{"id":1357,"date":"2014-03-09T20:14:29","date_gmt":"2014-03-10T01:14:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/jevon-rich\/?p=1357"},"modified":"2014-03-09T22:59:01","modified_gmt":"2014-03-10T03:59:01","slug":"becoming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/jevon-rich\/2014\/03\/09\/becoming\/","title":{"rendered":"Sitting on the Ground"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cA little more povilho<\/em>\u201d my coworker said.\u00a0 I reached for the bag and poured a little more manioc flour into the strainer in her hand.\u00a0 She shook it gently to sift the flour into the bowl on the counter, where she was mixing the dough for p\u00e3o de queijo<\/em>.\u00a0 (Cheese bread rolls).\u00a0 We were making a Saturday evening snack for our two families to share.<\/p>\n

I turned my back momentarily to rub a little oil in the baking sheets, and when I looked back at Cris, she was sitting on the floor.\u00a0 \u201cLicen\u00e7a<\/em>,\u201d she excused her un-conventional behavior, \u201cI have to sit on the ground to mix the dough with my hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

I have only been in Brazil for a year and a half, but I have spent a lot of that time with women in the kitchen.\u00a0 Their kitchen, my kitchen, big shared kitchens, and little family kitchens \u2013 all kinds of kitchens.\u00a0 And I\u2019m pretty sure it\u2019s safe to say that sitting on the floor in the kitchen is not super normal here.\u00a0 Actually, the ground itself is avoided much more carefully than it is in the States, probably because it is much more difficult to keep the ground perfectly clean here, and Brazilians in general value cleanliness very highly.\u00a0 I actually sort of miss the ground sometimes\u2026because in my own culture back home I never stopped to think if it was normal or not \u2013 I just plopped on the ground whenever I felt like it.\u00a0 Here, we do stop to think about what\u2019s normal and what\u2019s not, in order to avoid making huge cultural waves where they are unnecessary.\u00a0 So I haven\u2019t done much sitting on the floor lately.\u00a0 Especially in kitchens.<\/p>\n

But there sat my born-and-raised-Brazilian coworker Cris, on the floor<\/span> of the shared kitchen in the guest house.\u00a0 So I picked up the baking sheets and sat down beside her.\u00a0 The two of us oiled our hands and started rolling the dough into little balls and placing them on the sheets.\u00a0 While we worked, she explained to me that the indigenous women always sit on the ground to work.\u00a0 She said that when she first came, and the women started teaching her how to cook their foods, they would always sit down on the ground and indicate for her to do the same.\u00a0 At first, it felt very awkward to her to work in that position.\u00a0 Now, it feels so right to her that she sits on the floor in her own kitchen to work dough with her hands.<\/p>\n

I know what she is talking about\u2026that change of nature that occurs in you, where the norms of someone else\u2019s lifestyle begin to make sense to you.\u00a0 Such good sense, in fact, that you start to do certain things their way even when you are alone in your own house, and don\u2019t have<\/em> to be doing it that way to make them comfortable.\u00a0\u00a0 You might even start to do things their way when you are with other people of your own culture.\u00a0 Because\u2026their way just works<\/em> for you.\u00a0 And because that other person\u2019s lifestyle has become<\/em> a part of you.\u00a0 Or because you<\/em> have become part of them.<\/p>\n

I know, because we\u2019ve spent the last year and a half intentionally becoming<\/span> something more like Brazilians than we were before.\u00a0 \u201cBecoming\u201d has become a very significant word in our vocabulary.\u00a0 And it can mean anything from changing the clothes we choose to wear, to what we consider \u201cclean\u201d or not clean, to the manner in which we demonstrate \u201cwelcome\u201d to a friend at our own table.<\/p>\n

But I have felt a little apprehensive, trying to fathom what it means to \u201cbecome\u201d in an indigenous context.\u00a0 I\u2019m guessing it doesn\u2019t have half as much to do with clothes and outward appearance as it does here in the city.\u00a0 I know it won\u2019t mean adopting their beliefs about the spirit world.\u00a0 So what does<\/em> it mean?<\/p>\n

As we sat on the floor rolling balls of p\u00e3o de queijo<\/em> dough, Cris talked about the indigenous women.\u00a0 She talked about the first time that they took her fishing with them.\u00a0 She talked about how they accompanied her while she was trying to tip-toe across a log.\u00a0 She talked about how much she has come to appreciate the care that the women show for the other women in their family.\u00a0 She talked about the lady who adopted her as her daughter in the culture, and how much she has come to love this dear woman.\u00a0 As she talked, it was clear to me that she genuinely appreciates the women she lives and works among.\u00a0 She doesn\u2019t just love them; she likes them, too.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the first time she\u2019s told me stories about them, or talked about things of their culture that she appreciates.\u00a0 She has told me about their fish-and-cooking-banana soup that she likes so much.\u00a0 \u201cYou don\u2019t have to like every<\/em>thing they eat;\u201d she says, \u201cbecause they are the same as we are.\u00a0 There are some things they like to eat, and some things they don\u2019t.\u00a0 But you will learn to really like certain foods, and ask for more.\u00a0 They will know that you really like it.\u201d\u00a0 She has told me about the way the women teach their daughters how to sit and how to reach for their food.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s not just any old way you sit and grab food,\u201d she explained, \u201cThere is a way that you are supposed to do it.\u201d\u00a0 And the way Cris talked, I perceived that she finds these women gracious and feminine in their cultural way.<\/p>\n

She has told me about how they feel when it rains, too.\u00a0 Cris loves rain, and at first she thought that their distaste for it had to do with fear of the spirits.\u00a0 So she played happily with the indigenous school kids in the rain, demonstrating, in her mind, that there was nothing to fear.\u00a0 Later she found out that grey weather and rain reminds them of their loved ones that have died.\u00a0 So now, when she sees the melancholy faces on a cloudy day, she understands why they are so somber.\u00a0 \u201cI still like rain,\u201d she said, \u201cbut I try not to have a big party in front of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Listening to my coworker talk encourages me.\u00a0 I can see that she is becoming.\u00a0 And this kind of becoming is not about learning to use the right clothes at the right times, as we were expected to learn when we came to Manaus.\u00a0 Brazilians, and especially Manauaras, have a pretty high standard of dress and expect others to follow it, too.\u00a0 But dress is not a big deal to every culture.\u00a0 Nor does this kind of becoming mean adopting their religious beliefs, because we believe the one Truth that supersedes all cultures.\u00a0 We believe that there is only One Who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and no one can come to God except through Him.\u00a0 But this becoming is<\/span> about finding out what matters to them, and what makes them feel at home with you, and what makes them know that you like them.\u00a0 It\u2019s about capitalizing on the things that you like and appreciate in their culture.\u00a0 It\u2019s about recognizing when some of the cultural values they hold are the same as your cultural values, but demonstrated in a different way, and when they feel the same as you feel, but express it differently.\u00a0 And it\u2019s about understanding, too, when their values truly are different than what your culture values, and when they really feel very differently about things than the way you feel about them.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not just<\/span> about becoming friends.\u00a0 It\u2019s about becoming meaningful in their lives.\u00a0 So that in time, we can become instruments of peace and hope in their lives.\u00a0 Vessels of light.\u00a0 Vessels of truth.\u00a0 It\u2019s so that we can follow Jesus into proclaiming freedom for the captives and opening the eyes of the blind, bringing good news to the spiritually impoverished, turning mourning into dancing, and clothing people with a robe of joy.\u00a0 A figurative robe of joy, that is \u2013 a condition of the heart, which has nothing to do with either our culture or theirs, but which is a gift from God to whomever will receive it.<\/p>\n

I am glad to have a coworker who is becoming.\u00a0 And who has a heart to become.\u00a0 The humility needed to learn<\/span>, and the willingness to like<\/span>, another culture.\u00a0 She also has true desire to see a mature church grow up among this precious people.\u00a0 That is our desire, also.\u00a0 We are here because we believe that that is, first of all, God\u2019s<\/span> desire. \u00a0And, with the existing team that is here, we are following His heart into the midst of a people that were not our own, to become theirs<\/span>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cA little more povilho\u201d my coworker said.\u00a0 I reached for the bag and poured a little more manioc flour into the strainer in her hand.\u00a0 She shook it gently to sift the flour into the bowl on the counter, where she was mixing the dough for p\u00e3o de queijo.\u00a0 (Cheese bread rolls).\u00a0 We were making […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":552,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1796,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-heart","category-ministry","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/jevon-rich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/jevon-rich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/jevon-rich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/jevon-rich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/552"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/jevon-rich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/jevon-rich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/jevon-rich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/jevon-rich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/jevon-rich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}