Critical Mass

I met with one of the Brothers today…San Diego hosts the last two monks of the order of St. Paul in the Episcopal Church. Br. Andrew and I have been meeting for awhile now to discuss my spiritual journey. I always walk away from these meetings with a sense of peace and direction, but lately there has also been a bit of dread attached. You see sometimes the brother likes to wax prophetic, and he tends to see a future with some major cataclysmic event in store that will challenge our generation. I wonder if this is the product of his advancing years, if he can’t imagine what the world will be like after he’s left it. I don’t know, but I can say this weekend gave me two sources of great hope.

I’ll talk about them reverse chronologically. On Saturday I took a group from UCSD down to Dorcas House, a new ministry of St. Paul’s Cathedral. The Children of Dorcas House’s parents are generally inmates in the La Mesa Prison in Tijuana. In Mexico, unlike in the U.S., when the head of the household goes to prison, the entire family moves in with them. The La Mesa prison living conditions are totally unsuitable for children, so several years ago a group started a home for the children whose parents are incarcerated. The kids of Dorcas House are housed, fed, and sent to school through the support of Churches in San Diego and Los Angeles. Our group goes once per quarter to visit the kids, to play soccer, do some art, dance, and to remember that our family extends beyond the borders that people try to place between us. This is a truly radical act in a country that would have us build a wall between us and our neighbor. The enthusiasm, energy, and raw love coming from the students and the kids of Dorcas house as they spent time together on Saturday gave me hope that we can learn to live in ways that are closer to the community God desires for us. I was particularly excited because a couple of the students decided to take on the planning of the next trip, and want to extend the reach of our present trips to include more immersion and engagement of border issues.

Friday night my buddy Rob and I had dinner and then were about to head to Ocean Beach to get a beer with some other friends. As we were getting in my car we heard whistles and bike bells coming down the street. We looked up to see several hundred cyclists with flashing lights cheering as they pedaled their way down 5th Ave. We jumped in the car to follow behind them and got to watch the “Critical Mass” unfold. Critical Mass is a play on words: Cyclists come together spontaneously to take over a city street and celebrate. This very action can be interpreted as a critique of a culture addicted to fuel burning vehicles. Bicycles ARE classified as vehicles and thus they are required by law to travel on roads while in the city, but road design often neglects bikes. The cyclists riding through the streets by their very presence critique a culture that depends so heavily on fossil fuels, and doesn’t think outside that addiction. As we followed along in my car (no, the irony is not lost on me that I am ranting about gas-guzzling while I was following a bunch of cyclists in MY car), I was overcome by the sheer number of people lining the streets to celebrate the bikes coming by. Maybe it’s that gas prices in California are approaching $4.00 a gallon, maybe it’s because we were passing through the liberal gay neighborhood, but it was inspiring to see so many people celebrating this “Critical Mass.” I know that on the last Friday of next month, if at all possible, I will be on my bike with a whistle.

I really have to believe that a group of cyclists and a handful of students visiting their neighbors in need can change the world. I know this is idealistic, but I follow a savior who surrounded himself with a group of crazies and proclaimed that power wasn’t to be found in military might, but in unimaginably big love. If enough of a critical mass believes in this and comes together, maybe we can avoid Br. Andrew’s scary visions of the future world. Maybe we can build the Community of God together.

May Grey

It is the time of year in San Diego when everything turns grey… As I write “grey” my American spell check doesn’t like it. To quote Madeleine L’Engle
“there is grey, which is English, and one very definite, bird-wing, ocean wave color to me; and gray which is American, and a flatter, more metallic color.” You see for some reason, in the world’s most perfect climactic miracle of a city about a month of purposeless clouds appear towards the end of May into the beginning of June. Though Americans would say it is May Gray, I would hope to see it as May Grey. The English are better equipped to teach us what to do with cloudy days. So I’m drinking proper tea, spending time reading, taking walks in the park…maybe I’ll go colonize something.

I’m also seeing my family a lot this month. My brother Sam and mom were here the first weekend of May for “St. George’s Day.” (speaking of colonizing, hooray for celebrating the British Empire in Anglican pomp and circumstance in California?) The Bishop preached a phenomenal sermon about “slaying the dragons of hunger, disease, and oppression,” and we marched in a parade with Bagpipes! The Dean and I caught sight of each other as we sang “God Save the Queen,” and neither of us made it the rest of the way through the song for laughing.

Last weekend I met the whole family in San Antonio to watch my sister Beth graduate. We had a really good time as a family. Beth leaves for Kenya tomorrow. She and I have been talking on the phone a lot about the weirdness of “becoming adults.” It is strange to have your family visit you in your “new home,” to feel that you have truly moved out of your old life. Beth has just begun to experience this new adult identity and like a new pair of pants it’s going to take a lot of moving around in it to get it to fit right. I think I’m just beginning to really enjoy the “adult-ness.”

I REALLY love my job. There are frustrating bits, a lot of administrata, but the chance to get to know and work with such a phenomenal community of people, to be invited into the holy spaces in students lives, to engage in mission, are AMAZING. Plus, I just got asked to be the chaplain for a backpacking trip in the High Sierra this summer with Camp Stevens! How awesome is that? Really, God has blessed me so unbelievably. It is humbling, and challenging. I can do little more than give thanks.

Enrique’s Journey

San Diego has launched a “One Book, One San Diego” campaign with the book “Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Nazario. I joined with “all of San Diego” and picked up this short non-fiction telling of a Honduran boy’s journey from Tegucigalpa to the U.S. in search of his mother who immigrated before him. The tale left me chilled, upset, and with more than a little hope.

Much of the story takes place in Tegucigalpa, a city I left behind just short of a year ago. Nazario’s rendering of “Teguc” sat oppressively on my chest, filling me with homesickness for a place I had only begun to know. Her telling of the commonplace daily life in abject poverty coupled with descriptions of places and sights I knew well made Tegucigalpa live in my present. I could almost smell the acrid smoke of burning trash, feel the burn of the tropical sun, hear the chatter of rapid slurred Spanish mixed with honking horns.

As Enrique journeys north to find the mother who left him when he was five, the one he is sure will fill the aching whole he feels in his life, he encounters unimaginable horror. He is repeatedly assaulted, robbed, stripped naked, and deported back to his Guatemalan starting point. Once he is beaten nearly to death by members of a mara, a Central American gang. These dangers all compound the already life-threatening journey atop freight trains that maim and kill thousands of migrants each year as they make the illegal trek.

So many of “my boys” at El Hogar wanted to come north. Most asked for my phone number repeatedly. I didn’t sleep well last night. “Enrique’s Journey” left me more anxious than I can remember being in a very long time. I don’t know if I fear directly for my boys, or if Enrique reminded me about the fragility of human life and the presence of those who work exceedingly hard and who still live in the bleakest of poverty.

The Church ends up the real hero of Enrique’s journey. In two places, Veracruz and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, we hear of communities who are reaching out to their migrant neighbors. Leaders in the Church set an example by throwing food and clothing to passing trains, or by sheltering those who are held up in making the final push to the United States. Their communities followed, and Enrique’s journey is a testament to the Gospel LIVED OUT by Christian communities making the option for the migrant poor.

Am I doing enough? I think part of my lack of sleep came from feeling so detached from these communities, from a sense of guilt because of my wealth. Last year I lived among so many who were planning or had made the trek north. Enrique’s Journey gave me new insight into what this via crucis actually entails. I feel so disconnected from those who suffer so much here in the affluence of San Diego. I am lucky that I will spend part of this summer in El Salvador and back in Honduras, that I can visit the children at Dorcas House in Mexico whenever I want, but I don’t go enough. My privilege isolates me from the poor, among whom Christ dwells. I must continually ask God to surmount my fears, excuses, and misgivings. I must repent of all that isolates me from the reality of so many people’s lives if I am to hope to have a glimpse of God’s dream for the world.