at night, and the days of wearing sandals to work are numbered.
But...isn´t that life? I´ve never once lived a life filled with nothing but sunshine and fun times in the park. Sometimes, it really IS winter, and the sun´s nowhere in sight. It´s part of the human experience...not a pleasant one, but a part of life nonetheless. We´ve become so obsessed with wanting to be happy (not joyful, or content, but happy) all of the time that we´ve stopped assigning value to the times that aren´t and simply devoted ourselves to getting rid of them - they´re just another inconvenience that should be done away with, like waiting in line or needing exact change.
I think I´m glad to have Easter in the fall this year. It´s hope, not that we´ll be able to live in the sun all the time, but that Christ´s victory is so great that even when winter is on its way, when the days are short and the nights cold and windy, we still have the hope of life, the joy of the Spirit, and the peace of the Risen Lord to carry us.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
¡Fotos!
It is time (well, past time is more like it) for a photo update. Here are 33 selections from the past couple of months - from the Carnaval parade of 24.1.8 up through the visit of the Minnesotans!
1. If you´ve ever wondered what it would look like to have a parade float involving a koala dancing with two women in leather gear, look no farther.
2. In the Carnaval parade, they have people in big papier-mache heads. The kids like to beat on the heads, and then they get candy...because THAT teaches all the right life lessons.
3. Dance review from the parade.
4. Murgistas up close and personal during the parade.
5. If you were expecting gyrations with beads and feathers when I said "Carnaval parade," trust me - there was a lot of that to be seen, too.
6. To go with the gyrations, there were entire corps of drummers - truly amazing.
7. There were also random parodistas and humoristas running around, making scenes - including this one.
8. CAUGHT ON FILM: Marco, KD, Analia, and Dorothea chowing down on some burger goodness in Montevideo.
9. Also caught on film: Dorothea assaulting KD with a light-up magic wand at a birthday party. Note José trying to block the camera with his hands...he failed, muahahaha.
10. My city map. The green spot a bit southeast of the middle of the map is Parque Battle; I live about a 20-minute walk to the north of the park. La Obra is further to the northwest - about 30 minutes in the bus.
11. During camp, Karin and some of the kids worked together to write a song.
12. Juan watching his grandkids play during camp.
13. Snack time!
14. Daniela´s sister-in-law came to teach a basic drumming lesson to the kids; most of them took to it like ducks to water.
15. More drumming.
16. "Che, I´m not out, am I?"
17. Wilma reading the Gospel during the end-of-camp worship service.
18. Karin, Kristina, and KD hard at work on some amazing Puerto Rican culinary goodness on my birthday in La Plata.
19. Here´s to weird cross-cultural moments...my aunt worked in La Plata, MD for several years.
20. What could be more gauchely Uruguayan/Argentine than drinking mate in front of a cathedral? Oh yeah, taking a picture of it.
21. The façade of La Plata Cathedral.
22. A late afternoon walk in La Plata.
23. This what YAGMs look like while learning songs together.
24. Tandil is known for its rocky hills...this is the one that we climbed.
25. View from halfway up.
26. Proof that I....1. Climbed up the thing. 2. Shaved off my mustache. 3. Have lost weight.
27. View from the top.
28. David, our coordinator´s husband, friend, and all around cool guy, striking an unintentionally heroic pose.
29. James praying in the Danish church in Tandil.
30. The large cross on Calvario in Tandil. The hill is home to a Via Crucis in a garden/wooded setting.
31. Our very friendly, and possibly intoxicated, Argentine neighbors in the campground singing for us.
32. Sebastián taking shelther beneath a rather dimunitive palm tree in Piriapolis during the visit of the Minnesotans.
33. Piriapolis after the rain had cleared out.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
MURGA...and a little Patito Feo
This is the first part in a multi-part multimedia blitz here at Mate Monday. Today, the sounds of Uruguay I´ve been treated to over the past half-year. Attentive readers have probably picked up on my being a hardcore murga fan. However, murga is hard to describe if you´ve never seen it before...so here´s YOUR chance to walk down Avenida Centenario to the Velodromo in Parque Battle for a night of murga.
The first act up is one of the oldest murgas performing - Los Diablos Verdes. They´ve been at it for 70 years now (not the same people, obviously, but the same group), and accordingly are a little bit of a tradition here...it´s not quite Carnaval without them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjBtbIiuHPk&feature=related
However, my favorite murga is Agarrate Catalina, the grand prize murga winners in this year´s Carnaval. They´re a young group, and accordingly are looked at as a bit of the "murga of the future," as it were. Rather than just parody life and events in Uruguay, La Catalina try to incorporate universal themes into their act - this year´s act centered around the theme of aging and mortality...the name of this year´s show is "El Último Viaje." This is the opening of their act, in the Teatro del Verano. The entrance sets the stage for the action - it´s clear that all of the players are old, and the song introduces the theme for the rest of the performance, as well as setting the physical scene.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSS2n3JcvFw&feature=related
The lyrics in "El Último Viaje" are amazing. Murga is, after all, a form of theatre, and like any good play, a murga has characters, a setting, and suchforth. The action is set in a home for pensioners, and the characters are all elderly Uruguayans, suffering from all the ill effects of age, but still filled with memories. Themes touched on in dialogue and songs include racial prejudice (a character´s granddaughter is bringing her boyfriend to meet the grandfather, and so he sings his hope that the boyfriend isn´t a "chino," Bolivian, Peruvian, black, "maricón," Protestant, and that, of course, he´s open and accepting of other people without prejudices - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B9aj5S6MQA&feature=related), incontinence, "drug" abuse in the form of a protein supplement (Gevral), the dilemmas faced by old leftists whose grandkids want Barbies for Christmas, and more seriously, memory loss in the form of a spoken word piece that literally brought me to tears. The act ends with this song, which continues the journey into death theme, and ends by comparing the end of life to the end of Carnaval and of the play.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpySinIVLow
Another murga jóven that I enjoy a great deal is La Mojigata. Their act, "At The Point of Extinction," is a comment on the struggle to maintain cultural identity in the face of 21st century technology and globalization, as well as a comment on Uruguay´s very stagnant population growth - while the country is not in the negative growth category like most of Western Europe, it´s not growing, either. La Mojigata warns that there will soon be more murgistas than there are people to watch the murgas, and that many of the symbols of 21st century Uruguayan life - text messages, Eduardo Galeano, FotoLog, the twin towers of the WTC by Montevideo Shopping, and even "esos culos divinos" - "pueden desaparecer" (may disappear).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyDAQPvYAN0
Obviously, a YouTube search turns up a lot of murga - this is a huge part of Uruguayan culture, and I could go on for quit a while posting videos from other amazing groups such as Queso Magro (such as this one...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9Yq9h38dPs&feature=related; it´s a satirical look at Uruguay through the eyes of a man shipwrecked on the tiny island about 300 m offshore of Playa Malvin) and El Gran Tuleque (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNIDQYVeSeY; this year´s theme was a New 10 Commandments, revolving around the life of Hamilton and his family problems and psychoses).
However, I work quite a bit with kids and pre-teens, and sadly, murga is much easier to appreciate and share in an adult context - it´s the sort of thing you talk about at work the next morning while passing the mate around. The big hit with the younger audiences during my time here has been a pre-teen themed telenovela (more-or-less a soap opera, but the ones here tend to run for less time and have a end in sight...they are, after all, "TV novels") called Patito Feo, or "Ugly Duckling." Since its amazingly successful TV run, it has become a traveling show, and commercials for the shows in Montevideo earlier in the month were non-stop on the two stations that we get at the church. This song is ridiculously popular and ridiculously well-known...several of the 10-12 year old girls at La Obra know every move to this dance. The song is more-or-less the theme song of Las Divinas, the group of pretty, popular, snobby girls at the school.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuHfxmW4-wA&feature=related
Now just imagine here THAT at least every other day, sometimes more, for 6 months...if you dare. My next update will, si Dios quiere, be a photo update from the beginning of Carnaval on to the present - stay tuned!
The first act up is one of the oldest murgas performing - Los Diablos Verdes. They´ve been at it for 70 years now (not the same people, obviously, but the same group), and accordingly are a little bit of a tradition here...it´s not quite Carnaval without them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjBtbIiuHPk&feature=related
However, my favorite murga is Agarrate Catalina, the grand prize murga winners in this year´s Carnaval. They´re a young group, and accordingly are looked at as a bit of the "murga of the future," as it were. Rather than just parody life and events in Uruguay, La Catalina try to incorporate universal themes into their act - this year´s act centered around the theme of aging and mortality...the name of this year´s show is "El Último Viaje." This is the opening of their act, in the Teatro del Verano. The entrance sets the stage for the action - it´s clear that all of the players are old, and the song introduces the theme for the rest of the performance, as well as setting the physical scene.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSS2n3JcvFw&feature=related
The lyrics in "El Último Viaje" are amazing. Murga is, after all, a form of theatre, and like any good play, a murga has characters, a setting, and suchforth. The action is set in a home for pensioners, and the characters are all elderly Uruguayans, suffering from all the ill effects of age, but still filled with memories. Themes touched on in dialogue and songs include racial prejudice (a character´s granddaughter is bringing her boyfriend to meet the grandfather, and so he sings his hope that the boyfriend isn´t a "chino," Bolivian, Peruvian, black, "maricón," Protestant, and that, of course, he´s open and accepting of other people without prejudices - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B9aj5S6MQA&feature=related), incontinence, "drug" abuse in the form of a protein supplement (Gevral), the dilemmas faced by old leftists whose grandkids want Barbies for Christmas, and more seriously, memory loss in the form of a spoken word piece that literally brought me to tears. The act ends with this song, which continues the journey into death theme, and ends by comparing the end of life to the end of Carnaval and of the play.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpySinIVLow
Another murga jóven that I enjoy a great deal is La Mojigata. Their act, "At The Point of Extinction," is a comment on the struggle to maintain cultural identity in the face of 21st century technology and globalization, as well as a comment on Uruguay´s very stagnant population growth - while the country is not in the negative growth category like most of Western Europe, it´s not growing, either. La Mojigata warns that there will soon be more murgistas than there are people to watch the murgas, and that many of the symbols of 21st century Uruguayan life - text messages, Eduardo Galeano, FotoLog, the twin towers of the WTC by Montevideo Shopping, and even "esos culos divinos" - "pueden desaparecer" (may disappear).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyDAQPvYAN0
Obviously, a YouTube search turns up a lot of murga - this is a huge part of Uruguayan culture, and I could go on for quit a while posting videos from other amazing groups such as Queso Magro (such as this one...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9Yq9h38dPs&feature=related; it´s a satirical look at Uruguay through the eyes of a man shipwrecked on the tiny island about 300 m offshore of Playa Malvin) and El Gran Tuleque (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNIDQYVeSeY; this year´s theme was a New 10 Commandments, revolving around the life of Hamilton and his family problems and psychoses).
However, I work quite a bit with kids and pre-teens, and sadly, murga is much easier to appreciate and share in an adult context - it´s the sort of thing you talk about at work the next morning while passing the mate around. The big hit with the younger audiences during my time here has been a pre-teen themed telenovela (more-or-less a soap opera, but the ones here tend to run for less time and have a end in sight...they are, after all, "TV novels") called Patito Feo, or "Ugly Duckling." Since its amazingly successful TV run, it has become a traveling show, and commercials for the shows in Montevideo earlier in the month were non-stop on the two stations that we get at the church. This song is ridiculously popular and ridiculously well-known...several of the 10-12 year old girls at La Obra know every move to this dance. The song is more-or-less the theme song of Las Divinas, the group of pretty, popular, snobby girls at the school.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuHfxmW4-wA&feature=related
Now just imagine here THAT at least every other day, sometimes more, for 6 months...if you dare. My next update will, si Dios quiere, be a photo update from the beginning of Carnaval on to the present - stay tuned!
Monday, March 10, 2008
More Monopoly
That revelatory first game of Monopoly was not the only one we played. A week or so later, we all sat down again in our makeshift living room for another round. The same pattern began to emerge - three pretty hardcore Monopolistas working their capitalist mojo on the board. We went back and forth, giving money, taking money, plotting strategy, wheeling and dealing and laughing all the way to the bank.
Then, the inevitable happened. KD hit some bad luck (my "control the corner" strategy with the light blues and magentas worked) and had to start mortgaging property. I smelled blood and used my new income to put hotels on all my properties. A few turns later, KD hit the big bucks properties of Dorothea - Park Place and Boardwalk (in fairness, we have the updated-for-the-21st-century version, so she REALLY landed on Fenway Park and Times Square). Dorothea graciously offered a huge discount for KD, and even said she didn´t have to pay - just move on so that the game keeps on going. KD paid (she´d hit Free Parking), and then Dorothea, on her next turn, put extra money from her surplus in Free Parking simply because she felt like it. Her family has a Bible Monopoly, and every so often players have to give an offering.
Dorothea, shortly thereafter, had the unfortunate luck of visiting almost all my new hotels, and then KD came back by for another visit to Kevin´s Corner of Capitalistic Oppression, and that was the game. However, all I could think about as I went to bed was, again, the Monopoly board as a microcosm of our world - what would happen if countries, corporations, individuals, played life a little more like Doro than like me? What if we really could just write off a little momentary profit, simply to keep other people in play because it´s the nice thing to do? What if we could give deeply of our own resources, simply because we can, it´s good for the soul, and it helps other people? What if we didn´t set up traps for the people who can´t get out of them and for the people who could wipe us off the board, but would rather not?
Anticlimatic postscript: Fear not, my Monopoly playing friends - Kevin is not going to ditch his favorite board game, or particularly amend his playing strategies...it´s a game, after all. But life isn´t - those bad endings don´t go away when you put the pieces back in the box.
Then, the inevitable happened. KD hit some bad luck (my "control the corner" strategy with the light blues and magentas worked) and had to start mortgaging property. I smelled blood and used my new income to put hotels on all my properties. A few turns later, KD hit the big bucks properties of Dorothea - Park Place and Boardwalk (in fairness, we have the updated-for-the-21st-century version, so she REALLY landed on Fenway Park and Times Square). Dorothea graciously offered a huge discount for KD, and even said she didn´t have to pay - just move on so that the game keeps on going. KD paid (she´d hit Free Parking), and then Dorothea, on her next turn, put extra money from her surplus in Free Parking simply because she felt like it. Her family has a Bible Monopoly, and every so often players have to give an offering.
Dorothea, shortly thereafter, had the unfortunate luck of visiting almost all my new hotels, and then KD came back by for another visit to Kevin´s Corner of Capitalistic Oppression, and that was the game. However, all I could think about as I went to bed was, again, the Monopoly board as a microcosm of our world - what would happen if countries, corporations, individuals, played life a little more like Doro than like me? What if we really could just write off a little momentary profit, simply to keep other people in play because it´s the nice thing to do? What if we could give deeply of our own resources, simply because we can, it´s good for the soul, and it helps other people? What if we didn´t set up traps for the people who can´t get out of them and for the people who could wipe us off the board, but would rather not?
Anticlimatic postscript: Fear not, my Monopoly playing friends - Kevin is not going to ditch his favorite board game, or particularly amend his playing strategies...it´s a game, after all. But life isn´t - those bad endings don´t go away when you put the pieces back in the box.
Irony
After the visit from the Minnesota group, the three of us volunteers found ourselves "aprovechar"-ing the Monopoly board game that the group donated to youth/children´s efforts here. Monopoly, more than any other board game, is MY game (yes, Mom, even more than Trivial Pursuit). I´ve played it since I could count, practically. When my grandfather lived with us during my early teenage years, we played often, and I had the good fortune to be the first person to beat him at it in 40 years...never let that man get a Monopoly on the green properties. EVER. He will have a hotel on North Carolina Avenue before you can say "bankruptcy." Accordingly, I learned the good ole gam of free-wheeling, unadulterated capitalism from the best of them, and then beat him at it, the good ole American way.
Fast forward a decade. I´m 23 now, not 13, and living the life of a volunteer in Uruguay. I´m reading my way through Las Venas Abiertas de América Latina (Eduardo Galeano, who is uruguayo), a classic text on how, since 1492, Latin America has suffered the economic abuse of Europe and the United States. Enter a game of Monopoly. I played, predictably, like the cutthroat Monopoly player that I am. KD, too, is a fierce Monopoly player, and Doro´s every bit as ferocious as the two estadounidenses.
Pause. As I´m rolling the dice, the thought crosses my mind of how incredibly, almost disgustingly, stereotypically norteamericano this game is. This is EXACTLY what Galeano is writing about. The board is the world, its countries the players. We all roll the dice - some of us get lucky, and some of us don´t. The ones who do luck out use what they get to take everything they can from the other players. Sometimes, they win. Sometimes, things backfire because someone else has a good break. However, the truly great players know how to keep winning, at least most of the time - they don´t just wave off money when someone comes up short at Marvin Gardens. They make them pay. Thy make them sell off their money-making houses and hotels, then mortgage their properties, and even sell them if they have to. That´s how United Fruit ran Central America for decades, how the World Bank and IMF stay afloat.
Play. I roll, make my move, and think about how very funny it is that I´m playing Monopoly with a copy of The Open Veins of Latin America right next to me.
Fast forward a decade. I´m 23 now, not 13, and living the life of a volunteer in Uruguay. I´m reading my way through Las Venas Abiertas de América Latina (Eduardo Galeano, who is uruguayo), a classic text on how, since 1492, Latin America has suffered the economic abuse of Europe and the United States. Enter a game of Monopoly. I played, predictably, like the cutthroat Monopoly player that I am. KD, too, is a fierce Monopoly player, and Doro´s every bit as ferocious as the two estadounidenses.
Pause. As I´m rolling the dice, the thought crosses my mind of how incredibly, almost disgustingly, stereotypically norteamericano this game is. This is EXACTLY what Galeano is writing about. The board is the world, its countries the players. We all roll the dice - some of us get lucky, and some of us don´t. The ones who do luck out use what they get to take everything they can from the other players. Sometimes, they win. Sometimes, things backfire because someone else has a good break. However, the truly great players know how to keep winning, at least most of the time - they don´t just wave off money when someone comes up short at Marvin Gardens. They make them pay. Thy make them sell off their money-making houses and hotels, then mortgage their properties, and even sell them if they have to. That´s how United Fruit ran Central America for decades, how the World Bank and IMF stay afloat.
Play. I roll, make my move, and think about how very funny it is that I´m playing Monopoly with a copy of The Open Veins of Latin America right next to me.
Monday, March 3, 2008
They Came, They Saw...
So about that visit. To sum up a complex, action-packed visit into one word, it was GREAT. Nine members of a group from Good Shepherd Lutheran in Minneapolis showed up at Nuestro Salvador on Tuesday afternoon, and from there it was a week of non-stop action. The basics:
TUESDAY
-Group arrived. Most of them thought I was Uruguayan until I told them, in English, that I was from Texas.
-Opening devotional; for all of Tuesday, KD and I took turns translating.
-Planning the week; I got to play bilingual secretary.
-Dinner as a group, then going up to Carla´s for more translating, as neither of her guests (Jean and Amanda) spoke Spanish and Carla and her family don´t speak English.
WEDNESDAY
-Work at La Obra during the morning.
-Lunch with the group.
-Lots of open time for discussion, playing around, etc.
-Sharing strengths/challenges/opportunities from each group; again, I got to be the secretary.
-Dinner
-Translating when one of the group members had some medical issues occur overnight
THURSDAY
-Work at La Obra
-Visit by the group to La Obra
-Open space in the afternoon for talking/sharing
-Dinner
FRIDAY
-Work at La Obra
-Visit to El Cerro. We visited a few families who´ve been participating in activities at Misión San Juan and then went to the top of the cerro to soak in the vista.
-Visit to the Monumento a los Desaparecidos (Monument to the Disappeared). This involved an explanation of one of the darkest periods in Uruguayan history, the military dictatorship of the 1970s and 1980s. It also opened some a space for hearing stories from some of my Uruguayan friends about their experiences during this time, as well as a more precise history of what happened.
-ASADO at Beatriz´s house. My personal vision of heaven is an asado - huge piles of perfectly grilled meat, red wine, and great company to share it with. The asado ended up being made into the impromptu congregational celebration of my birthday, amazing cake and all.
SATURDAY
-Pancakes for breakfast!
-Desarrollo Natural de la Iglesia/Natural Development of the Church (there will be a separate entry on this sometime)
-Excursion to Piriapolis, one of the prettiest beachside towns in South America.
-Bible Study with the community in Jaureguiberry (say that one ten times fast). This is a village of about 300 people, many of them retirees, right by the beach. It´s an amazingly peaceful, shady place - a perfect afternoon.
-Dinner with Carlos, Carla, Camila, Alejandra, Diego, Kirsen, Dorothea, Amanda, and Jean - pizza and fainá, and lots of conversation/translating.
-Fiestita with the young people from both Minnesota and Uruguay; lots of laughter and good conversation.
SUNDAY
-Closing Worship; the youth acted out the Gospel lesson, the group from Minnesota shared a few from-the-heart gifts with Nuestro Salvador, and even though there were a lot of us, we still held hands in a huge circle to take Communion.
And then it was over, seemingly as soon as it began. Amid lots of hugging and a few tears, they headed out for Buenos Aires. It was an amazing week - I´ve made 9 new friends, grown closer to the people here in the process, and can only wonder what amazing things might come out of the seeds being planted in both Minnesota and Montevideo.
TUESDAY
-Group arrived. Most of them thought I was Uruguayan until I told them, in English, that I was from Texas.
-Opening devotional; for all of Tuesday, KD and I took turns translating.
-Planning the week; I got to play bilingual secretary.
-Dinner as a group, then going up to Carla´s for more translating, as neither of her guests (Jean and Amanda) spoke Spanish and Carla and her family don´t speak English.
WEDNESDAY
-Work at La Obra during the morning.
-Lunch with the group.
-Lots of open time for discussion, playing around, etc.
-Sharing strengths/challenges/opportunities from each group; again, I got to be the secretary.
-Dinner
-Translating when one of the group members had some medical issues occur overnight
THURSDAY
-Work at La Obra
-Visit by the group to La Obra
-Open space in the afternoon for talking/sharing
-Dinner
FRIDAY
-Work at La Obra
-Visit to El Cerro. We visited a few families who´ve been participating in activities at Misión San Juan and then went to the top of the cerro to soak in the vista.
-Visit to the Monumento a los Desaparecidos (Monument to the Disappeared). This involved an explanation of one of the darkest periods in Uruguayan history, the military dictatorship of the 1970s and 1980s. It also opened some a space for hearing stories from some of my Uruguayan friends about their experiences during this time, as well as a more precise history of what happened.
-ASADO at Beatriz´s house. My personal vision of heaven is an asado - huge piles of perfectly grilled meat, red wine, and great company to share it with. The asado ended up being made into the impromptu congregational celebration of my birthday, amazing cake and all.
SATURDAY
-Pancakes for breakfast!
-Desarrollo Natural de la Iglesia/Natural Development of the Church (there will be a separate entry on this sometime)
-Excursion to Piriapolis, one of the prettiest beachside towns in South America.
-Bible Study with the community in Jaureguiberry (say that one ten times fast). This is a village of about 300 people, many of them retirees, right by the beach. It´s an amazingly peaceful, shady place - a perfect afternoon.
-Dinner with Carlos, Carla, Camila, Alejandra, Diego, Kirsen, Dorothea, Amanda, and Jean - pizza and fainá, and lots of conversation/translating.
-Fiestita with the young people from both Minnesota and Uruguay; lots of laughter and good conversation.
SUNDAY
-Closing Worship; the youth acted out the Gospel lesson, the group from Minnesota shared a few from-the-heart gifts with Nuestro Salvador, and even though there were a lot of us, we still held hands in a huge circle to take Communion.
And then it was over, seemingly as soon as it began. Amid lots of hugging and a few tears, they headed out for Buenos Aires. It was an amazing week - I´ve made 9 new friends, grown closer to the people here in the process, and can only wonder what amazing things might come out of the seeds being planted in both Minnesota and Montevideo.
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