Contemporary Latino Art: El corazón de San Antonio

At the downtown Mercado there is an art museum, where the most recent exhibit celebrated Latin@ artists from San Antonio. I had been itching to go after seeing their massive poster emblazoned on the side of the museum, so on the last day the exhibit was open, there we went.

An evening at MujerARTES

MujerARTES is a women's art cooperative in the Westside, offering pottery classes to low-income women. The women's Bible study at our church had gathered there last week for their monthly dinner and lectio reading, and I bicycled over to spend the evening with them.

Muddle

The clouds loom large in San Antonio. I'm used to seeing the sky against the trees and rolling hills of inland San Diego, or as the backdrop to the San Gabriel mountains in Los Angeles. Even Tucson, flat pancake in the desert that it was, had the Catalina range cutting shapes into the horizon, and more distant mountains when you looked west toward the freeway or south towards Mexico.

San Antonio is not like that. Some days, the sky seems all-encompassing and the clouds are monstrous. When you drive over the bridge towards downtown and peer over the suburbs and the buildings, it all runs toward a flat horizon.

It's a different sense of scale, but I don't mind the clouds so magnified. There's hardly a blue-sky day here, because the clouds are always floating across the atmosphere, journeying somewhere in gentle clumps. Sometimes I take a moment to watch them on my lunch breaks at San Anto.

Associations between God and the sky are nothing new; same goes for the clouds. But I've always thought that God must live in them.

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All that's to say that I'm about to get really, really existential. Bear with me. It's all been bumbling about in my head for several days.

St. Tony

Guess which building is the community arts office.

It's the closing of our first work week, and I wanted to share with you a little about my placement now that I'm a wee bit accustomed to it.

A message from the church kitchen

Caro

New York part 2, and Sebal

Dear blog,

The Sunday of orientation week, we were sent to be commissioned at various churches in the New York/New Jersey area.

What's commissioning? Not being very hip on institutional church lingo myself, I didn't really know until recently, but I'll fill you in. The church effectively endorses you for mission, recognizing you as following God's call and pledging to support you on your journey. You answer a few standard questions about your Christian duty, the congregation says a prayer over you, and that's commissioning. Now a church home has your back.

This summer I've been commissioned by two churches: Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian, with whom I grew up, and Patterson Community Church, who graciously commissioned four of us YAVs last Sunday.

New York

Dear blog,

YAV year orientation was a week-long affair in New York state, at the Presbyterian, multifaith-oriented Stony Point retreat center. I saw deer, bats, one teeny firefly, and ravens probably large enough to devour the crows from back home. I even spotted a bald eagle diving over the Hudson River. Americaaa! 

But anyway.