Part II

Okay, so the library internet was super slow earlier- hence this being Part II of my entry today--

I feel like life has been super packed lately, in a really good way, so this entry might be a bit fragmented, as I try to fit as much as I can into it. Probably this has something to do with the fact that we're all packing up and heading back to our respective homes for the holidays soon-- Kaitlyn is already in Guatemala with her family visiting her sister who is doing Peace Corps there!

A few momentous occasions for Casa Nacho have been some kitchen appliance purchases: a blender and a toaster oven! We were decently pretty under our food budget this month and since we have been searching thrift stores for these things since our arrival, so we decided to buy them with our left over money. The blender is red, too, which is a festive bonus :)

Just tonight, Jeff and I made a DELICIOUS soup (a variation of a butternut squash soup recipe shared with me by my brother) and used the new blender and squash-peeler-utensil, both of which greatly facilitated the creation of this wonderful soup. Then, as we were doing dishes, we discovered a cabinet we had never noticed! And it contained really wonderful ceramic mixing bowls! Great night!

Tonight aside, it was a packed weekend. Friday evening began with the Homeless Persons Memorial that Primavera put together. There are memorials like these held all across the country, around the winter solstice, the longest night of the year that a person might be sleeping outside.

It was a really beautiful event, held at the county plot of the local cemetery, and included reflections on migrant deaths, and a compilation of blessings by all different faiths, amongst other things. Perhaps the most touching for me though, were the memories that were shared about people that died on the streets just in this past year. Despite the airplanes creating unwelcome raucous above, the memorial was very poignant and as I walked throughout the graves to place my carnation, I felt very full and very blessed.

One of the Shelter Managers at the Men's Shelter wrote this poem in memory:

No more waking over and over during the night.

Rest, Now, Rest.

No more getting to the labor hall at 2:00am, hoping for a day's work at 5:00am

Rest, Now, Rest.

No more standing in long lines for a sack lunch or a night in a bed and a shower.

Rest, Now, Rest.

Just no more wanting a better life.

Now you can rest my friend, now rest.

Just no more, rest, now, rest.

As touching as the event was, I struggled with the fact that even though some of the men I work with were there, I couldn't go and speak with them... because of confidentiality, I am not supposed to initiate contact. And so in those same moments that I felt my soul touched my all that was being said and all those who were being remembered, I also felt very torn and personally fragmented.

That fragmentation was incredibly juxtaposed by my Saturday- we went to Nogales, Sonora (aka Mexico) for a Posada. As I understand it, this is a Christmas tradition here, in memory of Mary and Joseph going in search of a place to have Jesus and to bring attention to the many doors that are being shut on people today. At the Posada we took part in, there were multiple stops (though we were late and missed the first two) at which different migrants shared their stories, and we ended at the Comedor which is part of the Kino Border Initiative.

The program reads, "Today, the same thing is happening: people who denounce impunity, the injustices and acts of corruption, those who demand honesty from their political leaders and question their excesses, are then threatened, followed and murdered. At this Posada, let us remember all those persons who have had to abandon their countries, homes, friends, and even their families, language and culture so that they could outrun the threats, or because they think and act differently from those who hold power or because they bravely denounce abuses and corruption. Let us silently think about the thousands of citizens - men, women, children- who have been killed as a result of these injustices."

Not only was a glad to be able to take part in this event, but I was especially excited to get to see my good friend Erin, who I studied abroad with in El Salvador and who is living at working at the Kino Border Initiative. Whenever I am with someone I studied abroad with at Casa, I know that the magic I remember from that semester was real, because I see and feel it in my friends. I haven't had a chance to speak with Erin too much about her experiences at the border, so I can only speak to what I witnessed and not necessarily what her experiences have been, but what I saw was community. I saw her laughing and dancing, truly entering in, as much as one can, into people's realities. And in those moments, I felt my own being filled by that community.

The Posada closed with this song (and my attempt at a translation with Jeff's aid):

AFUERA (outside)

Somos toda una familia, deportada sin piedad, arrancados de raices, y arrojados como mal

We are all a family, deported without mercy, torn from our roots, and cast away as bad

ADENTRO (inside)

Pa que regresen amig@s, ya no tenemos lugar, y nuestro pinche gobierno, nada va a solucionar

For returning friends, we no longer have space, and nothing is going to fix our damn government

AFUERA

Nos sentimos inseguros, ya ni de aqui ni de alla, vivimos todo despojo, por favor, tengan piedad

We feel unsafe, we're not from from here nor there, our lives have been stripped away (?), please have mercy

ADENTRO

Pa que se fueron al Norte, de aqui nadie los corrio, ya la verdad es que ahorra, la situacion ya empeoro

For those who went north from here, no one ran after them (??), and the truth is that now, the situation has already worsened

AFUERA

Mexican@s de mi tierra, miembros de comunidad, juntos hoy trabajaremos, por justicia y dignidad

Mexicans of my land, members of community, together today we will work, for justice and dignity

ADENTRO

Bienvenid@s, son, herman@s, Dios en ustedes esta, su presencia entre nostras, mil bendiciones traera

Welcome, you are my brothers and sisters, God is in you all, your presence here with us, will bring us a thousand blessings

TOD@S (all)

Vamos junt@s como pueblo, como pueblo, como herman@s a sembrar, la justicia en la frontera, la frontera, el respeto, amor y paz

We go together like a people, like a people, like brothers and sisters to plant justice on the border, the border, respect love and peace

Fotografia

Christmas lights in Winterhaven! We went twice this past week, once for a 5k fun run (after Jen and Kaitlyn did half-marathon, yay housies!) and then again on Wednesday night after dinner at Casa Mariposa.

Jeff's family sent us a real live wreath! It smells so good- so good we wanted it inside, not on the door, where we can enjoy it even more :)

Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love.
-- Hamilton Wright Mabie

A jumble of thoughts

I hope you come to find that which gives life a deep meaning for you...something worth living for, maybe even worth dying for...something that energizes you, enthuses you, enables you to keep moving ahead. I can't tell you what it might be -- that's for you to find, to choose, to love. I can just encourage you to start looking, and support you in the search.

This quote is an excerpt from a letter written by Ita Ford, one of the four churchwomen martyred in El Salvador on December 2, 1980. I suppose this reflection is a bit late, given that it's December 15... but I've been sitting with those words this month, unable to quite articulate what I'm thinking... here is my jumbled attempt--

For our spirituality night (that fell closer to the anniversary of the deaths of Ita Ford, Jean Donovan, Maura Clarke, and Dorothy Kazel) we watched the documentary Roses in December, which focuses on Jean Donovan. I'd seen this documentary before, read Ita's letter before, and commemorated this anniversary before. For some reason though, this time it felt different.

I feel humbled remembering their lives, and find myself amidst countless questions. What am I doing in Tucson? What am I doing in this moment? My job right now is case manager-- and is perhaps equal parts fulfilling, frustrating, and overwhelming. Who am I to tell people what to do? Who am I even to suggest things? So many of the men and women I am working with have experienced so much more than I have.

My supervisor and another volunteer/staff-ish person are reading John McKnight's "The Careless Society: Community and its Counterfeits" (chances of me adequately explaining his argument- slim. click the link to check it out), which articulates well the ways in which professionalized services (ie health care, case management, counseling, etc) can detract from communities. Professionalized services often times do the opposite of empower... they shuffle people along from appointment to appointment, supply them with medications, and give them schedules. They supposedly prepare people to become more self sufficient. In reality though, they treat people as the problem and ignore the environment. I cannot tell you how many of the men and women I work with are on medication, or have a history of self medication (aka drug/alcohol abuse)... my thought is this- maybe the problem is not so much each person, but rather their lifestyle and environment. Living in a shelter with 99 other men and without community is an overwhelming reality. Day after day they put one foot in front of another, working to get their basic needs covered, but are seldom reminded or given the time and space to acknowledge that they are more than those needs.

We're only in the middle of the book, and so perhaps it's most appropriate that at this point it has left me with many more questions than answers. Or rather, that the only answer I can see -- that people should not be reduced to basic needs and that people need genuine community -- is not easily navigated.

A few weeks ago (? - I often lose track of time here) I found myself in the park by our house, speaking with someone who is both a participant and a neighbor, and I feel overwhelmed and inadequate, but also grateful that she is sharing her story with me, and I find small but genuine hope our conversation. For all of my uncertainty about my job here, that moment felt right.

I feel like I am only at the beginning of understanding so many things... and I encounter so many pieces throughout my days. My clues are these: joy I feel sharing a meal with my housemates after a long day, dance parties with our friends, the vulnerability and tears of participants and friends... moments of liberation.

Perhaps it does not so much matter what I am doing in Tucson, but that the people I have encountered and the reality of the desert and the border are teaching me so much.

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains, I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain. There's more than one answer to these questions, pointing me in crooked line.
The less I seek my source for some definitive- the closer I am to fine. [Indigo Girls]

{Wall in Tucson}

Sometimes I feel like I live in a painting

Today, as I was biking home from visiting SAMHC (a crisis center for people in Tucson-- I've been slowly but surely visiting other agencies in the city to familiarize myself with what resources are available, for my own education and so I don't feel too absurd referring people to places I've never seen myself), I had the pleasure of feeling dwarfed by the Catalina Mountains to my north and the Tucson Mountains to the west.

I think one of my favorite moments in life, is when I happen to be biking down Speedway (the road our house/street is off of) right around sunset as I was today, with a beautiful view of the silhouetted Tucson Mountains. The intersection itself is far from picturesque, there are dusty empty lots to the north and south of this point, and telephone lines/electrical wires galore... but the mountains and the sunset make it all not matter as much.

It reminds me a lot of Annie Dillard, in her book "Holy The Firm":

That they bear their own unimaginable masses and weathers aloft, holding them up in the sky for anyone to see plain, makes them, as Chesterton said of the Eucharist, only the more mysterious by their very visibility and the absence of secrecy. They are the western rim of the real, if not considerably beyond it. If the Greeks at looked at Mount Baker all day, their large and honest art would have broken, and they would have gone fishing, as these people do. And as perhaps I one day shall.

And so sometimes I feel like I live in a painting, and I pinch myself but it's real.

Below are some pictures from my life recently--

The Weepies came to Tucson! The Monday before Thanksgiving Jen, Kaitlyn, Meredith and I went to go see them at Plush-- they were fabulous, and well worth not getting a full nights sleep.

This is a picture of the Rocky Mountains taken from my plane ride back from CT to AZ. I was surprised with a trip home for Thanksgiving :)

Tucson decorates for Christmas. Did I mention it's weird to see Christmas trees when it's 75 and sunny outside?

Oh TUson! Need I say more?

On Saturday Jeff and I went to a farmer's market, where we prepared a worm compost bin learned all about growing garlic and sampled some local foods- like sunchokes (apparently you can eat the root of some sunflowers)! When we got home we were inspired to finally plant some of the seeds Jeff had gotten from the Food Bank awhile ago, hopefully at least some of them will sprout...

A poem I've liked recently

(photo of some of the mountains surrounding Tucson from the plane!)

"Bone" by Mary Oliver

Understand, I am always trying to figure out

what the soul is,

and where hidden,

and what shape

and so, last week,

when I found on the beach

the ear bone

of a pilot whale that may have died

hundreds of years ago, I thought

maybe I was close

to discovering something

for the ear bone

is the portion that lasts longest

in any of us, man or whale; shaped

like a squat spoon

with a pink scoop where

once, in the lively swimmer's head,

it joined its two sisters

in the house of hearing,

it was only

two inches long

and thought: the soul

might be like this

so hard, so necessary

yet almost nothing.

Beside me

the gray sea

was opening and shutting its wave-doors,

unfolding over and over

its time-ridiculing roar;

I looked but I couldn't see anything

through its dark-knit glare;

yet don't we all know, the golden sand

is there at the bottom,

though our eyes have never seen it,

nor can our hands ever catch it

lest we would sift it down

into fractions, and facts

certainties

and what the soul is, also

I believe I will never quite know.

Though I play at the edges of knowing,

truly I know

our part is not knowing,

but looking, and touching, and loving,

which is the way I walked on,

softly,

through the pale-pink morning light.

from Why I Wake Early (2004)

This little light of mine...

Sometimes it amazes me how much happens in a week, how many emotions can be experienced, and how much life can change and grow.

For one, the little basil plant that my parents sent me seeds for is really looking like it’s starting to thrive and the parsley has finally sprouted! We haven’t planted anything else in our garden yet, but we’ve got the seeds for all sorts of cold weather foods that aren’t root vegetables (mostly greens…we can’t do root vegetables because we couldn’t loosen the soil deep enough for them). Today we’re hopefully going to get a hose too, so that will make watering everything a lot easier.

* * *

Last Saturday night, after posting last week’s blog, we hurried off to dinner in preparation for the vigil at Fort Huachuca, which was at Southside Presbyterian. For those of you unfamiliar with Southside, you might have heard of it because the Sanctuary Movement originated there in the ‘80s. When we got there we were created by some people we didn’t know yet, and others we recognized from our Wednesday night dinners at Casa Mariposa (an ecumenical community, similar in many ways to a Catholic Worker, that has open dinners on Wednesday nights). It is so nice as we get more situated, to recognize people when we go places…it makes me feel more settled and peaceful. The night included lot’s of singing (hence the title of this entry), some speaking (John from Casa Mariposa invited us to read a short piece by Walter Wink on the true meaning of non-violence), and some tai-chi (to bring peace to our bodies). When we left I felt very alive…I think the music especially connected with me, something about sitting in that room singing songs with mostly people I didn’t even know but that spoke to our shared beliefs. As we were singing I felt like I let go a little bit of some of the stress I’d been holding onto, questions about where to live next year, questions about what jobs to pursue, questions about my vocation…questions that don’t need answers with any urgency.

When we got to the protest/vigil/demonstration, I was kind of surprised- it was tiny! Only maybe 100 people were there and maybe 30-40 counter-protesters right across the street. I thought a lot over the afternoon about why I was there, and what I had hoped to accomplish in being there. I think in a lot of ways I was there for myself, to participate in a nonviolent action that I believed in, to continue being a part of the Tucson community and understanding the Tucsonan-imagination (another way of saying, the unspoken cultural/philosophical context that informs the energy and actions of a place or people) . I was also there to speak out against torture—and this is the point the counter protestors seemed to miss—against all torture. I was not there to not support the troops, I was not there to shame any individuals, as Walter Wink well articulates, “As we stop dividing the world into 'us' and 'them,'” we can begin to see that the enemy is not monolithic”. I think that is something I learned well going to the Teach-in/SOA vigil in years past, and meeting teachers at the school. Individuals are quite simply that, and it is important not to confuse them with something greater, not to forget they have their own story. While that may be the case, that does not mean that people should not raise their voice against wrongs out of fear of harming the individual, rather that one should be intentional and thoughtful about the way they raise their voice. Nonetheless, on Sunday I kept feeling as though my time would have been better spent trying to speak with people about why I was standing there. As the counter protesters told us to “shut up” (even though we were in silence for the most part), or “go to Afghanistan” or said “maybe they don’t understand us, say it in Spanish” (a few of many things shouted at us)…I couldn’t help but feel that some where between our sidewalk and theirs the message was lost and if the message couldn’t even make it that far, what was I doing?

That night for Spirituality night, Kaitlyn taught us how to make paper cranes and shared with us the story of Sadako Sasaki. So we each first decorated/wrote of the paper messages and prayers of peace, then folded them and now plan to hang them somewhere in our house.

* * *

Then began a whirlwind of a week…or rather, as Jen and I decided, a week of Mondays. As usual, my schedule over the course of the week was Monday/Wednesday/Thursday spent at Works (a day labor/employment center), Tuesday at Casa Paloma (a drop in center for unaccompanied women where they can get a hot breakfast, shower, do laundry, get clothes, get hygiene products, and relax…more commonly called Casa P), and Friday at HIP (homeless intervention and prevention, a drop in center for anyone and everyone where they can also get mail delivered and receive phone messages.

Maybe it’s the full moon, or maybe it’s because the end of the month is nearing (and along with people’s money running out so too their patience), but the week was just crazy. When I’m at Works I am a Case Manager, which in my interview was explained to me as “accompaniment”…and though I definitely believe that, over the past 3 months I’ve started to figure out what that means on a daily basis.

• For me, it means that people think I know more than I do (a few weeks ago a woman at Casa P told me she had been peeing blood for two days, took out all of her medications and said that she didn’t want to go to a hospital because she doesn’t like them, but instead of would like for me to tell her which medications to stop taking)
• It means that people sometimes take advantage of our presence, in that they are rude to you because there is no one else in their life onto whom they can take out their frustration
• It means you connect people with resources, when they say they need a drug test you help them figure out where to go and how to pay for it…when someone says they haven’t received their food stamps yet, you help them navigate DES...etc
• It means you help people write resumes and cover letters and navigate applying for a job with felony convictions
• It means telling people they need to go to AA or another kind of meetings, even if they think that 1 month of sobriety means they’re all set
• It means that you listen…to job search experiences, to frustrations with the other services they’re getting in the city, to problems they’re having with their families, to the frustrations of living in a shelter with 99 other men, to whatever they want to share—the good and the bad

It’s the listening that makes the job worthwhile for me, and also the part the drains me. It’s the part that is breaking my heart, as my heart was broken in El Salvador.

I am regularly astounded by how humble the men I meet with can be, how vulnerable they can be in an office environment with a person half their age from across the country that has never lived on the street. I am also often frustrated that our meetings are yet another hoop these men have to jump through and balance...they need to get to a thousand meetings, and job search, all on a 2 rider bus pass. When do they get time to be themselves? When do they get time to simply be?

* * *

Then, one final part of the week I want to acknowledge in this blog post is that November 16^th was the 21^st anniversary of the deaths of the Jesuit UCA martyrs, including our house’s namesake—Ignacio Ellacuría. During my time in El Salvador nearly 2 years ago, the martyrs were a part of daily life…and I went from frustration with how much people discussed them, because I thought it meant that the countless others that were killed during the war were being forgotten…to beginning to understand how deep a role they truly play in the Salvadoran imagination.

We watched the YouTube video of Fr. Mark Ravizza’s “Hope of the UCA Martyrs” talk at Fordham in the Bronx last fall, and I was again reminded of so much…of the impact of the violent poverty and humble grace experienced by so many Salvadorans…of the real hope the martyrs bring to Salvadorans today, the strength that is drawn from their memory…of what the martyrs have taught me, and what El Salvador taught me…about myself and about the world, about living one’s values. Listening to Mark talk, I thought about what it means to be truly present to others, and considered if I am doing that both in my job and at home…what it means to be fully myself, to allow myself to be open to the mystery of life, to let go of attempts at control, to let others in…to be quiet and listen to others, to the world, to myself.

I caved and got a blog.

So, I've been in Tucson for about 3 months and have finally decided to make a blog. What better way to start my blog than to introduce everyone to my house?

The picture to the left is of Kaitlyn, Jeff, Jen and me after working on our garden all afternoon. Though the patch may seem small, we worked hard pickaxing through caliche ("a layer of soil in which the soil particles have been cemented together by lime" http://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/garden/ mg/soils/caliche.html) to make it. Apparently, just a few inches below the dusty Arionza... dust is this rock like layer that can get in the way of roots, basements, and optimistic gardeners. This week Jeff, who works at the local Food Bank, is going to bring some seeds home and we'll hopefully get some veggies planted to join the flowers!

Below is a picture of Kaitlyn posing with our new compost container. On Thursday we all had the day off thanks to Veterans Day and borrowed a truck to go collect pallets, dirt, soil, manure, etc.

We also finally bought some ceramic pots for our herbs, so hopefully basil will make it a little longer... and a clothes line so we can start taking full advantage of the dry air!

Now I'm sitting in cafe on 4th Ave, an area about a mile from our house full of cafes, thift/vintage stores, and other Tucson goodies with Jen and Jeff (who are also working on their blogs!) Tonight we're going to head down to Southside Presbyterian for a dinner and "ritual for preparing and holding peace within", in preparation for the vigil at Fort Huachuca tomorrow. For those of you familiar with the annual vigil at the SOA, this is a sister sort of event that acts as a demonstration against torture.

Well, I don't want to overwhelm this post with too much background of my life in Tucson but I'll try to explain it a little more in future posts :)