Carnival

The title of this blog has nothing to do with anything. But it is the name of a song by Natalie Merchant that I have been listening to a lot in the past month or so. I am not sure why. You know when you just need a good song in the background and it's raining outside (like right now) and you're like, yes, this is nice.

Speaking of music, something interesting I have noticed about myself here in Immo is that every time I hear traditional music from Mexico or Guatemala, I get this huge smile on my face and something inside of my soul smiles even wider. I feel this contentment within that I have not felt in a long time. It reminds me of the contentment I felt last summer when I went to Manila and we spent a couple of the day in the slums, making new friends. I can't even really differentiate between Norteno or Duranguense or Marimba, yet I know something in me is drawn to this music, whether it's in the car with no AC in the middle of a humid Florida afternoon or coming from our yard while Lucas works outside. Something in me comes home when I hear it.

I realized that I did not write in here all week! I really wish I would have because this has been a different kind of week;I got out of the office a lot and did some other kinds of things. Then this morning I had a bunch of revelations that kind of tied the whole week together and I was like AAH!, this is so awesome and convicting and harsh and incredible all at the same time.

Hmmm, where do I start?

Well, God is faithful, once again. I was riding my bike to the office this past Tuesday and it hit me once again how Immo is full of single males who don't mind showing a cute young woman like me some attention (hahaha). I can't really ride my bike or walk around here without someone hitting on me at least once. It doesn't really bother me and I have never felt offended, because like I said, it happened all the time in Miami growing up. Yet it made me sad that this is another barrier to building relationships with people in the community. I can only talk so much to a single male my age because I don't want to give him the wrong idea and there are really not a lot of single women here, so yeah. So I was praying as I rode my bike and I asked God for the opportunity to build relationships with some of the women of the community. That day at the office was pretty quiet and slow and a lot of the other staff had to take off and do some other things. Eventually it ended up only being one of the CIW staff, Pancha (Francisca) and myself. She just turned 26 and does not speak much English. We have talked before and she is really cool but I am so afraid of not being able to fully understand her or her understand me. Something amazing happened that day and I credit it all to God. Pancha and I sat down and had some deep conversations, all in Spanish and I promise you that I understood at least 90% of what she was saying. It was not just like, oh yeah, do have any brothers and sisters. No, we were sharing our struggles with body image, talking about exercise, talking about men, talking about God. It was so wonderful. She did most of the talking and it was so great to hear her story. Pancha came from Oaxaca (in southern Mexico) to Immo when she was 17 to work in the fields. She came with her 13 year old sister. I think they had a couple of family members here already but man. That is scary. When I was 17, I had trouble convincing my mom that I should be allowed to drive at night. My biggest concerns when I was 17 were college applications, my friends, and whoever I was dating at the time and how I looked. Pancha was 17 and immigrating on her own to a place she had never been to with a little sister. I was working on my one-act plays for theater classes in school and she was picking the tomatoes for my sandwich at Subway and having to endure a lot of unfairness in the process of picking those freakin tomatoes. And she did this just so she could send money back home so that her younger brothers and sisters would be able to go to school.............

Then Pancha showed me something else that really felt like an answer to prayer as well. One thing I miss here a lot is being able to converse with other believers and pray with them and just find hope in God together. The phone has been good but there is something about those face to face conversations. While we were talking, she grabs this book off her desk called Prayers for the New Social Awakening and then proceeds to show me her prayer that was published in this book! Pancha is Catholic; her poem was printed in Spanish and then translated into English. I will type it up later on tonight so you all can see it, it is pretty powerful and it was so encouraging to read about her faith.

The poor and the oppressed always have the strongest faith. They have been through the worst yet they generally never seem to doubt that God is on their side and that He is with them. The closest I can relate to that is when I had cancer three years ago. In that moment everything was stripped away from me and all I had was my Heavenly Father. The marginalized of this world have such a deep understanding of that because God has always been all that they have had. The rich and privileged like myself have so much worldly things and we still doubt and question at times. Even in a world that has been so mean to them, the poor tend not to doubt the existence or power of God. Pancha and I talked about that and dude, it was so hard for me to express how much I believe in the power of God and how I believe with all my heart that He is the one who will bring real transformation. But I believe she got what I was trying to say.

I believe God is constantly just trying to remind me of His power here. That same day God spoke to me through a Mos Def song (yeah, I know I got this CD like a decade late but it's still amazing and I love it a lot). It's from the "Black on Both Sides" album. The first song on it, called "Fear Not of Man", really has struck me hard. I love real hip-hop. Here are some of the lyrics that truly to spoke to me and encouraged me:

"The world is overrun with the wealthy and the wicked,
but God is sufficient in disposin of affairs
Gunmen and stockholders try to merit your fear
But God is sufficient over plans they prepared".

GOD IS SUFFICIENT!

We cannot let go or doubt His power to bring transformation into this broken and painful world.

It was truly incredible because you probably know that I have been thinking a lot about wealth and TNC's and profit and all that kind of stuff. I just struggle with the idea of rich CEO's and rich people in general. So I was listening to that song while I was working on some stuff at the office (yes, I can listen to music on my headphones while I work, it's so great! I love being in a grassroots organization!). And God did not stop there with speaking to me through this song. I checked my email and a certain little panda bear that has come into my life recently forwarded me an article about Jesus and Zaccheus (the tax collector). Basically Zaccheus was a man who cheated people out of money for profit and he became rich that way. He abused the already corrupted system to gain his wealth. Hmm, yeah, it did not take me long to compare Zaccheus to someone like a modern day CEO of a big corporation.

What really smacked me in the face was the fact that Jesus reached out to this rich man. Zaccheus climbs in a tree to see and hear Jesus speak and as a result of their interactions, Jesus invited himself over to his house for dinner. Out of the gracious love Jesus shows Zaccheus, who is so despised in his society, Zaccheus ends up giving away half of his wealth. He repents for the ways he has cheated others and for the ways he has abused the system.

How can Jesus, a man who came to the world and stood amongst the poor and the least of these, also choose to love this rich man and show him grace and love?

Now that, my friends, is radical love.

I was just sitting there reading this article and I wanted to scream because something in me clicked. The rich desperately need Jesus, too, and His will is also to be reconciled to them as well.

His will is for me to love those whom seem like enemies. The ones I cannot stand, the ones controlling all the wealth in this world and creating unjust trade policies, the ones who oppress, the ones who are racist, the ones who gentrify low income neighborhoods, the ones who hate immigrants, He calls us to love them and share His good news with them, too.

Trust me, it's a bit hard for me to swallow, too. But this is truth. I cannot deny that this is truth.

This morning I realized that probably since the beginning of time there has been a war going on between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots. This past week it hit me that this struggle, this fight is not just about farm workers fighting for their fair wages and safe working conditions. The working class is fighting against the system everywhere. On Thursday I went with Melody (my roommate/co-worker) and Brigitte (another co-worker) to a Collier County School Board meeting that was set to be pretty controversial. Basically, the county has decided that they are going to fire a few hundred janitors because they want to outsource them to work for a private company. That means all the janitors (who are mostly Latino and Black) will lose their jobs; if they want to, they can reapply for a job with this new private company but of course they will lose a lot of benefits and will be making less money. The three of us decided to go to stand in solidarity with other day laborers. That is what I truly love about the CIW. Much of their philosophy is not all about the farm workers; the fight is against any kind of oppression anywhere and we will show our support to others when and where we can.

I had a lot of mixed feelings at the school board meeting all the way in Naples. Going to Naples just feels strange in itself because it feels like one just went to another planet. It is so wealthy, so extravagant, so pristine. All in the same county- one of the richest towns in the US and then one of the poorest. Anyhow, there was a few hundred people who showed up to this meeting in order to fight for their jobs. Part of me felt hopeful because at least there was a time during the meeting for some of the janitors and their supporters (i.e. teachers) who were there to speak to the school board members about this. Some people spoke so powerfully and they really put the school board in their place. Some were audacious enough to challenge them and ask why there have been so administrative raises yet the school board claims they need to privatize in order to stay within their budget cuts. I loved watching their faces at certain comments, hahahaha....
There was one really beautiful lady who got up; she was from Haiti and even after her three minute time limit was over and the buzzer went off indicating that she needed to stop talking, she just looked at school board, pointed at the paper she was reading off of and said, "I'm sorry but I need to keep going, I need to read this until the end" and everyone in the audience just laughed and cheered and she finished! She said her piece and it was wonderful and they needed to hear about how she has worked as a janitor for ten years in Collier County; how dare they freakin just take away her job like that.

Then on Friday several of us drove over to Miami for a protest and march that took place downtown. It was put on by an alliance of people called Right to the City; there were groups based out of New Orleans, New York, L.A., etc, who all decided that it would be a good time to protest at the National Conference of the Mayors this weekend. It is a time when a lot of the mayors in the US get together to talk with developers, etc. But what about listening to the people of the community? What about talking with constituents about where their tax money is going, about how we want to improve our schools, about how we don't want our neighborhoods gentrified and yuppie'fied. So this protest and march around downtown was to get the mayors attention about these kinds of issues. Again, we went as the CIW to support other grassroots and community organizations who support us and have come to our events in the past.

It was so interesting. This march started in Overtown, which is an inner-city mostly African-American neighborhood in Miami right next to downtown and as I walked through there, I saw a lot of beauty and charm. I wondered why I was taught growing up to be scared of this neighborhood and to be separated from the people of that community. I was taught to avoid those exits on the interstate. It has gone through a lot of gentrification, though and you better believe a lot of the community was there to march and fight against it that day.

The protest got really rained out, though, typical Florida! But we marched anyhow and stood outside of the hotel that the mayors were in, people with their megaphones and their signs and everyone chanting their chants. I was just standing there in the pouring rain in my orange skirt and my bare feet (because it was too hard to walk in wet sandals and I am not a big fan of shoes anyway), looking up at this fancy building in the downtown of the city I grew up in and I wondered if the mayors even cared. I wondered how effective we are. I wondered if they would take into consideration any concerns of the citizens. I wondered if they cared that people are pushed out of the communities they have lived in their whole lives. I wondered if they cared that teachers are underpaid or that students are not often receiving the best possible education.

I wondered if the school board cared about the janitors who got up and spoke about how they were concerned they might not have enough money in the near future to feed their families if their jobs were outsourced. I wondered if they cared about the struggle of the immigrants who clean Collier County public schools.

God is sufficient.

So we ended up staying in Miami the whole weekend and it was a lot of fun. I unexpectedly ran into a ton of people I went to high school with and hadn't seen since I graduated. I also got to see my old college roommate/one of my best friends since the 6th grade this weekend too and it made me so happy. I missed her so much. She came out to dinner with my family and I love how she just feels like a family member even after not seeing her for a while. It was also great to share with people about Immokalee and to tell them about this amazing community I have entered into. I got to go to the beach, too!

So Melody and I ended up staying at my mom's place and for some reason, as much wealth my family has now because of my mom's re-marraige to my step-dad, there is no internet access in that house. Melody really needed to work on translating on this document for some of the CIW staff and get online so we decided to crash for four hours after coming home really late and then wake up at like 7:30 am to go take advantage of free w-fi at Panera Bread since she was on a time constraint. I felt like dying when I woke up because I was so exhausted but wow. I am so glad we woke up and I ended up sitting in Panera with her for a couple of hours because I had this powerful experience with the Lord.

I decided to just sit there and write and journal and read. I wonder if some people were just really praying for me this morning because the whole week tied together for me in a powerful way. I am not even sure that my words will do justice to what I felt and heard from God.

Reconciliation.

My life seems to run in themes sometimes. Reconciliation has been the big theme for me so far in 2008, it has seemed.

I don't know if you are familiar with the story of Jonah or not. In case not, it's a short book in the Old Testament; he is the dude who gets swallowed by the big fish for three days and three nights. Jonah, a Hebrew, was called by God to preach to the Ninevites to repent for their sins. The real interesting thing is the Ninevites were very oppressive towards Jonah and his people. Yet God was calling Jonah of all people to go and love the very people who oppressed him? Who hurt him, who probably stripped him of his dignity in some ways, and his people, too?
God has been bringing me back to the story of Jonah for three years now. I have gotten different things out of it at various times in my life the past three years. Today the Lord lead me back to Jonah and all I could hear was God's desire for reconciliation. His desire for peace, for truth, for restoration.

God calls for an end to this war between the rich and the poor. He calls for an end to oppression and He calls us to end it with love. We are called to the love the oppressors (and in some ways, I am part of being the oppressor but I take it personally as that I am called to love the CEO's I despise).

God loves those who hurt us, too. He wants better for them, too.

It's exactly what Jesus preached about -loving our enemies.

God is kind to the ungrateful and wicked, He is merciful (Luke 6:27-36).

I thought about how so much this semester the Lord has urged me to be merciful to so many who have deeply hurt me in the past and also recently. He has urged me to choose His love. Reconciliation is the ministry of Jesus, that is what He did for us. He reconciled us to our Father, He gave us a restored relationship.

Is it possible? Could we be willing to fight for that? For reconciliation between the rich and the poor? Could we be willing to reach out to those who oppress, to those who hate us for no reason, who try and control us and the rest of the world?

I wrote this in my journal this morning as God spoke all this to me and I was trying to take it all in. I saw Him come alive once again in the Scriptures. I saw His desire for us, for His children, His jealously to be first in our lives, above anything else....

"Mercy on an abusive father....
mercy on a man who lies to you and disrespects you and uses you...
mercy on the rich CEO's who profit off of sweatshops...
mercy on me, the prideful girl who often deceives herself".

God is merciful and gracious and loving. He gives us a call to be of this kind of character as well. We have to choose this if we ever want to see real transformation, real reconciliation in this world...............




(PS~I just want to put it out there that Melody personally knows Zack de la Rocha and Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine because they heavily support the CIW! She has Zack de la Rocha's cell phone number in her own cell phone! OK, I just thought that was really cool because I have been a Rage fan since I was like 12). :)