As Way Opens
I have been immersed in VBS this week. We have been premiering a video each evening and then hosting a zoom call with the kids that want to join us (Rebecca has done an amazing job of creating the videos). I have appreciated the theme of VBS this year that Jesus’s power will see us through and help us face hard things, be bold, have hope and make friends. Our kids have talked about the things they are worried about and the hard things they are facing. We are all facing hard things and we desperately need hope. Jesus is our hope. Jesus is the hope I turn to everyday. Jesus lived a life of compassion, contemplation, care for others, healing and wholeness, accepting those on the fringes and of sacrifice. These are the values I want to embrace and try to exhibit in my life.
I have been wearing our “Watch for God” bracelet the last 2 weeks as a reminder for me to watch for God every day. We can get so immersed in ourselves, our concerns, our fears, our challenges that we forget to look for God all day in so many ways. Our kids shared they have seen God in the outdoors, in friends, family, pets. I know that I often forget to do this as my ego keeps getting in the way. As an example, I watch all of these videos we prepare for worship and VBS and think about how I look fat, say uhm too much, lick my lips, notice my collar is askew etc…. Why do I do this? What does it matter? It’s a continual struggle for all of us to limit our egos and instead turn to see the face of God in our activities and experiences.
Each year our kids remind me of this and remind me of the simplicity and depth of Jesus’s love and power. Even though we did VBS completely differently this year, it was a meaningful experience for me. A huge thank-you to Bob H, Jim K, Sue H, Bill H and Rebecca L for making VBS great this year. Jesus’s power pulls us through and helps us do hard things.
Beth
Joys & Concerns
Let’s give a BIG thank-you to our food pantry volunteers from the 15th: Virginia and Derek S; Linda L; Kathy and Bill F; Christie M; Phil G; Carol and Jim D. Food recipients were gracious and thankful for the efforts of our volunteers.
Western Yearly Meeting annual sessions were a success! Bob was also recorded during the worship service on Sunday. If you’d like to see the service and Bob’s recording, you can watch it on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=PSdd1JUN6y4 (his recording begins at 54:30). Or you can read the words Bob spoke here. Congratulations, Pastor Bob!!
Please pray for Joyce B. She will be having Hip replacement surgery on August 4. It had been pushed off due to the pandemic. Please pray for a successful surgery and speedy recovery for her!
Announcements, Reports, & Opportunities
Remembering to Bless the Hands that Pick Your Food
Jennifer in the Community Garden.
Jennifer grows everything from herbs to flowers and vegetables in her well-tended plots in the Community Garden. She even neatly fenced in her largest raised bed that features climbing tendrils reaching skyward. She loves being outside watching her garden grow.
“I am acutely aware of how hard it is to bring the food to the table from the field,” she says. Her ex-husband, a Mexican, came to the U.S as a field worker along with his brother. Jennifer was not as aware about where her food came from until they were sitting down at the table to eat and she was serving asparagus. Her husband started talking about how hard it was to pick asparagus in the fields, how he was always having to bandage his hands.
Now Jennifer personally knows people who have worked in fields and factories in slave-like conditions. She speaks of a relative in the ‘90s who had to escape his untenable situation. She said he was picked up at the border by people who turned out to be human traffickers. They took him to a farmer who had made a deal with them. He was treated like a slave or an indentured servant. He had nowhere to live except where his employer placed him. He owed his boss for rent, food and everything else, including the trafficking fee. He soon realized that he would never be able to pay off the debt he owed with the pitiful wages he earned. He recognized the dark threat hanging over him. When the farmer drove the workers to town for their weekly laundry trip he chose to escape. He traveled from North Carolina to Maryland with nothing but the clothes he wore until he arrived on Jennifer’s doorstep.
“[U.S.] people don’t understand how hard [Mexican] people try to do the right thing,” Jennifer said when talking about how hard undocumented immigrants work to try to become documented. She also spoke of a Mexican relative who merely wants to visit her but is not able because she must have income and property and is too poor to fit the criteria.
Jennifer believes the U.S. doesn’t recognize that many Mexican people might need refugee status. She used to live in Mexico and spoke of how she and her children feared being kidnapped by cartels.
“I know personally about the need to leave Mexico. People are often in dangerous situations.” She explained how young men can be threatened to join gangs and they want to run away so they do not need to do that and because they must find a way to support their poverty-stricken families. She explained how “U.S. businesses leave the back door open so they can obtain cheap labor.” Poor Mexicans are tempted by this arrangement and if they take these positions, which Americans typically don’t want, they lack health care and benefits. They also have no protection from the law. The country still needs the labor though, to feed the population. Corrupt employers sometimes call Immigration to conduct raids on payday at the end of a particular harvest when the migrant workers must move on anyway and are no longer needed. There are always more illegal immigrants to fill their vacated low-level jobs. New people will be hired illegally and treated accordingly.
Jennifer believes people are more aware of these inequities than ever before. Still, she is upset by people who have no compassion for the immigrants.
“Undocumented immigrants are still working in the fields, even with masks on. They have never stopped. They are planting, caring for the crops and harvesting. Meanwhile those who have no compassion and don’t think about where their food comes from are stuck in the house hoarding food,” she said. “They depend on the undocumented people for their food.”
She believes the “sins of the fathers,” like in the Black Lives Matter movement, are still with us and “the trauma is not over.”
“No matter what your political view is, we always need to provide food for the masses. No one wants field jobs because they want better jobs.” Then undocumented immigrants fill the less desirable jobs that we offer them. Before the undocumented immigrants, Jennifer is cognizant of the role of black slaves in working the crops.
“Always, it is the people who are disenfranchised that have to fill the void,” she said. “After black slaves the Mexicans, Central Americans, and other immigrants became the main sharecroppers and farmworkers. Some call it ‘contemporary slavery.’”
Jennifer KNOWS where her food comes from—her garden and the hands of others.
“I always bless the hands that picked my food,” she says. “I always remember the black slaves who raised the food first in this country because our country is built on slavery.”
~Nancy
Queries for the Week
(From self-led guide)
How might practicing equanimity help me as I struggle with the pandemic, racial unrest, and the political season our nation is in?
As I reflect on the mountains, what am I learning about God or my spiritual journey from them?
What pilgrimage might I need to go on, physically or spiritually this week?