Becky and I were at the county fair last weekend. A warm Saturday afternoon with our daughter and her family – what could be better? Midwest Americana. Our granddaughters tested some of the carnival rides and all of us rode the Ferris wheel to high above the midway.  There was even a trained sea lion show – what else would you expect in Saint Joseph County, Michigan? And, of course, the 4H kids with their displays of rabbits, pigs, sheep, goats, and cows.

We dined on corndogs and Polish sausages with sauerkraut, but declined the deep-fried delicacies – elephant ears, funnel cakes, cookie dough, cheesecake, Oreos, and Twinkies.

In a week we head off on a long-anticipated trip to Brazil where, among other things, we will spend time with good friends we have known for many years. We can hardly wait. We test as intermediate Portuguese speakers and will be able not only to make our way through airports, but enjoy good, even deep, conversation with our friends. We will talk about life and faith and tell stories as we catch up with one another.

I am not sure we will be able to talk about the deep-fried Twinkies at the county fair. Google Translate says we could say “Twinkies fritos.” But how might we explain this American phenomenon?

We have learned over the years to avoid conversational rabbit holes if we can. You get so far and then your vocabulary fails you or, more likely, the cultural translation just won’t work. “Não importa,” we will say. It doesn’t matter. Not only can we not say what we meant to say, we cannot communicate what we wanted to communicate – our dismay at the idea of deep-fried Twinkies and Oreos.

We are so excited about seeing our friends, but we know there will be those moments of serious snags in our cross-cultural communication. But cross-cultural snags or not, we will talk for long hours about life and faith and tell stories as we catch up with one another. It is what friends do.

This moment in our own American history is marked by serious miscommunication even among those of us who share a common history and language. It’s not that we don’t understand the vocabulary, we don’t understand meanings and importance. It might be that a sophisticate from the urban centers would not understand the appeal of a deep-fired twinkie, but, more, it seems that we can no more communicate the joy of faith and love and hope and forgiveness to one another than Americans are able to explain deep-fried Oreos to their Brazilian friends.

Conversation about life and faith, love and hope, may feel like going down a deep rabbit hole, but it is worth the risk. É muito importante.  It is very important.