What a Man

Taken from a Relevant Magazine podcast interview done earlier this year with author and speaker Donald Miller:

"I like the way post-modernity is taking thought. I'm somebody who believes in absolute truth, but I don't believe in absolute truth in the way that, probably, the modern traditional evangelical believes in absolute truth. I believe in absolute truth in the way that Jesus defines absolute truth, in the sense that Jesus is asked what is truth, and He says 'I am.'"

-Don M.

That's so hot.

I propose that from now on when we say "The Donald" we agree that we are referring to Mr. Miller and not a NYC developer with a bad hair piece and a habit of marrying models.

Like Chores For the Internet

I have been meaning to update my links for a few weeks now and they are finally done.
I now have some music review sites, a whole bunch of blogs (from Christian to political to feminist), and a few webzines up there. If you get some time check those out. They are pretty well organized, more or less.

Sunday Music Video Blogging

In honor of the last concert I went to before wandering on down here to Meh-hee-koh I am posting a couple of really awesome videos from two incredible bands that I absolutely love.

This is the new video from The Format for their song "Dog Problems." This album is full of really great pop music with an orchestral bent, and the video is perfect for the song.



This link: http://www.tubopopcorn.com/mp4/anathallo/hanasakajijii.wmv takes you to a video that I put up last year on instant messenger. It is two songs performed by the band Anathallo, Hanasakajijii 1, and Hanasakajijii 4. Floating World was one of the best albums released in 2006. Do yourself a favor and check it out if you missed it the first time around.

Special thanks to Special K, E-Rick, The Legend, and Third Wheel for going to this concert with me and dancing to Anathallo when the rest of the crowd was being lame.

Kings to you Mr. Perica

My great friend Bryce Perica has once again improved my life by pointing out to me the incredible advantages of Blogger Beta.

The big news is that I just received a whole bunch of comments I had never seen before. Apparently you could leave them and they just never showed up. So, umm, thanks. I promise to respond from now on.

Almost as exciting: I now have labels! I feel all grown up in a blogging sense.

Meet Your Neighbors: Phoenix

Every Monday I spend, at a minimum, about eight hours working in the Migrant Resource Center. I've written about the MRC before, so for those of you just joining this little party you'll have to go back and find the explanation of what it is for some of this to make sense. Back to business. The result of this extended shift at the MRC is that I get to meet a lot of migrants on Monday, and often spend most of Tuesday distracted by thoughts of where those people are and what they are doing.

As a result I have decided to start a series of posts called "Meet Your Neighbors," where I introduce some new American residents that I have met, both as a way to process some of my experiences, and to share a little bit of these people's lives with all of you.

This inaugural edition of "Meet Your Neighbors" is aimed primarily at residents of Phoenix, Arizona, as that is where Rosa is headed today, God willing. Although I will give the real destinations and place of origin for everyone that I talk about here, I will change all names to protect their privacy.

Rosa comes from a small town in southern Mexico in the state of Puebla. She has lived in the United States with her husband for the past eight years, and now resides in Phoenix. Rosa had returned to Mexico about three weeks ago in order to attend the funeral of her older brother, who had died while living and working in North Carolina. Of Rosa's four siblings, only one still lives in Mexico, and at a great distance from their original hometown.

Rosa was caught on the American side of the border yesterday afternoon, and deported back to Mexico late last night. This is fairly common for many migrants, as they tend to cross in the late afternoon or early evening, and are often caught within a short distance of the border. What is so unusual about Rosa is that she had been crossing the desert without a Coyote, the name the Mexicans use for a paid guide. Instead she was accompanied by her two year old son Roberto, her ten month old baby, and a friend from Phoenix.

Rosa was not able to leave her children in the U.S. with her husband because of his work schedule and the fact that she is still nursing a very young child. She had risked this crossing to bury a beloved brother, and was returning only three weeks after she had left because she was worried about losing her own job bussing plates at an all-you-can-eat buffet. As I write this 24 hours after I met her, it is possible that Rosa and her children are still alone in the desert, still walking north towards the car that will come to pick her up. It is possible that she has been caught and deported again. It is entirely possible that something very bad has happened to her or her children. I'm praying that they are home safe.

As she was leaving last night, after I had given her some blankets and jackets, hats and socks, burritos, water, and tea, I had this moment where it was all I could do not to start crying. I had this moment where all I could think of doing was to beg for forgiveness. To get down on the floor and ask her to forgive me, forgive us, for making her risk her life and her children's lives in the desert just so she can bus my plates at a greasy spoon. I wanted her to tell me that I was forgiven. I wanted her to tell me that they would be all right. I wanted her to know that if I could have it any other way, I would. I wanted to feel better somehow.

Ultimately I didn't say any of those things. I told her "Vaya con Dios," go with God. Frankly, God's all she's got right now.

Buy Nothing Day

Ariah over at Trying to Follow (http://blog.iamnotashamed.net/2006/11/20/the-consequences-of-buying-everything) reminded me that Buy Nothing Day is coming up. I love Buy Nothing Day, not just as a way to think more deeply about consumption, but also as a way to avoid going anywhere that might involve shopping the day after Thanksgiving. Hell can't be any worse than Wal-Mart is going to be on Saturday.

I'm not actually sure that I´ll be able to participate in this, since my parents will be here, but I'd like to suggest it to you anyway. Actually, scratch that, they are taking me out to dinner, so technically I will buy nothing and they will buy me dinner. Sweet.

Also thanks to Ariah, here´s a little video for your viewing pleasure. It´s an interview with Adbusters founder Kalle Lasn from last year´s buy nothing day. I love him. I don´t know who that CNN woman is but I´m pretty sure that I hate her (in the Christian you're not supposed to hate people sense of the term, of course).



Apologies to Ariah since I basically stole his post, a huge blogging party foul, but I just really liked it. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery...

I´m baaaack.

Guess who´s back, back again...
Sorry. Couldn´t resist.
Actually, I am back, and happy to be home again here in good ol´ dusty, dirty, Agua Prieta. I returned yesterday from a Presbyterian youth conference at a church in Chihuahua City, which is about eight hours drive from here farther into the interior of Mexico. This conference was a pretty big success compared to the last one I went to since I did not find myself on a date with anyone underage, nor did I badly damage the engine of the van that was supposed to take us there.

Instead I spent the weekend in what is easily one of the nicest cities I have ever been to in my life. No joke. Chihuaha is clean, economically prosperous, and culturally engaging. It was a side of Mexico that was completely new to me, i.e., where government works. That´s not to say it didn´t have its problems, but I won´t dwell on any of them as I was just so impressed with how amazing it was, especially in comparison to the other Mexican cities I have seen, and, well, Los Angeles, California. I love LA, but frankly, it´s pretty terrible.

Here is a picture of the Cathedral in the main plaza,
a beautiful building and a very active church.

I really did enjoy the weekend, but it was also very exhausting. As much as I would like to think that I just sort of fit in here, or that I´ve learned enough Spanish to make it almost all the time, being immersed in another culture is just hard, and having to do it 24 hours a day for three days straight doesn´t make it any easier. I don´t do very well around people for extended periods of time anyway, something that Mexican culture HIGHLY values, and the language and culture thing strain my endurance that much more. By the end of the weekend I was trying hard to appear polite while avoiding talking to anyone but some close friends. Good times, glad to be home.

Work starts again this week, but it´s going to be very interrupted by my Mom and Steve, who are coming for Thanksgiving. I´m really looking forward to having them here and integrating two parts of my life a little bit better. Other things on the too do list are contact people about Just Coffee, ease tensions with a very upset former drug addict, and try to get myself insured. Turns out I´m not. Oops.

I also have to distract myself from the fact that many of my best friends in the world are reuniting for a week of great food and good times in Longmont, CO. I miss them all dearly and am really glad that they will get to enjoy one another´s company, even if I do not.

"I've Been Reading Your Blog"

The title of the post says it all. This is probably going to be a little introspective and confessional, even by my standards, but I have been thinking a lot about it and I think it's important.

When I started this blog just a few short months ago I did it for pretty self-serving purposes. Basically, I wanted to be a better, more confident, and more faithful writer. I am, slowly but surely, meeting some of those goals. I started the blog for me, but along the way it has come to serve a lot of other useful purposes.

For example, since I started blogging my relationship with my parents has gotten better. Really. I can skip over some of the stories that I have already written about and get on to explaining more about how I feel about things. Unexpected, and great.

This blog has also been a soapbox of sorts, which I think all writing inevitably must be. I have been able to write a lot, although not as much as I would like, about my work and about border issues. Obviously I think that this is a good thing.

One of my bosses told me the other day that he wants to post a link to my blog from the Frontera de Cristo website, and give the URL in the quarterly newsletter. I didn't really know how I felt about that, and it instantly sent me back to questioning why it is I blog in the first place, what I blog about, and how I do it. I write some serious posts here and there, but I also make posts that only a small and self-selecting group would ever find interesting. The reality is that I started this blog for me, but my readership is surprisingly large. On the advice of my friend Bryce, a more seasoned blogger by far, I installed a stat-counter to tell me how many people visit this site, and where they come from. I confess that I don't really use it very much, but since I was going to write this post I opened it up today, and the results surprised me.

Here are just a few of the things I learned:
- Someone in England has read my blog.
- Lauren Brown (hi Lauren, I was actually just thinking about you!) has a blog, and links to this blog from her own. Her thoughts can be found at http://laurenbrown.typepad.com/weblog/
- More people than my mom, my dad, Bryce, and Mike Cruz, along with a few other usual suspects, are reading this blog. I have to say that I was actually very surprised by that.

I haven't really decided what, if any, changes I am going to make in light of these new discoveries, but I'm sure I will give it some serious thought. In the past weeks I have considered whether or not to blog about the elections, the arrest of Peter Kim, a former youth pastor, and how much I hate the NYTimes Select Edition. I haven't actually written any of those posts, nor am I sure that I will, but if and when I do I now know that apparently someone is reading.

I am aware that no one is commenting, and I have been told that my comments are broken, something I'm not sure how to fix. I have really enjoyed this sense of isolation, a sort of digital journaling where I send out information and no response ever comes. But this period is apparently over. A response is coming now, as I hear "I'm reading your blog" quite frequently, and the stats are telling me that this isn't a lie.

So I send out a question that no one can really respond to: Why do you come here, and what is it appropriate for me to say to you?

I think I'll stick with Wells Fargo...

Good ol' http://www.relevantmagazine.com posted a link to the following video, which I pass on for your viewing pleasure. Well, not pleasure really, more like entertainment. Well, it's actually sort of boring, but...well, watch and you'll see.



For those of you unable to watch the video, or unable to stomach watching the whole thing, I'll give you a little play by play. Against better judgment, or perhaps as an affront to class and good taste, two employees at Bank of America decided it would be a great idea to defile the song "One" by U2, and to play it at a corporate meeting for who knows how many staff members.

In the interest of journalistic integrity I will admit to "One" as being high on the list of my favorite songs of all time. U2 has written some good tracks in their day, but nothing that even comes close to competing with one. The combination of its composition and lyrics leaves nothing to be desired. I think of it as a perfect song. But I digress...back to the bloodbath. In my humble opinion these two banking "professionals" actually pulled off a pretty impressive cover of the song. The guitar was understated and the singing was, to be honest, very good. It was changing the lyrics that really signalled their doom.

Here are a couple of select passages that I particularly enjoyed:

"And we’ll make lots of money, forever I can sing about trusting and teamwork and doing the right thing. We’ll live out our core values while the competition crawls."

"One bank. One card. One name that’s known all over the world."

I could write all day about this video. I could talk about what an poweful example of cultural appropriation this is, especially coming from a massive, faceless corporation. I could talk about how awful it is that they changed the lyrics to this particular song, especially since they changed them to sing the praises of corporate banking and making money. I could write about these things, but I want to post something else. Instead I will just say this: Did they actually get a standing ovation?

"Duty is the pilot light of passion."

Bart Campolo, who writes down his thoughts, conveniently enough, over at http://www.batcampolo.com, has left up a really brief but really important post about the place of duty and passion in our daily lives.

He writes that "Passion waxes and wanes…motives are always mixed…but the kid still needs to get tutored, the old lady still needs a visit, the food still needs to be delivered. Do the right thing anyway, out of duty…and sometimes, in the midst of the dutiful act, the kid ‘gets it’, the old lady feels loved, the hungry delight in being fed, and in that moment of secondhand joy, something goes off in your heart and reminds you of why you thought this stuff was so important way back when you were passionate…and you are again."

I think that this sums up something that I have been thinking about in my own life, and a struggle that I have from time to time about the decisions that I make and the work that I do.
The thing is, I am passionate about a lot of things. One of the things I am most passionate about is justice. I always have been as far as I can tell. This passion has brought me to a lot of interesting places, and into a lot of interesting situations. I am blessed to have such a passion and to be able to share it with those around me (whether they want me to or not).

There's a big problem with this, however, and Bart hits the nail right on the head. Passion can make us do something initially, but it is almost always insufficient to make us see that thing through to the end. Passion can give us a conviction that we ought to do something, but it cannot make us do it when we just don't feel like it that day. In other words, passion often fades when it is confronted with the often gritty reality of daily life.

I have certainly found this to be true in my own life, and it continues to be true here in Agua Prieta. In theory I love the work that I am doing, and the work that I have chosen to do, but in practice it can seem more like torture than a calling. There are days, sometimes weeks, where I find myself wishing to be someplace else with some other people, doing something a lot more, well, a lot more normal. I think a lot of these feelings are pretty natural. The truth is, I love a lot of the things I have left behind. I love A LOT of people who are not here with me, and who would make my life that much more enjoyable if they were. And I can't escape the fact that I have chosen what is often a really hard job, and a really hard way of life. I don't always have a lot of time or money or freedom of choice. I don't live in the culture, or the country, in which I was brought up. I can't do many of the things that make me happy or feel relaxed. But it is a way of life I believe in. And I also can't escape the fact that, all of this excluded, everyone, at one point or another, wishes their lives were different in some way.

Ultimately, this is my choice, and I really like doing it, but sometimes I keep on doing it not because I want to, but because it is the commitment I have made. Bart is right when he says that duty is the pilot light of passion. More often that not I find myself really enjoying what I am doing, even if it didn't seem like I would. I do things out of duty that end up fueling the original passion that I had. I attribute this to a generous and loving God, but I trust that doesn't surprise anyone. In my present season of life I have agreed to do a specific job for a specific period of time, and I imagine that I am being prepared for a future without a forseeable ending and with fewer boundaries and guidelines. I expect I will have passion for what I am doing in future seasons of my life, but I also expect that I will need a sense of duty and commitment to carry them through to whatever end.

I have experienced both duty and passion today, I pray you have as well.

Dear Minutemen: Those Tanks Don't Pay for Themselves.

Sitting in front of me, right next to my keyboard and a "Happy Secretary's Day" commemorative coffee mug, is a nice little copper colored bullet. I'm not sure what caliber it is as I have limited experience with small arms (and very little experience with any real guns to be honest), but as far as I can tell it is probably the spent shell of a .38. This bullet was given to me on Wednesday by a woman I work with. It was found in the desert outside of Naco, Sonora where it was embedded in the plastic of one of the water tanks used by Agua Para la Vida. Apparently another tank had been shot as well, but that was done with a shotgun and so no bullets were recovered. I have been told that the tanks we sent to replace the ones that were shot have had their taps stolen, rendering them useless.

Agua Para la Vida is an organization very close to my heart. I spend at least one solid day a week out in the desert with the water truck making sure that our tanks don't go dry. Agua Para la Vida is a good thing. It is a coalition of groups including Frontera de Cristo (where I work), CRREDA (a Mexican drug and alcohol rehabilitation center), No More Deaths ( an umbrella organization combatting deaths on the U.S./Mexican border), and Healing Our Borders (a local NGO), among others. The idea behind Agua Para la Vida is pretty simple. Basically, over the past several years, hundreds of people here in Cochise County, and thousands of people nationally, have died in the deserts as they were attempting to cross into the United States without documentation. These people have died, and continue to die, of both exhaustion and hypothermia, but primarily they have been dying of dehydration.

Agua Para la Vida, literally Water for Life, tries to address this problem by leaving tanks of water out in the desert outside of the Mexican towns of Agua Prieta and Naco. The goal of Agua Para la Vida is to have water available to migrants who are thinking about crosssing so that they do not suffer from dehydration, or to migrants who have become lost and are in need of water. While there is a legitimate argument to be made that we aid in illegal immigration, our goal is strictly to prevent further deaths. I'm not talking about dangerous criminals here, I'm talking about men, women, and children.

We put out the tanks and fill them with water to stop people from dying. Someone shot two of those tanks. Should I read these actions as support by the shooter(s) for people dying in the desert? Despite the title of the post, I am not going to accuse anyone of doing this. I have my suspicions, but nothing even close to something resembling proof. Plus, let's face it, there are a lot of people wandering around out there in the desert with guns. I will say this, however: the two tanks that were shot are the only tanks that we have which are easily visible from the United States, and are in fact only about twenty or thirty feet away from the border.

Isn't it usually considered war when one country shoots at another one?

Friday Picture/Meghan/Puppy Blogging

Umm, these pictures aren't really going to help you understand my life that much better, but they sure are cute.

This is Estrella, Mark and Miriam's puppy. I love her.



This is Meghan, my fellow intern and partner in crime. She is neat.



This is a totally appropriate bumper sticker that I saw the other day. I am in fact reading Pride and Prejudice RIGHT NOW. Yeah, the hair's a little out of control.