prophecies like screaming toddlers: how we got here

So I recently spent like 4 weeks studying Jeremiah through Trinity Anglican, and in this post I took some time to reflect on it, including some just factual stuff but also what I gained from it personally.

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I learned several things through the study. One is that Jeremiah is arranged more like an anthology than a chronological compilation of works, and that this was done with a purpose. Much like experimental types of literature (I'm thinking of surrealism, modernism, dadaism, that sort of thing), the book of Jeremiah is intentionally chaotic. It doesn't just work on you through the meaning of the words you read - it uses form to affect you too, thus mimicking in you the confusion and frustration of the people of Israel at the time of their deportation to Babylon. I liked learning that, it's pretty meta. And helps me push through the frustration to try and make meaning.

The class also helped a lot with that meaning making, thank goodness. We learned that Jeremiah's work occurred in the 40 years just before/during/after Judah's deportation to Babylon, and that he spends his ministry announcing that the people have broken their covenant with God, and therefore consequences - in the form of takeover by and deportation to Babylon - are coming. Now I cannot lie to you - I am TERRIBLE when it comes to history. That subject matter just doesn't stick with me very well, no matter the format. So there is a lot more that got discussed that I really would have to put in a lot more effort to retain, but I did learn some of the names of the different kings, and I have the notes to reference how they fit into the general story of the time. All this contextual information is WAY more than I had to work with before when attempting to read through the prophet Jeremiah.

Similarly, the class teased out of the text some of the major stages of Jeremiah's life and walked us through them. I really appreciated that about Ashley (the teacher): her gift for painting a picture of everything that would've been happening, of how all the pieces fit together.

So we learned that it is unusual for a prophetic text from the Ancient Near East (ANE) to include any information about the prophet, his or her life - nevermind his or her thoughts/feelings about the messages they had to deliver. And yet those things are included in the text of Jeremiah: who he was, things he did, his opinions of what God asked him to say. So, just as the form of the text is equally as important as the meaning of its words, the life experiences of the prophet himself, and his opinions of his message, bear just as much meaning as his actual message. I had no idea.

A key feature of the book of Jeremiah are all the "symbolic action reports" God tasks him with. These are things that God asks Jeremiah to do, and then turns the actions into symbols by ascribing meaning to them. They are part of the prophetic message, enacted metaphors. It makes sense that God would include these, really, even more sense if you know anything about how basic metaphor is to human understanding of reality, or if you consider embodied cognition. Embodied cognition is the idea that physical reality affects our thoughts. For instance, one study found that, if you're carrying a heavy clipboard, you will take a conversation more seriously; another, that if you're carrying a heavy backpack, you'll judge the top of a hill to be further away; yet another that if you hold a warm drink you will feel more emotional warmth toward the people you're talking to. These are small indications of how closely our understanding is tied to our bodies, so to me it makes sense that God - all-knowing, wise, creator of the human experience - would understand this about people and use the physical actions of his prophet to communicate with his people on a level more than verbal. Plus they were just weird things to do, and he had to know that would stick in people's minds and make them wonder.

Anyway. I really appreciated hearing a more in-depth analysis of some of the action reports, like Jeremiah "redeeming" the field his family member came to sell to him after the town it was in had been ransacked by the Babylonians, and God asking him to agree to buying the field. A field which happened to be in Ben-hinom, later known as Gehenna, which, when Jesus mentions it in our New Testament, is translated as "hell". So Jeremiah had to buy back a piece of hell, redeem it. What beautiful foreshadowing.

So I've brushed up on a good bit of history in this class, and been privy to some excellent exegesis (meaning explanation of the what scholarship has learned about particular passages of text to help us better understand them); but what I valued the most about the class was learning more about the actual chronological life of Jeremiah in his context. Getting a picture of who he was and how he fit into the situations that were going on around him.

This was the most valuable piece to me because, to me, it makes his message more digestible. It can be really hard to read the prophetic books. It feels like the prophet says the same things over, and over, and over, and they are painful, confusing things to read. Israel gets called a prostitute, accused of infidelity, told they will be destroyed, told how they will be destroyed... the threats and accusations and complaints get overwhelming. The reader is left in the difficult position of not knowing who to identify with - you understand Israel, their actions seem reasonable, yet God is clearly very upset with them. So you feel guilty because you understand, but also know that God is technically righteous, so shouldn't he be in the right? So does that make you just as bad as the Israelites? God's voice is confusing too. Can he really mean all those terrible things? Isn't it all kind of overwhelmingly intense? Who's right here?

Basically, it feels like walking in on a pair of kids who are already 5 minutes into a fight. You want to sit them down and get them to tell you what happened, so you can get a clear picture, and form an opinion, so you can figure out what's just. But instead of clarifying, they just keep shouting, and now they're shouting at you. Taking this class gave me exactly what I wanted: the chance to sit everyone down and learn about what went down to get us to this level of rhetoric in the first place; the chance to see how the rhetoric fit into the sequence of current events. It spaced it out, it explained the intensity of emotion going on on both sides, and, bonus, also explained the whole anthology, out-of-order thing, which really intensifies the confusion factor.

Also, getting to learn about Jeremiah's life and the different kings and characters (by reading those bits of text that talk about it all at once) really humanized it for me. Knowing how Jeremiah felt about the messages he delivered (because it's written down in parts of the book), knowing that he had a "tragic phase" and just talking about the life of the man who spoke the words somehow helped me know how to feel, because it placed the words into a story, with people in it. It's hard to explain, but it kind of feels like turning the volume down to a level where you can hear what's being said.  Hah.

So thank you, Trinity, and Ashley, for that. I hope to sit down with the material again soon and tease out the timeline a little more, but for right now this is good. It will probably help me understand Isaiah and Ezekiel too. Hah!

bike commuter

Atlanta is a city of rolling hills, as if the gentle swell of a calm ocean had solidified into rock, overlaid with concrete. I suppose this has something to do with tectonic plates and long-gone seismic activity, but for the bike-commuter, it means alternating between torture and exhilaration - the glory of flying and the agony of slowly pedaling uphill.

Tonight, as I plodded up the final hill in my neighborhood (too steep for my burning thighs and aching lungs to handle on the bike), I thought about the adventure I'd just had. The cracked sidewalks, sporadic streetlights, cars whizzing by too close for comfort; the random men walking, catcalling, glaring, and even apologizing for almost running into me... I thought of urban hiking, and how not-trendy it is, despite nature-hiking being practically a requirement for people between the ages of 20 and 30. That, I thought to myself, is what I call an adventure,

And it makes me wonder if, having once learned that you can overcome the cultural norms you have in your own head, if that desensitizes you to other people's ideas of what can and cannot, or should and should not be done. I am always doing things other people find too inconvenient, or just plain untenable, but those things always seem totally reasonable to me until someone else makes a comment.

In any case, I've been carless this week, and it has led to some interesting reflection. Ha! These are only a few thoughts, but we'll see how long it lasts before the novelty wears off.

the identity of an interpreter

Some of my colleagues have described interpreting as being similar to acting. One coworker talks about how she likes to get into the characters. For practice, she watches movies that have been dubbed into Spanish, just to see how the movie deals with all the normal, crazy things we deal with in speech: things that don't have clear, comfortable equivalents like jokes, idiomatic expressions, and slang.
Another pair of colleagues recently gave an excellent presentation on dealing with death and delivering bad news as interpreters. They made the case that we interpreters, because we speak in the first person, truly inhabit the role of the people for whom we interpret, and therefore deeply identify with them - to the point that we may experience vicarious trauma from hearing - and telling - their stories.


Yesterday I had the privilege of interpreting for a woman who, despite being active and still in possession of all her faculties, is approaching the end of her life. So I did what we do. I wedged myself into a corner next to her chair, in front of the MD and at her side, and started repeating everything everyone said, just as close to how they said it as I could. I soon realized that my patient was intelligent, educated, with a good vocabulary, so I stepped up my linguistic game, reaching for words that maintained the meaning-for-meaning exchange, but belong to more educated discourses.



It was the type of interpretation I deeply enjoy, because there's a certain elegance to it, and it stretches my creativity with language. As I've mentioned before, I'm a very verbal person. When I explain to people what I do, their eyes often get wide and they say, "Wow, learning all that medical vocabulary must be hard!" And it's true, that part is a challenge - one I enjoy, because I find it fascinating. But in reality, there's a relatively small set of words and phrases I use all the time, every day, because if my patients don't know the big medical words, then they don't get used much. We stick to everyday words like "pain," "what's bothering you?" "belly," and so forth. That means that when I know my patient has a command of Spanish that allows me to confidently use words like "abdomen" instead of "panza," and say things like "cuando tratamos estos temas..." instead of "cuando hablamos de estas cosas..." you might not think it's a big deal, but I get pretty excited.



The thing about really reaching into my linguistic resources like that, though, is that it requires an increase in focus and concentration, which also means paying less attention to the world around you. For those two hours - my fellow interpreters are groaning in recognition - it's a long time to concentrate that hard! - for those two hours, my surroundings faded and I paid attention only to the words, and the ideas and emotions in them. And because it was a palliative care conversation, they were very sad words indeed. At points I had to coach myself not to cry, not to let my voice shake.



So all the while I am interpreting, I'm focusing in on the characters, the two people I'm giving voice to, and making sure they understand each other. But I'm also having my own thoughts and reactions to what is going on. So I was surprised at the end of the session, when I actually looked at my patient's face for the first time in a long time, and I had a feeling of coming back into myself. It was like I looked at her, and me, who I am, came back into focus. I remembered that I am young, that I'm not dying, and that she is a completely different individual, unknown to me. But at the same time, I felt such love for her. And when I came back to myself - it was strange - but I had this sense of peace.


It was like the whole time I was interpreting, identifying with her, some part of me inside was panicking and thinking, "I'm not ready for this! I haven't thought about this! This is awful!!!" but when I stopped and looked at her, and remembered that we were separate, I could see what was evident from what she had been saying. That she's thought about it; that she has time to keep thinking about it. That she has deep bonds of love with people she cares about. That she has the strength she needs from God to walk down this path. That she is wise. That she is prepared to go through what is coming to her. That this was her struggle, and it was ok.



Going home, I remembered that moment, and I cried. I prayed and told God all the things I'd wanted to tell her, the things I'd been thinking in the back of my mind as I spoke her words. And I cried because I was sad that this loving, hard-working, mature, normal sort of woman was facing death. And I cried mostly because the dignity with which she faced it was breathtakingly beautiful.

my job exists because of injustice

I thought I had talked a little bit about what I do on this blog, but when I did a word search, it turns out I've only mentioned it in passing, twice. So allow me to officially say that I work as a Spanish Medical Interpreter - even though I am often casually referred to as "the translator". It is a relatively young field, only about 25 years old, so although some people are familiar with interpreting in the context of the UN, and conference interpreting, a lot of people have never heard of medical interpreting. To break it all the way down, I work with medical staff, who call me in to help them communicate with patients who are 1) primarily Spanish-speaking, and 2) who's proficiency in English is somehow limited.

The patients I work with run the whole gamut: they may not know English at all, they may know only the words they need to get by in their job, or they may be almost fully fluent, but out of their depth in a medical setting. If you speak, or have attempted to learn another language, you can probably imagine why this is necessary. If you were talking to a doctor about a pain, some unexplained bleeding, a chronic illness, a procedure you've never heard of before, or something you're worried about in that second language, even if you consider yourself able to get by, you'd probably feel much more confident about the interaction if you had the option of speaking and being answered in English, too. That confidence is what I give to my patients, and to medical staff.

I once saw a South Asian woman, in full Sari, standing in the middle of a hall on a hospital ward in Georgia, looking so isoltaed. She was a pillar of color transplanted from another world into this tan-and-white washed-out place. As soon as someone handed her the phone, it was like her world snapped back into focus - she could tell the nurse what was going on with her family member in the other room. She could find out what medicine the nurse had given, and what the doctors' plan was for the day, and that the nurse wasn't ignoring them, but actually working on what needed to be done for discharge. There are horror stories of people being in the hospital without being able to talk to anyone or understand anyone, and so thinking they were in prison, or dying, or not knowing that they were dying, or unable to speak to anyone for 18 days. You never know how important talking is until you can't.

So as you can imagine, this work is deeply satisfying; to be able to be that conduit that allows someone to have full awareness of and ability to participate in what's going on around them. But it is also fascinatingly complex and full of anxious moments, times when you have to make a decision under pressure, on your own, that will have lasting consequences. If you could ask my friends, or acquaintances, they would tell you that I can easily go on for over an hour about the ins and outs of interpreting: the people and situations I encounter, and what it's like to be always negotiating the in-between. Not unlike most professions, I suppose, interpreting is a world unto itself.

One thing that's fascinating about being a Spanish Interpreter, in particular, in the medical field is that the patients I serve come from all different corners of the Americas: Colombia, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Guatemala, Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Costa Rica, Cuba, and Equitoreal Guinea. And occasionally Spain. Each of these people, to get to where they are both geographically and in life, have passed through so many different experiences and places that each one is completely different. Sure, there are some patterns, but there are so many patterns, that most days, it doesn't feel like it. I never know who I'm going to meet when I walk into an encounter - it might be a Cuban person from Miami, or a recently emigrated lawyer from Venezuela, or a migrant worker from Guatemala... the list is endless. This has a lot of different implications in terms of vocabulary I need to know, skills I need to employ, and background knowledge I need to have/acquire.

One thing that took me completely by surprise at first was meeting patients who spoke Spanish as their second language. My first experience of this was with a Mam speaker. I had never heard of the language before, and naturally asked why we hadn't just used the phone service to connect with a Mam speaker, rather than calling me, a Spanish interpreter in to do the job. What I learned that day opened my eyes to this fact:

My job exists because of Spain's participation in colonialism.

Think about it. Why do so many countries in South and Central America speak Spanish? Why does Mexico speak Spanish? Because of Spanish conquistadors. We recently had Columbus day, and my facebook feed was inundated with angry posts about how we should be celebrating indigenous peoples day. Well, that day when I met my first Mam speaker was when I first came into contact with someone who speaks a living, breathing, evolving, indigenous language.

Since then, I have met speakers of Mam, K'iche', Q'anjob'al, Akatek, Chuj, Zapotec, and Mixtec. Today I had the privilege of hearing Carmelina Cadenas, from Maya Interpreters LLC speak at a professional conference for medical interpreters. I learned that in Guatemala alone, there are 22 officially recognized indigenous languages; that many of these languages are actually more like 2, or 4 separate languages, and that though they are called "dialects," they often really aren't mutually intelligible - which in the field of linguistics could be used to argue that they are in fact distinct languages that belong to the same language family.

Indigenous languages are still spoken across all of the Americas. According to Wikipedia, South America and the Caribbean are home to 350 indigenous languages that are currently still spoken, but there were 1,500 at first European contact. Hearing Carmelina speak today, hearing her speak to us in Akatek, really made it hit home for me that all of the many wonderful people I serve would not speak Spanish but for colonialism. My job, as it is, would not exist but for colonialism. Not linguistically, not politically, not economically. The situations that my patients are fleeing from, the reasons for which they are emigrating, would be completely, 100% different, if they existed at all. My job exists because of injustice. And it's not something where I can look at it and say, "well, what I am doing is a tiny drop in the ocean of restitution that's required." There is no going back. Those horrors have been done. My patients speak Spanish, and many have since birth. Those other 1,150 languages are dead now, and will never need an interpreter.

I'm sorry, I just had to sit with that for a minute. I don't really know what to write after that.

I love my job precisely because it IS a drop in the bucket of justice that's needed. I love working and giving my patients the dignity and participation they deserve because they are human, and it's not their fault that they ended up where they are, or who they are, or when they are. Day after day of speaking someone else's words, even though I do have to speak my own later, is a good sacrifice, and I am glad to make it. But this is work in the trenches. This is work on the ground, and as one person, there is a limit to the impact I can have here. I hate that there are so many speakers of Q'anjob'al and Mam, here in my state, who don't have access to the language services I can give to Spanish speakers. I know that there are young people growing up here, who speak English and either know or have the opportunity to know those Mayan languages, or other languages of lesser diffusion. I want to help inspire and train those people. I don't want to walk into a room with a family from Guatemala and have my heart sink because I know we're going to have to make do, because there is no interpreter for Chuj. I want to walk in and be able to say, "Actually, this family speaks Chuj as their primary language. Let me get you the right interpreter," and then make a few phone calls and see the relief on the mom's face.

So far this has been a vague dream, an idea. But today I met Carmelina, who grew up as a migrant worker and now works as one of 3 certified court interpreters for Akatek in the whole country, and is part of a company called Maya Interpreters LLC, and my idea turned into hope. It was good to see that there are people in the world aware of and working on this. Maybe I can get in there with them and start pulling some weight here in my state, where the Mayan community is bigger than I ever imagined.

Where's home?

You've probably read about me in BuzzFeed. Ok, sure, maybe not me personally. But they had a list a while back (actually a few lists) about these people called Third Culture Kids. Basically TCKs are people who grew up in a country that was not their parents' country of origin, because of the work said parents did. If you know much of anything about me - if you've read the beginning of this blog, even - you know that I grew up in a few different places because of my parents. So technically, I'm now an ATCK, or Adult Third Culture Kid. And one thing TCKs have in common is that we get a little anxious when asked where "home" is, or "where are you from?"

I have also grappled with anxiety about this question whenever it is asked. The standard things you'll hear people say about how they pick the place that makes the most sense for the conversational context they're in, or choose what to say based on how much they feel like revealing about themselves - I've done all those things. And I've struggled with the concept of 'home:' I've lamented that I've never had one, joked that 'home' is just the word I use for where my bed is that night, and generally done my best to deal with the transience.

But recently, I've been thinking some more about home. My strongest feelings of being at home have historically been when I feel most connected to God through the practices of my faith. I have often felt like I've come home for the first time in weeks during church services, or while I pray,  while reading the Bible, or doing something I feel God is leading me into. Recently, though, I've been feeling like I was at home in certain physical spaces, and it's been interesting to notice having that at home feeling in the actual room where I often pray. Tonight I was surprised to notice that I felt at home when I stepped into the elevators at work. I have come to associate that feeling of being at home with God's presence, and I didn't expect it in the hospital elevator. But who's to say he isn't there?

I am so incredibly grateful that I do have that sense, though. And how interesting that it comes to me through my faith. I wonder if Jewish diaspora feel the same way, or Muslim migrants.

Anyway, I just wanted to get started writing about it tonight to see the thoughts on "paper."

Goodnight!