Choose Life: No More "Little" El Paso

As I was at a bus stop with some people I travel with regularly, another person was talking about another bus stop experience with someone else.  It was snowing in Las Cruces and my Hispanic friend was telling us a story.  He was at another bus stop with "a African-American, Neg.., black guy," as he said, and he had become covered in snow.  My friend said to him, "You're white now."  He apparently laughed and said, "Noooooo!" while laughing.  Yet, somehow, I was not offended.  The other people standing around us were all also not offended.  As a culture, we have become too serious.  In fact, everyone at the bus stop laughed at what he said because it was completely believable.  Yet, for as long as I can remember, El Paso seemed to be held captive by race.

When discussing minorities, I usually get in trouble for this statement: Everyone is a minority.  This is something I have always known because everyone in my family was a minority.  Before I knew that I was English, German, Irish, Scottish, Spanish, and American, I had blue eyes.  Everyone in my family origin had blue eyes except my mother.  Her eyes are hazel.  Our blue eyed minority was the majority, or so my science teacher taught us when we talked about genetics in middle school.  I wasn't ever teased about my blue eyes until someone needed to point out that Hitler liked blue eyed blonde haired people, so I had obviously been engineered that way because we were Lutherans at the time.  There were more kids in school in El Paso around me that hated their own eyes because they were brown like all of the other kids.  Like most El Pasoans, I went to a predominantly Hispanic school for most of my education.  In fact, my university education has been the same experience until I started at Liberty.  I don't remember a point in time when the majority of my classmates were not Hispanic.

I pray that one day El Paso realizes that being Hispanic is not a problem that people seem to think that it is.  I find to be incredibly frustrating that instead of being responsible for themselves and the work that they do that they say that "it's because this is a Hispanic culture to me."  They say it to me as though I don't know what shoddy work is or that I'm not an El Pasoan.  At some point, when I moved to Minnesota, I realized for the first time that I didn't fit in with the rest of the very white Norwegians there that I didn't fit in because, and I remember specifically that I thought, "I'm the wrong color."  The reason that people were speaking to me the way that they were was because they thought I was a white person.  When I wasn't in a bilingual community, I didn't know how to live.  I had lived on military posts in Europe and was always around more than one language before my family moved back to El Paso just before the 5th grade.  I don't remember race when I lived on post.  I remember Army guys and Girl Scouts.  Everyone had a uniform.

One of the things that I am more than painfully aware of about El Paso is that people like to compare it to other cities for a few reasons:  1) It's a Hispanic culture, so people can be sexist, misogynistic, bigoted, and overly capitalistic, 2)  people want to get away with being lazy, 3) illiterate and uneducated, 4) blame emotion or the heat, and 5) are indifferent to their surroundings.  People are people.  If someone can get away with doing whatever he or she wants, that person will.  I'm tired of people telling me why El Paso can't do something.  Usually, this comes to me in the form of something called "small El Paso mentality."  It is shown in the following two statements:  1) El Paso isn't New York, so bigotry is okay and 2) El Paso isn't San Francisco, so people don't have to let GLBT people have decent salaried positions unless they are will to essentially sell themselves as the post child for how inclusive the company really is.  I've been told over and over again, "Well, it's not New Mexico.  This is Texas" which is fairly demeaning since El Paso county is the historically democratic county in Texas.  People who do that are trying to get away with doing whatever they want.  Geographic discrimination is actually illegal.  Being an El Pasoan doesn't make me unenlightened, incapable of working properly, inhumane, or in need of special accommodations to accomplish tasks.

It's not the culture.  It's people's perception of what it is.  Lazy is lazy regardless of where a person is.  I was reading earlier about passive-aggressivity and what astonished me was how many employers and religious leaders I had had in the past five years who are incredibly passive-aggressive because they won't make a decision, will wait years to make one, or that they will intentionally target and sabotage an employee or member of the laity who is more talented that they are.  If you don't care, don't lead.

I accidentally found these passages this week.  "Take care of yourself, have a good time, and make the most of whatever God job you have for as long as God gives you life.  And that's about it.  That's the human lot.  Yes, we should make the most of what God gives, both the bounty and the capacity to enjoy it, accepting what's given and delighting in the work.  It's God's gift!  God deals out joy in the present, the now" (Ecclesiastes 5:18-20)  It really is okay to enjoy our lives.  It seems that people don't think that they have been given the ability to enjoy life.  When at least, Abrahamic believers have been given it as a gift.  El Pasoans should embrace ourselves joyously.

No, we are not New York, San Francisco, Denver, the Twin Cities or even Juarez.  We are not less than the others. There's only one on the border.  We are strong, smart, and capable of doing well.  We are able to serve one another and not tear each other down.  We are able to live well and be at peace.  We are El Paso!

L'Chaim!

Gratitude for Gifts

I had an wonderful phone call this afternoon which has prompted my gratitude list for this evening.

1.  I am grateful for Dr. Victoria Gonzalez.  During our conversation today, she told me that she thought I was a good teacher.  She thought that I would be good at teaching English to people who didn't know any at all.  For those who don't know, she's the reading specialist for Dona Ana Community College.  I was blessed to teach reading for this first time this past semester.  It was a wonderful experience for me and my students did really well.  I actually got to hear someone say that she didn't know why I wasn't assigned another reading class because she wanted me to teach another one.  I met her this past semester and for the spring the enrollment is really low.  She encouraged me to be a part of the training workshops throughout the semester.  She taught in the same room I did right before me.  Bless her heart, Dr. Gonzalez would leave things all the time on the desk.  I was blessed to constantly give her her belongs back.  I love losers because I am a finder.  She lost a lot for me to find.  She has a lot of experience teaching that and what I don't.  It was a blessing to her say that I was good at it; I don't hear that very much at all.  There were a lot of things that she said I would be good at teaching and doing.  She gave me a lot of gifts during our conversation.

2.  I am grateful for Connie Finke.  The conversation I had with her about being an inter-faith person and being a Christian at a Jewish Temple was wonderful.  We had a good time talking with each other and sharing devotion information.  It was a wonderful time.  She's fun and has her own wisdom.  I like that the conversation that I had with her prompted me to look into my Marian devotions again and think about the things within my own tradition that spring from Catholicism.  I had some wonderful prayer time with my Saint Augustine's Prayer Book again which I really like.  I feel more comfortable with it and have for about 7 or 8 years when I have my own person prayer time throughout the day.  I keep two prayer books and a devotion by my bed: 1) Saint Augustine's Prayer Book, 2) Prayers of Christian Consolation, and 3) the Rosary with the Luminous Mysteries.  Connie encourages me to continue to connect with the Blessed Virgin Mary and with Jesus throughout the day.  She is quite a gift to me.

3.  I am grateful for the Holocaust Museum in El Paso, TX.  I was there for the first time this past weekend.  I walked through the exhibit after being at the memorial for Sara Hauptman.  May her memory be a blessing.  I had an experience that I didn't know was going to happen.  I am very leary of public restrooms for several reasons and experiences.  I have been confronted in several of them due to my gender.  I never know what is going to happen in them and when I saw the shower heads in the exhibit which replicated the showers in Auschwitz which poured Zyklon B gas into the rooms, I became nauseous.  The not knowing what would happen in a locker room has been enough of a prohibitive experience for me to keep me out of gymnasiums as well as public bathrooms, unless they were single use restrooms, for a long time.  The fear was so amplified in the museum's exhibit that I thought I was going to pass out.  Thank God that I can choose whether or not to go into the bathrooms and locker rooms that are in society.

4.  I am grateful for the experiences that I have had getting to teach at another university.  I have been looking forward to the experience for a long time.  I am going to have a hybrid class.  I like that I will be able to teach partially online again.

5.  I am grateful for people I have met who just do the business that they are there to do.  I am happy that I know that there are people who are forthright about their business practices and don't make side deals about everything.  I am grateful to know people who will just do the work that they have been given to do instead of looking the other way, making excuses, blaming others, or trying to find ways to get out of doing the work.  I think it is why I like libraries.  I've never haggled with a librarian over checking out a book.  Thank God.        

All of these gifts have been given to me to help balance out the rest of my experiences right now.  It is important to know that I am not only experiencing problems in my life, but have a lot of encouragement and support for the positive things that I am doing.  It is wonderful to know that I have been blessed with so many positive things and trusted to work through the negative experiences in my life.

Headed East?

I intentionally didn't write a blog for Western Christmas.  I don't think I was ready for it.  I love Advent.  I am usually not ready for Western Christmas when it appears.  It is important to me to follow the liturgical calendar and remain within myself.  If it takes me more time to move through the calendar then it does.  I am not held captive by predetermined boxes through which I am to schedule everything.  Since it has been a little while, I hope that people who do read this consider what I have been reflecting upon.  Whether my friends and family live in the north, south, east, or west, we usually have little time during the winter to be able to reflect a little more on what another year in our lives will bring.

While I didn't write specifically about Western Christmas, it seems that I am ready to go from Advent to Epiphany.  But, what happened to the birth of Jesus?  Well, this year, it's the next day: Eastern Christmas.

When I think of the upcoming season of Advent, I think of claymation.  While I understand that this may not be what others think of, I learned about jazz, claymation, and Epiphany through the California Raisins.  I loved the Christmas special when I was kid and watched it with anticipation every year.  "We Three Kings" quickly became my favorite season song while the other kids were in love with Frosty the Snowman and Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer.  When people say Rudolf, I think of Chevrolets.  I'm an El Pasoan.  While this is not the wisest of holiday specials or commercials, tv has played a large role in most people's lives.  It doesn't play such a large role in my life anymore.  So, I didn't watch one holiday special this year and don't intend to which has caused me to question:  What are the wise gifts that I bring this Epiphany for the Christ child?  It's the "Little Drummer Boy" who asks this question in our lore about the nativity.  So what do I bring:

My Gold:  My creativity is the most malleable gift I have been given to give back.  Under standard conditions, just like gold, I think my creativity remains a part of my life as a practice that I have continued to have throughout the work I do and the thoughts about the future I have.

My Frankincense:  Just as frankincense is the most common incense in every major world religion, the one thing I have in common with everyone else is my humanity.  I am not a perfect human being, and it is in the places where I find myself to be human and not other than I am that I bring to give.  My gift is imperfection and difference which is common to everyone.

My Myrrh:  My gift of blood-passion, as myrrh balances the blood from birth, is a connection with nature and the natural world.  I'm from a family of farmers.  Connecting with nature empowers every other gift, large and small, that I have been given.  

Just like a heated censer, gold, frankincense, and myrrh combine to visual prayers of creativity, commonality, and connecting with nature for all of God's children.  This is the wisdom that I have found in the time I have spent reflecting on and preparing for next year.  It is only in wisdom that anyone is really ready for Christmas -- the gift of God of Himself to us with us for us.

Eastern Christmas takes place this year on January 7th, one day after Western Epiphany.  Some people may think it is just 6s and 7s.  2015 in sequence yields between west moving back to the east: "the vision of God is Christ the Lord."  A divine gift to an ailing world seeking for God is oneness with Him to which "All the People Said Amen."

Advent 4: Angels

The neo-orthodox hermeneutic of the Bible requires that each person read the words for him or herself.  There can be no replacement for personal submersion into the scriptures.  It is only when an individual reads for him or herself that the scriptures become valid for that person.  So, too is the spiritual life and the experiences of the people of faith throughout time.  God is valid when we have experiences of God.

Karl Barth's humanism can easily be found in this week's Advent reading.  The transcendent God speaking in 2 Samuel 7:5 "But that same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan, "Go and tell my servant David, 'Thus says the Lord: Would you build a house for me to dwell in?"  God speaks from beyond everything to Nathan to become known in the world.   What is the house of the Lord, though?

Any definition of the house of the Lord is not necessarily going to be able to hold the entire concept of a deity.  Usually people think of a church or of a temple.  Because Jesus is incarnate, or at this point on the way, the Archangel Gabriel announces that Mary has been blessed to carry Jesus.  Furthermore, the Archangel announces that God has done so.  This is the humanistic workings of the Transcendent God found in neo-orthodoxy.  In time, neo-orthodox theology gave birth to liberation theology and postliberalism.  These social uses of the gospel find themselves to be an incomplete understanding and explanation of "housing" God.

While I was in graduate school the first time, my classmates as I would converse about what would be after the postmodern age.  We decided that what would be next would be another Renaissance that a lot of us were already experiencing in our lives.  As we tried to find a way to explain our thoughts, we turned to what we called "The Age of Love."  After our jokes about the hippies and the Age of Aquarius were done, we decided that what the world and humanity really needed was a return to agape love.  If we called it Christianity though, someone would control it.

What our minds and hearts decided, standing in front of Hudspeth Hall at UTEP, was that no tradition or explanation could really define God.  We had found our attempt to find a new explanation in which to house what we were going to call the next age was really the beginning.  What happened in the beginning?  God.

God created the world and so loved it to save it.  Some parts of Christianity argue that there is a messiah in every generation.  We are to be little Christs.  We are to rebuild and fulfill our mission.  We make attempts at explaining our experiences in the hopes that there will be a new way to house God for us.

We cannot house the transcendent God of neo-orthodoxy.  We cannot house the ideas that we have to explain what we believe.  However, was the 19th century can give to us for the transcendent God is a place where conversation can begin to bring a humanistic social gospel that requires human action to further the mission can be discussed a lived.  Yet, what is the message that houses a transcendent God?

The Archangel says it all, "You are blessed."

Advent 3: Rejoice! (in Crayola)

The third Sunday in Advent lightens the penitential season of waiting expectantly with Joy.  The reading challenge us to rejoice in all things.  Some things most people don't want to rejoice in.  There's a lot of things actually.  I've never seen or been told that a child rejoiced in being spanked; I've never been told that someone was checking into rehab for an addiction while rejoicing in the Lord.  I tend to think that both of those situations cause the person to think "This is some BS right here."  However, it is what we are called to look past this week and to rejoice that we have been given tasks because:
      "The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to
      proclaim good news to the poor.  He has sent me to bring up the brokenhearted, to
      proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners"
      (Isaiah 1:1).
While the reading in Isaiah continues through to the 11th verse, the initial first verse gives the reason why Advent is joyous season.  It is a season of rebuilding and of renewal.  I am of the opinion that spanking a child has more to do with inflicting pain and causing shock.  I think finding other ways to discipline children might be better even though my siblings, their children, and I have all been raised with parental shock therapy to change our behavior.  It is actually the change, the transition, that God calls us to focus on that is to give us Joy.  It is Joy to turn back to God looking hopefully and forward to the future.  It is as verse 4 states, "They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations."  Children are given to generations of people and not just their parents.  Children are given to communities to watch as they grow and change into fruitful adults.  The life cycle rebuilds families as people wax and wane together with the tides of experience that life brings to them.

As my friends have gotten sober over time, I find that they change in ways that their families can't handle.  Mine couldn't handle that I would go to meetings with them, and eventually, I, too, quit smoking through another discipline.  Renewal is the way to return to God in Joy.  What I have witnessed the most is when people change that those around them don't or they try to control the change.  Change is fluidic.

One of my favorite authors, Brennan Manning, wrote "there comes a time when self-pity becomes malignant, seducing us to into self-destructive behavioral patterns of withdrawal, isolation, drinking, drugging, and so forth.  We simply give ourselves the grace to to set a time limit on our self-pity" (Ruthless Trust).  Brennan Manning, a Franciscan priest and recovering alcoholic, found himself a ragamuffin and a beloved of God.  I like his work because he focuses on joy in our identity as the chosen beloved of God and not as a we should be.  None of us are as we should be.  When God's Joy is the center of our lives, we find that we are not giving into peer pressure, or at least, I do.  When I live from whom I think God sees me as, I tend not to care about what other people think so much.

One of the things that I have come to know this Advent season more than before, as I am writing more poetry, is that I have lost the childlikeness that my faith once had.  I didn't lose it.  I gave it up.  I found it to be too difficult to continue to have around such serious adults in my life whom only understood me as a child.  My spiritual life used to be very playful; it isn't anymore.  It isn't because I became very tired of the judgment that I would get from people.  People who know me will know that I have very little trust for those whom have a need for age appropriateness when people are past a high school age.  Once we consider people to be adults, I think we should, as a society, accept their desire to choose their own paths.  What's sad is that I gave up the discipline of joy in my life for more adult disciplines which is similar to the gamer experience of people thinking that game playing is for children.

The discipline of blowing bubbles with God is a far better one than voraciously studying scripture  when someone is in a time of renewal.  It seems to me that a thriving spiritual life requires crayons, children, laughter, and love be to be joyous.  When we focus on the mud in our lives, in our suffering, we forget that closeness we all can have with God.  We have the ability to create.  Creation is good.  It brought about such joy to God that he set aside an entire day for us to renew our lives in Him.  I hope to remember throughout the year that the Sabbath, whether someone chooses Saturday or Sunday, needs to be a joyous experience with God.

May we all remember the Joy of being the renewed beloved of God.  




  

Thoughts about Power

I am entering my fifth year after surviving serious crime which has been proven; although, people seem not to even want accept the fact that my reality is reality.  I have worked with all kinds of advocates, doctors, pastors, and faith communities in order to raise myself back up from the issues in my life caused by other people.  The number one thing that has astounded me concerning the treatment that I have received because I actually tried to get help from the system is that they don't believe that their own work is worth asking questions to adequately complete.  The system is broken due to a lack of critical thinking.

From the Episcopal Church to advocacy centers to the legal system, I have encountered more problems than anything else.  The main two questions that people seem to really be asking is 1) How can I reduce my liability in this situation? and 2)  What do I get out of helping you?  It seems to me that people have spent more time covering themselves for their own liabilities and trying to fight their own causes that they have been unable to find my humanity beyond themselves.  At this point, I have been so processed by the system where I live that people can no longer hear my voice as they are so busy trying to place me into their understanding of what whatever box or label that they need me to be for them.

I am going to make myself blatantly clear.  What I have survived which is a religiously targeted hate crime whether the Episcopal Church or even the judicial system wants to accept it, it is not a women's issue due to one kind of crime involved in it.  It's a human issue.  It seems to me that more people than ever before in my life are concerned with making sure that I revert back into being the nice young woman that they want.

I am going to make probably a heretical statement by writing that I don't believe in Women's Studies.  I don't accept that there is one issue on the planet that is strictly a women's issue because women are a part of humanity.  Again, I don't believe in women's studies as a complete separation unto itself.  Women's Studies by itself is segregation.  It's as though women would need a play group or conversation group because their thoughts are not as valuable as ours.  I am not now nor will I ever be a part of any women's groups.  I also believe that groups that are segregated by the sexes fail to grasp the humanity of the people involved in them.  It has only been since I have been more vocal about one event in my life that people have even questioned my gender identity and life as a result of being assaulted.  The mere idea that someone would want me to choose to base my life on one event is ridiculous.

I have also never actively chosen to officially join another faith community other than an Episcopal Church.  The Diocese of the Rio Grande is living as backwards and as exclusionary as they possible can when it came to actually listening to me.  They were out to protect themselves.  Ultimately, they want to protect themselves instead of actually listening to me.  They are taught to get rid of people instead of helping them.

Every single part of my life has been questioned by people whom I am, apparently, supposed to understand as having good intentions.  It seems to me that when people have good intentions for me that they actually listen to what I have to say instead of being exclusionary of me based on their own need to protect themselves.  Essentially, when people don't ask others questions, then they can say "you didn't tell me" which really means "not my fault," or "I saw when...," or "But I thought," or "But friend said."

I have tried to keep my faith in God and humanity throughout the past five years.  I can't help but notice that the advocacy centers in the north would help me without trying to revert me back into being the cisgendered woman that they wanted everyone to be.  The ones in the south were afraid of men and decided that I was just identifying with the assailant.  It is astounding to me that people in recovery systems for those whom have survived crimes would be more focused on people's clothes than the rest of society.

It's ridiculous to me that people have tried to do everything to include deciding a new religion for me based on their own understanding of an outfit.  I find the fact that when people are taught that they are sheep that they don't ever understand that they are being taught to be mindless.  It is those same people who, when they found out that I already had a graduate degree, decided that there was no way to really help me.  The answer for a lot of people is don't talk about it and if you have an education that you are then supposed to have some kind of magic wall that protects you from crime.  The very people working the systems to help others recover from crime don't understand that it is about how people use power.  

Advent 2: The Way of the Prophets and "Cups"

Advent is a time of preparation.  Advent 2 is about finding a path in order to come closer to God in openness, expectancy, and longing.  Anna Kendrick's song, Cups, illustrates this week's Advent theme very well.  Waiting for the Messiah brings with it active waiting and preparing to unite with Him.  As Kendrick's chorus repetitively states, "You're gonna miss me when I'm gone," I am reminded of the incredible amount of work that people are doing this time of year to be able to prepare for various holidays.

Decorating takes a lot of work as does the culinary arts that thrive during holiday seasons.  Still, we are brought back to scripture to ground us into why we are celebrating.  Interestingly, the ground and grounding oneself in the ways of God are the main themes in this week's reading from Isaiah 2: 1-5.  In this selection of the text, in a vision people are called out in the last days to the mountains to raise the temple of God, to learn God of Jacob's ways, to beat their swords into plowshares, to attain and maintain peace.  The descendants of Jacob are called to walk in the light of the Lord.  Because I live in America, I am always reminded of children's shoes with lights in them when the readings say to walk in the light of the Lord.  While it is a very literal image, it works really well along with "Cups."

I miss the light of the people I love when they are gone.  From time to time, I have been told that they miss me when I am gone.  At any point in time when that happens, Advent waiting appears.  Busy active waiting is not one that does nothing.  Advent waiting is one of preparation for one another.  Preparing work for the future or sowing seeds in the ground.  Studying scripture so that it is known to your heart and not left in a text is active waiting to know the Lord in order to walk in the light.

In Mishkan T'Filah: A Reform Siddur, there is a prayer of praise which states in part:

Praise God in market and workplace,

with computer, with hammer and nails.

Praise God in bedroom and kitchen;

praise God with pots and pans.

Praise God in the temple of the present;

let every breath be God's praise.  

In everything, we are to praise God.  The Way of the Prophets is one of truth and patience.  Both truth and patience are praised.  This Advent season, people can praise God for a lot.  As Americans, we have more material things than most other nations.  We have first-world issues like iPads being too heavy and not having enough battery life.  We have seasonal concerns like not confusing airplane pilots with our holiday light displays and making sure that scarves match the choir's robes in our churches for the big show in a couple weeks.  Our first-world concerns are often prioritized higher than the third world among us in the poor who are always present.  To walk in the light means to know them and to care for those with less.  

Less can mean a lot.  Is there a member of the faith community who really can't buy the holiday cookies in the fundraiser?  Someone could buy them and make them appear for that person without acknowledgment.  Less could mean that the parents in a family are giving everything they can this season to their kids and are not receiving for themselves.  Then, they are experiencing less.  Sometimes, less is better.  Does someone need help in their homes for the holiday season?  In all of these things, we can praise God.  We can praise God that as we are waiting we have been entrusted to help people experience the lesser moments.  God is the judge of the lesser moments that cause people to settle disputes by beating spears into pruning hooks.  Hanging the greens unites families in our community through the chill of winter.  Pruning the rough edges of pastries and creating activities to unite people is a holy time to God.  Discipling to accept one another in peace keeps the light of God guiding all of our journeys.  We will miss one another when we are gone.    

Walk in the light this week as we all prepare for the miraculous this season.