From the Camino forums: After I found the online Camino forums I haunted them, reading and learning from other people’s experiences. There were many uplifting anecdotes, a lot of questions of the “how-do-I-do-this” variety, but also some stories of innocent misunderstandings while on the Camino.
The simple tasks of greeting and departing others in a polite manner, or asking for a beer, or placing an order for a meal was more complex than one might presume. Even native Spanish speakers had strikingly different answers on how to say things, depending on where in the world they originated. Argentinians, Mexicans and Spanish differ greatly in the pronunciations of their shared language, and have unique grammatical forms and word choices, and vastly different cultural practices.
But it’s not just words; it’s also gestures. Pointing with a single index finger alone is considered rude in Spain. How could the innocent American be expected to know this?
On occasion, the online posts got a little heated, when people’s sense of the proper way of doing things were disappointed. Frustrations by Spanish participants of impoliteness from pilgrims, and peeved sensibilities from pilgrims when expectations were failed by waiters, hospitaleros, volunteers at the cathedral in Santiago, etc., are not at all uncommon.
How, ever, shall we all just get along?
Mark 9:38-40 – 39John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone driving out demons in your name, and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow us.” 39 Jesus replied, “Do not prevent him. There is no one who performs a mighty deed in my name who can at the same time speak ill of me. 40 For whoever is not against us is for us.”
For reflection: As a starting point, any expectation on our part that everyone should “get along” by doing things in a way we feel comfortable is guaranteed to fail.
One of the great fallacies, often repeated, is that, “after all, we are all the same.” When you travel, you find that people can be quite different and amazingly complex. Cultural anthropologists note that in very similar circumstances, societies can arrive at very diverse ways of responding to the world around them. Something as simple as a smile, used broadly in some cultures, is restricted to family and friends in others. If people, for whom the smile is normative, behave as they do at home, they can appear fake, implying a false sense of intimacy for folk from less smiley cultures. The shared friendly intimacy of handshakes and hugs, broadly shared among some, are invasions of personal space among others, where bows are appropriate.
We often identify quite strongly with whatever behaviors and conceptions our own cultures promote, and feel, without even knowing why, quite uncomfortable when people behave contrary to our anticipations. Hurt feelings, moments of anger, a sense of displacement or disappointed expectations can occur when the differing ways of handling the world around us collide in intercultural settings, that is, whenever people from different backgrounds meet.
Americans are, in particular, naïve to the differences. Coming from a country just slightly smaller than the whole of Europe, with only some small regional differences in expectations of others, we are often unprepared for just how quickly and vastly languages and cultural expectations change in much smaller spaces in Europe. Travel can cure us of this, but only if we’re paying attention, and open to the differences we encounter.
In the Scripture passage, Jesus’ close friend and companion, John, was apparently uncomfortable with outsiders: “He does not follow us!” One can’t help but notice that John didn’t say the exorcist wasn’t a follower of Jesus, but of us. John’s behavior reflected a sense of empowerment, that he was one of the elite and special, of being proper, and curiously, entitled to control others’ behaviors. In contrast, Jesus opposed John’s exclusivity. Jesus was all about belonging and including, not separating and distinguishing.
To get to that same spirit, we may some work to do. We might have to liberate ourselves from a spirit of competition, where things have to be better back home, our traffic systems superior, our food more edible, our volume for speaking more tempered, our manners more proper, our beds more comfortable, our air cleaner, etc. Underneath these reactions to differences is a presumption that our culture is not only “normal” but perhaps more worthy, while theirs is “exotic” and even if interesting, somehow lacking.
Whenever we are in someone else’s country, though, we are the ones who are exotic and alien. It is our responsibility to find ways to communicate for other’s benefit. When we attempt to use someone else’s language without a lot of skill, we may well offend or amuse others when seemingly innocent words end up laden with sabotaging nuances unknown to the non-native. And yet we still communicate. We stumble and we embarrass ourselves, but somehow meaning gets communicated, and if we can learn to laugh at ourselves, often little or no harm is done.
It would be even more valuable if we can be at peace when the other proves to be truly “other.” The French, vive la difference, invites a celebration of the richness that comes from celebrating the divergences between our cultures.
At the heart of successful intercultural encounters, lies the willingness on everyone’s part to overcome the drive to set the norm and to be in control of our surroundings and the other people who populate it. We have to find sufficiency and happiness without being the king of the mountain. In fact, liberating ourselves from the drive to dominate could be a much more important Camino process than shedding the extra possessions in our packs. If we could, it would lighten our hearts. It would mean that rather than leading the world, we could share it. We all have so much to offer each other: the foods we eat, the plants we grow, the technology we use, the literature that fires our imagination, the movies that entertain us.
Jesus, too, leaves room for the other, and the other’s unspoken motives. His name belongs to strangers, to Samaritans and Syro-Phoenicians, and his gifts of healing and restoring people to their families and communities are not narrowly distributed: “For whoever is not against us is for us.”
