A Day in the Life of the Canamari

Recently I was reminded, from Blenda Blanda's blog, about some past
experiences.

It was a regular day during the dry season in the hot and humid
tropical jungle of the Amazon rain forest.  But it was an
exceptional day because this day, by myself without any missionary
supervision from Lee, I was going to accompany Owapo on a village
fishing expedition.  I was 18 years old, and you have to try to
imagine the scenario to comprehend my excitement.  The jungle
itself is full of dangerous creatures such as jaguars, wild boars,
all kinds of poisonous snakes and insects, not to mention marauding
tribes out for mischief which could include shooting and looting.
Communication was no picnic.  My native tongue, English, was totally
useless here.  The dominant language being Canamari, of which I knew
extremely little, and the lingua franca was Portuguese, a little of
which I had managed to acquire and spliced with the little Spanish
that I knew.  But my missionary companion, Lee, thought that my
Portuguese was sufficient to manage a solo trip among the Canamari.
As it turned out communication consisted of single words, small
phrases, and alot of pantomime.

Owapo was a tall young man of his village, tall being relative to
his own people, a foreigner like me at slightly over 6 ft was a
freak among the village.  Owapo had responded to the message of
Jesus presented by the British and American missionaries who had
built their homes as close to the village as the Brazilian
government allowed.  He was a quick study, progressed in reading
such that the missionaries talked about Owapo being the primary
teacher of his village.  The Canamari language was completely
oral,the work of the missionaries was primarily to learn the
language, apply a phonetic alphabet, teach the people to read,
and then they also translated scriptures into the Canamari
language.  Owapo was about 5 years my senior, and he liked to
participate in the conversations that arose when we visited the
village.  I must have been a strange sight, a towering white guy
who said very little, and when I didn't understand something
would speak in an unintelligable tongue to Lee, who would respond
in the same gibberish.  Owapo asked many questions about the
meanings of Jesus' story and when explained, he responded as
though not surprised and as if he already knew the answer.  He
seemed to like my presence, as I'm sure I was an enigma.  It was
really his suggestion that I accompany him on the fishing trip.

I walked to the village early in the morning to meet Owapo,
and the rest of the expedition.  There were young and old,
men and women, dogs, even a parrot, but not one fishing pole,
no line and hooks, not even a tackle or bait box among them.
They had bows and arrows, and poles with long, sharp, dark
hardwood tips, notched with barbs.  A couple of older men
carried small clubs and some roots cut about two to three
feet long, and many women and children carried woven baskets
out of thatch or vines.  Even while waiting for all to
assemble, some of the elders started down the trail.  When the
last interested person showed up, Owapo and I took up the rear
guard along the trail.  We hiked for a long time on a trail
that followed the river, passing patchy jungle mixed with small
clearings.  After what seemed like a very long hike we came
upon a wall of jungle.  There was a path leading into the dark
and dense vegetation, and at the trail head there was a tree
stump.  On the stump was a clump of red ochre paste.  Both
young and old took a small dab of the ochre and painted their
faces, some on their cheeks, some on their foreheads, and some
on both.  When Owapo began to paint his face, he looked at me
to do the same, and I asked him what it was for in my best
Portuguese.  He responded that it was for protection against
"beasts of the jungle".  Looking back I should have joined
the ritual, but being the pompous ass that I was back then I
just replied that Jesus would protect us and we could proceed.
Owpao, being more gracious than I, was cool with that and
we entered the deep canopy.

It's hard to describe hiking through dense jungle.  At my
height you did a lot of ducking and bending to miss the
overhanging branches, and the humidity and sweat from both
the heat and the workout of the hike made you drippy,
like you'd just walked through a shower fully clothed and
had to air dry, but the moist air could be cut with a knife,
consequently you never felt really dry.  It's uncomfortable
and exhausting. And on top of that you had to keep your
eyes open for dangers, like...deadly snakes!  It was obvious
to me that Owapo was holding back his pace so as not to leave
me behind. I struggled to keep up, and was so grateful when
we finally arrived.

The fishing hole, as I call it, was actually a murky backwater
marsh.  The dry season left pockets of backwater when the
rivers began to shrink and fish were trapped.  These marshes
were not small, this one was very deep and not many braved
to wade in, as there are all manner of creatures trapped in
these eddies, like piranha or maybe even an alligator or two.
But when a couple of brave souls did wade in they weren't
even close to the center and were already neck deep in water.
This one spread throughout the jungle for about an acre.
When we first arrived, being the last I saw that most
everyone had settled around the edge of the water and were
preparing their equipment.  Those with bows and arrows had
notched their weapons, the older men with the roots were
pounding them with the clubs they brought and were rinsing
them out in the water exuding a white milky substance. They
did this in several strategic locations.  The pulpy roots
were swished in the water making waves and the milky
substance seemed to permeate the water rippling out from
the edges.  I asked Owapo if the water was safe to drink
when the milky substance was present, he responded that
he didn't think so.  Fish and other water creatures were
floating to the surface belly up.  It seemed so unsporting
that the archers just shot floating fish as they came to
the surface.  But I realized that this was a practice
thousands of years in the making, and when you're on
subsistence survival mode, 'sport' just doesn't factor
into the equation.

Fish were being brought to people with baskets, and
prepared for the return trip.  In the catch of the day there
was even a large turtle.  The people seemed pleased with
catching the turtle, it must have been a delicacy for them.
Among the various species of fish caught, were my favorite,
the Amazon catfish.  These could be very large, the largest
I'd seen could fill a whole canoe, but on average they were
between 8 and 12 lbs.  Fried and served with farina (dried
and grated yucca) or even boiled yucca was a delicacy for me.

So we made the trip home, and celebrated the great catch that
evening in the village.  We stayed late talking over a campfire,
and the night was clear, the stars were unbelievable, and that
evening we saw a satellite traverse the night sky.  Lee wanted
to inquire what the villagers thought it was, but didn't get
a serious response.  I think they just didn't know and made
jokes about it.  This day was burned in my memory, as I can write
about it some 32 years later, and yet it seems as if it were just
last week.

Faith, Evolution, and the Economy (revisited)

The following is something I posted on the Emergent BB about a year and a half ago, and thought I’d throw it out again, this time here on my blog.

This is what comes when I read too much. I read the recommended reading from Brian McLaren on Wendell Berry’s essay “In Distrust Of Movements” and I read an article referred from Tim Keel's blog by Dell deChant, “Economy as Religion”, and an article on Don Beck's website on “Spiral Dynamics” as well as my scripture reading below. All these diverse elements get stirred up in my head, and explode into a rambling post.

Matt. 6:26, Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

The questions that came to my mind when I considered this verse is that Jesus first gives us an injunction, Look, Behold, Consider the birds as an example of God’s sustaining activity. Now any trip to the neighborhood park with a sack of bread crumbs, where there is a pond and water fowl, will quickly demonstrate the way in which these creatures acquire their food. It is a short lesson in Darwinian principles of the quickest and the strongest gaining advantage in the melee that occurs. One could argue that the importation of the bread into their environment is artificial to the regular routines that these birds follow to survive, and therefore maybe this example isn’t a good picture of how birds feed, but that doesn’t change the fact that competition and struggle is part of their ordinary way of feeding. No they don’t plant and harvest grain, but they do go hungry and search for sustaining resources, and when those resources are scarce will aggressively compete for food. When I consider the birds, I picture the Seagulls from the movie, “Finding Nemo” squawking, “mine, mine, mine….” While this could be a caricature of the nature of birds in general, it resonates with my experience of both birds and human beings. I can’t believe that this Darwinian formula is what Jesus was pointing to in this lesson on the way that God provides? Because to be honest the Darwinian formula of the ‘tooth and claw’, exaggerated or not, does little to dispel anxiety over how we can rest in God’s provision, even if we are worth more than birds.

But there’s more to consider when I go to the local pond and scatter bread crumbs for the birds to feed on. There is another principle at work that is just as natural and as convincing as Darwin’s 'struggle for survival' and that is the principle of “being in the right place at the right time” which has less to do with size and speed and strength. When I scatter the crumbs, the poor little duck on the sidelines who is just as hungry as his cousins, but who is not big enough or aggressive enough to push his way to the front, patiently waits for food within his range of reception. When I throw unaware of the sideline duck, bread will inevitably fling within his range, and if it happens to be one of the bigger pieces, the small weakling duck will get a beneficial meal. The operative principle for his survival is not strength, nor speed, nor size, but just being in the right place at the right time. We have several terms for this principle, such as luck, chance, fortune, fate, serendipity, and my favorite…grace.

So how do we look at this from a position of Faith? Additionally how do we look at the whole economic realm of acquisition-consumption-disposal and resource allocation and distribution with a greater consciousness and conscience to know and care about what is happening? Can we impart or factor “grace” into the equation?

I sought to answer these questions, and would like to share what began to make sense to me.

First in trying to understand Jesus’ statements I had to take the whole of the scriptural view into account. And see Jesus’ words in the light of Psalm 104: 27-30. That God is both giver and taker of life, sustainer and destroyer. And realize, that yes, the Darwinian struggle is part of what happens in this world, and whether it is a result of the Fall from grace that all of creation groans for deliverance, and God doesn’t like it any better than I do, or if it is a natural process that is necessary and just seems distasteful to me because of my current perspective, I don’t know. It is possible for me to see that I might have a limited perspective in the sense that when I was a baby I ate baby food, but now that I’m grown up I don’t care for it much any more. But it was necessary for me to mature to this point. Maybe some aspects of the Darwinian struggle for existence are necessary for other aspects to emerge, and then to transcend. And the principle of “grace” actually explains more about why there is more genetic diversity, and all creatures are not ultra superior beings by this point in our evolution.

Using the model of spiral dynamics formulated by Clare Graves, Don Beck and Ken Wilber, bird consciousness is at the instinctual level. I too am instinctual but as a human I am more than that also. I have a culturally coded value system, (meme) through which I interpret the world that is developed beyond the instinctual, and includes a sense of self, tradition, achievement, a pluralistic inclusiveness, a holistic and integral perspective. While I still have instincts and can still act instinctually, because of the progression humans have demonstrated through history, will more than likely, or have the capacity and opportunity to operate from these other developed faculties. So when considering the economic realm of acquisition-consumption-disposal and resource allocation and distribution it is from these higher levels that we can find meaning in Jesus’ words about resting in God’s gracious provision, and where we can get to the place where we can consider the point that Wendell Berry makes, when he says, “One way we could describe the task ahead of us is by saying that we need to enlarge the consciousness and the conscience of the economy. Our economy needs to know – and care – what it is doing.”

Resting in God as sustainer, knowing our value in creation, and seeking to live and bring redemption to all the world, we can begin and continue the healing up and down the spiral.