Honeysuckle & Sage

//Tonight I read the rain as sacred text      that is: with awe, without full comprehension   my spirit the sculpted canyon walls       through which it ran and yet was held// Before I moved out here people asked me how my position working with disability justice was connected to border justice. In response, I've been thinking about how the border region is affected by so much more than immigration itself-- the economic partnerships, trade, transnational corporations and their influence, the involvement of oil & gas companies, military presence and militarization of the border, veterans and retirees, water issues and agreements to send water on to Texas & Mexico. New Mexico is the state with the highest per capita phd-holders yet is somewhere around 49th in grade school education outcomes.  During our orientation we met with Pastor Rosemary in El Paso to discuss border economics, her congregation spans one of the poorest zip codes in the U...

"Wherever I've lived I've felt at home." - Blake It seems like more than five days have passed since I moved into J-House. J-House-- with the wind shook pecan tree leaving dappled shadows on the backyard, with the sun too brilliant over the Organ mountains to open my eastward shade, with our five spots at the table already ritualized and our stories and questions unwinding and weaving together. The quickness of adapting to new spaces always surprises me.  On  Sunday we met and joined our fellow residents of Las Cruces for the first time at a solidarity vigil (" sometimes there is only one side" .) Tuesday we built a keyhole garden in our yard with the help of the El Paso house and our neighbor guide, Blake. We met with a pastor and then a Buddhist priest who guided us in zen practice-- the sacredness of the ordinary, the ordinariness of the sacred. It has felt easy to fall into step with my housemates-- dinners shared with neighbors, mapping out our s...