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Sunday Gathering
November 12, 2023 @ 9:00 am - 12:00 pm
Join us!
Sunday’s Schedule:
Sunday’s Program and Reading:
Sunday, November 12, 2023
We Have Questions: What Do the Margins Teach Us?
Speaker: Rev. Miriam/Mimi Bush is retired, but continues to offer Spiritual Direction and leads various opportunities to pay attention to one’s life journey. She has been in ministry for 39 years serving as pastor, spiritual care coordinator at LifeCircles, and retreat leader. She has three grown children, three grandchildren, lives in the woods, and kayaks as often as possible.
Musician: Loren Johnson of Grand Rapids has released several discs, including Sleepsick and Into the Morning. Her vision is to be creative with the people she loves in the places she adores, and have a good time doing it.
Music: Loren Johnson
Gathering Host: Valerie Engeltjes
Music: Loren Johnson
Meditation: Margaret Willey
Moment of Silence
Reading/Teaching: Mimi Bush
To live in the borderlands means you
are neither hispana india negra espanola
ni gabacha, eres mestiza, mulata, half-breed
caught in the crossfire between camps
while carrying all five races on your back
not knowing which side to turn to, run from;
To live in the Borderlands means knowing that the india in you, betrayed for 500 years,
is no longer speaking to you,
the mexicanas call you rajetas, that denying the Anglo inside you
is as bad as having denied the Indian or Black;
Cuando vives en la frontera
people walk through you, the wind steals your voice,
you’re a burra, buey, scapegoat,
forerunner of a new race,
half and half-both woman and man, neither-a new gender;
To live in the Borderlands means to
put chile in the borscht,
eat whole wheat tortillas,
speak Tex-Mex with a Brooklyn accent;
be stopped by la migra at the border checkpoints;
Living in the Borderlands means you fight hard to
resist the gold elixir beckoning from the bottle,
the pull of the gun barrel,
the rope crushing the hollow of your throat;
In the Borderlands
you are the battleground
where enemies are kin to each other;
you are at home, a stranger,
the border disputes have been settled
the volley of shots have scattered the truce
you are wounded, lost in action
dead, fighting back;
To live in the Borderlands means
the mill with the razor white teeth wants to shred off
your olive-red skin, crush out the kernel, your heart
pound you pinch you roll you out
smelling like white bread but dead;
To survive the Borderlands
you must live sin fronteras
be a crossroads.
. -Gloria Anzaldua (1942-2004) Chicana poet, queer writer, and feminist theorist
To Live in the Borderlands
Music: Loren Johnson
Gathering Host: Valerie Engeltjes
Music: Loren Johnson
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