Here are a few questions we asked Sara about her work.

What does a typical day of work look like for you?

What gives you a lot of life in your work?

What are some of the greatest challenges you have in your work?

Through My Eyes by Ruby Bridges

Ruby Bridges was a black girl who integrated in schools in the 1960s and is Sara’s childhood hero. It was Sara’s first glimpse into the past and was what sparked her interest in history and the Civil Rights Movement. The book also gives a glimpse into how Sara sees her family and past. For Sara, when she read the book as a kid, she saw that there was a right side of history and a wrong side of history. Then when she started talking with her parents about Ruby Bridges and the Civil Rights Movement, she learned that her family was not on the side of history that she wanted to be on. This book sparked Sara’s awareness to question what is going on in the world presently and think about on what side of history she wants to be on. This book was Sara’s catalyst for wanting to work with immigrants and immigration issues. In high school and college, immigration seemed like the big issue occurring in the United States, and so she decided to understand those issues so that she could one day work for immigrant justice. 

Ultimately, Sara now strives to live and reflect from history in a way where she is not blindly molding to culture and religion. She finds history very disheartening in the fact that we continue to repeat injustices against certain groups of people. One of the reasons she no longer identifies as religious because she has seen the danger of blindly following religion and how Christianity has been perverted in history. While she thinks that religion can provoke good reflection and thought, she does not think that it is very common. For her religion can provoke groupthink. And while she knows this can happen to any people in all areas of life, it is the church as an institution that has been the tool to justify many of the atrocities she is against. This is also why she is drawn to churches that are social justice oriented because it proves to her that the institution of the church can be used to do good in the world. However, she was not exposed to more progressive religion growing up nor does she see religion painted this way in history. 

El Colibri (hummingbird)

When Sara became interested in immigration issues, she knew that she needed to learn Spanish. So, a year after college she received a job with Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in Guatemala. And she went to Guatemala with the purpose of learning Spanish and why people migrate. One of the first communities that she worked in was Santiago Atitlán (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_Atitlán). It was also how she met her good friend Kat and the women at ANADESA (https://www.natik.org/anadesa) who do mostacilla (bead work).  For Sara this colibri (hummingbird) represents many things, like her intro to a Mayan culture that she did not even know existed before. It also represents the people in Santiago that she met and how important they are to her, something that she did not even realize for her first years in Guatemala. El colibri reminds her of why she went to Guatemala in the first place, and all the things that she uncovered in Guatemala, and why she can’t stay away from Guatemala now. She finds friendship in el colibri because Sara shared experiences with friends in Guatemala who have become some of her longest friendships apart from childhood.

Sara also identifies with the meaning of el colibri in Mayan culture as a sign of resiliency and bearer of strength in confronting obstacles. Sara acknowledges that as much as she loves Guatemala, there were other things occurring in her life and being in a foreign country added extra layers of difficulty. Some people have asked Sara why she did not leave Guatemala during difficult parts of her life, but Guatemala felt so much like home for her that she wanted to make the best of her life even in those difficult times. She now realizes that while she would have never used the word “resilient” to describe herself before Guatemala, she now has constructed resiliency for herself, and she enjoys that aspect about herself. 

Migrant Trail Bandana 

This is the bandana that Sara took on the migrant trail. Sara started to work for Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in 2016 and it was her job to facilitate learning tours for MCC Guatemala. So, she had the opportunity with MCC to participate in another MCC learning tour anywhere around the world, and she chose to go to the U.S./Mexico border because she really wanted to learn about this part of her country. She was drawn to immigrant issues there, and she felt it was really important to know what was happening with immigration in her own country on the border. On the learning delegation she visited Tucson, Douglas and Agua Prieta, MX. She remembers feeling that there was a great harshness to the borderlands, but there were also a lot of glimpses of hope from the harshness. 

She was inspired by Jack and Linda in Douglas, AZ of their intentionality of living on the border, and how they had found hope and beauty in the midst of the injustice and the ugliness of the borderlands. After the learning delegation, she participated in the Migrant Trail (https://azmigranttrail.com), and it was a powerful experience for her to reflect on the journey of migrants to the United States. She also met many people like Jack and Linda who have shaped their vocation and profession around helping immigrants. The bandana represents her redirection in life from her visit on the border that eventually led her to live and work with immigrants on the border in 2020. It was after the Migrant Trail where Sara went from saying that one day, she wanted to work with immigrants to saying that she wants to work with immigrants on the border after her time in Guatemala. Sara has made this a reality for herself when she moved to Tucson and began to work with Kino Border Initiative in Nogales, MX. However, she thought she would be here in Tucson a long time, but it has not been a great year for her professionally. Her time in Guatemala was supposed to be like a steppingstone to work in immigration on the border, but she has not felt belonging in her work or she has the skills for her job. Now that she has been re-directed back to living and working in Guatemala, it feels a little bit weird for her. But Sara is also really excited to go back to Guatemala for more aprendizaje, and she feels good with making the choice to go back. 

Santiago Atitlán Painting

The last year that Sara lived in Guatemala, she lived in San Juan La Laguna, which is a small village on Lake Atitlán (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Juan_La_Laguna). The town is almost 100% Tz’utujil Mayan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzʼutujil_people), and it was a culture shock for Sara because she had been never exposed and immersed so much in Mayan culture. She lived with a family who adopted her into their family like a daughter. Since they were a family of painters, they wanted to gift her paintings when she was about to leave to the United States. She asked them to paint her a woman from San Juan and a woman from Santiago. The woman in this painting is from Santiago Atitlán. 

These two places for Sara are important because they are the sandwich of her aprendizaje (learning) of indigenous cultures in Guatemala. When Sara worked for Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) she would visit the town of Santiago often. It was in Santiago where the community helped her learn the Tz’utujil Mayan culture and norms there. Her aprendizaje in the community of Santiago then helped her do work in San Juan La Laguna. In this way, the painting is like a representation of how her life in Guatemala came full circle. In Santiago Atitlán she had to go through a lot of cultural choques (clashes). Sara feels that during this time in her life she did not do things with a lot of grace, and she was frustrated all the time. Her frustration came from that everything in the Tz’utujil Mayan culture just did not make a lot of sense to her. But then when she lived in San Juan La Laguna it was not such a cultural choque because the people in Santiago Atitlán had been so patient to teach her. Her time in San Juan La Laguna was really beautiful because she knew she was utterly different from everyone else there, but it was not an obstacle, her differences were something that she could celebrate. And she feels that her time, exposure and personal growth in Guatemala allowed her to learn to celebrate her differences. 

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También, pedí que Brenda me enseñara cuatro objetos que son simbólicos en su vida, aquí es lo que me compartió.  

Su Pulsera Roja

Brenda es de una familia con tradiciones que no son occidentales. Su mamá siempre le ha regalado una pulsera para protegerla del mal de ojo. Ella lleva tanto la pulsera que tiene una línea de bronceado de la pulsera. Cada vez que se rompe, siempre recibe una nueva, y su madre le dice que ha cumplido su propósito y le da una nueva. Siempre que no tiene su pulsera, siente que le falta algo y sus amigos y familiares notan que ella no tiene el rojo también. Su pulsera roja suele tener un santo, que tiene una función religiosa de sus creencias católicas. Tener un santo en la pulsera la ayuda a centrarse en la oración, Dios y la conexión espiritual. El color rojo de su pulsera le recuerda de la sangre de su familia y sus lazos familiares.

Una Foto de Su Hermana

Esta es una foto de la hermana de Brenda que siempre tiene en su billetera. Es una foto que siempre lleva consigo porque ella y su hermana son muy cercanas. Siempre que pasa un día pesado y abre su billetera para comprar algo, la foto le recuerda que las cosas van a estar bien. Su hermana siempre la ha motivado para triunfar. Su hermana tiene necesidades especiales y ha pasado por muchas cosas en su corta vida. Entonces, cuando mira la foto, le recuerda que, si su hermana pudo pasar por cosas difíciles en la vida, ella también puede superarlo todo. Dado que su hermana es cinco años menor que ella, ha asumido un papel más paternal con su hermana. Y verla pasar por tantas luchas en la vida, la hace admirar a su hermana debido a su resistencia.

Su Collar

Cuando Brenda se graduó, su profesor le regaló esta cadena. Su profesor le dijo que siempre necesitaría estas dos cosas para su tipo de trabajo: la fe y el amor. El collar es un recordatorio para ella y su trabajo, que necesita tener fe en sí misma y amor por sí misma para compartir la fe y el amor con los demás en su trabajo. En su campo de trabajo, tener fe en sí misma es un recordatorio para no dudar de sí misma o enojarse con sus errores. Cuando trabajas en salud comunitaria, puede ser fácil para alguien dudar de sí mismo a pesar de que el trabajo realmente puede impactar a las personas. Brenda ha aprendido que es muy importante ganar confianza de las comunidades con las que trabaja ella porque esas comunidades confían en ella para su salud, y elle puede perder fácilmente la confianza de las personas si comete un error. En cualquier trabajo de salud pública que haga Brenda, lo hace con amor y fe en que su trabajo tiene un impacto positivo en la salud de comunidades. Para Brenda, dar amor a su trabajo significa que trata de ser una persona cariñosa y tratar a las personas de una manera que ella quiere ser tratada. De esta manera, ser cariñosa significa que les da respeto.

Su agenda de la escuela y trabajo

Brenda lleva esta agenda a todas partes porque le gusta planear todo. Si no escribe algo, no puede conceptualizarlo. Ella siente que nunca está fuera del trabajo, por lo que siempre la tiene consigo para apuntar las cosas. Cuando está trabajando, tampoco no deja su vida personal, por lo que anotará cosas personales en su agenda. Le ayuda a organizar y equilibrar su vida, de modo que si tiene demasiadas cosas planeadas para el trabajo, puede mover las cosas para un día posterior. Su agenda la ayuda a mantener un buen equilibrio entre el trabajo y la vida personal. También ella siente que es una persona ocupada, especialmente, el semestre pasado cuando tuvo que equilibrar ser estudiante, tener una profesión y tener una vida personal. Como Brenda tiene que viajar mucho por trabajo, su agenda le permite saber donde estará ese día. Cuando abre su agenda, le da un suspiro de alivio al ver lo que tiene que hacer durante el día porque si simplemente fuera de su memoria, piensa que sería un alma perdida. Ella también siente que está involucrada con muchas cosas en el trabajo y fuera del trabajo porque siempre comienza muchos nuevos proyectos o nuevos intereses, así que su agenda le permite administrar el tiempo y hacer lo mejor que pueda. También le permite priorizar sus días de trabajo, los proyectos en los que está trabajando y otras cosas que tiene que hacer fuera del trabajo.

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I also asked Brenda to show me four symbolic objects in her life, and here is what she shared.

Red Bracelet

Brenda comes from a family with non-western traditions. Her mom has always given her a bracelet to protect her from mal de ojo. She wears the bracelet so much that she has a tan line from the bracelet. Whenever it rips she always gets new one, and her mom tells her it has served its purpose and gives her a new one. Whenever she is not wearing her bracelet, she feels like something is missing, and her friends and family notice that she doesn’t have her red on too. Her red bracelets will usually have an appendant of a saint, which has a religious function of her catholic beliefs. Having a saint on the bracelet helps her center herself in prayer, God and spiritual connection. The red color on her bracelet reminds her of her family blood and family ties. 

Photo of Sister

This is an older picture of Brenda’s sister that she always has in her wallet. It is a photo that she always carries with her because her and her sister are really close. Whenever she is having a hard day, and she opens up her wallet to buy something, the picture reminds her that things are going to be okay. Her sister has always motivated her to be successful. Her sister has special needs and has been through a lot in her short life. So, when she looks at the picture it reminds her that if her sister has been able to get through hard things in life, then she can get through everything too. Since her sister is five years younger than her, she has taken more of a parental role with her sister. And seeing her go through so many life struggles, has made her look up to her sister because of her resilience.

Necklace

When Brenda graduated her professor gave this chain to her as a gift. Her professor told her that she would always need these two things for her type of work – faith and love. The necklace is a reminder to her and her work that she needs to have faith in herself and love for herself to share faith and love with others in her work. In her field of work, having faith in herself is a reminder to not doubt herself or get mad at herself with mistakes. When you work in community health it can be easy for someone to doubt themselves even though the work can really impact people. Brenda has learned that it is very important to have trust with communities because they are relying on you for their health, and you can easily lose people’s trust if you make a mistake. In whatever public health work that Brenda does, she does it with love and faith that her work will impact their health. For Brenda, giving love to her work means that she tries to be a loving person and treat people as she would like to be treated. In this way, being loving means giving them respect. 

School/Work Agenda

Brenda carries this agenda everywhere because she likes to plan everything out. If she does not write something out then she can’t conceptualize it. She feels like she is never off from work, so she always has it with her to write things down. When she is working she is also not off from her personal life so she will write down personal things in her agenda. It helps her then organize and balance out her life so if she has too many work things planned and then she can move things to a later day. Her agenda helps her keep a good work-life balance. She also feels like she is a busy person, especially, last semester when she had to balance being a student, having a profession and having a personal life. Since Brenda has to travel a lot for work, her agenda lets her know where she will be that day. When she opens up her agenda it gives her a sigh of relief that she sees what she has to do for the day because if she just went from her memory, she thinks she would be a lost soul. She also feels that she is involved with a lot of things in work and out of work because she is starting new projects or new interests a lot, so her agenda allows her to time manage and do the best she possibly can. It also allows her to prioritize her days at work, the projects she is working on and other things she has going on outside of work. 

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En los Estados Unidos a pesar de trabajar contra el Dios de vida para hacer sistemas sociales que ahora nos dejan vulnerables e inciertos sobre nuestro futuro. Optamos por que los gringos dominaran a los morenos y negros, lo que resultó en linchamientos, muros, racismo y odio. Optamos por los combustibles fósiles sobre otras formas de energía en la tierra como el sol, el viento y el agua que provocan el cambio climático, el desplazamiento humano y la extinción de especies. Optamos por el monocultivo en lugar de la agricultura tradicional que nos da enfermedades y deja la tierra sin nutrientes. Sin embargo, el Dios de vida siempre perturba nuestros sistemas de dominio en los Estados Unidos. Dios ha dado esperanza a los oprimidos, ha preservado nuestro conocimiento sagrado y nos ha ayudado a trabajar juntos para resistir la injusticia social. Y tengo fe en que el Dios de vida ayudará a la iglesia y las personas a continuar este trabajo en el futuro para resistir la muerte física y cultural de las personas, los animales, las plantas y nuestra Tierra.

Hay gente indígena en los Estados Unidos hablan de un estilo agrícola llamado las Tres Hermanas que puede ayudarnos a comprender cómo podemos acercarnos a la misión y la iglesia con los jóvenes. Las semillas de maíz, frijol y calabaza ciertamente pueden crecer por sí mismas, pero juntas pueden producir más frutos de los que producirían solos. El maíz es como la hermana mayor porque es la primera hermana en crecer y la más alta. Pero no tendrá suficiente nitrógeno mineral del suelo sin la ayuda de su hermana mediana, el frijol, que puede producir nitrógeno de la atmósfera para agregar más al suelo. El frijol puede utilizar el maíz de su hermana mayor para trepar alto y crecer de los depredadores en el suelo. Mientras que la calabaza es como la hermana menor, que puede crear un nuevo camino para sí misma al crecer horizontalmente debajo de sus hermanas mayores. Pero sus semillas deben ser sembradas con las mismas cantidades para que produzcan la mayor abundancia de frutos y alimentos para nosotros. Cuando una hermana se hace dominante en el suelo, no obtenemos tanta comida y cosecha de las otras hermanas.

Quizás, nuestras iglesias son como las hermanas mayores del maíz, donde han crecido altas y fuertes a lo largo de los años, pero necesitan más nutrientes debido a la falta de frijol, que es como la diversidad que les hace falta en muchas iglesias cristianas en los Estados Unidos. Quizás, la hermana de calabaza es como los jóvenes que puede mostrar a la hermana mayor (la iglesia) nuevas formas de abordar la misión de cristo en un mundo cambiante. Pero, las hermanas menores pueden beneficiar de las estructuras sólidas y la experiencia de la iglesia para ayudarlas a crecer aún más para producir más frutos y amor por nuestro mundo. Pero si nuestras iglesias solo están llenas de maíz, entonces necesitamos encontrar una manera de hacer más espacio para nuestras hermanas menores. Necesitamos dar preferencia y apoyar la vida, el trabajo y la espiritualidad de los jóvenes para verlos crecer con la ayuda de la iglesia. En este proyecto esperamos involucrar y conectar a hermanos y hermanas de varias generaciones en esta serie de blogs de Jóvenes en la Frontera por amor y conexión en la frontera de Estados Unidos y México. La serie se enfocará en conectar las vidas, el trabajo y la espiritualidad de dos jóvenes con comunidades que tienen una rica historia y sabiduría para ayudar a nutrir y regalar a los jóvenes. Compartiremos las vidas y pasiones de dos increíbles jóvenes Brenda y Sara en Tucson, AZ con dos comunidades en la frontera DouglaPrieta Trabaja (Agua Prieta, MX) y La Iglesia Presbiteriana de San Marcos (Tucson, AZ) para nutrir a estas jóvenes con amistades, regalos y el amor de Dios.

James Martin

^[1] Robin Wall Kimmer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. (Minneapolis Milkweed Editions, 2013), 130.^[1] Kimmer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 132-134.

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In the United States we have often worked against the God of life to create social systems that now leave us vulnerable and uncertain about our future. We opted for white people being dominant over brown and black people resulting in lynching’s, walls, racism and hate. We opted for fossil fuels over other forms of energy on earth like sun, wind, and water that result in climate change, human displacement and species extinction. We opted for monoculture farming over traditional farming that made us unhealthy, gave us diseases and leaves the land without nutrients. Yet, the God of life disrupts our systems of dominance in the United States. She has given hope to the oppressed, preserved our sacred knowledge and helped us work together to resist social injustice. And I have faith that the God of life will help the church and people continue this work in the future to resist the cultural and physical death of people, animals, plants and our Earth. 

Native people in the United States speak about a farming style called the Three Sisters that can help us understand how we can approach mission and church with young adults in the United States. The seeds of corn, beans and squash can certainly grow all by themselves, but together they can produce more fruit than they would alone.^[1] Corn is like the oldest sister because it is the first sister to grow and the tallest. But she will not have enough mineral nitrogen from the soil without the help of her middle sister, beans, who can produce nitrogen from the atmosphere to add more to the soil. The beans can utilize her older sister corn to climb high and grow up from predators on the ground. While squash is like the youngest sister, who can create a new way for herself by growing horizontally below her older sisters.^[2] But their seeds must be equally planted if they are to produce the most fruit and food for us. When one sister becomes dominant in the soil, then we don’t get as much food and harvest from the other sisters. 

Perhaps, our churches are like the oldest corn sister where they have grown tall and strong over the years but need more nutrients due to the lack of beans, which is like the diversity that is missing in many protestant churches across the United States. Perhaps, it is the youngest sister squash who are the young adults that can show the older sister and church new ways of approaching mission in a changing world. But, the younger sisters can both benefit from the strong structures and experience of the church to help them grow even taller and wider to produce more fruit and love for our world. But if our churches are only filled with corn then we need to find a way to make more room for our younger siblings. We need to preference and support the lives, work and spiritualities of young people to watch them grow tall with the help of the church. We hope to engage and connect siblings across generations in this blog series of Young Adults on the Borderlands for love and connection in the U.S./Mexico borderlands. The series will focus on connecting the lives, work and spiritualities of young adults with communities that have rich histories and wisdom to help nourish and give to young adults. We will be sharing the lives and passions of two amazing young adults Brenda and Sara in Tucson, AZ with two communities in the borderlands DouglaPrieta Trabaja (Agua Prieta, MX) and St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church (Tucson, AZ) to nourish young adults with friendships, gifts and God’s love.  

James Martin                         

^[1] Robin Wall Kimmer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. (Minneapolis Milkweed Editions, 2013), 130.

^[2] Kimmer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 132-134.

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I write to you on the Lunar New Year, a tradition that is not endemic to my culture, but one that I’ve come to value for a number of reasons.   I often feel that I start the calendar year with ideas of what the year SHOULD be, and by the time Lunar New Year rolls around, I’ve come down from my post-holiday, New Year optimism, and finally settle into a more likely scenario of what the year WILL be.  This tension between what I expect things to be and my acceptance of what they actually are has defined the past year for me, and I think for many people, as our lives seem to be one endless cycle of recalibration.  Lately, the grief of letting go is becoming more palpable to me.   My expectation that we would eventually “get back” to our previous life slowly evolves into an awareness that we’re swimming towards a shore we don’t quite recognize.  It’s an odd feeling at an even odder time.  Since I last wrote to you at the New Year, there’s been an insurrection, an inauguration, an impeachment, and the slow dawning of a vaccine campaign that appears to be our eventual off-ramp to this pandemic.  And that was just last month! 

Through all of this, I always appreciate the conversations within this Collective to which I bear witness.  Many of you are asking vital questions as you maintain your commitment to difficult work during adverse times.  Understanding what it means to be in community, to live together and to engage with one another across political division and illness and injustice and loneliness, remain at the heart of our work and our expression of Christian faith in this brave new world.  I offer you a few things for your consideration that I’m holding closes this month, trying to stay inspired and animated during a cold winter in the midst of this long, hard haul:

LOVE
-In this compelling interview with Krista Tippett, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks quoted Wordsworth:  “What we love, others will love, and we will show them how.” (from The Prelude).   How am I celebrating and sharing the things I truly love right now?  This really inspired my imagination around our work connecting congregations with young adults.  How are we living/sharing/speaking the things we love about the life of faith?  Spending time with the things and people (safely) that we love feels like the right place to focus attention during times such as these.

-Consequentially, my commitment to spend more time with things I love led me to pick up a copy of Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White which I am joyfully re-reading.  This excerpt from the introduction is my 2021 anthem:   “Every word of Charlotte’s Web bears the full weight of White’s love for the people, seasons, animals, and arachnids of this world.  And every word of the books shows us how we can bear the triumphs and despairs, the wonders and the heartbreaks, the small and large glories and tragedies of being here.  We can bear it all by loving it all.”

GRIEVE
-I would be dishonest if I didn’t address the grief our country is experiencing in the wake of the last month’s events.  A young adult introduced me to this book by Martín Prechtel which I am consuming with both awe and reverence, and appreciate so much his direct and eloquent meditations on the need for right expression of grief both individually and collectively.  I’ll share this gem:   “Grief expressed out loud, whether in or out of character, unchoreographed and honest, for someone we have lost, or a country or home we have lost, is in itself the greatest praise we could ever give them.  Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses.”

-Because so much has been read, said, watched, and heard about the events on January 6^th, I don’t want to overload or belabor the point.  The two things that I engaged that have stayed with me over the weeks are this article from the New York Times magazine (a very long and dense read but extremely thought provoking) and this interview between Senate Chaplain Barry Black and Anderson Cooper (it’s an easier listen but does run about 26 minutes). 

CELEBRATE

-Honoring that the sibling of grief is praise, it feels right to celebrate the good where we are, as we can.  This NPR obituary did a beautiful job of celebrating the life and work of the late Cecily Tyson, all the more poignant during ongoing celebrations of Black History Month.

-Regardless of where in the country you are, here are two resources for engaging Black History Month that came recommended by folks in the Collective:  An amazing array of on-going events through the ASALH website (Association for the Study of African-American Life and History) as well as the Opposite Ends podcast which features daily reflections in  #TreasuresofDarkness, an African Descent History month devotional

-We’re celebrating the start of our study of My Grandmother’s Hands with the fantastic Fatima Mann.  Our planned start date is Saturday, February 27^th and there is still space!  Anyone interested can learn more or register here.

PERSIST

-The spiritual haul of Lent into and through Holy Week and Triduum embodies much, not least of which is persistence.  I’ve ordered this book as company along the Lenten journey this year, and am excited to honor the persistence of the women who contributed to the book as well as the pastors who serve them.
-Webster’s needs to reconsider their definition of persistence, perhaps including a photo of this feisty gal.  I’d like to replicate her birthday menu just for funsies.
-And finally, for those of you who remember the 1990s (this is literally a hazard in my line of work), this piece from NPR about the persistent cast of Rent in the face of the unimaginable had me crying at the kitchen sink for all the right reasons, including grief, inspiration, and deep nostalgia.  And then there’s just all those dishes!!  So many dishes. EVERY DAY! (Even the NY Times is talking about it).

Okay-  that’s a lot to think about but it’s been too long.  Hopefully the Lunar New Year will kick this newsletter back in gear.  In the meantime, I’ll leave you with some Charlotte’s Web wisdom in lieu of a poem-

“These autumn days will shorten and grow cold.  The leaves will shake loose from the trees and fall.  Christmas will come, then the snows of winter.  You will live to enjoy the beauty of the frozen world… Winter will pass, the days will lengthen, the ice will melt in the pasture pond.  The song sparrow will return and sing, the frogs will awake, the warm wind will blow again.  All these sights and sounds and smells will be yours to enjoy, Wilbur- this lovely world, these precious days…”

So much love,

MLC

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Danse Macabre

If my father’s obsession with classical music exists in a gene, he did not pass it on to me. But he used to play this piece around this time of year, and I always loved it. It’s meaning was lost on me: it was just a cool, spooky bit of music; a grown-up’s version of “This is Halloween”; a fun tune to rediscover each October. That was enough. 

So naturally, when the 787 Collective proposed this project, I thought of this piece. I swept the cobwebs off its memory, which had sat undisturbed for a decade or longer. I listened to it again. 

How joyful it is to find something you once loved and to learn that its magic still lives. It feels like a connection to a time of my life that I can now barely remember: to car rides in the dark when I was still too young to sit in the front; the comfort of my father’s presence felt in the back of his head and the motion of the car and the sound of the violin. That young man and that young boy no longer exist, but to rediscover this piece is a pleasant reminder that a part of them survives. 

Around that age, I discovered death. I don’t remember how. Likely it was just an idea, borne of T.V. and the movie theater, that sat still until the season was right and then sprouted, one day to the next. 

I asked my father about it one night: me in bed, him sitting next to me. Whether he was saying goodnight or I had called him in, I don’t remember. I just remember that death scared me, as it does today. And that my father sat there, shrouded in the dark, and spoke to me in a quiet voice.

He said that nobody knows what happens after death. That some people believe we’ll go to heaven. Others think we’ll be born again. He said he didn’t believe in either of those things. He believed that after death there was only stillness and peace: nothing more. He said death was nothing to fear, but that it was alright if I was afraid. And that though he couldn’t stay there all night with me while I wondered on it, I would see him in the morning.

I think that’s one of the wisest things a father could tell his son, and I have never forgotten it. 

Hands on the Wheel

  At a time when the world seems to be spinnin’

Hopelessly out of control

There’s deceivers and believers and ol’ in-betweeners

Who seem to have no place to go 

    How to reconcile God with this world?

Speaking to me that night, my father didn’t believe in God. Today, neither do I. I wish I did. For a long time, I tried to force myself to believe, as if there were a switch somewhere, and if I heaved at it hard enough I could flip it into the right position. But it never budged. It just stays right where it is: stuck in the damn middle, useless. 

This world seems a convincing argument against God’s existence. It feels like this year in particular has peeled back the veneer and revealed a true part of its nature: everyday horrors, lonely fear, death and hunger. That I am confronted with this only now is because I am undeservedly fortunate.

God, all this pain and all this death. Where are you?

How do people maintain their faith despite the world? What is it about this place, this God, that speaks to them? Where do you find the strength to look out on the world and say, “This is right?” Sometimes it seems like there is an arrogance to faith. An assuredness that this world does not deserve. 

All I know is that I can’t find the answers to these questions in my heart. So that switch stays where it is. 

Though, I guess to say it like that isn’t quite correct. Because it doesn’t stay still: it often wiggles a bit, as if it were loose and with the right leverage could go firmly either way. 

On a good day, when I feel closest to this God that I’m not sure exists, it feels like it might just be ready to shift. In those moments, I could go out and shout this knowledge into the sky: that God exists and God is good. 

     But the world returns, always. And to consider this world is to cry, “Where are you, God?”, and to hear your voice echo across the void. 

    At least, that’s what it seems like to me these days. 

Cradled in Arms

           So try not to worry

         Consider the stars

    So here I am, in a world I don’t really believe is good, heaving at a switch I don’t really believe I can move. 

I wonder if part of the reason I heave so hard is because I think that if that switch does move, it will take my fear of death with it. Probably it is. And probably that fear will never go away, no matter how hard I heave. 

    It’s more than a bit difficult to write about where I find good in the world, or about how I find God where others may not. What I will clarify is that none of what I’m writing here is aimed at anybody; this is not a, “Hey, I know things suck, but have you tried this?” sort of essay. This is just my reflection on my own sliver of the world.  

And recently, I’ve realized that I feel best when I pray regularly. Prayer for me is just the practice of being. It is intentional silence. It is an attempt to wash away my ego and all the petty bullshit that piles up and weighs me down. It is a communion – or an attempt at that. 

I guess really what I realized is that when I stop praying, I feel a little worse. It gets harder to wake up in the morning. Harder to sleep at night. Harder to find the motivation to do the things I want to be doing. Easier to drink alcohol and kill the time. An unhappily large amount of my past few years have been spent like this. 

Living those times feels like traversing a long, arcing spiral. There’s no rush to it, no frenzy: just a slow and steady journey downward.  And I’ve realized that the further I go, the more I forget just how much prayer used to help me. It becomes easier to scoff at the idea of prayer. Easier to forget it. And in this way, things get worse for a while to varying degrees. Until, eventually, I remember to pray again. 

    I don’t think I fully understood any of this until I began to write this piece.

    So, if I believe in the power of prayer, maybe a part of me does believe in God. 

I’ve been stuck here now for days, coming back to this same point, trying to put into words what God might mean to me. Doing so is like trying to relive a dream. Like reaching out in the dark in a place you know, trying to remember how the pieces fit together.  

I know little to nothing about any of this, and if you ask me tomorrow I might have changed my mind. But today, as I write this, I know that I have felt loved in the moments when I needed it. When I have been intentional with myself, when I have been able to quiet this world and simply be, I have found love.

 My truth, the one that I remember when I pray and that I start to forget when I don’t, is that in those moments I forget the nature of this world. And in its place what I have found has made me feel so right and so utterly at peace: as if I were just a little boy again, cradled in his father’s arms.

I guess that’s what God means to me, on a good day.  

This Joy 

          This joy that I have, the world didn’t give it to me

The world didn’t give it, the world can’t take it away

    I don’t believe God has much say about what goes on around here. And if he did, I would not be inclined to know him. How could I? How could I look at the injustices of this world and believe that some gracious God has willed it all? At best that would be blindness. At worst, vanity. At least, that’s what I believe. And this belief leads me to some conclusions that are difficult to balance. 

On the one hand, I can’t blame God for what happens here, for this year, for us. I can’t blame him for the suffering of the world anymore than I can blame him for when I stub my toe. I think God is just as the world is, and though they may intersect they are not the same. 

But then, to what can I attribute that love that I have known? That peace? The short answer, the unfulfilling conclusion to all this, is that I don’t know. 

    But an image keeps coming to my mind.  It’s of a young child on his bicycle, being pushed by his father and then released, propelled alone into the world for the first time. His father’s eyes unseen but upon him: in love, hoping that he might not fall.

This world is a terrible, beautiful place. That I have experienced so much of its beauty and so little of its sadness is inexplicable, without purpose. I suspect there may be no purpose to any of this at all.

I can’t explain my life, but I think it’s my responsibility to accept it. I try to remind myself every day to be grateful for what I have and who I am. I try to live with as much joy as I can: not because I deserve it, nor because I feel this world has given it to me. Just because I can. 

In a pleasant way, to remind myself of all this feels like another connection to my past. As if it is another way to make alive that little boy who was comforted by his father that night, those decades ago. To accept that fear and uncertainty will be within me always. To understand that there are some things that I will never grasp. And to know that I am loved.

The post Death and Faith in 2020 appeared first on 787 Collective.

I should preface this by saying that I have the immense privilege of being young and healthy and that I have not yet experienced the loss of anyone close to me through either the coronavirus or police violence. That is not the case for many people throughout the United States, and I recognize the luck I have been gifted. But I am a woman of color in a country that has not historically valued the lives of its residents of color, particularly Black and Indigenous folks, and I am in a unique position to understand this historical problem. As a doctoral candidate in American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, I have read extensively on the history of slavery, on U.S. imperialism, on racial capitalism and violence and the harm continuously enacted on communities of color in the United States and beyond its borders. I have been trained to see the broad strokes of government policy and the resulting devastation on individual lives, which have never been more obvious than at this particular moment. So I know that I am not safe, that the people I love are not safe, and that I need to consider what it means to experience this particular form of precarity.

I’ve been especially concerned about my father. He is safe and healthy as of now, for which I am immensely grateful, but he is a large Black man living in a country where large Black men are seen as a threat, and where our current healthcare systems do not support Black people in the ways that they should. I cannot understand what it feels like for him to walk in this world, and I am cognizant of the differences between my more privileged mixed race experience of the world and his. But I love him, and I want him to be here with me for as long as possible, and so I worry. He is a delightful man, conscious of the world’s inequity but forever cheerful and positive. He makes friends wherever he goes, and I often refer to him as “the King of Riverside,” as it is impossible to visit any stores or drive down any streets in our hometown without him being greeted enthusiastically by friends and family new and old. Last year we celebrated his sixtieth birthday, a milestone for any human but particularly one for Black men living in the United States, where life expectancy rates for African Americans remain significantly lower than for white people. In a pandemic which has proven to disproportionally affect people of color, while police violence against Black people continues to make headlines, I am scared for my father’s life, for my uncles and aunts and cousins and for Black folks across this country who deserve better than what they have been given.

How do I get through my days when my father’s safety feels threatened? How do I justify my decision to live three states away from him and my mother and my sisters when I don’t know how much time we have left together? How do I write and take walks and live my life when I feel fear permeating every inch of my body? These questions are not mine alone, I know many people are experiencing similar queries every day in these uncertain times and in some cases have asked themselves similar questions for a long time before this particular moment. How do we live with this fear of death?

I tackled this last question with the strategies that have served me well as a graduate student, museum professional, and person living with a lot of anxiety for many years: reading and preparation. I call my dad multiple times per week to harangue him about wearing his mask and staying home and to ask whether he has experienced any symptoms. I bothered him about creating a living will and about his advanced directive and homegoing preferences.* I bought a book entitled The Art of Dying Well and read it with my partner, highlighting and taking notes and trying to understand as thoroughly as possible what the end of life looks like, how I can prepare, and how I can protect myself and the people I love. I bought life insurance for myself and asked my partner to do the same, talked with my sisters about what to do if I pass suddenly or if our parents do, made a note of where all the important documents in my apartment are located. I did everything I could to plan around death, to think about logistics, to be organized and methodical about the thing that scares me most.

And then I picked up a book called Everything Happens for a Reason (and Other Lies I’ve Loved), by Duke Divinity School professor Kate Bowler. Diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer at thirty-five, Bowler writes about contemplating her own death when it seemed so near. As a historian of the American “prosperity gospel,” she acknowledges the myths she’d absorbed, consciously or not, from the people she’d studied and from her years living in the United States in a culture obsessed with platitudes around sickness and death. Though my experience is obviously vastly different from hers (she is slightly older than me, married, with a young child, and diagnosed with advanced cancer), I found her thoughts about life and death incredibly familiar. She writes about her life as a planner, always looking ahead to the next thing, busying her mind with the possibilities of the future rather than immersing herself in the present. She admits her preoccupation with control, calling it “a drug, and we are all hooked.” Through her incredibly well-written meditation on mortality and uncertainty, I realized I had been guilty of many similar obsessions with control and futurity, and that I had still not addressed the real problem of my fear.

I’m not sure if it’s actually possible to do so. It’s reasonable to be concerned with Black precarity, and it makes sense to complete paperwork that will protect ourselves and our families when we are confronted with death. But I cannot control my dad’s life, and in immersing myself in the terror of his passing I will miss the wonderful moments I have with him now. It is hard to live far away, but I get to talk to him as often as I’d like, and he is just as delightful over the phone as he is in person (though I cannot access his amazing facial expressions, which is unfortunate). I think he’s already figured this out: he knows that Black life is not guaranteed, he lost both of his parents too early and he attends at least one funeral a week. But he approaches his days with optimism and joy and surrounds the people he loves with care and affection as much as possible. I will still mention masks in every conversation we have, but I am also going to follow his example and enjoy my life and his right now instead of focusing on the possibility of their absence. Instead of doing all that research and preparation to cope with my fear, maybe I should have just asked my dad.

*Homegoing is a term some Black folks use to describe funeral/memorial services. Family and friends are able to celebrate their loved one’s life and mark the occasion of their returning “home” (to heaven or to God). The term originated during slavery, when enslaved people thought death meant that their soul would return back to their native home in Africa.

Gaila Sims is a doctoral candidate in American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her dissertation, entitled Imprimatur of the State: Interpretation of Slavery at American History Museums, explores how state history museums exhibit on the history of enslavement in the United States. Originally from Riverside, California, she received her M.A. in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 2018 and her B.A. in History and African American Studies from Oberlin College in 2011.

The post Precarity and Preparation: Grappling with Death in the Age of Covid-19 appeared first on 787 Collective.

God help me to be free.
God I want to be seen for me.

God please be with me…
May I not meet a fate such as what we’ve seen.

With black hands tied in pleasant knots in front of me,
I pray they’ll know I’m not threatening, and as kind as can be.

Let my lungs expand deeply to release the pressure in my chest,
As the sinking thought of who I am to them persist;

Father, release me from the words “less than;”
From that time I dated someone of a different complexion.

When I realized that because of my very dark skin,
I’d always be hidden from their family like a secret sin.

An internal timer ticks incessantly now as I wait;
Silent words stay lodged in my throat, hoping one day they’ll relate;

Piercing me from the depths of my inner self to my outer core,
Over time these are the types of things that will hardly make me sore;

If a black body is worth losing over a counterfeit $20 bill,
What more, or what less, is a black mind to be priced at still?

Don’t go into that store.
Don’t play your music loud.

Don’t open your mouth.
Don’t look like you are proud.

Don’t…
Unless you can erase the color of your skin;

I am submerged in my blackness;
With no way to rise out of that being.

Blackness is seen, but our value’s overlooked.
Blackness is seen, even when we try to hide.

My reflection remains like their obscured thoughts of my intentions.
My reflection sometimes translates into misguided opinions.

Father, would you stretch out your hand towards me?
Father, would you stretch me as you see fit, but still let me fit in?

I wish I knew a world where it was safe,
To have a bad day and not be “abnormal;”

Or “threatening;”
Or “the angry black woman;”

But for now I’ll just stay in my place;
With desperate pleas in my “please” and “thank you’s.”

Maybe they’ll like me better then.
And maybe that’s how it’s always been.

So I’ll return to my home to unpack all the thoughts;
In a sacred place where my hurt will not be hurried.

Yet somehow, after some time, I’ll go back to tucking it all in;
By practicing again in the mirror how to wear a pleasant grin.

Somewhere between truth and lie while dancing on that thin line,
We fall over the edge and start to uncover what lies beneath.

Truth is cold and bare, with a sharp, bitter taste;
Exposing the things we don’t see in our lives filled with haste.

Only there in the the dark spot marked with discomfort,
Can we see where the light is disrupted from getting in.

Only there in the the dark spot marked with discomfort,
Can we start to plot how to let the light in.

Father, forgive me for giving up too early at times.
Father, help me to activate the boldness within.

God help me to be free.
God I want to be seen for me.

God please be with me…
May I not meet a fate such as what we’ve seen.

Poetry and Illustration by Jannifer Kibe

The post God Help Me To Be Free appeared first on 787 Collective.

The impetus for this blog series came in May of this year, after the sequential and highly publicized murders of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd. I say highly publicized because according to data culled from Mapping Police Violence and The Washington Post, police in the U.S. killed 164 black people in the first eight months of 2020. So while names like Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery (who was not killed at the hands of police but was the victim of murder based on race, bias, and assumption) entered the living rooms of American citizens, their deaths appear as only the tip of a lethal iceberg.

Our work centers around the lives of young adults: their longing, their fears, their spiritual questions and pursuits, their yearning for community, their hopes for justice. Our goal is to connect the questions and needs of their hearts to the active and emerging work of American churches. How are we serving their needs? How are we allies in the quest for justice? How are we listening and learning from them? How have we failed and where are we called to repent and pivot in our desire to serve all people, of all races and generations? How can we work together to help birth a world that resembles the one Jesus modeled in the Gospels, aligned with marginalized people rather than principalities? How can our ancient traditions and current practices serve in each person’s healing and the healing of the world?

By the time we were three months into the pandemic, and the economic and racial disparities in our country were quickly and deftly laid bare, we began to key in on a pervasive recognition that both the pandemic and the racial reckoning called up in many of us, and particularly among the young adults in our midst: The truth of our own mortality. The harsh reality that, whether we know it or not, death is always with us. And acknowledging that both COVID and police violence bring the presence and possibility of death into black and brown communities disproportionately.

In the middle ages, one of the ways people normalized the presence of death in their daily lives was through art. A genre, often referred to as Danse Macabre (or Dance of Death), emerged to “remind people of the fragility of their lives and how vain were the glories of earthly life.” (Wikipedia by way of the Catholic Encyclopedia). Often the pictures showed a personification of death summoning representatives from all walks of life to dance along to the grave, signaling both the inevitability and the great equalizer of death. We adopted this theme to reflect on our mortality, as well as the reality that, in our current systems and institutions, death is not always an inevitable equalizer. The 787 Collective asked a small group of young adults to consider this topic and share their personal thoughts and reflections. Their responses are as diverse as their viewpoints, and we are deeply grateful for their gifts of poetry, personal reflection, essays and remarks as we all seek to broaden our understanding of each other’s lives during this time and discern the collective call that emerges as we listen to the lives of young adults.

MLC

The post Danse Macabre Introduction appeared first on 787 Collective.