Counting My Blessings at (almost) 26

Year 24 was AMAZING.  Year 25 was somewhat grim but full of lessons and probably not so bad in hindsight.  Year 26 is fast approaching; who knows what it will bring.  These are some of the ways God has blessed me in these 25 years leading up to the 26^th.

1. Family.  I know it’s cliché, but it’s true.  I love my mom, my dad, my sister (who begins her 24^th year the day after I begin my 26^th), and my baby sister (who’s not such a baby anymore since she just started 9^th grade).  They are largely responsible for who I am.
2. Friends.  I used to think love was a word reserved only for family and spouses.  When I learned to love Jesus I learned what it meant to love my friends.  I learned what real friendship is about.  Through service, kindness, compassion, and both encouraging and challenging words my friends have taught me what being a disciple of Jesus is about.  Jesus said, “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that the father has made known to me” – John 15:15.
3. Isaiah 61.  I love that my God is just and compassionate. 
4. Luke 4:21.  I love that my Lord keeps his promises.  This is why I love Jesus.
5. "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches." – Matt. 13:31-32.  This was one of the verses that drew me to Jesus.  I prayed that God would turn my mustard seed of faith into a deep love and desire to know Him.  I think it’s starting to work.
6. “On hearing this, Jesus said to them, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.’”  I couldn’t believe that God could love me or choose me, but there’s no denying it.
7. Sometimes I have to praise God I’m Mexican because the food is just so delicious!
8. This may be shallow, but I love my new car.  Her name is Josie – named for the following: Josie is one of my favorite Blink 182 songs, Josephine is one of my favorite Wallflowers songs, and Jo March from Little Women is one of my favorite literary characters.
9. I recently rediscovered that I like hiking.  I love being in nature.  My Creator is a talented artist. 
10. Fun socks make me happy.  On a particularly dull day a look at my polka-dot-covered feet puts a smile on my face. 
11. I’m a Bruin through and through.  When I was a senior in high school I chose to attend UCLA because I fell in love with the campus: sunny blue skies, beautiful red-brick buildings, lovely green grass, tall tress, and tons of libraries…though I could do without the vicious squirrels.
12. Music.  It moves me.  I am not the most expressive person, but music stirs my soul and awakens all those feelings, fears, and dreams I keep hidden.
13. Did I mention I love the fact that I’m Mexican, first-generation U.S. born?  I speak Spanglish.  I am neither here nor there.  I was a History and Chicano Studies double-major in college.  I learned that there are intelligent, creative, eloquent, beautiful, and brave people out there in the World that look like me, sound like me, smell like me, who are worthy of respect and admiration.
14. Books.  When I go to Heaven Jesus and I are going to hang out on the porch sipping lemonade, looking past a flower-filled meadow and into a thick forest, deep in discussion about great tales of adventure and love that sought to reveal truths about the human experience.  Stories that describe the deep longing and desire to know and be known.  Then I’ll laugh when I realize that it all boils down to this:  God is good.  And that is all that matters. 
15. Somehow God led me to the field of Social Work.  I went to graduate school and earned a Masters in Social Welfare.  I praise Him for allowing me to witness His work of compassion and justice first-hand.  I pray that He will use me to do His work of mercy and love. 
16. I am the eldest of three sisters.  I like being the oldest because I can get my sisters to do stuff by giving them “the look.”
17. Even though it was a painful three years and three months of braces and headgear, I am grateful for straight teeth (although I’m pretty sure my teeth are getting crooked because I haven’t worn retainers in years, yikes!).
18. Disneyland, the place where your dreams may come true.
19. Baskin Robbins Jamoca Almond Fudge ice cream.
20. EBCLA Youth Ministry.  I’ve been blessed with new friends to encourage me and laugh with.  I love the kids.  Friday nights make life better. 
21.  I am employed by the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services as a Children’s Social Worker.  It’s a tough job but I hope He is using me to heal some brokenness in the families I serve and the people I work with.  I suspect He is using them to heal some brokenness in me.
22.  I was born and raised in Los Angeles.  I feel lucky to be surrounded by a richness and diversity of experiences.
23.  I have a two year-old nephew (by way of a cousin) that has the cutest dimples.  Thinking of him brings me joy.
24.  I have wavy hair.  I am grateful for it when it does what I want.
25. He made me a good listener.  It is a privilege and an honor to have people confide and put their trust in me.

No Blood Diamonds here.

Healing

“Well, anyway, I looked up and saw the very last thing I expected: a huge lion coming slowly toward me.  And one queer thing was that there was no moon last night, but there was moonlight where the lion was.  So it came nearer and nearer.  I was terribly afraid of it.  You may think that, being a dragon, I could have knocked any lion out easily enough.  But it wasn’t that kind of fear.  I wasn’t afraid of it eating me, I was just afraid of it - if you can understand.  Well it came close up to me and looked straight into my eyes.  And I shut my eyes tight.  But that wasn’t any good because it told me to follow it.” 

“You mean it spoke?”

“I don’t know.  Now that you mention it, I don’t think it did.  But it told me all the same.  And I knew I’d have to do what it told me, so I got up and followed it.  And it led me a long way into the mountains.  And there was always this moonlight over and round the lion wherever we went.  So at last we came to the top of a mountain I’d never seen before and on the top of this mountain there was a garden—trees and fruit and everything.  In the middle of it there was a well.

“I knew it was a well because you could see the water bubbling up from the bottom of it: but it was a lot bigger than most wells—like a very big, round bath with marble steps going down into it.  The water was as clear as anything and I thought if I could get in there and bathe it would ease the pain in my leg.  But the lion told me I must undress first.  Mind you, I don’t know if he said any words out loud or not.

“I was just going to say that I couldn’t undress because I hadn’t any clothes on when I suddenly thought that dragons are snaky sort of things and snakes can cast their skins.  Oh, of course, thought I, that’s what the lion means.  So I started scratching myself and my scales began coming off all over the place.  And then I scratched a little deeper and, instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully, like it does after an illness, or as if I was a banana.  In a minute or two I just stepped out of it.  I could see it lying there beside me, looking rather nasty.  It was a most lovely feeling,  So I started to go down into the well for my bathe. 

“But just as I was going to put my feet into the water I looked down and saw that they were all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as they had been before.  Oh, that’s all right, said I, it only means I had another smaller suit on underneath the first one, and I’ll have to get out of it too.  So I scratched and tore again and this underskin peeled off beautifully and out I stepped and left it lying beside the other one and went down to the well for my bathe. 

“Well, exactly the same thing happened again.  And I thought to myself, oh dear, however many skins have I got to take off?  For I was longing to bathe my leg.  So I scratched away for the third time and got off a third skin, just like the two others, and stepped out of it.  But as soon as I looked at myself in the water I knew it had been no good.

“Then the lion said—but I don’t know if it spoke—‘You will have to let me undress you.’  I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate.  So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.

“The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart.  And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt.  The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off.  You know—if you’ve ever picked the scab of a sore place.  It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.”

“I know exactly what you mean,“ said Edmund. 

“Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off—just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt—and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker and darker and more knobbly-looking than the others had been.  And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been.  Then he caught hold of me—I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on—and threw me into the water.  It smarted like anything but only for a moment.  After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm.  And then I saw why.  I’d turned into a boy again….”

"I am Joaquin"
By RODOLFO "CORKY" GONZALES

I am Joaquin,
Lost in a world of confusion,
Caught up in a whirl of a gringo society,
Confused by the rules, Scorned by attitudes,
Suppressed by manipulations, And destroyed by modern society.
My fathers have lost the economic battle and won the struggle of
cultural survival.
And now! I must choose between the paradox of
Victory of the spirit, despite physical hunger
Or

to exist in the grasp of American social neurosis,
sterilization of the soul, and a full stomach.
YES,
I have come a long way to nowhere, Unwillingly dragged by that
monstrous, technical industrial giant called
Progress and Anglo success
I look at myself. I watch my brothers.
I shed tears of sorrow.
I sow seeds of hate.
I withdraw to the safety within the
Circle of life . . .
MY OWN PEOPLE

I am Cuauhtemoc,
Proud and Noble Leader of men, King of an empire,
civilized beyond the dreams of the Gachupin Cortez,
Who also is the blood, the image of myself.

I am the Maya Prince.
I am Netzahualcoyotl,
Great leader of the Chichimecas.
I am the sword and flame of Cortez the despot.
And

I am the Eagle and Serpent of the Aztec civilization.
I owned the land as far as the eye could see under the crown of Spain,
and I toiled on my earth and gave my Indian sweat and blood for the
Spanish master,
Who ruled with tyranny over man and beast and all that he could trample
But . . .

THE GROUND WAS MINE.
I was both tyrant and slave.
As Christian church took its place in God's good name,
to take and use my Virgin strength and Trusting faith,
The priests both good and bad, took
But
gave a lasting truth that
Spaniard, Indian, Mestizo
Were all God's children
And from these words grew men who prayed and fought
for their own worth as human beings, for that
GOLDEN MOMENT
Of
FREEDOM.

I was part in blood and spirit of that courageous village priest
Hidalgo in the year eighteen hundred and ten
who rang the bell of independence
and gave out that lasting cry:
El Grito de Dolores,
"Que mueran los Gachupines y que viva la Virgin de Guadalupe"
I sentenced him who was me.
I excommunicated him my blood.
I drove him from the Pulpit to lead a bloody revolution for him and me I
killed him.
His head, which is mine and all of those who have conic this way,
I placed on that fortress wall to wall for Independence.
Morelos!
Matamoros!
Guerrero!
All Compañeros in the act,
STOOD AGAINST THAT WALL OF INFAMY
to feel the hot gouge of lead which my hands made.
I died with them . . . I lived with them
I lived to see our country free.
Free from Spanish rule in eighteen -hundred- twenty-one.
Mexico was Free
The crown was gone
but

all his parasites remained and ruled and taught with gun and flame and
mystic power.
I worked, I sweated, I bled, I prayed and
waited silently for life to again commence.
I fought and died for Don Benito Juarez Guardian of the Constitution.
I was him on clusty roads on barren land
as he protected his archives as Moses did his sacraments.
He held his Mexico in his hand on
the most desolate and remote ground
which was his country And this Giant
Little Zapotec gave not one palm's breadth
of his country's land to Kings or Monarchs or Presidents
of foreign powers.

I am Joaquin.
I rode with Pancho Villa, crude and warm.
A tornado at full strength, nourished and inspired by the passion and
the fire of all his earth, people.
I am Emillano Zapata.
"This Land This Earth Is OURS"
The Villages
The Mountains
The Streams
belong to Zapatistas.
Our life
Or yours is the only trade for soft brown earth and maiz.
All of which is our reward, A creed that formed a constitution for all
who dare live free!
"This land is ours . . . Father, I give it back to you.
Mexico must be free . . .'
I ride with Revolutionists
against myself.
I am Rural Course and brutal,
I am the mountain Indian, superior over all.
The thundering hoof beats are my horses.
The chattering of machine guns'
are death to all of me:
Yaqui
Tarahumara
Chamula
Zapotec
Mestizo
Español

I have been the Bloody Revolution,
The Victor,
The Vanquished,
I have killed and been killed.
I am despots Diaz and Huerta and the apostle of democracy
Francisco Madero.
I am the black shawled faithful women who die with me
or live depending on the time and place.
I am faithful, humble, Juan Diego, the Virgen de Guadalupe,
Tonatzin, Aztec Goddess too.

I rode the mountains of San Joaquin. I rode as far East and North as the
Rocky Mountains
And all men feared the guns of Joaquin Murrietta.
I killed those men who dared to steal my mine,
who raped and Killed my Love my Wife
Then
I Killed to stay alive.
I was Alfego. Baca, living my nine lives fully.
I was the Espinoza brothers of the Valle de San Luis.
All, were added to the number of heads that in the name of civilization
were placed on the wall of independence.
Heads of brave men who died for cause or principle.
Good or Bad.
Hidalgo! Zapata!
Murrietta! Espinozas!
are but a few.
They dared to face The force of tyranny of men who rule
by farce and hypocrisy I stand here looking back, and now I see the
present
and still I arn the campesino I am the fat political coyote
I, of the same name,
Joaquin.

In a country that has wiped out AIl my history, stiffled all my pride.
In a country that has placed a different weight of indignity upon my age
old burdened back.
Inferiority is the new load . . .
The Indian has endured and still emerged the winner,
The Mestizo must yet overcome, and the Gachupin will just ignore.
I look at myself and see part of me who rejects my father and my mother
and dissolves into the melting pot to disappear in shame.
I sometimes sell my brother out and reclaim him
for my own when society, gives me token leadership
in society's own name.

I am Joaquin, who bleeds in many ways.
The altars of Moctezuma I stained a bloody red.
My back of Indian Slavery
was stripped crimson from the whips of masters who would lose their
blood so pure when Revolution made them pay Standing against the walls
of Retribution, Blood . . .
Has flowed from me on every battlefield
between Campesino, Hacendado Slave and Master and Revolution.
I jumped from the tower of Chapultepec into the sea of fame;
My country's flag my burial shroud;
With Los Niños, whose pride and courage
could not surrender with indignity their country's flag . . . in their land.

To strangers now I bleed in some smelly cell from club.
or gun. or tyranny.
I bleed as the vicious gloves of hunger
cut my face and eyes, as I fight my way from stinking Barrios
to the glamour of the Ring and lights of fame or mutilated sorrow.
My blood runs pure on the ice caked
hills of the Alaskan Isles, on the corpse strewn beach of Normandy,
the foreign land of Korea and now Viet Nam.

Here I stand
before the Court of Justice Guilty for all the glory of my Raza to be
sentenced to despair.
Here I stand Poor in money Arrogant with pride
Bold with Machismo Rich in courage and Wealthy in spirit and faith
My knees are caked with mud.
My hands calloused from the hoe.
I have made the Anglo rich yet Equality is but a word, the Treaty of
Hidalgo has been broken
and is but another treacherous promise. My land is lost
and stolen,
My culture has been raped, lengthen
the line at the welfare door and fill the jails with crime.
These then are the rewards this society has For sons of Chiefs
and Kings and bloody Revolutionists.
Who gave a foreign people all their skills and ingenuity
to pave the way with Brains and Blood
for those hordes of Gold starved Strangers
Who changed our language and plagiarized our deeds
as feats of valor of their own. They frowned upon our way of life
and took what they could use.
Our Art
Our Literature
Our music,
they ignored so they left the real things of value and grabbed at their
own
destruction by their Greed and Avarice
They overlooked that cleansing fountain of nature and brotherhood
Which is Joaquin.
The art of our great señors Diego Rivera
Siqueiros Orozco is butanother act of revolution for the Salvation of
mankind.
Mariachi music, the heart and soul of the people of the earth,
the life of child, and the happiness of love
The Corridos tell the tales of life and death, of tradition,
Legends old and new, of Joy of passion and sorrow of the people:

who I am.
I am in the eyes of woman, sheltered beneath
her shawl of black, deep and sorrowful eyes,
That bear the pain of sons long buried or dying, Dead
on the battlefield or on the barbwire of social strife.
Her rosary she prays and fingers
endlessly like the family working down a row of beets to turn around and
work and work
There is no end.
Her eyes a mirror of all the warmth and all the love for me,
And I am her And she is me.
We face life together in sorrow.
anger, joy, faith and wishful thoughts.
I shed tears of anguish as I see my children disappear behind the shroud
of mediocrity
never to look back to remember me.

I am Joaquin.
I must fight And win this struggle for my sons,
and they must know from me Who I am.
Part of the blood that runs deep in me
Could not be vanquished by the Moors
I defeated them after five hundred years,
and I endured.
The part of blood that is mine
has labored endlessly five-hundred years under the heel of lustful
Europeans
I am still here!

I have endured in the rugged mountains of our country
I have survived the toils and slavery, of the fields.
I have existed in the barrios of the city,
in the suburbs of bigotry, in the mines of social snobbery,
in the prisons of dejection, in the muck of exploitation
and in the fierce heat of racial hatred.
And now the trumpet sounds,
The music of the people stirs the
Revolution, Like a sleeping giant it slowly rears its head
to the sound of Tramping feet Clamouring voices Marlachi strains
Fiery tequila explosions The smell of chile verde and
Soft brown eyes of expectation for a better life
And in all the fertile farm lands, the barren plains,
the mountain villages, smoke smeared cities

We start to MOVE.
La Raza!
Mejicano!
Español!
Latino!
Hispano!
Chicano!
or whatever I call myself,
I look the same
I feel the same
I cry
and
Sing the same
I am the masses of my people and I refuse to be absorbed.
I am Joaquin
The odds are great but my spirit is strong
My faith unbreakable
My blood is pure
I am Aztec Prince and Christian Christ

I SHALL ENDURE!