Yesenia Rodriguez Blog #5 July 24th, 2022 - Systems of Care

Hello everyone, 

I made it to my last formal week with my EYA internship at the General Board of Church and Society. I still will be doing another week with my internship at Fundacion Escuela Nueva. I feel so thankful for having the opportunity to work with the people I have met either through GBCS or Fundacion. I have been able to connect with thoughtful, passionate, and faithful people. It feels amazing to meet other people who want to connect their professional work with their faith work and finally intertwine those two parts of my life. I also have loved meeting people who are passionate about education specifically and working to help better the lives of kids across Latin America. 

Now on to this week’s readings. We read Chapter 33, “In The Beginning There Was Care” from We Cry Justice. I loved this chapter because I have been saying to a lot of friends for a long time that we need to stop focusing on “self-care” so much and instead change our perspective to community care instead. This chapter focused on how we need to build up the care systems in our society. It finally gave me the word I was looking for when having conversations surrounding community care. It’s not just a societal issue, but a systematic one. One that was intentional in breaking us apart. 

Society in the United States is so individualistic that people often are not looking to care for others. Were so focused on our individual paths of stability and success, when we could achieve that on a larger scale for everyone if we put a little effort into it. Things such as adequate medical care, adequate education systems, and sustainable ways of living so as not to further climate change are necessary for all of us, not just the vulnerable. A system of care is God’s system, and creation can only come from care. We are not isolated from each other, we are always in relation to each other. Instead of constantly over-pursuing personal responsibility in society, we should be prioritizing public assistance and corporate responsibility to adequately create systems of care. 

For Wednesday night devotion, we opened up with the question: What makes you smile? So I invite you all to also think about that. We answered it with questions like “my mother’s smile” and I answered “rainbows.” It was really nice to think about it and did make me smile. I also just felt grateful for God to give me rainbows, and the sight to see them, how they represent equality for me since each color is there equally, and how beautiful God can show that piece of art for free in nature. It’s also nice to think about how beautiful the sky can be after experiencing a rainy day. We also looked at three photos to pray upon and think about with God over our devotion time. It was of a sunset on a beach, a busy city street, and Earth from the perspective of space. All were very interesting to pray about and it made me very grateful to think about the life God has given me. 

During Friday’s devotion, we talked about our other book, Just Mercy as well as Civil and Human Rights with Kendal McBroom, Church & Society's Director of Civil and Human Rights. We had some very interesting conversation on how we, as a congregation and people, can further push for Civil and HUman rights despite the hardships of pursuing them. It can be very exhausting work, but we should be pushing for no death penalty across the Uited States. We should be pushing for more restorative practices that actually help communities, instead of pushing for mass incarceration and punitive student-to-prison pipelines. We should continue to treat people as human beings, even if they have made a grave mistake, and we should remember that not every law is morally right either. We should fight for those laws to be changed as well. There are many faith groups still pushing to expand human and civil rights, like Sojourners, the National Council of Churches, and the Catholic Network Lobby. Hopefully, I get to work with them in the future.