Still Too Much

Andover, MA
Saturday, February 2, 2008, Groundhog Day, one day before the Superbowl - and all I can think of is "I wonder if they made it?" Any of the men and women we met. They had to try, as one said to us, "I would rather die trying than stay at home and see my family suffer because I hadn't." So they kept on throwing themselves at the border.

I have been trying to sort all of this out and to be able to answer the questions I undoubtedly will get at church tomorrow, "So what did you learn - how was it?" And I haven't had it all fall into one nifty trim little sentence yet. Maybe that's because it isn't neat or tidy. It is a broken mess - a failed border policy that doesn't work - a failed treaty that ends up hurting more than it ever helped - an economy so dominated by old arcane Conquistador hierarchies that it produces both the richest man in the world and many of its poorest. How do you put that into a sentence, let alone discerning what God would have me do and say and be as a result of having gone there?

Encounter at the Wall

A few days ago, after returning from our deepest penetration of the trip into migrant-land, we were at the Nogales wall. We were on the Mexican side of the border and viewing this monstrous steel structure of 20 plus feet of recycled landing strip (courtesy of Desert Storm). Cecelia (our wonderful Mexican guide), who originally hails from Nogales was telling us that before the wall, the residents of the twin city would come together for fiestas and events. She said that that they would dance and party back and forth across the little fence that marked the border, and when it was over, they would each go home. But the families on either side could visit and have holiday meals together at any time.

Now looking at the impenetrable steel barrier, you could see no one and no thing. It felt inhuman and divisive. How could you have a relationship with anything you could not see? It was about then that through a little crack under the steel I saw some movement. I went to have a better look and saw two boys playing along the drive the Border Patrol use to police the wall. So I stuck my hand through and called to them. Nothing happened and we figured that they were scared of what might be over here, or afraid that they might get in trouble with the BP. So I gave up, but just as I was turning to go I saw a little chunk of rusted metal shoved through the hole.

I knelt down and pushed it back to the edge. It got pushed back to my side. And the game was on! Back and forth like the game of "football" we used to play in the cafeteria with folded triangles of paper. He stopped for a minute and I thought he had quit. Then the hand came through holding a dirty silk flower! I was stunned - a gift from a boy, a thank you for momentarily dissolving the wall. I took the flower and put my hand through to wave to him, and said "thank you, I have to go now."

My most prized memory of the day - perhaps of the whole trip - was this (maybe) 5 year old hand pushing through the hole waving goodbye to me.

Walls are constructed from fear, but children and families know that once you reach out to the other side you don't need a wall to protect you from the "other." There is no other in brotherhood and love.

Mass in No Man's Land

January 27
We just returned to Casa Misericordia from our trip to Altar. I am so filled with images and thoughts. There was undeniably a sinister air about Altar though the CCAMYN center for refugees, where we stayed, stood out like an oasis in the desert. The accommodations for the migrants were clean and new and the meeting/meal room itself was beautiful and spacious.

This morning we went to the Catholic Church (the only church in town) for mass and the children were the choir and the lectors. It was a ray of sunshine to hear their beautiful and powerful voices in this church when only moments before we were interviewing migrants and watching out for the coyote in the square outside. It was one of the strangest things I have ever seen. Picture this town only a few blocks square with a central square at the hub. On one side of the square is a church and on the other three sides are openfronted shops selling either ready-to-go food or hats, coats and rucksacks (all black for heat absorption and cammouflage). Roving the square are small groups of migrants (all men and boys that day and due to the cold and rainy weather, not as many as the 1200-1500 usually passing through). The coyotes carefully watch their groups from fixed positions on the corner or nearby. They eye us with a mixture of scowls and distrust.

When we walked around the square telling the migrants about CCAMYN and asking them questions, I was watching for the coyote. Brita (our professor) asked me how I recognized them and I told her about how they stayed fixed to one place and would go over to the group we had talked with and then returned to their position. I also said I had noticed their energy.

And then, at 10AM the church bells began to ring and everyone filed into the church. Regular members, children, migrants, coyotes and our band of seminarians and professors. Truce! It was miraculous - for that entire hour everyone was Catholic and prayerful. The children sang like angels, the priest gave a lighthearted but spirit-filled sermon, people commmuned - and there were no borders, no migrant or resident, just God's children gathered together as one family.

When it was over, the priest introduced us to the parish and we went up front to speak to the congregation and they applauded us. But we all felt that they deserved the applause for keeping a faith in such a place.

Afterward he escorted us to a boarding house where the migrants stay in their short time. It was horrific and he said that this one was one of the better and cleaner (there are no "ratas y cucarachas" there). The accommodations weren’t much better than the Amistad bulkhead.

Traveling so much and so far in this cramped van has really taken a toll on my back and legs. There are three of us who have L5S1 problems and we call each other the L5 club. We are all taking care of each other but it is hard. Our only consolation is that we know that the migrants have to travel in rougher conditions than we have, sometimes 20 or 30 in the same size van as we cram the 14 of us and our equipment.

Migrant Sendoff

Jan 25
One month after Christmas and 46 days since Daniel left Argentina. This morning we had breakfast with about 20 migrants and prayed with them before they left for the border. It was a tearful goodbye and I really did not want to see them leave. As each one went out of the door, he would turn around and smile at us. It felt like seeing a platoon of young soldiers off to the battle front. Carlos with his cut hands. Hector with his torn coat. Both victims of last night’s failed attempt. But they each had to keep trying.

From there we went to the wall and had a memorial service for the ones who hadn’t made it. One of the names I read was Roberto age 27 months old and I broke down crying again. Do people actually think that his mother or father intended him to die in the desert? Do people actually think that their crossing is anything less than the last desperate effort for survival?

These are people, men women, boys and girls just like us just like Ari. How can we look at them and feel anything other than love and compassion? If I get nothing else from this trip, I will take home these two things:
Flesh and blood have no borders – we are all part of the human family.
Those who want borders for safety have it all wrong – it is in the moment we are vulnerable that we dissolve the fear, break down the barrier and become safe with each other.

Conversions at the Border

Jan 24
What a remarkable day. Today we met with Mark Adams at Frontera de Christo, a Presbyterian minister who lives the word better than anyone I have ever seen. His commentary and commitment were beyond that of Jim Stevens of C2C. Truly a man on a mission. He talked about how he saw examples of faith in the people in Mexico that he had never seen before. He choked up telling us about when he had been first invited to a cement block walled (with no roof) new construction of a house for some bible reflection. The house if he could call it that was two rooms and one bedroom the size of a small apartment. There were six people living there. That night they read the gospel of John and he was thinking “how could these simple uneducated people understand such a complex and theoretical passage?” But when asked how they had heard God speaking in the passage one man said, “and the word became flesh and dwelt among us… that means that God understands what it is like to be out of place, because he left heaven and divinity to be with us. He knows what we feel.” On a subsequent visit there were 12 people living there and by Christmas there were 20. Mark asked if some could come and live with him but the home owner said that he had plenty of room. He said that when he had left Chiapas he thought about building a casita but he had decided instead to build a big home where many people could stay. Mark could not finish the sentence with the thought that what he had considered a tiny house was to this man a spacious home with room for everyone.

It has us all thinking about the scarcity that we Americans operate from. If only we saw life with the abundance that these people lived with we might approach it all differently. He spoke so openly and articulately about this like it was a conversion experience. Yesterday we listened to Mike Wilson of Tucson who diligently puts out water bottles at various stations along trails in the Tohono O’odham nation lands. Mike was a former Special Forces green beret in El Salvador and one day he was working and it was hot. So he decided to have a banana split. He was outraged by the price of $3.60 he had to pay but, heck, he had the money and paid. Later that day he was to have dinner with some people he had befriended so he went home with the wife and her two kids. After dinner her husband came home from his job of driving a bus along the rural routes. He was exhausted and he put a mason jar of change on the table and began to count out his days wages – over 12 hours of driving. As he stacked up the coins and tallied his entire wage for the day, Mike was crushed with guilt and embarrassment – the man had not even made as much as Mike had paid for his ice cream treat.

These little events are the conversion experiences these folks describe. Mike thinks of himself as Saul turned Paul – a former trained killer now saving lives on a daily basis. Where yesterday I was so weighed down by the gravity of it all I could hardly speak, tonight I have hope.

We are staying tonight at a refuge called CAME in the Mexican border town of Agua Priete. We had dinner with some of the migrants – some who are on their way to the US and two who had just been deported after 13 years in Phoenix. One of the men going north was Daniel, who had waked on foot from western Argentina through Peru, Ecuador, Panama and then was canoed through the jungle waters of Panama into Costa Rico and eventually walked into Mexico. He had done this in just 45 days. This man was determined. The stories are all like that. Two young men from a little further south who were trying to go across were just the most polite and wonderful young men you could want to meet. Neither spoke a word of English and none of us had much Spanish. But we communicated with the occasional help of our interpreter.

We spoke with two of the volunteers – one of which was just 18 years old. Steven had been volunteering every day after school for the last four years. I asked him why he did this and he said that everyone in his church does it - it is needed so he does it. Just that simple. I told him that I hoped my son would grow up to have those values as well.

Everyone is asleep now but I have stayed up – filled with good thoughts inspired by people who are living their mission and who see god in every person they meet.

Notes From BorderLinks, Tucson

Greetings from near the BorderLands. At this point in our trek, we have been pummeled with so much information on all sides of this border issue. Each presenter has been opening our eyes to more and more of the elements that contribute to the problem of migration and our borders. There is a point in assimilating such devastating information that one starts to numb out. (I rarely drink coffee in the afternoon, but am taking a hit as I write). The problem though that is forming in my head right now is how will I ever become articulate enough to string together some kind of coherent thought pattern to open the eyes of others?

As I look into each issue, my particular lens is trying to see through to the complicity of our various corporate entities. In what ways do the sourcing patterns, the employment practices, the consumption and distribution of all of our products and goods and services impact this problem. Take for example the inclusion of corn syrup in most of our foods in the US. Hybrid and genetically altered corn not only produces corn syrup but floods the corn market driving down the prices in Mexico so that the farmer cannot sell his own. So our addiction to sugars, our inclusion of corn syrup in cereal, catsup, baked goods, mustard, you name it, combined with NAFTA has resulted in a greater poverty, driving someone potentially off the land to seek employment and food for his family elsewhere. But that is such a little example of one complicit event adding more fuel to the conflagration.

As of yet I do not know how I will be changed by this experience. But I do know that I must stay alert to take in each next moment and message. God help us all.

Sidebar From The Developing World

Ok, I can't be fully serious and all theology all of the time. And thanks to one of my magnificent daughters, I am now enlightened regarding some of the "excellent" efforts of the Indian peoples toward the prevention of AIDS and overpopulation. The link, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTLj_3R0-2g is a very pop view of sex-ed featuring four men dressed as condoms (complete with a Michael Jackson-esque dance troupe of backup singers) doing a little ditty on the benefits of the love glove! I was hysterical, but you know what, if it works for them, you gotta love it!