How Does This Play Out?

“Wealth, to me, is discernment.” Mari Fonseca

By: Gabriela Yareliz

We are entering uncharted territory. We arrived here strongly during the pandemic, and we are still watching this unfold.

What happens when independent media presents hard facts— names, resumes, photos, first-hand personal testimony from people in the positions to know (many personally asked to break protocol), license plate numbers, regularly kept logs— and the mainstream media, with only half the attention on it, continues to slander, not present any facts but just unsubstantiated opinions and dig in its heels. Who wins?

And if independent media has a larger community, part of that community having personal knowledge, how do we move past this point of two lines that don’t converge. Two alternate realities being put forward with one truth. One group telling another group with first-hand knowledge that what they know isn’t true.

Is it one of those situations where people keep status quo with an awkward knowing layer of distrust that continues to thicken over time? Does mainstream become like a Netflix show we all know is fiction? What happens after truth is revealed? Are we sitting on a ticking time bomb?

I am intrigued. As always, time is our friend and will reveal all things. What remains interesting is the group of us that rejects the truth that time reveals. Ego winning that battle. Where do we go from there? Where does willful blindness take us, as a society? Does it drive us mad? What else does it lead us to reject?

One thing is certain, there is a battle for the soul out there. Truth arrives to those who seek it. We get what we seek. That is why one must be so careful to not just seek validation but to truly seek truth. If we choose blindness, we will be allowed to keep it. Times are interesting and strange. Discernment is everything.

The Jesus

“I’m interested in the radical creativity hidden beneath the stained-glass Sunday school version. The Jesus who tells stories that detonate inside people for centuries. The Jesus who rewired entire social systems with using metaphors. The Jesus who refused every role people tried to hand him: good son, political puppet, religious mascot, and insisted on being something stranger, wilder, more alive.” Rainier Wylde

On the Other Side of the Trade

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Chris Kreider and Jacob Trouba (former Rangers Captain) were welcomed back into MSG, as they arrived to play against (and slay) their former team (the NY Rangers) with the Anaheim Ducks. These two trades were among the most controversial, in recent time, steeped in drama from the players to the fans.

The Ducks won 4-1. Kreider and Trouba looked happy— happier than they did before their exit from a team where rumor has it, they both wanted to stay. The departure was hard.

There is a comedian I like, Tony Dabas. The Staten Island native does skits and believably (and kindly) can play a whole range of nationalities. His imitation of accents and mannerisms are so on point. I kept wondering where he was from, and I found a video where he discussed growing up Arab on Staten Island. After 9/11, he started to pretend to be Italian because being associated with anything Arab at that time made your life hell. What started as survival became a full-on comedy style that brings light and laughter to the world.

Bryony Basse survived a disastrous accident that almost killed her and had her bedridden in her early years of being a young adult. What literally almost killed her, plus her rheumatoid arthritis, left her to finding classical Pilates. She healed her body, and now leads one of the best Pilates fitness platforms in the world.

Often, the story is way better on the other side of our pain, loss and shame. Sometimes, it’s that “trade moment”, the moment we are ostracized or the moment that threatens to take us out that takes us to a different level. What I have found as a pattern in these stories is that beyond the darkness comes a season where you are prepared to win.

May we all win 4-1 on the other side of our trade. Shine bright and slay.

Intersections and Delays

By: Gabriela Yareliz

I was absolutely sure someone was sabotaging my laundry run by holding the elevator on the fourth floor. Here’s the thing— the only way to get the basement where the machines are is via elevator. There is no staircase. I patiently waited (my frustration mounting). I wondered if I was going to be able to start laundry at all. NYC traumas.

They are currently sanding and painting the elevator doors in my building so I knew what the hold up was. Or so I thought.

When the elevator opened, little Ms. H was there. Ms. H is 98 years old and lives on the third floor of my building. She was going to do laundry, too.

“Oh thank God,” Ms. H said as I stepped into the elevator with my laundry bag. “I can’t see well, and I was praying someone would come down to do laundry at the same time as me and help me put money on my card,” she said.

I smiled. We put money on her card and then she realized she left her soap upstairs. I offered her some of mine. “It’s my lucky day,” she said. “I count my blessings.”

I was touched that she thought so. But it was a great reminder that, so often, timing and intersection are not random. It is often an answer to a prayer.

“We help each other,” Ms. H said to me smiling as we waited to go back up. It was a long wait because of the sanding of the doors, but we made it to the washers and were both smiling. That was all that mattered.

The Seeker is Honored

“When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy.” Matthew 2:10

By: Gabriela Yareliz

There are many narratives to the holiday season. There are different focal points, and reminders along the way. I believe those points of focus reveal a lot about those who celebrate and the values they cherish. We internalize these meanings. We hold them close in times of darkness.

We have the season of advent— where the whole buildup to Christmas is about the journey and silence leading up to Christmas. Advent is all about preparation and anticipation. We prepare our hearts. Its main focus is reflection on the promise to be fulfilled. In one word— hope.

Hanukkah is all about the miracle of the burning lights. It reminds us of a God who provides for us, and will orchestrate miracles on our behalf to give us victory over an enemy. A God who is an inextinguishable light in the darkness.

I can’t speak for Kwanzaa. I have lived all over the place and met all kinds of people. Never met or heard of a single person that celebrates Kwanzaa. So, if you celebrate Kwanzaa, pop into the comments. They say it’s about unity, so we will go with that.

Christmas— the world’s main event. The coming of the Savior of the world. A God who loves us so much, He injects Himself into our story to save us from our hopelessness and sin. A long-awaited promise fulfilled. God does not lie, nor does He abandon us in darkness. He comes in the most unexpected ways and defies expectations. A God who comes to us. Emmanuel. God with us.

Then, there is one more. It’s largely ignored by many cultures, but not by mine. The Spanish celebrate the Three Kings hard. It’s called Epiphany on January 6. We make them a focus point of our art. We paint them. We carve them. We remember them. It’s curious to me how much attention we give to the outsider.

Three outsiders (non-Jews in the story) who were mystics. They paid attention to the stars and had dreams. They were seekers. They trusted their gut and followed a star to Bethlehem from very far. Very far, guys. We sometimes overlook the level of conviction they had to arrive to where Jesus was. They were asking questions the whole way through and even stopped by the king to ask him where they could find the true King of the story. (It pissed the king off, and thankfully, the magi were warned in a dream to go another way back home).

They remind us that God is seeking after all of us. He drops signs and guidance, and the one who keeps asking and follows that inner knowing, finds Him. It may be a long journey, but the seeker will find Him.

The magi’s presence in our main story declares early on in the story that the Messiah, even though He came from the Jews, was not just for the Jews but for the world. He came for any person who would accept Him in their heart. The magi are drawn in; their worship, accepted.

And I would dare to say that these men who dared to venture out and ask questions and act on those questions remind us that God honors the seeker.

Do we ever just stop and think about that? I think we live in a time where seeking is demonized. Low effort reigns. You ask a real question and people feel you are out of line. Do we dare ever question a narrative? And I am talking everywhere— within religious structures, with our government, with the information we are given.

Maybe I believe in this to the extreme because I literally studied a profession that seeks to ask questions until you arrive to truth. That is what journalism is. Journalism always seeks to lift the veil and come closer to truth. It crosses lines. It disturbs what is “settled” when there are indications that something just isn’t right. It digs and digs to the point of exhaustion. It clarifies the complicated. It shares truth, which leads to justice.

I was reflecting on the magi after a dance I saw based on that hymn about the Three Kings. The one thing that came to mind as I watched was not just that seekers will find truth if they continue to search— even when the king gets mad and wants you to stop— but that God honors a sincere seeker. He honors the seeker with the gift of Himself. The seekers, in this story— after they asked the king for directions, wandered a bit and kept their focus on the star— they ended up seeing the face of God.

They ended up finding Him. When they found a child in poverty, they didn’t turn away thinking that what they found didn’t match their expectation. No. They prostrated themselves before the King. In their innermost self, they knew the truth in front of them. They blocked out the noise and saw what was real. They came prepared with gifts and gave Him all that they had that was of value. Their gifts were fit for the King.

In this life, where literally the main journey is to seek Him and seek truth (the truth sets us free; He tells us ‘I am the truth and the life’)— may we be the ones who ask and ask and wander following the sign given. May we see the light and be filled with “exceedingly great joy.” May we keep pressing on when nothing looks as it “should.” May we never stop seeking until we have arrived to see Him face-to-face. Until the day we bow to touch His feet— may we keep in our pursuit.

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone. […] For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.” Isaiah 9:2, 6-7

My culture’s focus on this holiday is one that I value deeply. We saw this story of salvation and didn’t forget the outsider. The ones who were deeply convicted, packed gifts for a king and went out to find Him. We didn’t forget the seeker. The one who sees the bright star in darkness. The one who believes even when God shows up in a way that is unexpected. We honor the fact that God honors the one who seeks. Importantly, the one who seeks, finds.

Surface Level

“Any major life rupture reveals who was never built for the terrain ahead […] when you discover that half the people you thought were ride or dies weren’t even ride or die adjacent, don’t waste time being sad about it. Those people could not have supported you much longer anyway. They maxed out their capacity for you the moment your life required more than surface level friendship.” Kelly Oxford

By: Gabriela Yareliz

This was a profound statement. As life takes you into the deep, you swim alone, but you also end up seeing and experiencing things beyond your initial imagination.

The depth requires a different level of person. We often get plunged into depths against our will and out of our control, so don’t be surprised if no one is ready for the plunge with you. In my own experience of loss, I have noticed so much in relationships and friendships revolves around the depth a person can handle. Can they go there with you?

Nothing is worth staying on the surface. Lose what you must to transform and see the new.