Getting Back Into Recording the Journey

It's been nearly five months since my return to the States and it has now become an undeserved commodity to sit at my old room, at my (new) desk in the house that saw and witnessed the range of family ups and downs within high school and middle school, in the town that witnessed most of my childhood. Have you ever felt like you're middle of so much bliss and things longed for that you know the grave abuse not savoring it anymore? In rare occasions I give myself the time to notice my ingratitude and the most selfish attitude of vanity and selfishness I allow myself to easily nest and feed of. How easily do I ask myself,  mainly bitterly, of the pain and brokenness of the world and its affect on my own cross but forget to be utterly repulsed at my direct contribution to it all- and how often is not rhetorical here, every day I do this and perhaps ever more frequently since the return of this young pilgrim.


But this is no woe post of course, but rather a necessary acknowledgement in the records for myself. Blessings experienced in the past 5 months have been sweetly held in my memory and now ever more eager to continue its recordings. A beautiful chapter of my life has been closed and despite my daily ungratefulness God gives me enough sanity (ah, praise for Mercy!) to see what I must do for a holy journeying in the years to follow, even if my will strongly battles with it at the moment.

The Desert

I've been on the border city of Cuidad Juarez, a few meters (or an inch like in the above picture) from El Paso, TX for about 3 days. The quality of my phone camera is really VERY poor so I was not able to capture in an image the painfully DEEP and stinging contrast between the two cities meters away from each other. Both cities lie in a desert and yet Cuidad Juarez is the only one that shows this for when I looked over the fence to glance at el Paso all I could see the very characteristic American highways, big trucks, huge hospitals, hotels and the whole infrastructure rising above its neighbor, a city filled with dust, graffiti and slums (the bordering part of Cuidad Juarez is the oldest part of the city, and hence in worst conditions than other places, for example, the U.S. consulate near my hotel) where one wonders if for its residents in Juarez (or likewise in El Paso) do not wonder how this can be, and silently feel some sort of desperation or remorse. For myself I couldn't help but wonder how I could have grown up in Juarez near its slums, WATCHING with my own eyes a life and place SO different from mine and know for whatever reason I was born a few meters south of a city that I could see but never enjoy. I still can't fully grasp the image I saw a few hours ago I must confess. No, my God, I still cannot grasp why in the above picture you'll find pieces of trash, stray dogs and houses in the desert in Juarez while El Paso you see Border Security vans protecting with guns and a fence anything resembling Juarez.

The desert is a beautiful place, desolate and full of false promises and yet come and see like I did this place, on Juarez, and don't tell me why you don't understand why a 12-year old boy risked his life to cross the desert, he knew El Paso, he had been watching the city his whole life. 

Today I was able to experience something QUITE wonderful, all praise and thanks to God! I gathered with a group of students from St. Joe's University to talk right across the fence, to ask about and listen to the immigration dilema. I shared my story, which in Juarez was coming to its end. I heard others, who in God's great Mercy and Love had traveled much longer and painful journeys. I saw the desert, and saw border patrol too, right across the fence, worried about me, about us, worrying that the U.S. was threatened by a few older women and a young woman. I saw my friend after nearly two years, but the fence impeded me from hugging her, the best we could do was pass our fingers through the fence and touch, even if barely. I heard students wishing me luck, desiring to show me New York when I return, excited to consider St. Joe's. It was touching, I felt unworthy to have that hope...most there did not. And so we prayed, in a circle, on the fence, touching hands, everyone still on their respective countries despite our inches in distance..... and I thank God DEEPLY for it!

The desert IS a beautiful place, in fact, I think it's the VERY first time I've been able to see one, but ever more beautiful was the experience that occurred there this Friday morning......

Oh The Weather Outside is... wonderful!

Oh the weather is... frightful? Nah, why you're in Mexico, sunshine ALL year long! :)

As the weeks pass I can hardly believe in almost 10 days little Ms. Gonzalez will be HERE!
I don't know how much she'll remember the few weeks she will be here in Guadalajara but I know for me, as her older sister, it will be significant enough. She was a toddler when she left this city and now she is a big teenager visiting the place of her birth for the first time again! It's insane that her 10-year old cousin and her will finally meet for the first time!

A couple of months before leaving Mexico, little Ms. Gonzalez enjoys an uncle's family ranch and its animals :) 

And yet I realize that for some reason this is the life God has given me, the unique aspect of being "home" in two homes, of (God-willing) having the freedom to travel back and forth in these two unique beautiful places. I AM so blessed with this, or will be at least!

However I don't forget that really, this is a small victory, my brother will still be in another country because of details in the immigration law, my mom still has a longer wait and there's the reality that UNdesired immigration is still present and pushing Mexico. I believe that roughly 1 out of every 10 Mexican citizens are in the U.S. most as illegal immigrants, most having suffered through an awful ordeal of poverty. Minimum wage here continues to be 50 US cents the hour and I know full well food prices are about the same in both countries. It's a beautiful place, with a beautifully deep inequality and much too well defined socio-economic groups.

Art thrives in this theater built in 1866 in Guadalajara, still VERY much in use to promote the arts in the city

The gorgeous hills in Veracruz

Slums in Guadajara

C'est Fini

It's finished, se ha terminado....

Alas I find myself writing for a bit here again, with the most arduous desire to re-take this habit and I think indeed with the opportunity to do so!

The past two weeks or so have been a blur, I am not certain where one started or ended, and what content there was in the middle of them! It's suddenly early in December 8th and I find myself with the sweetness of a few weeks where there is so little planned and with a semester at the threshold of its completion. I normally dread these occasions, I am reminded of 4 months about a year and a half ago where time was painful, where it much too slowly and painfully layered into depression, loneliness and frustration. However I know the circumstance are quite different but I still find myself a bit antsy about planning errands, helping, doing, feeling a day has had some purpose to it. If anything (once this flu is over) I hope to spend a few days a week with the gorgeous children at the home. I still stand in awe of them, in their simplicity, in their extraordinary way of just living and being present to those who visit and care for them. They simply do it, they don't plan how or why they do it, they simply do. They live. They tell you what they need with a great faith that their need will be responded and then express gratitude in their authenticity of their personhood. They ask to be loved, and they love you by being fully themselves. I can't possibly ask for anything else... with them or anyone else really.

Regardless, God is so good, indeed He is! In about a month I'll be packing a few things to fly (or maybe drive?) to the Mexican border city of Cuidad Juarez (right next to El Paso, TX) known as El Paso al Norte (the gateway north.. slight change from St. Louis gateway to the West nickname) according to a quick search in wikipedia. For about a week little Ms. Gonzalez and I will go through the various requirements (ranging from medical examinations, fingerprinting, lots of paperwork and a final interview with U.S. official) required by law to see a place a year ago I wasn't certain at all when I'd see. Things really will change after that, and I anticipate the date more than anything! It's been over 10 years of a process where at any point it could end and break (and many many times I saw its end so close for various circumstances) so yes, I am pinching myself again and again to see if it's actually happening...

Regardless, indeed MORE to come!

Photo Credit: Lianette Papaterra, dear friend from St. Louis who took this picture in El Paso about a year ago. The right shows you Cuidad Juarez, city that awaits this pilgrim soon enough!

A Gift

As many folks back at home start one of my favorite holiday celebrations (yes, as a kid moving to the U.S. Thanksgiving was like two Christmas dinners in the same month, who wouldn't LOVE that?!) I feel a daunting sense of the year coming close to an end. Classes this semester haven't been nearly as successful as in the past and I feel the agony that I've failed myself, and that I am losing an imaginary scholarship which surely (in my mind) will no longer be there upon my return. As I grow weary of my stay in Mexico in academic aspects (and a desire to be back, to in my mind really start and stay in the place I'll graduate from and will be the jumping point of the rest of what I'll do in Biology) God showers me most abundantly with good people here and humbles me to see that there's a gorgeous aspect of my person that also blossoms outside of my own frantic tearing down of self in academics. To that I stand with an open arms gesture, yet still in a cautious trust but knowing FULL well that there is something most beautiful that happens in the middle of chaos..always.

And so the gift (the small wooden cross, imprinted with the label "Jerusalem" at the back) was given to me the day after my 20th birthday by a woman who in the past few months has been crazy enough to take on the responsibility and task of joining me in a bit more closely in God's conversation with me and perfecting the WiFi signal so to speak. A Handmaid of Christ King sister's gesture touched me deeply (and the authentic candies from Spain were also such a treat, praise God for pilgrimages and travel!) and I felt that God brought me to such caring and loving place, to such loving and caring people... He has treated most tenderly this "orphan" of His who arrived in Mexico nearing two years ago now and whatever hurt, and bruising may also have occurred in this interlude all is well, all is good, all is Love... 

....As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.  If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.  (John 15: 9...)

The Source of My (recent) Joy

It's been a while since writing here, school has started, immigration shenanigans have gone down and up, and my mind has been swirling and swirling and anxious for some quiet time of writing! It will come, I've realized that this discipline will be very helpful to me and it's much needed! In the meantime I leave a little snapshoot of the source of my joy as of late! A boy named Diego from the home I've been visiting here the past few Saturdays.. him along with a few other young lads in the home have taken away my heart and they're the few men that I will gladly give such precious thing to!

More to come!

Taming and the Little Prince

Amidst the week and half of rest and recovery I've had at home after a small surgery I had the great gift of finishing up perhaps one of the most well known children's classics.. The Little Prince , adapted by every culture and language it has arrived to as its own. In my particular case I didn't find this little treasure until I was in college and in fact had not heard of it before, despite now being in complete agreement as to why it rose to such fame. For only roughly 70 pages, it not only packs to the reader (many children I am sure) a great story line of a small  strange little boy traveling through different planets but also a great deal more subtle messages that are written in a very clear and clever manner. I found it quite quite the delightful story, and I still debate if  its end is extraordinarily hopeful or quite the opposite.

Perhaps one of the most well known portions in this work is the encounter of the prince with the flowers after  speaking with the fox, as he narrates to the roses about his beloved flower and why precisely it is beloved. I couldn't help but ponder and pray through this small passage:

The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.

"You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world."

And the roses were very much embarassed.

"You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on. "One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you-- the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose..

I am certain one could extrapolate very different meanings from this portion. Each soul is indeed so unique and beautiful because God has "tamed" him/her in such a particular manner as well as other friendships.

Going with the last theme of remembrance of two very different places and standing in the middle of them I was certainly reminded of that. A few days after the last post I heard the very very gracious news my dad had received American residency and a few weeks after that immigration requested information about myself and my sibling. I stand in the interlude of anticipation and reality. Of remembrance of "taming" two very wonderful places and the being torn between the joy of returning to my beloved St. Louis and abandoning this city, who, as the fox experienced with the prince, had realized it built a much stronger bond..

So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near--

"Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."

"It is your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you..."

"Yes, that is so," said the fox.

"But now you are going to cry!" said the little prince.

"Yes, that is so," said the fox.

"Then it has done you no good at all!"

"It has done me good," said the fox, "because of the color of the wheat fields." 

It is very true that my time so far in Guadalajara has been relatively short, not yet a year and a half, and it's also true that in this interlude of anticipation and reality I still have some time with it. I've learned to never trust immigration too much, but regardless, as the prince knew, departure is near.. a few months at best and perhaps prematurely (and unlike the prince who seemed more joyful to return to his flower) I've begun to mourn a bit this interlude, despite its mystery. 

In roughly a week school resumes, Molecular Biology and Genetics (and 5 other classes!) promise to keep busy as well as maybe a job teaching 3 children this English language shenanigans, and I fear that the day shall come, in the middle of all of this where I too shall say:

"Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."

And the fear or sadness is two-fold. The knowledge of the beautiful things I've tamed here but also the worry and sadness of the flower (hinting back at the story) that I've left alone for roughly a year and half. That's a year and half where I have not continued to "tame" that little planet of mine. I worry, like the prince, perhaps the wind has already harmed my flower...or the future harm of a sheep that I am bringing from this new place

"You must keep your promise," said the little prince, softly, as he sat down beside me once more.

"What promise?"

"You know-- a muzzle for my sheep... I am responsible for this flower..."

Before I digress too much I know that despite and with all of this taming, my only peace and joy comes from the joyous faith that I place all these "tamings" with Him. Knowing His graze embraces future, present and past.. and that (I pray) with wisdom and with the same severity in this care and concern as the little prince I can journey to each and every planet (again, alluding to the book) this pilgrimage calls me to!