Cross Culture
"Please God, let Andy be home today."
"Dios, por favor, que Andy está en casa hoy."
"There! I said it in both languages, so that God will hear me."
My son and I are staying in Guatemala for a week, and he's doing all he can to practice Spanish, and make friends with the little boy from our home stay. After several days of shy glances, they finally started playing and now couldn't get enough of each other. So as we came home from our morning Spanish lesson, Tom laid the request before God.
"Pienso que Dios comprende todos los idiomas" I respond, working on stringing new words together to make a phrase.
"Yeah, God understands all languages because he created them! You know at that tower thing?"
"Yes," I agree, "Something like that... "
I keep reflecting. This week has been lovely for reflections - with long walks, warm sun, and only one kid (who happens to be a deep thinker) asking me questions. "Yeah, and now we're scattered, and so different, and it's really hard to communicate with each other....."
Tom feels the cost of communication - in fact we are in Guatemala because Spanish was so hard for him he repeatedly begged me to take him out of his bilingual program and let him just learn to read and write in English like a normal kid. In first grade he even looked me in the eye and declared, "learning Spanish is your dream, not mine, Mom." That cut. I panicked, desperately trying to convince myself and him that I was doing the right thing.
"But, there are so many people in our neighborhood who don't speak English!"
"I just won't talk to them...."
"But you can travel the world and see amazing animals, and nature, and.... snakes!"
"When am I going to do that, Mom?"
"I'll take you!" I was in a state of mom-panic, the level where crazy promises are made. "If you will just stay in Spanish and work hard and not complain, until fifth grade, I'll take you somewhere really cool where they only speak Spanish!"
My kid never forgets a promise. And he did work hard - despite nothing related to spelling or grammar coming easily. So here we were. Celebrating, and acknowledging the great cost and hard work of learning another language.
The trip was for him, but I was enjoying it on a level I didn't expect. I've been travelling the world since I was 18 and I hopped on a plane for Uganda with the name of an orphanage and someone who could pick me up at the airport written on the back of an envelope. My experience in Uganda led me to shape my career around helping others through development work, and most of my trips have been in that capacity. I love cross-cultural travel - there is a thrill in the challenge and vulnerability of it that fuels me with wild energy. But that energy is so quickly depleted through long days of hard, often frustrating work, and the harsh realities of the very difficult circumstances our clients and coworkers live in.
I've never travelled to a less developed country purely for vacation. And despite also being a desperate promise (bribe?) to get my kid through bilingual elementary school, I was also trying to look at this trip as a vacation. Which meant I had plenty of time to enjoy the thrill of cross-cultural travel without the drain of work. And to reflect - on those long, lovely walks in the sun. We had covered a battery of theological, political, and existential topics, from the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, to the utility of pacifism, to the feeling of missing the place you were before you were born. (Apparently both my sister and son have this sensation, and for Tom it is akin to "feeling hungry, tired, and yawning all at once.")
I had been reflecting on why I love cross-cultural travel so much. It's scary, uncomfortable. I'm not always great at it, and it doesn't often feel natural. I have to plunge into it like a cold pool before appreciating the rush of joy and energy it gives me.
But once I jump in, it is always a powerful spiritual experience. It makes me draw close to and feel God in way I don't really do anywhere else.
As we walked down the long corridor to our room, I enjoyed the extended silence having one quiet kid offered, then continued my reflections out loud.
"It's so hard and uncomfortable to communicate, but it's also so powerful and joyful when we do."
"Yeah," my son agreed. "Why?"
"I think it's because Jesus was comfortable, familiar, complete in heaven with God, but he still became flesh and came to set up his tent among us. He didn't consider equality with God as something to cling to, but he emptied himself and took the lowest form. He left his comfortable, warm home - that place you miss from before you were born - and came down to be like us and with us - the ultimate cross-cultural experience.....
"I guess when we do that, we get a little thrill of the divine - just like yesterday," I thought about how hard it was for Tom to finally make friends with little Andy. "You didn't want to leave your warm, cozy bed" - it had been unseasonably cold in a country where all the common spaces were outdoors, and Tom had taken to reading under the covers for a good portion of the brisk mornings - "but the tenth time we heard Andy whistling in the courtyard, you got up, went out, and bravely said - 'quieres jugar conmigo?'"
An hour later, there were two plastic chairs as goal-posts in the cold courtyard and the two boys, now quite warm, were laughing hysterically.
What a thrill!
I'm home now, and still reflecting on the wonder of this trip. But today, I'm sitting in my kitchen beside my Guatemalan friend as she weeps, searching for words we both understand to recount how her closest uncle died crossing the desert to try and be with her in the US. I cry with her, and now hold in my body a reminder that not everyone's cross cultural journey is so holy and fulfilling. Most are driven by poverty, persecution, or violence. Some end in death or deportation. Too few are welcomed in the same accepting, childlike way.
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