The Gateways Festival Orchestra: The Color of Concert Music

The event described below is part of a series of initiatives of the Anti-Racism Taskforce of the Northern Illinois Conference of the United Methodist Church.  See below for details. The color of concert music is white. Its gender: male.  So goes the popular perception.  To start a conversation on t.....continued>
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Beauty in the Time of Pandemic

Below is a 3:30-minute video of a small but momentous occasion.  My son Aaron—a wonderful musician and talented teacher and conductor—leading the Gage Middle School orchestra, Riverside, California.  He’s been teaching there for 20 years and thousands of students. When he first got to Ri.....continued>
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Pentecost Means No “Supremacies”

We celebrate the Church’s “birth” on Pentecost Sunday, the day the promised Holy Spirit arrived.  This year we celebrated on May 20th, a Sunday where at my church—one of the most diverse in America—its large Filipino group took charge of the service.  The VIDEO below sh.....continued>
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Ornette Coleman: Lessons in Freedom (excerpt)

This is the first of 16 short excerpts from my radio series Voices and Freedoms: A History of Jazz.  Based on my book of the same name, the series (and book) were produced at the University of Virginia in the nation’s Bicentennial Year.  The show, syndicated by the Intercollegiate Broadcasting.....continued>
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Ronald L. Fair: “We Can’t Breathe”

May 2020 Update:  Another “I-Can’t-Breathe” incident. I could not watch the video of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 26, 2020.  But I heard it while my wife described to me what she was seeing: a police man with his knee on the neck of an already-subdued bl.....continued>
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Songs by DAN GUZMAN: “CBS”

“CBS” (COOL BLACK SICKNESS) a song DAN GUZMAN co-wrote and performs with Brad Hoskins.  Fat Cats, Moses in the desert with the Great I Am, bleeding seas, and things tumbling from the sky.  Apocalyptic dread.  Cool grooves.  It not only sounds good—it&#.....continued>
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VIDEO: Sen. Dick Durbin visits Emmanuel House

Update:  IN APRIL 2018, EMMANUEL HOUSE MERGED WITH LONG-TIME PARTNER ORGANIZATION THE JOSEPH CORPORATION TO BECOME The Neighbor Project.  THIS INCREASED THE NUMBER OF FAMILIES SERVED FROM AROUND 25 AT THE TIME OF SENATOR DURBIN’S VISIT TO NOW, IN 2020, A NUMBER APPROACHING 3000.  WATCH A VIDEO.....continued>
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VIDEO: Sen. Dick Durbin visits Emmanuel House

Posted on May 5, 2012 by Richard Guzman

Update:  IN APRIL 2018, EMMANUEL HOUSE MERGED WITH LONG-TIME PARTNER ORGANIZATION THE JOSEPH CORPORATION TO BECOME The Neighbor Project.  THIS INCREASED THE NUMBER OF FAMILIES SERVED FROM AROUND 25 AT THE TIME OF SENATOR DURBIN’S VISIT TO NOW, IN 2020, A NUMBER APPROACHING 3000.  WATCH A VIDEO Introducing The Neighbor Project, AND FOR AN INSPIRING TALK BEST SUMMARIZING ITS WORK AND VISION GO TO A VIDEO OF EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR RICK GUZMAN’S TALK “Every Person’s God-Given Ability to Contribute.”

______________________ 

Less than four years after Senator Dick Durbin’s visit to an Emmanuel House site in 2012, Emmanuel House was named one of the “Top 100 Most Innovative” social change organizations in the world.

Dick Durbin visits Emmanuel HouseOn May 5, 2012, I posted this short paragraph as an introduction to the VIDEO BELOW:  “On Monday, April 30, 2012, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin visited Emmanuel House, our family’s organization in Aurora, Illinois—a great day for us and for all organizations trying to build better communities.  The visit was front page news the next day in the Sun Times/Beacon.  See Video Below.  Read the story Here.”

♦  Go to the Emmanuel House/Bryan House/The Neighbor Project main page on this site.  It began with Bryan House, which Rick and Desiree Guzman founded as a living memorial to Rick’s youngest brother, Bryan Emmanuel Guzman (1985-2006).  Bryan House served 5 families, Emmanuel House 25, and now in 2020 The Neighbor Project serves a number which will soon be approaching 3000.  The Neighbor Project helps families reduce debt, build assets and credit, and—in many cases—purchase their first homes.  All this leads to their financial stability and better communities for all of us.  Their children will be 25% more likely to graduate from high school, and 116% more likely to graduate from college.

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Dick Durbin Visits Emmanuel House

Posted on May 5, 2012 by Richard Guzman

On Monday, April 30, 2012, Senator Dick Durbin visited our family’s organization, Emmanuel House, on his way to announcing Community Development Block Grants for Aurora, IL.  The story was front page news the next day.  Watch video of visit HERE. Less than four years later Emmanuel House was named one of the “Top 100 Most Innovative” social change organizations in the world.

AURORA LEADERS TO DURBIN:
FEDERAL FUNDING HELPS NON-PROFITS DO WORK

By Stephanie Lulay, Front Page Beacon-News/Sun Times, May 1, 2012.

Dick Durbin visits Emmanuel HouseAURORA — The co-founder of Aurora’s Emmanuel House emphasized to U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin on Monday the important role federal funding plays in his agency’s effort to help people buy their own homes. The half-dozen non-profit partners to the Emmanuel House program rely on federal dollars to keep the program afloat, said Rick Guzman, co-founder of Emmanuel House and now assistant chief of staff for Mayor Tom Weisner. “You could pull out any one of our partners and it might not work,” Guzman said of the multi-agency collaboration.

Durbin was in Aurora Monday to announce the city will receive about $1.6 million in federal Community Development Block Grant and HOME funding. He made the announcement at an Emmanuel House project site at 314 Claim St. The funding will help support partnerships among non-profit organizations, he said. The Claim Street home, now being rehabbed, will be turned into two of Emmanuel House’s nine units, which people rent at market rates while saving toward making a downpayment on a home.

“Many of the organizations that have joined forces to make the innovative program at Emmanuel House a success are recipients of the federal funding I’m announcing today,” Durbin said. “They use it to provide services that ensure the families are ready when the time comes to own their own home.”

The CDBG federal funding for 2012 is $1.18 million, a 6 percent increase from the $1.1 million the city received in 2011. The city also will receive $455,018 in HOME investment partnerships funding in 2012, but that is down from the $522,462 received in 2011, according to Karen Christensen, manager of the city’s Neighborhood Redevelopment division.

Dick Durbin and Rick GuzmanEmmanuel House, an Aurora non-profit founded in 2002 by Rick and Desiree Guzman, helps working class families purchase their first home. Durbin met Monday with some Aurora families who have been helped by the program.

Cuban immigrants Yanary Labrador and Reynaldo Garrido were the first to complete the program in 2008. “When I got in this country, I never thought I could be a homeowner,” Labrador said.

Durbin said the rehab of foreclosed homes into Emmanuel House apartments makes the best of a bad situation. “It is important to come home from Washington and see how dollars are being spent. This is money being well spent,” he said.

Working with other non-profits, Emmanuel House selects qualified families to live in an apartment where families pay market rate rent while saving for a home. Partnering organizations provide down payment assistance, credit counseling, homeowner education and tax credits for first-time homebuyers.

Leaders from Emmanuel House, the Dunham Fund, Joseph Corporation, Quad County Urban League, Family Focus Aurora and Community Christian Church all met with Durbin, as did Weisner, Alderman Juany Garza, State Rep. Linda Chapa LaVia and State Sen. Linda Holmes.

♦♦♦  Go to the Emmanuel House main page.

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Sacred Texts as Literature

Posted on May 4, 2012 by Richard Guzman

Diversity, Interfaith DialogueChristianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism—these are the religions we explore through reading portions of their sacred texts in my course ENG 390 – Sacred Texts as Literature.  The Bible for Judaism and Christianity, Al Qur’an for Islam, The Bhagavad-Gita for Hinduism, The Dhammapada for Buddhism, and the Tao de Ching for Taoism.  This isn’t an exploration seeking to prove that “all religions are the same.”  Similarities are profound, yes, but so are the differences.  I am Christian.  Though I am this very imperfectly, I believe absolutely in the resurrection and lordship of Jesus Christ.  But I also have a deep love for all religions and believe that they can enrich each other even across their most profound differences.  For example, Christianity and  Judaism—and Islam, too—are so-called “historic” religions. For them historical “fact” is crucial, and with this comes the primary importance of “presence.”  The so-called “Eastern” religions focus more on “absence,” thinking the hard facts of this world less important than the emptiness that lies behind it, the Void out of which everything comes.  The very first verses of the Bible even make it clear that God creates out of this Void, and the famous 11th poem of the Tao te Ching helps us see that “emptiness” makes many things truly useful:

Hollowed out,
clay makes a pot.
Where the pot’s not
is where it’s useful.

Cut doors and windows
to make a room.
Where the room isn’t,
there’s room for you.

Emphasis on emptiness can help those of the history-centered religions enter into a more profound encounter with God through silence, and the disciplines it takes to cultivate emptiness can help Christians, Jews, and Muslims gain more discipline in their own faiths and develop a quietness and calmness at the core of their beings—something these religions do preach.  They are short, however, on disciplines that will get us there.

Go HERE for a copy of a recent syllabus.

The syllabus usually begins with the normal stuff—my contact information, the texts for the term, etc.—but soon begins grappling with the impossibility of the task: five major religions, five major texts, or parts of them, in only ten weeks.  Note the addenda as well.  There’s a “multicultural” version of the Genesis creation story, some cartoons, and a beautiful essay by Karen Armstrong which turns our usual notion of the place of faith on its head: you don’t first have faith, then because of that embark on a religious quest; rather, faith is the result of embarking on that quest.   I hope this particular quest, to understand the nature of texts deemed sacred, doesn’t result in a kind of intellectual neutrality.  I believe commitment to a faith is still one of the most important dimensions of our lives.  But though a committed Christian, I have come to believe more and more that this commitment must include a growing respect, even love, for other religious traditions and their central texts.

 

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