Yesenia Rodriguez, Blog #1, June 19, 2022 - Cheers to New Beginnings!

 Hello everyone and welcome to my first blog this summer! I am very excited to be sharing my thoughts and experiences I go through my internship and journey with my faith this summer. I am very happy to be working with Church and Society this summer with my placement internship being with Fundacion Escuela Nueva where I am doing research and evaluation work with them. 

The past two weeks have been very interesting as I am getting used to doing remote work. I am not going to lie, I wish I could have done this internship in-person as it is so much easier for me to learn and make informal connections with people while exploring new places. Lately, I have been doing a lot of excel work. I am looking forward to when I finish this part of my work so I can get to the more fun research and evaluation part of my internship. 

I am still making the best of my internship by reaching out to people and trying to connect. I hope I can do a better job at it in the future as well as I try to network for my post-graduation plans. I plan to apply for Fulbright and the Peace Corps, but I have already got an early decision admission to Teach for America. We will see where God will take me. 

The past two devotions we have had each Wednesday night have been fun. We have been exploring faith differently using water, labyrinths, and mandalas. Each tool has been interesting to use and I have been able to talk to others about it. It’s so interesting having other ways to pray and build my relationship with God. I like both the labyrinth and the mandala. I have to use it more in the future intentionally. 

During devotion, we have also been able to read We Cry Justice by Liz Theoharis. We read Chapter 11 “Jesus Came To Set It Off” and Chapter 14 “Wake Up, Jonah.” I really liked Chapter 11. We got to set our first devotion off right. It was a very empowering chapter where Jesus suffered and sacrificed and struggled just like regular people so that we could do better for others. It made me start thinking, however, how can we set it off when there is so much alienation in my community. How can people care for each other where, at least in the city of Philadelphia, people are scared of each other? How do we get people to fight for one another when they don’t know each other and don’t really want to know each other?  Something I have to think about more as we talk about organizing within the Church and building community. 

Chapter 14, “Wake up Jonah” was also really interesting. It will always stick with me that during dark times, “We are not in a tomb. We are in a Womb.” We can see dark problems as a time when really we should be building with each other. Dark times can actually give us hope as they could be taken as an opportunity for rebirth and new beginnings. After each winter is spring. I love that and it gives me more hope for the future even if America is in dark times today. 

Last Saturday was also The Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. It was a Moral March on Washington and to the Polls that called on ow-wealth people, state leaders, faith communities, moral allies, unions, and partnering organizations to disrupt the state and the politics of the United States. Although I could not join. I was happy to join virtually. They called on incredible action from people and really brought to light that we need to care for each other more. They called on us not to just talk about love, but to practice it. They implored that the worst thing for good people to do is do nothing. We need to do something. Not just thoughts and prayers. It is meaningless without action behind it. We need to be more appalled and weep more and mourn more. We need to continue crying even if we feel desensitized to the violence we see every day, whether that be physical violence, financial violence, or emotional violence. People do not need to die in the richest country in the world so young. People do not need to be poor in the richest country in the world. It’s immoral that so many people work so hard and cannot make ends meet for their families. I want to do more and talk less. I hope I can do more of that through the Church.