How Dares the Tree?

This summer I'm hanging around at and learning from a nonprofit called CDF: A Collective Action Initiative.  The organization does community development work in the city of Clarkston, where so many of the refugee families I worked with last year live (I think they're pretty awesome-- check them out at cdfaction.org).  Yesterday my supervisor and I had a walk-meeting on the Beltway, a path which winds right around the office.  Struck by the fruit trees growing wildly along the way, he shared with me a story about a tree that taught him much about God.  The poem below was inspired by his words.

How dares the tree to grow so free,

so bold and resolute?

Risking to plunge up from the ground,

reaching out beyond its root. 

If you listen, you’ll hear the tree declare

Soft, yet defiantly,

“Gravity, of you I’m not afraid—

you have no hold on me.

I choose to grow up

and up and up

until I reach the sky.

Strong and resilient I shall be;

your rules do not apply.”

But does the brave tree know, I muse, the suffering that's in store?

There’ll be plucking and pruning, dismembering too,

and yet whatever for?

To make it "productive," "domestic," "pretty," and "tame"

And oh yes, to make space

for a set of electrical wires to cut the sky

like raw scars across a face.

 

Lightning too sure likes to strike

the most compelling and lovely of trees

And even the sturdiest of oaks

are not immune to heavy breeze.

Yes even the wind, the precious wind,

who soothes creation with her breath,

has been known to wreak havoc on wooded folk

Whispering, To live is to face death.

Does the tree know?

Oh has it heard, how hard it will have to strive?

How humans will expect it to change every fall

and every springtime to make fruit arrive?

I wondered and wondered to myself 

till at last I went to the source:

Oh Tree, I asked, did you know?

Great Tree replied, Of course. 

 

The neighboring roots taught me about gravity's pull

the earthworms, about pain.

The buried trash around me foretold

how the world can be insane.

But still I risked and dared to grow,

ever moving towards the sun.

You see, that’s what I was made to do—

Like you, oh Little One. 

A More Complex World

 

           I spent last weekend hanging out at El Refugio, a hospitality house that provides support and a place to stay to families/ visitors of the immigrants detained at Stewart Detention Center (check them out here, if you please: http://elrefugiostewart.com/).  I went there with a professor of mine who co-facilitated our spring trip to the Border and who is also one of the house coordinators at El Refugio.  Speaking of a surprisingly positive experience she recently had with a CCA official [CCA is a major player in the for-profit prison industry that turns a pretty penny contracting with Immigration Customs Enforcement to detain immigrants], she remarked, “Sometimes you can’t help but be filled with gratitude at discovering the world is more complex than you thought.”  I found these words to be striking and true.

           Below are my thoughts on the experience of watching a Stewart Detention Center guard count, fold, and repack items into a backpack that El Refugio had given me to deliver for a man who was soon to be deported:  

With meticulous care

she folds
two pants, a pair of shorts, three shirts.
A shirt wrinkles, and so does her brow.
With a shake of the head and the wrist
she folds it once more
with clean—nay, pristine!— lines.

The clothes, for a man

about to be sent
quite forcefully back to his “home.”
Home to a land he left long-ago
for reasons neither she nor I know.

When he arrives

he will carry
naught but the clothes in the bag that she packs
and tales of stark inhospitality received
here, in the U.S.,
home of the brave and the free.
 
I wonder, as she carefully marshals
the clothing into the bag
is this her “something,” if you know what I mean?
Her quiet act of resistance, that is.
Her way of pushing, however gently,
against a system that traps humans as one might
a spider under a cup.
Her way of declaring, albeit softly, HE IS A MAN.
 
I do not know.
It could be nothing, after all.
Mayhap she worked in retail clothing in another life
before a series of turns led her here to this role of guard
at good ole’ notorious SDC,
and her past training came with her too.
I do not know.

But maybe— it is possible—

she thinks to herself,
I will not let this man
return to his land
in sloppily folded clothes.
Perhaps, in wrestling out the wrinkles
with her two hands
she seeks to remove one small wrinkle
from what is likely to be
a bittersweet home-coming indeed. 

Watching, nearly choking,

I swallow unexpected tears
and pass through the metal detector with a watery
and appreciative smile.
I wanted to reach out my hand,
to tacitly let her know
that I saw and was moved by her care.
Thank you, Officer, I said aloud.
Tacking on, in my mind,
Thank you, thank you for a precious reminder—
The world is more complex than we know.  

To Paint a Wall

        

This Wednesday, two of my close friends and I had the honor of unveiling the public art installation at Candler that we've been working on since returning from Spring Break.  The whole process of this installation has, without doubt, been one of the most meaningful aspects of the year.  It has also been one of the most exhausting, so, rather than reinvent the wheel, I hope you'll humor me as I pull significant chunks (i.e. most) of this post from passages I wrote for our Church on the Border group paper.  In doing so, I hope to paint a picture (pun intended) of the "what's" and "why's" of the installation, inviting you into the imaginative space we sought to create on the third floor of the theology school building:

On both sides of the Border, we heard stories; stories that challenged our assumptions, that  pushed us beyond easy and reductionist answers, and that demanded an active response.  This installation, Stories of the Wall, is that response.  In bringing the Wall "here" to Candler, our goal was to put a face to an oftentimes controversial issue and to lend a layer of proximity to a debate that can feel distant and remote.  We believe in the power of art and of narrative.  We believe in their power to transform.  We would argue, the Border can and must be transformed both spatially and conceptually if we are to resist the dehumanizing forces that blind us to our moral and theological responsibilities to all who migrate.

The process of installing Stories has at once been maddening and rewarding, draining and life-giving.  On one level, investing so much of our energy and care into an installation that will remain (at most) for a month felt rather counterintuitive: after all, why go to great lengths for a project that is to be torn down so shortly, one might very well ask.  However, we draw inspiration from the artists of Taller Yonke, who reminded us of the power of such fleeting images.  In their ability to capture the transience of life, these temporary works of art resist the capriciousness of the human eye that renders us far too quickly immune to beauty in our midst.

Moreover, for each of us, this project has taken on deep levels of personal significance. Returning from our journey to the Border felt, at times, a comparable challenge to those presented to us on the trip itself.  Having seen such vivid pictures and heard such poignant testimonies of the effects of U.S. immigration policy, how inadequate it felt to dive back into the frenetic pace of life back home without having, in some way, done something.  Stories of the Wall is our initial "something."

At the installation event, we also included an opportunity for viewers to sign a petition to eliminate the bed quota mandate in the Department of Homeland Security annual appropriation bill that, since 2007, has been unjustly serving to incentivize immigration detention.  Hannah, Ruth, and I believe that narrative and art must always be paired with action, and this particular political action resonated with us, reminding that—as residents of a state that houses two of the nation’s most notorious detention centers— Border issues do not stay neatly corralled at the Border.  If you’d like to learn more, please, please, please check out Detention Watch Network’s End the Quota campaign at http://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/EndTheQuota.  Moreover, once you’ve taken a second to peruse this site, I’d love to invite you as well to add your names to this petition as a small yet potentially significant step towards guiding our nation into more just immigration practices: http://www.change.org/petitions/end-the-quota. 

Finally, as we move into Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday, I wanted to share with you the prayers we wrote and left in a bowl at our little “altar” in front of the Wall.  In pairing art, narrative, political action, and prayer, we hoped to draw concrete connections between a life of faith and a life of advocacy and solidarity alongside immigrant communities. 

Prayers for the Migrant: God, we pray for all who are making the Border crossing today.  Bring relief to aching feet, water for insatiable thirst, and comfort for weary spirits.  Grant courage and discernment as they are forced to make life and death decisions.  Thank you for being the God of all migrants, the God who promises to lead us into green pastures.

Prayers for the Detained Immigrant: God, we pray for all who are currently held in immigrant detention centers across the nation.  In the midst of environments permeated by hostility and uncertainty, God we ask that you continue to sustain, enliven, and empower every detainee.  Grant us the courage to be advocates for more humane detention practices and immigration policy.

Prayers for all Would-Be Migrants: God, we pray for all who are suffering in Latin America, for all who greatly desire to stay in their homelands and yet who feel that migrating is their only choice.  We ask that you strengthen them and grant them wisdom.  Open the eyes of U.S. citizens; help us to see the ways our nation’s policies have contributed to this context of economic desperation.  Help us to remember that our neighbors live on both sides of the Border.

Amen. 

This Year

The beauty outside my back door,
reminding me that spring allergies
aren't the end of the world.

Catching up over coffee with a friend this afternoon, I was suddenly struck by just how rapidly the end of the academic year is approaching.  Feeling a wee bit dazed by the realization, I decided the only logical response would be to write a poem, an ode to the insanity and wonder that has been this year.  I realize that this poem is a little odd/ disjointed, but it was either this or the sassy ditty I wrote last night about the woes of exegetical paper-writing, so here we are:

This year

            I’ve eaten bananas and rice and hot sauce

                        all mushed up together in the palm of my hand

            With a woman and her three year-old son

                        Who fled from their home in Somalia mere months ago.

            She is my friend, my peer, at the age of 24.

            She is also my senior, having lived in the charred side of life that I

                         have only glimpsed in passing.

This year I have travelled.

            Travelled East to my family in Senegal, where I was reminded of my roots,

                        of the gift of an identity planted betwixt and between.

            Travelled South to Stewart Detention Center, where

                        I witnessed the underbelly of American hospitality:

                                    “Welcome, worn and weary.  Have a jumpsuit. 

Here’s your prison-in-disguise.”

            Travelled West (and South) to the Border, where I stood in the shadow

                        of the Wall made by humans.  The Wall which deceptively whispers,

                                    “Your neighbors live only on my northern side,”

                        Yet across which life and love continues to flow in both directions.

            Travelled North (or North-ish) to Nashville,

                        where I tried my hands—and my feet— at liturgical dance.

                        Do you hear me, God, when I speak to you this way?

                        When I turn in the wrong direction and forget the next three steps?

                                       Yes, God says, I think.

This year I have written and read,

            painted and created, listened and learned

                        things of great beauty and despair.

            I have been befriended and encouraged

                        challenged to new heights

                                       and given to in great abundance.

This year

            I have gone crazy

                        with laughter and tears and joy.

            Filled to the brim with the muchness of it all,

                        bursting at the seams till there was nothing to do but twirl.

This year I…

            No, not I.  Too much “I” for a year transformed

                        by others and the Divine Other too

                        who all made this year so rich, so full.

            Thank you.  Thank you.

                         For 

                                       This year.

A Handful of Haikus

         

Photo courtesy of Hannah Ebling-Artz

             I was recently surprised to be introduced to John Paul Lederach’s book, The Moral Imagination.  Reading some of his work for my January-term Theology and Ethics of Reconciliation, he quickly became a new favorite—as a peacebuilding practitioner who has worked with transforming conflict across the globe, there is a certain grounded realness to his theological reflection that is pretty darn compelling.  In the chapter I read from Moral Imagination, however, he writes on not conflict, not on peacebuilding or reconciliation, but, rather, haikus!  He asserts that, in its ability to “embrace complexity through simplicity,” the writing of haikus “becomes a pathway to peacebuilding…For the process of paying attention to poetry, listening to a voice that seems to come from nowhere in the midst of turbulent inner seas, is very much like sorting through the storms of protracted conflicts” (66, 67).  Feeling challenged and inspired, I decided to try my hand at it!  [However, I was rather terrible at limiting myself to the whole 5-7-5 syllables part (i.e. the whole point of haikus, alas!), so I somewhat cheated and dedicated each of the poems to the person/ experience whose essence I was seeking to convey.]  

 

Spanish, he teaches.

Stories of laughter they share.

Beans, for us, she cooks.

For José and Rosa, who so warmly invited us into their homes.  Who looked past out limited Spanish and showered us with limitless hospitality.   

 

In shackles they stand.

Broken Border.  Broken “law.”

Humans can break too.

For the 67 men and 3 men we saw sentenced in the span of 35 minutes via Operation Streamline in Tucson.  And for our nation.  May we soon learn to care more about upholding the dignity of humans than for the sanctity of administrative ordinances.

 

Candles on the Wall

Lit for the youth extinguished.

José, remembered.

For José Antonio, who, though killed at the age of 16 by a Border Patrol agent from the U.S. side of the Wall, lives on in the memories of the Nogales community.  Candles are painted on the Mexico side of the Wall where he died, and it is here that community activists hold a vigil once a month.

 

A child’s plane flies to

the Wall’s other side.  Passing,

hands touch, eyes meet.  Peace.

For Maricruz (one of our BorderLinks leaders) and her four year-old granddaughter.  Who reminded us that our interconnectivity knows no bounds and that it is only in re-humanizing those on both sides of the Border— even/ especially Border Patrol agents!— that true reconciliation can be attained.

 

Prayer, he says, shapes souls.

In jumpsuit orange he shows me

A world now opened.

For a Stewart Detention Center detainee (and friend), who knows how to dream bigger in detention that I do here, in this place of privilege.

 

Confessions of a Wannabe Professional Host Daughter

Photo Courtesy of Hannah Ebling-Artz

            Not everyone wants to migrate to the U.S.  This sounds like a simple enough statement, I know.  But with words like the immigration “tide,” “wave,” and “flood” inundating media coverage today, this is a truth so quickly obscured!  Currently, net migration from our southern neighbor hovers right around zero.  And yet, this immigration “wave” is overwhelmingly equated with Mexico in particular, leaving many with the unconscious impression that everyone there would come here in a heartbeat if only they could.  This, I would argue, is why we need stories, stories of people who live contentedly in Mexico and other Latin American nations, people who can help us to debunk the myths percolating around the issue of immigration.[1] And so it is that I would like you to meet José and Rosa, the couple with whom three other students and I had the honor of staying during our two nights in Mexico.

            I am going to be honest: when BorderLinks first shared with us the news that we would be staying with families instead of in an office building as originally planned, my initial response was apprehension.  This might sound out of character for me, given the enormous role my Senegalese (host) family has played in my life.  However, literally all I could think in response to the news was, “I don’t speak Spanish!  And two days is too short a time!  This just isn’t going to work!!”  However, these fears melted almost immediately in the warmth of the couple’s welcome, and soon I was dreaming up ways of making a career out of being a “professional” host daughter, or at the least, of delaying my departure!

            Both retired, José and Rosa live within sight of the Border wall in Nogales, Sonora, with a parrot named Parrot.  Having previously worked at a bank with a significant clientele base of English-speakers, José had a pretty expansive English vocabulary.  This, when paired with the Spanish of two of the other students staying in the house, enabled us to communicate almost (well, kind of) seamlessly.  Though I definitely had to rely on the translating help of my friends when trying to ask more involved questions of Rosa, my favorite thing was when I was able to communicate with José directly.  Drawing from the similarities between French and Spanish, it was almost a game to try to decipher what was being said and then string along my own halting, ungrammatical Spanish phrases, with José meeting me in the middle with no small amount of laughter!

            As might have been the case with any U.S. family, we spent the vast majority of our brief time together in front of the T.V. and around the kitchen table.  We bonded over the Mexican equivalent of Dancing with the Stars—except in this case, El Gran Chapuzon, the stars dove off of high boards instead of dancing!  Around the table, we talked about everything from their children to our classes in seminary, from their thoughts on the Border wall to our favorite places to travel in the U.S. and Mexico alike.  We learned about their residential visa, which allows them to cross back and forth to the U.S. to buy clothing and groceries at cheaper rates, not to mention Subway, which is Rosa’s favorite!  Perhaps the story I loved hearing most of all was that of José’s Christmas car, which came to him a few years back when Rosa surprised him with a state lotto ticket that turned out to be the lucky winner!  (In contrast, my story of having once won a goldfish at an elementary school party could hardly hold water, though goodness knows my parents did not feel that way about it at the time!)  Through it all, Rosa plied us with delicious and seemingly endless amounts of food, José regaling us with stories of friends and family come ostensibly to visit, but who in actuality were most of all there because they were craving Rosa’s famous beans!

            All this is to say, well, quite simply, that things do not magically stop or change somehow when you arrive at the U.S.-Mexico Border.  We humans created that border, after all, so it only makes sense that life would continue to connect and spill over across the divide, and so it does.  The land, the weather, my allergies—the same on both sides!  And in so, so many ways, so too are the people.  Were it not for the difference in language and latitude, José and Rosa could easily be another couple in my family’s church, or in our neighborhood, with countless shared hobbies, concerns, and hopes.  Moreover, I think I can fairly make the argument that this dear family is just about as likely to move to the U.S. as my American one is to move to Mexico, so deeply rooted are they in their community!

            During our brief time in Nogales, we had the chance to speak with an activist artist association called Taller Yonke.  Referring to a mural they had once constructed on the wall itself that depicted what things looked like on the other side, they poignantly declared, “With art, we erased the wall.”  Looking back on the time shared with José and Rosa, I would like to think that, in our own small yet real way, we too erased the wall, through a mélange of shared learning, human connection, and joy.

---

[1] Stories on their own, I realize, cannot bring resolution to the quagmire that is our policy reform debate.  But they can capture our imagination and equip us with new vision, and in these role I find their power to transform.

Dreams in the Desert

The Border Wall
Photo courtesy of Hannah Ebling-Artz

Standing still in the desert that spans much of the U.S.-Mexico border, I heard the sound of the ocean.  No, not the Pacific Ocean—its roaring, surely, is not quite that loud.  Rather, as we stood solemnly circled around the make-shift grave of a 16 year-old who had died in the crossing, the wind siphoning over the rugged desert hills became crashing ocean waves in my mind.  Walking in the desert in the middle of a temperate day, led by an expert guide and sporting water bottles as full as our energy levels were high, in many ways I could not imagine what it would be like for the migrants—so many of whom are children and youth—compelled to make this journey for reasons of economic survival or physical safety.  The panic of being lost in this inhospitable terrain, the strain of weathering the extreme highs and lows that characterize the region, the terror of discovering one’s water supply has ended long before the voyage has, all of these realities resisted my ability to grasp.  But I could wistfully, wonderingly hear the ocean, and in this I imagine I am not alone. 

Along with the eight other students and two professors in our Church on the Border class, I spent Spring Break on both sides of the Arizona-Sonora, Mexico divide.  We were hosted by a group called Borderlinks, who helped us to pass the week gathering up stories as a way of learning on the ground about undocumented migration and the implications this movement across borders has for people of faith.

Our first full day of the trip, we worshipped at Southside Presbyterian in Tucson, the church that pioneered the Sanctuary Movement in the 1980’s.  The churches who joined the movement provided shelter for the refugees fleeing torture in Central American countries (and whom the U.S. initially failed to recognize), eventually serving as the impetus for the U.S. government’s decision to extend protection to these asylum-seekers.  In the interim period prior to this decision, however, the congregations that chose to offer safe-haven were technically breaking the law, and many of the participants risked federal prison sentences in order to act in the way they felt their faith to demand.  Speaking to two of the movement founders, Ken and Elna, after the Sunday morning service, I was struck by their passion and patience, not to mention humility, as they described themselves as “just normal people who never intended to get involved.”  Afterwards, I found myself feeling irrationally yet undeniably jealous. Only later through reflecting with friends was I able to puzzle through this unexpected gut reaction, and this with the help of words from the sermon we had heard earlier that morning.  Urging us to see Lent as an opportunity for discernment, Southside's minister asked us to consider whether we are currently living our most real lives, that is, the lives we long to live.  And I think that was it— here it was so beautifully and inspiringly clear that Ken and Elna were and are living in such a way, a thing I want terribly badly to be able to do.  How greatly I want to find ways to live my life in light of my convictions, to make use of all that I am learning, to honor the deep investment placed in me by family, mentors, teachers, and friends!  And yet somewhere deep in my very core I worry that that I’ll miss it somehow, that I’ll wind up being too busy, too sleepy, too oblivious…

Throughout the week, we had the opportunity to meet with migrants on both sides of the border, so many of whom were willing to vulnerably open themselves up to us and share their stories.  The stories I heard were beautiful, full of sacrifices made for love of family, signs of immeasurable resilience, and an abiding faith in the God who promises to lead us from the desert into green pastures.  In many ways, too, the stories were ragged and raw, highlighting the often inadvertent yet inherent cruelty of an immigration system that builds bridges for capital and goods to cross the border but not for humans.  A system that has militarized our border, downplays our complicity in creating some of the economic factors that fill people with the hopelessness that makes leaving homelands and crossing the border feel like the only option, and that ultimately violates human dignity by turning people into problems.  As I write this, please do know that I understand that U.S. immigration policy is an extremely complex, not to mention controversial, topic.  I am not writing to advocate for a simplistic and sadly doomed approach say, of opening up the border entirely and having no restrictions at all, nor even am I necessarily trying to change anyone’s mind.  What I do long to do, and hope to try my hand at in the next few weeks, is simply to invite you into some of the stories I was so blessed to share in last week, to help put a face on the issue—or, rather, the faces of those whom I met that remain profoundly imprinted on my mind. 

It’s hard to say, but who knows: maybe doing so is part of what it looks like for me to live my most real life?  Regardless, my goal is to write one (hopefully) short post each week for the duration of Lent, if anything to help myself continue to process the crazy and heartbreaking and wonderful experience that was my last week—we’ll see how it goes!