claraduffy

[claraduffy]

El Paso in the morning

In El Paso in the morning

The sun turns everyone driving their cars into bats

Bats behind the wheel, squinting

Reaching for their sunglasses fallen between the seats

As the sun goes about its daily work

Of turning 38 degrees into 68

And burning everyone’s scalps

In El Paso in the morning

All the cars in central

Roll onto the highway

and I-10 becomes a great see-saw,

Tipping half the cars out east and half out west

To go to work and then return to the opposite side

Or to the middle

In El Paso in the morning

The shadows are long, or short

I don’t know what the groundhog said

In El Paso in the morning

Every morning

I get sunscreen in my eye

I make too much coffee

I open the window to shine light on my English Ivy

That never grows

Not even a little bit

Not even an inch, since July

In El Paso in the morning

I accidentally drive to the wrong office

But take a left and arrive at the other in a minute

In El Paso in the morning

Pat goes out to feed the cats

Or to get on the bus to feed the other cats

In El Paso in the morning

Nate’s low rider is parked by the warehouse

I run a stop sign,

I grab an envelope full of money and cross the border.

[claraduffy]

accompaniment, les mis, codo con codo

I remember the first time I sat down to talk with our director Sami about my internship with Abara. We outlined a few areas I could focus on, like resource development, newsletter support, admin help, donation processing. In the midst of nodding and typing it all out for my professor, I hear Sami say: “Well, all of this could change suddenly if MPP (also known as Remain in Mexico) is lifted. If the new administration begins to process all of the individuals and families waiting in Mexico (asylum seekers), you could have a completely different semester.” I look up from my typing to see Sami staring wistfully into the middle distance and wonder what will happen in the next few months. A few days after that conversation, new enrollments into MPP ended, and on March 3rd, we received an email: In the order in which they first enrolled, asylum seekers under MPP would be released to family and friends in the US, that is, allowed to continue with their asylum cases on US soil. Abara staff would be part of the team welcoming them at the Port of Entry. My first shift, I rode with Blanca, who brought balloons and a poster that said “BIENVENIDOS AL EEUU!”. She knew that some of the ladies from her sewing workshop in a shelter in Ciudad Juárez would be coming through that day. I’d been to the workshop with her a few times, but I knew I couldn’t understand what it had been like to wait with them. I’d arrived in El Paso at the very end of 2 years of MPP, and at the Port I was getting to see the sweet relief on the faces of families walking onto US soil to balloons and flowers. But there’s something I was missing, because I’d arrived for the party but witnessed little of the uncertainty, restlessness, and sometimes cruelty families experience living two years in a crowded shelter. But somehow I was there. And I met the loveliest people doing Port of Entry Welcome. I got to know Jesuits, Maryknoll sisters, lawyers, journalists, relief workers, other social workers, volunteers. We’d stand in bright yellow vests in front of the doors and watch people come out squinting through face shields, clutching toddler’s hands and papers and suitcases and we’d clap and cheer and say “Bienvenidos, ya están aquí!” We’d ask if they needed shelter, if they had plane tickets or bus tickets, if they had someone picking them up. We’d point to where they should walk for a taxi or to walk them to the shelter bus or to the print station to get their temporary passports. We’d carry bags and ask where they were from and where they were going and how long they’d waited. From some of the organizations involved and the people that show up for Port welcome, I got to learn about the concept of “accompaniment”, which comes from Catholic social teaching. Rafael Padilla describes accompaniment as "walking together in solidarity which is characterized by mutuality and interdependence.” It’s a being with instead of ministering to or, in my discipline of social work, intervening or serving a client. Welcoming at the port, or coordinating travel from a shelter or walking with someone to the notary or waiting with someone for a family member that got stopped by ICE--it was all more accompaniment than it was direct service. It was standing around and making jokes, or carrying a bag or pointing in the right direction. And when we parted ways it was saying Que le vaya bien (may all go well with you) and Dios te bendiga (God bless you) and Suerte (good luck). What I’ve learned in accompanying asylum seekers, in the small ways and for the short time that I have, is that social work can teach you theories and give you tools and great guidance about working with people who are in vulnerable situations, but when I really get in front of someone who’s hurting and tired and relieved and overwhelmed, all I can offer them is the recognition that our humanity is shared, that their suffering is meaningful, that I see them and I’ll walk with them for the little bit that I can. It’s eye contact and an elbow bump or waving and smiling behind a mask. And really seeing another human, it’s

like seeing the face of God, I swear. That’s not me, that’s Victor Hugo. But I’ll leave you with this: Welcome the stranger. You, too, are the stranger.

[claraduffy]

sisterhood in the bathroom

I got the idea in college to write something about the magic of women’s bathrooms, back when I often attended sorority events in bars in Austin. I’d get tired of the loud music or of my date, or I would need to pee, and I'd head to the bar bathroom whereupon crossing the threshold I’d find myself in complete respite. If it was an event for my sorority I’d often know most everyone in there. Sometimes there was a long line, other times there was hardly any room to stand. I’d exhale, though, because in those women’s bathrooms I was safe. 

I don’t mean to say I didn’t feel safe, exactly, out in the bar. I didn’t have any horrible experiences or encounters in the bars during those sorority events or other times I went out in Austin. There was just something about the bathroom. I’d walk in during a date event and a friend or an acquaintance from my sorority would squeal my name, compliment my dress, ask a question about my date, just in the first few seconds. I’d relax my shoulders and share my lipstick, fix someone’s hair, or listen to complaints about the guy they brought or the too-many-drinks or the price of food at the restaurant they went to before the event. I’d give and receive hugs and promises to “hang out this week.” Eventually I’d get nervous that my date would feel lost or frustrated so I’d go find him and keep talking small. But I’d have more energy for it, because I’d just come back from a moment of sisterhood in the bathroom. 

Other nights would bring similar experiences in bar bathrooms, nights when I’d only know the group I’d come to the bar with and every woman in the bathroom was a stranger. I’d still walk in to smiles, wide eyes commiserating about the line, compliments on my shoes. I’d hold a broken door closed for someone, then sit in the stall and listen to friends talking about guys they were with or where they wanted to go next, telling each other how good the other looked tonight and promising to get pizza later. 

Sure, sometimes there is considerable drunkenness or stumbling or vomiting in bar bathrooms. But when someone is drunk and struggling in a women’s bathroom, every woman in that space is aware and will likely do her part to help. One will open the stall door for the vomiter to run to the toilet, another will hold her hair, another will run for a cup of water. There’s this abundance of grace in women’s bathrooms, grace for adjusting your Spanx and standing barefoot with heels in your hand and for vomit and for drunken confusion. Sometimes it’s hard to want to leave that bathroom. What’s out there for us in the bar, anyway? 

I think women’s bathrooms in bars are a little like heaven might be— spacious, even when they’re small; warm and bright, even when they’re dark and dingy; supportive and encouraging, even when you’re sloppy drunk and needy. That’s the thing, though. It’s okay to be needy in that space, it’s okay to be falling apart. You’re safe; and that’s called sisterhood! Hallelujah! 

[claraduffy]

grocery store grace pt. 2

Saturday evening in El Paso and I am walking around the non-HEB-grocery store with one of those cumbersome plastic baskets that will be the subject of grocery store grace part 1. I grab some things I need and some that I don’t while talking on the phone and shifting the basket arm to arm and the phone from ear to ear

After 15 minutes or so I get in a line and immediately I notice the interaction in front of me between the cashier and an elderly man putting his groceries on the conveyer belt. The cashier is joking with the man about how consistent he is and how he’s always there and always buys the same things and to me it seems important to the man, to have this one store and this one ritual and this one list of foods and this friend. And the cashier sees him. I wonder if he’s lonely. I watch them fist bump around the plexiglass.

When it’s my turn, I stand there as the price increases on the screen. I thought I had 40 bucks in my account but looking back I didn’t think it through because I spent 15 doll hairs at lunch so I had 25 left.

So when I see it total 60 I tell him, I don’t think my card is going to work and he says try it and it’s declined and I say, can you take out the dried mangoes (ha, the price of those) and the coffee and the bread? And he does and and we get it down to 40 dollars but it’s rejected again

I think maybe there’s something that happened with my account, I say, that I don’t know about but that I will have to go check on

but because he’s kind and because I think maybe I can do it, I say Let’s try again, I ask him to take out the tampons, the flossers (I don’t floss, I don’t know what I was thinking), the blueberries but card is declined again

I guess I will just come back, I say, but not necessarily tonight I tell him, I’m sorry about that

Then I see him grab the box of tampons and hold them up, Do you need these? He asks And I say, yeah, I mean, I do, but I’ll come back

And he just says okay, and I see him using his badge the one that he’s used to cancel all the other items and then he gets his apple watch and scans it but i don’t understand at first and I am walking away and then he says hey don’t forget your groceries and I look at him funny and he says I got them and I say really? And I get red and he says I know how it is, don’t worry about it (the guy behind me in line joins in too saying don’t worry about it we know how it is) the cashier says yeah, no need to feel awkward, we get it (does he know this guy too I wonder?)

Thank you I say and I take my groceries and my box of tampons and the flossers and I say thank you

I get home and my account has 3 dollars less than what I had tried to get it down to and I am unloading them and I am thinking.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

I am thinking this: I can buy groceries. I can use savings I can ask my parents for money, I’m not in a dire or a desperate kind of situation that I truly can’t buy them, and if it were not for my flip phone with no internet I could have transferred money, I choose this (oh how subtle I think I am for choosing to have a flip phone for some ideal of simplicity) (my helplessness is counterfeit)

but this is grace: I receive even when I don’t know my own need.

I’m not physically or materially needy in a meaningful way, even if there’s not money in my account right now

But because of a combination of things, I needed help buying those groceries.

I hear myself insisting (to myself) (and to you) that I’m not needy, not really, But I still experienced someone buying those groceries for me. And It didn’t matter, to him, that I looked like I should be able to buy the groceries, especially against the backdrop of El Paso, where many do need help with groceries. It didn’t matter— I received and in abundance: tampons, flossers, blueberries, and bread.  

That’s God’s grace. That’s God’s rain falling on the good and on the evil. On those who know their spiritual poverty without Christ and on those who don’t. God’s preference is for the poor. God is for the needy. And the last will be first.And I, who I have never wanted for food in my life received grace in groceries, in fullness and abandoned open handed generosity from Jay, the cashier at Albertsons.

God’s grace reaches people who don’t realize their own need. I am realizing that I don’t often experience material lack and therefore don’t always have a tangible sense of my spiritual lack and my own need for a savior. I’m self sufficient; I grew up on America and rugged individualism and bootstraps.

And this is grace: I wasn’t excluded from the extravagance of the cashier holding up my box of tampons and saying do you need this? In my great, ugly comfort I never learned about my own need for help. But even the putrid pride of wealth and self-sufficiency isn’t too deep into the muck for God to fish me out. And Jay wanted to make sure I had tampons. Hallelujah. 

[claraduffy]

po-em

February 7th 2021

Thank You, I whisper, wrapped in old towels

and listening to them laugh out there

about the Indian Matchmaker

In pj shorts and white tank (stained, always stained)

I shivered on the bottom stair

And listened for the creaky gate to close, again,

Has he left? Did he leave it?

No dice.

Thank you. What is this. I speak softly

Behind my mask in the conference room

in the church, watching that smile-

ing man in the suit sing and dance as

I sing and dance, too

It did go away, and it did come back,

I tell her, finally, on my bed on my Nana’s quilt. I am

24 and suddenly

I think of that rainbow night light and the way Beeville sounded

from a twin bed in the late afternoon

Hayes talking to me from the other bed

Dear friend, what is it you’re not telling me?

What is it you’re trying not to think about?

Jesus, do we get freedom from these things too? 

Do you have power

over every scary dark thing

in me?

Yaweh Yaweh Yaweh Yaweh Yaweh

[claraduffy]

sept. 12, 2020

Some things have felt too deep for words. Or sometimes, for words in English. Some things have felt too light for words, too lovely. And other times (more than I’d like to admit) I am too preoccupied to write the words. The depth of things hasn’t always kept me from attempting to assign such things words. I waver! 

I shouldn’t wonder why I love reading old emails, old journals, and letters. I love to read what I write because it reminds me of what I think. And sometimes I don’t remember what I’ve thought, or even present-tense, think. There is too much of other people’s thoughts, perspectives, or situations that fill my head. I don’t pretend it’s selflessness. It’s a kind of self-forgetting that sometimes hurts me. And I sure can go too far with it (as well as too far toward comfort-seeking and selfishness). 

Writing feels like a phantom limb I’ve been ignoring for months; nadie can even see it but it weighs on me. I can set it aside but it never leaves. Writing again feels like biting my tongue to remember it’s there; feels like squeezing my friend’s hand after months and remembering that I love them; feels like turning off I-35 onto 77, Exit 14 “Rio Grande Valley.”

[claraduffy]

from a letter to kristy

Thanks a millón (milión?) for the note you sent a few weeks ago. That and the note you sent in December, the one that sent me crying out the front door of my parents’ house. There is something horribly tender in me and in all of us that longs to be missed--or to belong somewhere or with some one so truly that your presence is missed. Something I’m learning is that this belonging (and really, belovedness) that I and we long for is not exclusive. It doesn’t form tight or remote groups that are hard to break into, or hard to leave. Even more, it’s not scarce. It’s not running out. There aren’t limited spots for true belonging, because it (this belovedness) is found in the family of God. So there’s no scarcity to it at all. 

In my pride, jealousy, egoísmo, I imagine that I’m getting the last of it, and that connection is a precious commodity that has to be competed for. In my skewed view of God’s Kingdom, I sigh in relief when someone indicates that they miss me, value me, love me--because it indicates to me that I haven’t been left out. I got my portion! This is so warped, because I wrongly think that for my longing to get met, others have to be turned away empty. It’s not true! But my tendency to believe this is what’s dark in me. Oh Lord, come soon! 

Your letters are super special to me and also lead me to think more deeply about where I think belonging is found. I found it so truly on the team last year, that some days I am still reeling in the experience of that community. God’s taught me even more in the absence of it, somehow. 

American Dirt was so full of devastating images and systems and realities. It was so vivid and horribly so. There was some redemption woven through it, hints of a greater reality. Somehow knowing more about the atrocities migrants endure has me thinking bigger about the depth of God’s healing. 

“He is wooing you from the jaws of distress, to a spacious place free from restriction, to the comfort of your table laden with choice food.” Job 36:16

God, I want that for Lydia and Luca and Soledad and Rebeca and Beto and Lorenzo and Javier...and the real folks they stand in place of. Like I said, I am a puddle today. But sometimes, I like staying the raw place for a while. love you and looking forward to being together again--glory, glory! 

Clara

[claraduffy]

new Life

It’s that time of year where the wild olive trees are blooming, and it’s windy too, so all those flowers are falling.  When we were growing up, Seton convinced me those flowers were fairy food, and that the dust particles dancing in the sunlight that came through the cracks in the tires, that those were the fairies. There are wild olive trees all over the valley, so whether it was the one at school or the one in my backyard, I was forever picking the flowers, leaves, and olives and arranging them into tiny picnics at the top of the slide. That’s where the fairies liked to have breakfast.

In third grade, a baby bird fell out of it’s nest onto the concrete slab where we played dodgeball, but didn’t die, at least for a few hours. Ms. Moore put it in a shoe box with a bunch of leaves we found and fed it with a tiny plastic dropper until recess. After it died Seton and I begged her to let us bury it under the fairy tree. She gave us its tiny dead body in a ziplock baggie and we made a grave marker with popsicle sticks.

In these days the olive flowers fall into the street and get crushed by truck tires and later by my feet. I’ve been walking around a lot and driving to HEB and back, or to the border and back. I feel better being closer to it, the border that is, but I feel awful not being able to cross.

The postal workers alternate every day. My favorite is the one who blasts music from his truck, I can hear him coming before I see him. We don’t really know how to act around each other anymore, and he puts the mail in the slot, sidestepping to give me more space. I don’t really want the space, but it’s nice of him to give it to me. As he’s walking away, Mom runs out to give him extra hand sanitizer.

Most nights we walk over to the smelly lake and make a lap past the library and the water treatment facility. Two nights ago Seton found ducklings at the lake; “New life!” she sent me on WhatsApp. We still use WhatsApp, even though she had to leave India because of the virus. These days she walks around our neighborhood doing her Farsi lesson, talking with her hands. I run out the front door as she passes, stopping short of a 6 ft radius.

It’s what we need: new life. I need ducklings in the same way I need water and salt and dark chocolate and hugs and sunshine. And the sunshine, where did it go? I feel blurry without it.

[claraduffy]

9/2 and 9/15

9/2

if I'm going to love it more than you I don’t want it If I’m going to want it more than you I don’t want it If I’m going to abuse it I don’t want it if it’s not good for me I don’t want it If I'm putting it above you over you before you then take it away from me God take it away from me It’s not better than you it’s not sweeter than you it’s not deeper than you it’s not more abundant than you it’s not richer than you it is not the source of all truth it is not the source of all love it is not my peace it is not my joy it is not my hope You are all of those things it is not about Reynosa it is about you

9/15

and things are a little clear-er but not a whole lot. Still counting backwards since I left - 31 + 11 = 42 days passed since I’ve been there, 6 weeks today and what an interesting 6 weeks (what a very hard 6 weeks) it has been. Coupled with a lot of sweetness, it’s all been a little bitter or rancid or dry. The kind of spicy that makes you cry and taste it for hours after you’ve swallowed it, the kind of heavy that sits in your stomach like raw pizza dough like hot tears like period cramps. The kind of tasteless-ness that has you reaching for the restaurant salt and knowing it will never make it much better. The kind of hurt that is dull and buried but sneaks up throughout the day until it leaks into my phone call at the bus stop, the kind of apathy that makes me avert my eyes, hold back opinions, scrap questions, scroll endlessly. The kind of fear that makes my stomach turn and my fingers hold my thumbs and my eyes close, frantically trying to think of something else, the kind of anxiety that makes me type and delete texts and dream every night and roll over at 6:45 am and de repente, recordar. 

[claraduffy]

on abundance

On these 6 months: the words have been lost to me for some time now. I sure want to find them, or to look for them in an uninhibited sort of way. I’ve done myself some harm, I think, by hesitating to look for them; by sitting blithely in the sunshine without praising it when night-time comes. It sure is a spacious place out here - more spacious than I ever knew or could have known. There are marvels and then there is orange construction fencing around a broken up street; there is pure honey goodness and later there is cheap ice cream and stomach cramps and hurt feelings. This life is paradoxical! 

Some of the very lovely and holy things I want to explain are the true welcome of my team and people I’ve met in Mexico. I want to explain the devastating beauty of Aquiles Serdán - its people so weathered and strong, so hurt and yet reaching out for more. I want to laud the hungry and restless children, their fingers curled around the iron gates, waiting for 5 o’ clock, screaming “ya son las cinco!” I want to stop and remind you that I and my words (my words!) are completely inadequate to really take you there, down Calle Alamo, over the topes and past Lupita’s carnicería, past Antony and Eva sitting under the magnolia tree, to the red gate of the mission where Miguel is sitting on his five gallon bucket. I can’t take you there, but I will try and explain what it has meant to me. 

If there’s one true thing I know it’s that God gives us each other. He gives us to each other and it doesn’t always make sense to me why and how and who and when, but in these six months he’s given me people and given me to people, and through these beloveds God, sometimes gently and other times quickly, is pulling me out of my-comfortable-self, into a place where I am helpless and vulnerable and afraid, doomed except for His hand pulling me along. There are almost no earthly reasons anymore, just this hearty, blind sort of trust in His purpose. 

Let me be more clear: what I mean is that he didn’t have to let me in on the glory of his work in Mexico. I am not Mexican. I am here with a 6 month visa and a short term commitment to serve in a mission. I have no right to be here. But I am helpless when I turn to look at his face of Love and Mercy. He let me come, anyway. 

One thing that I keep coming back to is the hands: holding hands, shaking hands, hi-fives and secret handshakes; the hands of my grandfather, so wrinkled and scarred; the hands of my grandmother, softened by years and always laden with jewelry, memorable in the way they touch - pure tenderness. Hands mean something, and have meant something here because almost every day I have looked down and found my own hands dirty - paint, clay, mud, dust, mulberry juice, soil, mango, markers, glue, chile or masa. And it is delightful to work in this way, with my hands, and to have people working alongside of me, getting their hands dirty, too. 

The other thing is realizing what this picture - me with dirty hands each day - can teach me about my heart and the way I walk toward the throne. I am forever looking in the mirror. I am forever pushing to the front of the line. I am approaching others thinking about what they can give me or do for me. I am climbing up to the top of the jungle gym, perching there and thinking ugly things about my friends playing tag on the ground. I am thoughtless and lazy and sometimes bulldozing through the day like it’s mine to tear down and use for my own purposes. I’m filthy! Todd (Leon) Bridges sings in his song, River, “There’s blood on my hands, and my lips are unclean.” One grace is realizing this: as I get my hands dirty working and playing every day, my hands are also dirty in the way I sometimes walk selfishly and destructively, not caring for others or listening to God’s voice. My hands are dirty when I believe I can do it alone and forget how much I need Him, and I run toward those desires of my heart that are deeply selfish and, really, evil. My hands are dirty in this way, too. 

In Ezekiel, God is addressing Jerusalem, employing the image of a bride whom he loves and who is cheating on him. 24-26: “For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”

Every day I get my hands dirty, literally, and at night I get to wash them and take a cold shower and rest, knowing that in the morning his mercy will be new. I get to apologize and ask my friends for forgiveness, and their mercy toward me flows from Him, too. I get to stand, sort of stripped and helpless, in this devastating and beautiful city and accept a little more every day this heart of flesh that is going to be inconvenient and inefficient for the rest of my life. He doesn’t get tired of sprinkling clean water on me. He knows I will get my hands dirty again. 

Isaiah 55 is the name of the mission, and that chapter of the Bible paints a picture of abundance that is ringing in my ears. 1-3: “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; listen, that you may live. I will make an everlasting covenant with you, my faithful love promised to David.” 

I am standing here and I have nothing of true value to offer Him - I am thirsty, I am always needing something. He sees me and sees that I cannot pay for it, but he asks me to come! Because I can see myself this way, I can see others who cannot pay for it either, and I can point to my loving father and say, I know you cannot pay for it but please, come! 

Later in the chapter it says something of the nature of Christian mission, of inviting others (and others you know not!) into this unbelievable grace. 5: “Surely you will summon nations you know not, and nations you do not know will come running to you, because of the Lord your God, the Holy one of Israel, for he has endowed you with splendor.” He gives me the tools and the courage to talk to people in my second language, to ask them about their pain and their joy and sometimes share where my hope comes from. Some days the girls from the community center literally run toward us when they see us from a distance opening the black iron gate. Out of breath, Daniela hugs me with her long, bony arms, pulls a caramelo out of her pocket for me, and asks me to braid her hair. 

The end of the 55th chapter of Isaiah goes like this. 12: “You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. Instead of the thorn-bush will grow the juniper, and instead of briers the myrtle will grow. This will be for the Lord’s renown, for an everlasting sign, that will endure forever.” 

I have gone out in great, dizzying joy and known unexplainable peace in these six months. There have been moments of bursting into song, and creation around me has declared his glory. I want to laud and praise Him for all of it: 

living on Calle Nogal with Kimi, a wise and kind mother-sister-friend, sitting at our little table eating grapes with the sunlight pouring in the window; the kittens born behind our washing machine and the giant bougainvillea plant coming out of the ground a little more each day; the dear friends who flew and drove and dug out their passports to visit me here; to Kate who gave me books to read that I am still rambling about to anyone who will listen; to Keila Alemán with whom I sat in the park with a box of pizza and who listened so well and who walks so kindly and with eyes so wide open (to Keila who has taught me so much by being a friend and caring for others as I watch in awe!); to Mario whose humility and joy and attention to others are rare and precious; to Keila Xoca who is brave and steady and weepy and true; to Jacki and Ashley and Grecia and Jenny and all the girls who answer my endless questions and learned the table beat thing and poured chamoy over their apples; to to initial thrill of driving alone in Reynosa and to the rose man and the men who clean my windshield as I laugh and ask them not to; to Azalia sewing red thread through my ripped jeans and Adalia walking me through the centro; to the giant nemo piñata and cake in my nose and ears after the mordida; to the warm rain falling after sweltering days painting; to baseball and soccer with boys who called me Cristiana Reynaldo; to crying on the back porch of the mission and to staff meetings passing biscuits around; to picking mulberries with Beto then climbing on top of the backhoe to reach more berries; to the crazy Dr. Simi costumed men dancing in the street as the sky explodes in shades of pink and orange and I drive home (this is my home?!) singing in Spanish, ready to kiss the dry, rocky ground littered with broken bottles because all of this is holy and undeserved and pure, 100-proof grace. 

I could go on and on (and I have) but I will stop now. I just want to say that I’m thankful and that I believe this Grace is waiting on you, too. That the God of Mercy wants to sprinkle clean water on your dirty hands and give you good gifts. That there is more room, more grace, that there is abundance, and freedom in this knowledge: Romans 8:15 “The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father!”

[claraduffy]

me to God in april in Coahuila

lord that your palabra would be a burning coal on my lips

that i wouldn’t cease my pointing back to you

that my heart would beat with urgency at the oportuno o no oportuno moments to SAY IT

that I would see your fingerprints on every thing alrededor de mí

that your work on the Earth would be as real to me as the words of others

as clear to me as my own needs are to mi corazon egoística

that you would lead me to continue meeting people that change my mind and my heart

that i would know that it is you changing my mind and my heart

[claraduffy]

God to me in april in Coahuila

You’re not asking me to open your ears to hear Spanish

You’re not asking me to open your lips to speak Spanish

You’re trying to do it out of your own strength. 

You’re not asking me what to do about much - you’re making decisions out of your own desires, will, expectations. 

You’re not asking me for what you hope for. 

I am a concept to you. You don’t think of me as your father. 

I am the reason you do lots of things but do you know me? 

You know about me

You know the right things to say

But your heart is hard. 

You watch in confusions as others weep with love for me

You lift your hands but your heart is still in your stomach. 

You look at the mountains and your cannot believe their beauty

but you hear about my love and it’s cotidiana

You know too much and you feel too little

You are not giving me enough room to work

You are filling yourself up with desire, effort, expectations, distractions, pride 

and not making space for me. 

Do you believe I know you? 

Do you believe I always have? 

Do you believe me when I say I am the best at pursuit? 

I want you to choose me. I want you to trust me when I say I know what’s best for your heart. I want you to admit you’re weak so that I can be strong. 

I want you to ask me when you need help and esperar gran cosas de mi! 

I long to meet you in your longing. What you don’t always realize is that your longing is for me. 

[claraduffy]

true things only, 3/19/19

My desire to learn more of Spanish is so strong it is scaring me 

it is flowing out of me like hunger 

like anger 

like breath

I feel like I’ve run into a wall, one with an eye-level hole

And on the other side I can see them having a feast & they are fully connected & I want so deeply to be there but

I don’t know how to ask and I freeze up when someone offers me a hand to begin climbing the wall 

it’s like I’d rather stay frustrated

can I get back if I go over there

will I ever love it again on the home side? 

[claraduffy]

House on 38th

It’s been like breathing really slow and then sometimes fast. They and I and the space in between growing larger and then smaller, like coming home to two friends drinking wine in my bed at 1:30 in the morning; like perpetually losing my water bottle but knowing that there’s a million cabo bobs cups in the cabinet and cloudy water in the brita. It’s been like walking in the door 100 times to faces that are familiar and ask you about what you’ve been doing out there. It’s so rare that we all get out there together, but we all breath slowly in the same house every night. And we all open our eyes and stretch and shower and eat breakfast here. There’s something impossibly intimate about it, waking up together I mean.

The first morning I woke up in the house on 38th street, I was nervous to go into the kitchen. I wasn’t sure what I would say, or how it would be with these girls, when I was grumpy and slow and in a morning mood. But I got up anyway because of the coffee and the doing the thing that scares you, and we talked and I got used to it, like all things. The evenings are better though, when there are more stories to tell and most of the days things have been done. Sometimes we have sat together and had wine and talked, or watched movies with the front door open and leaves blowing into the house. Sometimes we have lain on the floor giggling until our stomachs ache, or doing 8 minute abs until our stomachs ache. Lately there’s been more boys around, boys who like my roommates. I’m happy for them, but I’m glad they’re usually not here early in the mornings.

We named our house after a movie none of us have seen. It’s a classic, but none of us are really movie buffs. I’m especially not. I used to like a boy who really loved movies, but even then I just listened and tried to ask the right questions. I hoped he would change the subject soon, because I’d rather talk about books. College is a selfish time, even if we try not to be.

We have an instagram account and have had few good facebook events, but what happens when everyone leaves is better. We aren’t family, and we don’t act like one. It’s something sort of different from that. We are so privy to one another’s quirks, nothing is a surprise anymore. That’s sort of like family, but there is a distance, too. You can close your bedroom door but someone will open it. You can leave all day but someone will ask you where you’ve been. I think that is the tension of it all, that distance and closeness in a sort of tug-of-war.

It’s real quiet until someone walks in. And it’s real loud until everyone leaves. That’s easy to understand, but I’m still baffled sometimes by the thought and effort these relationships take. They are so worth my time, more worth it than a lot of other things.

The hardest thing is knowing when to yield or stand up, when to hide or spill your heart, when to clean up or when it doesn’t matter as much as the conversation you need to have. I think it would be easier to just be house mates, to have a chore chart and thicker walls and different schedules. It would be easier to not know one another the way we do, to keep the walls up and the blinders on and never take off our thick skin. But the hard thing I think is making sure the walls stay down and words stay true and, the heaviest thing, to be completely and utterly present. How quickly my mind can run to my to do list, my schedule, my education, my ministry, my stomach. Presence is something I can’t do well without the help of the Holy Spirit. It’s so needed though, and bears such fruit.

The sweetest thing is sending each other on dates from the backdoor mostly and sometimes the front door. It’s waiting for that girl to come back and tell us everything that happened. It’s making breakfast together and reading out of the book of John. It’s coming home after campaigners to 4 strings of Christmas lights on the ceiling, all the furniture moved, and champagne in plastic cups for a 21st birthday. It’s most times we move the furniture, whether it is to host Friendsgiving or a paella party or just dance around on the rug. It’s the rug that a boy spilled wine and then water on. It’s the late nights after football games that we would have junior year, making breakfast together and taking pictures of anyone who sat on the couch next to a boy. It’s plucking eyebrows on the couch and then waxing upper lips. The sweetest thing is praying over one another by the door, on the couch, on the porch. It’s folding each others laundry but sometimes just dumping it on their bed. It’s not being perfect but learning a lot of forgiveness and grace.

I am going to miss living with so many people. I am going to miss them opening my closed door and asking me about my day. I am going to miss dancing around in our prom dresses from high school. I am going to miss cooking in the kitchen and then not cleaning it up for a few hours. I am going to miss the way it feels to come home from club to everyone collapsed on the couches, or already trying to do homework, and have my head so full of high school girls and skit characters and know that they understand completely.

I have learned that not everyone grew up loading the dishwasher in the same way as me. And that some things bother my friends that don’t bother me, and that that is an important thing to note. I’ve learned that doing something that you don’t feel like doing because it means being with your friend is worth it, and eating a lot of cookie logs is okay when you’re only 21. I am going to miss the girls who loved me when it was hard to. I am going to miss going to bed in the same house as them, and eating breakfast when we’re tired and there’s a million things going on in each of our separate heads. I have this theory that it would be a lot easier to live in isolation, to not know anyone but yourself and only take care of yourself. It is the wrong choice though, that I know for sure. I am better because of them. I owe a lot of growth to them and their truth, to Jesus and the way he lives in them, and in me too, miraculously. Alabanza a Jesus para los dos años pasados, lleno de gracia y forcejeo, completamente valioso e inmerecido, Lo elogien.

[claraduffy]

Anabel

I met Anabel during sorority recruitment, in the Kappa Delta house, where she had recently taken the job of maid. It was my senior year as a member, and my third time to chant and clap through the chaos of recruitment. By the fourth time I rushed by her, dressed identically to the other 150 plus girls rushing by her in white shorts and light blue shirts, it occurred to me to say hello. She was dusting.

A few days later, things were mostly the same, except different outfits and more pressure. I was hiding during a recruitment party and ran into Anabel in the stairwell. Over the swell of high pitched voices from below, I began, “Puedo practicar en español?” watching her reaction closely.

“Si,” she said, curtly, expectantly, almost challenging me. I stumbled over my words and she corrected me. I made fun of myself for doing the sorority thing, and she laughed, admitting that she thought it was loca. I agreed. We chatted often for the rest of that week, about music, her daughter, and what time parties would be over that day. A few weeks later, I set out to get to know Anabel better. We planned to meet in the study room of the Kappa Delta house after lunch on a Friday.

Before I interviewed Anabel, I hadn’t yet taken the time to see her clearly. She is short in stature, with honey brown skin and thick, dark eyebrows. Her raven hair is usually pulled back out of her face. When she sits down to talk with me, she carefully peels off blue latex gloves and pulls her cell phone out of her pocket. Trying to diffuse the tension, I introduce our interview into the voice memo app on my phone like I am a real reporter, saying the date and time in Spanish, only to get the year wrong and call it 2016. Anabel corrects me with a wry smile, and laughs uncomfortably. “Where are you from?” I begin, the Spanish words clumsy on my tongue.

Anabel was born in 1977 in San Luis Potosí, in the interior of México. She is one of seven children born to her mother and father, buena gente and an alcoholic, respectively. She grew up in a house across the street from mejor amiga, Iris. Anabel and Iris would play on the street together, picking up the large rocks off the road and carrying them around “como bebes, or Barbies.” Her family struggled to make ends meet, and at 8 years old, Anabel took her first job helping an older lady make bread and cleaning her house. To pay for middle school, she lived with her aunt and uncle and took care of their young children, so that her tio would buy her school shoes, books, and a uniform.

I ask Anabel if she will describe her mother, her eyes grow wide. “Siempre nos cuidó,” she begins. She tells me that her mother was muy trabajadora, and that she called Anabel her right hand. She doesn’t say anything more, but I wonder if she is holding back, because of her wide eyes.

Anabel speaks more of her father, but with less feeling. He got cancer when she was a teenager, around the time she began to consider moving to the United States. His alcoholism was part of the reason for her family’s poverty. “An alcoholic lives in un otro mundo than someone who doesn’t drink. My father was a good mechanic, but él desperdició all of his money on alcohol… But you learn from all of this,” Aprendes de todo, Anabel repeats throughout our time together.

I ask her why she decided to leave San Luis Potosí, and she explains that her tia, who she lived with in middle school, called her one day, saying “My nephew is moving to los Estados…where we have car repair businesses. Do you want to go?”

Anabel said yes without thinking. She giggles as she tells me this, how she said yes to immigrating at 19 without blinking, without considering. “But I still had to talk with mamá,” she begins, and I can hear the catch in her voice; I can see her wavering. “I didn’t ask for her permission. I just said, I’m going. But ella no quería, y lloraba…but I thought if I came here and made money, I could help her with my father’s medical bills. I told her on the 18th of February, and I left on the 24th of February for Austin, Texas.”

Anabel’s answer to several of my questions is mi hermana. She has two, but she always means Lorena, who was born two years before her. Lorena is Anabel’s most treasured sister and closest confidant. When Anabel was pregnant in Austin with her third son, Alonso, Lorena was pregnant too, in San Luis Potosí. “They were born on the same day, the 29th of April, mi hermana en México y yo aquí.” Anabel claims Lorena is more honest than the rest of her siblings, and of course she is la madrina of Anabel’s firstborn, Zair. “If I’m sending money to México, or if I need to pay someone: ella,” she emphasizes.

Later in the interview, I ask her to tell me in detail the events that lead up to her leaving. She replies that she and her first novio broke up right before she left. I ask her what he was like. “Me cuidaba mucho…” she says lightly. “He always had flowers behind his back. He loved to surprise me. If we were eating, he would grab the paper napkin and write me a love note. He would make me mixtapes…Almost every weekend, we would ir al cine, a un restaurante…muy bonito.” She pulls out her phone to look for a picture, but realizes that she doesn’t have one.

I tell her I can imagine him, and that it’s more fun that way. “He always had flowers behind his back,” she repeats, and I tell her I will think of him that way, con flores atrás su espalda. “You’re probably thinking, why did it end?” she prods.“ Yo no sé. It was like, yesterday to today, over. Como nada. And then I moved here.”

Anabel makes sure I know that there is not much to say about her youth. “It was muy cortita. I didn’t go to happy hour with friends.” After living and working in the US one year, Anabel got married on the 9th of May 1996, the day I was born.

She and her husband, Ciro, have three children ages 13, 14, and 18. Her youngest, Alonso, has autism. “You would never know from looking at him,” she insists. “There are some parents whose kids have special needs, and they ask God, por que? But my son is muy intelligente. He’ll draw a picture of something he sees on the computer, and it comes out igualito…igualito. All three kids are my angels, but he’s a double angel.”

The fascinating thing about talking with Anabel is that she was at once vulnerable and guarded. She both raises her eyebrows at my Spanish mistakes and lays her heart bare at my questions. She cries talking about leaving her mother in México, and laughs about young guys these days, saying all that’s on their minds is el sexo, and gone are the days of mix-tapes and paper napkin love notes.

Before I run off, I thank her for her time and she slips on her blue latex gloves again. “I’ll see you around here, right?” I nod, and my heart swells as I begin to process all the stories she’s told me. I have a paper to write.

[claraduffy]

Melody

I met Melody in all level basketball class, in the fall of our junior year at UT. We weren’t at the same skill level, so I have the “all level” label to thank for her friendship. Somehow our gap in skill level didn’t stop us from becoming friends. Later I would learn that there is very little one can do to avoid being friends with Melody. Her heart is too kind, voice too inviting, joy too infectious.

Most Tuesdays and Thursdays that semester I would run into the gym late, and join the group running, rounding the back corner by the door I came through. Melody and I naturally fell to the back, wordlessly agreeing that winning the warm up was less important than joking about the boys who were trying to. During the third class meeting I asked her about the words on her t-shirt:  “next stop med school.” That was the day I learned Melody’s purpose in Austin—she was learning to heal people.

Flake that I am, I dropped out of basketball class in the 3rd month of the semester. Melody reached out to me and asked to get lunch before winter break. There’s no expectation on in-class friends to keep up after the class was over, but this girl was different (is different).

Melody Nnedinma Adindu was born in Irving, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, in 1996. She is the eldest sibling, followed by two sisters and one brother. Her parents were born and lived until early adulthood in Nigeria, her dad moving to Texas to live with a friend and attend Dallas Baptist University in 1999. After marrying in Nigeria, Melody’s mother joined him in Irving, where all four of their kids were born.

From pre-kinder until she was in 4th grade, Melody and her siblings attended a charter school in Dallas called Universal Academy. It was a challenging school made of kids mostly from minority groups. At Universal Academy, Mel learned to raise her hand quickly if she knew the answer, and to love learning. The charter school filled her up with confidence, which seemed to bubble over in the way she spoke with authority at age 11.

One week before the first day of 5th grade, Melody’s parents moved the family out of their apartment in Irving and into a house in Grand Prairie, Texas. The first day of public school brought ridicule, both when Melody wore the dress shoes that were required at her old school and when she too eagerly to raised her hand when she knew the answers. She went home that night asking for tennis shoes. “I wanted to wear the right clothes,” she recalls.

Middle school, the next year, brought something new: sports. Melody chose basketball, and put all of her effort into it. Finally she had a place to do her best, unashamedly. She was very good, and a starting player most games. But the girls on the basketball team saw something else. Melody didn’t quite fit with them in the way she spoke, wouldn’t talk about others the way they did, and didn’t hang out with them on the weekends. Melody didn’t fight with them, or at all. And she stuck out, sorely.

She still can’t shake the feeling she had when she first heard the words, “not black enough.” To her, it sounded more like “not enough.” Late one night in the 7th grade, she was added to a four way phone call with some of her classmates. After talking for a while she heard someone whose voice she didn’t recognize say “Someone sounds white on this call.” Her stomach dropped, realizing quickly the stranger was talking about her.

For some of the teasing she endured as a young person, she knows her parents are to blame—for raising her African. “They just wanted us to work harder than the rest.” she explains. “You don’t need to worry about guys right now,” her mother would say, “You’re too young.” Replace the word “guys” with anything but school, and Melody was too young for it. Their relationship was hard in adolescence, Melody reaching for her mother’s guidance and her mother hyper-focused on school. But as a college student, Melody sees her mother as her greatest confidant.

Her passion still lies in school, years after being made fun of for knowing too many answers. She excels in her classes, making connections everywhere she goes and tutoring biology freshman at the library. As part of the diverse TIP Scholars program her freshman year, Melody was placed in most of her classes with Latino and African American students, not quite the norm for the rest of the university. Now in classes where she is the only African American in the room, Melody insists “I’ve never experienced somebody at UT play down my intelligence because I’m black. I can’t speak for others, and I know that goes on here. But it’s never happened to me.” Melody has a voracious appetite for knowledge, for the tools she needs to be a doctor. Her caring nature shows itself in her friendships, her easy way and open smile. It makes sense, even to the most recent acquaintance, that Melody wants to be a doctor. I think she could be anything, absolutely anything. She is too much goodness. She passed me the basketball even when she knew I wouldn’t make a single shot.

[claraduffy]

Intimacy > Novelty

I set out to write something about the value of intimacy over novelty during the summer I experienced the most novelty of my short life. That summer I spent 6 weeks living in a foreign country, listening, speaking, and learning in Spanish, and traveling to new cities with other college students. That summer, I often found my heart was overwhelmed with cosas nuevas I was experiencing. Eventually I carved out time to be alone and write so that my brain could catch up.

In these journal entries, the loudest themes reveal a struggle between intimacy and novelty. I had an abundance of one and a shortage of the other. My friendships were new and sparkly, the city was foreign and I was experiencing new flavors, faces, and vistas cada día. But in the long walks to the centro to meet friends, in-between moments on the bus or looking out my bedroom window, what I craved the most was friendships that were honest, vulnerable, and intimate. As this idea grew in my head, I began to spend time trying to get people to admit that study abroad was hard, and that sometimes they were scared or anxious or overwhelmed. I began to listen for the pauses, the shaking in a voice, the hesitancy in manner of speaking. It became my priority to get honest about the thoughts and feelings and fears that were running through my head. I wanted to get honest in the joy-filled, exhilarating moments, but especially in the hard moments.

As weeks rolled by and I found myself in closer relationship with my travel companions, I realized that I probably hadn’t manipulated things so much as time and God had worked their magic. I began to feel known, which was a game changer. Friendships settled into that comfortable valley after some hard things have been shared, and acceptance and respect had been passed around enough for there to be trust. And I couldn’t have predicted that. I trust most people almost immediately. But there’s something more than that, and I think it’s called intimacy. And I think it takes time, and work, and maybe something else I don’t know about yet.

When I first heard about the difference, or the tension between intimacy and novelty, it was in a commentary about a song. John Mark McMillan references the song “Tougher than the Rest,” which Bruce Springsteen released in 1987. He is describing his relationship with his wife, and extolling that she, thankfully, is tougher than the rest. Maybe this has something to do with him being difficult, or maybe just marriage being difficult. I wouldn’t know. But the principal I believe rings true in friendship, too.

Novel friendships, at least in the first few months, are sugary and fun. You are still something new and shiny to another, and they to you. They have never hurt you and you can’t imagine them doing so, anyway. There is no tension about being with them, no forethought required before a conversation. You do not have to worry about hurting them because you do not know how to.

Intimate friendships have some traction. They have some scars, and some experience together, and you have built up that report like a callous from doing a lot of pull ups. Pull ups are hard, and it’s very tempting to give up. But it’s worth it to have the muscle and the callous. Intimate friendships are an enviable strength, something with which to face the inevitable sharpness of living. Intimate friendships are when you know that your friend is going to stick around through any and all of your human crap. They operate out of the mercy and forgiveness of Jesus, and it shows: these calloused, intimate, dead true friendships are the ones that teach, comfort, and challenge me the most. In the words of JMM, “What people don’t understand about intimacy though, is that its actually better than novelty. It’s just also, harder.”