Dear Substack Community: I have been away from this space in ways that are now haunting me. I love to write! I love to share with you what’s happening in my world, but I needed time to come to a clearer perspective on how to balance preaching each Sunday at Union University Church in Alfred, NY and carving out time to write. I don’t know if I will write on Sundays or not, but I had the energy to write, so here I am!
The world is falling apart, and I just became a pastor of a brick and mortar church. I am learning how to live in Western New York AND be a pastor to a small rural congregation. I am astounded at the support systems that are in place to ensure this work can be done well! I am learning this new dance of rural America; where most of America lives.
What is it about Our Collective Search to be good humans or faithful followers of our chosen faith or belief system that we struggle with the unknown? We are each learning the dance of life at the same time. The choreography is improvisational and we are still learning.
We are still learning.
The things that I am learning are lessons that only life can teach you!
I’ve spent a long time within higher education as a graduate student or professor and it isn’t real life. What I mean is that we evacuate real life in favor of another new idea. People suffer in very real and material ways, but there is no cultural space for that awareness or the grief that comes with it.
I am now in a community where we must learn from one another regardless of how we might vote. To be clear, Allegany County, NY always goes RED. The well-being of our democracy depends on the well-being of us as neighbors to each other. It’s no longer about Red and Blue, though there are material consequences to both Red and Blue. This space and place feels very special. I am on ancestral land that has had the first participatory democracy. I will be learning a lot from the land and the people!
I want to start writing out some thoughts I’m having about belonging and freedom, the topic that is bubbling up for me. I don’t know yet where these thoughts are going, but the energy of these thoughts are beginning to sow their bare seeds, just as spring is emerging here in the Southern Tier of New York.
I hope to be writing more and sharing my journey with you, along with some of the things with which I’m wrestling! I want to write about the importance of race and the dangers of white supremacy, but I want to write about them from the place of lived experience. I am in white space and white culture now living in New York. I am not around fellow Latines in person, but keep in touch with a vast number of Black Indigenous and People of Various Colors. I would like to learn the culture of Alfred and also be able to reflect on the culture of Alfred in order to plant those bear seeds of belonging and freedom here. Alfred is not void of white supremacy; it is more subtle here. I want to learn the subtleties, along with the blatant reminders. I hope to write about this.
I will say that I had dinner in Rochester this past Friday night and a gaggle of white men came in along with 2 Black men and it was the gaggle of white men who made me almost have a panic attack. My nervous system is still healing and we need to be able to talk about the prevailing notions of toxic white masculinity that have harmed people. There’s lots of work to be done, still, to bring heaven to earth!
I would love to hear your comments, but the ways I keep this space safe is by putting up a paywall of $5/month. If you’d like to comment, please become part of this growing little community. I also want to thank the many subscribers that I have recently seen subscribing to Our Collective Becoming! I hope you’ll stay and join us, eventually!
Happy Sunday!
Dr. Roberto Che Espinoza.