A Letter of Confirmation

I've never really considered how profound it is to be asked to confirm, the responsibility to reinforce someone in a choice.  I have asked and been asked to participate in a confirmation ritual.  I don't put that on my resume.  I can't submit that as a write off on my tax return.  I don't share it on a first date.  But I can recall it when I am discouraged, stressed, and doubtful.  

I am not much of an apologetic, evangelist, or preacher.  I appreciate the way of Francis of Assisi.  I trust my life, imperfect and radical, to be my explanation of my faith.  I breach the walls of sensibility and dance in the clutches of paradox's vortexes.  I put faith in forgiveness.  I am learning to trust being gentle.  I am accepting that power is not strength, and being strong does not help me carry, lift, or move heavy topics.  I am not valuable, I am expendable, and yet I am still significant.

My daughter made her confirmation last summer.  I wrote the following letter for her.  I came across it while cleaning out some other writing off my iPad.  I was pleased with how far I have come as a father, a friend, and confirming believer in Christ.  It gets easier and easier to be faithful as my journey leads me further into maturity.  I was inspired by it and hope you are challenged by it too.

Daughters,
Life gets really difficult and beautifully challenging.  You may want to take short cuts, find pleasures, and take the easier routes.  I don't blame you.  This is the beauty of choice.  You have chosen to be a believer in Jesus Christ,  A person and God, who asks you to find the divine route, find joy, and take the peaceful route.  I hope you value what your contribution to the world can be.
There will be a time when you will need to see your life as serving a purpose for ideas, concepts, and situations greater than yourself.  As you grow you will become aware of how significant every emotion, moment, and incident can be.  You are my motivation for loving others.  I learned to love myself because it was watching you grow where I realized I am living so you can have a good understanding of love.  I have learned to love so that I might show you through my love for you what love looks like.  As you know, I fail, I am irritating, I am silly, I am embarrassing, and I am awkward.  I hope you know it is what trying to love looks like.
I would like you to know that my goal as a dad is to learn to love you despite anything you could possibly do to deserve it. That is a fancy way of saying that I am learning how to love you no matter what. I am really thoughtful about how to challenge you because there are going to be situations in life that will push you to the limits of being able to love. When you come to the point of not being able to love I want you to know that you are touching your humanity, it isn't failure. I also want you to know that God's love doesn't have limits and neither does Her grace.
If you never reach points that test your ability to love, then figure out how to take a couple more risks.  I am very proud of your choice to commit and confirm your Faith in God. I hope you understand that God is unknowable and yet just a prayer away.
I hope that you are courageous enough to find God beyond the Catholic catechism and open yourself to understanding how the people of the world have seen God.  I hope you continue to recognize the power, the beauty, and the soul nutrition that comes with the Eucharist.  I'd like you to discover that the church is not so much a building, can exist without an organization, and is more a way of living.
I'd like you to know that paradox is an important concept that will help you understand what it means to believe in Jesus Christ.  I want you to understand that pain is part of life, suffering doesn't have to be, and there is a difference between the two.  I hope you believe that you are just as valuable as your neighbor and never believe that you are worth more then anyone else. I do hope you understand that I think of you as a priority and precious.
You are worth as much as anyone else but you are uniquely valuable to me.  
Hope you find this message helpful someday.

Reflexion Uno: My observation of distinction

There is sadness that comes from the realization that changing the world on the grand scale is not in the cards for me.  Not in the way I romanticized.  This makes growing older a little more frustrating. What is not frustrating is knowing I found what appears to be a faith.  It is a faith that reminds me that learning is the work of undoing judgments, comparison, and conclusions.  Education is not the sole source of learning and knowing is not necessarily intelligence. Sharing is my evidence of being learned.  I have grown beyond believing that melanin levels in skin significantly affect people's preference, and it is not the only source of discrimination. As proof, I've heard that some blind have a disdain for those who can see.
  Walking around the Mexico City reminds me humans find or create difference. I have to wonder why would an elite forgo the emotions and excitement of being seen as the best, when as people we believe in differences between each other, possibly as a way of feeling valued.  Where does this sense of value grow or get fed?

Today's Reflection:
I wrote this while observing for the first time the significant difference in class, privilege, and status of a group of people who I had, throughout my childhood and adolescence, believed or thought might finally be the homogeneous group of people that would be free of discrimination. In Mexico City, there are distinctions between Latinos. There are what appear to be European descendants, possibly Anglo, but definitely not gringo too.

My observation is that the wealthy in Mexico resemble the wealthy in the United States.  The biggest distinction was that the poor in Mexico look more ailing than the poor in America.  I notice the barriers to quality are the same as in the USA.  The neighborhoods are broken up by property values.  Mortgages or rent have become the new fences and walls guarding or filtering out, what might be biased-ly seen as the less worthy.  Gentrification is still the tactic of the non-violent, less rude, and hungry debutantes.  There is the same opportunity to recognize facades and arrogance.

I also realized that genuine quality in a product is similar to the genuine quality of a person.  I can buy an elite watch, but if it doesn't tell me the time how I need to hear it, then it doesn't have the quality I need.  Just like people who are valued beyond my price range, I may not be able to afford or reciprocate traits for the friendship with an elite person, and I can still meet my need for a healthy friend.  So at what point do I become discriminating and segregating of myself from others.

I realized I am not a peasant, maybe at one time felt like one.  Realizing I come from the stock of the "help", has not helped my self appreciation.  Realizing that I come from the stalk of quality people helps me accept my greatness.  All this reflection and contrast of cultures helps me ask the question, do we work to discriminate or are we also working to distinguish?  Can pushing others away also be understood as pulling towards others we see as having a higher quality?  Discrimination isn't as conveniently simple as race can make it.  There are more factor that can be responsible for how discrimination and prejudice exist.  Keeping with the metaphor of a luxury watch, what I have accepted is that we can all be quality watches.  I see how significant it can be when someone has not developed an authentic understanding for how to tell time. These elitests tend to believe that the luxury watches' time is more accurate.