Bakersfield

here i am at the Virtual Enterprise Business and Trade Fair Competitions in Bakersfield, Kern County California.

I have my own hotel room with king size bed all to myself.

Earlier, Sean, his mom and i had dinner at John's Incredible Pizza-- an all you can eat pizza and gaming extravaganza

Later, all the other students will come back from the convention center after dancing, karaoke, DDR and commence to do whatever high schoolers will do when they are alone with other high schoolers in nice hotel rooms in another city.


Life is funny

Thank you, Hugo, for taking care of our poor

When I read this article it amazed and amused me greatly, so I had to share it.
I have been interested in Hugo Chavez since taking Latin American history classes in college and seeing the documentary "The Revolution Will be Televised" about his coup and rise to power. I think he is one of the most interesting and important world leaders of our time.

Anyway...most of the time you hear about him it is because he is butting heads with Bush. This is very important, becasue for most of the last 40 years, Latin American leaders have gone along smoothly with neo-liberalism, global capitalism, right-wing politics and being political and military clients of the US in the region. Chavez reperents the resurgence of the Populist, leftist leader of days gone by, when charismatic and controversial figures came to power by delivering on their promises to help the poor. Chavez has been the champion and spokes person for the working poor, land reform, environmentalism, anti-US economic imperialism and every thing else that is good and decent that George Bush hates.

So here is old Hugo, ever the villian, the thorn in the side of the Bush Administration, providing a service to AMERICA's POOR! What is wrong with this picture? How beautifully does this illustrate what is going on in our times?!

Recently, the US Oil Industry has come under fire from even Republicans in Congress who say the oil companies should be accountable for the MASSIVE profits that have been made this last year with the extraordinarily high gas prices (price gouging motivated by pure greed) US lawmakers have been saying that the oil companies should be giving some of that money to the benefit of the people. now, you know the amount of money they made with the high gas prices must be obcene when you hear REPUBLICANs calling for acocuntability!

So......here is Venezuela, also experiencing a windwall of oil revenue from the high gas prices. And what do they do? in addition to helping their own poor, they gave discounted gas to heat AMERICAN poor homes during the winter!!

Love your enemies.
Amen

I think that one of the the things that Jesus wants us to understand about Him and about life is this: That there is something profound about pain. There is a way in which we can, in our human pain, really be human with (and thus, love) our neighbor.
Our pain, our longing for an end to pain is what unites us all. We spend our lives trying to hide it, escape it, numb it or understand it.
What Jesus did was come into the world's pain, and make it his own. In this way he became fully human.

How can we become fully human? How can we love our neighbor?

Every day i am around people who struggle to live through circumstances that are painful. I aid a student who was born unable to walk or move his limbs. I live in a neighborhood where people have to work very hard for the things that they need, and broken relationships result in fighting, depression, and self-destruction. I myself struggle with the sins, flaws and limitations that keep me from the life God wanted for me.

Here is where we can connect. My pain, is their pain. I can view my pain as the pain. The agony that defines our expereince as humans who are living not as we are meant to live, but marred and blinded by sin.

Truly this is the mercy that God showed us. The mercy of knowing our pain and making it his. This is my redemption, it is your redemption, it is the redemption of our communities as we go forth and do the same. You can truly love someone and serve them when you see that their pain is your pain, I think

Every person knows deep in their soul that things are not the way they should be. we wait for the Kingdom, but what does it mean to wait but to suffer-with? Com-passion

sweet

Currently Listening

I recently had the desire to explore more acoustic emo music. I became enamoured of this genre back during my freshman year of college when Joel, my friend and fellow music fanatic introduced me to such artists as pedro the Lion, Damien Jurado, Songs Ohia, Other Desert Cities and Starflyer 59 to name a few. There was a particular quality of the music that was simple and soft, and spoke to my soul's inner depths....the part of me that would just want to stare out the window and then write down some free-form poetry. It was a nice compliment to the hip hop, funk and soul that dominated my musical repertoire.
Here is something i recently picked up--"Veneer" By Jose Gonzalez-- and a quote from a Spin magazine review

"González is a Swedish-born Argentine folkie who exhales snatches of rainy-day poetry and finger-picks his guitar like he's backing a suicidal flamenco dancer. But his debut betrays no melodrama, just an exquisitely brittle, bruised articulation of how bewildering and devastating it can be to wake up every day and watch your hope slip away before the coffee is even made." A-

Other stuff....the new Los Lobos album. Some of the best and coolest Mexican traditional music performers.


And i am waiting for this in the mail--- more melancholy, poetry-inspiring instrumental/sample-based hip hop. (trip-hop, as it were). A local producer known as Dday One. The album is called "Loop Extensions"

feats of strength

Last night was a fun time. The Northwest Neighbors men all faced off one by one with Greg to honor him and his Germanic/Midwestern roots by wrestling. It was an evening of epic struggles, pitting man against man, intern against intern, executive director against intern, and people group against people group.
Props to Greg for emerging victorious in about 7 of 9 matches. His valor and stamina were stunning (or maybe that was the blow to the skull i revieved when Greg and I accidentally butted heads)

Happy Brithday, Greg

Querida

waves of grainy cumbias and guajiras flutter through the
walls and in between doorways
sad strains, with dust and shards of sunlight
a cloudy vase sits atop a thickly painted red table
only a fiery dead rose inside

the times of needing her are over
left to ponder unknown words and intentions
trapped and aching in this space
in this space
in this city
cracked concrete, smell of taqueria, cars moving
human bodies from hogar to trabajo
bungalows and apartments hiding millions of
stories under cover of sooty palm trees.
Kissing her was like kissing tragedy
like embracing something that was only a word away from
becoming a phantom
together, we forgot the path ahead of us
lived solemnly backward and backward in time
whispering echoes of chocolate,
café con leche
incense smoke
and Mayan pyramids

the needle sputters and pops as it glides over the record
I strain to hear her voice—
that sound that brought colors to life
and made all songs repeat her name,
her name

we carved our stories into the loneliness of nameless streets
walked them
made each other laugh and
sing on them
and shared the joy of watching
a neighborhood change and grow

her voice now massages fading mysteries
into my mind
her memory is a dark deer
quiet breath into chill air
a twitch
then gone
onto a mossy mountain path I will never find

hope it goes well

Tonight Teresa and I are going over to Cal State Fullerton to begin a teaching series on justice and God's love for the poor. I will be speaking for 30 min on the topic of God's identifying with the poor...
I am a little nervous about going into this. i am just not sure how it will be recieved or how well my talk presents the material i want to get across.
please pray that the Holy Spirit works through it and that people hear what they need to hear.
i like preaching to a group, but it still makes me nervous, especially when i dont really know the crowd

America, Vol 1

In honor of Dia de los Muertos

on another note...i've been wanting to start a topical 'blog series' kind of like Jason had last year about capitalism.
I've been wanting to talk about the idea of America-- The concept that America itself is a concept, an abstraction that shifts, evolves, adapts to different settings, different historical periods and different personal or social needs.
What does America mean?
what does it mean to immigrants?
what does it mean to soldiers?
to Christians?
to Muslims?
to city-dwelers? rural dwellers?

i think the discussion is important, because more and more, our leaders on the natonal level are shaping policy annd moving us in a direction that leads toward their particular idea of what America is. Call it religious conservatism, privitaization, villification of outsiders (immigrants, 'terrorists') and subversive insiders (gays, minorities, liberals, welfare mothers, teachers)
in any case, i think there is a case to be made for the idea that in no time in history has there ever been a unity, a nation or a community that could be called the United States. The title 'American' is an arbitrary, abstract one--yet it takes on meaning depending on your context and your other identities within your context.

Look at the history of America before the Civil War. What were the 13 colonies? Most historians agree that the bond between them was relatively weak until after the Civil War when Federal power greatly increased. What was America then? A Continental Army? A set of laws called the Constitution? A wealthy, landed elite maintaining power over the masses of disenfranchised or enslaved people? Or was it the thousands of stories of the mixing and melding of ethnic groups, the negotiation in homes, on farms, in the streets, on the frontiers of new and changing identities? Was it the experience of the Iroquois, the Sioux, the Cherokee? Was America the crucible for new cultures, languages, economies? Was it the destination for people who wanted to forget where they came from? Was it the goal of people who wanted to make things better for themselves and their decendants?

Remember that wars have been fought, people have died over the issue of what defines America. People have gone to their death clinging to the desire for this idea to be real. But it never was real, nor could it ever be. Humans have been creating America since day one, and we continue to create it, which is why i think we are either so critical or so proud of it. It is the best of what we can create and it is the worst.

One thing i want to throw out there is defining the most fundamental unit of social organization. As you go from Global to national to local, what is the point at which you cross over from the abstract to the real? Is there such thing as a global community? A nation? Is the most basic form of social organization the family? The neighborhood? the married couple? the Church?

What is America to the youth in my neighborhood? On one level,they are products of the public school system. The purpose of the public school system was to assimilate immigrants in the late 1800s and early 1900s by molding their minds around the idea that , yes, indeed there is a thing called America and here is what it looks like to be a part of it-- good citizenship, know your history, obey the rules, speak English, stay in line, no cuts, play sports, learn some skills and get a job.
Public education is the factory in which the labor force for capitalism is produced (soldiers and prisoners as well as mechanics and managers)

So....the youth in our neighborhood have some sense of a mythical and all-encompassing America. It is taught to them in the schools. But what is their experience of America outside school? That is where it gets fascinating, because they and their families are in the process of creating "America" First of all, they are "Americans" before they even crossed the borders of this nation. They come here, raise their children here, work, live, buy things, make relationships, pay taxes, commit crimes, engage in politics, re-shape the ecology, etc.
But what would they consider their community, their 'country'? Some would say Mexico, or Guatemala or El Salvador. Others would describe a 'globalized community' in which family relationships, resources and information permeate national borders and form a kind of 'third space' of identity that is not confined or defined by colors or lines on the map. Some would say Pasadena. Some California. Some would say Chicano, some Latino. Some might say 'I am an American.' ........
to be continued