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.

Old School principles.

The idea of entitlement and privilege haunts the conservative mindset and antagonize the socialist's.  There is an appreciation for the groundwork established by ancestors, it should be valuable, secured.  Some believe there shouldn't be a penalty for benefiting from the foundation of work and success already laid. There might not need to be a penalty, but paying respect to the entire foundation may be necessary.  Who takes the risks?  

There seems to be this idea that successful people found success on their own.  They took the risk.  It may be important to give the old school their props, but what really makes up the old school.  The railroads were laid by millions with investment from many.  Fossil fuels were drilled by millions with technologies from many.  The banking system was nurtured by millions of deposits.  The technological advances were developed by millions of minds.  The culture of industry was paid for in lives, risky working conditions, and daring attitudes from many, not just those who's names are on buildings.  Who worked harder?

Malcolm Gladwell helps me sift through the complexity for success in many of his ethnographies about success stories and rags to riches cultures.  I find this topic a hot topic in the arena of politics because we like to think there is government money and private money, but we don't like to think that public worth if fed by both.  The cost of goods and services distract us from the value of needs and sustainability.  How do we justify work effort? It might not be who expends more energy, ideas, solutions, hours, or cash.  It might be who we prefer to value.  

The urban culture has a term for this, the Old School.  Nothing happens new that wasn't inspired or grounded in the Old School.  So I feel entitled to the attitudes of hope and prosperity, but not the exploits from those who we consider Old School.  I feel the exploits should be reinvested into the public worth not hoarded by dynasties.  I feel giving props is acknowledging with patriotic benefaction for the privilege that comes from being connected and tapped into the Old Schools.  

 

Just a laborer

This is my first encounter with feeling inspired to collaborate with a Saint.

“He who works with his hands is a laborer.
He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman.
He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.”?
-Francis of Assisi

Reading this quote can inspire, then as I realize my own sadness around being seen as labor, and not as often, seen as an artist, it doesn't completely help me feel divine.  But, what I have noticed in my evaluation of people's perceptions through their cultures, privilege, and histories, especially my own obligation or rooted ideas to be seen or identified as a "Mexican-American", "Brown", or "Hispanic", is that I have allowed other's preferences and perceptions to define how I am perceived.

I participate in judging one's work, again especially my own.  I establish my own scales of cost and compensation. I determine my own version of what it is to be labor or art.  That scale is used for me and against me.  I cultivate my competencies and doubts from these determinations.  I internalize my worth, alongside my values, and ultimately my social cost.  I have become a judge of quality and economized human worth.

One concept that Francis left out is that when I judge someone's work to be absent of head or heart or both head and heart, I participate in the historic human neurosis, possibly mental disease of bias, prejudice, and economics.  What does it mean to hold an individual in comparison for what they contribute?  What does it mean to use your head or heart?  Is it fair to suggest that some people choose not to use their head and heart?  I wonder about comparison.  I often find it is the root of jealousy.  It seems natural to see comparison as competition.  We, I, have the need to excel and be more alluring.  It might be our reproductive instinct for desirability.  Are we fulfilling our primal instructions to reproduce?  Does distinction drive us to improve or see ourselves as insufficient?  I have a desire to know where I stand among others.  Does my true self need to know this or is it my insecurity that is seeking this out?  So I see this comparison as toxic and hurtful egoism.  Without disregard or disrespect for separating mundane from enchanting,  I have my contribution to this quote.

My contribution would be subtly different.  Those who see the God in someone's work, without comparison, even when done modestly with their hands is an artist.  Those who see Divinity in the distinct quality that  reveals a person's thoughtfulness is an artist. Those who can see beyond jealousy and grandiosity of an individual who combines their labor with thoughtfulness to reveal their heart is an artist.  Lastly when we can begin to look for the hands, head, and heart in all people's contribution we will be artisans.

I hope that one day we, I, will value the produce picker with the same preference as the gourmet chef.  I am working to see the Crossfit games champion as valuable as the dainty homebody.  I am working to see the nuclear physicists as valuable as the janitor who empties the trash.  I desire a day when the carpenter with blistered hands is valued with same reward as the real estate agent with manicured nails.

I idealize about what life would be like when our knowledge won't have a cost on it, and our labor won't be the measure of our social worth.  Who am I to judge someone's worth, much less their cost?

Maybe a better inquiry would be into how modestly can I provide enchanting contributions in community that I am compensated with resources that will not distance my opportunities to thrive from yours?  Or Can I be an artist without keeping you a laborer?  Are you an artist if only the elite can afford to benefit from your work?

The Wound Fears!

Healing hurts.  It takes a certain will power to heal.  The body, the mind, the spirit all get wounded.

A fashioned life-like tree from the tools that destroyed it.

The wound has boundaries.  The boundaries can create pain free zones.  These zones can be crippling.  A paradox exists because being pain free feels a lot like being healthy, but may not necessarily be healthy.  The feeling of bliss may at times be unnoticeably unhealthy.  Calibrating this paradox of comfortable health and painful health is challenging, requiring critical thought about personal perception and perspective with awareness of social norms.  What you see as painless may really be a debilitating comfort zone.  What you see as painful may really be the struggle to break free from illness.  When we function with an idea of health as being a state or condition, it becomes purchasable, definable, or measurable.   When I think of health as living, it becomes a relationship.

Black Lungs from Coal miner

How I treat health will be reflective of what value I have for it.  In the end I am learning to know the value, not cost, of my pain.  I have learned to put myself in pain to connect with health, and am working on distinguishing when my pain is damaging my connection with health.  I am learning to avoid the comfort of profiting from health, while also receiving gratitude from helping others connect with health.  I am having a hard time with connecting with those who use the fear of pain as a way to improve their own quality of life.  I aspire to hold health gently, as if it were lying next to me each night.  I think asking her questions that she may have never been asked before.

Health, can you teach me how to love you...but without the pain?  I think she might say.  To love me is to love yourself, I don't need anything you don't, nor can I do without anything you also need.  The health that I have in my life today has come from both pain and fulfillment.  I have yet to know health without spending a little of both.  The same goes for sickness, I don't hate you, but you seem to bring more pain than joy, and then after really seeing your contribution to life, I see you are a remedy to arrogance, toxic pride, and grandiosity.  I struggle with loving you too.

Luxurious Blessings

I am discouraged by how much I struggle to be Holy, a believer, or faithful.  The more I engage in research, business, technology, and entertainment the more I find myself doubting.  I think God has a way of reminding me that I don't have to leave the world to love the world. 

 I find my doubt is healed by the undeserved blessings I cannot help but be grateful for.  The hard part is having to accept that God might be using my intellect, economics, conveniences, and luxuries to help remind me that divinity may not only be seen in nature.  I am reminded that even in service there is a reward.  Be balanced, don't take more than I need, and have respect are phrases that come to ease my worry after feeling the anxiety of discerning whether I am being blessed or being self-indulgent.  


Returning from a immersion with a team studying, observing, and even some being called to Curanderismo has me, once again, remembering to ask for balance.  Where there is energy, I'll likely find light.  Where there is light I'll likely find heat.  Where there is heat I'll find movement.  Curar!

Embracing the Elements: Curanderismo

Straight up cambios

  Tupac Shakur mentions in rap lyrics that he sees no changes, straight up racist faces, and for a long time I agreed.  Now, with faith, I gotta say, I see straight up changes.  I can't say I lived a thug life. I can't say I have shared in the darkest struggles that humanity or poverty seems to provide.  I don't remember my barrios ever being hazardous, poor, or scary.  As I look back on my barrios from the outskirts, from a different cultural group, I notice that they are perceived as dangerous, poor, and, when the sun goes down, scary.  People are violent in the barrios where I came from, not so much to be bad asses, but to not be seen as weak.  I look on my barrios now and see a whole lotta changes.  I also hold the admission that history hints at plenty of things that appear to lack change.

  I know there are struggles unique to regions, ethnicities, and cultures that can get overwhelmingly discouraging, but what seems to be common is a desperate yearning for worth.  How desirable am I, are you, are we?  What can I gain without giving, aka "efficient"?  Wealthy, healthy, and obedient seem to be the preferred cultures.  These qualities have the highest rank in the realm of worth.  The perception that defines these quality's criteria are biased and even prejudice.  It has become apparent to me that race is a scapegoat, because when I stare into the abyss of discrimination, I see through spiritual eyes, and see that the root of it all is worried peoples trying to keep, find, or validate their worth.

  I think we have a hard time, sanctioning sadness, and it spans across cultures, because it depreciates desirability for most, causing a shrinkage in worth.  Grief seems to carry a stigma of illness.  I think the perception of sadness as a weakness causes people to avoid, fear, and suppress sadness.  I think we fear the lack of productivity and action that can come from being sad.  It makes sense to me that America prides itself on being fit, enduring, capable, and powerful, because there is so much cultural sadness that has been suppressed, avoided, and ignored.  I have found that dignity and integrity, aspects of a person's identity, are cultivated in sadness and cannot be fooled by appearances, but unfortunately the ego is easily fooled.

  There are too many cultures bringing their tired, sick, and huddled masses and aren't or haven't dealt with the grief of saying good bye to the rejecting, displacing, punishing, or deteriorating places that they left behind, or worse were taken from.  Likewise they are not able to have enough time and space to integrate a pride for both their losing culture and their newly adopted Culture's attitudes.  This grief is spread over generations.  Every lineage has a generation struggling with identity, the conquistador, colonist, refugee, slave, pioneer, immigrant, and the transient.

   I did at one time buy into Shakur's perspective that seemed to reflect no changes.  I bought into the idea that things won't change, until I couldn't ignore how they have.  I have my own perspectives that include the noticeable changes.  I look at New Mexico's prisons and see it filling with cholo's faces. I see that discrimination changes too.  Young boys once, over time and their development, rarely afforded an opportunity to taste America's graces, but often expected to know how to reach out with simple willpower.  These vatos locos, raised by parents who stem from a family tree rooted in a legacy of Spanish treasure hunters, then peregrinos, eventually becoming displaced villagers.  People who once upon a time were conquerors, now sit in concrete pens, conquered.  A culture caught by pioneering Americans resting in simplicity, and now dazzled by America's dream while bitterly denying the pain of not really being desired in its reality.

  I cannot yet describe being pulled by an ever growing number of identities, the least of them being American.  I am stuck between countries that never belonged to my ancestors, and yet I am tied to a land that feels like a mother.  I am critical of a country that a majority of people admire.  I am resistant among people hypocritically holding a mindset that understands Christianity but who thrive on lifestyles more fitting of something like capitalistianity.  I struggle with both myself.  I see changes, some fitting my idea of just and often confused by those changes that seem unfair.  I see the dignity in my parent's dilemmas and how they have changed and arrived at their identities.  All this has helped me change my idea of success.

I see that the worth my un-primped barrios carry, because mi jente, my people, are succumbing to the monetary and economic gravity of property values, putting price tags on eloquent bosque views, and corrales around pedestals revealing Sandia sunsets, selling out, figuratively and literally.  Many are continuing to suffer from the disease I like to call worth, including me.

  I am not the same, so I see changes.  The way I look has changed.  The way I see has changed.  The way I love has changed.  The perceptions that matter to me have changed.  I have changed the way I live.  At the same time I still have to live with how so much doesn't seem to change.