Lifeboat

This week at the Wesley Center we did a series of exercises to discuss what our priorities are and what we think is really important in our lives. We had to rank things like "three meals a day" and "friends" and "the stars and moon" in the order we would give up if we had to. We also filled out a "forced choice" test which was supposed to rank our priorities in areas like wealth, freedom, security, religion, orderliness, and new experiences.

I spend a lot of time working on various areas of my life. I spend a lot of time maintaining friendships and my relationship with my family. I also work very hard at school and try to have as many adventures as possible. But it is easy to go through life doing these things without really considering the order and reality of your priorities. It was also very interesting to discuss these tests with the other students at the Wesley Center. Most of us rate our family and friends very high in our priorities, and things like orderliness and wealth were less important.

For the final activity of the evening we all made up a character and then played a game involving epidemics with a shortage of medicine, lifeboats without enough space or food, and pirates who demanded human sacrifice. The point of the exercise was to vote each time for one character to have to die. While we treated this as a sort of funny game, we also discussed how leaders make decisions like this all the time, based on factors like wealth and youth.

I really enjoyed this evening, also, because we all got a chance to talk about ourselves and our own outlooks on life. I love the activities we do together when we study other topics, but sometimes it is a wonderful thing to talk about our own experiences and plans.

I also discovered something about myself that night: I am an extremely manipulative person. My nondescript character was the second-to-last to get voted off the lifeboat!

Spring Fundraiser a Smashing Success

Recently The Wesley Center students hosted a Spring Fling fundraiser. The fundraiser featured a silent auction including many of the Wesley Center student talents including handmade jewelry, Spanish Lessons, How to Set Up your own blog, handy man services and more. To date this fundraiser raised $3700 to support Wesley Center activities including Tuesday night fellowship dinners and discussion.
Below are some pictures and film from the Spring Fling, we are grateful to those who support the Wesley Center and hope you will continue to do so in whatever ways you and your family can.

Note: Spring Events Calendar Now Available

The Wesley Center Spring Events calendar is now up! This quarter promises to be a busy with nearly 40 events to choose from. The Wesley Center strives to meet the social, spiritual, and volunteer needs of the students participating. For the most part Wesley Center Events are Come As You Are; however, people looking to participate in any event marked Special Event, are asked to email peaceuofu@yahoo.com in advance so that transportation, food, and other logistics may be adequately prepared.
If you would like to receive emails about Wesley Center News and Events please send an email to peaceuofo@yahoo.com with the subject "Subscribe to Wesley Center List". The Wesley Center welcomes students from all walks of life and faiths.

Visual Arts: Theater Group

It is often thought that some forms of art that rely heavily on sight to create them are of particular difficulty for people with visual disabilities. This was proven false with the help of the Theater Group that used the Wesley Center as their headquarters. Students from the 4j School District ranging from first grade to a high school senior, who are blind or have low vision and hearing disabilities came together to act. The world of the theater is full of life skill lessons and experiences such as personal space in relativity to others bodies and how the sighted world sees you when you cannot see them. Through games, verbal and physical exercises and the acting out of a scene from Monty Python's the Holey Grail the group learned about themselves and had fun doing it. Each student have different skills, interests and accommodations.

Students scene here read their scrips

in Braille one being helped by her teacher.

No More Deaths Trip (An Introduction)

Note: the majority of this blog was previously published at http://www.isupportuoregon.org/my_duckstory/blog/katie_d

I have really struggled with starting this blog.

I want to write about my experience during spring break. I want to write about being out in the desert with the humanitarian aid organization No More Deaths, and tell you about hiking food, water, and medical assistance out onto the migrant trails in an effort to end suffering and death along our southern border. I want to write about the stories told, hardships witnessed, and friendships made. I undertook this trip with five other Oregon students, with the blessings and support of many people in our Eugene community, especially Warren and some kind folks at First United Methodist Church.

But it is hard to begin. It is hard on two levels: a personal and a public one. On a personal level this is a hard story to tell because my spring break was such an emotionally overpowering time. It was nearly bipolar: to witness suffering and be present in places that memorialized the pain of my fellow human beings, but at the same time to be surrounded by beauty and the hilarity that comes with close proximity between friends. It was an emotional jumble that I am far from sorting through.

But the public concern is just as difficult a barrier. This is not an issue that people feel united on. My alternative-style spring break was not helping to mitigate Hurricane Katrina damage, nor was it working with Habitat for Humanity. That is work that is not controversial, that I would stand in good company for doing: it’s work that nearly everyone would say is deeply needed and for the good of all.

But you tell the wrong person you were working on the border, helping “those Illegal Immigrants,” and you witness such extremes of reactions. You hear people applaud your humanitarian efforts less often than you hear the familiar litany of complaints: job loss, poverty, crime. And you have reactions of fear: fear that you were on the border consorting with drug runners and murderers.

I am not looking for approval or applause for my efforts in the desert. I do, however, feel moved to tell the stories and to share what I have learned and witnessed regarding this very complicated issue of migration. So, over the course of several blogs, I would like to tell a variety of stories. I will write about men I talked with at a soup kitchen in Nogales after they had been deported. I will write about the militarization of the border: about Border Patrol helicopters and car searches, and about seeing various aspects of the Border Wall, from art in Nogales to virtual wall towers to a section of fence outside of Sasabe that cost $8 million a mile but took a friend of mine less than thirty seconds to climb. And I want to write about two places we visited that moved me beyond what I can express in the format of a brief summary.

But for now, back to the personal part of this story. Camping in the desert a

nd working with No More Deaths changed me, and changed my expectations for my daily routines. I did not use a computer all week. I turned my cellphone off, and did not use my ipod. I also did not shower. The desert and our purpose there emptied me of many of my usual desires and habits. Instead I drank in a beautiful place, bonded with inspirational people, worked hard, and did my best to help those who needed it.

And now, back in Eugene, I feel called to hop back in a car and drive the 22 hours back to Tucson, to stay in the desert tent with its routine and its purpose. I will end this blog by saying that I will be going back to work with No More Deaths. This summer if I can, next spring break for sure, and possibly the entire summer after I graduate.

So please, read the coming blogs that we will be writing. We will all be posting these stories: stories of what affected us most, stories of harsh realities we have now witnessed. Hear what is happening with your (tacit) political consent and your tax dollars. Imagine the footprints in the baking sun, the lives left behind and the enormous fear of desert and patrols. I hope my stories can contribute to changes, somehow, that will lead to fewer deaths on our border, and to less fear.

I feel very present, still, in the desert and in what is happening there. I feel close to and conscious of the thousands crossing the desert tonight, desperately hoping for a new home and a true chance in life.