Actor Lindsay Wagner, who was a darling of made-for-TV films in the 1980s, played the title character. Wagner was everything my family was not: tall, blonde-haired with hazel eyes, and spoke perfect American English. My mother waited for this show each week, anticipating the new adventures of the bionic woman dubbed into Spanish.

When my little sister was born, my mother named her Lindsay, because she said that Lindsay Wagner was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. It was also an American or English name, which, in my mother’s opinion, gave it an air of sophistication. Because we still lived in Guatemala at that time, and Spanish is a phonetic language, none of us could pronounce Lindsay, and, truthfully, we had never even heard the name spoken out loud so we did not know how it should sound. As a result, we ended up calling my little sister Misha because her middle name is Michelle.

That same year, I showed older kids on the bus my school pictures, and they said I was ugly. My innocent seven-year-old heart was wounded, and I wept all the way home and told my parents through hiccupping sobs. My father reassured me and told me I was pretty. He gave me a snack, smoothed my hair, and told me not to believe those awful kids—that I was the prettiest girl in that school. Nevertheless, I was not reassured. Even at that tender age, I knew my mother thought a blonde, light-eyed woman was the most beautiful person she had ever seen, and I understood I looked nothing like this woman. I had (and still do have) brown skin, black hair, dark eyes, and, decidedly, non-European features.

Hay que mejorar la raza

It was not hard to absorb all the aspirations toward whiteness in my family and in my Guatemalan culture. I heard my paternal abuelita tell stories of her Spanish father and Italian mother; she spoke with disdain about Guatemalan indigenous people as did all my aunts and uncles on both sides of the family. Even my maternal Afro-Guatemalan abuelita disparaged Black Americans for their Blackness, distancing herself as if she were not Black.

My friend Bethany once noted insightfully that when white North Americans say they are Irish or German or French, they are seeking proximity to their ancestors. In contrast, when many Latines in the U.S. or Latin America say they have European ancestry, we are seeking distance from blackness and indigeneity. Proximity vs. distance. It is an important distinction.

Even though our family was made up of people who were indigenous, Black, and/or a mixture of different races, there was always a stated clear preference for European features and white skin.

As I grew up all of my dating experiences were with white boys and, when I became an adult, white men. I could offer you any number of reasons for why that occurred— that I was raised in a white community in a suburb of west Florida; that I went to a predominantly white college and seminary; and that I have been in predominantly white institutions my entire life. All of those things are true, but the real reason I only dated white men is that I was raised to prefer and believe in the superiority of whiteness, and it was a message I internalized.

There is a racist Latin American saying that is very popular even among Latines in North America: “Hay que mejorar la raza.” Loosely translated, it means “we have to improve the race.” It is a saying that encourages Latines to marry and have children with someone white because of the belief that European genetic traits are superior and more beautiful, and, thus, more desirable. Even though “mejorar la raza” is a lived reality of internalized racism for many Latines, this phrase is often repeated tongue-in-cheek, as if it is harmless and amusing.

This is the legacy of Spanish colonialism and American imperialism that has brainwashed our communities into thinking that being white and having European features is the only way one can be beautiful and acceptable—it’s the way to find belonging and social mobility. It’s an idea that translates into self-hatred since the majority of us are not white. The theologian Oscar Garcia-Johnson calls this brainwashing our “colonial wound,” one that we pass on to every generation.

The Colonized Mind

Because I speak so frequently on immigration , I am often asked why there are so many Latines working for ICE and the U.S. Border Patrol. It’s difficult to explain to people outside our communities all of the above: the implicit aspirations toward whiteness and assimilation in order to access all of the privileges that come with that identity. It’s ultimately a desire for inclusion and belonging, and its roots are deep and far reaching. It’s the false belief that if we distance ourselves from “those immigrants,” who are clearly not like us, we will find acceptance because we’ve adopted the values of the broader culture.

Of course, this alignment with racism and xenophobia never works out like they expect. I’m sure you, like me, have read dozens of stories of Latines and others who supported this administration and its anti-immigrant policies, just to find themselves or their loved ones on the receiving end of deportation orders.

One of the saddest and most infuriating of these stories you can hear on This American Life, where a Latine Border Patrol Agent, who deported thousands of people for decades and supported this administration with feverish enthusiasm, finds out his birth certificate was fraudulent, and he wasn’t born in the U.S. He promptly receives a deportation order, all-the-while writing fawning letters to President Trump about why he deserves to stay.

Like I told you—it’s just sad and infuriating.

The political philosopher Frantz Fanon once said, “A colonized mind will fight harder to protect the master’s image than to recover its own dignity.”

This is a helpful graphic:

Healing the Colonial Wound

When I think back to how my elders inadvertently taught me to survive in a racist world, I realize they were telling me, in their own way, that life is easier for white people—that they have more opportunities and do not experience the exclusion we do. They wanted me to have access to the whole wide world, and the only way they knew to give it to me was by encouraging me to assimilate to white spaces and marry into whiteness. They passed on the colonial wound because teaching me to adapt to a racist system was the only way they knew to help me survive it.

Healing the colonial wound means doing the uncomfortable work of telling ourselves the truth. It means looking back at that seven-year-old girl sobbing on the school bus—and the mother who named her daughter after a TV star she thought represented perfection—and offering them both an immense, quiet grace.

It looks like choosing to stop striving for a proximity that was designed to erase us.

It means looking at the white, hazel-eyed standard of beauty that governed my childhood and realizing it was never a universal truth, just a story sold to us by empires and television executives. It means refusing to pass the phrase “hay que mejorar la raza” down to the next generation, except as a historical relic of a lie we survived. And it means choosing to love our dark hair, our dark skin, and our complex, beautiful histories not as a consolation prize, but as our primary inheritance.

Healing doesn’t mean erasing the pain our elders carried; it means deciding that the wound stops with us. It means recognizing that the master’s image was never meant to protect us; it was built to keep us striving for an acceptance that is always just out of reach.

To heal, we must disrupt the quiet lies we tell ourselves in the name of survival:

• We stop equating whiteness with safety.

• We stop seeking distance from our Indigenous and Black roots.

• We refuse to sacrifice other vulnerable migrants on the altar of our own assimilation.

Our elders gave us the master’s tools to survive inside the system.

Now, we have to use our tools to build something better: a community rooted in self-love, solidarity, and the radical idea that we were already whole to begin with.

We are the image of God.

How are you recognizing or healing the colonial wound in your own life, family, or culture?

Note: some of the content in this newsletter was adapted from my book Beyond Welcome: Centering Immigrants in Our Christian Response to Immigration

It was a conversation about community. How we all mourn the fact that no one takes you to the airport anymore because there’s Uber; you have to board your pet or find a pricey pet-sitter when you’re away because we don’t know our neighbors well anymore; you have to pay movers because no one wants to come help you move or pack or unpack; and there’s no free support for parents with young kids because everyone is isolated from one another in the privacy of their own homes, and good babysitters are not cheap.

What happened to the village we all so desperately want and need?!

Well, as it turns out, we exchanged it for payment for services. Convenient. Easy. Comfortable. Efficient. But expensive and not communal.

At the time I came upon that thread, I was facing a challenge of my own—an upcoming work trip and no friend that lives nearby to care for my two cats, though I did find a trustworthy pet sitter that charges $30 a day to visit once a day (a total of $210 for the whole trip).

Then I learned that the condo building where I rent has a pet-sitting swap. It’s free, and we all exchange cat or dog care.

This moment is when I realized that I don’t want community, not really.

It was hard for me to consider emailing them and asking for support. I don’t want to be a nuisance; I want to be independent and self-sufficient, not a burden to others. Additionally, signing up would mean that I would not only benefit, but I’d have to commit to the hassle that comes with it: there would come a time I would need to provide care for someone else’s pet.

Finding Perennials

A while back I read an illuminating fact about aging and retirement: the best guarantee of a comfortable old age is not having children—it’s having enough money and community.

Your children, if you have them, will be busy with their own lives, careers, and families, perhaps even in another state. Adult children are not a cure for loneliness.

You’ll see your children, of course, but chances are good they won’t be the people to meet your social needs. So you’ll need your friends.

At the same time, I’ve realized that it’s more and more difficult to maintain friendships or make new friends as we get older. I don’t exactly know why—maybe it’s because we’re a lot more geographically mobile these days. People frequently move cities or countries in pursuit of better education, career opportunities, or a lower cost of living. Maybe it’s because friendships, unlike family relationships, require that we continuously opt in, which can be challenging as our lives change. Maybe it’s because friendships don’t have forced rituals, so you have to create the opportunities to gather: phone calls, road trips, dinners, hikes. Maybe the rise of social media gives us the illusion of connection and friendship, causing some of us to disengage from actual relationships. And maybe some friendships are annuals not perennials, just like the summer flowers.

As my faith evolved, friendships I thought were perennial flowers gradually wilted and died with my old belief system. As I began writing, I happily spent more and more time alone doing the work, turning down invitations and initiating less with friends. Twelve years ago, I moved from Southern California to Maryland and then spent two years in Mexico City working—naturally, my friendships suffered the distance. My work now is entirely remote—we don’t even have a physical office in the US, so I can spend an entire week without seeing another human in the flesh unless I make the effort.

Remember that old 1995 movie The Net? At the time, it was astounding that Sandra Bullock’s character had a life lived almost completely online. Yet that’s not altogether unusual these days. Modern life is simply less rooted and rigid. Today, we have unprecedented freedom to change where and how we live. For better and worse.

Pet-Sitting Swappers Unite!

Which brings me back to the pet-sitting swap.

Reader, I joined.

It has been as I expected. My neighbors don’t scoop the litter box the way I do; nor do they clean the pet dishes like I do; and they don’t always send me a daily picture of Oscar and Trudi as I’ve requested.

But neither do I care for their pets exactly as they would. I’m sure that’s annoying to them.

As it turns out, being a villager that both gives and receives support is everything I don’t want: uncomfortable, inconvenient, inefficient, and difficult at times. But very communal. And community is something I need.

We’ve become (dare I say it?) friends. And I’ve become attached to their cats! And they love my cats and take good care of them, even if differently.

This decision led me to join the building book club, where I read books I wouldn’t necessarily choose and sometimes don’t like. But I’ve also read books I’ve loved and others that provoked great discussions. Then I decided to really commit to my DC Latine writing group, even though it’s mostly social and not like a writing group I joined In Mexico City where we just wrote a lot, which I prefer. I’ve started accepting invitations even when I’d prefer to just chill at home with my cats (although once a week is my limit), and I’ve started initiating with friends. I even invited my neighbors to my most sacred place: the baseball park when the Dodgers came to town.

We all want the good parts of community: the free support, the love, the name on our emergency contact. But it comes at a cost that’s not at all romantic or fun but very necessary. So I’m choosing to be a villager, and I’m enjoying it. Most of the time. That’s the uncomfortable, messy reality of choosing connection over convenience.

As a refresher, in the middle of Matthew’s second chapter, there’s a short narrative about an incident in the life of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus—it’s an event that’s not retold in the other Gospels. We learn that after his birth, Jesus’ parents had to flee with their child to Egypt:

When the magi had departed, an angel from the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up. Take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod will soon search for the child in order to kill him.” Joseph got up and, during the night, took the child and his mother to Egypt. He stayed there until Herod died. This fulfilled what the Lord had spoken through the prophet: I have called my son out of Egypt. (Mt: 2:13-15)

Herod, the all-powerful king is troubled at the coming of King Jesus, but he is unable to destroy him—God sees this humble family, and God’s hand is upon them and not the rulers of the nations. Frustrated and determined to find and murder the child Jesus, Herod unleashes his vengeance by slaughtering the children of his own people.

We, in the Western Church, know next to nothing about the holy family’s sojourn in Egypt, but we know they found refuge there and were not turned away. For a short time, they made their lives in the safety of Egypt. The ancient church that still exists in Egypt today, the Coptic Church, takes great pride in having provided sanctuary for the holy family—there are caves and trees that mark their journey south from Bethlehem, and churches have been built where it is believed they rested, prayed or found shelter.

It is likely intentional on the part of Matthew, the gospel-writer, to introduce early on in the book the magi, probably astrologers, who, in contrast to Herod, come to worship and bring gifts to the child Jesus. They follow a star from their distant homeland, possibly ancient Persia or Babylon (modern day Iran and Iraq, respectively).

In King Herod, we see paranoia, fear, and resistance to God, but in these foreigners we see obedience to the divine will. It is an irony that is repeated throughout the book of Matthew: Jesus’ own community rejects him, but those on the outside, like the foreign magi, receive him.

In modern terms, we would say that Jesus and his parents are refugees. Herod sees Jesus as a threat to his own leadership, having heard about this child who would one day be king and usurp him and is determined to kill him. The legal definition of a refugee is a person who flees from their home country to seek refuge elsewhere, because of persecution, or a well-founded fear of persecution, on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.

Given that very clear definition, Jesus’ status as a refugee child is undeniable, but you would never know it from the threads upon threads online dissecting the story and claiming that Jesus was not a refugee because he did not flee outside the Roman Empire.

But what does that mean exactly?

If Jesus was displaced outside the empire he’s a refugee, but if he fled within it then he’s an Internally Displaced Person (IDP).

Isn’t that a distinction without a difference?

Either way, his family had to flee far away from their own people to protect the life of their child.

And what’s behind the rhetoric?

It’s no coincidence that most of these detailed posts and social media threads are coming from Christians on the far right who reject the biblical command to care for the immigrant in their midst. Their arguments reflect a specific and disgusting kind of justification for absolving ourselves of any responsibility for our vulnerable neighbors being terrorized by ICE, having their visas and permanent residencies revoked, and being denied entry and the right under our U.S. law to seek asylum at the southern border.

One thing is certain no matter our denominational affiliation: it’s difficult to read the story of the flight to Egypt and not think of the refugees and other immigrants in our communities. Like the Holy family, they seek refuge from violence and terror. There may not be a ruthless Herod chasing immigrants today, but there are repressive U.S. government agencies persecuting rather than protecting them.

I’ve never visited the Middle East or North Africa, but I imagine that their climates are not unlike the ones in the U.S. border cities of Nogales, Arizona or El Paso, Texas. It’s not difficult to envision Mary and Joseph trudging along the dusty, dry wilderness of the borderlands, where the wall along the border stretches for what seems like an eternity. Here the holy parents plod along, knowing that their God sees them, and hoping someone will have mercy on them and their desperate situation.

The story of Christmas--of foreigners and poor shepherds gathering to welcome and celebrate their newborn king is a complete reversal of expectations. So is having a savior who became a refugee (or IDP!) with his humble parents and grew up to have no place to lay his head. He reminds us in Matthew 25 that when we welcome foreigners and others in vulnerable situations, we welcome him.

All of us must ask ourselves: are we willing to welcome Jesus when he comes to us disguised as a poor immigrant from Honduras or Cameroon or Bhutan and begs for shelter at our doors?

Or will we find justifications for our failure to welcome, love, and show mercy?

That choice is also the story of Christmas.

I hope your holidays are gentle, and you get the rest you need. Advent blessings!

Because Indiana has a “stand your ground” law, which permits residents to use deadly force to stop someone they reasonably believe is trying to enter their dwelling unlawfully, the district attorney is still weighing whether to charge the homeowner responsible for her death.

Naturally, this tragedy has raised important questions about gun rights and Stand Your Ground laws (which 31 states have). Mrs. Ríos Pérez’s family and her supporters are asking the district attorney to pursue the case as they demand justice for her.

As I learned about this case, I kept thinking about the women in my family. Since the seventies and eighties, when my family immigrated to this country, my abuelita, mom, and a few tías have all worked as house cleaners for at least some time. My abuelita worked for nearly two decades as a live-in housekeeper and nanny for a wealthy family in Brentwood, an affluent neighborhood of Los Angeles.

While housekeeping isn’t a job anyone in the U.S. particularly dreams of doing, I remember how grateful my abuelita was for having work — especially as she was an undocumented immigrant for much of the time she lived in the U.S. She cleaned, ordered, and organized an American home and cared for children that were not her own, while her employers went out and pursued more lucrative work. Notably, this work came at the expense of raising her own young sons who were still in Guatemala and whom she supported financially. As a little girl, I remember spending time with her at this beautiful mansion high on a hill, keeping her company as she went about her duties.

My mom and my tías were never live-in housekeepers, but for a time they all had a set of houses they would clean on their days off from work. My mom worked the second shift (3:00 PM to 11:00PM) as a nursing assistant in an assisted-living facility. Sometimes, I’d accompany her when she cleaned houses, and I’d help her do some of the things I could do more easily, like crawl under beds to find clothes and other items and put them in their place.

In all that time, they never once worried about coming to work and being shot and killed because of an innocent mistake. And I never worried for them. They worked in very affluent LA neighborhoods and often didn’t have keys but would come right up to the house and knock on the door.

I can’t imagine the grief Mrs. Ríos Pérez’s husband and children are experiencing right now. They watched their mom go off to work in the morning, to a job that is normally safe, and now will never see her alive again. All she did wrong was come to a door at the wrong address in broad daylight.

I once visited a friend in Portland, Oregon. His parents had a rather large home in a swanky neighborhood and generously offered to host me. Something was missed in the communication of my arrival to the whole household though, and when I arrived, his father greeted me and immediately began telling me what to clean that day. It took me a moment to get my bearings and realize he thought I was the house cleaner.

I didn’t want to embarrass my host, so I clarified that I was his son’s friend. He was embarrassed anyway and pretended he hadn’t assumed I was the house cleaner. I didn’t say anything, of course, and didn’t even bring it up to my friend. But I’ll admit I was offended and, frankly, annoyed.

In the few years I lived in Los Angeles as an adult (where I was a graduate student), I was mistaken at one time or another for a custodial worker, a nanny, a house cleaner, and a landscaper. I was asked point blank and fairly innocently if I knew how to make tortillas (I don’t); if I could teach someone to dance salsa (I can’t); and if my family was “illegal” (they were). A friend in seminary actually asked me if I could recommend a gardener to her parents—they lived in Colorado!

I’m fairly certain these assumptions were made strictly on the basis of the fact I’m a brown-skinned Latina. And while I don’t appreciate microaggressions and stereotyping and certainly don’t encourage them, I understand that these assumptions are usually made out of ignorance. Many people don’t realize how dehumanizing these stereotypes can be, reducing immigrants to human resources rather than seeing the humanity we all share.

As a kid, I was embarrassed that my mom was a house cleaner—I never told anyone what she did for a living. But now I don’t consider house cleaning to be lowly or degrading but dignified work — despite the way it may be viewed in our culture. Just as God created the ideal conditions for human flourishing, my abuelita, my mom, my tías, and Mrs. Ríos Pérez maintained the world that helped the families they worked for to thrive. And with their modest salaries, they helped their own families to thrive as well.

I don’t mind being associated with the meaningful work that people like my mom and Mrs. Ríos Pérez had to do every day, whether it be housekeeping, landscaping, or childcare. What I do mind is being dehumanized by racist, stereotypical assumptions that rob me and other Latines of our dignity as image bearers of God, and, in the case of Mrs. Ríos Pérez, our very lives.

I wonder how much these stereotypes and assumptions had to do with the actions of this homeowner that shot and killed her. Did they truly feel so unsafe that they had to shoot through the closed door without asking any questions? Do they listen to the rhetoric coming out of the White House, the one that tells them Latine immigrants are criminals and believe it? Do they believe in the right to life just as much as in their right to own and use a firearm? Do they see that Mrs. Ríos Pérez was just like them, a human being with dreams and a family?

Her husband, Mauricio Velásquez was quoted as saying in Spanish, “Although we’re immigrants, we still have rights. We’re not animals. We’re people just like everyone else. We have blood, too. All I’m asking for is justice.”

While I, too, hold hope for justice for Mrs. Ríos Pérez, that hope is severely tested in a nation that prizes gun ownership and rights over and above immigrant dignity and worth.

If you’d like to give to support Mrs. Ríos Pérez’s family, here’s a link to their GoFundMe

* parts of this essay come from an article I wrote for Sojourners and my book The God Who Sees.

They sped off then, and I thought I was safe. But it turns out they just went around the block and caught me on the other side where they pulled into a driveway in front of me, so that I couldn’t pass. They kept calling out to me, and I thought one was opening the car door. I was scared and didn’t wait to confirm. The last thing I heard was one of them yelling “ugly bitch” at me. I ran all the way to the corner and straight into a 7-11.

There, I called my aunt’s house from a pay phone and told them what happened. My aunt and cousin walked to the 7-11 to walk with me back to their house. I was too scared to walk home, so my father came to get me later.

That evening my mother scolded me for leaving the house wearing shorts (as if I hadn’t done that a million other times before). She also reminded me that I could knock on someone’s door and pretend that’s where I was going if something like this ever happened again, but, nonetheless, she forbade me from walking to my cousin’s house from now on. And that was the end of that.

Even the President isn’t Safe

To be candid, I never really considered that my mother’s admonitions were wrong, except for the part about wearing shorts. It seemed logical to me that I should be more careful and know how to protect myself.

I thought about it again because there’s a video being shared on social and news media of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum being groped by a man as she’s walking through a group of people and greeting her constituents. In the video, you can clearly see a man come from behind her and attempt to kiss her neck as his hands move up her torso towards her breasts.

I’m not shocked when I hear about this kind of harassment happening to any woman. I am shocked that not even the president of a nation is free from harassment and the entitlement that some men feel toward women’s bodies.

I want to be clear that this problem is not unique to Mexico. What happened to her could happen anywhere—patriarchy is the shit gift that keeps on giving everywhere in the world. My own story, shared above, happened in California, but also in Florida, Rhode Island, and Maryland and would have likely occurred in more states with enough time.

What I am finding bewildering and, frankly, enraging is the response I’ve seen from people online, no matter their gender:

• “This is just a distraction she manufactured to call attention from her failures” As if the incident could not possibly have happened to her. Perhaps she was harassed and she’s calling attention from her failures. Multiple things can be true.

• “Where was her security team? They should be fired.” OK, but that doesn’t address the point that a woman ought to be able to walk the street and be left alone. Her predecessor and former mentor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, certainly did.

• “She’s so old and ugly that who would sexually harass her?” So we’re back to calling a woman an ugly bitch and denying her experience? From what I’ve seen as a woman and an HR professional, those who sexually harass don’t seem to care what you look like or how old you are.

• “He was drunk, so she shouldn’t press charges.” Listen, I’ve seen lots of drunks in my life, and sexual harassment is not created by alcohol unless those impulses are already there.

• “Now she knows what the rest of us go through.” Do you think she hasn’t known? She’s a woman who grew up in the world. She wasn’t born president.

The only thing I haven’t seen is people blaming her for not dressing modestly enough. Thank goodness for the pantsuit and mock turtleneck she happened to be wearing. And to be fair, I don’t know if she’s a good president or not, but either way, she should be able to walk the street in peace.

Daphne and Apollo All Over Again

When I was a college student, I became suddenly indignant and outraged when my humanities professor showed us a picture of a Baroque statue called Daphne and Apollo. The statue depicts an incident in the story of the mythical figures in the title. The nymph Daphne is about to be raped by Apollo, who, driven by Cupid’s arrow, has been relentlessly pursuing her. She cries out to her father, the river god Peneus, for help. The help arrives in the form of turning her into a laurel tree just as Apollo has caught up to her. He doesn’t rape her, but now she’s a tree. A tree. Forever a tree. (see the picture below)

Don’t misunderstand me; the statue is beautiful, a true marvel of Baroque art—it has a sense of movement akin to a candid photo. Its creator has captured the exact moment when Daphne’s metamorphosis begins, and the viewer can see her fingers sprouting leaves, and her arms and hair turning into the bark of the tree.

My indignant response comes from the message I received from it: Daphne is the victim, yet she is the one who is punished.

And that’s the way it always is when women are harassed or assaulted—we are the victims, but we get blamed for what we were wearing or where we were or what we were drinking or what we might have done to get out of it or who we were with or whatever else people come up with as an excuse. We have to become trees and teach younger women to become trees, so we can all be safe.

What I seldom hear in all the discourse is that men should not harass women on the street or anywhere.

I was told not to wear shorts or walk to my cousin’s house. I was told to pretend I had arrived at a neighbor’s house and knock on the door, but the simple truth is that men should not harass a girl walking down the street, minding her own business.

When I went to a club I was told to wear a fake wedding band or tell aggressive men I had a boyfriend, so I’d be left alone but the simple truth is that men should respect a woman who says no to dancing or anything else, no matter her marital or social status.

When President Sheinbaum walks down the street in her pantsuit, she shouldn’t have to have the best bodyguards and a spotless record when the simple truth is that men should leave her alone because she is a person who has not invited anyone to touch her.

It has taken me a lifetime of unlearning to lay the blame where it needs to go, because even women internalize misogyny and police other women instead of telling men not to harass or assault women. And that’s the simple truth and the only answer. Why does the blame always go to everything but the person who chooses to engage in this behavior? They are wholly responsible for themselves and their actions.

And if we can’t do that, just once I’d like to see the Apollos of the world turned into trees, living lovely arboreal lives, while not being a threat to any woman.

As a Christian, I found this remembering fascinating. So much of the Bible focuses on telling God’s people to remember: the Sabbath was given to remind the Israelites they were enslaved in Egypt but God delivered them to freedom; the prophets call the people to remember and return to God; and my favorite Psalm, 126, along with so many other passages of Scripture, remind the people of God’s past faithfulness that it might fuel their faith in their present circumstances.

Remembering is such a big part of God’s story with God’s people. So much of trust in God is reliant on remembering God’s past faithfulness, God’s character, and God’s goodness. When we remember, we carry something of the Divine within us.

The Wind Phone

As All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days approached this year, and I was putting together my Día de Muertos altar, I remembered learning about the wind phone. If you’ve never heard of it, you’re not alone.

The wind phone was invented by garden designer Itaru Sasaki in Japan right before the tsunami in 2011 that killed thousands of people—six times more than died in 9/11—and 2,500 people are still missing.

Mr. Sasaki installed the phonebooth on his property as a way to process his grief and find healing after his cousin’s death. Inside the white, old-fashioned phone booth is a simple, black rotary phone that is not connected to anything but the wind that carries your voice. It’s a one-way call that provides a place to air your grief and speak to those you’ve lost.

Unlike in the West, in Japan keeping up a relationship with the dead is not unusual. The line between the world of the living and the world of the dead is thin. Many people have altars in their homes with photos, fresh fruit, rice, incense, and a bell, and use them as a way to stay in touch with their dead and let them know they’re still part of their family—they’re not forgotten.

After the tsunami, word spread about the wind phone. So many people were grieving that they started showing up and walking into the booth to talk to their dead. Thousands of people have used the phone now—it became a phenomenon that inspired a short film.

The one-way conversations are sometimes lighthearted and fun; grandchildren telling their grandad the highlights of their week—a way to stay connected even in the mundane. Other times, the conversations are poignant and forlorn: a husband telling his wife and daughter that life is unbearable without them. Many have expressed their plaintive cries while reassuring the dead that they’re really fine, even when they’re not. They want them to rest in peace, after all.

More than anything, the wind phone has met a need that many people have in the world—a way to express the love and care they still hold, a way to commune, a way to speak about grief in a world that often does not want to hear it.

Physics and the Black Christ

I’ve thought about the wind phone a lot lately. And it reminded me that my tía Pía had just returned to her life in Guatemala a few days before my mother died. Months later, she mentioned that she had been having dreams about my mother each night, and these dreams caused her to remember that she had made my mother a promise: she would go the most sacred space in all of Guatemala, which is the Basílica del Señor de Esquipulas, where pilgrims come to honor and pray to the carved Black Christ, and light a candle for my mother and pray for her eternal rest.

She did so and reported that she stopped having the dreams because she had fulfilled her promise. This happened decades ago, and yet when I saw my tía Pía in Guatemala last summer, I discovered she still enters Catholic Churches wherever she goes and says a prayer for my mother and for my siblings and me, too.

It’s noteworthy that out of all of us, my tía Pía has been able to process her grief in a way that has made her stronger and more able to be comforted by my mother’s memory. While many of us are stung with pain and regret over many things: words said or unsaid, actions we should have taken, or love we should have been shown, she still feels close to my mother. She says that she experiences her presence and warmth. Her worldview has helped her to process and endure the loss.

There was a time in my life where I might have dismissed my tía Pía’s experience as superstition and would have thought her actions bordered on something dark or even the occult, but that’s not the way that the woman I am today receives her experience. In fact, in many ways her words were a guide and a comfort. Part of the reason for the change is that who I am today is not only more open to the mystical, but I know that her experience is supported not only by my Christian faith, but also by science.

Yeah, you read that right: science. Physics to be more exact. Remember the first law of thermodynamics?

No energy gets created in the universe and none is destroyed.

Maybe you’ve read a popular post by a physicist named Aaron Freeman, who encourages everyone to have a physicist speak at their funeral because only a physicist can remind our grieving loved ones that all our energy, vibrations, every BTU of heat, every wave of every particle that was us, still remains in this world. All that energy that our ancestors gave off as heat—all that warmth that flowed through our ancestors is still here, still part of all that we are.

Our ancestors are with us--we don’t mean that as just a figurative saying but as a lived reality. How all that happens is a mystery, but their energy exists.

“In ancient Mesoamerica it was believed that the heart was the seat of the soul, and at the time of death, the spirit was transformed into winged creatures, butterflies or hummingbirds, and the energy returned to the universe, a form of reciprocity.” (“The Lament of the Cihuateteo”, Yrenda Cervantes, Voices of the Ancestors).

Nepantla Spirituality

We Latines know that we have lost much cultural memory because of colonialism. The western worldview we have adopted has no connection between the physical and the spiritual--they are severed from one another so that we live in one or the other: the physical while we’re alive, and the spiritual when we die. We are taught explicitly and implicitly to distance ourselves from the dying and the dead and to fear death. So once someone dies, they are powerless as well as invisible.

An indigenous worldview is not binary--it doesn’t present in these rigid dichotomies but instead there’s a fluid connection between the spiritual and the physical. We remember our dead and, in return, the dead renew the living. Mesoamerican and African indigenous ancestral wisdoms teach us that the veil between the lands of the living and the lands of the dead is permeable, and that veil can be lifted or penetrated so that the dead may visit the living. This is a Nepantla spirituality—the spirituality of the “in-between” spaces.

What’s interesting is that the biblical worldview is more similar to the indigenous worldview than it is to the western one—the Scriptures, after all, were first given to a community in the ancient Near East. The writer of Hebrews reminds us that we are actively surrounded by “a great cloud of witnesses” (12:1) and references all those witnesses in chapter 11. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead on the 3rd day after his death because the community believed that the person’s spirit hovered over the body for three days after their death. That’s why it’s also notable that Jesus was resurrected on the third day and not immediately. Death in the Christian tradition is never final because we are a people of the resurrection—a people who have, throughout church history, prayed for the rest of our departed and remembered them every All Saints’ and All Souls’ days on the Christian calendar.

In the last 10 years, I’ve reconnected to the tradition of creating an altar for those I’ve lost to death, including my mom. This practice was easiest to do in Mexico because it’s a communal endeavor. Mine has candles, pictures, food, marigolds, water, catrinas (elegant, skeleton-like figures), sugar skulls, among other things. It has become a joyful day of remembrance and the recognition that they’re still with me, that the veil is thin and their energy is here.

Our ancestors can serve as guides, as comforters reminding us that the physical and the spiritual are connected, they can support us in our grief and continue to be present to us. Our practices can help us experience a deeper connection to them and offer us a chance to reflect deeply on who we really are. In remembering, they, and we, are made whole.

What do you think, dear reader? How have you experienced communing with your ancestors in a way that honors them and your faith? Would love to hear your thoughts.

I intended to send you this newsletter before these church feast days but…

<gestures broadly at everything>

I hope you are well and enjoying the changing of the seasons.

Karen

So Olivia Pope is the only fixer in DC who sees things clearly and can diffuse your scandal; the problematic Carrie Mathison is the only intelligence officer who knows how to fix the current international concern that threatens the homeland; and in House of Cards, the very underhanded Frank Underwood is the only cunning and intelligent person in the city and, thus, outsmarts everyone and gets everything he wants.

The truth is less than thrilling and wouldn’t make for a very good TV series: there are lots of smart people in D.C.

And I mean loads—you can hardly throw a rock without hitting one.

I’ve been at dinner parties. book clubs, church services where I sat next to a simultaneous translator for the World Bank; a policy-maker that regularly meets with U.S. legislators; and a PhD in biology who works at NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). In fact, just last weekend I went to a Latinx poetry event where I sat next to a microbiologist doing very important work at the National Institute of Health. And that’s just to name a few. Many people come to D.C. to work for the federal government or think tanks or at the headquarters of large organizations and nonprofits.

Many of them people have dedicated their whole lives to public service, working to make a difference in international development, public policy, public health research, etc.

So you can imagine how devastating it has been to live in this city since the current presidential administration took over. In the misguided effort to create a more efficient government and save tax dollars, DOGE has slashed or eliminated the budgets of many federal agencies, and now lots of these brilliant people are out of work.

Last Wednesday when I went into the city center around 6:00 in the evening, the train was strangely empty and the two people sitting behind me were discussing the protests against these federal layoffs and their financial plan to make it through the next few months.

It’s heavy in a way I can’t describe. I feel rage and survivor’s guilt all at the same time. As if that weren’t bad enough, the programs and projects that supported individuals around the world in areas like food security, sustainable agriculture, economic opportunities, reproductive health, public health are suddenly gone. No warnings. No gradual end to the program. Just a very sudden “Stop work” order and then lots of chaos.

So it’s the end of USAID; Elon Musk, a man from a country that received support from USAID, boasted that he put the agency through the woodchipper. Allegedly, he resents the agency’s involvement in dismantling Apartheid in South Africa.

Now I am not one of those people that romanticizes USAID and its many problems. It was a bureaucratic beast and having worked for three organizations that received funding from it, I can tell you a hundred different ways I would have reformed the agency, just with my limited knowledge. But I would not have dismantled it completely because it provided life-saving services through its funding. Life-saving!

And I’m heartbroken by all the people I know and don’t know looking for work. People who were meeting those needs and measuring the effectiveness of the work. And I’m absolutely wrecked when I think about the people whose lives our government deems worthless, not worth vaccines or mosquito nets or HIV medications, even though the budget for USAID was less than 1% of the national budget.

Supposedly, it’s illegal to dismantle USAID by an Executive Order—it should be done by an act of Congress. But as it turns out, our checks and balances were on the honor system, and there are no honorable people left in government, apparently.

And it’s ok to stop, notice, and grieve all of this before moving on to anything hopeful. Because that’s where I am. And maybe that’s where you are, too. I hate having to think about the federal government every single day, but here we are. I wish there were an Olivia Pope who would come and handle everything. But it’s going to have to be all of us.

I’m writing from a coffee shop in my neighborhood this Saturday afternoon because for some reason my cat Trudi always knows when I’m not doing “work work”—that is, the kind of work I get paid for from 9-5, the kind that enables me to buy her treats. So she insists on sitting on my lap and getting cuddles whenever I sit down to write.

I adopted Trudi in Mexico—she was meowing and wandering the rooftops when she was 4-months-old, and none of the neighbors claimed her, so I did. She’s a very sweet and cuddly kitty that reminds of what it’s like to have a toddler (though much less labor intensive).

When I brought her to the US, I had to do the usual paperwork of health certificates and vaccination cards, so she is fully “legal.” But my colleagues in Mexico like to joke that under the new Trump administration she’s going to be deported. She won’t, of course. That’s the joke. My cat has more rights than human beings who have built a life here in the U.S.

Words, Words, Words

When you live in the D.C. area, it’s impossible not to be conscious of the government—it’s literally all around you in the form of stately buildings, barricades (since the Oklahoma City bombing), and the odd car with diplomatic plates driving in front of you. So I am hyper aware of the inauguration that will take place on Monday. It’s going to be a bitterly cold day, in more ways than one. Even Trudi isn’t trying to escape out the front door these days

Trump has said a lot about his deportation plan. Many people I know are hoping it’s all bluster and bravado for the sake of the many immigrants they know. I hope so, too, but I also believe that even the words are harmful.

The first chapter I wrote of Beyond Welcome was about words—how much they matter. In light of the many ugly words that will come from the White House, I want to share an excerpt of that chapter with you.

Words Matter (Chapter 3)

“As a lover of language, I have always been fascinated by the description of Jesus as a word. When I was a young Christian, the whole concept seemed curious and a bit confusing—the idea that a feathery light word could become flesh seemed incomprehensible. How could that be?

In the prologue to the Gospel of John, the writer says that the Word was in the beginning and became flesh and dwelt among us (1:1–14). “Jesus is the incarnation of God’s own word, the embodiment of God’s glory, truth, and will, and way to life with God,” says Dr. Marianne Meye Thompson. Many of us were taught that the Bible itself is the Word of God, but John’s Gospel opens with a clarion declaration: Jesus is the Word of God, and his arrival in the world is no afterthought; Jesus was present with God from the beginning of creation. In Greek, Jesus would have been called the logos of God. Logos is defined not only as the outward expression of thoughts in speech but also as inward thoughts. And for the Stoic philosophers of John’s day, the logos was the rational principle that caused the natural creation to grow.

Words as Sticks and Stones

I remember an elementary school teacher training all of us to say, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” She was, I am sure, overwhelmed by tattling little kids complaining of name-calling and wanted to give us an easy way to respond that would leave her out of it. And “sticks and stones” might have helped when someone called you a “ball hog” during recess or said the lunch packed by your immigrant mom smelled yucky. Those words were airy, light, and easy to cast away.

Overall, I found “sticks and stones” to be . . . unsatisfactory. It did not soothe my injured soul when a classmate said I had “icky brown skin” or make me feel better when another said, “Go back to your country!” These words were powerful; I did not recover from them easily. Sometimes I still feel their weight and sting. They reminded me that I am “the other”—a perpetual outsider.

Looking back on those events, I recognize that had I been more aware, it would have been easy to understand that words had power: those words spoken to me in childhood lingered and wounded my own heart for years.

There are so many terrible words in our world, and they shape our realities.

The Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano recognizes this truth in his poem “The Nobodies.” He describes the way Spanish conquistadores and colonizers used carefully chosen words to dehumanize and devalue the indigenous peoples of the Americas, the nobodies . . .

Who don’t speak languages, but dialects.

Who don’t have religions, but superstitions.

The colonial settlers understood that it is much easier to enslave and kill those whom you do not recognize as human; it was no challenge to extinguish a subhuman life. Lesser peoples are unworthy of attention and human compassion. It is acceptable to place walls and barriers between us and them, to keep them and their subhuman lives out of ours, to exterminate them if we deem it necessary for our own protection.

Sadly, this seemed to be the understanding of the terrorist responsible for the shooting in El Paso in August 2019 that took the lives of twenty-three people and injured twenty-three others. The shooter said he feared the “Hispanic invasion” of Texas, reflecting the racist language used by former US president Trump, who baselessly used the word “invasion” to describe the humanitarian crisis at the US-Mexico border at least two dozen times. Rather than seeing the humanity he shares with Mexican-Americans and other Latinx people, many of whom are brown skinned, the shooter saw an invasion, a threat to himself and the survival of his own.

Words have power, and there is little doubt in my mind that the former president’s xenophobic language influenced this man; violent rhetoric has violent consequences. Former president Donald Trump referred to immigrants and other people as animals, rapists, and criminals and has characterized us as “an infestation.” When I think of an infestation, I think of vermin, disgusting creatures like lice, cockroaches, bed bugs, and rats—creatures that are nonhuman, creatures no one cares about when they die, creatures we want to die. Applying that horrifying language to human beings all but ensures our rejection of them, our feeling threatened by them, and our seeking to annihilate them. That is the terrible way that words can have destructive power.

Refugee vs. Immigrant

Words can cause harm in more subtle ways too. In the fall of 2019, I spoke at a conference in Toronto facilitated by a network of North American Christians who share a common desire to see the church care for those who have been forcibly displaced. Over dinner one night, a few of us Americans and our Canadian hosts discussed the plight of undocumented and economic immigrants in the United States. Bewildered, one of our Canadian friends asked, “Sorry, but can you explain what an ‘undocumented’ immigrant is? And an ‘economic’ immigrant?”

We explained some of the most prevalent categories for immigrants in need that the United States identifies: asylee, asylum seeker, undocumented immigrant, economic immigrant, immigrant under temporary protected status, DACA recipient, and refugee. Our hosts nodded their understanding, and one replied flatly, “In Canada, we only have refugees and refugee claimants. Most often, we call them newcomers.” The conversation moved on.

I have often thought back to that exchange. All the headlines in the US discuss immigrants and the immigrant crisis at the southern borderlands. Refugees flee a place because their lives are at risk. The legal definition of a refugee person is one who flees their country due to persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution due to their race, nationality, religion, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. Refugees are literally running from persecution, violence, or the threat of death. It matters very much whether we call people “immigrants” or “refugees,” whether we think they are coming because they might have a better life here in North America or because it is the only way they will have any life at all. Canadians do not make all the distinctions we do. Their words acknowledge the desperate need of their neighbors and their responsibility to care for them.

Here in the US we prefer to differentiate. You can with a clean conscience tell an immigrant, particularly an economic immigrant who just wants better opportunities for work or education, to go away: “Sorry, go find a better life in some other place.” But when you tell a refugee to go away, you are sending them to an almost certain death. In 1939, before World War II, a ship called the St. Louis left Europe loaded with Jewish refugees, and they were turned away by the United States, Canada, and Cuba. The refugees on board were forced to return to France, since they found no port that would welcome them. Two-hundred and fifty-four of the passengers on board died in concentration camps, approximately half of those who had sought refuge in the Americas. Many more of them suffered internment in the camps but survived.

This is what happens when you tell refugees to go away: they suffer, and they die.

We don’t like thinking about that, so we change our language, calling these same people “immigrants” or, worse yet, “illegals”—nameless, faceless immigrants without the legal right to be in the United States. Never mind that “illegal” is an adjective and not a noun—it allows us to reduce a human being to their legal status, thereby absolving ourselves of all responsibility for our neighbors in need. We prioritize processes, laws, and the words that keep us from seeing ourselves in our neighbors, because then we can do what we want but still live with ourselves. Our language has the power to remove humanity; when we reduce a person to a single characteristic of their experience, like legal status or even whether or not they are immigrants, we take away from the image of God in them. For this reason, my friend Sandy Ovalle always says “refugee person” or “immigrant person.” Though she knows it is redundant, she says it reminds her that these are multifaceted and complex human beings in front of her, who are more than their status or their experience of migration.

When I bring up the subject of words and the clear difference in connotation and meaning between a migrant and a refugee, someone will often ask if perhaps I am making too much of words. Perhaps this is not so serious. After all, these are just words—not words that dehumanize or incite violence. Is it possible that these tiny, seemingly insignificant choices do not matter? We all know what we mean, so aren’t the specific words we use irrelevant?

Writer and immigrant Phuc Tran addresses this dilemma in his memoir, Sigh, Gone: “Do we want words to be powerful or powerless? We can’t have it both ways. If we want them to be powerful, we have to act and speak accordingly, handling our words with the fastidious faith that they can do immeasurable good or irreparable harm. But if we want to say whatever we want—if we want to loose whatever words fly into our minds—then we render words powerless, ineffectual, and meaningless.” Indeed, if words have power, if they can shape our realities, then we must be careful how we handle them. After all, the Word took on flesh! The Word that is Jesus came to dwell among us (John 1:14). If we long for words like “justice,” “equality,” “peace,” and “harmony” to take flesh in our world, then we must be cautious with all words, not just the ones that are clearly harmful. Indeed, if we are Jesus’s representatives on earth, representatives of the Word, then these beautiful words can take on flesh through us. Those of us who carry his name have chosen to take on the responsibility of taking great care with our words and actions.

In church circles, I frequently hear words about refugees and other immigrants that are meant to be positive, to signify solidarity, care, and concern. These include phrases like “welcome the stranger,” “we welcome refugees,” “stand with the vulnerable,” “be a voice for the voiceless,” “we’re glad you’re our neighbor,” and “care for the least of these.” While I appreciate the heart and intention of these words, I often wonder about their impact. The dominant church culture’s best efforts continue to highlight their own kindness and openness to “the other”—they still center their own posture.

Grammatically speaking, immigrants and refugees are the objects in the above phrases, not the subjects; in other words, we receive the action of those belonging to the dominant church culture but we do not take action ourselves. Very subtly, these words remove humanity from people because they reduce us immigrants to a single characteristic of our experience. While seeming positive, these words have the insidious effect of widening the distance between all of us, between immigrants and the dominant church culture: the more these words become part of everyday vocabulary in the church, the more they inform the imaginations of the dominant church culture and take away from the complex image bearers of God who stand before them.

It is noteworthy that in Matthew 25 Jesus does not command his followers to be kind to those in need. In a complete reversal of expectations, Jesus takes on the very identities of those most marginalized in the ancient world of the first century: “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me” (Matt. 25:35–36). Jesus quite literally sees himself in the poorest and most forgotten people of his time. They are not objects of his charity or hospitality—they are him! He commends those who care for him vicariously through the care of others, because the Jesus they worship is the same Jesus they care for in their neighbors in need.

Biblical scholar Anna Case-Winters says, “We need not worry about the timing of the ‘second coming.’ Christ is already in our midst now and comes to us again and again—unexpectedly—in the form of the person in need. Our response to ‘the least of these’ is our response to the judge of all the nations.” I wonder how advocacy and activism of the dominant church culture might be transformed if they saw themselves in those who live on the margins of society. Rather than flinging a coin to a person experiencing homelessness on the street, they would see their very selves in the need of this neighbor without a home. Rather than feeling pity at media images of refugees in a camp, they would see their own families in the plight of displaced people. Rather than visiting people in immigration detention or prison out of a sense of duty, they would feel their own isolation in the loneliness of their incarcerated neighbors. How would this change their language? Their sense of social responsibility? Their awareness that they are their neighbor in need?

Be well, friends. As this administration is coming into power, I am receiving more requests to speak about immigration. Maybe I’ll end up in your neck of the woods. Speak kindly to each other.

Cheers,

Karen

…again.

Lots of people have asked me if I regret coming back, especially those who are themselves now looking to live abroad. Given that Trump has promised to deport immigrants, even naturalized ones like me, and has laid the blame for every negative thing happening in the U.S. at the feet of immigrants, it does, indeed, seem like really inopportune timing.

Truthfully, I came back for a few reasons—some of which I can’t share in a public forum like this one—but I don’t regret it, even with Trump’s election. If I learned anything living abroad this time, not as a teacher or a Christian service worker or as a student, it’s that I’m a U.S. American. I feel most at home here (now in the D.C. area), and all my stuff is here. My family is mostly here in the U.S., and I’ve attained most of my education and all my work experience here. I am most comfortable and most fluent in American English. This is where I’ve made my home since I was 9-years-old. I’ve been naturalized to this place.

Being Naturalized

In her beautiful book Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer describes what naturalization means:

Being naturalized to place means to live as if this is the land that feeds you, as if these are the streams from which you drink, that build your body and fill your spirit. To become naturalized is to know that your ancestors lie in this ground. Here you will give your gifts and meet your responsibilities. To become naturalized is to live as if your children’s future matters, to take care of the land as if our lives and the lives of all our relatives depend on it. Because they do.

I’ve written so much about immigration in my short writing career, and the theme that has come up for me over and over again is that the question of immigration is ultimately one of belonging. Where do I belong? Where do my people and I belong? Living in liminal space is fine and dandy if you’re speaking metaphorically, but it’s not so great literally. Frankly, it sucks. Because we all want to belong somewhere.

My time living in Mexico taught me that this is my home, right here among the red people of the voting map who supported a man who called Latines like me criminals, rapists, pet eaters, and garbage…just because we are immigrants. Fortunately, I do live in a blue state.

The Mestiza Guadalupe?

Earlier this year, my friend Sarah came to visit me in Mexico City, and we visited the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The only other time I’d been to the Basilica was when another friend visited and wanted to attend mass there, which I reluctantly agreed to do. It’s an interesting structure, but it’s far from where I lived, and it’s always crowded (so much so that there are actual moving walkways in front of the altar, so you don’t just stand there and gawk like an awkward tourist).

The first time I attended I listened to a priest talk about Guadalupe, the appearance of Mary in the Americas but as an indigenous, brown-skinned woman who speaks Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. Those are the basic facts about Our Lady of Guadalupe and what has made her beloved and revered in many Latin American countries…

…except the priest didn’t speak of her that way. Instead, he spoke of her as the mestiza virgin Mary. It might not sound like it, but there is a big difference between being mestiza and being indigenous.

A mestizo is a person of mixed race descent, especially indigenous and European. In that priest’s estimation, Guadalupe was not indigenous, but mestiza…like him. This was news to me, and yet it’s not that surprising since most of us want to create the divine in our own image.

Many of us Latines in the U.S. don’t like the term mestizo/a because it has a racist history—it was created to distance us from our indigenous roots. Many Latines want to be associated with Europeans and not with indigenous people who are seen as less civilized, less sophisticated, and, let’s just put it bluntly, less human. To be a mestizo is to be half-human and, thus, more acceptable. That’s the connotation of the word mestizo, no matter its actual definition in the dictionary.

And I believe it’s the reason so many Latines are drawn to Trump and his xenophobic rhetoric—aligning with whiteness even against their own people.

On our drive home from the Basilica, the tour guide, an educated Mexican woman who runs her own business, started telling me about all the issues she has with all the immigrants in Mexico. There are migrants from the U.S., Canada, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Colombia, Russia to name just a few.

“Would you believe some restaurants aren’t serving spicy salsas to accommodate these people?” She was incredulous and especially emphasized “these people.”

I nodded but asked, “But isn’t that a business decision made by the owner of the restaurant? How are the immigrants to blame for that?”

She then clarified that she’s not xenophobic, but she’s concerned about the way immigrants are changing Mexican culture—they’re just not assimilating. At this point, I’m annoyed and tired, so I get salty.

“You sound just like Trump,” I said. And we were quiet the rest of the ride.

And the truth is that she does. And so did a lot of Mexicans I met in the city. Even the woman who cleaned my apartment weekly had issues with all the Haitians in her neighborhood, though she grudgingly acknowledged that they are hard workers and are doing the work nobody else wants to do. I let her know that the way she speaks about Haitians: unwanted but hard working—is the way many Americans regard Mexican immigrants in the U.S. She seemed unfazed by that information.

Xenophobic Immigrants

Maybe it’s not that surprising to you that there are Mexicans who also don’t want immigrants in their country. But did you know that there are immigrants who also don’t like other immigrants? I call it the “shut the door behind me” phenomenon because nobody is more anti-immigrant than an immigrant with legal status.

Because of the lure of white supremacy (hey, maybe I can become a secondary white person and escape the hardship of being othered and discriminated against), which comes with the pressure to assimilate, many immigrants, particularly those who have been in the country a long time and have permanent residency and/or came the “legal” way, strongly oppose welcoming immigration policies. I want to be clear that that this is a survival strategy. As I said earlier, we all have the need to belong, and all immigrants have historically suffered the pressure to abandon their own people, language, and culture and assimilate. This was the “melting pot” mentality that was promoted forever.

A friend of mine says that white supremacy is a helluva drug. Indeed. Nobody wants to suffer or feel like they don’t belong, and assimilation is an insidious form of white supremacy because you don’t even realize you’re assimilating not just to language and culture but to systems of oppression, even your own oppression.

Home

All of that said, I’m glad to be back because this is my country as much as it is Trump’s and his supporters. And because you really can’t escape xenophobia no matter where you go. It’s a human problem not a uniquely American one. The truth is that the whole world has become less welcoming to immigrants, not just the U.S. But this is where I happen to be living.

So I’m staying.

And there will be a lot of work to do to care for immigrants in the coming administration. Trump is no longer focused on building a wall at the southern border to keep immigrants out—now he is focused on a mass deportation plan that will be devasting to immigrants and their families if it comes to pass. The writer Rebecca Solnit puts it this way:

They want you to feel powerless and surrender and let them trample everything and you are not going to let them. You are not giving up, and neither am I. The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything, and everything we can save is worth saving.

There will be work to do for all of us. Someone shared these affirmations on Instagram, and they have become my daily affirmations to maintain a glimmer of hope.

I will do what is in my power to care for my immigrant neighbors and to work for the country that I want. Because it’s my country, too.

How are you doing in the aftermath of the election? I hope you’re taking good care of yourself and finding ways to keep that flicker of hope burning.

“But since that time,” he went on, “I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fräulein”–again the hand came out–“will you forgive me?”

And I stood there–I whose sins had every day to be forgiven–and could not. Betsie had died in that place–could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking?

Like you’re probably doing right now, I have wondered over the years what I would have done in her place. In those moments when I struggled to forgive or simply couldn’t, I would think back on this story and feel a deep sense of shame because I knew I would not have been able to forgive him—those simple words could not erase my sister’s “slow terrible death.” But since the book is a favorite of evangelicals, you might have guessed that she, of course, does forgive him and shake his hand. It’s a powerful moment in the memoir and seems to have been the right decision for her.

Not So Sorry

I used to feel bad about that conclusion, about my hypothetical inability to forgive him. In fact I’m confessing it to you for the first time. I felt bad…until I read ’s stellar new book, Not So Sorry: Abusers, False Apologies, and the Limits of Forgiveness. This book challenged and freed me in so many ways!

Oakes explores everything from the abuses and coverups of Catholic clergy to the #metoo movement to the Mother Emanuel Church shooting in Charleston, SC where a white supremacist murdered 9 Black church members. She discusses the pressure to forgive that victims and survivors experience, particularly in situations where the morally right thing to do might be not to forgive. Considering that perpetrators are sometimes not repentant nor are they making amends, as in the case of the white supremacist who entered the Mother Emanuel church with the intent to kill and has never once expressed remorse nor extended an apology to the families of his victims.

Oakes also discusses those who do extend apologies, often self-serving apologies, that aren’t followed by true repentance and reparations to the victim. In the case of Corrie Ten Boom, no empty apology would return her sister to her, and I don’t recall if the guard truly repented and sought to repair the harm he did. A more recent example is Pope Francis’ recent apology for homophobic remarks he made in a closed-door meeting; his apology, given through the Vatican press office, said that he never intended to offend or express himself in homophobic terms and he apologizes to those who were offended. That’s what I call a non-apology apology—instead of truly asking for forgiveness and focusing on the impact of your actions, you focus on your own intent and offer a general “I’m sorry” to the atmosphere and hope it lands well. Never mind the way your homophobic comments harm Catholic Christians who are part of the LGBTQ+ community.

I also think of the people I know who were hurt in Protestant churches—who were not offered apologies nor repair, who were kicked out of leadership or asked to leave, who lost their entire community and were called “divisive” and “disobedient” as they were pushed out the door for calling attention to abuses in leadership or to vulnerable people in their faith community who were experiencing abuse or exploitation. People like and who’ve written about these experiences and the fallout and pain they’re still experiencing as a result. Not to mention the fact that the churches and leaders that harmed them continue with the same abuses they called out. Are these churches and leaders owed a reconciliation when they are not seeking one nor seeking change? This is not to say that people can’t forgive of their own free will, but they should not be pressured to do so and to seek reconciliation.

Though her book is not expressly Christian but appeals to a more broad audience, Oakes also explores the way different faith traditions, including Christianity, speak about forgiveness and what’s required to receive it—you may not be surprised to learn that we’re not following these teachings as much as our own interpretation of them within our own cultures.

Evangelical Penance

A while ago I ran into the image you see below:

You can’t imagine how much I cringed! There’s so much for me to be sorry for…participating in and promoting purity culture, pushing my LGBTQ+ siblings to the margins of church and ministry life, perpetuating a soft patriarchy but a very harmful one nonetheless, and participating and encouraging participation in churches and ministries that, at best, centered male-dominated, European Christianity, and at worst, were just plain racist and misogynistic. Truth be told, there are probably even more harmful things I’ve engaged in that don’t come to mind at the moment. In fact, if I could change the image above, I would edit it to say “I’m sorry for what I said and did when I was an evangelical.”

On this side of an evolving faith, it has been difficult to reckon with who I was. For a time, I went to the opposite extreme of liberal faith, which mostly resulted in being very judgmental of people who are still a part of conservative evangelical churches, just like I used to be. This journey to the other side was facilitated by the election of Donald Trump and the support he received from evangelicals, including many people I used to call friends.

The one thing that has nagged at me through it all is that I remember so many sermons, Sunday School classes, Bible studies, small groups, and conferences where we talked about forgiveness. Not just the spiritual benefits of forgiveness (your heavenly Father won’t forgive you if you don’t forgive—that probably means you go to hell if you don’t forgive!), but the emotional and psychological benefits of letting go of resentment, bitterness, anger (even righteous anger) and any other socially-undesirable emotions. I’ve heard that people who forgive, even what seems to many of us unforgiveable, live longer, report more satisfaction with life, and have better relationships. I don’t know if this is true, but it sounds true. And even so, I have still struggled with to apply the many teachings on forgiveness I’ve heard over the years, both to forgive myself for having caused harm. This is another topic that Oakes explores in this book—how do you forgive yourself?

In case you can’t tell, I strongly recommend this book to you! I spent many hours this past month thinking about it and examining my own life in light of it. I know it will challenge you, too.

I think many of you might know that I’m back in the US. I’ll be moving into my new place in Silver Spring, Maryland, just outside Washington DC tomorrow (probably when you receive this letter!). I’m grateful to be back and will write more on that later. Be well and enjoy the lovely autumn whose arrival is imminent.

Cheers,

Karen

Before she left, she asked us to share this information with other women cautiously, keeping it under the radar. Her point, she said, was to keep other women of color safe and informed, not to expose herself to the wrath of powerful men. We agreed and removed his name from future handouts, not wanting to promote the work of a man harming women.

And that was the end of our conversation on the subject. It wasn’t until a couple of years later, when news of this man’s predatory behavior broke publicly that the Christian world at large found out what a network of women of color had known for a while. Far from being a poisonous rumor mill, this was a sisterly network of care and protection. Women were cautioned and reminded to pass on the information to those who may need it most.

For much of the time I spent in Christian circles, conservative or otherwise, the above interaction would have been branded as slander or malicious gossip because we were speaking behind a man’s back—it wouldn’t have mattered if the information was true. Women, who are the main targets of admonishments against gossip, would have been silenced and discouraged from passing on such information and quoted some Bible verse about the evils of gossip and idle talk.

I once heard a pastor preach from the pulpit that Jesus charged the woman at the well in John 4 with sharing his message because he knew how much women liked to gossip, and she’d spread the message well. It was said in jest, but it was in poor taste. I suspected he was communicating some of his biases against women.

Chisme or Gossip?

Chisme is the word for gossip in Spanish. As a writer, I find it fascinating that the word chisme in Spanish has a much different connotation from the word gossip in English. “Chisme” denotes something light and communal, generally benign. But “gossip” definitely has only negative connotations--it screams of betrayal and willful harm. In Spanish, chisme can even denote something along the lines of snooping or browsing, like I’m going to go chismosear what’s in that store over there.

Even so, it can be negative in Spanish as well. If a woman gets branded a chismosa, it is not a compliment, just as being known as a gossiper isn’t a compliment in English-speaking circles. I’ve rarely heard men labeled as gossipers even though the research shows that men gossip just as much as women. This is the shadow that patriarchy often casts on the bonds between women. As long as you can frame women’s interactions negatively, you can better control us and keep us from supportive relationships with one another.

However, we can’t deny that not all gossip is harmless. There’s a reason why all the world’s major monotheistic religions have stern admonishments against gossip, rumors, backstabbing, and prying—and they don’t discriminate between true and false information (which is oddly beneficial to those in power). It’s likely we all have an anecdote about the way we’ve seen gossip harm relationships, workplaces, and faith communities.

Gossip has also been used by nations to harm, discredit, and even kill human beings. Think of…

• the McCarthy witch hunts that could ruin a person and deprive them of their livelihood just by associating them with communism;

• the informants during the Soviet era who denounced their neighbors resulting in their being sent to gulags in Siberia literally to be worked to death;

• and the methodology used by repressive governments in Argentina and Chile encouraging people to reveal the identities of enemies of the state; these enemies were often “disappeared,” tortured, and murdered.

  

Gossip is more universal than we would like to admit.

I don’t know anyone that considers being a gossiper anything but a character flaw, and we generally judge those who engage in gossip. Even when we ourselves engage in gossip (and we do), we think negatively of our own selves!

But is all gossip bad?

Can gossip ever be good?

The Grapevine as a Force for Good

I first began wondering whether gossip was always a bad thing a few years ago when I heard a podcast episode of This American Life. The episode discussed the way people in Malawi relied on gossip because there were so many people infected with HIV or AIDS in their country. The grapevine was the only way that people would communicate about who was safe to date or marry, thus protecting themselves and preventing further spread of the virus. Gossip literally saved lives!

And then I remembered the times when, in a work situation, someone had warned me about a particular leader or leaders:

“Don’t cross so-and-so or you won’t advance at this organization. He’s the golden boy around here.”

“Beware of so-and so who says he values women but treats all women with paternalistic condescension.”

“So-and-so thinks he’s not a racist, but makes racist comments all the time and has never hired a person of color for his team.”

In fact, networks of information at work are a great way to be in the know about the implicit values of an organization (these are often in conflict with the stated values posted on the website for the world to see). Work gossip is a way for women and other historically marginalized people to subvert the patriarchal or racial politics of the workplace and survive in a place not designed for our thriving. Of course, the company would rather we did not discuss these things, but we always have to ask ourselves:

One study shows that most of us spend an hour per day gossiping, and we do it in order to make sense of the world we live in—in order to validate our feelings, foster cooperation, and better navigate situations. Far from being negative, gossip can actually be helpful. Only a small percentage of gossip is of the kind we usually think of—the-tear-people-down-out-of-spite-or-envy-kind.

In faith communities where we’re admonished not to gossip, it can be very helpful to know if a leader is inflexible or sexist or a narcissist or a poor communicator. It’s also good to know if the elders have an agenda that doesn’t include LGBTQ+ people in leadership even though the denomination specifically allows for it. I have visited churches because they were affirming of women’s ordination as stated on the website, only to discover that the leadership generally doesn’t support women as pastors or preachers and would never dream of calling a woman to their pulpit. Why is it considered harmful to discuss the clear biases or flaws of leaders and faith communities? This is the gossip we should all share with one another because it would protect us and, in some cases, would save us a lot of heartache.

In a church I belonged to over two decades ago, there was a man in his thirties that only pursued homeschooled adolescent girls as they were finishing high school (so there was not a legal issue to contend with). I commented on his behavior to a Sunday School teacher because I knew it was predatory, but I was shut down and scolded about gossiping.

Wait…shouldn’t behavior like his be talked about?

Shouldn’t the girls (and their parents) be aware of this man’s unsavory predilections?

Again, who is benefitting from silence? Certainly, not these young women.

This is exactly the kind of scenario where gossip would benefit the entire community.

Tricksters for the Common Good

Some of my favorite people in the Hebrew Scriptures are the tricksters. These are usually women who prevail in some way through the use of trickery, cunning, sexuality, and deception. Because they do not have any power or position, trickery is the only way they can subvert oppressive structures and survive.

Some great examples:

• Rahab, a Canaanite sex worker, who hides the Hebrew spies in her home (quite possibly also providing them her services), and then lies to the king’s messengers to protect them. The spies likely came to her home because sex workers were privy to all kinds of gossip about the community they were seeking to conquer. Her deceitfulness, in part, results in their success and ensures her survival.

• Tamar, the daughter-in-law of the patriarch Judah, pretends to be a sex worker to deceive her father-in-law, tricking him into having sex with her and impregnating her with a son. This is the only way that she can exact justice from Judah, who did not intend to uphold the law by giving his son in marriage to her after she had been widowed by his older son.

Though we are often uncomfortable with their behavior, it’s notable that the Scriptures don’t condemn them, nor are they kept from accomplishing their goals through their deception. In many cases, they are seen as heroic and clever in the sacred text. The one unifying factor in their trickery, however, is that it’s done for their survival and well being in an unjust world. In other words, they never punch down and take advantage of those who are poor or marginalized, but they do punch up to oppressive systems in which they have no voice. Their actions are subversive, for certain, but they are disrupting systems that would seek to deprive them of their rights or deny them life.

On an interesting note, both the sons of Rahab and Tamar end up in the lineage of Jesus.

I don’t believe that people like Tamar, Rahab and the many other tricksters in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures are being rewarded for bad behavior. Instead, I think we’re being shown that there are times to be shrewd, savvy, and wise.

As long as it’s for good.

What do you think, reader? I struggled to write this but would welcome your thoughts and/or feedback.

Cheers,

Karen

I thought about Antarctica and its desolate landscapes of snow drifts, a place that is so inhospitable to human life. I was 20 at the time and didn’t understand why women would be compared to this mostly empty continent for any reason. My mother had died at age 39 and would have given anything to get to be an old señora with grandchildren. At the same time, my mom and my tías all dyed their hair and used creams like the old Oil of Olay to keep their skin looking young. 

Now as a middle-aged woman myself who is approaching her 52nd birthday, I understand a lot more about the stigma of aging for women. I’d love to think that I’m above it, but I’m not. I feel the pressure and have to work actively to resist the harmful messages of our youth-obsessed culture. As I notice my body changing, I’m tempted by the trappings of staying “forever young” (as if that were an option).

Invisible Women

Four years ago 43-year-old Shakira and 50-year-old Jennifer Lopez performed during the halftime Super Bowl show. The show made headlines for many reasons, but definitely because many people thought they looked amazing for any age. Truly, it seemed that, for them, the hands of time had stood still ever since they were in their twenties.

I remember watching and wondering what they did to achieve such incredible results.

Had all of JLo’s husbands kept her locked in a gym, occasionally feeding her a lettuce leaf or two?

Had Shakira discovered a fountain of liposuction?

The truth turned out to be more mundane, as Ms. Lopez shared the diet and exercise regimen she followed before that fabulous performance. Not surprisingly, it takes a lot of time, money, and effort to look that young when you’re middle-aged, but the alternative is to be Antarctica: invisible.

I joked with a couple of friends last week that if middle-aged women are truly invisible in a culture that strictly values youth, I was going to test out that theory by robbing a bank. Please don’t worry—I haven’t turned to a life of crime in my invisibility, though everyone tells me that it’s not a superpower.

Some middle-aged women find invisibility welcome—they are tired of the male gaze and its unpleasant baggage. Aging can be liberating—no more cat calls or demands to smile. You can dress how you want because no one is paying attention anyway! But others mourn the fact that nobody “sees” them anymore. I remember a former colleague, who had been considered quite the beauty in her youth, agonizing over the fact that she no longer turned heads. She, like many middle-aged women, hated the backhanded compliment that we often hear: “You look wonderful…for your age.”

Forever Young

Scrolling through Instagram a few weeks ago, I came across this picture…

I have to tell you that I find it just a little bit annoying and frustrating that I’m supposed to aspire to look like Jennifer Lopez on the right (which pretty much requires not just all my time and energy but also hitting the genetic jackpot) and not like the great Rue McClanahan of Golden Girls fame on the left. Ms. McClanahan looks wonderful, but she also looks her age.

Doesn’t looking our age proclaim to the world that we’re still here? That our maturity and wisdom have been hard won?

I remember reading on some social media platform about a woman who asked the doctor injecting her with Botox and lip fillers how much younger she would look after these treatments. The doctor didn’t skip a beat and replied flatly, “You won’t look younger—you’ll look like a woman your age who has had Botox injections and lip fillers.” Ouch! But also kudos to that doctor for being completely honest. I’m sure that woman looked much better than she felt, but she likely also looked like a person who is aging, and that’s exactly what she didn’t want.

Suffering or More Suffering?

Spiritual teacher Richard Rohr says in his book Falling Upward that aging causes us to suffer because we are aware of losing the gifts of youth. We know that our bodies are changing and not for the better: joints begin to ache, recovery from injuries takes longer, our eyes need reading glasses, our hair grays, and our skin wrinkles and sags. These are the unwelcome changes that come with aging, and no matter how much exercise we do or how little we eat, we will still age.

But he stresses that resisting aging causes more suffering–because not only are we still aging, but resistance, in the form of having a younger partner or a new sports car or Botox injections or weight loss regimens or whatever we do to try to stop the hands of time, doesn’t work. We are still growing older, and we know it. And that knowledge on top of aging only increases our suffering.

Years ago, I dated a man who was almost 10 years younger than me. I wasn’t seeking a younger partner; he just happened to be the person I fell for. Our age difference was a great concern to him. In particular, he worried that what made no difference at his age 29 and my age 38 might be a big deal at 40 and 49 or 60 and 69. His only consolation (and mine) was that I didn’t look 38. Thanks to good ole’ melanin and a few extra pounds, I had no wrinkles, and most people didn’t know about our significant age difference unless we told them.

The thing is that I was still 10 years older, and that age gap would never change. We both knew this, and his anxiety quickly became my anxiety. I became preoccupied with futile attempts at recapturing my youth.

And that, my dear readers, is how I came to live the truth of Rohr’s teaching and increased my own suffering. It was a terrible time—there are few things worse than betraying yourself for the sake of keeping a relationship. I hate even to write about it because I remember all the fear and all the self-loathing that were my constant companions back then.

What I love about the wise Rohr is that he does provide an answer to ending this suffering, and the answer is simple though not easy. The key, he says, is to grieve the gifts of youth and to see and accept the many gifts of aging. The poet Robert Frost put it this way:

Afternoon Life

Ever since I read years ago that we should grieve the gifts of youth, I have wondered how to do this exactly. To be honest, I am still not sure. I still revel in the joy of no more menstrual periods, street harassment, and salon visits to dye my hair. I have found it easier to focus on some of the more abstract gifts of aging that I have experienced:

1. Identity—in my youth, I struggled so much with cultural alienation and self-imposed assimilation. These days I’m very comfortable in my brown, bicultural skin and reckon with my internalized racism.

2. Solitude—I wasted years of energy on seeking a romantic relationship without noticing the other kinds of love all around me or even stopping to ask if I was really my best self in a romantic relationship. These days, I happily spend a Friday evening exploring a new street food stand by myself and coming home to my kitties. Looking forward to turning into an old swamp witch surrounded by cats, books, and creative, interesting people. Maybe I’ll even solve mysteries in my spare time!

   

3. Vocation—This was a source of angst for me for years. What should I do with my one life? Now I’ve come to understand that my vocation is as a writer, but I don’t want to do this job full-time. The reason I love it is because I have to find stolen moments, weekends, and random times to work on it, almost like I’m having an affair. I didn’t arrive at this realization till I was 43. My day job is not my vocation, but it pays the bills nicely, and I’m grateful for it.

4. Saying No—A favorite writer once said that there’s a difference between acceptance and resignation. Resignation lacks peace, tranquility, release. I’ve come to accept my aging body in the sense that I no longer dye my hair or purchase age-defying products. I’ve given up the illusion of any 51-year-old being young or growing more attractive by societal standards. I also recognize that my energy is more limited as I age and, therefore, needs to be spent more carefully, so I’ve learned to say no to people, places, and things that seek to claim my time and energy but aren’t life-giving in any way.

5. Liberation—Truth be told, when I was a young woman, I was drawn to faith because of the certainty it promised (the way it was presented to me, anyway). But patriarchal, racist, and exclusive religion did not liberate me in any way. I just exchanged old shackles for new ones. Aging has made me more open to seeking God outside of the designated spaces, and I have found real freedom and joy in faith. Aging has liberated me from the structures in which I never really fit in anyway.

And lastly, dear readers, I embrace aging these days because the alternative to aging is not being alive at all! I hope you are well and embracing the place where life finds you right now. You look fabulous for your age.

Cheers,

Karen

I hope you are doing well and that you have been gentle with yourself as we have started a new year. I have meant to write this newsletter for a while but haven’t had the creative energy to write lately due to my very busy day job and because, well… *gestures broadly at everything*.

It takes me a while to process experiences and write about them—I wish I could tell you that it’s due to the excellent advice given to creatives: “create from your scars, not your wounds.” But it’s not. I’m just a slow processor. However, I finally have the space to reflect on and write about a short trip I took to Central Europe.

In December 2022 I did something I had never done before. I took a vacation by myself to visit the Christmas markets of Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. It was as beautiful and magical as you might imagine—I felt like I was in a real life Hallmark Christmas movie, even taking a sleigh ride through the Swiss countryside in a horse-drawn sleigh with jingling bells. The only thing missing was running into a handsome stranger who would lure me away from my big city career for a life in the country on a dairy farm (I met no stranger, but I did meet a very friendly Jersey cow).

Honor the Dead

Perhaps my intro belies the seriousness of what I want to share with you, but I want to tell you about an excursion I chose to take on that trip; I went to Dacchau Concentration Camp Memorial Site just outside of Munich, Germany. After visiting castles, festive markets, and historic buildings, it was sobering to be in a place like Dacchau, a place explicitly created to harm people and take their lives—where the unofficial motto was “annihilation by work.” It reminded me of visiting the remnants of the gulags in Kazakhstan. These spaces are sacred, if only because they have absorbed so much blood and seen so much human suffering.

It was especially difficult to be in that space during the winter when there was so much snow falling and on the ground. The guide told us stories of Jewish and other prisoners who were made to stand in the yard in freezing winter temperatures, exhausted and shivering, until every single prisoner had been accounted for—a process that could take hours if someone was missing for any reason.

In a side conversation, a local told me that in Germany, it’s not just children that come on field trips to places like Dacchau, but adults from their workplaces. We were told that Germany takes its history of fascism, the Holocaust, and World War II very seriously in an effort to honor the people who were murdered and learn from that history. It is a crime in Germany to give the Nazi salute, and in Austria, where Hitler was from, they have kept from the general public information about the exact place where he was born to prevent it from becoming a place of pilgrimage for neo-Nazis.

When I was a high school English teacher in Florida, the state required us to teach a unit on the Holocaust in 4th, 8th, and 10th grades for much the same reason—we read novels on the Holocaust, watched documentaries, and learned the history of the time. Notably, we did not learn that Otto Frank, Anne’s father, was denied a visa to the US twice (!) because of the virulent anti-Semitism in the US that sought to limit the number of Jewish people admitted to the country.

But I digress. My point is that, though by no means perfect, these countries have done things explicitly aimed at reckoning with their history and learning from it in an effort not to repeat it.

Remind the Living

Near the crematoriums in Dacchau I came across this statue of The Unknown Prisoner. It depicts a frail inmate in a prison uniform. An inscription at the base of the statue reads, “To honor the dead, to remind the living” in German.

It seems that despite all efforts to memorialize the Holocaust and teach about it through schools, museums, memorial sites, novels, films, and other means, we haven’t learned the lessons of its history. We learned the facts, and, at least in the US, made sure people knew we were on the right side of that terrible history. But we didn’t absorb the lessons about the consequences of supporting demagogues and dehumanizing our neighbors, blaming them for a world that isn’t as we would like it to be.

Never again and never forget, we were told. This tragedy must never again be repeated, for we cannot allow members of the human family to be slaughtered with impunity ever again.

Yet here we are…again.

So Trump is allowed to say with the support of half of all Americans that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” and the Israeli government is allowed to slaughter Palestinians while much of the world watches and doesn’t condemn their actions. Anti-Semitism is once again on the rise around the world, and the state of Texas is fighting a Supreme Court ruling that would force them to remove barbed wire from the river because it harms and has even killed migrants in vulnerable situations.

We have forgotten. Never again has become “here we go again.”

Hope in Hopeless Times

I have refrained from saying much about Palestine in my social media, because I’m not an expert on Middle East diplomacy and history. I wanted to stay in my lane, so to speak. But valuing and protecting human lives is my lane—it’s a lane where all of us belong.

I’m disheartened by the state of the world, but I’m also unwilling to give in to cynicism and despair. While I continue to call my government representatives and senators, I am also encouraged by the people on the ground, who though unable to make systemic changes, are affecting one life at a time for the better. These are the people who work in shelters, who run nonprofits, who are humanitarian workers, who drop water containers in the desert, who risk their lives to bring aid into Gaza, and so many others whose work I don’t even know about.

Often when I speak on immigration I’m asked what gives me hope amid such a hopeless immigration landscape here in the US. I always tell people that I try to focus not on the national conversation but on the local one. Locally, you will always find people quietly working to care for their neighbors in need. Whether it’s a lawyer working pro-bono to help a person with their asylum case or a church opening its doors to allow the kids in the neighborhood to use their Wi-Fi for schooling during the pandemic or a case worker finding housing for a refugee family or an aid worker distributing food and water.

There’s no fanfare or excitement around these jobs—they never make the news or get reported in the media. In fact, most of the work they do is administrative and logistical. But it’s work that makes a world of difference one life at a time. Desmond Tutu once said, “Hope is being able to see the light despite all the darkness.” These are the places where I see the light.

One of the more interesting things about traveling alone is that you end up befriending people you would otherwise ignore if you had your own traveling posse. On my Christmas market tour, I had the chance to meet some lovely people whom I discovered care deeply about the world. It was a restful trip, and it reminded me that we need rest from the cares of the world as well so that we can return to the work refreshed and ready.

I hope you are finding hope amidst the grief in the world, too.

Cheers,

Karen

"For the migrant, his country is the land that gives him bread.”

It’s a thought I’ve come back to again and again. As an immigrant person, it’s so hard to know where you belong. In my case, this lack of place led to romanticizing a return to Latin America, to a place where the people look like me, and I’m not constantly asked where I’m from. The reality has been…complicated.

Reality Check #1: Language

As a writer and a person who has always loved words, I have grown accustomed to being a competent communicator. My sister has often told me that I have the gift of gab. It’s a nice way of saying I’m a talker, and it’s true. But only in English! I was educated in the United States from the time I was 9-years-old, which means that basically my entire education has been in English.

This has never been a problem for me on my visits to different places in Latin America because I know the language fluently and can navigate different cultures within Central and South America. However, these days I find myself working next to Mexican colleagues whose entire education, including university degrees, has been in Spanish. In addition, they’re all fluent in English at a fairly high level. I, on the other hand, have studied more French grammar than Spanish grammar (thanks to high school and college second-language requirements).

And so I find myself understanding nearly everything they say, but I don’t quite have the vocabulary to respond in Spanish. In fact, sometimes, I respond in English. I’m feeling a little bit like that scene in the Selena movie where the Texas-born and raised singer is asked how it feels to be back in Mexico, and she says, “Me siento muy…[long pause as she searches her mind for the word in Spanish]…excited.”

For some reason, I can’t shake the shame of looking like what many people think a Latina looks like yet not being competent in the first language I learned, the only language I knew till I was 9.

Reality Check #2: Universal Problems

In my naïve mind, moving back to Latin America was going to be a bit like moving to a TV sitcom land, where you live in community; everyone loves each other; and every problem is resolved in 30 minutes or fewer. Ok, I didn’t actually think all of that would be true, but I did overemphasize the positive aspects of my return to living here. In fact, I felt a bit like Hagar must have long ago when she and her son returned to Egypt after being mistreated in foreign land among strangers (Genesis 16).

Because President Trump made xenophobia great again, hospitality toward refugees and other immigrants in the US has shifted considerably and not for the better. But it turns out xenophobia exists here, too—it’s just directed at Central Americans, Haitians, Venezuelans, Colombians, and African immigrants, many of whom aren’t even seeking to stay in Mexico. I’ve learned about these unpleasant realities while volunteering at a migrant shelter just outside the city.

I somehow thought that some of the burdens of the world wouldn’t be felt here. The reality is that I feel some of the same burdens here, and I’ve exchanged others for new ones! Classicism, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, machismo, and internalized as well as externalized racism are huge issues here, as they are in many places in the world.

No Country for Immigrants

In the Selena film (and in real life, I’ve since learned), Selena’s father expresses a truth a lot of us immigrants feel: in the US we are regarded as not being American enough, and in our countries of birth or those of our parents, we are regarded as not being Mexican, Guatemalan, Korean, Indian etc. enough. I have felt this here in Mexico as well as in the US—I’m often treated like a person without a country.

Don’t misunderstand me—there are absolutely wonderful things that I love about Mexico. Every country has beauty and rich cultural traditions, and these are my favorite things about living here. But as an immigrant, my people are those who live in-between, in the figurative borderlands.

I felt this truth deeply on a recent trip I took to Houston, TX for a speaking engagement. I encountered several immigrants and children of immigrants on this trip and I felt a kinship with them that I just don’t feel among the people here. Those are my people. it’s in these borderlands that I find belonging.

Perhaps this is what St. John Baptist Scalabrini was expressing in the idea that for the immigrant, home is where you find bread—and maybe also where you share it with your people who are also without a country.

I hope you’re doing well and enjoying this changing of the seasons. I’m looking forward to celebrating Día de los Muertos soon. More on that later.

with hope,

Karen

Some good stuff you should check out:

• Anything for Selena podcast: The episode on Spanglish relates to some of the things I’ve discussed in this newsletter.

• My comadre, Sandy Ovalle Martínez wrote an excellent article for Sojourners: “My Latine Christian Faith Embraces What Western Faith Demonizes”

• Casa Migrante Tijuana is the shelter I visited in Tijuana. They are doing God’s work, and if you have the inclination, I encourage you to donate to support their work: https://casadelmigrantetijuana.com/

• A great show on Netflix about a Palestinian asylum-seeker in Houston—it’s so well done:

Delving into my immigration story in that book brought up a lot of things that I’d packed away securely for decades and hoped never to unpack; but it’s the nature of writing to bring to the surface the stuff locked away, and I wanted, no…needed, a companion as I processed many of these things.

My therapist Jazmin, a fellow Latina, was instrumental in helping me to face the many things I’d turned my back on (most notably my mother’s death when I was 17) and that I thought I could manage just fine, even as I burst into tears when I read aloud from my book at public readings.

FINE

Jazmin says that it’s a truism in therapist circles that F-I-N-E means “feelings I’m not expressing.” What’s interesting about that is that it’s often easy to see…in other people’s lives.

I just finished reading a touching and heartfelt book titled A Man Called Ove by the Swedish writer Fredrik Backman. You may have read it or seen the movie with Tom Hanks, A Man Called Otto, that’s loosely based on Backman’s book (read the book—it’s much better!). Ove is the epitome of FINE—a curmudgeon who has experienced multiple tragedies since childhood, but stuffs them neatly away and, with a very grumpy disposition, keeps telling the whole world (including himself) that’s he’s fine.

To those reading or viewing, it’s clear to see that Ove is, in fact, not fine—he is lonely and experiencing an all-consuming grief after the death of his wife. It is also clear to Ove’s neighbors who refuse to let his gruff exterior keep him alone with his grief and suicidal intentions. By their sheer needs as fellow human beings in his circle, they elbow their way into his life and ultimately save it.

Curiosity Not Judgment

A professor I had in seminary, who was both a psychologist and an ordained minister, told our class once that the majority of people in the world aren’t able to see a therapist, either because of cost, cultural taboos about therapy, or accessibility. That’s why, he said, it was our job as fellow human beings to hold one another’s stories and be engaged, curious listeners. Curious as opposed to judgmental, not as in prying.

And that’s perhaps the most important lesson I’ve learned in therapy: to reflect on my own experiences not with judgment for myself or others but with curiosity.

As I’ve been working on my new book, a work of creative nonfiction about my mother, I have tried to approach it with this perspective in mind. It has been difficult, especially this last week which was the anniversary of her death. But it has been so good for me to step back and approach these memories with curiosity—in fact, it has reframed my memories.

39 Autumns

My mom didn’t even live to see her 40th birthday. I never knew her as a person, but only as my mom, as she appears in this picture. I have a hard time imagining some of the stories I’ve learned about her from the people who knew her well.

My earliest memories of her involve the worries and cares of marriage and motherhood–I can’t even imagine having had a baby at 22 (and 3 by the time she was 28). I wish I had gotten a chance to know her as an adult, where we could have been friends instead of adversaries (as we were when she died, and I was a teenager seeking independence).

She didn’t really grow up in a stable home, nor did she find a supportive partner when she built her own home. And all of that was aggravated by the immigrant life that’s so hard because people don’t value you as a human being but only as a laborer.

So this writing season has been one of grief, remembering, and wondering what might have been. I’m trying to hold all of it and not rush to a resolution or being to hard on myself or her. It’s a fine balance to write about her without turning her into a saint, a martyr, or a villain. I want to embrace her complex humanity.

Would love to hear from you and hear what you’re most looking forward to this autumn. I encourage you, dear reader, to be curious.

With hope,

Karen

One of the first Mexican sayings I learned since moving here is credited to former president Porfirio Díaz: “Pobre México, tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca de Estados Unidos.”

Translated into English, “"Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States."

While you may have learned from the media and other sources that Mexico benefits greatly from its proximity to the US, that’s not the general perception of the Mexican people. You may be used to thinking of Mexicans dreaming of migrating to the US in search of the American dream, but the reality is more nuanced than that. In fact, they’re dealing with a situation you may not expect: an influx of Americans flooding their capital city for the last few years.

If you search the best places from which to work and live, Mexico, and specifically Mexico City, almost always comes out on top:

• It’s affordable for most North Americans and Europeans

• It has a mild and dry climate—the high was 75 yesterday! in August!!

• The food scene is amazing, and it’s chiles en nogada season :)

• It has a strong infrastructure with fast and reliable internet

• It’s completely walkable and relatively safe

• They offer a temporary residence visa for digital nomads

If you haven’t heard the term “digital nomad,” it’s used to describe a person who has the ability to work online and can, thus, live anywhere…or nowhere and move around at will from Airbnb to Airbnb. Typically, digital nomads stay anywhere from a few months to a year or more before moving on to a new location. The digital nomad lifestyle became quite popular during the pandemic, and for many people it continues to be a way of life post-pandemic.

Part of the appeal is what is known as “geoarbitrage – earning money in a strong currency and then living in a country where the local currency is weaker and the cost of living lower.” Of course, “passport privilege” for Americans and Europeans makes the digital nomad lifestyle possible. In Mexico, someone with a US passport can stay for up to 180 days without a visa. That’s almost half a year!

In Mexico City, digital nomads are seemingly everywhere. You can hear English spoken just as much as Spanish in the popular neighborhoods of Roma, La Condesa, and Polanco, where foreigners tend to live and work. Cafes and restaurants offer menus in both English and Spanish to cater to them; they can rent homes remodeled with western-style amenities; and, all the while, they can feel good about the economic benefits they bring as a foreigner with far more money than most locals.

I have met lovely digital nomads in the city—Americans who are eager to learn Spanish; who respect the culture and its people; who come with a learning posture; who see the injustice of immigration policies in the US; and who are aware of their privilege. Above all, good nomads interrogate the unequal conditions in the world that allow them to be nomads or “expats” living abroad while others are denied entry to the US or Europe even for just a short, tourist visit.

Digital Nomads: Destroyers of Worlds

But as you might have guessed, there is a dark side to the digital nomad:

In some of these historic neighborhoods in Mexico City, rent has increased as much as 60% in the last 3 years, compared to 30% overall across other parts of the city. This steep increase has priced out many of the Mexicans who used to live there. While many Mexicans are very welcoming to digital nomads, their presence is creating displacement and changing the face of the neighborhoods. Suddenly, little coffee shops are full of mostly white working nomads on business calls (that are much louder than they think), rather than the neighborhood people who used to come to drink coffee and spend time together. Not to mention the nomads who brag about how far their dollars go in the city in front of Mexican people who are not earning dollars and can’t afford the same lifestyle. This is a huge, and mostly unwelcome, shift.

Movement for All

If you’re thinking that I’m going to discourage Americans and others from coming to Mexico City, you would be wrong. It’s the job of the Mexican government to make sure housing remains affordable for its citizens—it’s not the responsibility of digital nomads. I believe in the freedom of movement…for all people not just Americans.

Movement is natural. People have migrated whenever they have had an open land and the right to move and even when they haven’t. After my parents received the right to permanent legal residency in the US, they chose to leave our home in Southern California in search of a place where property prices were more affordable. They did not call it “migration” because that is not how people typically refer to movement when it occurs within a country, but we migrated from the West to the East Coast. We arrived just after the Mariel boatlift that brought thousands of Cuban refugees to South Florida.

Science journalist Sonia Shah says that it is easy enough for us to be lulled into the false perception that immigrant movement is the exception to the rule—that what is normal is to stay in one place. She adds, “But life is on the move, today as in the past. For centuries, we’ve suppressed the fact of the migration instinct, demonizing it as a harbinger of terror. We’ve constructed a story about our past, our bodies, and the natural world in which migration is the anomaly. It’s an illusion. And once it falls, the entire world shifts.”1

Today, more people than ever live outside of their country of origin and do so for varied reasons. The twenty-first century has been dubbed “the age of migration,” since immigrants make up 3 percent of the world’s population.2 While that number sounds small, it represents 244 million people. Were they to gather in one place, they would make up the world’s fifth most populous nation. What is unnatural, then, is not movement or migration but the restriction or prevention of movement.

And that’s precisely the beef I have with the US immigration system—it suppresses a natural instinct to move in search of…anything. It could be a better life; it could be a season of adventure; or perhaps to be a tourist…yet the expectation is that other countries will welcome their own citizens with open arms.

I’ve met Mexicans who would love to go to the US for a time, to be digital nomads themselves—these are professionals with jobs and homes and lives here in Mexico, yet most of them have not been able to get a visa to enter the US. The freedom of movement should be for all of us, not just a privileged few who happened to hit the citizenship jackpot by being born in the US, Canada or Europe. I suppose that Mexico could respond by having equally restrictive immigration policies, but why can’t the US respond with equally generous ones?

I wonder how the US would respond if Mexico treated its citizens who’ve migrated to Mexico with the same suspicion and disdain with which the US treats Mexican migrants? Why is the natural right to move only for some and not for all? Why can’t we have reciprocal immigration policies when Mexican migrants have historically contributed so much to the US?

By the way, when I talk to digital nomads here in Mexico, they almost always say they came here for a better quality of life. Sound familiar? That’s exactly why lots of people move to the US, too.

Dear friends,

I heard a TikToker talk about colonization once and express bitterly, “…we learned your English, your French, your Spanish, and you learned our…nothing.” I felt that. It’s a visceral truth, and she’s entitled to the bitterness that comes from what might have been, from the grief of all that has been lost.

I confess that I never understood why Americans identified themselves as Irish or German or English when they were clearly just American to me. But I now understand that there’s a longing for missed connections—a longing to know and learn about where we come from and who our ancestors were.

The TikToker made me think about the indigenous language I might have spoken had Guatemala never been colonized. I was thinking a lot about indigenous wisdom at the time because I was reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s beautiful book Braiding Sweetgrass (stop what you’re doing and go get this book from the library right now!) Kimmerer speaks with candor about the challenging process of learning the language of her own North American indigenous family, and she inspired me with the knowledge that it is never too late—our ancestors’ languages and wisdom can be recovered.

Learning Kaqchikel

So last summer when I was celebrating my 50th birthday in Guatemala, I took language lessons in Kaqchikel,1 the most widely spoken Mayan indigenous language in the region where my father was raised in Guatemala, the department of Sacatepéquez, located just to the west and south of Guatemala City.

I’m calling it a language, which it is and always has been, but my family never referred to it that way. To them it was always one of many “lenguas (literally, tongues) or dialects.” It was always spoken of negatively, in a way that was meant to convey that it wasn’t as sophisticated as Spanish, wasn’t worthy of rigorous study, like my boring Spanish grammar classes that explained the subjunctive tense and the rules for the accent mark. You would no more study Kaqchikel than you would study Pig Latin. I heard the message loud and clear: this “dialect” is inferior…and, by extension, so were the people who spoke it.

I know it sounds like I’m being very hard on my family, but this is a message that has been prevalent in Guatemala for generations, ever since the first Spanish conquistador arrived and wrongly placed himself at the top of the hierarchy of what it means to be human. In the 1930’s, a Guatemalan president said publicly that the country would never get ahead while there were so many “ignorant indians” among us and encouraged migration from Europe to “improve the race.”

It was not hard to absorb all the aspirations toward whiteness in my family and in my Guatemalan culture. For many people, aligning themselves with whiteness wasn’t just a preference but a matter of survival—life is easier for white Guatemalans; they have access to better opportunities, don’t suffer exclusion, and they’ve never suffered the threat of extermination by the government.

I write in my book: “I understand now that my family did not know how to disrupt the harmful systems that create hierarchies, that divide us by race….” So they did the only thing they knew to do: they taught us how to adapt and work within them for our own well being. I don’t blame them. Even if you’re a brown or other person of color, you can’t swim in white supremacist waters all of your life without swallowing that toxic water. At the same time I knew they would not understand my desire to learn Kaqchikel now. But learning and valuing this language is one way for me to disrupt and not assimilate to oppressive systems. After all, those who belong to the kin-dom,2 use their resources and privileges to build a better and more just society.

The People of Corn

I’ve always had a gift for learning languages. I don’t say that pridefully because it truly is just a gift and not something I’ve had to work very hard to achieve. The combination of an extroverted personality, a good ear, and an obsessive desire to communicate created the perfect conditions for me to be a good language-learner.

And I’m happy to report that the trend continued with Kaqchikel. One of the truisms of language-learning is that when you learn a language you also absorb a lot of the culture. One of the many things I learned about Mayan culture is that it was very closely tied to the land, and to corn, in particular. In fact, they refer to the land where they live not as Guatemala (which means land of many trees in Nahuatl) but as Iximulew (pronounced ee-shee-moo-lev), the land of corn.

In the Mayans’ sacred book the Popol Vuh, the creation myth says that two gods created humans out of corn; our bodies and bones are made of corn masa. Corn, like people, comes in all different colors. In gratitude to the gods for this gesture, humans learned to work the land and give it life by planting corn. It’s a reciprocal relationship: the people are made of corn, and they cultivate corn.

I couldn't help but wonder what it must be like for the indigenous Mayans to see everything, not just their land, renamed with Spanish or other foreign terms. My teacher is from a town in the mountains called Junapju, named after a Mayan God. But everyone in Guatemala knows this town as Santa María de Jesús, named literally Holy Mary of Jesus. He taught me the names of so many towns that I already knew but with Spanish names.

What the Spanish colonizers did is akin to someone walking into your house and deciding that your name is now Susan; renaming everything inside it for their own convenience; and then throwing you out!

They never considered learning from the indigenous Mayans. Even though the Mayans had their own sophisticated numbering system that included a zero, a number they discovered independently of the Sumerians. They successfully used cacao beans as currency and ran a robust economy. They revered the land and agriculture, giving them a sacred quality and planting according to the phases of the moon. And they had not one but at least seven sacred books (a Spanish priest destroyed several of them).

In fact, many Guatemalans today revere the ancient Mayans while denying that the indigenous people living today in Guatemala are also Mayans.

And so, dear readers, I am re-learning what was lost before I was even born. I only study on Saturdays now, but I’m creating space every week to reconnect with my ancestors and their sacred knowledge. There’s a fine line between appreciation and appropriation, and I’m working hard to stay on the appreciation side because, while I have indigenous blood, I’ve never experienced the marginalization that comes with an indigenous identity.

I don’t know who to credit with this quote but it’s a beautiful truth:

“I feel my ancestors in my blood. I am a body of people that are asking not to be forgotten.”

Want to learn to say hello in Kaqchikel? Watch this 28-second video and don’t forget to listen and repeat:

So what are you learning? How are you connecting with your roots? I’d love to know and continue the conversation. I could talk about this all day!

Cheers,

kg

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I don’t know if this story is true or not, but I heard in a film that when monarch butterflies embark on their migration, the journey is so long that the ones who depart never necessarily arrive; some do and some don’t. Flying as many as 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers) from the U.S. and Canada where they breed, all the way down to the forests in central Mexico where they hibernate. They make the journey, not knowing when or if they will arrive at their destination.

It brought to my mind the book of Hebrews that lists all of those who lived by faith: “They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance…” (11:13).

Two Options

I learned about the migratory pattern of monarch butterflies in a film called Women Talking. I happened to watch this film on a flight to the U.S. last month. It’s not exactly the kind of film that’s a fun distraction on a flight, but I was in too deep by the time I realized it. I found it so compelling that I couldn’t stop watching.

It’s the story of a group of Mennonite women who are part of a conservative and isolated colony, in which they are betrayed in the worst way possible. I don’t want to give away spoilers in the event that some of you are like me and watch films much later than everyone else, but suffice it to say that the women feel they have two options: stay and fight or leave the colony.

Doing nothing is not an option they ever consider though they’re pressured by men in the colony to forgive and forget.

What the women experience in that colony is horrific and very different from the kinds of betrayals I’ve experienced in faith communities. In no way do I want to minimize their suffering or compare it to mine (particularly because the film is based on a true story). But it occurred to me in baggage claim a couple of hours later that the decision the women have to make is similar to the one many of us have to make regarding our faith:

Whiteout Conditions

As a student in seminary, I had to prepare a sermon once on the faith of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Luckily, I found a way to procrastinate on my homework by reading a magazine that arrived in the mail. I became immersed in a story about an explorer near the Arctic who gets lost in whiteout conditions and has to build a temporary shelter to survive. He explains that the best way out of such a predicament is to rely on a compass and not on a map.

A map, he emphasizes, tells you what the road ahead should look like and exactly where to go. The problem is that when there’s heavy snow and minimum visibility, the road looks nothing like the map; the blizzard conditions obfuscate the well-laid out path in the map. To survive, he says, you just need to know your general direction not the exact path. And for that you just need a compass.

I ended up using that narrative in my sermon, because it struck me that faith is a lot like navigating with a compass. You only know the general direction but have no sense of the path, where it may lead and what you’ll find on the journey.

Long ago when I chose to follow Jesus, I did so because of the certainty—the map—I was offered. Follow Jesus and all your problems will be solved. Blessing follows obedience, I was told in a Bible study. You grew up in chaos and instability? No worries—Jesus guarantees a perfect little family life. You’re scared of the future? Don’t be—there’s no plan B when you follow Jesus; you’re always in plan A. You long for community? Join the family of Jesus, where you’ll never be alone.

Of course, all of this turned out not to be true or only true to an extent. After all, Jesus is not a cosmic vending machine where you drop your good deeds and obedience into a slot and receive the life you would have picked out of a catalog.

Faith is a lot more like traveling with a compass. You start the journey headed in a certain direction toward the Divine. And that’s where I find myself these days, embracing the ambiguity and uncertainty of that journey, outside of the Church, and open to knowing God but no longer on the old paths laid out so carefully on the maps.

That’s where you can find me now. Some people call this deconstruction. I just call it evolving faith, something that has always occurred in the lives of people who pursue faith. It’s the journey of the monarch butterflies.

How is your faith shifting these day, gentle reader? Have you found your relationship to the church changing over the years or perhaps just since the pandemic started?

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In February, I came on a work trip to Mexico City with a colleague, who happens to be Muslim. On one of our many taxi rides around the city, we had a conversation about our distinct faiths; she mentioned how surprised people in the city seemed to be by her hijab. I explained that it’s likely people don’t see many Muslim women here, and that because of the American media, people in Latin America generally believe harmful myths about Islam and the people who practice it.

Fatima (not her real name) leaned back into her seat and sighed. She told me that it’s unfortunate that people around the world only associate Islam with the tradition practiced in Saudi Arabia and other parts of the Middle East, which is very patriarchal and limits the role of women in public life. Islam, she said, is very much pro-women in theory, even if not in practice in some places.

Now it was my turn to lean back and sigh. Friends, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had that same conversation but not about Islam. When people have asked me questions about my Christian faith and its treatment of women, I’ve asserted how much Jesus loved and empowered women. I have defended my own faith, proclaiming that it’s not at all patriarchal and misogynistic—it’s just that some denominations have chosen to practice it in that way.

Big sigh. In no way, do I want to disparage my colleague or her beliefs. I know very little about Islam. I was just struck by the similarity to my own stance over the years.

No True Christian

You may be familiar with the logical fallacy known as “no true Scotsman.” This fallacy is an appeal to “purity” as a way to dismiss relevant criticism or flaws in the argument.

Example:

Person A: Christianity is not patriarchal or misogynistic.

Person B: What about the Southern Baptist Convention’s refusal to ordain women as pastors? What about its ousting of churches that dare to have women leaders? What about the way teachings on female submission have been used to subjugate women, keeping them subservient to men? What about the way women have been abused and limited by the Church for centuries?

Person A: That’s not true Christianity, pure Christianity. That’s not what Jesus taught. No true Christian would promote such teachings.

While I never went so far as to say, “that’s not true Christianity,” I most definitely felt that way in the past. And I am still convinced to this day that Jesus’ dream for the world is not patriarchy. I guess now I’m less concerned with debates about women in church leadership or in defending my position or in even quoting Jesus himself. Now I’m left to wonder what difference it makes that I may be right, when the faith has not historically been practiced that way. It’s not even practiced that way in the present in many places. Women continue to be marginalized in the church, whether or not that’s what the Bible teaches.

Always a Salmon

All of this came up for me when my sister asked me to lead a Bible study for my nieces about a year ago. I was very hesitant. The request brought up all the ways the church has harmed me as a single woman of color that did not fit its ideals of a quiet and submissive spirit. I thought about all the unlearning I had to do; all the ways I had to process in therapy the shame it instilled in me—the way it told me not to trust my own intuition; all the struggle just to be seen as an image-bearer of God. And, unsurprisingly, I did not want any of that for my nieces.

It’s ironic because when I was a fundamentalist evangelical, I would have given anything for such a request from my sister. But now, I wanted no part of any of it. I did do a handful of studies with the girls, mostly narratives about Jesus and his parables, but I was very careful to allow them space to doubt and ask lots of questions, even if I had no answers. Truth be told, I was thrilled when they lost interest and didn’t want to continue the project. I really did not want them to become interested in going to church. Meeting Jesus is enough.

They say Western Europe became post-Christian1 because it was exhausted by all the religious wars after the Protestant Reformation. I kind of know how it feels. I’m tired of the debates, culture wars, and the struggle—especially when those involve my own identity and calling.

Share A Karen the World

Even in mainline protestant denominations that ordain women, you see mostly men in leadership and/or the reality that women may be given authority to preach but no real influence in the denomination. It’s exhausting to fight against that stream all your life. I’m not a salmon.

So I’m taking an indefinite break from the Church. I need to figure out what church engagement means for me, if I’m afraid to have the people I love most become part of these communities.

Mexican Breakfast

I have now lived in Mexico for almost 3 months!

I am enjoying it and so is Oscar who loves that windows here do not have screens. Normally, when I first move to a place, I try to connect with a church but due to my aforementioned conflict with the Church, I have not done so here.

I have, however, connected with a writing group, some organizations that work with migrants, and with some of my Mexican colleagues. Mostly, I relish the joy of Mexican breakfast. I ride the city bikes to a different breakfast place every Saturday morning.

Saturday breakfast is one of life’s simple pleasures for me—it’s slow; it’s decadent; it’s special; and it’s festive (mimosa, anyone?).

I hope that you are well wherever Saturday mornings find you! More to come on Mexico in future newsletters.

Cheers,

Karen

I hope that you are well and enjoying the changing of the seasons. Having grown up mostly in Guatemala and Florida, seeing the changing of the seasons is relatively new to me. But I love it! It’s like witnessing a miracle.

I’m quickly approaching the end of my time in Baltimore! For a while, it seemed that my move to Mexico City was a long way away, but now it’s imminent. On April 1, my Oscarito and I will head out to our new home in Colonia San Rafael. So we’re doing our best to savor the early spring in Maryland.

Cherry Blossoms

Because this is my last winter in Maryland, I have been lamenting that it has been so warm this year—we didn’t get a single snowy day, which is really unusual for us. I have since learned that there’s a wonderful upside to our strange winter: the cherry blossoms will be here before I leave; they will peak March 22nd-25th.

If you’ve never had a chance to experience the cherry blossoms in the Mid-Atlantic, I highly recommend them to you—the first trees were a gift from Japan to the United States and since that time they have planted many more in the area. It’s absolutely magical, like you’re walking through a beautiful dream, and you never want to wake up. Of course, you should also bring your allergy meds, if you’re anything like me.

Kazakh New Year

Since I’ve known for a while that so many experiences would be my last ones in the area, I’ve been looking at my surroundings with different eyes. This year, I kept a lookout for the daffodils, which are the first flowers I usually notice as spring approaches. And I managed to see not just their pretty yellow buds popping up all around my neighborhood, but also crocus and forsythia. I’ve also been watching the hill in front of my apartment with all its vegetation—every once in a while I catch glimpses of deer with their little fawns. It’s a miracle the way everything, including us, comes back to life in the Spring.

When I lived in Kazakhstan, one of my favorite celebrations was Наурыз (Nauryz) or Kazakh (Central Asian) New Year in late March. It’s a celebration of spring—of the renewal that comes to us each year when spring arrives. For Nauryz everyone has two days off from school or work to celebrate and watch traditional dance performances and parades taking place all over the city. Everyone is involved in a frenzy of activities and in the preparation of elaborate meals.

Now we don’t really celebrate the coming of spring in the U.S. because maybe we don’t have as great of an appreciation for spring as people in Central Asia do. But they live in a pretty cold place—the winters are long and monotonous. The north/central part of the Kazakhstan is considered Southern Siberia.

The temperature hovers around zero for much of the winter, a winter that can last for more than half the year. In January, the temperature can drop anywhere between 20-40 degrees below zero and the winds are so strong and biting that they literally knock you down. So you can see why in a place with such long and harsh winters, spring is welcomed like warm chocolate chip cookies.

What’s ironic is that the annual observance of the Kazakh New Year usually falls in March, at a time when it’s still freezing cold! I have pictures of myself at celebrations of this holiday where I’m wearing about 10 layers of clothing and still look cold—in fact, I took off my hat briefly to take the picture you see above! In mid-March, there is no visible hope on the horizon that spring is anywhere near.

And that’s what I found so interesting: it’s really a celebration in faith that a restoration of nature is coming. That they will reap with joy what they’ve sown in tears through the long Siberian winter. It brings to my mind the renewing work of God in places of suffering, places of waiting, places of trouble and distress.

The arrival of spring really is miraculous!

Psalm 126

I confess that I don’t read the Bible a lot these days but when I do it’s usually the Psalms. I love the raw, unfiltered expressions of anger, distress, and despair they reflect back to us—they give us permission to talk back to God. One of my favorites is Psalm 126.

I read once that Psalm 126 is a Song of Ascents—that is, a song sung on a pilgrimage. I imagine these pilgrims traveling together and singing this song. It’s a hot and dusty road and the destination is still a long way off, and what do they sing about? We read in verses 1 and 2 that they are recalling a joyful time in their history, when the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion. It was like living a dream, they say.

Then we read on in the second half of verse 2, that this amazing restoration not only brought them joy but it even captured the attention of all the Gentile nations around them “It was said among the nations, the Lord has done great things for them.”

Can you picture them trudging along that road and sighing with nostalgia? Those were the days—God has done great things for us, they say in verse 3, and we were filled with joy.

But that was then, what about the present? It’s a reality, too. They’ve moved from that work of deliverance to yet another set of misfortunes. And having no recourse for their situation—no way to make things right themselves, they turn to the only thing they have left: prayer. We read in verse 4 their three-word prayer:

Restore our fortunes!

Actually, they don’t ask; they plead with God in the imperative to bring back the water to their parched lives. As a matter of fact, they may very well need literal water—Ancient Israel was, after all, an agricultural community.  Or they might just need figurative refreshment--water for their souls. And it’s not as if they just sow with tears of frustration and sadness on one day and reap with joy the next day. The time between sowing and reaping can be long.

The sowing with tears is followed by a long period of time that requires patience and care and waiting. When will the harvest of blessing finally arrive? They know that even the summer drought of the Negev Desert is interrupted by rain, causing the desert to bloom beautifully. But when? And will God answer them as before? How can they resolve this tension between their past and present realities?

Joy Anticipated

The pilgrims in the song don’t really have an answer to these questions either but they do have a firm conclusion that brings them peace and comfort. One writer phrases this conclusion as, “This psalm is about joy remembered but also about joy anticipated.”

I discovered that commentators have a difficult time knowing how to classify this psalm. Some put it in the category of lament and some in thanksgiving. A few of them classified this psalm as a song of confidence or re-orientation to God, because though it expresses trouble or distress, it also affirms hope in God.

I used to know absolutely nothing about farming or growing things, so the notion of sowing and reaping used to be a less-than-effective metaphor for me. But about ten years ago, I visited a few vineyards in Napa Valley and had an opportunity to talk to the farmers about the process of cultivating a vineyard. As I walked around observing and taking pictures of the vines, I realized almost immediately that I picked the wrong time of year to visit—all of the vines are bare in the winter. In fact, they look like crooked brown sticks shoved into the ground (just as you see below).

If I didn’t know better, I would have thought they were all dead. But I knew better.

I had great faith for those vines. When spring came a few months later, they flowered and eventually produced grapes that became wine. One writer says that in the winter life is “…underground, in exile, where it is being repaired and restored for the newness of the spring.”

The pilgrims in Psalm 126 are a little like those vines. They seem to understand that God is scripting some newness for them. And they are as sure of it as they are of the spring that comes each year. The psalm ends with an expectation of a divine miracle: the people will return singing songs of joy and will celebrate a plentiful harvest.

I think in this time that my faith seems to be dying, it’s hopeful to remember that perhaps God is scripting something new for me. And wherever you find your faith to be, God is scripting something new for you, too. Maybe something extraordinary or maybe something ordinary and miraculous, like the spring that comes each year.

With hope,

Karen

P.S. Coming up next month—an author highlight :)