I am very excited for this upcoming year. I am excited to immerse myself in Mexican culture, a new of living and new ideas. I am excited to be immersed in Spanish and to improve my fluency. I am excited to live with a host family. I am excited for the journey and to be with the people that I will walk alongside - my YAGM counterparts and my Mexican compadres. I am excited for community and growth.
While I am very excited, I also know that this year will be very challenging. I am going to hear a lot of heartbreaking stories at my worksite this year. I will likely hear of people fleeing gang violence and economic hardship in search of safety and economic opportunities, but in the process leaving behind their beloved countries and families. Meanwhile, I know that their path ahead will not be easy. They may encounter gangs and corrupt government officials asking for money or delivering beatings. They may face the danger of crossing through a barren dessert to enter the United States. Even further ahead, they could face a lifetime of being an "alien," living in fear of deportation, or being apprehended by authorities and waiting years to receive a court hearing and the possibility of being deported. The journey will not be easy.
This year will also be challenging because of the questions that confront me on my own journey. Some are questions I am already asking:
-What does it mean to be a Christian?
-What does it mean to be a Christian from the U.S. in today's world? What is my role in the global body we call the Church?
-What/who is God?
-What does it mean to follow God/Christ?
-What do I believe about the authority of the Bible? What role will it play in my life?
-What does it mean for me to be among the most privileged people the world as ever seen as white, wealthy, heterosexual, college-educated, North American, Christian, male? How will I interact with the world? How can I steward my resources in a way that is not paternalistic or harmful to others?
-What hypocrisies will I discover in myself this year?
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| Pondering on the Colorado Trail |
The questions ahead are many. I hope to keep and open mind through this journey, so that I can be present with each question and lesson that comes my way. I hope to heed the advice that Siddhartha shares with his friend Govinda in Herman Hesse's novel Siddhartha:
When someone is seeking... it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything, because he is only thinking of the thing he is seeking, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal. (p.113)
May my mind and heart be open. May I be ready for new discoveries, and not merely seek and fulfill my own previous prophecy (self-fulfilling bias). Furthermore, may God be present this year with me and the migrants I meet on our prospective journeys.
"The geographical pilgrimage is the symbolic acting out of an inner journey." -Thomas Merton
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