by Katie Comfort
Not long ago I was wearing an Arab Catholic Scout uniform and marching all over Jerusalem with the Palestinian Christian community to celebrate Palm Sunday.
Between Easter and then I traveled home, contracted a cold virus, spent too many hours awake, and made pilgrimage to Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, for my Easter break traditions with my bestfriend (hi, Hannah, I love you).
I struggle with knowing how to talk about two places that are so diametrically opposed.
I don't know how to be happy in each place when my heart just really wishes a tectonic shift would make Chicago and Bethlehem neighbors. (It would have saved me a couple bucks, too.)
Honestly, coming home often feels really empty.
So on Easter, as I put on lipstick and wedges and sang hymns that my Grandma loved; I was also thinking a lot about those I love who celebrate Easter by playing bagpipes and celebrating holy fire miracles and making special cookies.
Coming home often feels really empty.
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by Katie Comfort
Last February I took a trip called Sankofa.
It's essentially a multi-day road trip with stops scheduled intermittently so we can keep our brains on overdrive and stretch our legs. The point of Sankofa is to reconsider how we talk and process race. It's a conversation that is ongoing, and the trip helps it get started.
Each year looks different depending on the group of students who participate. Last year we stopped on a plantation, at the location of the Mike Brown Shooting, and at an old Underground Railroad house. Historically the trip has been focused on white-on-black racism, as that narrative is hardly taught and greatly misunderstood. But the trip last year boasted other minorities as well. Students of non-black ethnic backgrounds, of alternative sexual orientation, of non-evangelical religions, and of the mental health community all started raising their voices by the second day saying, "What about my pain?"
On Sankofa I learned that when we become afraid of scarcity, things get ugly.
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by Katie Comfort
It's because I used to be able to fooling people into thinking I had a passionate voice.
But lately,
my voice just feels flat.
Like any air I had in my lungs that inflated what I said
got let out.
Like I've let it out.
What's scary about this is that passion is pretty much the only word I would use to define myself.
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