It's a sad case. I remembered halfway through the ethics meeting that the child had a metabolic disorder. That she came from Central America just for her, much like a coworker of mine. This mother is so beautiful. Seeing her cry nearly brought me to tears. Her face is weathered and wrinkled and brown, one side less expressive than the other. Her eyes have so many smile lines, they're like little triangles. She's determined and loving and hard-working. Tuechtig, would be the German word. And I love her. Somehow. I wish I knew her name, not just her daughter's. I wish I understood her disease better... or could form a bond with the family. I'm glad I'll get to be around to hear what happens with them.
Another beautiful mom. I was glad to hear (and 2 seconds later, relay) that her baby had her surgery and is doing well. I wonder what kind of person she is. Today she was VERY nicely dressed. Like another coworker of mine, or her friends. She always gives me the impression of being well-nurtured and happy. Rich in the best sense of the word.
Goliath's* mom too, he's one of our cancer patients. She was happy and less worried in clinic today, which was nice to see. And Goliath was less sullen/more talkative than I've ever seen him. Things must be getting better.
It's such a privilege to see mother-love like this, all day. To get to say what they say, and in saying it, empathize with them, as if I were an actor playing their role, but in English. I am struck by how beautiful they are as they care for their kids; how they love them with all practicality, dealing with the ins and outs of a foreign healthcare system - all its procedures and people and red tape - in a non-Spanish-speaking country, so that their kid can just be sick. So they can get better.
I never know what to say when they look me in the eyes and say thank you, "gracias" or "gracias a usted por interpreter," "thank you for interpreting." It's like suddenly, when I have to speak my own words instead of everyone else's, I'm tongue-tied, jammed with the traffic of all the things I want to say to them for myself, all the things I've been thinking and feeling as I feel and speak for others. I'm not the doctor anymore, or the social worker imparting knowledge and wisdom. Neither am I a mother looking to the interests of her child. I am me. And I... mumble and stumble, and forget to smile. I run away in an embarrassed hurry of unspoken thoughts.
Maybe I just haven't found the version of "you're welcome" that I like. Maybe I need to intentionally pause and say something meaningful. Something about how glad I am to do this work. Even though it costs me my self.
Maybe I'll smile, look right back, and say:
"It was a pleasure to work with you." - "Me dio mucho gusto trabajar con usted(es)."
Because no matter what I've had to say, it almost always is.
*Goliath must obviously be a fake name. Privacy and all that.
Thursday, March 2, 2017
Saturday, February 4, 2017
how does a pebble feel in an ocean?
It was a normal-ish Saturday. I was on my own, one interpreter for 16 floors of hospital, and I had someone in the ICU who was going to be disconnected, whose grieving family needed to sign paperwork and needed help understanding it. The MD was breathing down my back to get it done in a hurry and - what was worse - the hospice agency nurse was dismissive of the language barrier and blithely went right in to start without me. And then I got a call to go to an occupational therapy session on another floor. So like I said... normal-ish. The attitudes, at least, were normal, the characters behaving as expected. I figure, OT can probably use the phones, but since I had a minute, I decide to go check out the situation.
When I arrive, the therapist says they already tried the phones, but the interpreter was having some trouble understanding the patient. So, as so often happens when a patient tries to talk and no one understands them, instead of wondering what other barriers might exist to communication, someone decided to ask 'is he thinking clearly?' Of course, once the question is asked, they have to check, and that was what this OT had been asked to do. Fortunately, the therapist was gracious, and declared herself perfectly happy to see another patient on the same floor first while I went and finished up with my ICU patient. "Thanks dear, just come find me when you're done." So I went and took care of the paperwork, sat with the grieving, but capable family in the ICU, and headed on back to the other ward.
The patient was in one of two beds in a room partitioned by a thin pink plastic curtain. I looked to the clunky hospital bed, surrounded by awkward, dingily colored hospital furniture and found it empty. The OT, Louisa, knocked on the door. There was a faint reply, so we waited. Louisa turned to me, "I have no idea how to say his name," she said, and pointed it out to me on a piece of paper with cramped little boxes denoting patient's names, locations, medical record numbers, and some scribbled notes. The name read like something that wasn't quite Spanish, and I wondered aloud if perhaps this man was from Guatemala, with a name of indigenous origin. Just then, our patient came out of the bathroom. He was a short, solidly built man with a square face, wrinkled and weathered a warm brown, and the dignified way he carried himself made me like him immediately.
We introduced ourselves, she in English, I repeating both our names in Spanish, and he waved his hands "No spikee Eenglish" he said. I felt a pang of sadness as I realized how well practiced that particular phrase was, and that he hadn't heard us. I spoke louder. "Sí señor, para eso estoy yo. Voy a ser su interprete." "Yes sir, that's why I'm here. I'm going to be your interpreter." He got it, but said, "I'm sorry miss, I don't hear very well out of this ear." 'Aha,' I thought, 'THAT's why the phone interpreter had trouble understanding him.' So I readjusted my position in the room, and my speaking volume, and we got going.
We asked him what his plans were once he was discharged. Where did he live? As he answered, I began to notice that he spoke Spanish like it was his second language, like other people I've worked with who were speakers of indigenous languages from Guatemala, southern Mexico and Belize. Strike two against the phone interpreter. In answer to Louisa's question he told us he lived in a shelter, and named a homeless shelter in the city. "So what do you do during the day, when the shelter closes?" Louisa asked "In the summer when it's warm, I'm just on the street. When it's cold out, there are other shelters I go to." The story that began to emerge as we asked questions and listened to the man's answers was one I was familiar with. Several of my neighbors, the ones from when I lived one of the most impoverished, abandoned neighborhoods in my city, had told similar stories. They explained to me that shelters kicked you out early, by 5:30 or 6 in the morning; that you have to be in line at the shelter by early afternoon to secure your spot; that there are a lot of churches that hand out meals, and soup. But one of his answers to the questions we were asking added a whole new dimension to this homeless lifestyle.
"Sir, do you have any friends, or family in the area that you could stay with?" Louisa continued. Just about every homeless man I've known has had "people," meaning family, living somewhere. But before I could even finish getting the question out in Spanish, he started shaking his head. "No, estoy yo solo." "No, I'm all by myself." He continued: "Yo vivo con 250 negros," he made a wide, cirlcling gesture with his hands, as if he were surrounded, "yo soy el único hispano. Hay un cubano negro que habla un poquito de Español, pero no mucho." I interpreted: "I live with 250 black men, and I'm the only hispanic. There's one black cuban guy who speaks a little Spanish, but not much." In my mind, I could clearly see him, the only short, solidly built, hispanic man, among his black roommates, line-mates, and dinner companions, not a friend among them. I imagined him in the shelter, his warm, worn brown skin so light it might not even register as brown compared to those around him. I tried to comprehend how isolating it must be for him among his 250 roommates, streetmates, if his best English phrase was what he had given us before: "No spikee Eenglish" No wonder he shook his head so quickly, with such gravity.
She asked another question, and we had some trouble getting it across, so I intervened. My professional curiosity was getting to me, and I decided it was time to find out. I couldn't tell if the problem was the fact that Spanish was his second language, or if it was because, as he had told us earlier, he was hard of hearing. Turning to Louisa I said, "I'd like to ask him where he's from, because it sounds to me like Spanish might be his second language." She gave me the go-ahead, so I asked. "Guatemala," came the reply, which I relayed, and then followed it up with "Ah, ok, I wondered. Sir, you speak Spanish very well. Is it possible, though, that you speak another language as well?" "Yes," he said, "I speak K'itch'e." Bingo, I thought. Between that and being hard of hearing, it was no wonder communication had been difficult. So we asked the OT's question in a different way, and continued "evaluating his mental clarity". She had him take off a sock and put it back on again, just to cover all her bases.
We had finished the evaluation, and were about to leave, when I realized I wanted to do one more thing. I knew that admitting to being indigenous, admitting to Spanish not being your native language, is something many Guatemalans are reluctant to do. The indigenous people of Guatemala have not been well treated by their government, and in many cases fled north to escape the Guatemalan genocide of the 80's. From what I have been able to learn so far, reaching Mexico did not mean safety. Mexico, too, has a certain amount of racism against its indigenous peoples, seeing them as backward and uneducated, and they were not happy to receive the wave of refugees. All of which are powerful reasons to keep your mouth shut and try to blend in as much as possible, and deny, deny, deny that you speak anything but Spanish. So to thank this man for his bravery, and to show that I didn't think any less of him, I decided to ask him if he would teach me a simple word in his mother tongue.
This would be the furthest I had gone out of my role as a conduit between OT and patient, which is my main role as an interpreter. Although I had intervened to clarify his linguistic history, that still fell within the bounds of maintaining good communication in the interest of quality care. But this was a little different. I looked at Louisa, and asked her if it she minded the question. As I'd expected, she said no, that's fine. Louisa knows a good bit about Hispanic people who speak "dialects" herself, having worked exclusively with that population for a while. So I asked. "Excuse me sir, how do you say hello in K'itch'e?" He was taken aback by the question. "What?" "How would you say 'hello' in your language, in K'itch'e?" He hesitated. Looked away. Swung himself back from the edge of the bed. I started to worry that K'itch'e might be one of those languages where you have to know the gender of the speaker, and the right honorific to be able to decide how to form a simple "hello". When he finally spoke, he said something that took me by surprise. "You know, I haven't spoken K'itch'e in 10 years, so I'm not sure." "Oh," I stammered. Then tried to cover up the embarrassment for both of us. "Oh, ok, that's fine. I just wondered, you know, but don't worry about it, that's ok." He rallied. "But I can tell you to say 'how are you?'" So he did, and I tried my best to imitate him. He said it several times, and I knew I hadn't said it well, but I was so grateful he'd managed to save face and hadn't gotten offended that I didn't mind.
Later I tried to recall and memorize his face as he spoke to me, teaching me that simple phrase as if I was a child. I could only imagine how many people had surely talked to him just like that over the years, trying to teach him simple phrases in the language that had swallowed him whole when he entered this country.
The interaction left me with so many questions. How come he has been here for so long, yet not connected with the Maya community here? How does he feel about not having spoken his mother tongue with anyone for the last 10 years? How does he get by in the city, on the streets, without being able to talk to anyone around him? Was he content with his situation? How did he get here? How does a pebble feel in an ocean? I had so many questions that I couldn't ask.
When I arrive, the therapist says they already tried the phones, but the interpreter was having some trouble understanding the patient. So, as so often happens when a patient tries to talk and no one understands them, instead of wondering what other barriers might exist to communication, someone decided to ask 'is he thinking clearly?' Of course, once the question is asked, they have to check, and that was what this OT had been asked to do. Fortunately, the therapist was gracious, and declared herself perfectly happy to see another patient on the same floor first while I went and finished up with my ICU patient. "Thanks dear, just come find me when you're done." So I went and took care of the paperwork, sat with the grieving, but capable family in the ICU, and headed on back to the other ward.
The patient was in one of two beds in a room partitioned by a thin pink plastic curtain. I looked to the clunky hospital bed, surrounded by awkward, dingily colored hospital furniture and found it empty. The OT, Louisa, knocked on the door. There was a faint reply, so we waited. Louisa turned to me, "I have no idea how to say his name," she said, and pointed it out to me on a piece of paper with cramped little boxes denoting patient's names, locations, medical record numbers, and some scribbled notes. The name read like something that wasn't quite Spanish, and I wondered aloud if perhaps this man was from Guatemala, with a name of indigenous origin. Just then, our patient came out of the bathroom. He was a short, solidly built man with a square face, wrinkled and weathered a warm brown, and the dignified way he carried himself made me like him immediately.
We introduced ourselves, she in English, I repeating both our names in Spanish, and he waved his hands "No spikee Eenglish" he said. I felt a pang of sadness as I realized how well practiced that particular phrase was, and that he hadn't heard us. I spoke louder. "Sí señor, para eso estoy yo. Voy a ser su interprete." "Yes sir, that's why I'm here. I'm going to be your interpreter." He got it, but said, "I'm sorry miss, I don't hear very well out of this ear." 'Aha,' I thought, 'THAT's why the phone interpreter had trouble understanding him.' So I readjusted my position in the room, and my speaking volume, and we got going.
We asked him what his plans were once he was discharged. Where did he live? As he answered, I began to notice that he spoke Spanish like it was his second language, like other people I've worked with who were speakers of indigenous languages from Guatemala, southern Mexico and Belize. Strike two against the phone interpreter. In answer to Louisa's question he told us he lived in a shelter, and named a homeless shelter in the city. "So what do you do during the day, when the shelter closes?" Louisa asked "In the summer when it's warm, I'm just on the street. When it's cold out, there are other shelters I go to." The story that began to emerge as we asked questions and listened to the man's answers was one I was familiar with. Several of my neighbors, the ones from when I lived one of the most impoverished, abandoned neighborhoods in my city, had told similar stories. They explained to me that shelters kicked you out early, by 5:30 or 6 in the morning; that you have to be in line at the shelter by early afternoon to secure your spot; that there are a lot of churches that hand out meals, and soup. But one of his answers to the questions we were asking added a whole new dimension to this homeless lifestyle.
"Sir, do you have any friends, or family in the area that you could stay with?" Louisa continued. Just about every homeless man I've known has had "people," meaning family, living somewhere. But before I could even finish getting the question out in Spanish, he started shaking his head. "No, estoy yo solo." "No, I'm all by myself." He continued: "Yo vivo con 250 negros," he made a wide, cirlcling gesture with his hands, as if he were surrounded, "yo soy el único hispano. Hay un cubano negro que habla un poquito de Español, pero no mucho." I interpreted: "I live with 250 black men, and I'm the only hispanic. There's one black cuban guy who speaks a little Spanish, but not much." In my mind, I could clearly see him, the only short, solidly built, hispanic man, among his black roommates, line-mates, and dinner companions, not a friend among them. I imagined him in the shelter, his warm, worn brown skin so light it might not even register as brown compared to those around him. I tried to comprehend how isolating it must be for him among his 250 roommates, streetmates, if his best English phrase was what he had given us before: "No spikee Eenglish" No wonder he shook his head so quickly, with such gravity.
She asked another question, and we had some trouble getting it across, so I intervened. My professional curiosity was getting to me, and I decided it was time to find out. I couldn't tell if the problem was the fact that Spanish was his second language, or if it was because, as he had told us earlier, he was hard of hearing. Turning to Louisa I said, "I'd like to ask him where he's from, because it sounds to me like Spanish might be his second language." She gave me the go-ahead, so I asked. "Guatemala," came the reply, which I relayed, and then followed it up with "Ah, ok, I wondered. Sir, you speak Spanish very well. Is it possible, though, that you speak another language as well?" "Yes," he said, "I speak K'itch'e." Bingo, I thought. Between that and being hard of hearing, it was no wonder communication had been difficult. So we asked the OT's question in a different way, and continued "evaluating his mental clarity". She had him take off a sock and put it back on again, just to cover all her bases.
We had finished the evaluation, and were about to leave, when I realized I wanted to do one more thing. I knew that admitting to being indigenous, admitting to Spanish not being your native language, is something many Guatemalans are reluctant to do. The indigenous people of Guatemala have not been well treated by their government, and in many cases fled north to escape the Guatemalan genocide of the 80's. From what I have been able to learn so far, reaching Mexico did not mean safety. Mexico, too, has a certain amount of racism against its indigenous peoples, seeing them as backward and uneducated, and they were not happy to receive the wave of refugees. All of which are powerful reasons to keep your mouth shut and try to blend in as much as possible, and deny, deny, deny that you speak anything but Spanish. So to thank this man for his bravery, and to show that I didn't think any less of him, I decided to ask him if he would teach me a simple word in his mother tongue.
This would be the furthest I had gone out of my role as a conduit between OT and patient, which is my main role as an interpreter. Although I had intervened to clarify his linguistic history, that still fell within the bounds of maintaining good communication in the interest of quality care. But this was a little different. I looked at Louisa, and asked her if it she minded the question. As I'd expected, she said no, that's fine. Louisa knows a good bit about Hispanic people who speak "dialects" herself, having worked exclusively with that population for a while. So I asked. "Excuse me sir, how do you say hello in K'itch'e?" He was taken aback by the question. "What?" "How would you say 'hello' in your language, in K'itch'e?" He hesitated. Looked away. Swung himself back from the edge of the bed. I started to worry that K'itch'e might be one of those languages where you have to know the gender of the speaker, and the right honorific to be able to decide how to form a simple "hello". When he finally spoke, he said something that took me by surprise. "You know, I haven't spoken K'itch'e in 10 years, so I'm not sure." "Oh," I stammered. Then tried to cover up the embarrassment for both of us. "Oh, ok, that's fine. I just wondered, you know, but don't worry about it, that's ok." He rallied. "But I can tell you to say 'how are you?'" So he did, and I tried my best to imitate him. He said it several times, and I knew I hadn't said it well, but I was so grateful he'd managed to save face and hadn't gotten offended that I didn't mind.
Later I tried to recall and memorize his face as he spoke to me, teaching me that simple phrase as if I was a child. I could only imagine how many people had surely talked to him just like that over the years, trying to teach him simple phrases in the language that had swallowed him whole when he entered this country.
The interaction left me with so many questions. How come he has been here for so long, yet not connected with the Maya community here? How does he feel about not having spoken his mother tongue with anyone for the last 10 years? How does he get by in the city, on the streets, without being able to talk to anyone around him? Was he content with his situation? How did he get here? How does a pebble feel in an ocean? I had so many questions that I couldn't ask.
Thursday, December 15, 2016
curve ball
One thing I love about interpreting is all the quirky, amazing, fascinating people you get to work with: both patients and medical staff of all kinds. And sometimes, if you're lucky and you work in a teaching hospital, you get to walk around with legendary doctors just exactly when they happen to be sharing their laboriously gathered wisdom with their med students, residents, and fellows.
I think about these people sometimes - the old, snow-haired men with hearing aids and slow purposeful movements that go with their slow, thoughtful words - and feel both honored to work with them, and just a wee bit nervous about what kind of curve balls they're going to throw me. Because there is ALWAYS a curve ball.
The other day, I went into a patient's room with just such a team. The boy's diagnosis was a passing illness, on the upswing, and medically there wasn't much to do but prod at his belly a bit and declare he was to be watched and given medicine a little while longer. This I learned as the team gathered around his bed and did exactly that - almost to the point of ignoring his dad, who, I noticed, nodded vigorously at everything anyone said to him, and spoke in an octave much higher than your average man. "Perhaps," I thought, "he's nervous," so I did what I could to include him in the conversation as much as possible, despite the team's focus on his boy.
Then, out of the blue, our attending snowbird looked me straight in the eyes, pointed his index finger right at me and said, "Can I ask you something outside?" Confused, I assumed he meant the boy's father, so I addressed the question to him. But almost before I finished my first phrase, I heard the words that bring any interpreter's smooth attempt to maintain transparency to a screeching halt: "No. I meant you." Uh oh.
So I made my apologies, discombobulated, "We'll be right back sir, just a moment, I'm sorry," and we all filed out. The big man made a big show of glancing seriously behind him and shutting the door. I was sure I was in trouble, or there was some serious issue afoot with the patient that needed to be discussed - but why he should want to ask ME a question, I couldn't fathom.
Fortunately, the answer came soon enough. As it turned out, the attending wanted me to go back and ask, in as culturally sensitive a way as possible, whether or not the boy and his father had been getting enough to eat. Apparently, there had been a problem with/confusion around ordering food or paying for it. In the explanations that followed, I learned that this doctor was prepared to pull whatever strings were necessary with social work or the kitchen to make sure everyone got enough to eat: to the point that when one of the residents said that they could probably get a discount for the father, the attending replied, rather darkly, "Or we could just give him some."
So, not only was this attending physician taking precious time out of everything to make sure the family was eating: he made a clear effort to make sure it was done without causing offense or embarrassment, and he was prepared to find unorthodox solutions to that problem. He was so invested in the answer, in fact, that when I came back, I had to report my conversation word for word before the tension in his face eased, his concern abated.
So, not only was this attending physician taking precious time out of everything to make sure the family was eating: he made a clear effort to make sure it was done without causing offense or embarrassment, and he was prepared to find unorthodox solutions to that problem. He was so invested in the answer, in fact, that when I came back, I had to report my conversation word for word before the tension in his face eased, his concern abated.
When I got back to the office and told of my adventure, my colleague said, "oh yes, I know that doctor. He's terrible at speaking directly to the patient, because he thinks too collaboratively, but he really, deeply cares. He is one who investigates and uses his influence to really make sure that all of the families' needs are taken care of. And then he teaches that to his students."
It's such a privilege to see medical staff fighting in this way for the patient demographic that I serve: poor, with low health literacy, sometimes poor literacy in general, refugees. So often in my line of work we worry about the times we weren't called to interpret for someone, and the staff just "got by" on "my crappy Spanish and his broken English." We worry they'll come back to the hospital because they didn't know how to take their medicines, or because they missed some key piece of information. We worry they might not know what they were diagnosed with or treated for (yes, that happens). So it does my heart good to know that there are influential people like this attending who will use their position and the resilient, good character they've developed over the years to make sure that their patients, at least, get excellent service.
Tuesday, November 22, 2016
thankful
There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
- Thomas Merton
A few years ago a friend told me her family's thanksgiving tradition was for everyone to spend some time that day making a list of 100 things they were thankful for, and then sharing them with each other later, around the meal.
I've remembered that often, and even tried it once or twice, but this year it occurred to me that I am thankful for all the people I know... and that's probably over 100. This year my mission is to tell every person I have a current connection with that I'm thankful for their presence in my life.
Some of you might say, hey, that's what you did for your birthday, and it was weird back then.
To you, I say: 1. it never hurts to tell someone you value them, and 2. it's already been six months, they may have forgotten.
- Thomas Merton
* * *
A few years ago a friend told me her family's thanksgiving tradition was for everyone to spend some time that day making a list of 100 things they were thankful for, and then sharing them with each other later, around the meal.
I've remembered that often, and even tried it once or twice, but this year it occurred to me that I am thankful for all the people I know... and that's probably over 100. This year my mission is to tell every person I have a current connection with that I'm thankful for their presence in my life.
Some of you might say, hey, that's what you did for your birthday, and it was weird back then.
To you, I say: 1. it never hurts to tell someone you value them, and 2. it's already been six months, they may have forgotten.
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.
- C.S. Lewis
If you are reading this, I am thankful for you, too. Whether we're enemies, or friends, or only met once... I have learned something from you, my life is richer because of you, and I remember you. Thank you.
* * *
Update:
So I've written 70 of the 100 notes I intended to write: I've written emails, sent snapchats, sent text messages, and made hand-written notes. I've fantasized about phone calls, but it hasn't happened yet. Uff. Let me tell you, it's been tiring. After 39 or so, I didn't want to do any more. But has definitely been a very interesting journey.
I've found myself feeling so vulnerable, so exposed, that I started explaining to people what I'm doing, in an attempt to feel less awkward. There's something about that level of sincerity that makes me afraid I will come across as needy or awkward, or just plain strange. Afraid my attempt to tell people what they mean to me, or how beautiful they are, will backfire and sound like a cry for attention. Seriously - after writing about 40, I felt like I had skinned my heart, flayed it open for everyone to see. It was raw. It was scary. I wasn't sure if I'd rather people reply, because then I'd know I hadn't been dismissed, or if I'd rather they didn't, because when they did I felt so embarrassed.
But, my discomfort notwithstanding, I've had some truly amazing responses. Coworkers have hugged me. One lady said she's going to print my email and read it every day because she wants to be the person I described. Many people responded with thankfulness, affection, and surprise. Another person even wrote a similar note back to me.
I still have a ways to go: some of the notes I haven't written yet are for some of the most important people in my life. But so far I have really enjoyed reflecting on the difference each person makes in my life, and what I learn from them, and how I see God reflected in who they are. It's been good to do this especially with people I don't particularly like, because I've realized some new things about them. It's also been good to reflect on people who are kind of peripheral in my life, because they have a big impact too.
Over the years I've started paying attention to how often I think of people I've known throughout the day, and it's amazing to me how often I think of people that I haven't seen in ages. Overwhelmingly I am realizing that every person you know shapes your world a little. In German there's this word, "prägen," which literally means stamped, as in minted, embossed or coined. It took me months to understand this word in context, but eventually I figured out that people were saying that they had been stamped or shaped by something. I like the connotation of metal being shaped, because metal, though fluid, is also rigid. Once you've been "geprägt," that shaping probably won't change for a while, at least until something else comes along and stamps over what's already there, or gradually smooths it out. People affect me like that. We emboss each other (it sounds so much sillier in English! ha!).
Anyway. Gotta get going on the notes I've still got left! I am not sure how often I'll do this, but I think I'm going to make it a semi-regular practice. At the very least so that I can acknowledge all the people who've loved me into being.
Update #2:
Bonus to this whole adventure: being in my friend's homes, or looking over at coworkers' desks, and seeing that they kept my words and hung them up on their walls or refrigerators.... Places where they're easy to see and remember.
* * *
Update:
So I've written 70 of the 100 notes I intended to write: I've written emails, sent snapchats, sent text messages, and made hand-written notes. I've fantasized about phone calls, but it hasn't happened yet. Uff. Let me tell you, it's been tiring. After 39 or so, I didn't want to do any more. But has definitely been a very interesting journey.
I've found myself feeling so vulnerable, so exposed, that I started explaining to people what I'm doing, in an attempt to feel less awkward. There's something about that level of sincerity that makes me afraid I will come across as needy or awkward, or just plain strange. Afraid my attempt to tell people what they mean to me, or how beautiful they are, will backfire and sound like a cry for attention. Seriously - after writing about 40, I felt like I had skinned my heart, flayed it open for everyone to see. It was raw. It was scary. I wasn't sure if I'd rather people reply, because then I'd know I hadn't been dismissed, or if I'd rather they didn't, because when they did I felt so embarrassed.
But, my discomfort notwithstanding, I've had some truly amazing responses. Coworkers have hugged me. One lady said she's going to print my email and read it every day because she wants to be the person I described. Many people responded with thankfulness, affection, and surprise. Another person even wrote a similar note back to me.
I still have a ways to go: some of the notes I haven't written yet are for some of the most important people in my life. But so far I have really enjoyed reflecting on the difference each person makes in my life, and what I learn from them, and how I see God reflected in who they are. It's been good to do this especially with people I don't particularly like, because I've realized some new things about them. It's also been good to reflect on people who are kind of peripheral in my life, because they have a big impact too.
Over the years I've started paying attention to how often I think of people I've known throughout the day, and it's amazing to me how often I think of people that I haven't seen in ages. Overwhelmingly I am realizing that every person you know shapes your world a little. In German there's this word, "prägen," which literally means stamped, as in minted, embossed or coined. It took me months to understand this word in context, but eventually I figured out that people were saying that they had been stamped or shaped by something. I like the connotation of metal being shaped, because metal, though fluid, is also rigid. Once you've been "geprägt," that shaping probably won't change for a while, at least until something else comes along and stamps over what's already there, or gradually smooths it out. People affect me like that. We emboss each other (it sounds so much sillier in English! ha!).
Anyway. Gotta get going on the notes I've still got left! I am not sure how often I'll do this, but I think I'm going to make it a semi-regular practice. At the very least so that I can acknowledge all the people who've loved me into being.
Update #2:
Bonus to this whole adventure: being in my friend's homes, or looking over at coworkers' desks, and seeing that they kept my words and hung them up on their walls or refrigerators.... Places where they're easy to see and remember.
Monday, November 14, 2016
scene
In the transplant clinic, talking to the social worker:
Dad: "Esto viene a ser un tema diferente, pero quizás no tan diferente. Queríamos preguntarle algo. Mire, es que mi mujer y yo no tenemos papeles," (pauses)
Child: starts tapping foot nervously and looking at parents
Me: "So this is off-topic, but maybe not so off topic. We wanted to ask you something. The thing is, my wife and I don't have papers."
Social worker: nods "Uh huh."
Dad: "Entonces queríamos saber, si a nosotros nos deportan, que va a pasar con la salud de nuestro hijo? El hospital le va a seguir dando sus mecidinas?"
Me: "So we wanted to know, if we get deported, what will happen to our son's health? Will the hospital keep giving him his medicine?"
Social worker, compassionately: "Well, the hospital won't be in charge of taking care of him. My best advice for you is to find somebody, a relative or a friend, who could take care of him if you two were gone."
Me: "Bueno, el hospital no se haria cargo de el. Lo mejor que les puedo aconsejar es que encuentren a alguien, parientes o amigos que puedan cuidar de el si ustedes dos no estuvieran."
End scene
During all the political uproar in the last few weeks, this is the scene I keep replaying in my mind. There's a lot I could say about it, a lot of things I could point out, but I want to say one thing.
There is a lot of uncertainty in the upcoming months, but in the midst of it, I know this. Minorities have been a huge topic in this election. I want to remind us that minorities are people. Most of them are people who need to be heard, people doing their best to meet their own needs, working as hard as they can to plan for their families and loved ones. If we ostracize, if we ignore, if we treat them as "the others" we are denying them opportunity to make good on what they are capable of. Things that benefit not just them, but the rest of our country. Moreover, we deny ourselves the opportunity of standing in awe of the beauty, dignity, and resilience of another human being.
Dad: "Esto viene a ser un tema diferente, pero quizás no tan diferente. Queríamos preguntarle algo. Mire, es que mi mujer y yo no tenemos papeles," (pauses)
Child: starts tapping foot nervously and looking at parents
Me: "So this is off-topic, but maybe not so off topic. We wanted to ask you something. The thing is, my wife and I don't have papers."
Social worker: nods "Uh huh."
Dad: "Entonces queríamos saber, si a nosotros nos deportan, que va a pasar con la salud de nuestro hijo? El hospital le va a seguir dando sus mecidinas?"
Me: "So we wanted to know, if we get deported, what will happen to our son's health? Will the hospital keep giving him his medicine?"
Social worker, compassionately: "Well, the hospital won't be in charge of taking care of him. My best advice for you is to find somebody, a relative or a friend, who could take care of him if you two were gone."
Me: "Bueno, el hospital no se haria cargo de el. Lo mejor que les puedo aconsejar es que encuentren a alguien, parientes o amigos que puedan cuidar de el si ustedes dos no estuvieran."
End scene
During all the political uproar in the last few weeks, this is the scene I keep replaying in my mind. There's a lot I could say about it, a lot of things I could point out, but I want to say one thing.
There is a lot of uncertainty in the upcoming months, but in the midst of it, I know this. Minorities have been a huge topic in this election. I want to remind us that minorities are people. Most of them are people who need to be heard, people doing their best to meet their own needs, working as hard as they can to plan for their families and loved ones. If we ostracize, if we ignore, if we treat them as "the others" we are denying them opportunity to make good on what they are capable of. Things that benefit not just them, but the rest of our country. Moreover, we deny ourselves the opportunity of standing in awe of the beauty, dignity, and resilience of another human being.
Sunday, October 30, 2016
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.
* * * *
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!
* * * *
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!
Wednesday, October 26, 2016
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.
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.
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