2nd Inter-Cultural Conversation
We plan to gather on Dec. 1 in San Diego, move to our Casa Jubileo site in Puebla, Mexico on Dec. 4 and finish in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas on Dec. 7-9. Total cost will be $500 plus your own airfare from TJ to Mexico City to Chiapas (approx. $300) We invite anyone who resonates with the call of the Biblical Jubilee and especially who are actively working among under-resourced populations to join us. Here is the itinerary of which you are welcome to join us for any part or the whole experience...
Dec. 1: Arrival to San Diego
Dec. 2-3: Initial gathering to evaluate JEM's first year as a bi-national org. and begin a draft plan for the future.
Dec. 4: Travel day (TJ to Mexico City & Puebla)
Dec. 5-6: Learn about the work of Casa Jubileo in Puebla. Add to draft plan.
Dec. 7: Travel day (Puebla to Chiapas)
Dec. 8-9: Learn about the work of our partners in Chiapas and finalize draft plan.
Dec. 10: Return home
Lee Van Ham has got the ball rolling with these conversation starters...
Political and ecological contexts—U.S. will have elected a new emperor ... urrr ... president. It may shift the political context in which we meet. The larger ecological context will continue to speak in all of our conversations.
Redistributive justice—Sharpening our thinking about Jubilee's redistributive justice and our actions to implement it. What are we learning about redistributing assets justly in OneEarth and religion-of-Creation ways? What are we learning about freeing those with more from the captivities of wealth and those with not enough from the oppressions they experience? What are we learning about practicing models of Jubilee's koinonia or solidarity economics?
Teaching Jubilee—What are we learning about teaching Jubilee as a biblical model of economics in a globalized capital economy? This topic acknowledges that few congregations, faith-based schools, or organizations have treated the biblical Jubilee as vital curriculum for modern discipleship or spiritual practice.
Truly practicing and thinking Jubilee in projects—integrity of projects Since the word "Jubilee" has been so diluted into 50th year anniversaries and such in most U.S. congregations, what are we learning about shaping projects that are honed by the biblical Jubilee for our world today?
Andrea Smith, in Sojo.net, posted an excellent piece that gets at a more reflective analysis of our own selves as we work for a better world.
These questions posed in this article may also help us go deeper in our conversation: https://sojo.net/articles/faith-action/decolonizing-trauma
"What are the organizing practices and strategies for building movements that recognize that settler colonialism, capitalism, white supremacy, and heteropatriarchy have not left us unscathed?
How do we create spaces to experiment with different strategies, as well as spaces to openly assess and change these strategies as they inevitably become co-opted?
How do we create movements that make us collectively accountable for healing from individual and collective trauma?
How do we collectively reduce harm in our intellectual and political spaces?
And finally, how can we build healing movements for liberation that can include us as we actually are rather than as the peoples we are supposed to be?"
