Tierra Nueva Newsletters

Stories, testimonies, letters from our director Bob, photos--you'll find a wealth of information here about our work with migrant workers and the marginalized. People tell us they read these from cover to cover, pass them on to others, and have been blessed and inspired by the contents!

Click the links below to read .pdf versions of past issues of New Earth News, our newsletter.

Summer 2009  .  Spring 2010 (new!)

Summer 2007 . Spring 2007 . Winter 2007 . Fall 2006 . Spring 2006 . Winter 2006 . Fall 2005

For more news from Tierra Nueva, visit our blog at the link abovet!

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Full-Text Articles from Tierra Nueva (click the titles)

The Word of God . . . Through the Toilet Bowl
Bob Ekblad

I serve as a part-time chaplain to people who are in jail. Twice a week, I make my way through five thick steel doors into the dreary center of Skagit County's high-security facility.

Guards let men who are interested in my Spanish Bible study out of their cells and pods, escorting them to the jail library and multipurpose room, where I await them . . .

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Against the Laws: Incarceration as Reevaluation of the Natural World
Chris Hoke, Assistant Jail Chaplain

Daniel has never been to the ocean; the closest this recently released, 19-year-old local gang affiliate gets to the Pacific is when we stand on the dyke behind his parents’ house in West Mount Vernon and he points out where he’d play on a large drainage pipe in the Skagit River at low tide when he was a kid . . .

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Jesus' Suprising Offer of Living Cocaine
6-21-04

Intercultural reading of the Bible demonstrates that reading strategies and interpretations vary widely and are relevant to reading communities to the extent that they are faithful to the text, the social context of the group, and the daily lives and concerns of individual readers. In this article I seek to include the perspectives of Latino immigrant inmates who participated in the Intercultural Reading of the Bible Project.

How might these people identify the contemporary equivalent of the well and water in their communities and lives? Where are today's wells where contemporary Samaritans might quench their thirst in their encounter with the Word become flesh? What is the role of the facilitator among people who are mostly first-time Bible readers, are outside the church, and often consider themselves condemned by God and unable to change?

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From Intimacy to Revolution:
Receiving the Full Prophetic Experience in the Body of Christ
Chris Hoke, Assistant Jail Chaplain

There persists a rather wide chasm between two schools of Christian faith and ministry: the highly personal and individual on one hand, and the socially informed, engaged and resistant on the other. Social and structural injustices are so overwhelming that the latter activist tradition may actively avoid what seems to be an overly individualistic and internal ministry, seeing it as a pacifying distraction from more urgent communal and organizational development. And more evangelical or inner healing traditions moving in a sensitivity to the Spirit too often embrace an extremely “sovereign” understanding of God’s will on the earth that would see little need for people of faith to question or challenge kings, rulers, authorities, markets and injustices beyond issues of personal morality or the nuclear family . . .

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Berries, Farmers, and Workers: Endangered Species

Thousands of migrant farm workers have moved into Skagit County's ten labor camps this
summer with hopes of plentiful work harvesting strawberries and other local crops. Many have found work. At the same time workers complain that more laborers and increased machine harvesting has meant far less work than expected . . .

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Journeying with Moses
5-03-04

I often read the story of Moses' awakening and call with incarcerated Latino immigrants who attend my weekly bilingual Spanish-English Bible studies in Skagit County Jail in Washington State . People in our reading circle immediately identify with characters in the narrative of Exodus 2:11-3:12 and appear to feel excluded from other roles in the story. Participants' first-glance assumptions about each biblical character's social location and their own place in world leads to a prejudiced reading of the story.

These biased interpretations of Biblical stories are often alienating, reinforcing people's feelings of powerlessness or exclusion. I am convinced that oppressive interpretations can be subverted by careful reading of the narrative itself . . .

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Finding Refuge in God's New Earth
5-03-04

Today we are facing an unprecedented assault on both the world's poor and the natural world. Marginalized people and wildlife all need refuge or the planet's most vulnerable and beautiful life will become extinguished. Those of us in solidarity with people at the edges of society and with nature feel the pain and chaos of marginalization.

We often find it difficult to step out of the fray into contemplative spaces where our minds, bodies and spirits can be renewed. Yet this is essential since there are direct links between the degradation of the human spirit and the destruction of the natural world . . .

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Subjects of Their Own Liberation:
Facilitating Dialogue in a Monologue World
12-03-01

Many a pastor, priest and rabbi strive to preach and teach in ways that will inspire their parishioners to live lives marked by compassion and service to the poor and excluded. This prophetic task is highly complex, made especially difficult in mainstream circles by a myriad of nearly insurmountable obstacles.

Before considering some of these obstacles and strategies for preaching that empowers, I will briefly present my context and understanding of the role and objectives of the preacher followed by a dialogical sermon on John 9 . . .

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"I Need a Beating" - Reading for Good News among Mexican Immigrants and Inmates Submerged in the Bad News
12-03-01

The socially-engaged biblical scholar or "trained reader" of the Scriptures must be as aware as possible of the many obstacles and prejudices that stand in the way of reading with people on the margins.

Distrust of and discomfort in the presence of the bible study facilitator or religious professional, compounded by differences in race, social class, language and religion, are the biggest obstacles to effective intercultural reading . . .

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Jacob and Esau Behind Bars:
Resisting Rejection by the "Elect" in Genesis 25-27
11-27-01

People who are truly on the margins do not expect to receive benefits legitimately. Accustomed to being rejected by the powerful, they learn to survive by hook or by crook. If Scripture is to be relevant to today's "damned" it must be freed from dominant theological paradigm that assumes that blessing in this world is a reward for good behavior and exclusion a punishment for bad.

I encounter people at many levels of marginalization as chaplain of Skagit County Jail and director of Tierra Nueva and The People's Seminary- an ecumenical ministry to migrant farm workers and study center for Scripture study with people on the margins . . .

Tierra Nueva  •  PO Box 161, Burlington, WA 98233  •  360-755-0768 

info@tierra-nueva.org