What happened next was a blur. Tears, deep breaths, grief, hope, a future?

June 15th, 2012 changed the life I would get to have in the U.S., and in other ways, it had kept me in a circular motion of grief, emotional violence, on a stage and hidden at the same time.

I remember entering 2012 in a prayer closet somewhere. At the time, I was very evangelical, but I was very good at giving ultimatums to God. So in prayer, I basically told God that if nothing changed, I would leave the U.S.

Six months later DACA happened, and while a long time ago I would’ve named it a miracle. The miracle is actually the work and commitment of so many activists and organizers who pressured the administration into keeping a promise they had been making since before Obama was elected.

It’s been 14 years since DACA was announced and yes, my life changed completely, but still, I, and many other DACA recipients, are still left in limbo.

Not only that, but so many folks were excluded from DACA. Older folks and younger folks, while positioning an exclusive group of people to become a “young” workforce, have access to labor while still holding safety over our heads.

The narrative surrounding the Dream Act and DACA tends to infantilize us. When the Dream Act was first brought to the House in 2001, I was a child. When DACA was announced, I was a young adult. It has been 25 years and 14 years respectively since that happened, yet the conversations are still about the “immigrant youth.”

Growing into adulthood with such uncertainty derails the soul. So many DACA recipients are parents, caretakers for aging parents, business owners, professionals, etc., we are no longer kids. Calculating how your life is planned out every two years (which is how often you have to renew your DACA) feels infantilizing. Life isn’t a university program where I plan out my semesters and hope for the best. Life is life.

Not only that, but DACA is expensive. Ranging between $500 and $650 USD every two years, which has turned into 1 to 1.5 years because you cannot let it expire. That doesn't include legal fees if you need a lawyer.

The last couple of years have continued to bring delays in renewals, costing many folks their ability to work and provide for their families (cue the importance of mutual aid). The consistent thread of the DACA tapestry is uncertainty and exclusion.

This administration has shown that DACA was never meant to be permanent. In 2017, they stopped accepting DACA applications, leaving younger generations out of the program. Since January 2025, ICE has detained more than 260 DACA recipients and deported more than 80. This is a program holding on by its last thread.

There are so many other things I could say. Stories that I hope to tell one day, but most of all, today I am remembering.

Remembering the ways my life changed, and the ways it’s never been enough. For the 14 years of renewals, the close to 25 years of uncertainty, the hope that’s been broken a million times over and still chooses to arise. As I look forward to what my life could be, I no longer dream of citizenship to this nation-state, empire country. I haven’t for a long time. Communally, yes, I will continue to show up and support a path to citizenship, because I understand the consequences of not doing so, but I personally no longer hope to ever be a United Stater.

I only dream of hugging my mom again. I only dream of witnessing my nieces and nephews growing up. I dream of leaving this country but getting to come back for my best friend’s wedding. I dream of starting a PhD program and not having to worry about private student loans like I had to do for my master’s program. I dream of going to the Camp Nou (the FC Barcelona stadium), something I’ve wanted to do since I was 16. I dream of taking the risk of maybe becoming a parent one day, which seems too costly under the circumstances. I no longer dream of citizenship. I just dream of agency. I dream of making my own decisions, which I’ve never quite been able to do.

My trust is not in the U.S. as a country or place or belonging. My hope is not in a constitution. Instead, I find my hope and trust in the faces of the millions of migrants who are still choosing aliveness in the midst of systemic violence, ICE raids, and family separation. My hope is in the folks who are still using their voice to protest the genocide in Palestine, even when their own futures are hanging by the threads of uncertainty. My hope is in the folks who still choose to dance, cry, scream, and care for their neighbors. My hope is in the undocumented artists, the mothers, the present fathers, the writers, the activists and organizers, the people who still continue to build miracles in hiding.

My hope is in you and me.

The main streets and avenues of Lima are barely ever quiet. The hustle and bustle of the city is alive even in the nooks and crannies. The soundtrack of Lima is made up of street vendors announcing their products early in the morning, the honking of so many cars, buses, and combis,1 the sizzling sound of the anticuchos and other street foods in the dusk of day, but perhaps most of all, the soundtrack of Lima is the sound of salsa. Salsa almost everywhere, anywhere, and all at once.

The sound of salsa often transports me back to the last Sunday I spent in Lima before moving to the United States. It’s almost like I can smell it, like I can touch it. That beautifully warm and sunny December day. Summer was fastly approaching, and we had gathered to celebrate my abuelita Aida’s birthday, my great-grandma. My abuelita Aida loved to dance, listen to Juan Gabriel’s music, watch novelas, and go to the paradita2 right across the street.

I got lucky, because I would spend time at my abuelita’s house basically every day for most of my childhood before migrating to the United States. It was there that I learned what a period was, how to eat limes with salt, how to budget, and it was in her house that I learned how to dance.

I often joke that I came out of the womb dancing salsa. I do not remember when or how I learned to dance, but in my family, we had no option but to dance. We weren’t picky, we danced to salsa, cumbia, festejo, chicha, saya, huayno, merengue, y hasta reggaeton, even in its early stages. We just danced — at every birthday party, for Mother’s Day, for Father’s Day, for the dog’s birthday, Christmas, and any other given day for no reason and every reason.

Still, it was the sound of salsa that would take me back to that memory. Sometimes it sounds like joy, or smells like the best carapulcra3 in the world, and other times it sounds like the deepest heartbreak a human could experience. The tear of migration will separate you from spatial collective memory, from dancing with your cousins, from witnessing your love for the Pacific Ocean every morning, and most of all, it’ll take away hugging your grandma once more before she becomes an ancestor.

Twenty-three years later, on January 5th, 2025, at 11:00 AM EST, I find myself on my way to the Upper West Side. It is absolutely freezing, and I am so incredibly sad. A recent heartbreak looms over me, but I am trying my best. My mornings are quiet, I make a pour-over, get dressed, and probably attempt to read, because grad school doesn’t care about how sad you are.

The problem is, my mornings are not usually quiet. This isn’t how I start my days. I start my days with music, with dancing, with the sound of eggs frying on my tiny teal pan, the espresso machine doing its thing, and did I say dancing already? Still, my mornings grew so quiet that I knew I was in trouble.

At the same exact time I walked out of my door on that freezing day, Bad Bunny released his sixth solo studio album, Debi Tirar Mas Fotos (I Should’ve Taken More Photographs). It didn’t matter how sad I was or not, I was going to listen because I’d been impatiently waiting for its release.

Within seconds, I knew I would love this album. The first song starts with a homage to El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico’s 1975 salsa single, “Un Verano en Nueva York,” and I was hooked! The second song was fun too, but by the third song, I was beginning to get lost in thought. As a chronic overthinker, this wasn’t a surprise, but what was a surprise was how I managed not to leap out of my seat on the train and scream when, after the intro of the third song, the drums made the sound that could only lead to one genre of music…salsa.

BAILE INoLVIDABLE, “Unforgettable Dance,” tells the story of someone who thinks they will spend the rest of their life with someone, but it doesn’t work out; still, this person remains their unforgettable dance. I didn’t know whether to dance, cry, or both. I am not a musicologist, and I’m actually quite terrible at music theory, so I wish I could articulate what the chords and instruments were doing, but I cannot. All I know is that in that moment, my soul and my hips had found a lifeline. They had found memory.

Every morning after that, I would begin my day by dancing to BAILE INoLVIDABLE, slightly bending my knees and moving to form the infinity symbol with my hips, which is a basic move in Peruvian festejo.4 It became a ritual, it became my prayer.

During a dance class at NYU with Cynthia Paniagua, a trauma-informed festejo instructor, she guided us through the infinity movement and explained that it was okay if emotions came up as we moved, because our hips store so much trauma. She then announced, “Our ancestors were smart, they were brilliant! When they couldn’t communicate their pain, they danced!” This wasn’t news to me, but something about hearing these words from another Peruvian person, when I have lived in displacement for so long, felt like a reminder to my bones, because she invoked collective memory.

The Black diaspora in the Americas has a long history of resistance in the most powerful and brilliant ways in the face of white violence — dancing was (is) one of them. Utilized not only as a form of somatic healing but also to convey messages between enslaved peoples so the white enslavers wouldn’t understand and know what was being said. Dancing was used as a form of remembrance for the histories they carried within them and for the new ones they were creating in the face of impossible circumstances. In fact, dancing was so powerful that it was often banned by enslavers all across the Americas.

In the face of displacement, the continuous fear of deportation, in the añoranza, the longing to see my land again, to be with her and know her so intricately, I must remember I come from a dancing people. I find memory in the rhythm, and I find a God who joins in.

In her book, Abuelita Faith, Kat Armas writes:

“Where would God be in a salsa bar?...the more I read about the Jesus in the Gospels, the fully embodied God who was often found in unconventional places, the more I believe not only that he would be in a salsa bar, dipping and swirling us as we engaged in a divine baile with him, but that La Espíritu Santa herself is the un-dos-tres-bachata”.

So as I listen to Bad Bunny’s BAILE INoLVIDABLE, I let memory guide me because la Espíritu Santa está aquí, moviendo sus caderas también.5 I think of all the times my hips were surveilled, not allowed to feel the movement, the joy, or the pleasure they surely deserved to feel, and how this fractured my soul. Through the sound of the drums, pianos, and trumpets, my hips are writing a new story.

My Unforgettable Dance is not a lost love, but it is all the times the sounds of salsa reminded me of the place(s) I love, the people I love, the poetry in song, and most of all, the sound of salsa that will always take me back to that last Sunday in Lima, Peru, to the street where my three abuelitas lived, just houses away from each other — in that memory, I danced, I dance, I will dance.

Notes:

• The video is a clip from Peru Negro’s performance for Lima’s anniversary in 2014. You can find the full performance here.
  

This experience was deeply spiritual, and it changed the ways I perceived the United States. I’ve been studying illegality and the immigration rights movement for a while, and I've always known there was something else missing in my research.

That missing piece was the history of citizenship for Black Americans. In 1857, the Dred Scott v. Sanford case brought to light that the U.S. government didn’t see Black Americans, even those who were born in what is considered the nation-state of the United States, to be citizens.

The case wasn’t about citizenship per se, it was about freedom from slavery, but at the end of the day, it came down to arguing that “no negro or descendant of slaves could be a citizen in the sense of Article III of the Constitution.”1

Whereas, the first naturalization act for any “free, white, adult alien, male or female, who had resided within the limits of jurisdiction of the U.S. for 2 years was eligible for citizenship.”2 This was, of course, after proving they were of good character. Such a wild requirement to ask of white people when slavery was still legal, and the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island were being forcibly displaced.

During a panel discussion for the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, a woman said, “Selma is the birthplace of Democracy.” Everything else before Selma was a myth of democracy. I felt a chilling in my bones.

The day before the march of remembrance, we had the chance to walk the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and all I could hear was “take off your shoes, you are on holy ground.” I didn’t know whether to cry or laugh, or scream.

As we approached the bridge, we stopped to talk to a vendor. He was a local to Selma who had lived there his entire life. He had a display of books that weren’t for sale, including The Cross and The Lynching Tree by Dr. James Cone. Instantly, I felt the tears in my eyes.

Cone writes:

If white Americans could look at the terror they inflicted on their own black population—slavery, segregation, and lynching—then they might be able to understand what is coming at them from others. Black people know something about terror because we have been dealing with legal and extralegal white terror for several centuries.

One thing that may be less well known about Bloody Sunday and the protests that happened before and after is that young people were the ones showing up. In Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom: My Story of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March, Lynda Blackmon Lowery describes how she and her classmates would take turns attending the protests and taking notes in class so everyone could still study. She even describes her injuries from Bloody Sunday and how she made the decision to still walk from Selma to Montgomery later in the same month.

That children were the ones standing up against such deep white supremacist systems and grown men should really make us stop and think about how we are responding in this moment of history as well. Not only is it asking of our courage, but it can lead us into an investigation of the adultification of Black children and how that continues to show up in the judicial branch of the U.S. I will never forget Tamir Rice and how a toy is what caused the police to take his life. Imagine if he could’ve just been a kid.

This is the terror James Cone was talking about. Why must Black children live in terror? How is it possible that his words could be about 1965 and 2026 at the same time?

The march from Selma to Montgomery wouldn’t take place until later in March. Although they had originally selected only 300 people to walk, thousands walked the 54-mile stretch from March 21st to March 25th. When they finally reached Montgomery, Dr. King gave the speech "How Long? Not Long.”

In this speech he is hopeful but realistic. He knows the work is cut out for them. “I must admit to you that there are still jail cells waiting for us, and dark and difficult moments,” he says. Still, he ends with,

And, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow,
Keeping watch above his own.
How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice…Our God is marching on!

Dr. King was not wrong, the arc of the moral universe is longgggggggg. Too long if you ask me. Still, to have a faith that walks, this is the kind of faith I want. The kind of faith that walks the 54 miles from Selma to Montgomery.

It wouldn’t be until August 4th, 1965, that the United States Senate passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Yet, what does this have to do with citizenship, illegality, and the immigration rights movement?

Black Americans were not immigrants who came here of their own volition. Just like my ancestors didn’t go to Peru on their own volition. They didn’t have a choice.

Still, it is because of the literal blood, sweat, and tears of Black Americans that so many of us, who came to the U.S. as immigrants, have any rights at all. Full citizenship for Black and brown people has come at a cost, and it shouldn’t be skipped over.

This is not only historically true, but it is also the truth, and we must acknowledge it, as anti-blackness has been the infected wound of the immigration rights movement. Black immigrants sit at a crossroads where their (my) erasure in the immigrants’ rights movement continues to perpetuate anti-blackness, while creating a separation and a lack of solidarity with the people who literally have given their lives for us to even find this country any sort of livable place.

One of the signifiers of citizenship is the ability to vote, but this wouldn’t be the case for so many people if it weren’t for the history of Selma and the courage of Black America.

I am not a citizen of the United States. I experience illegality placed by the nation-state on my body, but I hope to always answer the call of justice to follow in the steps of the Black Radical Tradition. Even when it’s risky and costly, because there are Black people in the future, and they will be, and they must be free. There is no other option.

I was perhaps even more convinced of this because, as I walked on to the bridge, out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw a bubble. I’d been traveling and got sick the day before, so I thought I was imagining things. But I turned around, and I was not imagining things; there were bubbles everywhere!

I looked to see where they were coming from, and maybe 20 feet away from me was a Black woman holding the hand of a little Black boy who was holding a bubble gun. As they walked past me (and my classmates), the boy happily made bubbles. I never even saw his face, but I know the Spirit of God when I see it.

60 years had passed, and a little Black boy made bubbles on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. This is my wish for every Black boy and girl and child, even when the nation-state continues to create legal and extralegal white terror. Whether they are born in the U.S or the Caribbean, Latin America, anywhere and everywhere, even when the state names them illegal, I wish them bubbles on a spring day. Is this not enough to keep us marching on? I think so, and if God is marching on, so am I.

P.S. My friends actually found the same exact bubble gun the little boy had and got one for me, too! I still have it, and every once in a while, I do still make bubbles, which is my favorite spiritual practice for sure.

ICE is a relatively new organization, officially formed in 2003 during the George W. Bush administration as a response to the xenophobia, racism, and islamophobia that came after September 11. Immigration systems and organizations existed before that, of course they did, but there was something sinister about the creation of ICE.

Forward to today, and the streets of Minneapolis are covered in protests after the murders of two U.S citizens. The outrage is, quite honestly, the least that can be done; we should be, and must be, outraged.

Still, my heart aches for the names of each and every human life that has been taken by ICE but were forgotten because “illegal” was before their name, not citizen. Is the illegalized body so worthless outside of the labor that said body can provide?

ICE raids are nothing new to those who have been paying attention. Don’t get me wrong, I am so glad people are paying attention, but this terror is not new, and it hasn’t been for a long time.

Under the current administration, I would be remiss not to admit that something feels so brutally different this time around, but I cannot pretend that its violence exists outside of history. From the creation of ICE, we’ve seen every administration (yes, even the Democratic ones) utilize ICE to terrorize immigrant communities. This isn’t a cut-and-dry statement either, as Black immigrant communities and peoples experience a different kind of terror when it comes to ICE.

However, this moment wouldn’t exist without the commitment and dedication of the United States to destabilize other countries for its own gain, in this case, I speak of Latin America. Off the top of my head, I think of Eisenhower during the coup in Guatemala, Jimmy Carter refusing to stop sending arms and military aid to El Salvador, lest I get started on Reagan, and the list goes on.

During and after destabilization, what should the citizens of those countries do? Who gave the right to the United States to wash its hands? Who are they putting on the cross? And why is it the woman working at a factory to provide for her family? Why is it the man working the fields where every labor law continues to be broken by U.S citizens who continue to commodify the illegalized body?

These days, I hold these truths: that ICE is not a novelty, and wishing and praying for grace as the monster I was so terrified of all these years becomes everyone’s monster too.

So, I did what I know to do, write. I wrote this poem/prose-ish piece because ICE has terrorized my psyche, my community, and therefore my body, for years, and I needed a place to land. My silence (online) on the matter is not because I stopped caring, but because my nervous system couldn’t handle one more thing. Anyway, here it is — on monsters and memories.

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What happens when the monster under your bed is suddenly no longer under the bed, and it’s everyone’s monster too?

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This was your personal monster, and no one believed you when you whispered its name

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In the early 2000s, when cell phones weren’t a commodity, your parents were delayed by a few minutes at the store, and you’d wonder if the monster had gotten them

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Your mother’s welcoming smile allowed you to breathe again
No 13-year-old kid should be worried about this daily

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The monster is under your bed
And in your nightmares, but you know it’s not just a nightmare, your terror is alive in the daylight.

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The monster is funded by xenophobia and islamophobia, and propaganda propaganda propaganda. Had Victor Frankenstein taken the time to build something again?

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This is your monster, the one who haunts you with family separation

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The one who hums in your ear all day, and you want to scream to tell the whole world that this is no way to live

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The humming says: illegal, criminal, unworthy (of love, light, dancing, fresh food, clean air)

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The humming says: hide, hide, hide until you’re not seen by us and sometimes even by your own self — become unseen

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And the monster and you walk alongside each other, and the detention center is just over the state line, and you wonder if your spark, your grit, or your laughter would convince them that you’re human

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You can’t trust people with the story of this monster. Will they look away? Will they believe you? Will they understand? Will they call the monster to take you away? This is the question you carry in platonic and romantic relationships. Are you even worth those? If you can’t tell them that the monster under the bed follows you day in and day out.

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At the airport, at the train station, on 42nd street when you’re being surveilled, at the protest, and at the family dinner.

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The monster is alive, the monster has escaped.

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The monster is not out of control; the monster is in control, living out its days exactly as it has been preparing to do so since 2003.

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The monster under your bed is everyone’s monster now, but the terror is yours— 
for one day, for 10 days, for 5 years, on your birthday, and Nochebuena, and 25 years later, this monster is yours. 

I have also posted the recording if you’d rather listen to it, but you can find the transcript below.

For the last year and a half, I have been going to Riverside Park at least once a week, sometimes at 2 or 3 in the morning when I couldn’t sleep, other times I’d go in the middle of the day, when you could hear children laughing and screaming in the playgrounds. Other times, I’d go there during the sunset to see a different light and hear the birds as they nestle for the night. In fact, I co-wrote the beginning of this sermon there.

For the last year and a half, I’ve cried at riverside park, I’ve laughed, I’ve walked, I’ve even danced, I've sat in silence, I listened, all as I tried to heal from the emotional abuse I experienced, holding the grief of displacement and illegality, heartbreaks and cancers, I’d come here to breathe after another news cycle where nation states chose the god of money again, over the human lives of Palestinian kids. I’d come here because I didn’t know where else to go. I’d come here because I needed a witness — and a witness I found.

Over the last few months, we have seen how this current administration continues to revoke visas and green cards, deny entry into the country, and honestly, anything else they want to do to any person whom they have deemed against the state. Dr. Willie James Jennings writes, “When the state is confused, they torture people to alleviate their confusion.”

This is the case for the student activists who are speaking out against the genocide in Palestine, and this is the case for immigrants who experience the United States as undocumented residents. They are experiencing the torture of not knowing what will happen next, the psychological and physical pain of family separation, and the removal of autonomy and agency.

The protests across the nation-state of the United States are never-ending, and rightly so. The protest signs are against ICE, police presence on university campuses, against the support of the nation-state of Israel, and against tyranny.

It is easy to see these movements as separate from the history of this country, but family separation isn’t a new concept in the building of this nation-state. From the decimation of Indigenous peoples across the Americas, the Middle Passage, the Trail of Tears, the domestic slave trade, the Great Migration from the South to the North (and other parts of the country), through segregation, Jim Crow laws, mass incarceration, and unjust immigration laws, through colonial borders that hold so much power, family AND land separation are pillars to this nation-state.

According to Capital B, a nonprofit news organization, there are an estimated 5.29 million Black migrants living in the United States, and the risk of detention and deportation is particularly high because many Black American communities already face intense scrutiny by law enforcement. According to the ACLU, despite only making up around 7 percent of the non-citizen population, Black immigrants represent over 20 percent of those in deportation proceedings on criminal grounds. Not to mention that we don’t have enough data for numbers regarding gender, sexuality, and disabilities.

I understand why we focus on our own communities sometimes, and I also understand that systems of white supremacy are always at play, so for Black people especially, anti-blackness is something we are hyperaware of, even in justice movements. Add being a queer Black person or a Black woman, and some of these spaces aren’t safe for us. Including the non-black immigration justice movement, which did not acknowledge its antiblackness until its recent history.

Yet, I hear the words of Jesus in John 13: 34-35 - I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’ (John 13:34-35 NRSV)

But Jesus is not speaking of a love that is rainbows and butterflies, Jesus says, “as I have loved you.” And what I know about Jesus is that Jesus’ love was never silent in the face of oppression, in the face of empire. This love multiplied food miraculously, breaking the imposed tax on that amount of food, this love turned water into wine, interrupting the Roman economy, this love healed the ones whom the law had deemed to be outcasts providing an avenue to not have to live in hiding anymore. This love believed empires could be interrupted, so much so, it cost Jesus their life.

Do not misunderstand me, I don’t believe we must sacrifice ourselves, not when Black and brown bodies and lives have been sacrificed on the altar of empire and white supremacy for so long. Surely, I am not glorifying the death of Jesus; I’m simply implying that nation-states, that empires, have used violence and continue to use violence because radical, which is to say, rooted love is an interrupting love, and it’s the opposite of tyranny.

Still, I’m not negating that what lies ahead could cost us our lives. I think of the words of Dr. King, in his famous speech, Our God is Marching on! “I must admit to you that there are still jail cells waiting for us, and dark and difficult moments.” Dr. King knew the struggle wasn’t going to be easy, even after they had marched the 54 miles from Selma to Montgomery to demand voting rights for Black Americans. Current times prove his words and witness to be true.

So how do we move forward? Who are we remembering? Who has walked before us? Who has survived the end of the world over and over? Who has resisted? And what is the cost?

Unsurprisingly, I found my answer at Riverside Park.

I co-wrote this sermon with the trees because even when they aren’t blooming, they are alive, and they have a story to tell. They have witnessed me for a year and a half, and I wonder how many other people and how many stories they have witnessed. Maybe they, too, were present when Dr. King gave his speech at Riverside Church, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence on April 4, 1967, exactly a year before his assassination. Maybe they, too, heard the chatter from the people walking by, and they, too, became hopeful for the end of wars and racism. And in my imagination, I wonder if James Baldwin ever took a stroll there too, or Toni Morrison? And the trees witnessed it all.

Colonial and western narratives have stomped on our sacred imaginations. They’ve tried to steal our ability to dream, to create, to become. But the land—oh, the land—she remembers. She has witnessed it all. She has witnessed us all. She has carried our joy and our grief, our resistance and our renewal. She continues to fight for life. The land has not forgotten, and neither must we.

So today, let us learn from the land, let us learn from one another, let us learn from radical Love, and let us learn from the trees, that have witnessed and refused to crumble under the weight of nation-states.

May we remember that the world has ended many times over for Indigenous peoples all over the world, at the hands of modernity and capitalism, the world has ended for Black people way too many times, at the hands of the state. The world has ended for a five-year-old child whose dad has just been deported. The world continues to end every day in Gaza, and because the world ends, we MUST march on. We must believe and act in rooted love.

May Spirit give us the spirit of the trees that continue to grow, that communicate and strategize underground in the middle of the city unseen by any of us, who continue to provide shelter for the sparrows and robins, who continue to dance with wind, reminding us like Alice Walker, that hard times require furious dancing, may we be granted the spirit of the trees who provide oxygen for our lungs, and who have the courage to witness, may we too have the courage to not look away, to witness death and life, and life, and life.

Amen and Asè.

The United States’ involvement in El Salvador led to the deaths of thousands of people. Monseñor Oscar Romero chose action in his Christian faith to speak up against the suffering of the Salvadoran people. As Salvadorans fled to the United States, the Sanctuary Movement was born.

In the 1970s, after becoming the fourth Archbishop of El Salvador, Monseñor Oscar Romero became an outspoken advocate against the right-wing military regime, backed by the United States government, who were killing the campesinos and the poor in rural communities. Although Romero began his ministry with a more conservative view of the church and its connection to the world, he could no longer ignore the atrocities and suffering Salvadorans were experiencing.

Only a month before his assassination, Romero sent a letter to President Jimmy Carter asking him to stop sending military aid to El Salvador. Appealing to Carter’s Christian faith and his own faith, Romero writes:

“Because you are a Christian and because you have shown that you want to defend human rights…[and because] I have an obligation to see that faith and justice reign in my country…”

Unfortunately, the Carter administration dismissed the words of Monseñor Romero, with his administration providing more than ten million dollars in military aid to El Salvador. A year later, the Reagan administration continued to send military aid to El Salvador while at the same time refusing to provide refugee status to Salvadorans who were fleeing the country due to extremely violent conditions caused by the U.S.-backed political unrest.

By not receiving refugee status, Salvadoran migrants became undocumented, facing deportation proceedings upon arrival. It is in this context that the Sanctuary Movement was born in the United States. As Sergio M. Gonzalez writes, religious leaders and lay leaders became aware of the risks many Salvadorans and Central Americans would face upon returning to their home countries. Although not everyone understood the political reasons for displacement, many US church members quoted their faith traditions as the reason for walking with those fleeing persecution. Many provided shelter, food, and accompaniment in the desolate journey of displacement.

Although the Sanctuary Movement came to a halt, with different iterations of it still happening today, the Sanctuary Movement left us with lessons of love, mutual aid, and an ethic of care that can be imitated and adjusted to fit the current historical moment we’re living in today.

As much as we witnessed the inauguration on Monday, we also witnessed the prophetic voice of Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde as she spoke to the 47th president of the United States with courage and invoked the love of the Word of God:

In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country. We’re scared now. The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes, and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurdwara, and temples. I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here.

As I heard her voice, I couldn't help but think of the countless sermons of Oscar Romero as he dared to speak the truth of the Gospel.

Today, may we remember their words and let our hearts be moved to action by the pain of others as the Sanctuary Movement did. May the long legacy of radical prophetic imagination be our guide.

Author’s note: I’d like to thank Dr. Jorge Rodriguez, who gently encouraged me to publish this after a slightly different version of this op-ed was presented in class for an assignment. I am grateful for his continued support.

I ran into you on the elevator and in passing I mentioned that I wanted to silk press my hair. Not one second later you told me you could do it so I wouldn’t have to pay for it. I was honest and told you it would take at least 3 hours, probably more, but you were so excited and told me you’d still do it. We agreed on a Sunday evening to spend at least 3 hours together. Even before Sunday afternoon, you had given me instructions and provided the hair products I needed to make sure we were good to go.

When I got there, you put my hair down and so gently started brushing it. I don’t remember the last time anybody brushed my hair, not even me, and so the 3 anticipated hours began. We all know it wasn’t going to be 3 hours because we knew we would get distracted with laughter and tears and with your sweet little companion dog, Hunter. When our friends showed up to the party, it was like the cherry on top.

I know this place where we live is complicated, but in this moment your little apartment became a temple filled with sacred stories of love, heartbreak, and rebirths. We dreamt and laughed, and laughed, and laughed, and laughed. Your hands brushing my hair so gently through it all.

These days, my heart has been nothing but tender and quiet, but every time you have shown up to hold [me][and my laughter][and my tears]. I think of all the times you ordered dinner for us when I couldn’t cook a thing, how you stayed up with me till 2:00 AM just to sit with me, and all the times we walked down the streets of Harlem in the freezing cold on our way to a random adventure.

And so there we were, at this made-up hair salon, with music playing in the background, and slowly but surely the heat of the hair straightener began to change my hair. There was a moment when I thought the Divine Herself was brushing my hair, reminding me that love lives here. Each hour we spent together felt like the ancient Japanese art tradition of Kintsugi, where the artist puts broken pottery pieces back together with gold, creating new life to what was once fragmented.

And I wonder, what did I ever do to deserve to be loved this way? To be brought back to health with so much gentleness and love? I hope you know how powerful and fierce your presence is.

Thank you for being my sister, for being my friend, for letting me into the corners of your soul, and for walking into my own with so much ease.

I hope you too get to experience the gentleness you have shown me, the brilliance, the hope you bring, the lowering of the shoulders I feel when you walk in, the belly-hurting and rolling on the floor kind of laughter, the reminder that Spirit is always and continually restoring our souls, and most of all, how beloved you are.

An ancient texts reads, “there is a time for everything…”

a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill and a time to heal;
a time to break down and a time to build up;
a time to weep and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn and a time to dance;

Thank you for being someone who shows up for everything. The times to weep and to laugh, to kill and to heal, to plant and to pluck what has been planted. Thank you for showing up when it was a time to mourn, but I know the the time to dance is finally here.

Con todo mi amor y todo mi corazón.

Tu hermana,
Karla

I wrote and delivered this homily for the Good Friday Service at Metro Hope Church in March 2024.

Luke 23: 32-34

32 Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed. 33 When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left. 34 Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”[c] And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.

Word of the Lord

“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” These are the first words Jesus muttered from the Cross to Father, Mother God. While his life is slipping through every breath he takes, Jesus realizes he needs help from Someone else.

To me these words show me the humanity of Jesus even more, because he didn’t say, “I forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing,” instead, Jesus asked someone else to do the forgiving.

Throughout his ministry, we see the stories of Jesus forgiving people of their sins, usually connected to their healing. I wonder if at this moment, Jesus knew there was no healing that could be obtained. How does one begin to heal from state violence on marginalized bodies? How does one heal from death itself?

His plea to Father, Mother God in this moment is a cry for healing and a cry for community. No one else could understand what he was asking for,

How many times have we needed others to forgive when we cannot? Forgiveness is no easy task sometimes, in our interpersonal relationships, in our relationship with ourselves, and in our relationship with the imperialistic state of the United States.

Jesus was awfully gracious in this moment because even in his plea, he is making the assumption that they don’t know what they are doing, “forgive them for they not know what they do.” So what do we do when we know that the systems of oppression know what they’re doing?

I’ll be honest and say I cannot pray Jesus’s prayer today.

I believe the systems of oppression know exactly what they’re doing to our bodies and our communities.

Dr. James Cone writes, “The gospel of Jesus is not a rational concept to be explained in a theory of salvation, but a story about God’s presence in Jesus’ solidarity with the oppressed, which led to his death on the cross. What is redemptive is the faith that God snatches victory out of defeat, life out of death, and hope out of despair.”

What if Jesus’s plea is a way of pushing back against despair, and against hopelessness? Jesus already knew this day was coming, yet he asked for the forgiveness of others, and still, we see his solidarity with the folks experiencing oppression.

Today we see how the settler-colonial powers of this world continue to place Jesus on the cross. The mother holding her dying baby in Palestine, the thousand-year-old olive trees burning to the ground, the men who have no more tears to cry. This is Jesus on the cross.
Jesus is at the Cross when our Black bodies are brutalized by the police.
Jesus is at the Cross when the LGBTQIA community is not loved and celebrated. Jesus is at the Cross when we turn our back on our siblings at the U.S Southern border, when we turn away the refugee. Jesus is at the cross when the Indigenous Peoples of this land are dying at disproportionate rates. Jesus is at the cross when patriarchy and misogyny are still ever present in our everyday lives. Where else is Jesus on the cross today?1

I believe that in this moment between life and death, Jesus is reminding us to hold one another, to ask for help, that in the moments when there is only despair, hope can still be present. Maybe today we can’t forgive, but I hope one day we will, remembering that as theologian A’Dorian Murray-Thomas says, “Forgiveness is not forsaking accountability.”

May we too have the courage to ask for the forgiveness of others as we ask for ourselves. And may we have the courage to ask Father, Mother God to forgive when we cannot.

Amen.

Sometimes I am taken aback by my own irreverence, but then I remember I have a reason to be this bratty, and I think God knows it too.

Today marks four years since the dreadful night that changed my life. I’d been avoiding remembering this day, but my body asked me to remember, so I am listening.

Long ago I used to work for a white evangelical church. It was perhaps my last attempt at seeing and finding some redemption in my own history with the white evangelical church. I wanted to end the story with a pretty bow on the end. Instead it almost cost me my life.

I no longer share the details of that night, though they are ingrained in my brain. The emotional and spiritual abuse combined with racism and white supremacy changed my brain chemistry possibly for the rest of my life.

As of today I’ve been in seminary for a month and one week, and maybe I should’ve known this grief anniversary would come like a wave because every day I am thinking and writing about God. I am even reading the Bible (for class but I am reading it nonetheless). Sometimes I don’t say much in my classes, not because I don’t have anything to say, but because I am often remembering. Remembering how some of these beautifully sacred texts have been weaponized, have caused so much harm, and somehow I still need to see it through.

Last week I made a silly joke about listening to “Christian” music while reading the Bible, and really, the joke was on me because it opened the the flood gates. So many songs came to mind, songs that once meant something to me, songs of what I thought to be worship, songs that held my tears so many times, and songs that held my laughter. On principle, I refused to streamed them.

But it also reminded me that just because those songs are over, it doesn’t mean my song is over. My voice can still sing a song about a compassionate God.

Last year on this grief anniversary I was in Lima, and I received the sweetest gift. Susana Baca was performing at the Gran Teatro Nacional and I knew I had to be there. Susana Baca is an Afro-Peruvian educator and singer. Her work focuses on Blackness, feminism, gendercide, and la lucha del pueblo.

I remember sitting in the theater and the moment Susana began singing the tears streamed down my face. There I was, in my beloved Lima listening to the voice of a woman who helped bring me back to health through her music and her celebration of Blackness, specifically the Afro-Peruvian expression(s) of Blackness.

And this is the new song I sing today. The song that can only be played al sonido del cajón. Of course God met me as a Black woman celebrating her Blackness and as someone committed to the liberation of her people, and this too changed my brain chemistry forever. A baptism of sorts, in the submersion of my tears gluing the fragments of my heart.

And so today, yes, it is the day when PTSD became a part of my life, and it is now also the day when Spirit met me in my grief and infused my veins with a celebration for life once again.

I’m known amongst my friends for always saying I’m God’s favorite and I’m not saying I have proof, but low key I do have proof. I have proof because even when I’m bratty I seem to still be in dialogue with this God I question every day, and if I know anything about this God is that even my bratty comments are received as sacred. And I am absolutely God’s favorite because after the concert last year I got to meet Susana. She was the gentleness my heart needed.

In this grief and in this celebration I just want to remember that new songs of liberation and liberating love can still be written, can still be sung, can still fill theaters, and can still make my hips move.

• Susana Baca’s performance at the Gran Teatro Nacional can be found on YouTube, but if you prefer something shorter, her NPR Tiny Desk is brilliant as well.

• In 2016/2017, Susana’s version of Caras Lindas became my daily prayer. Caras Lindas translates to “Pretty Faces”, referring to the beautiful faces and beings of Black people.

• I hope this lil’ essay reminds you that your song isn’t over, that new songs can be written.

Long ago I used to be afraid of tears, but these days I let them speak to me. I silently listened to my body and the first phrase that came up was, “I miss Jesus.”

Whew!

There was once a time in my life when I not only worshiped Jesus, I adored him. It wasn’t hard to use the words like, King, the Rose of Sharon, “who is this king of glory?”, prince of peace, and I could go on. Jesus was the lover of my soul.

I didn’t expect to go to a class about the psychology and theology of fundamentalism and leave thinking about the ways my relationship with Jesus has changed, but I should’ve known, really.

There was something so innocent about the ways I adored Jesus, and yet, so many of those days were filled with shame and guilt.

I remember my younger days as a teen grappling with living as an undocumented person in the U.S and how I hid my social location from my friends. I spent so much of that time hiding, except, when I was with Jesus.

There was nothing to hide from Jesus. As I got older I even explored the ways in which maybe a teenager Jesus also questioned God while living under the Roman empire. I thought of the ways in which Jesus spoke and lived compared to the ways in which Paul spoke and lived. Jesus wasn’t a Roman citizen but Paul was, and I think that matters. I hope to one day expand more on these thoughts.

I also have to wonder what it’s like to need citizenship from an empire to survive?

Jesus, the lover of my soul and dearest friend. Jesus who introduced me to Womanist theology through the story of the God who sees, Jesus who held all my tears.

God, do I miss him. And I hope that wherever he is he knows I have not forgotten him.

Taking a break from friendships is not easy, but this is what I need to do these days. I cannot forget him, and I know I will not forget him. Maybe there’s no more adoration, but there is a longing to one day hold his hand again, and that is enough for today.

Going back to school has been one of my dreams for over 10 years, but living as an undocumented person made everything a lot more complicated. Telling my education story is very taxing to my soul because there was so much heartbreak involved, and I’m sure one day I’ll tell it, but today I am staying in this moment.

I am sitting with gratitude as today comes to an end. Gratitude to Mystery, and to my family and my community because I cannot begin to write how they got me here today without writing a book.

I know I walk these sacred halls with deep curiosity and responsibility. As I learn I hope to bring you along for the ride.

Thank you for always reading my ramblings. And if you feel so inclined, please send all the good vibes and prayers my way. I know I will need them.

P.S To be honest, my friend Jake and I cheated and took this picture yesterday, but who has time to take a cute posed picture on the first day of school?

I could picture my 14 year old self walking around my neighborhood again. The days of going to the corner store for red Faygo (Detroit represent!) and hot cheetos, of learning how to dress for the dead cold midwest winters, and the summer nights when I sneaked out to talk to boys late into the night (sorry mom and dad!).

This has been a regular occurrence in my life recently, I’ve been running into folks from different parts of my life, going to places that once meant something to me, and even listening to songs that take me back to other worlds. I told my therapist about it and she exclaimed, “it’s like you’re in a movie and you see the flashbacks to understand what’s happening today!” and I exclaimed back, “YES! but I’m the only one who’s watching the movie!”

To be fair, I have also forgotten some parts of the story. Some parts were so painful my brain didn’t want to remember them, but some of them were sweet too. There is no way to neatly fold 22 years into an envelope to never open it again. I would be lying to myself if I decide to seal the envelope and pretend I was never in this city even when I know I could.

But negating this place is part of my story means I would be denying the day I saw a bright yellow book1 at a church service I didn’t even want to go to and asked, “who is reading this book? Because we should become best friends!” and wouldn’t you know it? We did become best friends. Thank you for the bright yellow book that changed my life!

If I decide this place isn’t part of who I am, I would be saying all the times I went to my favorite bubble tea shop with my best friends and sat there for hours didn’t mean anything to me, and let me tell you, they meant the world.

If this city was to be forgotten, I would be forgetting all the times the “I’ll be at your house in 5 minutes” texts came through just for my friends to drop off flowers on a hard day.

And where does one store all the coffee dates? And the social distance picnics? And the first kisses? And the one time I won first place for my self-portrait? What about the time when my best friend sat with me in the darkness on the first birthday I had without my mom? Where do I keep all the times I couldn’t get up because my belly hurt and the tears fell from laughing?

Maybe I’ll store them in my jewelry box? or in my coat pockets to pull them out on a cold day? I don’t know that I have an answer. What I do know is this city is not my home, but this pit stop, though longer than I would’ve liked, gave me some of the best moments of my life too.

The next 22 years don’t have to be like the last 22 years. I’m reading the last pages of this book because I know it’s time for a new book, and that first chapter is already sweeter than a ripe mango in Latin America.

I felt the tears in my eyes sitting still waiting for me to blink so they could freely fall.

March came and went. Filled with so many more surprises than I was prepared for. From getting the acceptance letter4 I was waiting for, to dropping off my dad at the airport as he went back home to Lima, Peru for the first time in 22 years5, to getting to hear Robert Glasper live in New York City. Wait, that was only the first week of March? I think I might’ve lived a whole year in one month.

There was a moment there where I sat down with a friend and said, “hey, is this what it’s like to be happy? I think I’m happy.”

Happiness as an emotion actually terrifies me. She is a new friend, or a friend who only comes around once every few years. Like me, she doesn’t know how to stay in one place long enough to call it home. She’s welcomed anytime of course, yet I wish I knew what I needed to do to become best friends with her.

Happiness has a sibling named Grief. Grief and I have held hands since I was way too young. Even when happiness is here, Grief can only ever be at an arms length because I have separation anxiety. Grief and I, we have ventured the United States together. We always have a window seat and a checked back. Our playlist is downloaded so we can listen to it on airplane mode, and we always have a pen and a notepad in case a poem needs to escape.

The interruption by Happiness really caught me off guard. She sat down right next to me on my yellow couch on a sunny Friday afternoon and hasn’t left since. I often evade her because I’m waiting for her to leave and I refuse to be attached to her.

Yet somehow, every day when I look at my feelings wheel6 she is still here. Even when other feelings are here too, she refuses to leave. I am still weary of her though, because her stay could still be temporary.

When I heard the question from my friend Amber, “Where is Your goodness today? Where can I find You?” I couldn’t help but remember that even if Happiness decided it was time for us to part ways for a little while, I would be okay.

Because the truth is God was here too when all I knew was grief and each day I still saw Their goodness. As the life of spring comes back, I heard my first woodpecker of the season and thought of all the times when this was how God would speak to me. This little bird’s aliveness is what God used to remind me of Their kindness. Sometimes that was the only break I had from my grief but it was enough to keep me going.

It’s not that I don’t want to write about happiness, it’s just that I’m just getting used to her. I’m learning to start letting go of grief. I can go on a neighborhood walk without her nowadays, yet I know the day is coming when I won’t have to share my window seat with her anymore.

I’m learning to rewrite my story, because the next 33 years of my life don’t have to be marked by grief and abuse anymore. Isn’t that hope? Isn’t that what it’s like to find God today?

Es el tiempo de reir, it’s a time to laugh, my cousin told me on March 3rd, 2023, and I believe her. I have seen the unwavering Love of Creator when grief was always here, I wonder what Their unwavering Love looks like when happiness is here. I am learning something new.

“She drew me up from a horrible pit,
Out of the miry clay,
And set my feet upon a rock,
making my steps secure.”

Thank you for reading and for being part of this community. It’s so very meaningful to me.

I talked to white jesus today

Told him he was dead

There is no resurrection for white jesus

That’s it.
There is no resurrection for white jesus.

I didn’t grow up practicing Lent, but it’s a practice I’ve been trying to incorporate for years. This year I decided I want to spend the next forty-days leaning into life, but for some reason I keep thinking of this poem. Some things simply need to die for true life to begin.

I always want to choose resurrection, but sometimes resurrection isn’t the answer.

It’s not like I hadn’t seen pictures of them, I had. I’d talked to them on facetime and I’d hear their little voices over the phone, but nothing could prepare me for the kind of love I felt for them.

I often wonder about what it means to fall in love. The idea of falling in love is terrifying to me because it implies I have no control, it implies I wasn’t paying any attention and now I might even be hurt. I am honest in admitting I am terrified of love and yet, here I was, completely in love with my nieces and nephews.

Their smiles, the way they danced, the way my two year old niece was a little skeptical the first time we hung out but by the next time we hung out her face would light up when she’d see me, the way they’d call me tía every two seconds, and let me tell you, nothing beats hugging your 9 year old nephew after Messi scores a goal.

bell hooks writes:

Love heals. When we are wounded in the place where we would know love, it is difficult to imagine that love really has the power to change everything. No matter what has happened in our past, when we open our hearts to love we can live as if born again, not forgetting the past but seeing it in a new way, letting it live inside us in a new way.

“We can live as if born again.” — this is perhaps how I would summarize my experience in Peru. A sense of being born again without forgetting the past, but knowing there was a before and after. Even in the before love healed me, and in the after it continues to do so.

For so long I lived terrified of loving. I learned to withhold my love, but when one is created to love and be loved, withholding love is denying the very being we were created to be.

Withholding seems safe from a distance, and it might even feel safe in the moment, this of course sometimes is a result of trauma. I will never tell you what to do or not to do within the context of that, just the fact that you’re still here is a miracle in itself and that is love enough.

This time around I stood no chance, I was not prepared, and I fell hard, because how do you withhold love from a 9 month old baby girl? Impossible. Even if I tried, she seemed to not withhold her love from me, how could I not love her? And maybe this is why I have committed to always learn from kids and to never forget what it’s like to be a kid.

Children seem to know something adults have forgotten. They know love heals, and that’s the only thing love can do — love dances, love belly laughs, love gives, love respects, love listens, love jumps and lands well, but if you fall you get up, and this is love too. Love pays attention to the way the birds sing, and the way the ladybug lands on the leaves of a flower in the garden, and they know love requires justice.

What if I give up having to be in control every day? What if today I fall in love with a song, or a book, or the way the buildings look like a blur in the snowfall? What if today I fall in love with a person? What if today I trust Creator enough to fall in love with Her too? A man from Nazareth once said. “let the little children come to me, for theirs is the Kin_dom of Heaven.” and I for one never want to forget that.

May we fall in love in the places where we need to heal today.

they don’t tell you that each hug will feel like the taste of a ripe passion fruit
so sweet
and so fleeting
becaus…

Read more

Every year I wanted one name only — Lionel Andres Messi. But every year I got other names, I even got Cristiano Ronaldo for 2021! God was saying something about loving your enemies, haha. Finally I heard the name I wanted. I just knew. 2022 was the year for Lionel Messi. I’ve never taken the time to write the whole story on how Messi became such an important person in my life, but I’ll tell you this, the moment I heard his name for 2022 I knew that I was going to Peru.

I could probably write Messi’s unofficial biography honestly, and I will spare you the details, but his story starts with brilliance, continued by rejection, family separation, glimpses of hope, shyness, struggle, and then came back around to brilliance but this time covered in joy.

I knew 2022 was going to be tough, but I had one goal (no pun intended) which was to let myself dream and have faith that I will get to go home. I had to let myself believe that it was time for the brilliance covered in joy. I couldn’t take any more of the struggle, rejection, family separation, etc., so God (and the many immigration activists and organizers) made a way where there was no way.

The entire year was a waiting game, but the miracle happened. I was in Peru from September 24th through December 19th. While I was in Peru I barely wrote, yet y’all still stayed here and continue to support my writing. I haven’t gotten around to sharing many pictures or anything on social media, but I wanted to share some with you, because even though you didn’t know it, you helped me believe and reminded me that my story and words were important. You read so much of my grief, so I wanted to share some of my joy. Thank you for always taking the time to read my stories and thoughts. I am excited for what’s to come this year.

And I’m not saying I’m prophetic, but if you haven’t heard Lionel Messi did win the World Cup! And so did I, because going to Peru was my World Cup. What a final and win indeed.

1. I got to hold my tia’s hand before she became an ancestor.

2. Got to celebrate my mami’s birthday with her!

3. Met my older sister’s family! This is her daughter ♡

4. Hung out with my dad’s sister every chance I got. She’s a blast.

5. I got to be with the ocean whenever. Just the proximity blessed my soul.

6. I met Susana Baca, who is a brilliant Afro-Peruvian musician and educator.

7. Road-tripped with my cousins.

8. Met my nieces and nephews! I have 9 of them on my mom’s side of the family!

9. My dear friend came to visit my mami and me in Lima. Such a fun treat!

10. Spent time with my first cousins. I grew up with them so this was a gift.

11. Meet my niece Karlita! I am obsessed with this baby, and not just because she’s my namesake ;)

12. Got to celebrate my abuelita’s birthday with her for the first time in 20 yrs!

13. My nephew got me an Argentina jersey, so we watched the World Cup together!

14. Messed with my abuelita every day. We laughed so much!

15. Met one of my Tumblr friends for the first time after being online friends for 12 years!

16. Went to so many birthday parties, it was unreal.

17. Ate Peruvian food every day, but the view for this one was next level.

18. Met one of my favorite digital artists! She was fantastic!

Ps. If you missed it, the videos of me seeing my mom for the first time in 6.5 years are here. And the videos where I get to see and hug my abuelita for the first time in almost 21 years is here.

Thank you for journeying this road of faith and life with me. Here’s to 2023’s footballer!

Except today I happened to look and saw a picture from the first (and only time) I’ve gone ice skating. I was completely terrified, but the friend who convinced me to go was a hockey player so he promised he’d help me.

From getting the skates on, to walking over to the ring, he walked right next to me, but even with his help I’m pretty sure it only took seconds for me to fall. I was embarrassed, but I got up and tried it again.

It felt like only seconds went by and I was on the ground once again. This time it took me a little longer to get up, but I’ll never forget what happened next. My friend came up to me, put his hand out for me to grab it and tried to help me up. I remember I looked him straight in the eyes and said, “what if I fall again?”, and as if it were a movie scene, his eyes lit up with kindness and he said, “It’s okay, I got you.” So I got up, and gave it one more try.

We weren’t talking about ice skating anymore, we were talking about broken hearts and all the tears he let me cry for months as I attempted to heal after losing someone I really cared about. Nine years later and I still get teary by how tender and kind this moment was.

I’ve been thinking a lot about friendship this year, because while my romantic life has never been great, I have been found rich in friendship my entire life. And somehow this year I felt like friendship was the abundance I didn’t even pray for but saved me over and over again, reminding me that Creator is the giver of good gifts.

I can almost guarantee my friend probably doesn’t remember that moment but that moment changed me. I have fallen so many times since then, many times truly wondering if I could ever get up again. But that’s the thing, I’ve always had someone extending their hand to say “It’s okay, I got you.” and each time I am taken aback by the grace I have been given.

If I had to pick a way to summarize this year I would pick three words, but one of them would be friendship because I cannot top the way my friends have welcomed me into their families, into their homes, into their grief and joy, and even into the mundane, the cotidiano moments that make up so much of our lives. Each shared meal, cup of coffee, every FaceTime call, every tear and every belly-hurting-laugh made up the most meaningful memories.

That moment was my miracle nine years ago, but perhaps this is still my miracle today, this is the gift of a lifetime — to know and be known. I am thankful.

As of today I have been in this city, in this country — my country, for 24 days. Before this I had been away for 7589 days, and I don’t believe I currently have the words to describe what it meant to step on Peru’s soil for the first time after 20 years.

It all happened so fast. One day I didn’t know when I was coming, and the next my permit to leave the United States came in the mail. Within ten minutes I had a plane ticket with the final destination of Lima, Peru. Five days later, a 14-hour flight, picking up my luggage and suddenly speaking Spanish only I walked out of the airport doors where I got to hug my mami for the first time 6.5 years.

The Pacific knew I was coming, I told her when I was in LA back in August. She wan’t surprised to see me. We met like old friends, and the entire car ride home she waved in contrast with the pitch black waters.

While it all seemed to happen within a week and so incredibly fast, the truth is this moment cost me 20 years. Can a miracle take 20 years to happen?

A part of me believes it shouldn’t, and the other part of me is reminded of the woman who suffered as the blood left her body for 12 years, until the moment she cut through the crowd and touched the garment of a Rabbi who was walking by.

To everyone else this was a “now” miracle, but she knew that wasn’t the whole story. She knew that because of her condition she couldn’t be part of the society she lived in. She was separated from community, she was alone in so many ways, and she had given everything she had. I think so many of us know that kind of loneliness, that kind of separation and isolation.

My miracle is different, I do not pretend to know what it would be like to be this woman in her social context and location, but I do know that in what seemed like a “now” miracle I was reminded that God is interested in interrupting systems that separate us from our people.

My “now” miracle is a moment that in all honesty, only God and I know the full price of, and I don’t mean monetarily cost. However I cannot deny that I am surrounded by people who love me in ways I will never be able to fully comprehend.

My “now” miracle didn’t happen without the prayer meetings in the little Black and Brown Spanish speaking Pentecostal church where we prayed for papeles. My “now” miracle didn’t happen without the activists and organizers who continue to fight for DACA and immigration reform. My “now” miracle didn’t happen without the women who long before even I knew if I could apply for advanced parole gave me a check to cover the application cost and told me it was time to go home. My “now” miracle didn’t happen without the prayers of so many people and the blessings of so many women who held my tears. My “now” miracle didn’t happen without my family. My “now” miracle is the mustard seed faith of hundreds of people.

The result was an interruption to the borders on stolen lands. It was an interruption to social orders that separated me from my home, from my family, and from the lands who knew my name before anyone else did.

I am still lacking so many words for the emotions, the joy and grief of it all, the life, death, and resurrection, but for today all I know is that I am thankful. This moment seemed so far away, I would dare say impossible, and somehow the faithfulness of Mother Father God still held my hand.

Thanks be to God!

ICYMI:

• I did an Instagram Live conversation with my friend, and author Kelley Nikondeha about her latest book, “The First Advent in Palestine”. You can watch it here.

• I shared the videos me hugging my mami and then my abuelita on Instagram.

• my friend Brandi invited me to record an episode for her podcast, “Reclaiming my Theology”. The episode about Purity Culture is out now.

• Thank you to all for being here, and thank you to my paid subscribers. It means so much to me that you support my work.
  

the faith of my sisters and their mothers
like the silent night of my 27th birthday
when no one else could sit on the brown leather couch
as the sunset passed us by
I said you could leave, but you didn’t.

The faith of my sisters and their mothers
As the handwritten words of a prayer
fell upon my hands
soaking them in rage and my daily bread
your eyes sparkled, mine cried

The faith of my sisters and their mothers
walked by a pergola covered in blue flowers
surrounded by bumblebees
they danced
I stood still covered in love
and a little bit of fear

The faith of my sisters and their mothers
spoke at least three languages
cooked three meals: breakfast, chilaquiles, and tteokguk
took up space and believed in liberation

The faith of my sisters and their mothers
took a photograph
or too many
we laughed
and held hands
I smiled because I’m not alone

The faith of my sisters and their mothers
danced salsa in the middle of the street
and remembered the voice of my own mother
she asked, “do you believe?”

I did not.
Not aloud.

The faith of my sisters and their mothers
believed in laughter when I could only see tears.
I do not stand on their shoulders.
for I do not want to crush their souls
I do not stand on their faith.
for we have different grounds to stand on

The faith of my sisters and their mothers
refused to look away
lifted my head high
and believed.
believed.
believed.