Blessings Blog

I've lived in Minnesota my entire life, and my third snow day ever comes after I've graduated college? Thanks Northfield! Man, even when I hate Minnesota (for dumping so much snow on us), I love Minnesota (for how the snow sparkles in the sun, for snow days, and for how an anonymous neighbor down the block just continued on with their snowblower and did our sidewalk too!). Minnesnowta Nice definitely won out today.

 

I'm thankful to have had some time with this house empty to just walk around singing. That has been so refreshing the last few days, praise God! 

I'm thankful to have had time, focus, and motivation to crank out another Cuba blog entry (I'm working through it slowly, we just learned and did so much!) today during my snow day. If you're interested, this entry is from when we met with a tobacco farmer and with popular educators who were part of Cuba's revolutionary (double meaning intended) literacy campaign in the early 1960's: http://kemstravels.blogspot.com/2013/03/1213-alberto-and-lucia.html

And I'm thankful for the great work IFSA (Carleton's InterFaith Social Action group) is doing to raise awareness about immigration policy, how it affects the Northfield community, and especially contextualizing how the status of being undocumented affects one's future in terms of opportunities for education and work in this country. IFSA has put together a presentation to deliver on the dorm floors at the scheduled study breaks, and I encourage you to take the six minutes to watch this video they've chosen as one of the pieces, even if you're a Carleton student who may receive this presentation in a few weeks: Illegal.

 There are almost two million undocumented children under the age of 18 in this country, and many of them really only know this country as their home. I think one of the most powerful reminders in this video is that with regard to students and their education, we should not punish them for being brought here by family as minors, but rather give them opportunities to follow their dreams and passions and contribute to this society they call home. In my book, hopelessness is one of the most dangerous things a human being can face. There are kids who are in school and see no point in trying or doing well because they think they have no chance of going to college (and many of them don't because without financial aid from the government or the school, cost of tuition is itself prohibitive), so what do they do? They get stuck figuring out other ways to provide for their families when they need the system to work for them to end the cycle of poverty. You do not have to agree with me on politics, just please watch the video, see how undocumented status affects the lives of these students, and reflect on the privileges and hurdles you have encountered.

With that, dear readers, I'll leave you with this lovely Brandon Heath song: Give Me Your Eyes.