Risk, Courage, and Women: Contemporary Voices in Prose and Poetry

sacred space, stage setters, and miraclemakers: reflections on courage

129 sacred space, stage setters, and miracle makers: reflections on courage Isaura Barrera I’ve never thought of myself as either a risk-taker or a particularly courageous woman. The word courage was never used much in my family. We used its Spanish translation of coraje only in reference to anger, overlooking its other possible definitions. Courage remained an unspoken reality carried silently in the definite message that we needed to face our fears and “have heart,” no matter the circumstances. With this message came a persistent insistence that joy existed, and a continuing encouragement to claim it, elusive as it might seem. Yet, neither message was ever explicitly associated with courage. Rather, both were presented as merely something that we had to do if we were to live in this world, flawed as it was. As I reflect on this apparently indirect attention to courage, I am reminded of something that I read a few years ago written by Caroline W. Casey. Apparently, the word sacred derives from an old Greek word sacer, which was posted on signs at the edges of villages and cities to warn that you were leaving safe and familiar territory. The meaning of sacred, then, might be described as “autonomous journeying beyond conventional boundaries.” While it was not Casey’s purpose to define courage, the phrase “autonomous journeying beyond conventional boundaries” captures core aspects of the meaning of courage as I have come to know it. Journeying. I believe that courage is primarily about the path that we walk and only secondarily about the places where that path may take us. I cannot clearly trace my journey from the implicit understanding of courage reflected in my home and culture to the more formal understanding I was taught in school, and then to my current more conscious and integrated understanding. But there are stories along the way that I believe mark the territory I’ve traveled. The story with the strongest impact relates to my family’s cultural and personal history, which is woven into the framework of all my subsequent journeying . This story was a story told in many parts as my parents and relatives spoke of their childhood. It is a story colored, though not dominated, by mem- 130 Risk, Courage, and Women ories of loss, violence, and persecution, some historical and some personal. Both my parents lost a parent at a very young age; they both experienced floods and the after-effects of revolutions. Living on the frontier—la frontera—there was always the threat and often the reality of accidents, raiding parties, storms, and other such disasters. Less immediate and less explicit, knowledge of more global catastrophes like the Inquisition, World Wars I and II and the Depression also seeped through their words as they talked of their lives and those of their parents. This is not to say that doom and gloom permeated my family’s conversations . It is rather to say that all aspects of reality were taken as an inseparable whole; the less positive was never hidden or sacrificed in favor of the more positive. It was actually only as I began to write these reflections that I realized the extent of my parents’ courage, both as children and as adults. It was not the courage reflected in my school curriculum, or in the books and movies I enjoyed. It was a quieter, more subtle courage, born of corazón, not guts. Courage rooted in the heart has its own distinct character. It is inextricably linked to the hope that underlies our deepest longings and most cherished dreams. But I am only now truly learning about such courage. Culturally as well as personally, I assimilated my family’s history of transition and heart. One of my earliest steps into the unfamiliar occurred at the age of six when I “left” home and entered the academic community. One doesn ’t usually think of school as sacred space, but perhaps for many of us it is just that: the space where our until-then-conventional sense of self is challenged. It was at school that I first stepped “off the sidewalk” and entered an unfamiliar world with radically different and dissonant language and expectations. For me, it was a world that looked the same and was composed of many of the same people, yet was simultaneously radically different. The two worlds I experienced seemed one, yet remained apart, each with its own distinct social and linguistic expectations. It would be...