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Puerto Rican flags hanging downward - red and white stripes with a white star in a blue triangle

Puerto Rican flags hanging downward - red and white stripes with a white star in a blue triangle

There is a phrase that has become a rallying cry for Puerto Ricans, whether on the island, mainland, or those of us in authentic solidarity with la gente Boricua: that phrase is Puerto Rico Se Levanta, or Puerto Rico Will Rise. Our Puerto Rican brothers and sisters have been in mourning over the loss of the lives of their neighbors and families. Their hearts are broken by the incompetent and insufficient response of the U.S. Government to offer aid and recovery.

Though I am not Latina, I speak Spanish as a second language and serve a bilingual (English/Spanish) and multi-cultural church in Chicago. Our church began praying the moment we learned how devastating both Hurricanes Irma and Maria were to God’s people in Puerto Rico. We are a majority Latinx church; some of us have family still in Puerto Rico, and many were waiting anxiously for weeks, and even months, to hear that good news that God had delivered their lives from the devastation. My own suegro (father-in-law) migrated to Chicago from San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico over sixty years ago. But the Holy Spirit moved our church to do more.

The Holy Spirit spoke to us of the work of deliverance through the words of the Prophet Isaiah in chapter 61. Our church is located in a part of Chicago that has been an enclave for Puerto Rican migrants for many years, with the neighborhood of Humboldt Park developing what is known as Paseo Boricua in the late 1960s, and Humboldt Park still being a focal point for Puerto Rican culture, food and celebrations today.

Our church building was built with twelve apartments. Over the years, our congregation has utilized the apartments to house waves of immigrants and migrants, starting with German immigrants when the church was built in 1928. For almost twenty years, the apartments were used as domestic violence transitional shelter for women and their children, while our church basement was a transitional shelter for single men. In those years, our church began a program that is now a separate non-profit called Center for Changing Lives that is about helping people escape the cycles of poverty in a way that honors each person as creative, resourceful and whole.

The women and men we were honored to house engaged in coaching, holistic financial education, and goal setting. The majority of them now own or rent their own homes. For almost five years since Center for Changing Lives and our church became separate entities, our church has utilized our apartments for low-income housing in a part of Chicago that is being rapidly gentrified, where studio apartment starts at $1500 per month. Read more

1908 Chicago Cubs
1908 Chicago Cubs

1908 Chicago Cubs

The world was turned upside down for Cubs fans this week. Since their last appearance in a World Series in 1945, one of the truisms of Cubs fanship has been hope for the impossible: that this will be the year. With their World Series victory, does life as Cubs fans know it cease to exist?

The question of life as we know it ceasing to exist may sound cliché and existential, but consider the changes in the world since 1908, when the Cubs last won the Series, or, for that matter in 1948 when Cleveland last won the Series: cars are everywhere; humans have landed on the moon; and we’ve learned to send messages on tiny screens using just our thumbs. The world as we knew it, a century, or even decades ago, has ceased to exist.

Fans of long-suffering baseball teams have established a personal practice of hope. This has been true both of Cubs fans and Cleveland fans. To hope means to look forward. Looking back at what could have been only ends in disappointment. Read more