Day 6 on the Camino Way
We Feed the World
I’m originally from Iowa. Iowa farmers know how to farm. They can grow stuff—corn and beans, especially. If you ask a Northwest Iowa farmer what he does, he’ll says something like—“I feed the world.” And he’d be right, of course. However, what I’ve discovered while trekking through the heartland of Spain is that Spanish farmers grow stuff too and very well. The wheat and corn fields here are beautifully tended. The olive groves and vineyards are splendid. And I’ve seen some of the best cared for vegetable gardens that I’ve ever seen, and I was raised in Iowa.
Every Iowa farmer’s wife kept a garden and kept it well. She fed her family from it and canned the extra so that you could have beans in January. Sally, my wife, speaks with pride about her mother’s garden. As we walked through the villages here Sally would point to one garden after another and comment about the neatness, the obvious pride the gardener took in this little patch of earth that she had tamed.
These are two of dozens that we’ve seen, and each of them is just gorgeous. My point is the we Americans think that what we do is the best ever and anywhere. It’s okay for us to say that we feed the world, but what we ought to quickly add is that we do not do this alone. It’s okay for us to say that nobody does it better, but it would be good if we could realize that this does not mean that nobody does it AS WELL. These Spanish farmers do it every bit as well.
Sunflower Plants with No Oil
When we came across these vast Sunflower fields we thought, how wonderful. What did we know? Felix is Puerto Rico born, but lived in worked in Virginia for most of his life. He worked for the Mars Candy Bar company. Good place to work, he told me. He now lives in Spain and loves it here. ”No AR-15s here,” he tells me. I mention the Sunflower fields and how amazing I found them. He reaches out and touches my shoulder and says, ”I nearly cried when I saw them.”
“Why?” But I must say that we thought there was something not quite right about this plants.
“There is no oil in them and has been no oil for years now. This region was known for some of the best Sunflower oil in the world, and now because of Global warming there is no oil.”
I’m not interested in an argument over the science of Global Warming. I’ve learned there is no winning in such a debate. But that doesn’t mean we should not talk about what is happening to some good people in many parts of the world. So, what I want to draw to your attention is that what we uninformed folks saw as a unique attraction was to the informed a tragedy.
Buddha is on the Way
On the Camino Way, Christianity is not the only game in town. Today I talked with an Irish Catholic couple from Belfast, a Brazilian Pentecostal woman from Sao Paulo, and an agnostic from France. And for six days now I’ve shared the bulk of my time with three progressive Reformed Church in America Calvinists. It’s been a challenge!
Look, my friends, here’s what Sally and I know from living outside of the United States for five years—America is not exceptional. The United States is not special. Are we powerful, yes. Are we wealthy, obviously. But are we better then the rest of the world?—no way! And we should actually take comfort in that. We don’t have to be exceptional. And not everyone is a Christian and not everyone has to be either. Being Jewish and understanding the role of Judaism, Jesus’ instruction was to make disciples IN all nations, not of all nations. We just need to be in the game, we don’t have to be the only game in town. It’s like what Jesus said about swords. ”How many do we have?” The answer was ”two, we have two swords.” ”It’s enough,” Jesus said.
No Mary, but this Young Girl
Another day without a Mary sighting. But my real agenda here is to lift up the influence of women and not only here but in general. So this is a stature of a young girl carrying baskets of produce. I don’t know who she is, but she’s right here in the middle of a rich agricultural region so I’m guessing she is bounty. But I also wonder if her presence here isn’t also a statement of identity. This is who we are—farmers! We help feed the world.
Beautiful words …. Thanks for sharing….🙏😊🍷
Love
I enjoy following your journey….
Looks like your editing paid off. Well said Marlin!
Thanks for questioning the perspective of America as exceptional. I enjoy your photos and stories.
Thanks for your words!
It sounds like another great day on the walk of a lifetime. Like others, I appreciate being able to “walk” along with you and Sally. May God bless every step on the way. May your feet remain healthy and your legs in recovery each night.
Love to you both.
So true, Marlin. The more you travel the more you realize we all want, dream and hope for the same things no matter what country we call home. We are in Lisbon right now and are thinking of you and Sally and your adventures across the border.
Just some rambling thoughts on “American Exceptionalism”……
Winston Churchill was quoted as saying: “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing – – after they have exhausted every other possibility.”
I think of this quote whenever I hear the phrase “American Exceptionalism.” What is it we Americans are exceptional at? ( I know, you’re not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition.) Well let’s see.
The first Americans did an exceptional job of stealing valuable, pristine lands from the Native Americans. “Land of the Free and Home of the [Indian] Brave[s]”was what America was before it was invaded by hordes of foreigners seeking a better life for themselves. Over the years we have done an exceptional job of exploiting and polluting it.
The subsequent settlers to the new land did an exceptional job of kidnapping and enslaving people, whom they then used to build the economy and infrastructure of the land they had stolen. I could go on and on…..
There is an long list of things Americans have done over the years, which we conveniently forget to acknowledge. How old were you before you learned about the Japanese internment camps during WWII? I was in college. When did you recognize how hypocritical it was for America to protest apartheid in South Africa when we had Jim Crow laws that perpetuated the same injustices right here in America?
We have accomplished many wonderful things in America – but my guess is that it is because we are a nation of immigrants – people who had the courage, and sometimes desperation, to leave/flee their countries of origin to create a better life in America. And when those same people, through their hard work and God’s grace, achieved their dreams – they were so grateful – they did their best to share their good fortune with their fellow Americans. I am an American – but my mother is British – having arrived in the 1950’s and my father is a first-generation American born of Dutch immigrant parents. The truth is, we are all from somewhere else originally and we would do well to remember that. In the Christian faith we are taught to “love your neighbor as yourself,” in the Jewish faith the guidance is “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow man,” in the Moslem faith the teaching is as follows: “None of you believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.”
Churchill also said: “There but for the Grace of God go I.” With Churchill you sometimes could not tell if he was being sarcastic or sincere. But I take this to mean he was counting his blessings because things could have always been much worse. We need to stop thinking in terms of American Exceptionalism and start thinking about how blessed we are as Americans and how much we should treasure each other in this diverse nation – where we all have something to bring to the table. We ought to also be thinking about how we can work together with our neighbors around the world to create a better life for everyone.