Deaf Christian Fellowship

A Deaf church. Can a fellowship of about 15 people be called a church? Is a church without a defined “Mission Statement” still a church? What if pastoral duties are undertaken by a man with a degree in history rather than one who graduated from seminary? What if one of teachers and leaders is a woman? What if...what if the members of the church are Deaf?!

If you had little to no problem answering “Yes” to these questions (I won't insist on unconditional affirmative answers; Feel free to trail qualifiers after each “Yes”) then welcome to to the Deaf church located on the campus of Goshen College. Please note that “Deaf church” contains a capital letter following the format of Deaf Culture's rule regarding written reference to itself.

Wait, what?

“Wait, what” what? Were you unaware that “Deaf” identifies a culture as well as a sensory state? Well, now you know. Anyway, the Deaf church on Goshen College's campus is officially named the “Deaf Christian Fellowship,” although I have not seen that name being used by any of the actual members when referring to it in conversation. I suppose the members and attendees don't feel much need for using a formal name for their fellowship.

According to Phil Harden Jr., the presiding pastor, known churches for the Deaf are rather sparse in the area, the closest being in South Bend and in Fort Wayne, and at least the former of these is “having trouble staying afloat.” Perhaps these churches draw most of the Deaf Christians in the tens of miles range, thus accounting for the small membership of the Deaf Christian Fellowship. Or perhaps the Deaf community close to Goshen is not spiritually inclined towards following Jesus Christ. As the Pastor put it: “You could say that threatening the survival [of the Deaf church] is the Deaf people themselves...if they don't come. Social people will go bowling to basketball tournaments...they'd rather go there. But there are Deaf people who like church.”

So perhaps there are Deaf Christians who don't realize that they can get to a church that they can be edified by more comfortably and personally than some might experience in a Hearing church. From what I have seen of the interactions of this Deaf church's members with each other and with the Hearing members of the church that houses theirs (the Deaf church meets in a room in the building used by College Mennonite Church), the Deaf church members have longer, more informative, and more expressive conversations with people possessing ASL skills than they do with people who can only speak a language (and hope that the Deaf all lip-read proficiently).

Deaf-to-Deaf conversations among members of this fellowship can flow at breakneck speeds between people 10 to 20 feet apart, and someone not used to knowing what pauses, gazes, and glances indicate that someone else is signing can find him-or-herself worrying about whiplash as s/he tries to not lose track of the topic or any new information. If someone who uses ASL but is not a fluent signer is involved, the natural signers usually slow down (somewhat...they could still be too fast for the newbie) or repeat signs when asked. However, this grace necessitates that the Hearing person attempting to be a part of the conversation be accomplished at at least the rudimentary level of ASL. Simply signing “Hello,” “Good Morning,” or “Thank You” is appreciated, but only the bare minimum of engaging members of the Deaf church in their own language.

Lip-reading and speaking are not common skills in this Deaf church, with Pastor Phil being the only Deaf member I noticed regularly using voiced words. This seems to be an extension of his overall welcoming attitude towards visitors, not wanting anyone bold enough to venture into the Deaf World to be alienated. The rest of the fellowship is equally welcoming, and an English-to-ASL interpreter is even available for unskilled signers in order to ensure that visitors are not missing out, which is more praise I can say for this fellowship than for some other church groups' attempts at multilingual provision. However, I hope that, regardless of signing ability, the Hearing visitor gets familiarized enough with American Deaf Culture to be comfortable with behaviors such as frequent touching (including hugging), hand waving (not limited strictly to signing), and table-thumping (strong enough to be felt through the surface). A little knowledge of Deaf Culture would do the mostly-unaware Hearing World some good, and more even more, much like how, to finish with another Phil-quote: "The knowledge of God is good for Deaf people...They just don't know it!"

1 Local Business & 6 Ounces

The South Side Soda Shop functions as a contact zone not in the sense that it attracts people who have the specific goal of mingling but rather because it provides a service, product, site , and ambiance that people appreciate and want to have access to. The South Side Soda Shop does not force customers at different tables to interact with each other, but if the patrons care to nose into the business (or leisure) of their neighbors, the only ones stopping them are themselves.
The main point of going to The South Side Soda Shop boils down to eating good food in an interesting place. The main point of running it is to ensure an income, and probably more specifically to ensure an income from a source that provides a fulfillment of purpose for the possession of a particular set of skills, skills that make a diner heaven for people who enjoy that sort of restaurant. I make this supposition as a result of seeing some display of pride in the unique characteristics of The South Side Soda Shop. This does not require that the diner be explicitly defined as a contact zone between people of various categories. The people who run The South Side Soda Shop are not professional event planners. They just allow people to meet up should they wish to do so, provided that the customers are actual customers, not loiterers. I did not see any parties during my visits, nor did I see any info posted about chartering the facility or having a party hosted there, so I assume celebrations are not an official service of The South Side Soda Shop. It's not exactly a loud nor even slightly crazy locale...I mean, shoot, their jukebox is eviscerated.  What the diner supplies is seating, sustenance, servers, and a seriously impressive old-fashioned atmosphere. That's about all. To be able to do its job , the business entity comprises itself of individuals who fulfill the roles required to ensure the whole operation has no holes in it. The diner has waitresses, cooks, and a woman who seems to be occupied with being the hostess, receptionist, and the cashier all in one. The employees seem to be mostly white and female, although most (if not all) of the cooks are male, one of whom is also black. I suspect there is more of traditional cultural expectations dictating the gender division into female waitresses and male cooks, and that the white saturation is due to more of a "Things White People Like" sort of phenomenon rather than any inherent racism. Part of the evidence is that, well, a racist employer wouldn't be likely to tolerate even one member of a despised group within his/her establishment. Secondly, the customer base is primarily White, and none of the items on the diner's menu are of the type typically labeled "ethnic." So it seems to me that The South Side Soda Shop is simply a highly specific "genre" of restaurant, and just as an entire genre of books can be shunned by people who grew up with a different genre. On the set of The South Side Soda Shop, burgers and hoagies are the stars, especially those with the Philadelphian flair of the diner's owner. However, in the world of burgers, The South Side Soda Shop does not have competitive costs nor rival swiftness to some of the greasier joints in the area. This is not to say that the prices are unreasonable nor that the service is sluggish. The South Side Soda Shop just doesn't specialize in franchised fast food. Quick and cheap is to be found at the "local" McDonald's. But suppose that someone wants to at either a place with a true local vibe or a place with food that makes them feel like they're eating in a particular city. This hypothetical person need not be torn apart by indecision, because The South Side Soda Shop fulfills both of these wishes. This diner will appeal to appeal to a crowd that wants to feel like they're eating in a wholesome home-like setting, and the diner will also appeal to a crowd that is driven by a desire for mild amounts of adventure, a crowd comprised of the kind of people that get a kick out of being permitted to intrude into the inner sanctum of somewhere that has a history or perspective separate from their own...that's my guess, at least. I didn't go around asking people while they're eating. That would be breaking a boundary I could clearly see around each table within the first ten minutes of being in the restaurant. The elderly people there did not come to party or debate or any of that, and neither did the middle-aged couples that brought their young children. And neither did any of the few people who did not belong to the two previously mentioned demographics. In fact, people flocked to the privacy of booth tables, and if unfortunate enough to be the overflow forced to the open area tables, they kept to themselves as much as possible. I had better success making eye-contact with the backs of their chairs than with the people themselves. There was a counter with high stools within chatting proximity to the cooks, such as would be expected in most American diners, which nobody ever seated themselves at. But the environment was not hostile nor antisocial, just private. The invisible walls around each occupied table were typically respected by all the customers, with only one or two "violations" that I saw, and even those instances were fairly quick, and I never saw anyone dare to seat themselves at someone's table without an invitation. However, I did notice people watching other people. Observing other customers without engaging them seemed to be a general part of appreciating the environment of The South Side Soda Shop. This struck me as the way people make contact with creatures in an aquarium: Safely from the other side of sturdy glass, with only the staff being qualified to handle actual interactions.
It's a nice place, y'all should go there if you're its sort of crowd. Or even if you're not. Everyone would probably be pleased to see you either way.

POETKER

Audrey Poetker's works break all the way past the “personal space” kept between people, reaching into the emotional core and “thought space” of poet herself, allowing a reader alien to a would-be mother's point of view to see how it works and to get a sense of how always having such a perspective forced upon her must feel.

Audrey Poetker takes an approach that is intended to lend readers her rare insight into the feelings of a woman desperate for a seemingly impossible conception. Readers unaccustomed to blatant references to the act of sex and to secondary sex traits can feel uncomfortable with Poetker's poems, and readers who are particularly finicky about punctuation might be put off by the disintegration of it all in the last section of “Symbols of Fertility” and in the near-entirety of “Fallen Woman.” But this is poetry, so the poet is allowed to be a little more liberal with her use of language and with the personal content of her pieces. Poetker's prevailing themes are strongly concerned with the treatment of the body, what benefits one's body ought to be able to have or give, what others expect of how one uses one's body, and what functional role one's body ties to one's identity in relation to its interaction with the natural order. If someone cannot handle the heat of the sexual imagery inevitable for such a topic, then s/he should leave the kitchen where Poetker's poems are cooked up. While parts of her poems touch upon the sexual, they are actually more sorrowful works than erotic poems. As the blurb about Poetker's poetry on turnstonepress.com clarifies, Poetker is writing about the body, yes, but more specifically about the "body's emptiness." 

In “Symbols of Fertility,” the point of the poem is to convey the deep emotional sinking Poetker feels due to her body's failure to cooperate with her desire for offspring. Since this mourning is directly linked to her attempts at reproduction, inclusion of some sexual imagery is natural. Managing to avoid mention of absolutely anything related to sexual characteristics would be a tricky dance that could all too easily result in a troublesomely clumsy and confusing communication. However, if the reader believes that the point of this poem is to be erotic, then the reader is failing to cross the bridge that the poet has crafted for our edification. The reader would either neglect to really read and examine the poem out of trepidation that s/he was crossing a taboo boundary, or s/he would blindly cross the wrong border into a land unmapped by the poem, thus becoming unable to identify the meaningful markers in the textual landscape.

“Fallen Women” and “My kingdom is of this world” are also poems that regard the behavior of people who are driven by desires. “Fallen Women” is melancholic in mood, saturated in ambiguity and hinting at a community's “secret” history, possibly related to promiscuity or to abuse. The imagery lying within it could be taken as references to sexual lifestyles or to death. Perhaps both are meant to be be seen in a reader's interpretation of the poem. The poetic device most obviously functioning as a bridge in this poem is the Point Of View, which is in the Second Person. For a reader like me, who is not a perfect match-up for that which is described in the poem, the declaration that "you" are experiencing the action and emotion of the poem forces the reader to cross over into an alien territory. My mind immediately responds with "No, this not my life history" and "No, I wouldn't do nor feel that." But because the poem insists that I did, I ask myself what someone like me would have to go through to be the person being described in the poem. Thus, I end up feeling a little more like there is common ground for the character in the poem (possibly a younger version of the poet herself) and myself to share.

“My kingdom is of this world” is the one poem of the three covered here that has a ray of cheerfulness in it.   This could be a result of the poet's ability in this poem to step outside herself more so than in the other two poems. She seems to have be comfortable with using Biblical allusions in a way that is a turnabout of the original Biblical meaning. This creates a bridge between her old life in a Christian family to her later one as a nominal Christian (A Capella tells that she describes herself as only culturally Mennonite). The very title of the poem is an inversion of what someone familiarized with the Bible expects, which could be a way to get Christians who have no troubles with faith in God to feel some connection with someone who does. Emily Dougherty provides an explanation of "Symbols of Fertility" being the outpouring of a woman who was "deceived to think that if she prayed hard enough, and had strong faith, she would be able to reproduce." Having moved from accepting the religion of others to rejecting it, she needs to find a way to show her perspective in a way people the members of her former in-group can sympathize with. Therefore, she phrases parts of this poem to make the twist or shift of her perspective easy to spot. So the Biblical allusions are a bridge from a past form of life to her current one. This poem is also her construction of a bridge for herself to the lives of others and onwards to life itself. She is able to able to appreciate other couples' joys vicariously, seeing that there is good in the world even if she cannot have all of the goodness herself. There is irony in the  fact that the bridge she builds gets her to a mental vantage point that lets her look the things which are not at all far from her home on a farm (those of us who read the "About The Poet" page in A Capella: Mennonite Voices In Poetry know that she lives and presumably writes her poems on a farm) without a grim attitude. She appreciates the more basic wonders in life, such as the produce grown in gardens. Or rather, these are the wonders of life, and in that light the fact that Poetker will take advantage of still moments to gaze at things that grow is indicative that she remains fascinated by the ability to create life. Yet this poem does not display an envious obsession; Poetker gives readers no reason to believe that her "rapture" is not a positive experience for her. Perhaps she wrote this poem as a way to demonstrate that she has matured and moved past the boundary of grief over personal inability to a destination of loving life's conquest as a whole.

Works Cited:

"Making Strange to Yourself." Making Strange to Yourself. Turnstone Press, n.d. Web. 31 Mar. 2013. <http://www.turnstonepress.com/making-strange-to-yourself.html>.

Hostetler, Ann. A Cappella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry. [S.l.]: University of Iowa, 2003. Print.

Dougherty, Emily. "Interpretation - Mennonite Poetry." Interpretation - Mennonite Poetry. Goshen College, n.d. Web. 01 Apr. 2013. <http://www.goshen.edu/mennonitepoetry/Poets/Audrey_Poetker/Interpretation>.

Transitionally Cultural Kids

We are taken from our homes
I won't mind how we roam
These homes were never our homes
We are packed into airplanes
Because He called our parents
To countries foreign to them
Foreign lands, foreign nations
Get no stranger than they seem
Their otherly quality
Equal to any other
I'll let my head lay upon
The shoulder of a brother
And he'll rest his head on mine
For our journey shall last long
...or we'll use the in-flight trays.
On arrival anywhere,
Ensure your back is upright.
Keep your baggage safely stowed.
Do not unfasten your lips
'Til we have reached a complete—
We live ever on-the-go.
Growing up, we learn to love
Our travails and our travels.
The 4 AM departures,
Intercontinental flights,
The constipated plane-seats.
We can fly economy
Or via friendly Cessna.
We love exchanging our tales.
We praise who has it toughest,
'Cuz we might as well admire
What we gotta put up with.
Being much too alien,
We search for things in common
In these true stories of ours.
Taught to go the extra mile,
We've already gone thousands.
...
...
Not much in our tradition
Is not our own creation.

What's that under your nose? It's a border; Made you look.

The Yuma 14 died, but they obviously did not believe that they would, not until their situation became desperate. Logical, yes, but plenty of people are ignorant of the ax overhead. The coyotes leading them, meanwhile, were aware that the desert was something dangerous, but they were overconfident despite their incompetence because of their greed and their machismo. They were rather apathetic about their charges; They were "bad shepherds."
Everyone involved was trying to bust through some sort of financial ceiling that existed for them in their hometown. The coyotes, cleverly, actually made steady money by providing a service to the people who were willing to risk more than may seem sane. But the prospects portrayed by the coyote's middle man, Don Moi, were grand and potential clients were assured the risks were manageable...supposing you're manly enough (Urrea 49). And of course you would be manly enough just by being daring. Or so the broken logic seems to go. But this ain't Hollywood...not unless it's "The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre." Regardless of whether or not one believes in acknowledging a national or political border, the physical boundary of the desert should always be respected. The United States government might jail you or deport you for your audacity, but Mother Nature will kill you.

For too long, none of them wanted to give up, even though giving up meant survival. Granted, the promise to provide emergency care was sort of a trap, but it wasn't a lie. All the border crossers would be giving up was their potential life in the USA, which was a better option than losing the lives they had. Actually, they would have only been giving up their chance to die horribly and be made some sort of idolized characters. Sounds like a deal to me.

A national border serves to keep out people, groups, corporate entities, etcetera that do not adhere to the laws of the land, or do not share a common history with the inhabitants, or do not strive for the same collaborative goals, or do not hold the same values, or do not use the same language, or do not make the currently occupying group more prosperous, and so on. Is it then a recurring device of self-centeredness? In this case, the national border was in the same place as a physical boundary, but what if the national border was farther away from such a deadly environment? Would that demonstrate a greater openness to immigration? Was the border laid at the boundary to have nature do the dirty work of enforcement, or did the border stop at the boundary because the boundary wasn't worth "bridging"? The Border Patrol emphasized that they saved lives with every capture (http://sensoryoverload.typepad.com/sensory_overload/2004/05/the_yuma_14_aut.html). The Border Patrol agents will attempt to bring a walker in the desert back from the brink of death if they find them, giving the would-be border crossers water and trying to cool them down with air-conditioning in a vehicle headed for the nearest hospital (Urrea 124). While the Border Patrol are not international bridge-builders, it seems evident that being around the border constantly has created a bridge between them and the other people they find in the desert. They develop their own peculiar brand of sympathy despite the professional boundary established by their duty to apprehend anyone who attempts to enter the USA illegally. It is not a sympathy expressed in a deluge of words, but it exists nonetheless (Urrea 133-134). They recognize that the people they track and send back to Mexico are just people, which is the first footing laid down for building an interpersonal bridge. Perhaps a few years from now will show the Migra crossing borders themselves.

Derailed by Dialogue

*Please note that the following post is sort of a whimsical creative splurge that happened while doing the assignment due today. I realized that it was getting quite off-topic, so I'll have to do a re-write that looks nothing like this, but I thought this might be worth seeing.*

The original nationality of an immigrant is not of where s/he currently lives, correct? So sometimes those who were born'n'raised as local as fresh farm produce can become convinced that an immigrated members should still be considered "outsiders."
"What the heck is in salsa?" asks the cucumber.
"Idunno, but it can't be anything American," says the tomato.
"All I know," says the cauliflower, "is that it burns my tongue. Stuff like that can't be helpful to anybody. Gotta keep that crap contained, isn't that right?"
"Uhhh...yeah. Sure. Of course. Ha-ha," the All-American bottle of corn-syrup laughs nervously as he backs away as slow as molasses, hoping nobody remembers to trace his lineage back to maize.
...Um...
Okay.
Anyway...
People are not plants. I'm pretty sure most of you can grasp this concept fairly easily. But some people might not get it, so I gotta say it. When you have foreign people come into your country, you could decide to treat them like a kudzu invasion, but that wouldn't be quite right. See, humans are the same species. Sometimes we kill each other, yes, and there have been times when large groups of us have attempted to kill off entire groups of others of us, but simply moving from one country to another is not how we tend to go about such aggressive acts.
So if immigrants to America aren't after the lives of the average American citizen, then what are they after? Well, the Yuma 14 were part of a group that didn't want much more than the good green cash on the other side of the border.
"AHA!" exclaims the cucumber, the cauliflower, and a bypassing carrot, "BURGLARY!"
No, guys. What? No. Let me finish. Also, I thought I was done with using you for illustrative purposes?
Whatever. These guys were planning to earn their money.
"Our money," retorts the cucumber.
I'm not touching that issue here and now, cucumber. I'm just making the point that the Yuma 14 had planned to do whatever work was available to them in the United States to build a windfall for their relatives back home.
"Go home!" screams the belligerent carrot.
Careful, carrot, you are getting kind of red in the face. Your blood-pressure is already pretty awful. No need to get so worked up. It'll be good for your heart, if not for your brain. If you have an issue with some category of people, whether totally legit or so-totally-not, making them feel bad is not how you go about the business of dealing with it. Furthermore, as a figure of my imagination, it is unwise for you people to keep interrupting me. It's rather upsetting.
"Hey! What do you mean by "You people?" I'm not with them on everything," says the cauliflower.
Very well. Maybe I was being a little overly general there. I apologize. But now you have an obligation to yourself to keep yourself distinguished from the other people in your highly political section of the grocery aisle by being better behaved than them even when you all are sharing the same feelings of opposition towards someone or something.
"Of course," says the cauliflower, "after all, I'm a cauliflower."
Oh, geez...

I just...

I don't think this is getting anywhere. I shouldn't be talking to groceries, anyway. It could be a bad influence on my brain.

P.S.  In a stunning total shift in opinion, the tomato eventually married a large tub of salsa after discovering that they had a lot in common and after realizing he liked the spicy zing she added to everything in life.

Urayoan Noel's Statement

Urayoan Noel may be trying to bridge Puerto Ricans and people living in the USA in his poems "Ballade of a Boy," "Kool Logic," and "Barrio Speedwagon Blues." I think this is probably the case since his poems' subject matter concerns mainstream American Culture and the “outsiders” (like Puerto Ricans) trying to fit in or just survive in it.

Unless his poems are supposed to be a challenge for people to go expand their monolingual horizons by learning Puerto Rican, some of these poems appear to not be meant for English-speakers like me. But then again, Mr. Noel has expressed an interest in removing some amount of clarity from poems. A bilingual poem read by a monolingual person would certainly help the poem achieve ambiguity.

To look more specifically at the message made about Latino culture, Mr. Noel seems to be trying to express how oppressive of an atmosphere the expectations and lifestyles of the USA are. This could mean that Puerto Rican life is freer and less dull than that of mainstream America.

Mr. Noel uses rhyme to make his poems euphonic, to emphasize the meter for each poem, and to link the words he uses, which is all quite standard for traditional poetry. His insertion of punctuation into each line of his poems is not traditional, however. Mr. Noel's punctuation for these poems may be of importance, since it is somewhat unique: Many poets wouldn't bother with that much punctuation, preferring instead to rely on line breaks to indicate when to pause for meaningful dramatic effect. With Mr. Noel's poems, the reader must then figure out how the poems are meant to be read aloud, since all the commas and semicolons and such punctuation marks accomplish much of the same effect in prose as line breaks do in many poems. At least Mr. Noel keeps the thoughts in his lines from spilling into the next stanzas. Pulling off that sort of befuddling trick of "crossing boundaries" of poetic form could be done cleverly, but I have a sense warning me that I would dislike the way Mr. Noel might try it.

Even when Mr. Noel's poems contain no character in particular, they convey a personal tone, which carries a sense of a history of nearly relentless discomfort (I can't quite call it "oppression") with society. Because the poems are touched by emotion, which must come from a source (whether individual or collective), and because the emotion is being processed in words, the poems are windows to a heart fed up with a misguided dominant culture, one with such messed up priorities that it traps itself in a paradox of many trivial options and no solutions to real problems.
Mr. Noel has said that he prefers "unstatements" over statements, but I cannot help but think that he is using his poems to try to state that "something is rotten" in the United States of America. He seems to be trying to bring a focus back to what needs to be fixed, starting with the fact that modern America is more concerned with distracting itself from big issues than dealing with them. Although America is a place people try to get into, the poems I read seem to contain a soul's desire to escape the intangible exigencies of living in America.

In "Ballade of a Boy," the porch screen is an example of a border and boundary where there was supposed to be a bridge. The main character's "eyes trying to glean" indicate recognition that the border of the two meeting again had become a boundary, and implies a longing for a bridge to be built between the two. I do not know what the speaker's background was supposed to be, but apparently there had once been a bridge between him and the main character, a bridge which must have decayed. The poem's speaker had a chance to reach out to the poem's main character, but instead the two of them maintained an awkward silence, and from then on maintained a relationship no more. The section covering this brief moment is pne in which noticing the punctuation will actually contribute to the feeling readers should get from the poem, for it includes the consecutive use of periods in its lines, giving the scene finality.
The speaker probably knows it is too late to reestablish a personal connection with the "Boy" of the poem, but attempts to prevent another wall being built up around the character as a result of damaged reputation. To avoid smearing the main character of the poem, the speaker calls him a "normal teen." This good word should be helpful in reestablishing a bridge between the "Boy" and the bulwark of society. In saying this, the speaker implies that adolescence is itself a time-bound boundary for most people, since a "normal teen" will "make trouble" and "careen," behaviors likely to distance others. Maybe we, as individuals, are expected to outgrow the boundaries around us, because nobody, even in America, really lives in a Utopia.