Flash blogs are short posts written to a shared prompt during community discussion time -- with a ten minute time limit. This practice helps us get used to blogging, stay in communication with our followers, and challenge ourselves to not overthink how we share with the world. See each YAV's response to this shared prompt below! PROMPT: What is one thing that stuck with you from Agua Prieta yesterday? Feelings, Thoughts, Emotions… Emma: On January 23rd, the TBYAVs went to Agua Prieta with the co-moderator of the PCUSA church and a couple of pastors from Tucson. When we got to Douglass/Agua Prieta, we immediately went to the U.S. side of the border wall where we had a bible study and time for prayer. On the Mexico side of the border wall, there were friends gathered. With the border wall between us, we formed a circle with our neighbors. We read Ephesians 2:11-22 in Spanish, then in English, and were given the opportunity to share thoughts about what we had just read/heard. At the end of our time at the wall, we all held hands to pray together. This image stuck with me all day. The people at the ends of our semi-circles crouched down to hold hands through the wall. There were huge rolls of concertino wire above their heads. The bible verse we read says: “For he is our peace; in his flesh, he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.” Christ has broken down the wall. Christ has crossed the borders. How can I do the same? We are all united in God’s love and peace for all people. Yet we still uphold this border between our neighbors. Katie: Yesterday was the fifth time went to Agua Prieta, Sonora. We have made it a routine to go once a month to attend an event or visit our roommate Hannah. It cracks me up that this has become so routine, yet, our trip is still met with the same initial shock and we all are left just as emotionally exhausted as we return. I am left with a feeling of confusion. What are all these trips suppose to mean? Are they meant to get easier? Are we supposed to interact more and build connections? ARE WE building connections? Are we LEARNING anything? This last question has been sticking in my head a lot. This trip to AP was different from most others. Our travel was more than just us YAVS and it was more than us and Alison, we were accompanied this time by three guests, one of whom was the co-moderator of the presbyterian church- or for those that aren’t presbyterian and know what a co-moderator is, we lovingly referred to her as “The Pope of the Presbyterian Church” (apparently this title is not known to her). We were given one day to help show Cindy around AP and introduce her to Frontera de Cristo and the other community partners. So, we relieved the week we spent in AP last November. We went to a few of the mission partners, we heard from the Frontera board, from the Migrant resource center, and we went to CAME the shelter for asylum seekers. We started our day at 7:45 am and made it back to the house at 10:30 pm last night. Around 2 pm Cindy had announced that with the time change, the jet lag, and the information overload, she was getting tired. At that moment it sunk- though we don’t fit it into a day, every day here is impactful. Every day, we are learning and growing and being shaped. It is a lot- and yesterday, I realized its okay to be exhausted. It is okay to need rest and to not constantly be absorbed by the important and impactful work that’s been happening. Though- this won’t change my feelings about work boundaries :). Laura: Yesterday we traveled back to Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico for the day. We were traveling with one of the Co-Moderators of the General Assembly, so the point of this visit was for her to experience the borderlands. What is happening and how the Presbyterian Church is responding. Because of the delegation that we did in November and other various experiences I have had while here, much of what we were talking about yesterday wasn’t new to me. At one point I was even questioning what I was getting out of this. “What is the point in me being here today?” Our last stop of the day was at CAME, a shelter for migrants to stay in while they wait to make their assylum petition. I had been in this shelter before and heard about the good work taking place there, but yesterday, in a few moments of downtime, I was drawn to a mural painted on the wall that I hadn’t seen before. The mural was of “La Bestia” a train that travels regularly from southern to northern Mexico. It is a common way for migrants to travel. The mural depicted migrants sitting atop the train and with them sat Jesus. He wasn’t doing anything other than sitting and being present with the people on the train. Being present is part of what Jesus asks us to do and that is what is happening at CAME. But what struck me more was how many different versions of the human experience there are. When I think of people catching a ride on the roof of a train, I think of the 1920s or earlier. That doesn’t feel like a 21st century thing to me. The point of me being in Agua Prieta yesterday may not have been to be exposed to 100 new things and challenging ideas like it has been the last few times I have visited the city. But I can still learn and recognize that the people sitting in the tents along the border, the people doing puzzles and waiting for dinner at CAME, the people on La Bestia currently all have vastly different life experiences than I do in life. The moments of looking at this mural brought me back to the reality that I am privileged to be born a white woman from in the United States. I carry that privileged with me everywhere I go. And I need to open my heart more to embrace everyone in all of their experiences. Haley: As a Tucson Borderlands YAV, who resides in Tucson, about once a month we visit Agua Prieta. In Tucson we are still in the Borderlands, however every time we are able to go to Agua Prieta/Douglas a border town in Arizona, we are at the heart of the borderlands.
Every time I’ve gone to Agua Prieta I’ve felt really moved by the different bible studies we’ve attended. Yesterday we had a bible study at the wall with fellow hermanas y hermanos de Cristo. They sent us a picture from their side of the border. They had a beautiful mural on the wall, we sent a photo back that had an aggressive amount of barbed wire on it blocking our view of the community we were getting to have that time of reflection with. This Bible study was held in both languages, and was extremely powerful. Each Bible study I’ve attended held by Frontera de Cristo is the most I’ve felt the presence of Christ and community. Being able to turn to the Bible to a place of justice and liberation and at times a source of hope, has been powerful. In Agua Prieta I see people being able to find strength in the Bible that shows stories of people thousands of years ago fighting the same injustices.
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Flash blogs are short posts written to a shared prompt during community discussion time -- with a ten minute time limit. This practice helps us get used to blogging, stay in communication with our followers, and challenge ourselves to not overthink how we share with the world. See each YAV's response to this shared prompt below! Ryan: The topic of this blog will focus on opposites. More directly, it will focus on the ideas behind wanting and needing. Often in our culture today it seems that wanting and needing something are portrayed as having synonymous meanings. But what does it actually mean to want vs. need? In my personal experience in Tucson we have been greatly challenged to live simply and to directly confront what it means to “need” something. What is it that we need? Usually this can be summed up as a need for food, water, and shelter. But what about anything more? I have heard the calls of many people here and at home complain about wanting to fix homelessness, immigration, and climate change but how many of us actually go about wanting to do something tangible about it? This is not to say you should go out and start a nonprofit or do some other world changing venture. What I believe is meant by this is we, in our personal lives (myself included) need to take more time out of our daily lives to address what we really need. What do we place value upon from our own personal experiences? Once we can identify what those things are and only once we can name them can we go about trying to do something about them. So what is one simple thing you feel passionate or feel a need to address and what is one simple thing you can change about yourself to address this? It doesn’t have to be something big or world changing because at the end of the day you can only ever really change yourself. Tanner: For this flash blog prompt, Alison asked us to consider a set of opposites we have experienced during our YAV year (hot/cold, tall/short, big/small). After some consideration, the set that stood out to me was documented/undocumented. These words are most often associated with citizenship or legal resident documentation status. And having or not having citizenship or legal residence defines the lives of many people who live in Tucson. But where I have most experienced the concept of documented/undocumented is through my work at Community Home Repair (CHRPA). CHRPA receives money from a wide variety of federal and local government agencies. In order for us to help a client with this money, we have to collect documentation from them. The documentation requirement varies from grant to grant, but usually we need to collect items such as a deed to the home or drivers license or a social security award letter. There are some clients who have these documents readily available. Then, there are others who do not. The reason for not having the right documents vary. Maybe the have had their house for decades and lost the deed along time ago. Maybe the are not US citizens so they do not have a social security card. Or maybe they simply missed place them. This seems like a small difference. These two groups are only separated by the fact that one group has a few more pieces of paper than they other group. But this difference can determine if we can repair that person’s home or not. Working at CHRPA has made me realize how much of our lives come down to having the right documents. These small pieces of paper dictate how we live. Just yesterday I needed to go the dentist, and because I had the right document (insurance) I paid a lot less for that service. You forget the privileges that are afforded to you because of the documents you have, until you meet people, many very similar to you, who just so happen to fall into the undocumented group. Dakota: I am not sure if this qualifies as traditional opposites (like hot and cold), but when assigned this prompt, the first set of opposites that came to mind were calm and stressed. The word stressed could also be substituted for busy, anxious, or overwhelmed. I have experienced a sense of stress, anxiety, and busyness a lot during my YAV year. I would say that the majority of my days at work at the Florence Project entail a high level of stress. I have to make very difficult decisions almost everyday, and I know that my actions, or lack thereof, have a direct impact on the lives of individuals. I have also felt stressed when we have speaking engagements as YAVs. We have presented at numerous worship services and church meetings. In the lead up to those presentations, I feel worried about what to say, what the audience will think of me and of the YAV Program. Many of the systemic issues that we discuss and explore via readings, community events, or travel also leave me with a deep-seeded anxiety. On the flip side, I have also felt very calm during my YAV year. The line between work and home is more defined now than it was in my life before. Yes, I often take work home emotionally (something I’ve worked on a lot this year), but I do not have “homework.” I do not have to stress in the evening about deadlines and assignments. Usually during the weekends, I can attain a certain level of relaxation, whether that be on a hike, playing board games with my housemates, or sleeping in. Sometimes just walking into our house gives me a sense of tranquility. It is a refuge where I can breathe and relax with my community. Perhaps confronting huge issues (yes, the same ones that make me feel anxious) has also taught me that so much is out of my control and that sometimes the best thing I can do for myself and the world is to enjoy a moment of calm. Flash blogs are short posts written to a shared prompt during community discussion time -- with a ten minute time limit. This practice helps us get used to blogging, stay in communication with our followers, and challenge ourselves to not overthink how we share with the world. See each YAV's response to this shared prompt below! Dakota:For starters, I totally had the idea to write a blog post about this in August or September-ish. Well, I didn’t. But because I had thought about it a bit back then, I already have some ideas and reflections on the Borderlands. Through this limited writing entry, I will see how those reflections have transformed through the last several months. My first interaction with the Borderlands in my YAV year was that I decided to go to a site that is called “The Tucson Borderlands Site.” Right there in the name! At first, I thought that the borderlands was clearly referring to the U.S.- Mexico border to which we are so close here in Tucson. We’ve traveled to the border a number of times, and I remember in my initial interview with Alison before coming, she said something to the effect of, “The border is felt in all parts of life here in Tucson.” My understanding of Borderlands changed at national YAV orientation when during our anti-racism training, we were presented with the borderlands framework. (Oh geez, how did I explain this in less than 10 minutes?) We split into groups and wrote sticky notes of all sorts of characteristics that are considered the “norm,” like: insured, Christian, educated, white, heterosexual, home owner, two-parent family. These sticky notes were posted into a square-ish shape on the wall. Then we wrote sticky notes that had traits that were societally perceived as outside of the norm like transgender, atheist, people of color, non-English speaking, immigrant, uninsured. These stickies were assembled around the square center, forming a border. I had never thought of the borderlands this way. The invisible, but far, far from nonexistent, lines in our society. I have returned to this framework of thinking many times throughout the year. Under this framework, any YAV site could have “Borderlands” in its name. Because of the emphasis and format of YAV, my peers all over the country and world are interacting with these invisible lines on a daily basis. Tanner:What do “The Borderlands” mean to me? Before becoming a Tucson Borderlands YAV, I had never heard the word “borderlands” before. When I thought of a border, I thought of a hard dividing line. Once you cross it, you are in an entire differently place than you were before. For example, once you cross the US/Mexico you go from being in Mexico to in the United States. It’s a black and white, night and day change. Seems reasonable right? What I have learned during my YAV year is that while yes, that is the technical definition of a border, it does not really encompass the lived experience of people who make their lives in the lands near the border. The border is a lot less hard of a line than I thought, in fact, it is often very blurry. You may cross the border into the United States, but for the next 100 miles, you may be forced to show your ID or prove your a US citizen at a myriad of Border Patrol Checkpoints. So you are not really past the border once you step into the United States, it follows you, popping its head up and making you prove you belong on this side. The border continues to follow you throughout Tucson. Every day, the green and white trucks of Border Patrol whiz up and down the city streets, reminding you of the ever present border. In the courtroom downtown, people’s lives are turned upside down on a daily basis as a judge rules they must return to the other side of the border, that they don’t belong on this side. In Southern Arizona, being 25 or 50 or 100 miles from the border is really meaningless. For some the border is always there. To me, that is why we live in the “Borderlands.” Whether we can see it or not, this land is shaped by the border, no matter how far away that border might be. Ryan:The borderlands and the myths/ideas surrounding a borderlands whether that is real or perceived is a subject of great importance but also of equally great confusion. A borderlands can exist anywhere where there is a space/gap between the familiar and unfamiliar. Whether this is within the realm of the material world or only within the minds of those living within it; the ramifications for those who exist outside of the familiar can all too often be isolation and unnecessary struggle. This also begs the question of what our role, as people of God, are in the face of this timeless struggle. Throughout many parts of the New Testament there are important reoccurring themes that reverberate throughout it. While they manifest themselves in different ways one of these central themes is simply to:
Live in Adversity But what does this truly mean? I could spend countless pages; possibly whole books on what this fully entails but one thing is certain. That as believers we are called out of comfort, or the familiar, into the borderlands. Just like how a muscle cannot grow without first being torn or a skill learned without time and energy expended we are called to the borderlands to grow through necessary suffering. This allows us to not only grow stronger physically but also spiritually, and in doing so grow closer to God and our understanding of the work we are called to do. Flash blogs are short posts written to a shared prompt during community discussion time -- with a ten minute time limit. This practice helps us get used to blogging, stay in communication with our followers, and challenge ourselves to not overthink how we share with the world. Please excuse any typos or errors. See each YAV's response to this shared prompt below! Tanner:Oh man, Alison gave us a tough prompt for this flash blog. As soon as she said it, my mind began to race through the past three months trying to come up with an answer. The answer I will settle on is cleanliness. I have lived in a clean environment all my life. My parents kept my childhood home well maintained, I always cleaned my dorm room in college, and (for the most part) my housemates and I work hard to maintain a clean space in our YAV house. What I have learned from working at CHRPA is that cleanliness is a luxury that many do not have. As part of my job, I walk into many people’s homes, and the reality is that most are not clean. I have seen varying levels of disorganization, clutter, and hoarding during my three months on the job. I will admit, my gut reaction is to make a snap judgement. Why would someone live this way? I often think. Yet when you talk to homeowners, there are so many layers behind their living situations. Elderly or disabled clients lack the physical mobility to move about their house or do chores. Other clients juggle multiple jobs while raising a family, so there is no time left in their day to tend to household matters. Still, others may have lived their whole lives in poverty, so it may be hard for them to throw things away. The point is, anytime that voice pops into my head asking me to make a snap judgement, I try to step back and see the big picture. The virtue of maintaining a clean home is ingrained in us all our lives. Afterall, the saying goes “cleanliness is next to Godliness.” But the more I see, the more I realize this attitude is just another way to shame those who lack the privilege of having extra time and resources that they can use to take care of their home. I am grateful that I have the ability to live in a home that is “clean”, but I am actively trying to separate the morality and judgement that can so often by tied into the arbitrary definition of what makes a home clean. Ryan:Things are currently going well for us in Tucson. I am currently very thankful for my home community. We have our differences, but I am so happy to see how much progress we have made towards creating a well balanced intentional community. My fellow house mates (Tanner, Dakota, and Miranda) are all great people and I feel as though in such a short time we have gotten to know each other very well and I am equally excited to see where this journey will take us next. Though this year has already had many unexpected surprises and challenges I feel confident that I can look to my community for guidance in my time of need and feel reassured with their responses. I feel so grateful to be here and experiencing all of this alongside those who felt called to support me through your prayers and interest in our work. I encourage you to also look at the current YAV page on the Presbyterian website and read some my other housemates blogs so that you can get a better picture of our journey/challenges/passions and whatever else we are currently going through. Thank you all and I am so excited to see where this journey will take all of us next! Dakota:During our community discussion time on Friday, November 16, we were given 10 minutes to write on the prompt: What is something you are grateful for that you used to not be grateful for?
Hot showers. Due to luck of birth, being born in the United States to a middle class family, I have almost always had hot showers and baths, with the exception of a sibling using up all of the hot water before I showered. I remember as a child I would stay in the bath tub playing, singing, enjoying the water, for hours! My mom would say, “Why are you still in there? The water is cold now!” As a teenager, a hot shower was one of the places I could go to escape from the stress of high school academia, scholarship applications, and social anxieties. I was in the habit of taking showers first thing before bed, which was often in the wee hours of the morning. Especially during the winter months in Wyoming, I would take a hot shower, then run into my room where I turned my furnace on full-blast and laid in front of it until I was lulled to sleep. All of this to say, I have regularly enjoyed hot showers in my life, but I usually took them for granted. I didn’t stop to think, “Wow, I am thankful for that steamy shower!” There have been two periods in my life in which I distinctly remember not having access to hot showers. First, was when I was studying abroad in Ecuador. According to the study abroad program I went through, our host families were supposed to provide us with hot water. My host family said that my shower should have been hot, but it was only about 5% of the time. (I thuuuuuuroughly enjoyed those 5% days). I became used to the cold or, if lucky, lukewarm temperatures, and adapted. I executed my shower routine in record time, and then quickly went into my bedroom and crawled under the covers to warm up. The second period of time in which I did not have hot showers, was when I moved into our YAV house in August. During the summer months, the cool showers didn’t feel too bad. As October approached, though, the cold showers were uncomfortable. I talked about it with my housemates, and it seemed that we were all experiencing the same shivery showers. At first, we accepted the cold water as part of our house, and jokingly chalked it up to be part of simple living. After a while (as outside temperatures dropped) we decided to ask our landlord/maintenance guy about it. He came over the same day we called, and with one twist of a knob, solved our problem! Apparently our water heater was set to “cool,” likely because of the summer months, and because the house was vacant for about six weeks before we arrived. We now have the luxury of hot showers! This small example of shower temperatures reminds me of a few of the larger ideas that underlie the YAV program. First, it caused me to recognize my privilege. I have had the privilege to access hot water throughout my life. I had the privilege to call a maintenance person who came and fixed our problem for free. Second, I was reminded that I, nor my housemates, knew everything. It was a simple fix, but we were clueless. I was reminded that as a YAV, I should try not to come into a community or to a setting assuming that I know everything. I should try to rely on the expertise of the locals and those who were here before me, and may be here long after I leave. |
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