Account Options Sign in. Top charts. New releases. Add to Wishlist. Local Hookup Dating was created to help singles meet new people, make new friends and eventually find a date. Our dynamic match system helps you easily find local singles looking to either chat, date or even a casual hook up.

See the best & latest car dealership used coupon codes on iscoupon.com. All of them are verified and tested today! .up old wounds meaning Sharepoint 2010 failed to provision the sharepoint central administration web application Ridsdale road woking cinema How to. Browse for sale in Climax, KY. ✓ AmericanListed features safe and local classifieds for everything you need! Best Places To Hook Up In Campbellsville Kentucky and ensured that you’re not stuck at the level of drooling at her photos. Through the chatrooms at Best Places To Hook Up In Campbellsville Kentucky GirlsDateForFree.com, you can send the messages Best Places To Hook Up In Campbellsville Kentucky to beauties and start getting to know each other.

About The average household size was 2. In the city, the population was distributed as The median age was 38 years.

For every females, there were For every females age 18 and over, there were Campbellsville University the local universityTaylor Regional Hospital the regional health care systemand the Amazon fulfillment center are the top employers. The university's operations directly employ and support over TRH is one of the area's largest employers.

InTRH served 98, patients. In the 20th century, Campbellsville was a regional center of industry agriculture, lumber, textiles, milling, automotive, distribution, oil and gas, light manufacturing, education, healthcare, and tourism.

For decades, employment in the area was dominated by a large textile plant, formerly Union Underwear and since Fruit of the Loom. It closed in Shortly thereafter, another notable employer closed, the Indiana -based Batesville Casket Company.

Inthe booming petroleum business was shut down because of environmental concerns of excess salt water disposal. Inattempts failed to revitalize oil reserves because of water infiltration.

The area is home to wood-milling companies that produce interior trim products Cox Interior, Wholesale Hardwoods. Campbellsville is home to the last Druther's Burger Queen restaurant in operation.

Top Outdoor Activities in Campbellsville: See reviews and photos of outdoor activities in Campbellsville, Kentucky on adivasihunkar.com. Hook Up Song - Student Of The Year 2 Tiger Shroff & Alia Vishal and Shekhar Neha Kakkar Don't forget to like share comg v ment and subscribe. Social Me. Find 5 listings related to Free Junk Pick Up in Campbellsville on adivasihunkar.com See reviews, photos, directions, phone numbers and more for Free Junk Pick Up locations in Campbellsville, KY.

Campbellsville is a home rule-class city in and the county seat of Taylor County, Kentucky, United States. The Campbellsville City Council is made up of twelve elected members.

The purpose hook up free in campbellsville this rather

During city council meetings held monthly, the mayor presides and all thirteen members have voting rights. Campbellsville has a lending librarythe Taylor County Public Library.

Public transportation is limited. RTEC provides public transit service that serves a county area in southeast Kentucky.

It is 2. Campbellsville is accessible by two-lane roadways.

The closest four-lane roadway is the Bluegrass Parkway. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

City in Kentucky, United States. Urbs progrediens media in civitate Latin : City in the middle of the commonwealth.

This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources.

Free Campbellsville Hookup Site & Hook ups. Signup free & meet s of sexy Campbellsville, kentucky singles on adivasihunkar.com. hook up 1. verb To connect two things. In this usage, a noun or pronoun can be used between 'hook' and 'up.' We can hook up your car to my truck to try to jumpstart it. 2. verb To set up an electronic device or system. In this usage, a noun or pronoun can be used between 'hook' and 'up.' Can you hook up my TV before you leave? 3. verb To meet with. Hook Up Website In Campbellsville Ky, la puente knight dating, ar city dating timeline, dating around in cookeville tennessee.

Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. February Learn how and when to remove this template message.

Gazetteer Files'. United States Census Bureau.

Have hook up free in campbellsville words

Retrieved July 24, May 24, Retrieved May 27, Retrieved Retrieved 8 April Retrieved June 4, Census website'. Retrieved December 1, Taylor Regional Hospital.

New York Times. Retrieved April 9, View our Athletics calendar. Additionally, we have been recognized by the following organizations for our excellence in education. Find Your Path.

Campbellsville is a city in central Kentucky founded in by Andrew Campbell. It is known for Campbellsville University, Taylor Regional Hospital health care system, its historic downtown, and the proximity to Green River Lake State adivasihunkar.comllsville is the county seat of Taylor County, with a geographic boundary shaped like a heart. Campbellsville celebrated its bicentennial on July 4. Campbellsville University is a place where learning, faith, and passion go hand-in-hand. At CU, you'll find more than your career: you'll find your calling. Campbellsville Dating Hookups. Signup free and meet s of local women and men in Campbellsville, kentucky looking to hookup on adivasihunkar.com. Hook ups / Hookup Site in Campbellsville.

Find Your Faith. Find Your Inner Tiger.

Find Your Location. Find a location across KY that fits your needs. Upcoming Events Nov. See how affordable it is to become a Campbellsville University Tiger.

Free Hook Up in Kentucky. Sign up and find mats within minutes. Over 30, 5 Star Reviews Welcome to the best free dating site on the web. Being in Kentucky and don't know how to satisfy your dirty need? We ain't Genie but still can help you fulfill your wish *wink*. Local Hook up Dating App is one of the best dating apps for singles since you can get mats and chat easily to get a date or a hot one night stand. Unlike other hookup apps, we are not only fans of hookups but we strive to find you relationships of any kind. Tap install now and get our dating app free! Local Hookup is free to download and use. Campbellsville may not be as popular as other cities in United States, but don't let that fool you. Campbellsville is a smaller but beautiful upcoming tourist destination that is worth a visit. You will be surprised by some of the unique things to do and places you can explore at this hidden destination.

Learn about Campbellsville and how CU reas out to churs and the community. Campbellsville University is in the Top 10 when it comes to our international students. Visit our campus and find your calling!

Request More Info.

Preaching in/and the Borderlands

edited by

J. Dwayne Howell and

Charles L. Aaron Jr.

Preaching in/and the Borderlands

Copyright © 2020 Wipf and Stock Publishers. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Pickwick Publications

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

Eugene, OR 97401

www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-6465-6

hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-6466-3

ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-6467-0

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Names: Howell, J. Dwayne, editor. Aaron, Charles L., Jr., editor.

Title: Preaching in/and the borderlands / edited by J. Dwayne Howell and Charles L. Aaron Jr.

Description: Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2020. Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: isbn 978-1-5326-6465-6 (paperback). isbn 978-1-5326-6466-3 (hardcover). isbn 978-1-5326-6467-0 (ebook).

Subjects: LCSH: Preaching. Emigration and Immigration—Relgious aspects—Christianity.

Classification: br517 p85 2020 (print). br517 (ebook).

Unless otherwise noted Scripture quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked (NASB) are taken from from the New American Standard Bible® (NASB), Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973,1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.Lockman.org/.

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007, 2013, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (ESV) are taken from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved

Scripture quotations marked (ISV) are taken from The Holy Bible: International Standard Version. Release 2.0, Build 2015.02.09. Copyright © 1995–2014 by the ISV Foundation. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INTERNATIONALLY. Used by permission of Davidson Press, LLC.

Manufactured in the U.S.A. 09/11/20

The Reverend Rachel Griffin Baughman, Senior Pastor, and the staff and members of Oak Lawn United Methodist Church in Dallas, Texas, whose ministry on behalf of the sojourner embodies the spirit of the book.

In memory of the Reverend Barney Ferguson, who taught me as a youth what it means to care about the needs of others.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Preface

Contributors

Poem: They Cross the Border

Chapter 1: This Is Just the End

Chapter 2: Why I’m Here

Chapter 3: “Being White These Days”29

Chapter 4: Making U.S. Protestant Disciples of All Nations

Chapter 5: An Overview of the Current Landscape of Immigration Law

Chapter 6: Immigration and the Biblical Migrant Narratives

Chapter 7: Turning Cheeks at Checkpoints

Chapter 8: Moving from Caution to Faithful Proclamation

Chapter 9: Toward a Border-Crossing Homiletic

Chapter 10: Comrades of the Kin-dom212

Chapter 11: God’s Kingdom at the Border

Chapter 12: Wounded Enough for Someone to Believe

Chapter 13: Immigrant Ministry through Relationships

Chapter 14: By God’s Grace

Bibliography

Preface

Hook Up In Campbellsville Ky Older Free Movies

“You shall love the immigrant as yourself” (Lev 19:34). These words struck me as I taught a class at Campbellsville University. First, because the passage is paralleled to Lev 19:18, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Secondly, it was just after 9/11 and the nation witnessed the xenophobia that emerged out of the tragedy. It is shocking to see fear turn to hatred and blame often directed toward immigrants and those of foreign descent. Even as I write today, we are witnessing the abuse of those of Asian lineage during the Covid-19 pandemic. In the present political atmosphere immigrants are turned away at the border, children are locked in cages, and walls are being built. Immigration is strongly debated in American society including the church.

What is to be the Church’s response to the immigrant? This is a question I have asked in both my classes and in church study groups. Most immigrants in American society are seeking a better life. They are among the most vulnerable, possessing little and at the mercy of those they work for and in the communities where they live. Leviticus 19:33 and 34 reminds us that we are not to harm the immigrant and we are to treat the immigrant as a citizen, literally like a “well planted tree.” The essays in this book address issues for churches to consider as they seek to better understand how to respond to immigration. I want to thank Charles Aaron for offering me the opportunity to co-edit this book.

This book took shape during planning for the 2016 meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, within the Homiletics and Biblical Studies program unit. That session of SBL met in San Antonio, Texas. Dr. David Schnasa Jacobsen, Bishops Scholar in Homiletics and Preaching at Boston University School of Theology, suggested the theme of preaching and immigration. With Texas on the front lines of immigration battles, the rest of the group enthusiastically agreed with the suggestion, and the working title of the panel presentation: “Preaching In/And the Borderlands.” Texas represented the border between Mexico and the United States, at the heart of the immigration controversies. We quickly realized how much biblical material—narrative, law, parable—involved immigration. We had found a topic timely, important, and thoroughly embedded in every genre of the biblical writings. We knew that we needed a widely diverse panel, with many perspectives. After we had assembled the panel, Dwayne Howell and Charles Aaron knew that the papers for this panel had to exert an influence beyond the brief two hours of the presentation in San Antonio. We readily agreed to produce this book, adding authors and insights from different fields. We wanted a book that examined the academic background of the biblical, ethical, theological and homiletical disciplines. We also wanted a book with contributions from experienced pastors, legal experts, and activists. After many years and a few delays, we feel honored to offer you this volume.

This book is divided into four sections. The first section addresses ethical and legal areas of immigration with essays written by Cláudio Carvalhaes, Miguel De La Torre, Robert P. Hoch, Gerald C. Liu and Sarah Ellen Eads Adkins. In the next section J. Dwayne Howell and Melanie A. Howard provide examples of how both the Old Testament and New Testament speak to immigration. The third section offers essays on homiletic concepts on preaching about immigration by Owen K. Ross and Lis Valle followed by three sermons by Rebecca David Hensley, Michael W. Waters, and Heidi Neumark. The final section provides stories by Rhonda Thompson and Jason Crosby about how ministries to immigrant communities have been incorporated into local churches in Montgomery, Alabama, and Louisville, Kentucky.

The editors would like to thank the other members of the Program Unit (official and unofficial) who helped with every aspect of producing this book. They invited panelists, who turned into contributors, and made suggestions for other people who could help with the book. They also performed all of the yeoman duties for putting together a panel. The members of the steering committee include Eunjoo Kim of Iliff School of Theology, Alyce McKenzie and Wesley Allen of Perkins School of Theology, Karoline Lewis and Joy J. Moore of Luther Seminary, Carolyn J. Sharp of Yale Divinity School, Ruthanna Hooke of Virginia Theological Seminary, and the aforementioned David Jacobsen. We offer our appreciation for all that you did to make this book a reality.

We likewise want to thank Pickwick Publications and our editors, Daniel Lanning and George Callihan, for providing the opportunity and the guidance for us to publish this work.

Campbellsville Ky News

J. Dwayne Howell Charles L. Aaron

Campbellsville, KY Dallas, TX

Easter 2020 Easter 2020

Contributors

Charles L. Aaron, Jr., coeditor

Codirector of the Intern Program

Perkins School of Theology

Southern Methodist University

Dallas, TX

Sarah Ellen Eads Adkins

Executive Director

Neighbors Immigration Clinic

Lexington, KY

Jason Crosby

Copastor

Crescent Hill Baptist Church

Louisville, KY

Miguel A. De La Torre

Professor of Social Ethics and Latinx Studies

Iliff School of Theology

Denver, CO

Becky David Hensley

PhD Student, Joint Doctoral Program in the Study of Religion

University of Denver/Iliff School of Theology

Denver, CO

Robert Hoch

Pastor

First and Franklin Presbyterian Church

Baltimore, MD

Melanie A. Howard

Assistant Professor of Biblical and Religious Studies

Fresno Pacific University

Fresno, CA

J. Dwayne Howell, coeditor

Professor Emeritus of Old Testament and Hebrew Campbellsville University

Campbellsville, KY

Gerald C. Liu

Assistant Professor of Worship & Preaching

Princeton Theological Seminary

Princeton, NJ

Heidi Neumark

Pastor

Trinity Lutheran Church/Iglesia Luterana Trinidada

New York, NY

Harold J. Recinos

Professor of Church and Society

Perkins School of Theology,

Southern Methodist University

Dallas, TX

Owen K. Ross

Director of Church Development

North Texas Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church

Rhonda Thompson

Director, The Nehemiah Center

First Baptist Church, Montgomery

Montgomery, AL

Lis Valle

Assistant Professor of Homiletics

McCormick Theological Seminary

Chicago, IL

Michael Waters

Pastor

Joy Tabernacle AME Church

Dallas, TX

They Cross the Border

Harold J. Recinos

they travel with homes stuffed

into small bags, sleep in fields,

on hard dirt floors, bus station

benches, on tractor trains, beside

the rivers that have for centuries

rounded hills, and beneath distant

stars hanging like lanterns in an

ancient sky. along the underground

railroad on the long walk toward the

border, light on the walls of Spanish

speaking shacks open their eyes to

the simple frailty of life, the voices

fled in grief, the choking feeling in

the company of other women and

children walking away from endless

poverty and violence that they will

be changed and their children by the

year’s end no longer recognized. in

lucid moments they stare at evening

stars blinking stories of hate waiting

Homes For Sale In Campbellsville Ky

to include them at the border, offering

quiet prayers to God who hides in the

black patches between dots of celestial

light forgetting to comfort them. they

have ambled Sunday shoes dark in less

than forty days, El Norte drawing near

with each brown step, children insisting

with occasional tears they can keep the

pace, giving illness in their long days

another name, trying to reach America

scrubbed fresh with dreams, hoping when

they come up against the southern wall

they are not named poison, or living filth

by the Lilly white people living behind

the locked door who stopped emptying

their years of memories made complete

on the land whose border their names

crossed to become another country

1

This Is Just the End

On How not to Go Mad These Days1

—Cláudio Carvalhaes

You see all these buildings, do you not? Truly I tell you, not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down . . . Beware that no one leads you astray . . . And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed . . . all this is but the beginning of the birth pangs. ‘Then they will hand you over to be tortured and will put you to death. Many will fall away, and they will betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because of the increase of lawlessness, the love of many will grow cold. But anyone who endures to the end will be saved. we raise our voices together and hold each other hands2

I have been telling my family and my friends that it is good to be here with my Latinxs community as we see and hear about all of the disasters and horrors done to our people at the borders. Better to be together, to cry together, to go mad together, to sing and pray together, to draw near each other in some form of warmth and solidarity! The brutal immigration policy separating children from their parents and then putting them up for adoption showed us again what this country is made of. Something that the indigenous and the black people of this country already knew way too well. With this uproar against immigrants and especially the Latinxs people, it seems that it is becoming clearer for other people that:

1.We, minority people, live in a viciously angry, merciless and racist country.

2.That the State rules with clear necro-politics of ethnic cleansing.

3.That our identity is that of a foreigner, socially placed at the borderlands, politically placed in the hatred of Republicans and awkwardness of Democrats, religiously placed in old forms of Catholicism, Pentecostal naiveté, and folk mythic beliefs, and psychologically located at the borderline of feelings between madness and lunacy.

4.That the nationalist rhetoric in the United States pivots away from brownness to construct a reality of pan-criminalization for all racialized brown bodied people. Today in the US, to be brown bodied is to be a Muslim-Hindu-Christian-immigrant-mexican-central-american-terriorist-rapist-low-skilled-poor-drug-dealer-illegal-dependent-animal.

5.Our people, immigrants, undocumented, have become the fake news of the content of the president “emergency declaration”!

We see churches and Christian institutions trying hard to learn how to deal with us but at the end, we are always at the tail end of respect, processes of decision, abilities, gifts to offer. The amount of solidarity offered, with important exceptions, is proportional to its expendable resources, guilt and not knowing.

The people at the border are for many, an unfortunate calamity. The distancing from these immigrants at the borders reflects the ongoing distance between white churches and the Latinxs communities. For many institutions, this immigrant disaster is mostly an occasion for a robust declaration against its situation and nothing else. What is always at stake is fear, self-protection, and self-interest. This situation is derivative of the discourse around blacks and whites in this country where other minorities have a hard time pinching in in some more fundamental ways. White supremacy continues to hold on to power, hide its brutalities in administrative legalities, business proper, law and order, state theology and political paraphernalia. All of this done in the name of Jesus!

The hidden perversity of the pleasure of seeing the pain of the children behind cages ripped away from their parents is beyond words. The system of immigration is indeed broken in its fullness when the government does not know how to get the kids back to their parents, when little children have to go to court to respond to judges about the conditions of their immigration status when all that they want is to play with toys and call for their mamas y papas.

Maddening! Whoever is not getting mad with these series of dreadful events are not paying attention, are not seriously taking the position of those parents living in unspeakable pain. We must take their side for their children are our children! So, we must return them to their parents and not to put them up for adoption! It is as if my precious children were in jail and I am rendered completely powerless to do anything. It is as if my kids have been taken away from me and I do not even know where to start to get them back. The situation of loss is such that at a certain point one might even start to imagine that their kids would be better off dead or with somebody else who will take care of them. If our hearts don’t drop to the floor when we see a child estranged from her mama because she hasn’t seen her for months and then seeing pure panic in the face of this mother, we are definitely not paying attention. Our hearts have already been covered by numbness, by privilege, the Spirit of God has left us and the gospel lost its place in our life. “Woe to those who plan iniquity, to those who plot evil on their beds! At morning’s light they carry it out because it is in their power to do it.” (Micah 2:1). Moreover, I think we Latinxs need a new translation for the Psalm 139. One that goes this way:

1 O God, you have searched us and known us well.

2 You know when we cross the desert and when we swim through the Rio Grande;

you discern our fears from far away.

3 You search out the path of our people, the immigrants,

in the desert, you find all of the shoes, toothbrushes, underwear, crucifixes,

and the blood of our people.

in prisons, you find our children alone, completely lost, and parents with a hole so

great in their hearts that they are swallowed by grief.

You are acquainted with all our desperation.

4 Even before a word is on our tongue, or a tear is shed

O God, you know us so completely. You know we are lost for words here.

5 like the heat of the desert and the cold water of Rio Grande you surround us.

6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for us;

we believe in you so much, you wouldn’t believe it.

7 Where can we go to find your Spirit?

we go to El Norte fleeing from hunger, violence and devastations,

where can we find the security of your presence?

8 If we knock at the doors of churches, we never know if we will be welcomed or they

will call La Migra;

if we try to go to Christian seminaries you will not be there.

For they are afraid of their statues and only concerned with their deep thoughts and research.

9 If we take the wings of the morning,

and go fight on the streets for our people,

they will come with the police and their laws and put us in jail

10 We wished your hand could lead us,

protect us, and hold us fast. But we have nothing.

11 For if we say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,

and the light around us become night’,

12 Darkness we are;

We are the night that shines as the day,

We are darkness to the world

and to You too.”

Our time can be defined as a time of white supremacy dominion, millionaires and billionaires as political representatives, global regulation by hydro/agri-business, and brutal state control grounded on an endless state of exception that sanctions all forms of violence, the reality of the Empire is translated into a) a myriad of fears wrapped up in patriotism and religious certainties; b) the sooner death of the earth and c) a constant war on women, the poor, indigenous, black and brown bodies.

During such a time as this, when our borderlands are a sign of death, we raise our voices together and hold each other’s hands. When violence separates ninos y ninas de sus mamas y papas, we raise our voices together and hold each other hands. When border crossers are turned into unlawful people who are then prosecuted and have to plead guilty when they are NOT guilty of anything, we raise our voices together and hold each other’s hands. When violence forcibly injects psychotropic in our children as we hear reports from New Orleans of a 9-year-old boy who was kept in a children concentration camp and tried to run away. When a boy is then sent to the Shiloh Treatment Center in Texas and the doctor creates a narrative that says he needs psychotropic medication so he is drugged and tamed. His mother has no idea what is happening to her son. We raise our voices together and hold each other’s hands

When violence kidnaps our children in the midst of the night to be trafficked as we could see it in a video done by New York One TV in New York city, both cases were denounced by Democracy Now! We raise our voices together and hold each other’s hands.

This is the United States of America today! This is American fascism through bio-power and necro-politics fully lived at the borderland in the bodies of brown people! For we are not only the people who live in the borderland, we are the borderland. Thus friends, I must say, we have to place our personal suffering in perspective when we are dealing with this much bigger threat to our lives. We need empathy for our own people. We need to take a step further them, which can be a step away from where we are right now.

I pray to Jesus who said to not be alarmed . . . But in my prayer, I say Jesus, how can we not be alarmed? They are coming in the night; they are coming in the morning. How do we not go mad with all this? Here are some things for us to remember as we go through these times:

First, We Are the Ones Who We Have Been Waiting For

We can’t wait for anyone! Not even for God! For most of our theologies are traps that paralyze us and nurture us with fear and as I said, we don’t have many institutions to back us up and protect our lives. We can’t wait for anybody to come and rescue us. Like Job, we must find a way through our suffering within ourselves and our communities. The only way Jesus will come to us will be thorough each other and some friends. There is no big leader or an assortment of “they” that will come to us to save us. Jennifer Harvey rightfully says:

There is no all-powerful “they” out there who is going to swoop in and stop this. There is no one coming to end these injustices and degradations once-and-for-all. I have to admit something. Each morning, these days, I wake up, and I realize some part of me is holding my breath in anticipation. I’m hoping, maybe even expecting, this: surely today is the day “they” will come. I am waiting for “them.” And when “they” come . . . mothers fleeing war won’t lose their babies. And Black people’s lives and bodies will be secure. And borders will be exposed as arbitrary while the people who cross them are honored as sacred. And trans and queer people’s humanity will no longer be degraded and destroyed, but celebrated and revered. But, beloveds, “they” ARE NOT COMING. There is only you and I and we. You are the one you are waiting for. I am the one I am waiting for. We are the ones we are waiting for (as June Jordan said and Alice Walker cited after). So, we must be that. All of us. Today. Right now. In every moment. In every place. Beloveds . . . there’s something else we need to know about we. We are many. And if we really understand who we are waiting for, we are powerful. We can be that. What do we choose?3

There is none coming for us. We are the ones we are waiting for!

We Must Be Aware of Our History

It is said that a people who don’t know its history tend to repeat it. People who don’t know their own history will not be able to see the traps they are caught up in during the present time. People who don’t know our history will call the recent history a kind of collective unconscious fate, or destiny, instead of seeing what is happening now is due to our choices and positioning in the past. Knowing our history is to excavate who we are, where we come from and see the ways our being is always an interbeing, always connected with the earth and other people. Knowing our history will help us face the fears that surround us and work on our challenges and mistakes, naming the wrongs we did in the historical processes that defined our trajectory. People who don’t know our history tend to not know the difference between coloniality and indigeneity, easily confusing their hunter with their savior. People who don’t know our history tend to go in two ways: they either can’t see specificities, differences and commonalities or they become so self-righteous that they can’t see the interrelationality and the blurring lines between traditions and the expansive common belonging of the people. People who don’t know our history keep working with the tools of the master’s house within the master’s house.

Know the Immigrant Reasoning: Don’t Fall for the Empire Logic of “Conquer and Divide”

Achille Mbembe, Cameroonian philosopher and political theorist said in Critique of Black Reason: “The fierce colonial desire to divide and classify, to create hierarchies and produce difference, leaves behind wounds and scars. Worse, it created a fault line that lives on.”4 We so easily fall prey to this de-classificatory project of undermining our own people, of creating hierarchies of difference, of widening our colonial wounds. Sometimes we don‘t realize that all we do is to fight for the crumbs we are thrown. We must think that our work is to find a safe space for our community and save it from everyone. NO! We must think ourselves as a collective, as a community, as a cloud of living witness and ancestors, of foreigners and strangers, as people interrelated to many other people and the earth. Latinxs people are made up of Afro-Latinos, indigenous people, Africans, whites, yellows and blacks. As we are made of the earth, animals, sentient and non-sentient beings. To fall prey to a certain politics of identity that erases the earth and makes communities into self-enclosed identities, self-sufficient groups and islands of self-proclaimed safety and self-righteousness, is to became weak, disconnected, debilitated, and confused and to fall prey to a victimhood with self-awareness that weakens our collective struggle and common ways of living. We are many! We are the composition of peoples and ethnicities and animals in many humanities. We cannot be communities atomized into itself and in need to defend its identity territory at any cost, even at the cost of trashing somebody else. We cannot live our identity without the identity of the earth and the animals either. We must call on what Indian literary critic and theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak called “strategic essentialism,”5 and even expanding it to the earth and all sentient and non-sentient beings in order to find our commonalities in the common struggle. Instead of feeding a “network of doubling, uncertainty, and equivocation,”6 we must offer mutual trust, assurances for a collective work done for liberation of people. Where spaces for ambiguities are held together.

Be Aware of Our Own Selves: Circulation and Borderlands

Every single human being is a work of many materials, forms and compositions, entities and voices and belongings. Star dust, our common ground is the universe and the earth, humus, where we all come from. As we inhabit this piece of the land around the world, what distinguishes the Latinxs people, among other things, is the complexities of our borderlands. We inhabit many worlds and none of these worlds are full. We are people of no one country. We are the borderlands, No somos de aquí ni de allá. Estranamos a todo y todas. We are in the midst of a state of slumber, numbed, and yet, fully active, fully wired. We are wrestling to understand our walk in the desert, in what poet Paul Valéry called the “leap of no return.”7 In Portuguese Lonjura sem retorno, in Spanish: lejos sin regreso. We are somewhat, not in the same complexity and specificities, like the African people that, in the words of Mbembe, are marked by “the articulation . . . of a thinking of circulation and crossings.8 Our circulation is limited, and our bodies crossed by so many borders: economic, sexual, gender, class. The cultural economy of US demands a form of circulation of goods and cultural artifacts and ways of living that tends to detach us from our own circulation of sources of sustenance and communal living. If we don’t hold to what we learned from our great grandparents we will not be able to know who we are and engage with awareness and fullness into the newness of the new circulations within this country. As we learn about ourselves and the histories of those from the bottom of this country that we are not part of the American “WE.” The American WE is very specific to a group of people, pertaining to a middle upper white class. The WE don’t have allegiance to its own white people either, for the real commitment is around class compromises. The white trash are not part of the WE of this country either. So, it is a naïve move to try to assimilate with the hopes of belonging. Trump’s America has its greatness to his own people. Make American Great Again, MAGA, is not a gathering of all of the US people but rather a political discourse and act on the whiteness of this country. For us it is a wakeup call for discernment to struggle. Yes, we belong, but as a daily act of resistance. Thus, to know ourselves is to know the brown reasoning of ourselves, the circulation of our sources and the ways in which we inhabit the borderland. Gloria Anzaldua has given us our itinerary, our territory and our spirituality: borderlands a spiritual Mestizaje.9