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.