The 25th Year Celebration Is Underway
What Are Jubilee Circles Planning for JEM’s 25th Year
Gloria Gonzales, San Cristobal, offers this strong statement at the start of our 25th year.
“The celebration of the Jubilee is permanent, and reaching 25 years is a great blessing in the lives of those of us who participate.” She continues, “The way to continue in this celebration is to continue promoting lekil kuxlejal* from our circles with community activities and from our faith.”
*”Lekil Kuxlejal” is a Tseltal phrase that translates to “harmony of life,” signifying a concept of living in balance and unity with oneself, one’s community, and nature, emphasizing values like order, integration, and respect for the environment.
Every year Jubilee Circles have plans. Many happen. And many more things happen that weren’t planned at all. Well, that is, no humans planned them. All the Circles live our days open to the breezes of the Holy Spirit. The following are examples of what various Jubilee ministries have in mind for 2025.
Jubilee San Cristobal
Gloria Gonzalez, leader of Na’Xajobal in San Cristobal— Groups of women (ecumenical) are preparing a statement to address the climate crisis and denounce violence as both are intensifying. They will hold 15 hours of workshops on promoting trust and peace. For March 8, International Day of Woman, a group of women are planning a breakfast. The year will also have a forum in which speakers from various religious traditions share spiritualities.
Women For Transparency defend water, the wetlands, and the territory in marches and actions to improve our environment. We participate in town hall sessions and give first-hand witness to the municipal government of our needs and offer actions that can be taken together.
Pedro Robledo Ramirez, leader of Yobel School—We will emphasize the Jubilee themes of economy, ecology, and spirituality. Courses will include:
- University students in Chiapas are taking a New Testament course.
- A class has already begun with students from Mexico, Peru, and the U.S.
- This summer a teacher from France will lead a course at the U. of Tuxtla.
- A course with Indigenous people.
Our courses use the liberating pedagogy used by Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Students participate and teachers assume the role of facilitator of the teaching-learning process of our groups. In the midst of the reality of poverty, insecurity, violence and environmental deterioration that we live in, we promote the signs of the jubilee. We provide keys to biblical reading for enabling pastoral work and processes of integral transformation in the peripheries of cities and towns. Each student adapts teaching to needs of their communities.
Isai Robledo and Lindsey Mercer-Robledo, leaders of Alter-Nativas—All of our work revolves around defending and reclaiming the commons from privatizers. Our objective for the year is to further break with hierarchies and support the commons. We will open spaces in which knowledge and skills from all areas of our lives are shared.
We want to create a video of what has been created in 25 years. It will be a collective project for all Circles. We also propose a celebration via Zoom to which can invite others.
Jubilee Tapachula
Pastoral Family: Rosy, Edman, Idelette y Edman Jr.—The border with Guatemala has quieted. Drug trafficking has lessened from a year ago.
On weekends, the family supports base communities. During the week they offer material and spiritual support to migrants. Edman continues to develop church leadership through teaching in Nazarene and Presbyterian seminaries.
The major development and goal regards the resistance of pastors and people in congregations to the aggressive conservative movement in the National Presbyterian Church. The initial congress in Mexico City was organized by a group of reformed pastors, who are fighting for a new way of being a Church. Edman is part of that group and was invited to give one of the presentations in favor of reformed theology, since lately, the so-called Reformational Theology has entered the National Presbyterian Church of Mexico (INPM), which is causing much harm in this part of the country. It is a very conservative theology that prohibits pastors from holding Christmas celebrations, celebrations of Mexico’s Independence as a country, among other things.
So the progressives emphasize reformed theology that is open to Mexico’s culture and traditions. Thank God approximately one hundred leaders attended, including Church Elders, Deacons and Pastors. It was a great blessing, Edman believes. They are now preparing the Second Congress for the month of February that will, God willing, be hosted by a church in Veracruz, the state adjoining Chiapas. But all this is outside of the Institutional INPM. It is an initiative by this group of pastors and directed to all the brothers and sisters of INPM.
Jubilee San Mateo
David Delgado —Within our youth group, we have talked with them about the economic jubilee and about social justice, and we have seen how this was the basis for young people to have in their colleagues in this group, a support network, working as a community among themselves, who support and listen to you when you need it.
Our plan is to be able to make reading circles that are based on the little book, “Jubilee Circles: Help Save Life on Our Planet” (translated into Spanish by David Funkhouser). We want to give the little translated book a design and illustrations. Then we want to print it— probably in collaboration with the printing press of the IBERO University (Jesuit) in Puebla. We are in cost talks.I am proposing that the Mexico Circles generate a digital, quarterly magazine with information from the 3 circles. It would have both Spanish and English editions.
In my job with the state government I am planning an interreligious meeting about how we can come together to work in favor of a better society.
Angelica Juarez Jimenez de Swanson, San Mateo Jubilee Circle —A dream to be more self-sufficient financially—But reality is that the economy in this town of San Mateo depends mainly on construction workers who have very low salaries compared to other places elsewhere. This is why many men emigrate to the US or to the north of Mexico (there are many in Monterrey, Nueva Leon) or to the beaches where they work in hotel construction. Some of them start a new family, so there are many single mothers here. We have to come up with some business where we can create jobs for them and at the same time generate income for ourselves.
Space Needs at Dan Swanson Cultural Center—More and more children are coming to the taekwondo classes and to Initial Education. Recently, two new people have joined us and have asked us for a place at the cultural center: a psychologist and a young man who is giving physiotherapy. A woman asked me to have a styling class (learning how to comb and cut hair, do nails and makeup, etc.) but the students can only study in the afternoon and all the space in that time is already taken.
Jubilee San Diego
Ben White, Lee Van Ham, John Michno—are leading the Initiating steps to help address soil-related needs of farmers working in OneEarth-oriented alternatives to the dominant industrialized U.S. food system.In 2024, Jubilee began helping to facilitate a way for connecting small regenerative-oriented farmers in the San Diego region with resources for reestablishing strong healthy soil ecosystems on climate-stressed and nutrient-challenged farmlands. Starting with a six-acre family produce farm (Hukama Produce) near San Diego, Jubilee helped arrange for deliveries comprising approximately 15 tons of sustainably produced organic certified vermicompost soil amendment from Ben White’s operation. Hukama and other farms supply fresh, high-nutrition food through a cooperative organization: “Foodshed Agricultura del Pueblo”. This distribution worker cooperative serves lower-income people—a population that is poorly served by the dominant food system organized around chain supermarkets and industrial agribusiness; and it is farmer and worker-owned, equity-focused, and committed to regenerative practices.
The vermicompost amendment, supplied at no cost to the farm, provides ample quantities and diversities of living beneficial soil microbes to reinvigorate and sustain a natural healthy soil ecosystem—one that is not dependent on expensive, soil-depleting, and ecologically harmful chemical fertilizers.
Small farmers in California typically have good access to compost produced from municipal green-waste and manure from large-scale dairy and meat production facilities; however, these products can be laden with heavy metals or salts, and can be immature and unstable; and in such a state they are not able to provide the diverse, indigenous, ecological community of beneficial microbes needed in fully functioning regenerative agriculture systems. Jubilee is helping to fill this gap and in so doing helps strengthen an alternative to the dominant highly industrialized food system.
In the year ahead, we are exploring ways to expand our efforts with other small farmers and ranchers and collaborating with other organizations such as the San Diego Food System Alliance.
