Oh! Give Thanks...

"Because Love is an act of courage, not of fear, love is commitment to others."

- Paulo Friere in Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Thanksgiving day turned into Thanksgiving weekend at our humble Fifth Ward apartment. 

On Thursday we spent the morning at our church, Pleasant Hill, singing songs of gratitude in English and Spanish, mixing our two services. I watched the singers on stage dance while a woman in the front row banged on a tambourine and everyone in the pews belted out their thankfulness in song. 

After church, our Pastor invited us to eat a Thanksgiving meal with his family. We ate delicious food, played Bingo and Dutch Blitz, and taught Pastor how to dance. He wouldn't Wobble, but we got him to do the Cupid Shuffle! Priceless. 

That night we had a friend over. We ate a small meal of side dishes and watched Source Code. 

Saturday was the day.

My housemate Heather got up at the crack of dawn to begin cooking our turkey. She spent most of the day in the kitchen preparing our Thanksgiving feast while the rest of us either went to hang out with our neighbors, read, or nap. 

Charlie and I went around right before dinner asking friends and neighbors if they'd like to come over for some post Thanksgiving festivities. We had several neighbors that were up for it, and we ended up having a pretty full house! 

I met Celeste a few weeks ago, so Charlie and I headed to her place to invite her over. She said she was about to go to bed, but instead she grabbed her coat and shuffled out the door with us to our apartment. 

This was the first time we had our immediate neighbors over for a meal at our house. We had some great conversation, ate delicious food together, and played with the kids. 

Having a full house is a joy, but for me it was also draining. As soon as the conversation died down, the guests left, and the kitchen got cleaned up, I was ready for bed. 

I'm learning so much about myself within community. I am discovering, or re-discovering, that I enjoy small groups of  people, preferably one or two people, whom I can get to know really well, rather than a large group where I can flutter around getting to know a little bit about a lot of people. I am most refreshed when I can spend time by myself, away from my community, allowing myself to be filled up in order to give fully to my community.  I love parties...on occasion. I love walking really slowly with Miss Celeste and Miss Addison, asking them questions, content with the silence. I like silence. A lot. I also really like old people. 

The neighbors that I have enjoyed the most since being in Fifth Ward have been the elderly folks I've met. I sit next to Miss Addison every Sunday, and pass Miss Celeste's house every day on my way to and from work, sometimes stopping for conversation on her porch. I think I like them so much because they remind me to slow down, that life is not in a hurry, that I have no need to be in a hurry, that I can enjoy a slower pace with them. 

Blessed are the Consumers

I was hungry and you went shopping on "Black Friday" for plasma tvs and video games.

I was thirsty and you bought yourself another holiday latte from Starbucks.

I was naked and you found a nice holiday outfit on sale to wear to the Christmas Party.

I was in prison and you voted to execute me.

My neurons shoot fire through my brain as I read a mesh of thoughts from Paulo Freire, Rob Bell, John Perkins, Jean Vanier, and a translated version of Jesus’ own words.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed challenges me in more ways than one. With my handy dictionary nearby, I walk through each sentence gradually, intentionally, pulling out each word, turning it over slowly in my mind, and linking it to the next, trying to find meaning.  At the end of the paragraph, I sit back, processing.  What did he just tell me? Freire explains that the oppressors do not realize they are oppressors; they are simply people benefiting from an unjust system of advantage, maintaining the status quo. The oppressed are the only ones capable of liberating themselves from this system, because obviously the oppressors aren’t going to do that (they’re the ones benefiting from this whole oppressive deal), and even if some sympathizer from the powerful party came along to join them in their efforts, the once-oppressor would be so influenced by her history as an oppressor that her immediate reaction would be, “These people are incapable of helping themselves. I must help them.” Thus perpetuating the mindset of oppressor-oppressed and never being able to liberate the oppressed because she is not able to liberate herself from oppressive thinking.

This thought from Freire was complemented by an excerpt from Love Wins by Rob Bell in which Bell discusses the biblical story of Lazarus and the rich man, a story told by Jesus in Luke 16. Bell points out that the rich man, when he is in Hades, asks for Lazarus, a poor beggar who is with Abraham in heaven, to bring him some water to quench his thirst:

“…note what it is the man wants in hell: he wants Lazarus to get him water. When you get someone water, you’re serving them.

The rich man wants Lazarus to serve him.

In their previous life, the rich man saw himself as better than Lazarus, and now, in hell, the rich man still sees himself as above Lazarus. It’s no wonder Abraham says there’s a chasm that can’t be crossed. The chasm is the rich man’s heart! It hasn’t changed, even in death and torment and agony. He’s still clinging to the old hierarchy. He still thinks he’s better.”

Jean Vanier in Community and Growth explains that when people get in groups oriented toward issues or causes there is a tendency to divide the world into the oppressors and the oppressed, the good and bad. He says, “There seems to be a need in human beings to see evil and combat it outside oneself, in order not to see it inside oneself.” 

Seeing the enemy as outside myself is easy. Focusing on some obscure idea of who the oppressor is and what the oppressor does is easy.

Seeing myself as the oppressor is much more difficult. Acknowledging the darkness, fear, hatred, bigotry, vanity, and envy within myself is much more difficult. Nearly impossible. Who wants to be aware of their own capacity to inflict pain, the benefits they’ve received from racial and gender inequality, the systems of injustice they perpetuate by buying luxury items made in sweatshops? Yeah, being aware of those things isn’t high on my bucket list. But it’s the only way to become aware of the Kingdom.

Vanier goes on to say, “The members of a community know that the struggle is inside of each person and inside the community; it is against all the powers of pride, elitism, hate and depression that are there and which hurt and crush others, and which cause division and war of all sorts. The enemy is inside, not outside.”

Here is how we fight darkness: Be honest with ourselves. Become aware of ourselves as we are, what we have done, what we are capable of doing. Get really pissed at the system, at ourselves, and at the mess we’ve made. Mourn. Start being mindful of our thoughts--where they come from, what they are, and what they lead to. Then gather strength to fight, on a daily basis, in word and deed through big and small acts of real, vulnerable love. 

“To grow in love is to try each day to welcome, and be attentive and caring for those with whom we have the greatest difficulty; with our ‘enemies’; those who are the poorest, the oldest, the weakest, the most demanding, the most ailing; those who are the most marginal in the community, who have the most difficulty conforming to the rules; and finally those who are the youngest. If people are faithful to these four priorities of love then the community as a whole will be an oasis of love.”

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,

    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn,

    for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek,

    for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

    for they will be filled.

Blessed are the merciful,

    for they will be shown mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart,

    for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers,

    for they will be called children of God.”

- Jesus 

It's Gonna Be Ok

Sometimes things are just too heavy. 

I felt the weight of trying to love everyone in ways I didn't know how, in a capacity I couldn't handle. The curriculum readings, the graduate class work, the trainings, the expectation of intentionally building relationships with my neighbors, my church, and my housemates. Suddenly, or maybe not so suddenly, it was too much. I just couldn't do it all. Something had to give. So my mind and body gave out. Physical and mental exhaustion took over, and for a week I trudged through, sleeping as often as possible.

I guess I'm not made for this. I would think.

How can I live in intentional community always angry, frustrated, upset with the people I live with, the people I'm supposed to be loving? How do I love them when I feel so tired and overwhelmed? What about all the things that seem like they will never change? What if I never change?

And, of course, as a last desperate plea: God, help. 

I can't describe anything miraculous, but after a dream Monday night in which God rescued me again, I woke up Tuesday morning with a peace and joy I hadn't known since moving to Houston.

"Sometimes you just have to know...everything is gonna be ok," my roommate Taylor said.

That day I laughed with my housemates at work, met an elderly neighbor who introduced herself as Celeste, and had a beautiful conversation about racial reconciliation while eating cake-in-a-cup with my team.

Everything is gonna be ok. 

There was an exceptional bright spot over the weekend. 

My parents were able to stop by Houston for a day, spending our Friday together visiting Project Row Houses in Third Ward, walking through the Menil Collection, eating the most delicious pizza at Star Pizza, and searching the city for a Family Thrift store that has $1.50 Fridays.

It was a wonderful way to say, "See ya later" as they head back to Kenya in a few weeks. 

Then there was Pinot's Pallete...

Monday night in our house is team night/"date night" when we intentionally spend time together as a whole team or as groups within our team, doing fun things and getting to know one another better.

This week we went out with my housemate Rediet's coworkers to a paint party.

As all the women sat on their stools in front of their canvases, paintbrush in hand, surrounded by pallets of color, Etta James' voice drifted into the room and all 30 women of different ages and races sand together, "Aaaaaat laaaaaaasssssssttttttt, my love has come along..." Beautiful. 

Creating a Farmers Market...

Another beautiful part of Mission Year life is working as an intern at the Fifth Ward CRC (Community Redevelopment Corporation). At the moment, I am working on creating a local Farmers Market to make healthy local food more accessible to my neighbors. 

I LOVE the work that goes into this! It seems mundane and boring, sitting at a computer researching bylaws, State regulations, permits, licenses, certifications, and requirements for creating a Farmers Market, but the behind-the-scenes work is definitely what I'm made for. In this process I am also searching for grants to fund the project which then requires that I learn how to create a Market budget, find a governing board, and seek out people who will run manage and run this project. I'm leaving in July and want to make sure this thing is sustainable and completely owned by my Fifth Ward neighbors. 

My Mission Year Newsletter will be going out this week! 

If you'd like to receive monthly updates on what is going on in my Mission Year life in Houston's Fifth Ward, please sign up below! 

Subscribe to Tarrin's Mission Year Newsletter

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name

Last Name

Email Format

• html
• text

Five For the Fifth!

Hey friends! 

Check out the blurb below and the video to see what my teammates and I are up to in Houston with Mission Year, and how you can be a part of it! 


We are the Fifth Ward Pleasant Hill team, and we are committed to living simply, growing in love for one another and for our neighborhood through intentional relationships, and learning what it means to truly follow Jesus. We volunteer over 30 hours a week with community organizations, visit neighbors, share meals and devotion times: pray, play, and love together.

We are not paid for anything we do here in the Fifth Ward and we rely solely on donations from people like you! Your financial support covers our cost of living so we can commit full time to our neighborhood. We have created our Five for the Fifth Campaign: each team member has five days to find five people willing to commit to donating $5 or more a week ($20/month) to our Fifth Ward Pleasant Hill Team! We have five days to meet this goal! The campaign ends it this Friday, November 15!

Will you be one of my five? 

If you are one of the people willing to financially partner with us in our efforts to love our neighbors, you can donate to our team by clicking on any of the Fifth Ward team faces below!

Please let me know when you donate because it does not show up on our donation site for a while! 

 

     

If you want to write a check, you can make it out to Mission Year, writing my ID number #13-9010 in the memo line: PO Box 17628 Atlanta, GA 30316.

 Thank you for your love and support on this new journey!

Love, 

Tarrin, Kira, Rediet, Heather, Taylor, Charlie, Caleb 
The Fifth Ward Pleasant Hill Team 

Digging In The Dirt

There is something beautifully simple about sitting in a garden planting seeds, digging in the dirt, and transplanting new growth in the ground.

Yesterday as I walked around the neighborhood, I wandered over to The Last Organic Outpost to do some volunteer farming.  Linda handed me a bucket of soil, some small pots, and a bag of cabbage seeds.  I set up under a ramada as it began sprinkling, digging into the bucket of dirt with both hands, patting it into the tiny pots, and setting a few seeds under the surface.

I was soon joined by the farm cat who tried to take a nap on my back as I hunched over the buckets.

After planting some cabbage and greens, Linda handed me some broccoli plants that had sprouted in pots and needed to be transplanted to a larger plot of land to thrive.  I broke up the ground, reached into the broccoli pots, gently removed them from their tiny homes, being careful of the roots, and set them in the holes I had made in the ground.

As I reflect on my time at the garden, and on the struggles I have been wrestling with over the past few weeks, God revealed some beautiful gems.

I cannot put new growth into the ground without tilling the soil, breaking up the hard ground that has been built up over time through storms and heat waves.  I cannot plant seeds without getting dirty.  I cannot make space for new growth without pulling up the weeds that have overrun the garden.

Gardening my heart is hard work.

It turns out that ground I thought was soft and ready for new seeds, new growth, is actually still littered with weeds, hard in some places, rough in others, unprepared.  I thought I was coming to Mission Year to get some pointers, some direction on how to do intentional community. I did not realize I was coming to Mission Year to re evaluate who I am and where I find my value. I did not realize living with six other people would be so difficult. I did not realize how hardened I can be when I clash with others' lifestyles and expectations. I did not realize how important a clean house and clean dishes are to me (ok, maybe I knew this one, but I didn't know how difficult it would be to live with others who have different expectations).

It turns out, there is a lot of ground that needs to be plowed and prepared for the growth that is to come. 

Love And Do What You Will

Prayer of Saint Augustine

Therefore once for all this short command is given to you:

"Love and do what you will."

If you keep silent, keep silent by love;

if you speak, speak by love; 

if you correct, correct by love;

if you pardon, pardon by love;

let love be rooted in you,

and from the root nothing but good can grow.

Last weekend, my team and the two other Houston Mission Year teams headed out to the woods for a three day solitude retreat to reflect, pray, meditate, and culminate the end of our six week technology fast. 

We prayed together and on our own, read our team covenants out loud to one another to symbolize our commitment to one another and to the ideals we've set out to live by, and sat at the feet of our elders listening to their wisdom. 

We also took some time to enjoy one another. 

 
We are continuing to learn to love, really love. To love when the dishes in the sink pile up, to love when our work styles collide, to love when it's too cold or too hot in the house, to love when we've had a bad day, to love when someone is sick in bed with the flu, to love when the house is completely full of noise, to love when the house is completely silent, to love when we think everyone else around us has gone crazy and we're the only sane ones left...

Love. Still trying to figure out how to do it right. 

Life is a Prayer

Our faith must be alive. It cannot be just a set of rigid beliefs and notions. Our faith must evolve every day and bring us joy, peace, freedom, and love. Faith implies practice, living our daily life in mindfulness. Some people think that prayer or meditation involves only our minds or our hearts. But we also have to pray with our bodies, with our actions in the world. And our actions must be modeled after those of the living Buddha or the living Christ. If we live as they did, we will have deep understanding and pure actions, and we will do our share to help create a more peaceful world for our children and all of the children of God. 

-Thich Nhat Hanh

Faith in action.

I wake up at 7am Monday through Thursday to have devotionals with all my sleepy housemates. At 8:45am, Charlie, Taylor, and I head off to work at the Fifth Ward Community Redevelopment Center where we sometimes do simple office work like data entry and filing. Other times, like today, we work on projects, brainstorming with friends on how to grow aeroponic crops and temperature controlled mushrooms, build shipping container cafes, and create local farmer's markets.

This is faith in action. Every day.

Do everything as a prayer. 

A Short Glimpse of Many Things

While I have internet on my Sabbath, I wanted to share a bunch of photos that reveal glimpses of my life here in Houston.

My roommate Taylor and I have beautified our room, making it into a sanctuary for late afternoon naps, craft sessions on the floor, late night bunk bed conversations, and a hub for incense and fresh scents of lavender and earth.

Our balcony garden grows and thrives, teaching us to be patient with growth, to tend and care for the little that we see. The balcony garden looks much better than this now, but I haven't had the chance to take a picture since we've been on our tech fast. Hopefully when this fast is over in a week, I'll be able to post some better pictures.

This is the awesome Last Organic Outpost Garden that we'd love to imitate in small scale form ;)

Riding the bus is a regular part of my week. I'm learning to cherish my time on the bus as moments of solitude, reflection, and sometimes, conversation with folks who sit next to me. 

And today, I get to rest at Agora, a sweet cafe that brings me life in the form of tea and internet...

Fridays are refreshing. 

Stay tuned!

Meet The Family

"If you really love one another, you will not be able to avoid making sacrifices." - Mother Teresa

As we dig deeper into what it means to be a community of people who love God and one another, my teammates and I have struggled through conversations and experiences trying to figure out how to relate to one another, deny ourselves, and sacrifice for one another and our greater Fifth Ward community. 

Recently I have found myself understanding the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi in a new context:

Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted; 
to understand, than to be understood; 
to love, than to be loved. 
For it is by self-forgetting that one finds. 
It is by forgiving that one is forgiven. 
It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal Life.

Dying to the false self fabricated by social compulsions and awakening to the true self completely enmeshed with Divine Spirit is a mystery I will never fully grasp. But being here, being challenged to love and serve in new ways, leads me to a deeper understanding of St. Francis' words and their relevance in my life.

I have also been ruminating on a thought from Henri Nouwen for the past few days: "What else is anger than the impulsive response to the experience of being deprived?" A friend rephrased this last night when he told me and my friends something to the effect of, "I pray to not feel entitled. Then I realize how angry I get when I am not getting something I feel entitled to: quiet time, certain foods, time being used in the ways I want." As an exercise in self discipline and self analysis, whenever I am angry, frustrated, or annoyed, I am asking myself, "What do I feel entitled to right now? What do I feel I am being deprived of?" After stepping back from the situation, looking deeply at my own motives and reasoning,  I can then make a decision to respond. 

MEET THE FAMILY!

I would love to introduce you to the team that challenges me and grows me, helps me love, and helps me learn:

In the back row, from left to right: Caleb Groth, Heather Chappelle, and Charlie O'Connor. In the front row: Kira Echeandia, Rediet Mulugeta, me, and Taylor Burch.  

You can click on each of their names to read a little bit more about them and, if you'd like, to donate to their Mission Year funds. Each of us has a goal of $12,000 in order to get us through Mission Year, and we're doing it together! If you feel led to love on one of my teammates by providing for them financially, it would be such a blessing! I am also still in need of financial support, having raised $7,500 out of the total $12,000. If you'd like to support me, you can donate directly to my fund HERE.  Or by clicking on the donate button on the right side of this page. 

Being the Community Backbone

I have begun interning at The Fifth Ward Community Redevelopment Corporation (FWCRC), a non-profit organization that reaches out to the community through real estate and home development, home loan and foreclosure counseling, and community organizing. Ok, this all sounds pretty boring, but it’s actually really awesome! There is an entire world behind community development that sits at computers, planning, organizing, finding resources, and writing grants, being the backbone of development that then allows others to go out and do the work: constructing homes for low income families, planting community gardens, building parks and recreation areas, and helping folks maintain their properties and businesses, all of which promotes neighborhood economy and sustainable quality of life for folks living in low income areas like the Fifth Ward.

This mosaic was created by folks at the Museum of Cultural Arts, Houston (MOCAH) Click on the pic!

I love learning about all of this behind the scenes stuff. I have always wanted to make my community a better place, so I started food ministries, handing out bagels in Phoenix’s ZONE downtown then joining up with people who were meeting the immediate needs of folks on the streets.  As I’m soaking in all this new information at the CRC, I’m beginning to understand that while immediate needs must be met, there needs to be a plan to build and sustain neighborhoods that foster relationships among neighbors and help meet residents’ long term needs such as affordable housing, access to affordable and high quality food, financial counseling, spiritual mentorship, safety and security in the neighborhood, high quality education, and common

gathering places that foster greater relationships. 

I suppose these were things I knew were needed, but I didn’t know where to start. I had no idea how to write grants, build parks, or start food co-ops. But now, God has placed me in the CRC to develop these skills, learn how to create truly sustainable community and then go back to Phoenix to find folks who are doing it there and join them to implement it all. And doing it all without gentrifying the neighborhood.

One project that my teammate, Charlie, and I are becoming heavily invested in is a project that focuses on the Fifth Ward as a “food desert.”  There are two grocery stores in our area. One is a market across the street from our apartment complex with extremely high prices and terrible quality food, more like a large gas station convenience store.  The other is called Fiesta, a market mostly catering to the Hispanic community, but which also includes many other every day food items.  This is where my team shops every week for our groceries.  As I am reading studies and getting a grip on the area, I have discovered that the African American population of the area (about 50%, while Hispanic folks comprise the other half) does not feel that their needs are being met by Fiesta.  Nor does Fiesta offer a variety of health conscious food (a much needed section for the obese and diabetic population of the community). 

We have discovered several community gardens in our area, some of which are currently fully functional, others that are dwindling because of a lack of gardeners, and others that are completely run down because they have not been maintained. Our idea is to create a food co-op between all these gardens, building relationships between all the gardens and the folks in the community, allowing access to affordable healthy, fresh local produce. This is quite a big project, and we are still working on what exactly it is we want to achieve, but we have an idea and it’s growing bigger every day.

We are going to be learning from Gerald at The Last Organic Outpost. We visited Gerald's farm last week and were blown away by how well his farm was flourishing. He not only grows fresh vegetables, fruits, and herbs, but he also has a Tilapia pond, a bee farm, and is making plans for a crab hatchery! They host several local events such as concerts, farming classes, community dinners, and, my favorite, yoga! This place gives me so much hope for what a farm can look like in the middle of an urban city. Click on the picture to check out the website! 

We are also partnering with Alesia at Cane River Gardens to begin plans to create a food co-op and build a coffee shop out of shipping containers on the garden property. Click the picture below to find out more information about cane River Gardens. 

I am so thrilled to be a part of what God is doing in Houston's Fifth Ward. It's a beautiful place with beautiful people reaching out to one another to build relationships and lift one another up. There are continuous lessons to be learned, and I pray to be open to all of them.