Sean Crespo Is Also Only a Man
Greetings True Believers...
This weekend I visited my paternal family in Virginia. Lovely people. Great folks.
But I may as well be adopted.
Since about the age of 10, I've only ever seen them every couple of years at best. Fortunately, though we don't always keep in touch, the aloofness that can develop from this kind of distance, the kind that generally makes the heart grow not fonder simply farther, never set in. It was always "just a shame" our schedules, the stars, the tea leaves mixed in goat entrails and fortune cookies, whatever... never lined up.
Oh yes, and exacerbating that physical distance is a cultural distance. As it turns out, SURPRISE!, I'm 1/2 El Salvadorian...which of course makes them a full 1/1 El Salvadorian. Fractions are "relevanto" in all languages, compadres.
Nevertheless, I'm sure it was in fact a surprise for my Latino dad when the palest child since the Albino Norse died out popped out of my mom. I'm fully half descended from the Spaniards, and yet...there are barbershop quartets with more "caliente" than me.
So on the trip down I found myself wondering if I would ever be able to continue to maintain a deep bond with a group of people I am not only already separated from by a physical and cultural and language boundary but also...TADA!...a religious one.
That's right. Jesus in da house...their house. Not mine! I rent and my landlord is very strict about that sort of thing. And I try to respect the wishes of the big man upstairs (literally upstairs). His name is Tony.
The religious thing...I can barely get through the language barrier some days, let alone bigger questions like, "Is there a God, and if so, how long is his beard?"
Some of my relatives speak English mucho well-o, some speak English only ok-good-good, and some speak a strange version of English that to me sounds like Spanish mixed with Middle English right out of Chaucer. MidSpanglish? I'm not sure, but "archaic by mistranslation" is a fun way to put some of the word usage I hear during my visits. The disconnect is hilarious. I like to play a game with them called "Do you really understand what I just said or are you now just saying YES to everything to make it seem like you do?"
ME: So that's how I got such a good deal on my DVR. Why, are you looking to get one?
FAMILY MEMBER: Jes.
ME: Cool! Well do you want to go online with me and take a look at the different models available?
FAMILY MEMBER: Jes.
ME: Ok. So which storage size are you interested in, 80 gig or a smaller one?
FAMILY MEMBER: Jes.
ME: Umm, ok. Did you know I own 3% of Amsterdam due to a technical loophole in Dutch property laws?
FAMILY MEMBER: Jes.
ME: I thought so. I'm going to set your cats on fire then pee out the flames. That cool?
FAMILY MEMBER: Jes.
ME: Terrif. See you manana.
And it doesn't stop there.
EX: I have an aunt who has been in the U.S. most of her life now. I can still barely understand her and she me--as well as most other EOL (English as their Only Language) speakers. Every conversation is peppered with constant shouts to a better equipped English speaking family member in the room adjacent, "How woot say (insert Spanish word)?" Which is many times itself followed by a similar exclamation to yet another member in a chain of language queries. Several times in the past this circle has actually completed itself, arriving back at my aunt who then asks me the same question she just shouted to someone else but this time using English synonyms...
MY AUNT: How woot say, eh, eh...commo POOTATO bayt noot, joo know? POTATO, in de treize?
ME: Potato 13?
MY AUNT: Eh...no. No? No. Pootato up in, in, uh, er...in de branch?
ME: (unbelieving she knows "potato" but not the following) You mean an APPLE?
MY AUNT: Jes!
And then a wave of relief and happiness washes over her because we both figured out this terrible mystery that would have dogged us until the end of time...or until we passed a produce section. And that's a piece of my aunt right there. You're welcome.
Don't get me wrong, I find this charming and sweet and one of those things indicative to my particular family, though I'm sure it's a part of most families composed of first and second gen Americans. But it's strange being so damn Caucasian in these situations...stranger still since Spanish was my first language.
Again, surprise! See, I lived in San Salvador for quite a spell when I was oh-so-wee so when we came back to Framingham, my parents were sporting a brand new blonde-haired Spanish speaking butterball. Actually, I guess I was never really that wee. But wee enough, ok! It only took a year after starting school in Framingham, Mass. for me to forget my first language, to exist as if my second language had been my first and only. How did that happen? YOU GROW UP IN BOSTON LOOKING THE WAY I DO AND SPEAKING SPANISH! The Spanish kids thought I was making fun of them, the shite kids thought I was making fun of the Spanish kids...and that I was fat. So either way I was in for it. You'd forget how to conjugate in foreign languages real fast too if your ability to make friends was also on the line.
Anyway, the language aside, there's the religion to deal with, to politely bear, to refrain from debating about...I'd love to have an actual conversation with these, my closest relatives on their side of the divide, but facts play an awful big part in my life and they've taken their religious views to a relativistic extreme. They don't shove it at you at all, but it keeps our conversational potentials to mostly just that...potentials. Kineticize any of those "dangerous" topics like WHERE DO WE COME FROM or HOW PEOPLE SHOULD TREAT ONE ANOTHER or DO ANGELS FART...and you're apt to wind up in a MidSpanglish word-bog of confused rhetoric, shouting circles,and one fuming Half Cauc.*
Although, I must admit, I'm pretty sure we all agree that angels don't fart. And that if they did, it'd smell pretty good. Like cookies. Hot chocolate cookies. Delicious, moist, fresh from the celestial colonic oven chocolate cookies!
Who's hungry?
My digressed point is that if a topic is conveniently close enough in line with a literal interpretation of the Bible then they'll buy the science and we can have a very tepid conversation about it. A "Nothing about gravity in the Bible, so we'll let that be" sort of attitude. Electricity, another safe topic, is useful, so it's accepted and not argued, but what they fail to grasp, as all creationists do, is that it's the same physics informing our understanding of the behavior of electricity that has given mankind the clues which also led to the nearly unanimous acceptance of natural selection as the model for biological evolution.
It's all connected! But not in the way they'd like it to be.
The problem in talking to my religious kin about anything touching on inconvenient truths, especially regarding the factual irrelevance of Genesis, is that we can argue the details of evolution, but not its existence at this point. And they don't know the details anyway. Sorry guys. You missed the party. All the right wing, conservative Christian boutique pressings of anti-Darwinian and anti-Copernican books written by agenda-wielding semi-scientists** won't make the world otherwise.
It's frustrating enough talking to any person crazy enough to believe in talking snakes from a long lost paradise, let alone something as silly as assigning a gender to an all powerful non biological super being. God's a man, a HE, to my family, to all Christians! A dude. That kills me! Angels may not fart but God is supposed to have a beard, a throne, and, presumably, a wang? Please! This is lunacy. Man, woman, tranny...it doesn't matter...if there is a God and he/she/shemale is anything like us, ANYTHING, we were screwed before we even got started. But then, again with the tada!s, I suppose that's the idea behind original sin. It's the perfect excuse in case we fail. It's existential bet-hedging.
All that said, and as frustrated as I can get with them (and that's a pretty astounding level of frustrated we're talking about, e.g. the furrows on my brow get furrows), there's the very simple fact that these were the people who were there for me when my father accused me of leaving a demon in his house (True!) and stopped communicating with me for quite a few years. When your father is that completely nuts, you can't take it for granted that your other relatives are only slightly and selectively nuts. Again, I'm sure they pity me in a similar fashion. So be it, right guys? As long as there's peace and love.
Nevertheless, frustration and love all mixed together, there has always been that lingering doubt, that curiosity, "Can a group of people who believe so much the opposite of what I believe ever truly accept and love me for who I am, and not just for the sake of avoiding conflict?" I mean, how can they? My own father didn't. And it's not as if their beliefs lie scattershot, far from his. They're all zealously Christian, most of them don't believe in evolution--which is ok really, I balanced out that non-reality check when I told them I don't believe in cats so they wouldn't worry about my allergies in their feline-festooned house--, and they have no problem ignoring the tragic rationale most religions have provided every generation for wholesale slaughter, overpopulation, and bigotry.
Pssssssssssssssst...
You get that I'm a secular liberal, right? Good. Wasn't sure. Thought I might have to start a S.L. pride parade or something to tip you off, but it seems you're with me.
Good good good.
Ok back into the thick of it.
Regardless of our nearly polar opposite viewpoints on topics ranging from Adam to Zoology, I was shocked during this visit...we truly got along just fine. Almost perfectly! It was fantastic.
And upon consideration, I realize now that I was allowing myself to fret, simply for the sake of having something to fret about. I really should not have been surprised at their warmth. I have this same fear every time I see them but I have found time and again that, for them, family comes first, beliefs second. And I love them for that. And I need to remember it during future visits, of which I hope for many.
It's that warmth despite each conversation's potential for "crossing the streams" and ending everything right then and there. It's what I could have had with my father...COULD HAVE HAD, except for the fact that he's terrified of a belief system that is not absolute, exclusionary, and deranged. Hair shirt anyone? I'm sure Christ would be weeping lepers if he saw how my father has interpreted the gospels.
So...
Everything was swimmingly great with my family. I had a great time and reaffirmed my connection with them. And my aunt Che Che made a great lasagna, you know, lasagna, one of El Salvador's most famous dishes.
But there was one awkward moment when their creationist views came up and they tried to convince me of them, and it happens EVERY visit so I know to expect it. It's fine. A waste of time but fine. It's their attempt at shooting for the game-winning basket from the other end of the court as the buzzer goes off...a long shot but 'why not" they figure. This moment occurred was when one of my relatives informed me that there was "scientific proof of God's existence" and that they have a video tape detailing the study that announced this.
Let me tell you...I CAN NOT WAIT TO SEE THIS TAPE!
"It's scientific? This evidence?" I skeptiqueried***. "Scientific? Proof? You're trying to tell me there is scientific proof that resolves a philosophical debate?"
The look of absolute belief in their eyes, the assuredness...it's great. It's sweet. It's enthralling. "If only you would believe, everything would be so much simpler" their looks says. It's hypnotic, this firmness of stance. I'd love to partake. The desire is there in me...but I'd have to shut off the rest of my waking mind in order to accommodate that one belief. A sense of comfort is important, but it's meaningless if it comes at the expense of your sense of self. I think the Bible said it best with "what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?"
Thanks, The Bible!
Still you have to admit, it's pretty miraculous, this video. Not a one of my family has ever read any book written by a real scientist on any topic, whereas I've read several dozen, and yet...the first time they made a foray into the field...they just stumbled upon the one video, the only one, the contents and claims of which are verifiable and already peer reviewed and which prove the existence of GOD! What are the odds?
This is astounding! This is amazing!
This is sarcasm!
And this is almost how we ended that conversation.
ME: Ok, just to be sure...this evidence, this scientific evidence...is it from a scientist or is it found in the Bible?
RELATIVE: De Bible.
ME: Ah. Ok, you know that that's not then evidence, right?
RELATIVE: Well, jes and no...
ME: Oh, wait, it probably depends on the kind of Bible though, right?
RELATIVE: Jes.
ME: So was this the 80 gig Bible or a smaller one?
RELATIVE: Jes.
ME: I'll be right back. I have to go put out your cats.
RELATIVE: Jes.
ME: And to you too.
Well, close enough. Anyway, I would say this to you, my family: I love you, you're good people, and I will always be there for you, as you have been for me.
BUT...
please, please please please please please please PLEASE ...keep your god on a leash. I don't want Him pissing in my yard or digging up my flowers of reason. It'd be a real shame since they're coming in so nicely, finally, and I'd hate for them to die so young. In return I promise not to let them get into the soil in your intellectual property. Wither wither anyway, right?
And look, my people, while I don't like or agree with what you're growing over there in your garden, nevertheless, sometimes, once in a long while mind you, when I'm far from home and the wind is carrying a familiar scent, I am reminded of you and your ways and what I think doesn't come into it. I'm just remembering you. And it makes me smile.
And for that, I thank and love you.
Te quiero mucho,
Sean
PS And now in the spirit of getting along...I've found a delightful video that seems to have perfectly mixed both our value systems...well, except for the part about THOU SHALT ALWAYS KILL at the end, that is. The rest of it...perfecto!
Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip
"Thou Shalt always Kill"
* My term for Half Caucasians--again World, you're welcome. I coined that phrase right here. Also see "MYSPACQUAINTANCE".
**People with legit degrees who do not however utilize the scientific method, i.e. they start with an assumed truth, usually Biblical scripture as the root, and try to find evidence to back it up, rather than starting with a hypothesis which they then try to disprove , the results of which are then open to debate and peer review...that is what real scientist do. Shucks.
*** Consider this word coined too!
This weekend I visited my paternal family in Virginia. Lovely people. Great folks.
But I may as well be adopted.
Since about the age of 10, I've only ever seen them every couple of years at best. Fortunately, though we don't always keep in touch, the aloofness that can develop from this kind of distance, the kind that generally makes the heart grow not fonder simply farther, never set in. It was always "just a shame" our schedules, the stars, the tea leaves mixed in goat entrails and fortune cookies, whatever... never lined up.
Oh yes, and exacerbating that physical distance is a cultural distance. As it turns out, SURPRISE!, I'm 1/2 El Salvadorian...which of course makes them a full 1/1 El Salvadorian. Fractions are "relevanto" in all languages, compadres.
Nevertheless, I'm sure it was in fact a surprise for my Latino dad when the palest child since the Albino Norse died out popped out of my mom. I'm fully half descended from the Spaniards, and yet...there are barbershop quartets with more "caliente" than me.
So on the trip down I found myself wondering if I would ever be able to continue to maintain a deep bond with a group of people I am not only already separated from by a physical and cultural and language boundary but also...TADA!...a religious one.
That's right. Jesus in da house...their house. Not mine! I rent and my landlord is very strict about that sort of thing. And I try to respect the wishes of the big man upstairs (literally upstairs). His name is Tony.
The religious thing...I can barely get through the language barrier some days, let alone bigger questions like, "Is there a God, and if so, how long is his beard?"
Some of my relatives speak English mucho well-o, some speak English only ok-good-good, and some speak a strange version of English that to me sounds like Spanish mixed with Middle English right out of Chaucer. MidSpanglish? I'm not sure, but "archaic by mistranslation" is a fun way to put some of the word usage I hear during my visits. The disconnect is hilarious. I like to play a game with them called "Do you really understand what I just said or are you now just saying YES to everything to make it seem like you do?"
ME: So that's how I got such a good deal on my DVR. Why, are you looking to get one?
FAMILY MEMBER: Jes.
ME: Cool! Well do you want to go online with me and take a look at the different models available?
FAMILY MEMBER: Jes.
ME: Ok. So which storage size are you interested in, 80 gig or a smaller one?
FAMILY MEMBER: Jes.
ME: Umm, ok. Did you know I own 3% of Amsterdam due to a technical loophole in Dutch property laws?
FAMILY MEMBER: Jes.
ME: I thought so. I'm going to set your cats on fire then pee out the flames. That cool?
FAMILY MEMBER: Jes.
ME: Terrif. See you manana.
And it doesn't stop there.
EX: I have an aunt who has been in the U.S. most of her life now. I can still barely understand her and she me--as well as most other EOL (English as their Only Language) speakers. Every conversation is peppered with constant shouts to a better equipped English speaking family member in the room adjacent, "How woot say (insert Spanish word)?" Which is many times itself followed by a similar exclamation to yet another member in a chain of language queries. Several times in the past this circle has actually completed itself, arriving back at my aunt who then asks me the same question she just shouted to someone else but this time using English synonyms...
MY AUNT: How woot say, eh, eh...commo POOTATO bayt noot, joo know? POTATO, in de treize?
ME: Potato 13?
MY AUNT: Eh...no. No? No. Pootato up in, in, uh, er...in de branch?
ME: (unbelieving she knows "potato" but not the following) You mean an APPLE?
MY AUNT: Jes!
And then a wave of relief and happiness washes over her because we both figured out this terrible mystery that would have dogged us until the end of time...or until we passed a produce section. And that's a piece of my aunt right there. You're welcome.
Don't get me wrong, I find this charming and sweet and one of those things indicative to my particular family, though I'm sure it's a part of most families composed of first and second gen Americans. But it's strange being so damn Caucasian in these situations...stranger still since Spanish was my first language.
Again, surprise! See, I lived in San Salvador for quite a spell when I was oh-so-wee so when we came back to Framingham, my parents were sporting a brand new blonde-haired Spanish speaking butterball. Actually, I guess I was never really that wee. But wee enough, ok! It only took a year after starting school in Framingham, Mass. for me to forget my first language, to exist as if my second language had been my first and only. How did that happen? YOU GROW UP IN BOSTON LOOKING THE WAY I DO AND SPEAKING SPANISH! The Spanish kids thought I was making fun of them, the shite kids thought I was making fun of the Spanish kids...and that I was fat. So either way I was in for it. You'd forget how to conjugate in foreign languages real fast too if your ability to make friends was also on the line.
Anyway, the language aside, there's the religion to deal with, to politely bear, to refrain from debating about...I'd love to have an actual conversation with these, my closest relatives on their side of the divide, but facts play an awful big part in my life and they've taken their religious views to a relativistic extreme. They don't shove it at you at all, but it keeps our conversational potentials to mostly just that...potentials. Kineticize any of those "dangerous" topics like WHERE DO WE COME FROM or HOW PEOPLE SHOULD TREAT ONE ANOTHER or DO ANGELS FART...and you're apt to wind up in a MidSpanglish word-bog of confused rhetoric, shouting circles,and one fuming Half Cauc.*
Although, I must admit, I'm pretty sure we all agree that angels don't fart. And that if they did, it'd smell pretty good. Like cookies. Hot chocolate cookies. Delicious, moist, fresh from the celestial colonic oven chocolate cookies!
Who's hungry?
My digressed point is that if a topic is conveniently close enough in line with a literal interpretation of the Bible then they'll buy the science and we can have a very tepid conversation about it. A "Nothing about gravity in the Bible, so we'll let that be" sort of attitude. Electricity, another safe topic, is useful, so it's accepted and not argued, but what they fail to grasp, as all creationists do, is that it's the same physics informing our understanding of the behavior of electricity that has given mankind the clues which also led to the nearly unanimous acceptance of natural selection as the model for biological evolution.
It's all connected! But not in the way they'd like it to be.
The problem in talking to my religious kin about anything touching on inconvenient truths, especially regarding the factual irrelevance of Genesis, is that we can argue the details of evolution, but not its existence at this point. And they don't know the details anyway. Sorry guys. You missed the party. All the right wing, conservative Christian boutique pressings of anti-Darwinian and anti-Copernican books written by agenda-wielding semi-scientists** won't make the world otherwise.
It's frustrating enough talking to any person crazy enough to believe in talking snakes from a long lost paradise, let alone something as silly as assigning a gender to an all powerful non biological super being. God's a man, a HE, to my family, to all Christians! A dude. That kills me! Angels may not fart but God is supposed to have a beard, a throne, and, presumably, a wang? Please! This is lunacy. Man, woman, tranny...it doesn't matter...if there is a God and he/she/shemale is anything like us, ANYTHING, we were screwed before we even got started. But then, again with the tada!s, I suppose that's the idea behind original sin. It's the perfect excuse in case we fail. It's existential bet-hedging.
All that said, and as frustrated as I can get with them (and that's a pretty astounding level of frustrated we're talking about, e.g. the furrows on my brow get furrows), there's the very simple fact that these were the people who were there for me when my father accused me of leaving a demon in his house (True!) and stopped communicating with me for quite a few years. When your father is that completely nuts, you can't take it for granted that your other relatives are only slightly and selectively nuts. Again, I'm sure they pity me in a similar fashion. So be it, right guys? As long as there's peace and love.
Nevertheless, frustration and love all mixed together, there has always been that lingering doubt, that curiosity, "Can a group of people who believe so much the opposite of what I believe ever truly accept and love me for who I am, and not just for the sake of avoiding conflict?" I mean, how can they? My own father didn't. And it's not as if their beliefs lie scattershot, far from his. They're all zealously Christian, most of them don't believe in evolution--which is ok really, I balanced out that non-reality check when I told them I don't believe in cats so they wouldn't worry about my allergies in their feline-festooned house--, and they have no problem ignoring the tragic rationale most religions have provided every generation for wholesale slaughter, overpopulation, and bigotry.
Pssssssssssssssst...
You get that I'm a secular liberal, right? Good. Wasn't sure. Thought I might have to start a S.L. pride parade or something to tip you off, but it seems you're with me.
Good good good.
Ok back into the thick of it.
Regardless of our nearly polar opposite viewpoints on topics ranging from Adam to Zoology, I was shocked during this visit...we truly got along just fine. Almost perfectly! It was fantastic.
And upon consideration, I realize now that I was allowing myself to fret, simply for the sake of having something to fret about. I really should not have been surprised at their warmth. I have this same fear every time I see them but I have found time and again that, for them, family comes first, beliefs second. And I love them for that. And I need to remember it during future visits, of which I hope for many.
It's that warmth despite each conversation's potential for "crossing the streams" and ending everything right then and there. It's what I could have had with my father...COULD HAVE HAD, except for the fact that he's terrified of a belief system that is not absolute, exclusionary, and deranged. Hair shirt anyone? I'm sure Christ would be weeping lepers if he saw how my father has interpreted the gospels.
So...
Everything was swimmingly great with my family. I had a great time and reaffirmed my connection with them. And my aunt Che Che made a great lasagna, you know, lasagna, one of El Salvador's most famous dishes.
But there was one awkward moment when their creationist views came up and they tried to convince me of them, and it happens EVERY visit so I know to expect it. It's fine. A waste of time but fine. It's their attempt at shooting for the game-winning basket from the other end of the court as the buzzer goes off...a long shot but 'why not" they figure. This moment occurred was when one of my relatives informed me that there was "scientific proof of God's existence" and that they have a video tape detailing the study that announced this.
Let me tell you...I CAN NOT WAIT TO SEE THIS TAPE!
"It's scientific? This evidence?" I skeptiqueried***. "Scientific? Proof? You're trying to tell me there is scientific proof that resolves a philosophical debate?"
The look of absolute belief in their eyes, the assuredness...it's great. It's sweet. It's enthralling. "If only you would believe, everything would be so much simpler" their looks says. It's hypnotic, this firmness of stance. I'd love to partake. The desire is there in me...but I'd have to shut off the rest of my waking mind in order to accommodate that one belief. A sense of comfort is important, but it's meaningless if it comes at the expense of your sense of self. I think the Bible said it best with "what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?"
Thanks, The Bible!
Still you have to admit, it's pretty miraculous, this video. Not a one of my family has ever read any book written by a real scientist on any topic, whereas I've read several dozen, and yet...the first time they made a foray into the field...they just stumbled upon the one video, the only one, the contents and claims of which are verifiable and already peer reviewed and which prove the existence of GOD! What are the odds?
This is astounding! This is amazing!
This is sarcasm!
And this is almost how we ended that conversation.
ME: Ok, just to be sure...this evidence, this scientific evidence...is it from a scientist or is it found in the Bible?
RELATIVE: De Bible.
ME: Ah. Ok, you know that that's not then evidence, right?
RELATIVE: Well, jes and no...
ME: Oh, wait, it probably depends on the kind of Bible though, right?
RELATIVE: Jes.
ME: So was this the 80 gig Bible or a smaller one?
RELATIVE: Jes.
ME: I'll be right back. I have to go put out your cats.
RELATIVE: Jes.
ME: And to you too.
Well, close enough. Anyway, I would say this to you, my family: I love you, you're good people, and I will always be there for you, as you have been for me.
BUT...
please, please please please please please please PLEASE ...keep your god on a leash. I don't want Him pissing in my yard or digging up my flowers of reason. It'd be a real shame since they're coming in so nicely, finally, and I'd hate for them to die so young. In return I promise not to let them get into the soil in your intellectual property. Wither wither anyway, right?
And look, my people, while I don't like or agree with what you're growing over there in your garden, nevertheless, sometimes, once in a long while mind you, when I'm far from home and the wind is carrying a familiar scent, I am reminded of you and your ways and what I think doesn't come into it. I'm just remembering you. And it makes me smile.
And for that, I thank and love you.
Te quiero mucho,
Sean
PS And now in the spirit of getting along...I've found a delightful video that seems to have perfectly mixed both our value systems...well, except for the part about THOU SHALT ALWAYS KILL at the end, that is. The rest of it...perfecto!
Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip
"Thou Shalt always Kill"
* My term for Half Caucasians--again World, you're welcome. I coined that phrase right here. Also see "MYSPACQUAINTANCE".
**People with legit degrees who do not however utilize the scientific method, i.e. they start with an assumed truth, usually Biblical scripture as the root, and try to find evidence to back it up, rather than starting with a hypothesis which they then try to disprove , the results of which are then open to debate and peer review...that is what real scientist do. Shucks.
*** Consider this word coined too!
posted by The Crespo at 12:44 PM
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