I Want to Hear from the Comadres
This year, like many of you, I wasn’t feeling one ounce of patriotism. Still, at the invitation of our immigrant neighbors, we ran around the parking lot, set off confetti poppers, and crowded on their apartment balcony to watch the city’s firework display.
As I watched these dear friends of ours (and the doorsteps full of refugee and immigrant folks all around our neighborhood) watch the lights, all I could think was they are celebrating a country not made for them, and I am so deeply sad and tired.
Lately, I’ve felt my words slow to a trickle. The bludgeoning of empathy by an onslaught of moral injuries will do that to a girl. Also, I just grow tired of words, words, words (incidentally, a play I performed in in college about monkeys who eventually type Shakespeare). At the risk of alienating some of you good readers, I have never felt more like purchasing this shirt:
I know the words are harsh, but whether from corrupt politicians, famous theologians, or well-meaning progressive gentlemen, there has been so, so many sentences from those in center of it all. As someone who passes as white and who lives in privileged spaces I have a hunger (and believe we all would be better off) to listen to the voices of faithful women on the margins. I want to hear from tias, abuelas, hermanas, madres (aunts, grandmothers, sisters, mothers) who have lived through coups, corruption, poverty, violence, misogyny and migration. I want their words to ring out to our tired congregations and communities. I want to hear from the comadres.
CoMadres protest. Their signs read: “We want them alive! For freedom, justice and peace in El Salvador!”Picture archived in the Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen, San Salvador, El Salvador.
In Spanish, comadre could mean godmother, neighbor, friend, gossip, sister, or midwife. All of these are evocative images for roles we need in the world we find ourselves right now. If you see it written “CoMadre,” it can refer to a movement from the 1970s, similar to the Madres and Abuelas of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, of women in El Salvador seeking justice for their loved ones (some people say CoMadre Paty Garcia encouraged Oscar Romero to work on behalf of the poor in their country). Here are some words from CoMadres and comadres I am rolling around in my mind and share with you.
We Kept Walking
During the war years we had hoped that we would find our missing children alive. And that hope gave us the strength to continue searching, fighting, and doing what we did. Many times at the marches they sent tanks after us and we just looked at them, and we kept walking. They saw that we were not afraid of them. I think that’s where we had a moral victory over them. They insulted us, they said ugly things to us: “Lazy women, go take care of your husband, of your house,” “Don’t you have anything to do,” and things like that. But we didn’t pay them any mind, we continued walking. They always sent truckloads of soldiers after us; they get down and run to us, and we would just look at them, we didn’t pay them any heed. We kept walking. They never dared to cross where we were going. They came very close, but since we ignored them and kept walking, I think that’s where we won a moral victory over them.
—Mother Alicia of the CoMadres movement
Don’t Be a Marshmallow
“Don't be a marshmallow. Walk the street with us into history. Get off the sidewalk. Stop being vegetables. Work for Justice.”
- Dolores Huerta, labor organizer and leader.
We Were Given a New Role as Mothers, Examples of Mental Health
“Now we are not the mothers of just one child, we are the mothers of all the disappeared. Our biological children became 30,000 children. And for them, we gave birth to a full political and public life. We are at our children’s side but not in the same way as when they were with us: we gave motherhood a public value. We were given a new role as Mothers, and in many cases, we weren’t prepared. We transmit more now than we used to transmit to our children: the spirit of struggle and sharing other struggles. In the end, we learned to give and take. The need to understand our children’s story kept us strong and led us to fill positions we hadn’t even realized existed.”
-Nora Cortiñas, one of the Madres of Plaza de Mayo on “Childless Motherhood"
And my favorite quote ABOUT Las Madres from Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano:
“In Argentina, the crazy women at the Plaza de Mayo shall be held up as examples of mental health because they refused to forget in a time of obligatory amnesia.”
The PhDs We Need
“When many of us with varying levels of privilege interact with the Bible’s stories, particularly those of Jesus engaging with marginalized women, we often have to force ourselves into the narrative. I wonder if much of our abuelitas’ theological insight comes from the fact that they can see themselves clearly in the story. They don’t need to stretch to imagine what it would be like to be the Samaritan woman or the persistent widow. Many of our abuelas know those stories intimately not only because they’ve committed to studying them and their lessons but because oftentimes those stories are about them.
What they pass on to us is a knowledge about God that many of us spend our lives trying to obtain from books and conferences. Our abuelitas may be “uneducated” by the dominant culture’s standards, but they possess PhDs in prayer and Bible interpretation. They may not be ordained as official priests or pastors, but they’ve been playing those roles behind the scenes forever, noticed and called by God.”
― Kat Armas, from Abuelita Faith: What Women on the Margins Teach Us about Wisdom, Persistence, and Strength
And finally, reorienting to what is real worship and who can we learn from when we’re feeling laid low
“I hope you've heard the lyrics of Amos, the lyrics that tell us that success and safety and self-actualization is not worship. The words that tell us that trampling on the poor, through our purchasing from companies that exploit workers or cause war for our luxurious jewels and cheap cotton and electronic batteries is not worship. That investing our wealth in funds that exploit workers or profit our 401(k) at the expense of incarcerated men and women is not worship. That self-importance, arrogance around our woke-ness, and the desire for significance is not worship.
Got real quiet in here. So.
While we were singing songs in the West and sending missions trip, people were living through apartheid in South Africa and genocide in Rwanda. And here we were creating the largest school-to-prison pipeline in the world. And we sang, It's all about me, and how I feel about you, Jesus.
So welcome. Welcome to joining the rest of us in the acts of justice as a part of worship.
People were trying to gasp for air under the foot of capitalism and American exceptionalism, and we were singing songs, and building buildings, and writing books, and hosting conferences, and creating podcasts. And all the while the church around the world and in our urban centers were getting stomped on at the expense of our singing.
True worship is not about intellect and intention. True worship is about embodiment and action.
When you live and have proximity to communities that are historically exploited and economically disenfranchised, you can see the brokenness and the violence and the deep sorrow that create environments of trauma. But I can also see real beauty— fathers and grandmothers, gifted artists and street vendors, who love and live in ways that inspire me. And when we are from communities of injustice and trauma, the call to justice in worship is not nice. It is not good. It is necessary…
Learn from us. Because we have been doing this for 44 years. There's something about the spirituality that we have. So when you're looking for hope in the midst of broken communities, and you want to see faith, and you want to learn hope through lament, and you stare racial evil and economic oppression in the face, and you don't want to be overwhelmed, travel alongside of your brothers and sisters in a 1,000 and a 7,000 person caravan about walking across countries and hold their calloused hands and ask them how they believe there's a God.”
-Sandra Maria Van Opstal (this whole conversation is great and challenging)
Who is a comadre you’ve learned from recently? Which voices are sustaining you during this time of upheaval and moral indecency? Who can you learn from this week whom you wouldn’t normally center? What is one thing you’ve learned from a woman on the margins (bonus points if it’s a Latina :)) May we continue to listen to the mothers, grandmothers, sisters, gossips, godmothers, friends, and midwives who struggle with the Spirit to keep moving forward in God’s good work.
