Bread & Oranges

Bread &OrangesFall 2010a publication of the Restoration Project communityTucson, Arizona

The Borderlands + juicy morsels

What the world needs now is love, sweet love. And community. And water. And the upholding of everyone’s human dignity. And compassion. And a garden in every yard. And simplicity. And peace. And a chance to live a full life. And hope. And more bicycles and more dancing.

What’s a tender-hearted soul to do in these troubled days? If you are paying attention, it’s just so complicated and overwhelming at times. And there’s so much that cries out for our attention.

Once your eyes are opened, there’s no going back. You are stuck. Once you know, you also know you have to do something. But where to start? And then when you do begin, the whole thing can make you pretty tired, and maybe lonely. And is it enough? And where the hell is God in all this?

St. Francis, as he lay dying, is reported to have said, “I have done what is mine to do; now you must do what is yours to do.” Whew. That’s good. Because we

2 BREAD & ORANGES, Fall 2010

can’t all pull off the St. Francis thing. He didn’t want to leave a legion of mini-me’s. Francis wanted his friends to let the unique seed inside each of them grow toward the light. It is not an easy thing. It takes more personal responsibilty to figure out what your path is, than to just follow blindly along.

It’s nice to have company on your path, though. It’s essential. We probably are better off if we don’t try to do anything by ourselves.

This magazine grows from a seed that was planted in me years ago, and it grows within the soil of the community I’m part of, the Restoration Project in Tucson, Arizona. Together we have pulled together some bits that we found tasty and nourishing and now we’re sharing.

And that’s pretty much what the name of the magazine speaks to. Both bread and oranges are things that you break apart and share with others. They smell good. They are delicious. They are simple. They

are sacred. It’s also sort of a silly thing to call a magazine and we like that.

We hope you find some hope inside these pages and a sense that you don’t walk this path alone. When you are done, I hope you’ll pass it along to someone else, or tear it up and compost it, so it has a chance to keep on giving.

In this inaugural issue our focus is “Borderlands.” Several of our community members work and serve along the border with Mexico. Inside you’ll find their insights. Borders are everywhere, like the suburbs and churches. You can read about that too. For our regular features we stirred up some very fine offerings from folks in Ireland, New Jersey, Chicago, Houston, Boulder, and Tucson.

We plan to print another one of these. And if that goes well, another. So let us know if you have something to throw in the mix. The next issue’s focus will be on sustainable living. Thanks for joining us in these pages. Peace.

Carol Bradsen

On the CoverNames of those who have died crossing through the desert of Arizona from Mexico hang at El Tiradito Shrine, Tucson. Photo by Melanie Emerson.

Contributors

WritersMaryada Vallet, Jean Boucher, Kate Bradsen, Susanna McKibben, Carol Bradsen, Nishta J. Mehra, Shea Van Rhoads, Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows, Cary Gibson, Todd Heldt, Kathy Escobar.

PhotographersMelanie Emerson, Scott Griessel (www.creatista.com)

Welcome

The writers in italics live or have lived in the Restoration Project community. Writers names in bold are priests and ministers. Yup: Lady priests and ministers. Everyone who has a lighter colored name does live or has lived in Tucson. Thanks to everyone!

Want to get the next issue? Contact us at [email protected]

Bread & Oranges is produced by the Restoration Project Community in Tucson, a spiritual, social-justice based, earth-loving bunch of activists, ministers, and friends. Learn more at [email protected] or find us on Facebook by searching, “The Restoration Project, Tucson.”

This publication is printed on 100 percent recycled paper and with vegetable based ink.

Contents

Fall 2010, BREAD & ORANGES 3

But we must ask ourselves, why would people be so desperate for jobs that they are willing to risk their lives crossing through the desert? Which brings us to the other side of the food-migration connection: the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTAPAGE 9

I consider myself equal parts Existentialist and mystic, and if that seems a ridiculous contradiction, consider that contradiction itself may prove to be a spiritual path.PAGE 19

We have joked many a time that to find oneself immersed in ‘born again’ evangelicalism requires only three months of indoctrination, and a decade (and counting) to get out. PAGE 21

7

17

8

24

Slices

You do not

pass this way unknown

to us


Photos by Melanie Emerson. Taken in 2006 at El Tiradito Shrine in Tucson during a community wide vigil to remember those who have died crossing the border near Tucson. Since October 1, 2009, the remains of 214 people have been recovered in the Tucson sector. Many more are missing.

See www.derechoshumanosaz.net for more.

Focus


Food and land. Not where most of the talking heads on television these days start when they sound off about immigration. But it’s where it starts for many in Mexico and across Latin America who make the dangerous and expensive trek northward. In our first article, Susanna McKibben writes about chickens, corn, and the North American Free Trade agreement. Susanna is the Sustainable Food Program Coordinator at BorderLinks, which offers experiential education trips and workshops about the US/ Mexico border and global political economics. She leaves us with some tangible food for thought and action.

Our next two authors write out of their personal experience offering humanitarian aid to migrants. For several years, they have listened to hundreds of people’s stories, washed and bandaged blistered feet, and observed the vast migration of thousands from the perspective of aid stations in Mexico and tents in the desert. Maryada Vallet has testified before Congress about documented human rights abuses by border patrol against migrants. Jean Boucher spent several years crossing back and forth between El Paso, Texas and Juarez, Mexico, in his work with Annunciation House, an emergency shelter that offers hospitality to migrants. Annunciation House’s mission says, “We place ourselves among these poor so as to live our faith and transform our understanding of what constitutes more just relationships between peoples, countries, and economies.”

Placing ourselves on the margins, with those not often included in institutions of power, can take many forms. Our next two articles are from ministers who write about cultivating spiritual communities on the margins of church and with those on the margins of society. Episcopal priest, Kate Bradsen, shares about the joy and life that can grow when we choose to live on the border between our ancient religions and our modern world. Kathy Escobar, a pastor at the Refuge community near Boulder, Colorado, reminds us that you don’t have to live next to an international border to stand in

solidarity with those on the margins. Sometimes you can just walk around the corner.

The borderlands, wherever we find them, can be full of life and creativity. It is in the coming together of two very different cultures, social statuses, geography, world-views, where life often flourishes with a vibrancy not found anywhere else. Sometimes this best takes on meaning and reality when we eat and celebrate together across our borders.

A few years ago I had the opportunity to participate in a worship service right at the border wall between Arizona and Mexico. The picture here is taken from the U.S. side of that service. We passed the peace to one another over the wall and then passed bread and juice during communion. Our voices joined together as we sang and prayed. It was a beautiful moment. The family of God together, despite the attempts to separate us.

Today, in that very spot where we worshiped together, the United States has built the wall much higher, 14 feet instead

of the waist-high barrier that was once there. That spot now looks like the wall pictured on the other page. It is solid

metal. Even though the wall is real in some ways, in another, deeper reality, it is not real at all. God has no borders. And we don’t have to either. Once we have hearts to know this, and an imagination to see the beauty that can happen when we join together in our common humanity, we are on our way to making God’s dream—of peace and abundant life for all—a reality. Not that it will be simple or we will be spared from heart break. But we will be on our way.

Borderlands

—Carol Bradsen


Focus


Noel Andersen and Peep Foot in the backyard of Casa Mariposa, the community house of the Restoration Project. in Tucson. Photo by Scott Griessel, Creatista.

Food &Migration By Susanna McKibben

In my work at BorderLinks, I talk to groups about how our food system is connected to migration. When I ask people how the two are connected, some see an obvious link, but most do not. This is not surprising – we live in a country where we are so disconnected from our food sources that we can’t imagine that our food is connected to anything. Food comes from the grocery store, and before that, it’s anyone’s guess. Maybe from one of those cartoon farms on your package of frozen peas? Or are they grown by a giant green man?

Back in college, one of my Spanish professors who was from Chile was reminiscing one day in class about her first time in a U.S. supermarket. The most startling food was the meat. “It came in little white packages, and there was not one little drop of blood on it. How would you ever know this came from an animal?”

You wouldn’t. We don’t.

the connection

We have seven beloved chickens at our house who provide us with eggs, here follows a dramatization of a conversation between me and a visitor:

Visitor (not necessarily a vegetarian): “Awww they are so CUTE! Wait, you don’t EAT them do you?”

Me: “Well no, we eat their eggs. But I suppose we might eat one someday if it stopped laying.”

Visitor: “You would EAT your own chicken??” Me: “I’d rather eat that chicken than some nasty thing from the grocery store.”Visitor: “But they are so CUTE!”

Meat and Veg

Seeing our chickens (and contemplating what might happen to them someday) makes some people squeamish. I think in part because it forces them to think about what the sterile, white piece of meat on their plate was before it was a

sterile, white, piece of meat. And maybe then they think about where it lived, and what it ate, and who killed it. And if that meat came from the industrialized food system (which it probably did), the answers to those questions are disturbing. It probably lived in a huge warehouse with thousands of other chickens, with barely any room to move. It may or may not have had its beak cut off so it didn’t peck the other chickens. It probably ate corn mixed with hormones, a surefire recipe for big breasted birds, fast. And it was probably slaughtered by an undocumented worker, who was paid well below minimum wage, with no benefits, no job security, and no health insurance, which is scary considering that people working in meatpacking plants in this country have a 1 in 5 chance of dying or being seriously injured on the job.

It’s not just meat, either. Sorry, vegetarians, you aren’t off the hook. It’s a hard figure to come up with, but studies estimate that about 75% of our agricultural workforce is undocumented immigrants. That means that when you walk into any conventional grocery store (Safeway, Kroger’s, Giant Eagle, Jewel, Wal-Mart,

Meijer, pick your favorite), nearly all of the fruits and vegetables you see on the shelves were harvested by migrant laborers, working long hours for less than minimum wage, with no benefits, and with possible exposure to chemical fertilizers and pesticides (if the produce isn’t organic).

If farm workers were paid more for their labor, our food prices would go up (or at least the profits of Green Giant, Dole, Sunkist, etc. would go down). We get cheap fruits, vegetables, and meat at the expense of undocumented laborers. Think about that next time you go to the grocery store.

So that’s one side of the food-migration connection. Many immigrants come to the U.S. from Latin America to work in our fields and provide us with cheap food. There are no legal avenues for “unskilled” workers to come here, so they cross undocumented, maybe through the deserts of Arizona.

But we must ask ourselves, why would people be so desperate for jobs that they are willing to risk their lives crossing through the desert? Which brings us to the other side of the food-migration connection: the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA.

NAFTA is a big, complicated agreement that has had far reaching effects for the three countries that signed it, and I don’t pretend to be an expert on all aspects of the document. But it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that since NAFTA was signed in 1994, millions of small farmers in Mexico have lost their land and their jobs.

Proponents of NAFTA said before it was signed that it would not only boost the Mexican economy, but it would actually help reduce migration into the U.S. Sounds great, right? Curiously, the same year that NAFTA was signed into law, Operation Safeguard and Operation Hold the Line were implemented on the U.S.-Mexico border. Both operations involved putting walls up in urban areas, and increasing the number of Border Patrol at urban Ports of Entry. Coincidence? Or did policy makers have some inkling that a lot of people were about to lose their jobs? You decide.

Corny, but no joke

NAFTA and rural Mexican farmers seem pretty far removed from our own food system, but not when you start talking about corn. Corn, what an innocent little food. Delicious roasted, grilled, steamed, or boiled, with a little salt and pepper, or mayonnaise, lime and chile if you’re in Mexico. But you can’t talk about migration or our food system without talking about corn.

In Mexico, corn is part of everyday life. It is prevalent in the food: tortillas, tamales, pozole, atole, huaraches, and tostadas. Corn is everywhere. In rural areas of southern Mexico, corn tortillas make up the majority of calories in a meal. Especially in southern Mexico, but also throughout the country, a significant portion of the population historically has cultivated corn to eat and sell on a small scale. Certain indigenous groups identify themselves as “The people of the corn”. There is even a well-known saying in Mexico, “Sin maiz no hay pais.” Without corn there is no country.

In the U.S., since the 1970s when Secretary of the Department of Agriculture Earl Butz declared that we would grow food “from fence row to fence row” to combat high food prices, we have been growing a LOT of corn. According to the EPA, the U.S. produces about 43% of the world’s corn supply, making us the largest producer of corn in the world. The U.S. government also heavily subsidizes corn farmers, to the tune of billions of dollars a year. And we’re not talking small family farms either. According to the Environmental Working Group, from 1995-2009, 10 % of corn farmers collected 74% of all subsidies. Nearly all subsidies go to commodity crops (corn, soybeans, wheat) and practically nothing goes to fruit and vegetable producers. Our corn subsidies are so significant that the U.S. can sell corn at below the cost of production. Pretty hard to compete with that. But when NAFTA went into effect, that’s exactly what small corn farmers in Mexico were up against.

NAFTA not only eliminated “barriers to trade” (quotas, tariffs, etc), but it also mandated that Mexico reduce their own subsidies to corn farmers in order to participate in a free trade agreement. Why? Because according to the authors, subsidies are trade distorting and unfair. I wasn’t there when the negotiations were going on, but I guess they just forgot to talk about the billions of dollars the U.S. pays every year to corn farmers. Minor detail..

So there you have it. As part of NAFTA, Mexico eliminated the quotas and tariffs on corn imported from the U.S. Suddenly, the U.S. is dumping cheap corn on Mexico, small corn farmers can no longer compete, they are forced to sell their land, and where do they go? Some go to the cities, to work in maquiladoras (border factories) making electronics, seatbelts, and cars. And many desperate and disenfranchised people choose to make the long and dangerous journey to the U.S., to work in hotels, restaurants, farms, meatpacking plants, construction, childcare, etc.

There’s not a lot of talk in the political world about

negotiating NAFTA. I think politicians won’t touch it because the agricultural lobby in this country is very powerful and they (along with politicians and a few large corporations in Mexico) are making a lot of money from this trade agreement. So we need to educate the community and write letters and call our legislators to get this issue on the table. But in the meantime, something we can do as consumers to take action is to stop eating so much corn. “But I only eat corn on the 4th of July,” you say. Well, if you are like the average consumer in the U.S., you would be wrong.

Because corn is a cheap and abundant ingredient, companies have found myriad ways to process it into fun and exciting foods like salad dressing, soda, Gogurt Yogurt, ketchup, Nestle Quik, cookies, Wheat Thins, bread, chips, frozen dinners, ice cream, juice, beef, chicken, and canned soup. The list is almost as long as the list of everything in your conventional grocery store. And because of our massive corn subsidies in this country, processed foods containing corn are much cheaper than fruits and vegetables. This makes it difficult for low income folks to afford a healthy diet, and eating highly processed and sugary foods contributes to obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.

With all the talk about health care reform, why doesn’t anyone bring up the fact that we are, for all intents and purposes, subsidizing obesity?

Make a difference – vote with your fork

As the debate about border issues and immigration rages on and legislators are passing more ridiculous and racist laws, it’s easy to feel helpless and


”

“Corn, what an innocent little food. Delicious roasted, grilled, steamed, or boiled, with a little salt and pepper, or mayonnaise, lime and chile if you’re in Mexico. But you can’t talk about migration or our food system without talking about corn.

Buy food that is produced locally.

Learn to cook fresh food. I promise; it’s not that hard! Get together with friends; take turns cooking meals for each other. It’s a great way to spend time together and enjoy delicious food.

Get out of the mentality that the cheapest product is the best. There are many hidden costs to our conventional food system, don’t be fooled!

Start a garden. There’s nothing better than eating something you grew yourself. Don’t know the first thing about gardening? Sign up for a workshop or ask a neighbor or a family member for help.

Keep learning! There are so many good books, movies, documentaries, and articles about local food out there.

discouraged. The systems in place and the people in power have a lot of money and resources, and it’s easy to think that things will never change. But we do have power, especially when it comes to food. We all have to eat. We all make decisions every day about where we buy our food and what we put into our bodies.

Unfortunately, because of our current food system, many people don’t have access to fresh and local food. But even that is changing because of community-based movements, because of growing awareness that the way we currently produce food causes environmental damage and health problems on a global scale.

You can be a part of a growing movement to change the way we produce food. Your decision to buy that tomato from a local farmer instead of from

DELICIOUS WAYS TO TAKE ACTION

Join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). Pay at the beginning of the season and get a box of fresh produce every week from a local farm. Go to http://www.localharvest.org/csa/ for a directory of CSAs in your area.

Avoid buying processed foods. Shop in the perimeters of your grocery store, where you find fresh foods that mostly don’t contain corn.

Find your local farmers markets – they are out there! The number of farmer’s markets around the country has risen dramatically in the past twenty years. Take advantage of it!

Start reading labels – see where your food is coming from, and what’s in it. You might be surprised.

a conventional grocery store has a ripple effect with implications far beyond your own community.

What are the benefits of buying from local farmers?

• You are eating a high quality, fresh vegetable (way better than a bag of chips),

• You are supporting the local economy,

• You are cutting down on fuel used to transport food (the average piece of produce travels an average of 1,500 miles before it reaches your grocery store),

• You are helping a farmer who uses sustainable growing practices instead of monocropping and heavy use of pesticides and herbicides,

• You are not supporting a system that exploits undocumented workers, and

• You are sending a message to the corporations that currently control most of our food supply that we have a different vision for food production.

That message says that we care for the environment and the workers; we want to allow people to stay in their home countries and grow their own food; we want to give everyone, not just the wealthy, access to healthy, fresh, and local food; and we want to give

”“Your decision to buy

that tomato from a local farmer instead of from a conventional grocery store has a ripple effect with implications far beyond your own

Focus


power back to the community to decide what we want to eat.

Remember: Every dollar you spend is a vote for the kind of world you want to live in. Fresh, local food tastes the best, but it tastes even better when we realize that our good food choices help us to become not only better citizens in our local community, but also in the wider world.

Sources

“Broken Promises: NAFTA at 15” Witness for Peace. 2008. http://farm.ewg.org/region.php?fips=00000&progcode=total

Farm Subsidy Database: United States Summary Information. Environmental Working Group. 2009. http://farm.ewg.org/region.php?fips=00000&progcode=total

“Major Crops Grown in the United States.” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 10 September 2009. http://www.epa.gov/agriculture/ag101/cropmajor.html

McKibben, Bill. Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. McMillan, 2007.

Smith, Aaron. “Farm Workers: Take our jobs, please!” 10 July 2010. CNNmoney.com http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/07/news/economy/farm_worker_jobs/index.htm


This is a crucial moment of convergence for the U.S. activist movements for prison reform and immigrant rights. With Homeland Security increasingly funding and strengthening the prison industrial complex, our voices can be united in calling for the abolition of both the destructive prison and immigration/border systems. However, I am not calling for an end to these systems because of tax-dollars nor political ideology, but because of my belief in the value and beauty of every life in its fullness.

“Maybe I would be better off just crossing again and going to prison for many years,” upon hearing this I have an instant knot form in my gut. David is telling me his story of deportation on a dusty sidewalk in Nogales, Sonora, where he was deported months ago after living many years in Vancouver,

Washington. But one day he was stopped by police, turned over to immigration officials and deported, though he had no prior criminal record. He has been struggling to survive ever since. Sweat dripped down his forehead and rolled over a dozen fresh stitches; he was recently beaten up—it’s a tough existence living on the streets of a bordertown.

This is a similar story, told over and over again, but with slightly different details and by countless people on these same streets: Family, work, young children on the other side—then one day...deportation.

Even worse, many immigrants are given heavy criminal sentences for no other crime but being paperless. Often they are given 20-year-bans from reentering the US, which is punishable by about that many years if they are caught again. Further, many people no longer have relatives

A Case for Prison and Border Abolition: Deportations that Destroy the Human Spirit

or connections in Mexico, so they wander the streets and desert. They hear rumors of the anti-immigrant laws in Arizona and intensifying debates over reform.

Day after cruel day pass, desperation begins to take hold of the human spirit. David reports to me that his marriage has ended as a result of his deportation, as there is little hope that he could safely return and his 3-year-old daughter has more of a future as a citizen in the US. It appears as though there is nothing more messy, complex, or heart wrenching than the malicious tearing apart of families and lives.

The Obama administration is on track to set a record in 2010 for nearly 400,000 deportations and the majority of these deportees are non-criminal undocumented immigrants. These deportation and detention policies are taking a toll on the lives

of millions of children and family members left behind. And from what we see on the border, the toll on the human spirit is so damaging that good and decent people like David give up their dreams and their dignity. In that state of hopelessness, even sitting in a cage behind bars becomes appealing.

Of course there are many people who, beyond my comprehension, show great strength of spirit against this adversity. I am convinced that God’s good vision is for us to be true Community. Can you imagine living as one, free of barriers or prison bars and in compassionate abundance?

I ask your prayers for those who are beaten down and need that strength and hope now more than ever, and prayers for all of us, complicit in these deportations; that the Spirit of Life may overcome destruction.

By Maryada Vallet

Focus


I believe I was a child when I first heard the word migration; I was probably watching a nature show on television. I also remember the autumns in New Hampshire, great swarms of birds would darken the sky; migrating south. They did this every year. They have done this for centuries. This is what birds do. They do this to survive. And if they do not migrate, they die.

I do not think many privileged folk look at human migration in this way, namely, if people did not migrate they would die. Perhaps if we did, immigration policies would be different. Perhaps if we put our hearts into our politics the world might be different. I have met many migrants, but I have never met one who wanted to be a migrant. They never expressed happiness at walking away from their country, leaving culture, family, children and familiarity behind. The migrants I have met were forced to migrate. They were displaced, economically. If they did not move, they would die.

Greed:

By Jean Boucher

A Core Cause of Migration?

An economically displaced person is precisely that, “economically” displaced. Capitalism and international trade agreements can displace a person. Capitalism by its competitiveness and trade agreements by their preferences create “winners” and “losers.” Let’s take the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) for example.

NAFTA creates winners and losers on both sides of the border. In the United States there are winners and losers and in Mexico there are winners and losers. Generally, large, dominant industries and agribusinesses do not suffer, but smaller businesses do. For example, NAFTA has had positive effects on the avocado industry in Mexico and, conversely, it

has been good for the corn industry in the United States. But the poorer and smaller farmers—on both sides—have generally suffered. For instance, small corn farmers in Mexico have suffered greatly. This has not been accidental.

From my read of the NAFTA agreement, the Mexican negotiators deliberately exposed Mexican corn farmers as a means of trying to make them more efficient. I do not know that the “efficiency” piece has come about, but I have heard that many of these farmers have been unable to compete with subsidized corn imports from the United States. Consequently, once out of business, these farmers are forced to seek alternative employment (read,

means of survival) and, generally, this “alternative employment” cannot be found in their hometown. Hence, they are now “economically displaced.”

To depict this reality in another way, I once heard a labor-activist from Chihuahua, Mexico quip, “For every thirty-ton container of corn that the USA ships to Mexico, Mexico sends the United States two migrants.” Perhaps a bit reductive, but I think this appropriately sums up the reality of the economically displaced person.

Even though NAFTA trade negotiators were aware that migration is a natural consequence of “winner-centric” trade, no plans were made to alleviate this “natural consequence.” What is more just, are


A Core Cause of Migration?

agreements that consider the potential plight of the “trade loser” and provide them with some sort of economic relief or safety net. Trade negotiators should guard against making things worse for those that are the most vulnerable in our societies.

Core Causes: Capitalism, Inequality, Greed

It is important to remember that comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) and border militarization are only “gatekeepers” to the United States. These only dictate “who,” “when,” and “how” someone may enter. But I do not see CIR and militarization as the “why” people are migrating.

I believe capitalism and a number of overarching themes—competition, inequality, advantage, power, greed, ignorance—are the real causes for human migration. Capitalism, in case we have not been paying attention, is not a very forgiving system (or mentality). There are many stories of those who have succeeded in capitalism, sometimes called the American Dream, but I believe that there are many more stories of those who have been crushed (though these stories do not get much of a hearing). Many migrants carry these stories with them and, personally, listening to these stories has expanded my view of capitalism, inequality, and the immigration debate.

Inequality

A discussion on trade agreements like NAFTA and economic systems like capitalism can be embedded or adjacent to another theme: inequality. For example, when an economically dominant country enters trade negotiations with a poorer country, it is difficult for me to see how the dominant country will not take advantage of the situation. Though both Mexico and the United States have things to offer each other (i.e., markets, goods, services, and labor), the United States was dominant before negotiations and has remained so after negotiations. Structures of inequality seem very difficult to change.

Maybe economic equality is just an ideal to be strived for? I cannot really imagine an “equal” world, where a doctor and a dishwasher earn the same pay, but I would like to see something more equal than what currently exists. Perhaps you have heard of “fair trade”? These are not perfect products, but a lot more just than what we might be used to The idea behind fair trade is to try to pay a person something close to the real value of their labor. For example, I have heard that in the sneaker industry, workers in China receive about 3 percent of the cost of a pair of shoes. I am aware that there are shipping, market, and overhead costs, but some thing here does not ring true or, better yet, fair.

What unbridled capitalism has allowed is something called the race-to-the-bottom. The race-to-the-bottom is when a corporation sets out to find the people in the world who will work for the lowest wage to make a product. And these may be desperate people without many choices. This scouring of the globe for the cheapest labor source can be an easy setup for those with power to take advantage of those without.

On the other end of the production process is a similar search to find the wealthiest people willing to pay the highest price for the finished product. If a corporation is able to maximize this search for the cheapest worker and the highest bidder, they will have achieved a maximization of profit. This may also be labeled a few different ways: doing business, basic capitalism, competition, greed, and/or exploitation.

Greed

None of this is seen as illegal though. Presently, we do not have a world state or a world minimum wage and there is not a world government to enforce global fairness. But I also find something inadequate about pointing a blaming finger at capitalism; it just seems like a moving abstraction. I would rather blame something that at the same time might feel shame or guilt. But I have not seen too may people excited about raising their hand and admitting that perhaps they are greedy or enjoy being part of a system that takes advantage of others.

There is a book by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva called Racism without Racists. What I hear from this title is that I can easily admit that racism exists in society, but when looking for where the actual racists are I am not about to raise my hand. I see the same dynamic when it comes to greed—I will not raise my hand! And is there a global system that takes advantage of the disadvantaged? Yes! But do I want to raise my hand and admit that I partake in it? No!

The Cure

The three things that I think would help remedy global economic inequality and the consequent immigration issue are: a global labor movement, a consumer movement, and stronger global governance. As difficult as it may be, laborers will need to unite—they will need to play a role in liberating themselves from their disadvantaged positions. Consumers will also need to make more ethical choices around the products they consume. We can begin by asking ourselves, “Is it local? Were workers being exploited? Do I really need it?” As consumers more and more of us will need to liberate ourselves from our greed and complicity in an unjust system. And finally, stronger global governance will be necessary to enforce more just structures. This is slowly happening, but it needs to start happening on a grander scale. It is no secret that there are many corporations with more power than many nation-states and they wont be too excited about being policed.

What can I do about all this?

Well, I do not have the answers. Things are very complicated. But sometimes, in my simplicity, I think (in the spirit of Lennon and McCartney) that “All we need is love!” Maybe, if I want to be part of the solution, then I will have to start thinking more globally and loving more locally—as Gandhi said, “Being the change I wish to see in the world!” And locally means I will need to examine my very self and the role I play in this unloving system.

I cannot completely stop consuming, but I can try to consume less and more wisely—and this will require some restraint and some education. And can I allow myself to sit with, and live more in the questions? How can I live more simply? How much is really enough? What things have I become too attached to? Where did they come from and what is their production history? Have I become excessively competitive? And in what ways am I afraid to lose my privilege and its benefits? I find it very hard to admit that I am greedy, but when I have witnessed migrants, with certainly much less than I, being extremely generous with what little they have, I have to stop and ask the question “Am I a lot greedier than I think?”


Danny had been preparing for baptism for years. We went through the formal process of preparation back when I was serving as a priest in a traditional Episcopal congregation. But he didn’t feel ready. He hadn’t grown up in the church. Everything was new. He wanted to be sure he really knew what he was committing to. We continued to meet for spiritual direction over the next few years, and the idea of baptism was discussed again and again. So a few months ago, when he told me he was ready and wanted to get baptized right away, I was not entirely surprised.

In fact, the timing was perfect. The monsoons were approaching here in the desert, as was the feast of Saint John the Baptist, often used as a time to pray for the coming rain. We decided the baptism would happen after the upcoming regular Wednesday night supper. Two of our community members prepared a special mashed potato bar in honor of Danny’s favorite food. After the meal, as the sun was setting, we gathered around a cattle tank in the backyard. The night before we had dedicated the metal, coffin-shaped tank as a vessel for baptism and in honor of Danny’s deceased father.

Even though the words and prayers for the evening were taken directly from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, the crowd gathered was very different from the one you would typically find at an Episcopal church on Sunday morning. There were a handful of Episcopalians, but there were even more Quakers, many of whom had never witnessed a baptism before. There were also one or more people present from the Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran and

Presbyterian traditions. Finally, there were a number of people who come from no faith tradition at all. Some of them have found a spiritual home at the Restoration Project community. Some of them were friends of Danny who came to support him on this momentous occasion.

This community was the one into which Danny was baptized. A “church” that reflects the diversity of a multi-faith, multi-cultural world. At the same time, Danny was baptized into the same ancient tradition that millions of Christians have been baptized into since the time of Christ. We sang. I spoke about what it means to be called beloved by God. We read a Rumi poem. We read from the bible. And it worked. It is possible to be unapologetically true to one’s own tradition, and yet simultaneously open to the miscellany that is our modern world.

It’s important that we are here. Because so many people stand at the border of their faith traditions. Some of us feel distance or trepidation when it comes to churches or organized religion. We don’t want to step inside. Some of us feel connected to the faith of our family, while simultaneously distanced from it. Others of us feel like we are standing along the sidelines of a faith and religious tradition we did not grow up in. We wonder if it is okay to ask questions, to accept a variety of truths, and to challenge the way things have always been. That borderland can be a lonely place. We long for the community and spiritual practices that we once knew or see for the first time, but the distance between our culture and the church culture which seems to hold these things, seems too far a chasm to jump.

Focus

Backyard Baptism:Finding God & Each otheron the border of church

”“We are not walking away from the hard questions. We are finding that God is here in the borderlands too, not just behind the doors of churches.

But the truth is, there are so many of us standing here at the border together. We are finding ways to make faith work and have deep meaning in a new and vibrant context. We are not walking away from the hard questions or from the reality of our lives and those around us. We are finding that God is here in the borderlands too, not just behind the doors of churches. And we are finding each other. When we practice our faith at the border of church as we’ve inherited it and the complexities of the modern world, we often discover rich soil in which new, but beautiful things can grow.

If you look at the numbers, many mainline churches seem to be in a death spiral. But the faith of that church need not die. Dying can also be understood as a transformation from one form into another. As long as we are willing to keep standing at the border of our ancient religions and our modern world, we will find that even as the sun is setting on this day, a new kind of believer is being born.

By Kate Bradsen


“I just want to wake up one morning and want to live,” my friend from the Refuge, our beautiful, messy, eclectic faith community, told me this last weekend. A single mommy, she struggles with depression & anxiety and every day is an effort in survival. She lives on about $600 a month plus foodstamps. She is doing an amazing job with what she’s up against, but the bottom line is that her life has never been or ever will be easy.

She lives in the borderlands of the suburbs, in a nice looking apartment building on the outside. I bet when the average person drives by they never suspect what it’s really like to live there. That every person that lives there is on Section 8, that the community is racked with drugs, abuse, poverty, and its share of violence.

I want to rescue her, but I can’t. I want her to believe that she is more than all of the ugly things she’s been told she is over the years. I want her to be able to pursue some of her dreams someday. I want her to wake up one morning and want to live.

I do not live in the margins. I live in a nice house in the suburbs. My husband has a good job and we have

health benefits. We both have good educations. When I need to buy food or gas, I do.

And the truth is that a lot of people really have no idea what life is like for my friend. I used to hear comments all the time about “those people, if they just had more of a work ethic, they’d never need to use the government’s money...they’re just lazy...they take advantage of the system.”

I am quite sure the reason they can make such callous and uninformed comments is because they’ve never had a friend in that situation. They’ve never sat in their living room and listened to their story. They’ve never spent time hearing them share their dreams. They’ve never had the privilege of knowing their hearts and seeing them for more than their circumstance. The chasm between their two experiences is too wide and the likelihood that they’ll ever sit on the same couch is slim to none.

I believe this needs to change. We must, as human beings, cross the chasms of the things that separate us, and enter into each other’s experiences. In the kingdom of God, there are no margins. There are no “them” and “us.” Sure, there’s a great

disparity between me and my friend when it comes to socioeconomics, but down deep, we both struggle with the same things—believing that we are valuable, that God is good, and that there’s more to this life than our current circumstances. Our similarities, not our differences, should be the glue that holds us together.

At the refuge, we have people who make $600 a month living next to people who make $6,000 a month. We have people who have doctorate degrees next to people who don’t yet have their GED’s. We have people who have never known deep pain next to people who have been ravaged by abuse.

It’s the craziest thing to see. Sometimes, I sit back and chuckle and think how not-like-society some of these moments are. Yeah, but it is most definitely so-like-the-kingdom-of-God that Jesus talked so much about. In Christ’s economy, we are all equally valuable, important, treasured, loved. The amount of money in our pocket or how much education we have is irrelevant.

The church, in my opinion, needs to quit living separate from the margins, keeping a safe distance

from “those” people or haughtily believing that somehow money or food tossed in that direction can replace relationship. We have so much to learn from each other and until we are willing to cross the barriers that keep us separated and enter into each other’s experiences, we will miss out on what Jesus really meant when he said that when we loved each other, we love him. It’s easy to love people who look like us, make the same money as us, live like us. But how much beauty do we miss by keeping ourselves safely insulated from the raw realities of other people’s experiences? I have never learned more about the craziness of the kingdom of God than I have in the past five years, when I took a giant step across the great divide into the margins, the borderlands of society. And the most glorious part is that the margins have ceased to exist. I have seen Christ fill in the space between us with sweet earth toiled with love and hope and equality and value. And as the ground has been tilled, the margins continue to disappear and we end up in the same beautiful field together, hoping for the day when my friend wakes up and wants to live. I believe it’ll come.

Longing for No more marginsBy Kathy Escobar


Roots


In my family, I am my own living history. The first American, the first to be first generation. The first to spend her whole life outside of India. Perhaps, then, I was destined to tell stories, the way outsiders often do. Song of songs, song of myself, keep me busy singing, seeking my place in the world. Of course it started in India. Of course it was this place which set the stage for what was to come.

Fifth grade, awkward years. Poufy, too-adult-style hairdo, thick glasses, baby fat. An era out of which I am convinced all pictures should be destroyed; how unsure I felt in my own skin, in a country I did not know firsthand but felt indebted to nonetheless. During that visit, my mother’s brother, Mohan, gave me a notebook—a small, flimsy, cardboard thing with a cheap rendition of Disney cartoon characters on the back. “Keep a record,” he said to me, being the worldly, well-traveled air steward he was, who had taught me how to say “thank you” and “you’re

“It is religion that carries a language. The river of language is God.”

—Don DeLillo, The Names

welcome” in half-a-dozen languages and inspired in me the desire to know about things, I did. I wrote with pen, which made me feel very grownup, and kept, for the most part, a straightforward and newsy account, describing meals, shopping trips, sight-seeing outings, visits to relatives’ apartments, and the names of everyone I met. More than once, I made genuinely distraught observations about the extreme poverty I had never seen before but which was suddenly all around me.

I wrote every day, dating each entry’s beginning and leaving my signature, like a stamp, at each end. I kept the writing private, guarded fiercely my book, found it hard to write when others were around. I began taking the journal with me everywhere, jotting down scenes and faces, keeping myself entertained during long visits at sari shops. The doing of it came very naturally to me and I started to think I might be pretty good. Having long been a voracious reader,

the thought of being a writer connoted respect and mystery. My handwriting was atrocious which only added to the glamour.

......................India’s most crowded city, Bombay (now

Mumbai), lies along the subcontinents’ western edge and looks out onto the Arabian Sea. The beach makes itself available for all the various pursuits one might have in a city this size—running, eating, playing, law-breaking, begging, business-dealing, praying, worshipping. Vendors hawk Coca-Cola and Technicolor paintings of Hindu deities with equal fervor. This is India; bright lights and squalor, lush vegetation and the detritus of capitalism, old priests in dhotis and young women in tight jeans. The land of contradictions, where everything is happening very fast.

The Mahalaxmi Temple is one of the city’s many landmarks that hold court along the coastline. It’s

By Nishta J. Mehra

Writing into Faith


not a particularly grand temple, neither very opulent nor charming. It is famous, like many things, for the story behind it. In the late 1700s, William Hornby was the governor of Bombay. A visionary man, he planned a massive civil engineering project to create a single landmass from the seven islands which at that time made up the city. This scheme, ambitious and full of foresight as it seems in retrospect, was rejected by Horby’s supervisors at the East India Company because of its extravagant projected cost. Not one to be discouraged, Hornby proceeded without approval. All was going well until a fortification wall near the coastline began to collapse. The wall was rebuilt, stronger, thicker, but high tides pushed it down again. This failure, coupled with the lack of official support and funding, stirred up dissent, and abandonment of the project seemed imminent.

Just so, one of the project’s chief engineers had a dream. In this dream, the goddess Lakshmi appeared, in all her splendor, with instructions: Search the seabed, she told the sleeping man, and there you will find three statues. One is a likeness of me, the other two are of my sisters, Kali and Saraswati. Bring them to the surface, house them in a worthy way, and your third-built wall will stand. And so the Mahalaxmi temple was built, and so does the Hornby Vellard still stand against the sea.

After walking through that very temple, my family and I stood on Hornby’s rocky shore and threw flower garlands into the Arabian Ocean’s foamy water. A few weeks later, I would return to America, to Tennessee, to Memphis, to the all-girls’ prep school I attended, where the legends and mythology of Hinduism were exotic and out of place, where I was the only one out of sixty students to make a clay angel without blond hair, where I was the best student in Bible class because, hey, I’ve never heard these stories before! And healing lepers didn’t seem any stranger to me than dreaming about goddesses and digging up statues from a seabed.

My parents sent me to St. Mary’s Episcopal School because it was the best education money could buy. Unlike some immigrant parents, they were unconcerned by the school’s religious affiliation; my mother herself was educated by Roman Catholic nuns, and taught at a parochial school before she was married. Both my parents appreciated the incredibly diverse and tolerant religious landscape of India. Their friends, festivals, school holidays, symbols, and rituals ran the gamut from Hindu to Buddhist to Sikh to Christian; the lines of observance between these faiths were blurry. As my parents discovered, so they passed on to me; Hinduism is a big umbrella, there’s a lot of room underneath.

.....................................

We drove home from the Bombay beach at sunset, just before the Friday evening crowd arrived. One of the few distinct memories I have from that trip which cannot be tied back to a photograph’s suggestion—the windows of our taxi were rolled down halfway, a compromise between the welcome cool air and the unwelcome smell. From my place in the backseat, I held a view to the south, out towards the water. With the sun blazing orange above the horizon, everything within my view came in a silhouette of black, the water shimmering from behind. At the very edge of the shore stretched a moving line of human figures, perhaps a quarter-mile long, making their way across a land bridge which the tide had recently pulled back to reveal. A sound, what I now know to be the muezzin’s call, came clear across traffic and in through our car window. The voice, male, was full of dips and curves, made

no sense to me the way words are supposed to make sense, one in front of the other. But I was already accustomed to singing prayers in Sanskrit, knowing simultaneously exactly what they meant and also having no idea. Melody of worship was familiar to me, even if this particular tongue was not.

I knew, instinctively, what was drawing those people across that narrow strip of land, much better than I knew the details of Friday prayers at Muslim mosques. It seemed to me the most beautiful thing in the world, and the simplest, that a voice should come from the sky to call men and women to prayer.

My mother’s (historically flawless) memory recalls that I was silent for a long time during that car ride, uncharacteristic of my twelve-year-old self. When I turned my head later to answer a question of hers, she saw that I had been crying. I was then and later in my journal, utterly at a loss to articulate why.

.....................................

I have learned that I do two things by default—seek words and seek God, or expressions of God, the sacred, the holy, the inexplicable. Journal after journal followed my return from India; I wrote and wrote and couldn’t stop writing. So, too, I began trailing friends and neighbors into synagogues and churches and mosques, going wherever with whomever would take me. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular—I was busy seeking the experience of experience itself.

Religion offered me a context for my words. In this land, words are at once a veil and a window, the tools to illuminate or obscure. Where our human language may be inadequate, but it is all we have to give. Study became worship became revelation became belief. That my visceral impulse toward the written word was nothing short of holy.

All of the world’s religions teach that the words inside are a gift and a power waiting to be used. They whispered to me through the pages of their sacred texts, sneaked into my class assignments and paper topics:

Judaism: that even the name of G-d is so full and ripe that it dare not even be written.

Hinduism: that a book is such a sacred thing, it should never be placed on the floor.

Christianity: that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Islam: that everything should be covered with the looped and curling words of Allah.

Buddhism: that when your teacher bestows a sacred mantra, it should remain inside of you, never spoken to another living soul.

“I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine” —Song of Solomon 6:3

Then, a surprise. My studies brought me to Jill, a professor in the Religious Studies department at Rice University. I learned there are times when the word is not enough. I learned to be grateful for the curves in life’s path which I never could have predicted. Thank goodness my experience is not limited to only that which I can imagine—oh what a small, narrow window it would

Roots


be. Small enough that it would never cast this woman, my professor!, born nineteen years before me to blue-collar, grow-it, kill-it, eat-it parents in Louisiana, as the person I would cast my lot with. No no, words do me little good here, truly.

Charismatic believers in Pentecostal churches like the one Jill grew up in practice the centuries-old tradition of glossolalia, or speaking in tongues. When the Spirit of God enters us, there is too much to say which could never be said in ordinary tongues. Instead, we are given tongues of fire, tangled languages and wild sounds which signify the presence of something greater. The words are unfamiliar, but it is still the language that we crave.

a memory—Shaw’s Tattoo Studio, Houston, TX

The black seeps into me slowly, sure of itself in a way I envy. There is no mistake in this mark, no going back. I have come here for ink; because I could use some certainty; because I need to remind myself of what I believe. I believe in this body, its dark skin stretched out across my back, exposed to florescent lights and gloved hands. I believe in the bismillah which is being drilled and drawn into my flesh: Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim; in the name of Allah, most Gracious and Almighty. In calligraphy, and on my back, it can look like this:

This is the blessing which Muslims invoke at the start of any endeavor, be it the beginning of a day, a job, a letter, or a life. Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim; pray be mindful that I walk always in the presence of God. Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim; pray my intention to serve God in all that I do. Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim; pray make me a vehicle for the glory and majesty of God.

Do I believe in this blessing? Does it matter? It probably does, or would, to most people. And doesn’t to me. Never has. I consider myself equal parts Existentialist and mystic, and if that seems a ridiculous contradiction, consider that contradiction itself may prove to be a spiritual path. Perhaps I owe this comfort with grey space to the wide breadth of Hinduism, at least as manifested through the lives of my parents—I was spared the oft-brutal passage through dogmatic early religion, ironically the very experience Jill lived through, thrived in, and eventually threw off to meet me on the other side. I myself haven’t had much to throw off, or away. Perhaps I was given just enough—enough ceremony, enough mystery, enough pain, enough discipline, enough structure, enough beauty. Just enough to keep me seeking more.

This would be hardfor you if you were weakbut you’re not weak.

—Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

The desert is a good place for solitude and sacrifice (see: Anthony, Augustine, Rumi). And so I find myself in Tucson, Arizona, a town where I know no one, where I have moved, alone, to pursue my written work (which I have, up to this point, primarily kept secret) and see what I can make of

myself. It is the single scariest thing I have done. It will get worse before it gets better. Left alone with me, myself. Hello, me. Who are you in there?

Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering. —Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

My love is here with me now, and we have chicken and potatoes in the oven, and a bottle of wine on the kitchen island. We are living, for a moment, in the domestic couple world of two people—two people in the bed, two people in the car, a restaurant party of two, two tickets for the matinee. For a few days, we will be two, and she will come to know me in my new space, and we will grow memories here together, so that I can remember the place her body occupied long after it is gone. She will return to Texas, the place we learned each other first, where the work that she loves demands her, seeks her spoken words as this place seeks the written of mine. We are two of a kind, who spin language and study religion.

She has just returned from Jerusalem with a mezuzah, small and slender, as a gift for me. The mezuzah is a Jewish vessel for words, holy words, verses or prayers or scripture to be displayed in the home as a blessing and as a reminder. “I want you to write something,” I say. “I want you to write a prayer to go inside.” It only takes her a moment to decide what to write. She asks to see my Bible, and turns the soft, silky pages quickly but lovingly, with an authority that shows she is not looking aimlessly. With pen in hand, she forms the tall, tree-like letters, characteristic of her tiny hands. I try not to watch her as she writes—I want my prayer to be a surprise. Then, the sound of ink stops, and she pushes the thick, white scrap of paper from her wineglass to mine.

He said to me, O mortal, eat what is offered to you; eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel. So I opened my mouth, and he gave me the scroll to eat. He said to me, Mortal, eat this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it. Then I ate it; and in my mouth it was as sweet as honey.

—Ezekiel 1:1-3

I have deep-seeded faith in something I can not even speak of, and I hesitate to call it God because the word has become almost ugly to me, and I know that every human attempt to label and limit and contain only casts a pale shadow up next to the glory that is with us on this often seemingly miserable earth. I have access to so little of it—I know I would have to learn forever and then some in order to appreciate all that is with us, all that is around, the sound and the fury, the fear and the trembling, the electric current of it all that runs through our very blood, that makes us fall in love, that creates babies, that builds the Taj Mahal, that makes the ducks fly south for the winter. Perhaps it is just a crazy accident. But I want to be ready for that scroll when the time comes.

Nishta J. Mehra is a proud alumna of both Rice University, where she earned her B.A. in Religious Studies in 2005 and the University of Arizona, where she earned her M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction in 2007. Her work has been published in Crab Orchard Review, Terrain.org, and the Houston Chronicle.


community

Tuesday Group. It’s not the most creative name in the world but it’s not the name that matters– it’s the spirit behind it. That said, we also go by, “Team Fury” – given to us by a barista friend in a local coffee house who felt we needed a “superhero” name. Which seems a little ironic, as furious is the last thing we are; usually it feels more like Team Furry. Because it’s a warm and welcoming place to be.

If there’s one thing we all agree on – and agreeing has never been a rule of ours – it’s that this is a vital part of our week, our lives. The most important thing about Tuesday group is being committed to others and having commitment of others in return. Every Tuesday night we gather to share a homemade meal together and then we move to the ‘comfy chairs’ and talk. We typically read a book together and take turns to lead our time of reflection, and every once in a while we share bread and wine together in a very simple form of communion ... it’s that simple.

We eat together and then we talk together. And we’ve been journeying like this, together, week in week out for years... there’s currently eight of us at the table (plus two boys raucously running around it) and it feels like this...

When I’m at Tuesday group I’m putting my legs under a family table. There’s nothing flash about it. But we are evangelical about its beauty. Our sense of togetherness matters more than anything. We choose to be at the table and we come to it in our fragility and vulnerability.

I love that this is the one place I can go where there’s no bullshit. We come as we are. No pretence. No pretending we have it all together. We don’t even have to pretend we want to be there on the nights when we arrive feeling burdened. Yet when one is absent from the table, their absence is felt by all. And that means a whole lot to us. When illness or travel keeps me from the table, I know I am being actively missed by a group of people who love me. And that’s a precious feeling.

People wax lyrical about the importance of community in a world where connection and relating seems ever more hard to come by. I always say, “But community is simply committing to those in your midst. It’s not rocket science. It comes down to a choice to share one’s life compassionately.”

Tuesday. It’s the new Sunday.For this group of friends in Belfast, Northern Ireland, committing to meet together for supper once a week has taken on a life of its own. It’s their anchor point. A safe space. Many grew up in churches, but no longer feel comfortable there. Out of their longing for a place to let down their guard and be welcomed as they are, they cooked and talked and loved each other into a sacred community that makes them not only less alone, but also more human, and thus, more holy. ”

“We’re not attempting to change the world, but we’re helping one another transform. Unfolding into our true selves together. We never instruct. Never lecture. Avoid judging. Try to listen to one another’s wisdom as well as one another’s pain. We choose to be our flawed human selves as honestly as we can. That to me is community at its heart.

By Cary Gibson


We’re not attempting to change the world, but we’re helping one another transform. Unfolding into our true selves together. We never instruct. Never lecture. Avoid judging. Try to listen to one another’s wisdom as well as one another’s pain. We choose to be our flawed human selves as honestly as we can. That to me is community at its heart.

If asked if Tuesday group is church, I say it’s what church could be and fails to be, if only because church has too many people in it to be truly vulnerable. I let my guard down in Tuesday group. I come unmasked. Or at least, that’s what I attempt to do. And I feel responsibility to be real with these friends.

Some folks have felt excluded because we don’t have an open door policy. But we have chosen to be a safe space. And more often than not, those that feel excluded don’t want to actually make the commitment to never do anything else on a Tuesday night but meet at this same table.

Throughout much of my twenties there was repeated conversation about the concept of intentional community, as year on year myself and many contemporaries shifted further and further to the fringes of the church. Conversations driven, perhaps, by the desire for relationships based on common purpose, and perhaps, more often, by a desire to feel like one fitted in. For if one wanted to fit in, then church was not the place to be.

Christendom often seems to be a place for misfits, but in my generation, the question seemed to be, are they my kind of misfits? And the resulting answer too often was, no.

For sure, albeit dominated by different denominations depending on where one grew up, this island is a conservative environment in which to do that growing. I have likened living in Belfast as being an abrasive place – a culture to sharpen yourself against. Despite increasing secularisation, Northern Ireland remains a religiously conservative environment, akin in some strange way to the Bible Belt of America. But with more rain.

For those who are and have been part of Tuesday

group, the majority have grown up in evangelical Protestantism. Our birthplaces and nationalities vary, as did the kind of homes and churches we were born into. While each of us has taken a unique spiritual journey, be we Baptist, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Brethren, Anglican, we have each witnessed conservative religious culture with that sense of mis-fitting and felt hunger to think for ourselves.

We have joked many a time that to find oneself immersed in ‘born again’ evangelicalism requires only three months of indoctrination, and a decade (and counting) to get out. We might liken church to often being in a bubble – keeping one separate, apart. Or like a sinking ship, with preachers telling us to batten down the hatches and maintain purity from the sin-ridden world outside the doors.

But to grow into adulthood is to experience a world that is different from that we were warned against. The bubble only works effectively if it remains intact. To enter the world of work and university is to enter a world where the preaching driven by fear and exclusion doesn’t hold sway and where black and white thinking doesn’t always answer the desire to live well in the world.

This has been a gift of the group – to feel one is amongst fellow travellers who ‘get’ that sense of misfitting. Yet, despite a shared sense of the impoverishment of Christianity defined as having a set of “right” answers to the confusion of life, we are diverse. Different nationalties, ages, life experiences, jobs, interests, identities. Some continue to attend congregations, others not, and with varying degrees of (dis)satisfaction for the place we find ourselves on our journey.

We all continue to journey with hunger for something ‘more than.’ And I think it is fair to say we have all increasingly embraced over the years thinking with our hearts as much as our heads. Tuesday group has never been a place to be told how to think, let alone what to think.

I have likened living in Belfast as being an abrasive place – a culture to sharpen yourself against. Despite increasing secularisation, Northern Ireland remains a religiously conservative environment, akin in some strange way to the Bible Belt of America. But with more rain.

And so that gift has been a space where one journeys authentically as an individual but with a solidarity of togetherness. There is an African proverb, if you want to journey fast, go alone. If you want to journey well, go together. That’s as good a motto for this little community always in becoming as any.

But that sense of misfittedness-and-hunger-in-solidarity is not the full story. Not by a long shot. For if we have all felt to varying degrees theological dissatisfaction, and all too often outright fear and oppression in our religious journeys, we have also experienced brokenness. There are hard experiences in our stories. We carry stories of fear, violence, loss and death—on the streets of Belfast and in the home. And if gentle committed ongoing conversation has been the method for our shared journey, then silent witnessing through listening has been a gift we have shared too.

I do not want, however, to paint a bleak picture of who we are. For if there are shadows in our pasts, and in our presents, then what characterises Tuesday nights for me is warm light. Of peals of laughter and enthusiasm. The best kind of family meal with a deep sense of unconditional welcome. To borrow a phrase from Julia Cameron, this is a table at which one always feels all is cloaked in the “patina of the cherished.”

Each of these people has been Christ to me. This group has been a safe haven for me in dark

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT TUESDAY GROUP

“Collective decision making, shared responsibility

for the success of the group. No monopoly on the

truth or enlightenment. No one requiring account-

ability without willingness to be vulnerable them-

selves. And no one to get burned out by a require-

ment to artificially maintain the group by providing

weekly content. The group is self-sustaining

because we are each equally responsible for its

future. We care for each other and care for the

space. And could I say, ‘fuck’ as often as I do in a

gathering united by dogma? Possibly, or perhaps

not, but that’s the beauty of Tuesday group—there

is no pretence or requirement to behave. Just an

invitation to belong.”

—Stu


times. When I started coming along I was married and turned up as part of a pair. Now, following divorce, I am single. In between they have seen me through the horror of separation, the flush of new love, the heartache of new love lost, the energy of creativity and the exhausted loneliness of depression. They have seen me off on travels to far off places and welcomed me home with prodigal embrace.

For one who isolates all too easily to protect oneself from the sharper edges of life, the disappointments, the hurt, Tuesday group is a consistent example of the best benefit of community – the gift of Love in the face of reality... of being really real with one another. You can’t meet together every week and wear a mask. Part of the commitment is to be yourself and to welcome others to be themselves.

Freedom is not just freedom to think, but freedom to be. And this highlights a benefit of having a safe, committed group. This is not a flit-in-and-out operation. Other friends know that if something is happening on a Tuesday, we won’t be there. The group takes priority. This is because inclusion and commitment creates safety. Safety to be real.

The members of this group are an anchor, a tether. They will never stop being that, wherever I am in the world. Misfits. Broken. Cherished. Witnesses. Friends. My Family-of-Choice.

Others have commented that I have been lucky to be a part of this family. I guess I am. I don’t know if I will ever find another table at which I feel so welcome and deeply known. These people are irreplaceable in my life. And all it took was agreeing to join the table once a week for a meal and be as much myself as I could dare. I don’t have to be Christian, I don’t even need to believe in God. But I feel I am in the presence of God when I am with them. And I have been held together by their Love and witness.

Tuesday. It’s the new Sunday. And I am more grateful than there will ever be words for.

community

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT TUESDAY GROUP

Rumi describes love as being like the moon appearing in your window—it arrives full and whole, like a gift. My entering in to Tuesday Group was a bit like Rumi’s idea of love. . . a full and complete welcome into the community was present as soon as I said “yes.” Although Tuesday Group is a quiet sort of undertaking that exists for the people that are part of it, the commitment that individuals within the group make to each other and to the group speaks loudly; so I had heard of Tuesday Group long before I was invited in. As the newest member of the group, I was curious about how it would feel to come into a group of people that had been committed to each other for years. What I found has redefined my concept of what it means to welcome.

What struck me on my first night was that the members of Tuesday Group have figured out a way of being with each other that allowed me to enter into their circle with the expectation and offering of the same sort of commitment, responsibility, and honesty that they employ with each other. Although relationships had yet to be formed and personal histories accounted for, what already existed on my first evening was a feeling of complete acceptance of me and of all I bring with me into the group, both life giving and difficult. This sense of welcome seemed a conscious decision on the part of the group and had very little to do with who I was or what I could bring to the group. More of an enveloping than even a welcoming, my entrance into the group felt like a sort of homecoming. An arrival into a space of safety and acceptance where, even as we change and as relationships change, the commitment to each other remains the same.—Sara

This is not a flit-in-and-out operation. Other friends know that if something is happening on a Tuesday, we won’t be there. The group takes priority. This is because inclusion and commitment creates safety.

TUESDAY GROUP FAVORITESWRITERSfrederick beuchner, walter brueggermann, john

o’donohue, henri nouewn, annie dillard, james

allison, thomas merton, flannery o’connor, dor-

othy day, anne lamott, kathleen norris, ignatius

of loyola, julian of norwich, richard rohr, shaine

claiborne, john bell, david dark, mary oliver

MUSICMax Richter, Helios, Peter Broderick, Spokes,

Ulrich SchnaussYEARLY PILGRIMAGEGreenbelt festival: www.greenbelt.org.uk

ONLINE RADIO SHOWSpeaking of Faith on American Public Media


Baking scones is one of my most favorite things to do. Over the past 25 years I’ve baked a variety of scones from the decadently buttery

Scottish scone to the classic and easy currant scone from The Joy of Cooking cookbook. Anyone can make scones I say. But my friend Nancy begs to differ. Because she is a food professional I’m inclined to believe her but deep down I wonder if she is just buttering me up. “You have ‘scone hands’” she tells me. “Not everyone can make scones like this—tender, flavorful, slightly addictive.”

Scone hands. These hands of mine have been perfectly functional but have too often fallen short of my own expectations. No matter how many hours I practiced, my right hand has never been able to execute legible penmanship. Years of art and architecture studio classes have rendered me merely proficient at drawing leaving me to abandon dreams of a career in architecture. Never until Nancy’s statement did I realize that my ability to bring together simple ingredients—flour, butter, some cream and fruit, sugar—and shape them into something worth getting out of bed for, was less about being able to read a recipe as it was about listening to the intuition of my hands. For most of my life I thought baking was a science: combine the right ingredients in the right proportions and under the right heat conditions to yield an edible

(and hopefully delicious) result. But perhaps I was underestimating how much of baking is actually art. Finally, my hands had found their artistic outlet in baking scones.

About once a week I’ll rise, begin preparations for some press pot coffee, and begin to bake scones. It doesn’t take very long—flour, sugar and salt are whisked together, butter is quickly cut in to create a mixture with that “peas and breadcrumbs” look to it. Eggs and cream, maybe a bit of orange zest, are whisked together and quickly added to the dry ingredients. All of that is prelude to the good part—the kneading of the dough. Feeling the loose ingredients take shape in my hands reminds me that I can create and transform. In smooth, swift, motions, I soon have a dough that is ready to be cut into triangles, brushed with cream, dusted with sugar, and eased into a hot oven for 15 minutes of baking. I can smell the scones before they’re done and pull them out a minute later once they’ve taken on the golden hue that tells me they’re ready.

My friend Nancy and I laugh each time I bring a plate of scones to church. We try to figure out what’s behind my ‘scone hands’. I think it is just practice, practice, practice—and body memory—that makes it possible for me to make a batch of scones in the dark if I had to. Nancy thinks it is the fact that my hands are always cold. Cold hands mean that the

By Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows

Hands by God

Scones by Jennifer

Morsel

butter doesn’t melt under my touch while kneading the dough. We joke about whether my taking iron pills to cure my anemia will make my fingers warm and take away my scone hands. She has me bake a batch on a regular basis just to check.

We’ll probably never figure it out and that’s okay. I’m just thankful for the privilege of having a community for which to bake—it is one of the ways I communicate my love. I’m thankful for having hands (scone hands or otherwise) that can create something that others are willing to reach out their own hands to receive. Most of all, I’m grateful for this body God has given me and the understanding that even the “functional and merely proficient” can be a source of joy and delight.

Follow Jennifer’s directions using these ingredients: 2 cups all-purpose flour 1/3 cup sugar 1 teaspoon baking powder 1/4 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon salt 8 tablespoons unsalted butter, frozen 1/2 cup raisins (or dried currants) 1/2 cup cream (try sour cream or heavy cream) 1 large egg

Bake at 400 for about 15 min, or a couple more. Serves you, your dog (when you aren’t looking) and 6 friends.

In the center of Southern Africa, a heart shaped nation throbs. Zambia’s economic health rises and falls with the global price of copper. Education mirrors the economy. Its eleven million inhabitants crowd into the capital, leaving the rural areas under-populated. It prides itself on its peacefulness in a region rife with civil conflict. Refugees cross borders from all sides, always inward, never outward. Dr. Livingstone included. Tourists come here, now, diverted by the bankrupt anarchy across its southern border. They photograph the mile wide, 100 meter tall waterfall known locally as Mosi-oa-Tunya, known elsewhere by its English name, Victoria Falls. HIV visits too, and stays with 10-25 percent of the population.

In a country that many can’t locate on a map, an estimated 1 million are orphans and 2.5 million people have HIV.

What happens to a country when 10—25 percent of adults contract HIV? From an external perspective, that depends on its accessibility, infrastructure, diplomacy, prominence on the world stage, and the spotlight cast by leaders and celebrities. From an internal perspective, a cascade of misery begins. The work force is depleted. Nurses and teachers die faster than they can be replaced. Parents die, one at a time. Extended family members take in orphans, until they can’t anymore. Grandparents and children become the feeble bookends on an emptying shelf as the entire generation in between dwindles.

As this reality replicates itself, again and again, year after year, the number of orphans and vulnerable children increases. A girl, a boy, a handful of siblings, with big, brown eyes and small hands and curious minds learn to fend for themselves. With bare feet, they kick soccer balls made of plastic bags tied in a bundle. With genuine

In Zambia, a country that many can’t locate on a map, an estimated 1 million are orphans and 2.5 million people have HIV.


For many years, Shea Van Rhoads has crossed and re-crossed the border to Zambia. In 2000 and 2001 she and her husband lived there and worked full time in an HIV clinic. Since then she has worked closely with a day center that’s grown to support about 250 orphans and vulnerable children, providing regular meals, education, and some rudimentary health care.

The Heart of Africa

from here

By Shea Van Rhoads

laughter, they play. At night, they sleep in the dirt of a relative’s hut, in a doorway to a shop that’s closed for the night, in the corner of a bar. They learn where to beg, when to steal, how to win a fight. The girls sell their bodies for food and shelter. They survive. They make do, without the guiding hand, the wisdom and discipline, of an adult who would have noticed their absence from school.

While high profile dignitaries debate and pass large sums of money around until it disappears, private individuals walk straight into the slums, gather up bunches of vagabonds, and try to help. They build small schools, day centers, orphanages. They tell everyone they meet about the plight, welcome any resource—local

groceries, a foreign shipment of school supplies, volunteers to build an annex, a clinic willing to give a few free physical exams. They come from home and abroad, their hearts beating in sync with the pain of this nation. And they help a few children at a time, in small and significant ways.

In 2004, my husband and I adopted two boys from among the many who needed a more permanent and secure home. It was a do-it-yourself adoption, since Zambia is not a country with an international adoption network, and since we had known and had supported the boys prior to adopting them.

Our sons were old enough when we brought them back to the United States to remember their lives in Zambia, but young enough to heal and adapt. Within three months, they spoke English proficiently. It’s been almost five years now. They do well in school and in soccer, they love video games, pizza, Yu-gi-oh cards, taking things apart, cooking. They are happy, resilient, independent. They also know how to pluck duck, clean fish, light a camp fire efficiently. They are strong, in the muscular sense, very strong. And, they still walk around barefoot


A range of official statistics have been published. But official is not necessarily accurate. In the international arena, officials may down play problems to showcase their efficacy or exaggerate to access funding. Collecting and estimating census data in Zambia is challenging for many reasons. For example: a question like “How many children do you have?” could have half a dozen true answers: How many children live in your household generally? How many today? How many do you have with this particular, current partner? How many children do you think you have sired? How many children do you support financially? How many children do you have that are being raised by others?

Given the difficulty of a straightforward question like, “How many children do you have?” The question of who has HIV (which is laden with stigma, denial, and misunderstanding) is even trickier to navigate.

Death records or certificates of death often don’t exist. Culturally, many Zambians do not record births, deaths, or keep track of ages.

Most die at home, not in a hospital setting. Few relatives prioritize the cost or hassle of procuring a government issued certificate of death because such documentation rarely has a tangible purpose.

Cause of death is often identified as “a long illness,” rather than explicitly citing HIV or AIDS. Many who are infected die of secondary illnesses like tuberculosis. Because HIV has an incubation period of one to five years, many do not suspect or believe they are infected. Even those who know their HIV status is positive rarely tell their spouses or partners. How likely is it, then, that a stranger with a clipboard taking a suvey via a translator would get an accurate “Yes, I’m HIV+”?

In 2000 and 2001, I administered a National Institutes of Health-funded HIV research clinic in Lusaka, the capital. Among the approximately 16,000 people tested, 1 in 4 were HIV positive. This was true regardless of context: clinic, orphanage, church, schools, or our own staff.

half the time.I am much more conscious of their previous lives than they are. I remember the

rags they wore, day in and day out—the pants without zippers, the second-hand sweatshirts; the Zambian shop keepers and bus drivers that tried to throw them out; the meals they missed; the education they missed; the distance and frequency they walked for fresh water; the exposure to malaria, cholera, TB, parasites; the adults who beat them; the causes of their biological parents’ deaths.

I’ve been back to Zambia several times since we adopted the boys, taking supplies to the day center they used to attend, leading groups of volunteers on short term projects. I’ve tracked down their former playmates. I know which of them still cannot read, which are ill, which are wild, which are hungry, which are dead.

Sometimes, American friends ask me a question no Zambian has ever asked – have we taken the boys back to visit? The question is well-intentioned, as if it were merely a matter of cultural exploration. I think of how difficult it was to get my sons out, how happy they are now, how distressing their origin might look through their Americanized eyes, how disconcerting it is to feel like a stranger in one’s homeland. I think of the rated R scenes they lived through and would encounter again. I think about the years of recovering they’ve completed, the bed-wetting, the tantrums, the cries in their sleep—all of which have now subsided.

My maternal instinct arches over them. Honestly, I hope they will never need to cross that border again. But, I usually answer, “Not yet.”

”“Sometimes, American friends

ask me a question no Zambi-an has ever asked— have we taken our adopted sons back to visit their homeland?The question is well-inten-tioned, as if it were merely a matter of cultural exploration.

PONDER

ON THIS

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READ MO

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HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE HIV POSTIVE IN ZAMBIA?

—Shea Van Rhoads


God bless you, though I have failed at prayer for twenty years, the sun, which bleeds morning through the clouds, which are blessed. And bless the mortar holding the bricks, the light and shade, a slow-motion movie cast upon their screen, every wall an allegory. Bless the bus driver who stops between stops, and the impatience that made me walk out the wait—I wouldn’t have seen the wall or made it to work on time without you both. Bless you, inefficiency, and getting lost in committee meetings—I’m the smiling idiot on the back row, surrounded by genius. Bless reformed skaters and slackers dressed in suits with short hair, the secret music blasting from their ear buds, and their understanding deeper than love of lost punks and kids who have messed everything up and have to start over again. Bless you, who called me out on the street one night and said, “You totally saved my ass last semester.” I hope you are legion and will take over the world. Bless them, the kids who beat you up or poked fun until you had to pierce your tongue and scar your arms to feel the sun’s fall on your face. Bless the ones who prepared me to know you. They contoured the angles, and we will win this thing because entropy must increase. It’s the law, and bless physics, its shiny elevator that takes me eleven stories up, where administration looks down, and bless their belief in me, which I realize is misplaced. And the same elevator that takes me down to the street, bless repetition and ritual. Bless running in the rain from awning to awning, and in the street I jay-run across, bless the driver who swerves, and his sense of humor, as well as the wisdom

Blessing

Manic Prayer for ThursdayAfter Tom Andrews

by Todd Heldt


to know that he’s kidding. Bless the universe, its games, and all its jokes, even the ones I won’t get for twenty years. Bless the building that has coffee and bao. Bless two buns of edamame and a cup of steam from my coffee girl, whose eyes are almost black, and who, when she squats down and her shirt pulls up, reveals the tattoo on her back. What is the whole story? Bless the way she holds my eyes longer than she should, the free cup she sneaks me now and then, and her fingers’ brushing against minewhen she hands me my purchase. Bless the umbilical desire, ravenous,for intimacy between strangers, the recognition that we don’t get to have one another, but would in a second, in some other time, and bless the student who every couple of years gets a crush on me. Where were you 20 years ago? Oh yeah, in your crib. I love you right back, but only in satisfied reflection. Bless my family, who held me up to the world, as if I were something worthwhileand the accent I worked for years not to have. And my friends, for emergency room visits I made you pay me. Bless my black friends who call me bro; can I ever deserve you? Bless old black folks who fought segregation, old women for equal rights, old queers and soldiers who still fight—man, y’all have been through some shit. I love seeing you on the street, right in the rhythm of my steps. Bless you old Jews and young Palestinians. When will the serpent stop eating its tail? Bless the train that takes me home, the old man humming to himself. Bless the shadows that follow us, etched on the buildings we pass, and bless the light

in the window, the couple inside settling down with evening drinks. Bless the hidden past and change, sweet change, bless you most, that I might be who I was not when I hunkered abused or puffed my chest in fat ignorance. Bless the agents of those changes, the people who drew me out and taught me to be who I am—the musician, the artist, the hippie, the cynic. Bless you, my wife, who waits at home to tell me your day. Bless the anthropologist who will one day find, when he digs through the files of Benicia High, that you were the first everto score perfection on their statewide writingproficiency test and then flunked out.Bless the academic who figures out why and righteously returns them their F. Bless the way you have wrestled your lifeback from the people who would take it away, and how you bring me coffee in bed, the way we laugh. Bless your doctor’s visit, which showed you, there’s something in there, all right. Bless the grain of rice in your belly, and let it grow to be bigger than both of us. One day we will name a baby Giant. Bless your green eyes, which sometimes still leave me awestruck. How am I this lucky? Bless this comfort, the unwinding of days. Bless coming home.

Todd Heldt is a poet, a new father, and has been widely published. Read more of his work at www.heldt.tripod.com

BorderLinks is an international leader in experiential education

that raises awareness and inspires action

around global political economics.

Join us: Oct. 24, 2010BorderLinks Annual Dinner Celebration, in Tucson, AzSample recipes from our Sustainable Food cookbook.

Fall, Winter 2010 & Spring 2011Trips to Copper Canyon in Sonora and Sinaloa, MexicoRide the Chihuahua-Pacifico Railway through Mexico and explore the colonial history of Mexico, artisan cooperatives, why migration happens and more.

www.borderlinks.org

Bread & Oranges

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Transcript of Bread & Oranges