Things here in El Salvador have been a bit crazy, a bit different than Guatemala - so i haven't been blogging very much. I want to catch you all up on my perspective changing homestay that i had about 3 weekends ago in a community called San Ramon which is only about 15 minutes form where I am staying now.
We went out on these weekend stays in pairs and groups of 3 or 4 to different communities to experience a true Base Christian Community. Most people traveled hours away where I and my companera only traveled 15 minutes away to our weekend stay.
After the weekend we were to write a 'reflection paper' on our experience, although my paper is a little academic for a blog, its still sums up what I experienced...
The most important part to me is in the end of my paper - My Family stay.
My Experience with this family helped me 'liberate' myself from my privilaged unawareness of poverty. They welcomed me into their family with open arms...which was hard but so necessary for me to feel what I believe I needed to feel.
My experience with them was raw, hard but beautiful. I would say it was the first time in my life i lived true life, or life as the majority of the world knows, which is important for people like me, the privilaged to see and understand... anyway the paper explains it more.
A People’s Journey to Religious Liberation in San Ramón
The combination of visible religious liberation and poverty within an urban setting made my church accompaniment feel more real and raw then I had initially anticipated. I have never been a part of a community that is so honest about their past, so real with their spiritually and so hopeful for their future. Also, I have never experienced and lived in poverty so first hand. All of these new experiences in San Ramón allowed me to take a step back from several aspects of my white, privileged, United States citizen upbringing and to further connect to the community. During my weekend with the people of San Ramón I was not a spectator in any respect. The community invited me in as a friend, sister, community participant and family member and it was these roles that allowed me first hand experiences with religious liberation.
It was clear after the first conversation with Sister Anita, one of the ‘leaders’ within San Ramón, that the ability to find spiritual community outside of the constraints of ‘the church’ has been the most liberating factor for the community. Stemming from the Catholic Church, San Ramón’s Christian Base Community has joined with their beliefs and allowed themselves to re-create a spiritual safe place. After experiencing years of torment beneath the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, several of the community members decided together to separate themselves from the church. In part of their branching off into the new community, members signed a document stating their problems with the church, with the priests, and overall reasons for leaving. This led to the legitimizing of their separation and enabled them to fully start the new community.
In the year 2000 with around fifty members, the liberated Christian Base Community of San Ramón was formed. With their new abilities to commune in any way desired, the community immediately eradicated several old and unwanted ideas of the Catholic Church. For example, the community does not consider themselves to be a church; they are a community and they meet in a community center. Also, one of the largest irritants to the community from the Catholic Church is the rule and control placed over people by the priests. Because of this, the community does not have one specific leader of priest-like figure. They operate under rules of equality between every single member. Every child, woman, man and foreigner is treated completely equally in terms of community respect, involvement and importance. The community’s Sunday service, which is referred to as the Celebration of the Word, works with a rotating schedule of members who will prepare and present the word and service. This creates a feeling of equal involvement for participants and leaders because everyone, including the children, is given opportunity to take part in every possible role. As an outsider, this rotation and idea of sharing responsibility is refreshing in a faith-based setting because the overall equality demolishes the opportunity for oppression.
Also, the community continues to follow several traditionally Catholic liturgical rituals within their celebration services. For example, the community takes communion at every celebration, but they replace the tradition of using wine by using cheese. The community members said that the substitution is because of alcoholism, and that they do not want to allow the community to aid in any member’s possible addiction. Also, the community sings songs during services but not traditional hymns; their songs are more popular as they put it. Their songs celebrate their community and are in remembrance of several members who died or were killed in the conflict. Scripture is also presented during services, but it is known by the members that they can break up the pace of the reading with prayers or personal thoughts or testimonies, so that the whole community can be involved in the reading. Overall the services and the San Ramón community are very relaxed, open, personal and inclusive of every single person present.
After having been raised in evangelical protestant churches, the open setting of the service was a different experience overall and gave me a new outlook on a Catholic service. My personal church experience has never been near as inviting to the church body as the celebrations in San Ramón. I believe the people of San Ramón are so inviting not only because of their faith, but also because of their history and grievances with the Catholic Church. It is clear that the traditions they disagreed with from the Catholic Church have been stripped away and radically changed to their liking. The end result for San Ramón is not only liberation from the Church itself but from dividing differences between the community members.
As a genuine family member of my host family I experienced a completely different aspect of liberation theology and of the community. I stayed about 15 minutes away from the San Ramón Community Center with a family of six. My family was one of the poorest of the community and lived with cockroaches, dirt floors, child abuse, animal abuse and without a great deal of education on personal health. We ate beans, rice and several vegetables for every meal and the family was working from penny to penny for those meals. Also I spent my nights in a sheet-less bed with their daughter Wendy in her dirt-floor room. I personally witnessed two of the family members slap, grab and verbally abuse the four-year-old nephew throughout the weekend for various reasons. I believe this weekend was the first time I truly experienced poverty.
All of my experiences with my family were raw in a very genuine way. Because my host family treated me as an equal family member they did not bother to cover up their child abuse or their extreme love for white-skinned North Americans. I have a wealth of scrambled feelings about my home stay, but over all I feel like it was not until this weekend that I have allowed myself to be liberated from difference. This weekend I allowed myself to take in the experience and put it in context with this family’s background, in the conflict and overall. With those things in mind and with the influence of the United States and capitalism in general, it is not surprising why they live in their conditions, but it is unsettling. Also, during my home stay I found myself feeling extremely guilty for my privileges, but when I allowed myself to find the similarities between my host family and me, I was able to rid myself of my guilt-ridden, upsetting and extreme differences.
I do not blame my family for their life style, or myself for mine. To align with liberation and liberation theology that I experience from the community, it is absolutely necessary to find the similarities between one another and flush our differences in order to come together. Liberation from the things that oppress is a basis of Liberation Theology. My host family has been liberated spiritually, and I need to continue to allow myself to be liberated from my guilt of privilege so that I can meet people where they are and we can, if only for a moment, see and experience each other as equals.
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