We all need a place to belong.
We need a place where we feel seen. A place where we can connect, be ourselves. We need a place where we can loved and be loved. A place that we can call home. A place where we can invest, put down roots, and work to make our surroundings beautiful.
Having a place to call home is a distant dream for someone who has had to leave their “place of origin” because of domestic violence, exploitation, addiction or fear. For someone who is living on the street, their feelings around home and place are deeply complicated. They might have had many different places. They might wish to find a better place, to leave this place, or to search for another place.
They might carry deep regrets.
There are simple and powerful ways that we can come together and celebrate our place. One of those ways is through community celebrations like our recent Independence Day Celebration. The truth is that many people believe that if they can just get to the U.S., they will find happiness, if they can just get out of their country, they can find a fresh start.
Choosing to celebrate our place together changes that narrative. We can flourish together here. There are good and beautiful things. God’s image is here among all of the faces that live in our community together. There are wonderful, valuable and lovely things to be found in the country of El Salvador. We took time together to celebrate the history, the culture, the food and the music. These are all things that make this a unique and special corner of the world…our own important place, a place where our people can belong.
Our community might not look like a suburban wonderful. It might look like someone sleeping on the street or in a house with a leaky tin roof. Someone else might scrape enough cash together to pay for the monthly rent of a single room. Yet another person might be living out of a car or under the generous overhang of an abandoned building.
But each of these circumstances become home, become a place to love, because of the community that is formed. One of our clients who sleeps on the street took care to hang a Salvadoran flag on her makeshift front stoop because it was a simple way to show her pride in her country and in her community. It’s her own way to celebrate her place and the fact that she has somewhere where she belongs.
When we look around it’s easy to focus on systems that are broken, on poverty rates that are high. It’s easy to see discarded needles, crumpled beer cans or graffiti on the walls. But beyond the twisted rebar, there is a flourishing that happens in these sacred urban spaces. Because the chaos that has pushed us all together, drives us to lean on one another, to navigate things together and to find belonging as we search for Jesus together on these sun-baked streets.
And that’s what we are doing.
Our team is formed by those who have been born and raised right here in downtown San Salvador, by those who have left and come back, and by some of us who are transplants to this community. Despite our different backgrounds, we have found and cultivated a shared sense of place. We have all found a place to gather and to find relationships and heal and connect.
That is Jesus in action, the only one who can pull broken souls together and create a tapestry of healing. That’s what we see over and over again. Whether we are celebrating our big place of El Salvador, or our small place of connection with one another there is something special about what we have because it’s a place to be known, and to know. A place to belong.
It is comforting and healing…a powerful place to be.
