Read More“If people don't vote, everything stays the same. You can protest until the sky turns yellow or the moon turns blue, and it's not going to change anything if you don't vote.”
Delores Huerta
Latina American labor leader and civil rights activist
Approximately 64 percent of Hispanic Students are not succeeding to where they should be in mathematics in one of our local middle schools.
Read MoreThere are close links, with research backing these links, between succeeding in 8th grade mathematics, high school graduation, college enrollment and then earnings
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.
Read MoreCommunity isn't just the physical neighborhood, homes, and streets - it's the people. Justice isn't just the laws, rules, and punishment - it's the treatment; it's how a community and society function and operate. For decades and even centuries, the United States has been working (and at many times struggling) to become more united. The idealism of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" written into the Declaration of Independence and the aim to be "one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all" from our school-aged pledges, are baked into this American Pie.
Read MoreLike Edmund, we ate the Turkish delight offered by the system, relying on their forms, processes, hoping thier procedural laws built to oppress us would do something other. Our stories cemented in stones, the scars on our skin, un-dead, and un-done.
Read MoreMichelle Obama says, “When they go low, we go high.” My dear African American colleague reminds me that supremacy creates a false dichotomy of the choices you have in a scenario – creating false equivalencies which are rarely true.
It has been a year of recognizing deep systemic injustice, longing for change and questioning, “Who are we to be with one another? How are we to be with one another?” Advent is about waiting, gestational waiting. Who are your role models for expectant waiting to birth something long overdue?
This Advent season, perhaps it’s time to sing a new song? Let it begin with me.
Read MoreAs I sit here trying to let my flame of joy live, I wonder about this. My rational brain and therapist in me say, “Yes, we hold the tensions of this world, we hold our various emotions and experiences together.” But my body and my heart are skeptical, possibly even scared, unsure if it’s safe. Safe for what you may ask? Safe to believe God is all who She says She is and I am who She says I am. Safe to be in my body as I feel the goodness of God and not fear disappointment, death, and it ending. Safe to take up space. Safe to believe that it’s okay to find rest and relief in my joy.
Read MoreMary, can you beckon us back to Advent in its’ truest form?
This year needs more than a forest of lights draped over stiff buildings.
It needs more than cheerful Christmas melodies.
Read MoreEven the restful aroma of a plucked tree’s pine and mint
Cannot swallow such vast lament,
It’s despair that hangs in the air.
And there was evening and morning the first day. Who am I to say
That a God who bends down low
Who drinks deep,
deep of my sorrow
Never hoped for a better tomorrow?
Read MoreDuring this pandemic we have been waiting, struggling with political heaviness, the loss of loved ones and the carelessness of others… but through it all, hope continues!
Read MoreDurante esta pandemia hemos esperado, siendo testigos de tiempos difíciles y pesadez política, la perdida de seres queridos y el descuido de otros… pero durante todo eso, lo que continua es la esperanza!
Read MoreAs we look back on the most memorable moments in our lives, we look back with joy and celebration. We try to recall the things that make us feel good and forgot the things that don’t. During this Advent season, what do you think it would be like if you intentionally focused on the less than pleasant memories in your past to gain new insight about yourself?
Read MoreRead MoreWisdom is grounded in embodied knowing, holding complexity without losing conviction. We must imagine a third way.
Read 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).
Cruel 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 MoreThe native Zapotec and Mexican fighters didn’t know they would survive the onslaught. Zapotec and Mexican heroes were fighting for the land under their feet — saying no to wealthy French landowners financing an unjust war — liberating their bodies from foreign domination.
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