Read MoreConditioned against healing the systems oppressing us, I sit here, too. The spice hits my tongue. I love its hotness, the dare of trying more on the next taco.
Unwavering in my tiredness, delight, anger, angst. The bigness of feelings, embraced. Familiarity with oppression is normalized, to where I am chastised for any attempt to bring relief to mi gente by asking those in power to remove their heavy feet off our necks. But we keep asking, demanding, resisting, and flying.
Jesus, born into a culture, of an other-ed group, under the tyranny of empire, answered the call of those other-ed groups. Ernest Gray states, “He champions their cause. He’s been doing it for all time.”
Read MoreRead Moreibrancy and beauty will come around again.
Did you know, Revelation 5:8 paints a celestial picture of the prayers of the saints as the incense filling golden bowls, brought before the Lamb? Our prayers are not forgotten.
Read MoreHope is,
Hope is a spark.
Shooting out from my fingers,
Pow, pow, pow!
Hitting the powder on the ground,
Blasting like fireworks to the dark.
It screams,
I (boom) am (crash) here (pow).
Esperanza is the treasure found in the faces of resiliency of our tias y tios, abuelas, the heroes in our village and the ones we’ve only heard about. Those that have sung a soundtrack of peace through the night.
Read MoreCruel mysteries surround us
About a plundered earth
Where people are pillaged,
Possessions cherished,
And cravings for power, insatiable.
With certain skin shades despised
While another is idolized.
Where there are wars and walls,
Image bearers banished to cages.
Read MoreGod doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t grow tired or weary. My burdens or the burdens of those I love are never too much for him.
Instead, Jesus invites us to allow him to carry all that weighs heavily on us.
Read MoreOn one hand hope fuels me to meet creative deadlines, stirred by the notion that my words will fall on ears to hear and eyes to see. Hope ignites passion to sit with clients who are filled with rumblings of despair as they look over the debris of trauma in their lives. Hope gives birth to desire and longing for repaired relationships.
Read MoreHope is like believing someone. A feeling of trust or something like that. Hope is hmmmmm.
Read MoreA candle flickers
in the night
And the breather of breath
purses her lips
letting out
a slow and gentle
lifeline.
Read MoreWhen we believe the lie that our individual choices do not impact the collective, we are comforted by our despair. We assuage our anxiety and release ourselves from responsibility or action. Hopelessness is a kind of numbness that desensitizes us to our world and ourselves.
Read MoreTime flies. And the formless, empty places of my heart, are a greater part, partially because I cannot find my heart. A heart where spaces feel empty – like before they were transformed.
Read MoreHow will hope hold the complexity of systems, people, polarized political parties, governments, estranged friends – faith communities divided? Is hope light enough to find goodness and heavy enough to sit in despair? Will hope provide for the hopeless without asking me or them to live in fantasy?
Read MoreThose who have passed, whose blood cries out to us – the Abels, wait for us to begin to slow down. We have a difficult choice. Will we listen? In a time of protesting, rioting, anger and rage, the blood of Abel deserves an answer.
Read MoreSo, you are asking what to do? Your eager to find hope? You’re rushing to grief?
Then, do the hard and bloody work of fighting for hope.
Repent. Repent. Repent.
Read MoreThe sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day. 14 There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the Lord listened to a human being. Surely the Lord was fighting for Israel!”
Read MoreI want to mourn, I want to grieve, but I’m not ready to be comforted, not yet. I won’t be rushed to be comforted. I won’t be rushed to let go of my anger. I won’t be rushed through my rage. I cannot be. I don’t want to be. I want to linger.
Read MoreJesus stood in front of the donkey, got on it, no scars yet and they all cheered as he entered the city. I cannot watch the live feed of Facebook without wondering if I am another onlooker, or observer, cheering for the next great moment of harm in someone’s life.
Read MoreI love words
I have none
Tell me,
How do you create without a brush?
I live, do I?
I’m real, am I?
I’m living in a middle space
There are words, drinks, business, and laughs
But also I’m alone