A Reflection from Parishioner Vinnie Casanova
Dear St. James’ Family,
I’m tired. Are you tired? Do you ever find yourself wondering what day it is during this pandemic? That used to be my favorite part of summer as a child. I never knew what day it was, because the days were long and all blended together. These days I feel like I’m gripping for signs of the day, month, and season. Which has given me another reason to celebrate the slow arrival of fall.
Another signpost in this season started on September 15th, the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month. It’s only over these last few years that our family has started to actively engage this month. As a Mexican American, I spent most of my teenage and young adult years in a predominately white town. I had no frameworks or vocabulary to understand my experience as a person of color, at least, not as something “good” or “reflecting the face of God”. Rather, the brown skin that makes me a person of color was, and at times can still be, a source of shame.
There was a time in my life that I was a part of a ministry that worked with Latinos and Hispanics. I never felt more nervous or out of place in all my life. Why? Because I thought it was the one place that I should be able to fit in, and largely because I didn’t speak Spanish, or grow up with many traditional “Mexican” customs, I felt like an imposter. While my worlds weren’t as distinct as “Mexican” and “American” I neither felt home in one or the other.
I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to run away from who I am. I’ve used up a lot of energy and excuses trying to dismiss my ethnicity. I’ve also spent way too much time focusing on the person I wish I was, or the person I think I should be, instead of receiving with love and grace the in-process person I am today.
I want to say that I’m entering Hispanic Heritage Month from a place of excitement, but that wouldn’t be true. At this current political moment, the month feels like a formality in a country with an administration that not only doesn’t want to celebrate Hispanic or Latino peoples (or their vast contributions to this country) but would rather that they leave.
I don’t know if sitting in a group with other Latinos and Hispanics, Hispanic Heritage Month, or America, will ever feel like home, but I know where I feel safe. I know the community that has helped me to acknowledge and embrace the Divine that shines through my brown skin. This same community has helped me also acknowledge and embrace the Divine in my neighbor. It has been you.
With the stark reminder of the fragility of life in 2020, let us continue to “pass the peace” in reimagined ways. Let love move us as it once did from one side of the room to the other. Let love strengthen us as we for a time gather online and hold space for one another. Let love embolden us as we sit, kneel, and stand together as one body decrying injustice.
The Spirit that fills us when together, fills each of us now. May we close our eyes and imagine walking up to St. James’. Do you see the doors opening for you? Do you see the warm smiles from friends new and old? You can take a deep breath now, because you’re home.
Vinnie Casanova
Vinnie Casanova has a fantastic blog, which you might just want to check out: https://www.vinniecasanova.com/
