Church Living in a Diasporic Context

“I do not know what is all the fuss about driving here. This is like driving at home.” I told my wife while driving through NYC. “Of course it is like driving at home,” she responded, “there as many Puerto Ricans in NY as in the island of Puerto Rico.” Clever! As of now, 2013, there are almost 5 million Puerto Ricans living in the USA. I am one of them. I have made my home in the West Coast, which by generalization, as a Latino, I am Mexican. Yes, Mexican. Oh the many times in which I have been asked where in Mexico is Puerto Rico. Or the questions about my immigration status and citizenship. And the ever present comment about 5 de Mayo and El Día de los Muertos celebrations, both Mexican traditions, not Puerto Rican. However, by generalization as well, from my Latinos compadres and comadres, I’m label as an other - not Latino enough. Yes, someone being born with a citizenship and not having gone through the hardships of immigration issues disqualify in the West Coast as a bona fide Latino.

Why is this in the Outside Church Wall? Diasporic hermeneutics (mind you I am in seminary and once in a while I need to show that all those years of schooling are sticking). People living in the Diasporas are constantly in the need of cultural adaptation, negotiation and re-creation. Like myself, many live in the in-between space of not being from here or there. We make a new place for us. We learn to not to give ourselves to the nostalgic cultural representation of our culture’s (countries) past, neither give ourselves to full assimilation to our new context. Almost 5 million Puerto Rican’s in the USA diaspora (by then one wonder how useful that concept really is) live differently than the almost 5 million Puerto Rican’s living in the island of Puerto Rico and yet we have not fully assimilated to whatever it is to be USAmerican. Many of us expressing ourselves in Spanish, English and Spanglish. Ok, for real now, why is this in the Outside Church Wall? “Times, they are a-changing” stated Bob Dylan or as Cuban Troubadour Pablo Milanes would say “El tiempo pasa y nos vamos poniendo viejos” Things change, cultural expression change, context change. Anglicanism emerged out and propelled cultural and contextual changes. I wonder about the creative ideas that might emerge if as Episcopalians we give thought about cultural changes and imagine (if ever so briefly) as a church living in a diasporic context. Really, not the Episcopal Church of Anglophile colonial time, neither a church completely devoid of identity - not one of a hundred years ago, neither one that would be the same in 100 years, heck in 30, 20, 10 years. I wonder if we could experiment with setting nostalgia and fear of losing ourselves aside, and push strong enough the metaphor of the Via Media, the middle way, the in-between in ways in which new expressions of being can emerge and propelled into the future.

Eliacin