Education is about trying to border cross; not an easy task in a world where fences are getting higher and more deadly trying to prevent crossing over into other parts of the world, particularly the US. Yet CS37 is all about that.

Why do I say border crossing; we’re dealing with the theme in a very real way, borders and boundaries, how do they touch our lives? When I think of borders I’m seeing them as a way to keep the impoverished in their place. Keep in mind; here I’m not using the word “poor”. When we use the word “poor” it means that those living on two dollars or less a day are passive. They’re poor as an act of nature. Whereas when the word “impoverished” is used it gives us much more breath to speak about borders in a way that has liberating potential behind it, for it leads us in the direction of trying to come to terms with actual economic and cultural forces, in place, that keep most of the population in Latin America in the informal sector. It gives us a bit more incentive to look at the reasons why every second there is a Mexican who leaves for the US, risks life itself to passover to find work. The word passover has clout to it, because it means that we’ve got to do some passing over, getting in touch with excluded both cognitively and experientially. The term excluded is used often these days and it gives much more depth to understanding the place of the impoverished in the world, exclusion is actually much more violent than a person living in a state of poverty, for it means that a population is denied voice, denied existence, ignored in place of prioritizing market values that try to include them in commercial circles that are premised on their death.

So when we talk about borders and boundaries we’re involved in exciting and life giving discourse, by that I mean attempting to define who we are given this setting of coming down on the poor of the world very hard by those who enjoy power and the wealth that goes with it and that isolates most of humankind.

We’ll spend some time trying to read the world we live in. When I say that, I’m talking about being literate about the energy that envelops us in family, community, nation and the world. They all go together, try to keep them in place: let’s add another one that we’ll focus on: the earth, our home and lets look at how economics serves us in maintaining our homes. What do our ancestors have to tell us about this, the history out of which we come, what’s it have to say about our place in the world and how others look at us, and how we look at ourselves and each other.

Often times we’ll be in a circle. It’s a powerful sign. It tells a lot about how we interact. The circle emphasizes that we’re all educators, all students; all involved in dialogs with one another that take on much more breath and expand to the edge when we listen and respect one another as we speak. We’re creators of language. When we utter a sound, a word, noun, verb, we’re in the process of detecting what’s going on around us. We’re giving voice to our “subjugated knowledge” that’s our wisdom that has been forced to hid, because by our voicing it poses threats to those who have tried to keep us in our place and have disrespected our stories, never giving much validity to it as they’ve chosen stories from the powerful that buttress the way things are.

Exciting that some of you will be out communicating with nature, the earth, the environment that sustains us, nourishes us and under so much threat. As you move in the desert you’ll connect with common energy; you’ll experience solidarity gestures on the part of the earth nourishing us with its free nourishment; there is no price attached to it; perhaps at times you’ll witness how nature has become impoverished like so many human beings on the planet and you’ll yearn for making connections between our own impoverishment and that of the earth; when we do we’ll all smile. When a smile comes it loosens us up to be much more in touch with who we are because we can’t come up with identity formation without linking up with the earth around us, seeing ourselves one with it; not separate from it, not in a place where we want to dominate it.

A story:

The story has to do with the connection to the earth. I’ll show some slides on this one later when I illustrate spirituality and resistance in Colombia. I’m talking about a spirituality that isn’t going to make you yawn; it will empower you, just be open to it.

Resistance: it takes place throughout this planet. Human beings making a stand; saying we’ve had enough, daring to do what perhaps they’d have never entertained, claim their land after being expelled from it by forces linked to the Columbian Army. Afro-Colombians make a decision to go back to their homes and live in the thick of an intense conflict zone and be people of peace, nonviolent, in touch with their tradition which the powerful would just as soon obliterate, for it speaks about connection, community, spirituality, in touch with the earth and a commitment to future generations rather than to profit and the market. This form of resistance the community calls El Proceso. Imagine, a community linked together to develop a Proceso to sustain life and a critical look at the world they live in that exposes empire and transnational corporations biting at the bit to come in and pillage their lumber, their biodiversity, their water in possibly making a new canal zone that will link the Pacific and the Atlantic.

To imagine such communities; to imagine here in New Mexico in our midst as we break new ground in our respect for one another, and our stories, experiences, traditions are all that we have. A true education celebrates them, nurtures the liberation themes that thrive within them and that link us with others rather than distance us from them.

Here you are, having to deal with a Bostonian who has a history. A Bostonian who's lived sixty-six years on this planet and trying to move step by step along with you into a space where we look at one another from a perspective of grandeur and celebration rather than from weakness. A Bostonian who grew up in a Catholic ghetto, cut off from the world at large. A Bostonian who would later break out and spend a chunk of his time with the violated of the planet, perhaps because violation played a key part in his story, as it does in all our stories, it comes to how we make connections with the violation of others; with a world in the throws of tremendous trauma due to political and economic forces that come down hard on the traumatized who live in war zones, who live in countries under heavy assault from those who have enormous power living outside the country as they dictate to countries what the value of their money will be which comes down hard on those on the bottom of an economic pyramid based on structures of violence that Catholic Bishops in Latin America decades ago called “structures of sin”. The more we touch and expose those structures the more powerful do our stories become and when we utter them they take us into language creation, political and spiritual expansion that may well take us by surprise. But don’t let the surprise frighten you. Go with its energy and never let anyone tell you that you have no right to it, it’s your energy, your creativity, your coming into the classroom of the world empowered, accompanied by others who support you and you them. That’s what CS37 means. You’ll feel it in your bones, your flesh, the way you speak, the intensity of your listening power, your voice growing as you articulate your place in the world of the 21st Century.