Reflections on the US/Mexican Border

Ah the Southwest, the Sonoran Desert, Nogales, Tucson, Arivaca...  March 5-13th were days that changed my life and have been some of the most difficult, impactful days. This week solidified a course that is probably going to be unfolding, hauntingly, for years. Right now, I am vacillating between desiring to speak to everyone I see and not wanting anything but silence... my heart and my mind are in the desert. 

Dorthea Soelle wrote, "If one finally understands what is really going on, one cannot live with a clear conscious in this bourgeois world, pursuing one's career and entertainment. Other priorities arise in one's life. These priorities are encompassed in the comprehensive word, 'resistance.'" 

For those of you who didn't hear, I spent my spring break on the US/Mexican border volunteering with No Mas Muertes, a humanitarian aid organization that seeks to end migrant deaths in the desert. The situation at the border, the way migrants are being treated is terrifying and a moral failure of us as humans. 

      To explain more: We spent the week at an aid camp and spent the majority of our time on water/food drops, walking migrant trails through these remote regions. "Somos amigos, tenemos aqua y comida." It was so difficult to realize the atrocious, pervasive ignorance between my life and their situation. The economic policies of the US (particularly NAFTA), drive these people from their homes and communities, then criminalizes their struggle for a decent life. Criminalizes their poverty.  Whatever language we use, the reality of the situation is the production of a sentiment... that we (the US) would rather see them die in the desert than cross into our country.   And it amaze/horrifies/frightens me... that we will take lives in the name of this nation, when all of us-- when from time immemorial, people have migrated, people have wandered the earth. So why can I say, I am American-- I took this land from the indigenous people, I took this land from Mexico, and this is mine and no one can come here unless I say so. That is what our government says. And the church sometimes says it. It makes me feel nauseous... As Derek Webb brilliant said, "my first allegiance is not to a flag, a country, or a man, my first allegiance is not to democracy or blood- it's to a king and a kingdom." I thought of Jesus saying, "I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink... whatever you did for the least of these you did for me." (That is Christianity, nationalism is not.) 

I sat beside the grave of a fourteen year old girl, Josseline, who died alone and thirsty in the desert.  Afterwards she walked every trail with me, lingering between the prayers of my footsteps and the whispers of forgiveness for my complicity.  I had the privilege of talking to a man that had lived in the US for fourteen years and was deported and is just trying to make his way back to his life, his wife and family, his kids-- and yet he still sang songs. A girl on our trip got frostbite, layered and in our tent-- and imagine how cold it is for them... how they see this hostile landscape of mountains and cacti and they have to hide, are being hunted... and an unknown grave that was only 6 months old... and the litter on the sides of the trail of shoes, backpacks, sweatshirts.

And the border patrol. I have never been so challenged by seeds of hatred... so many documents of abuse. A migrant man who asked not to be put in the back with the dogs because he was allergic, who at the aid station later had not only allergic symptoms but dog bites. How have we forgotten our humanity? How can we look past a body, to an idea?  Our water drops, if found by the border patrol, were often slashed, the food dumped out-- this shocked me, and it was not a one time occurrence.This is a way we are all guilty of killing. These deaths are not an accident, they are a manifestation of our border policy. And it is mothers, sons, daughters, children, old people, fathers, brothers, sisters. 

I also bore witness at he Streamline Operation (which is this court where they deport 70 immigrants at once having had only 30mins to talk with a lawyer, kept 5-10 days in makeshift facilities where sometimes there is not even room for everyone to lie down. This is a sin.)  I saw a man beg for his life trying to escape gang-life, and he has been denied asylum, so there was nothing the judge could do: It is the law of this land.  I was sitting next to the door they were led out so they'd look at me and I wasn't aloud to speak or tell them I thought it was unjust, all I could hope was that in my tears they would see compassion. Yet, it felt like so little to offer while they were chained ankles, waist, wrists... like animals, like criminals, these young scared men whose only crime is being poor. is being brown. is being born outside our wall.  We have a WALL across our border. It's ridiculous, it costs tax payers 700,000- 7 MILLION DOLLARS PER MILE... and prevents migrants only 5 minutes, but forces them into the most dangerous terrains. ... from CA to Texas 600-700 are caught trying each day... and people are dying... and its so hidden and manipulated by fear and greed.   

I could say so much more. But please, stop. think. become active in changing this catastrophe. 

Being back at school is... hard to say the least. All I want is to be back in the desert giving water, to focus on anything, to write a paper, to not think of Josseline, my friends, the desert, water, trails, the evidence of their passing, of the talks on white privilege, on the banning of ethnic studies, on the discrimination and racism so many people face... I can't focus in classes. I feel overwhelmed. I feel like rocking back and forth and sobbing. I feel more rage then I have ever felt. It's not okay. It's not okay. And, this is being done in my name-- in your name... for us to have this life. And I do not want that. Our policy is unfair, is inhumane, is selfish and ludicrous. 

More:

Josseline's story: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124046778

Operation Streamline: http://www.immigrationforum.org/images/uploads/OperationStreamlineFactsheet.pdf

No More Deaths: www.nomoredeaths.org

"all actual life is encounter."

I have been reading this book that excites me so much... I borrowed it from my philosopher professor. It's called I and Thou (Martin Buber), it's about encountering other people about relation. The kind of book that's poetic and rambling and entices you in while subtly rearranging you as you read it, or at least reminding you of how full of awe we should be at the Uncreated One and the glorious beings surrounding us.

He talks about how we either relate to people/things in the world as objects or as beings. And only in "I respond to You with my whole being" do we truly not just experience (which is a monologue), but encounter (a dialogue, that is dynamic and evolving and able to reshape us and this is presence and present.) In the whole experience vs. encounter - I started thinking of how little we know how to open ourselves and how to encounter, we rely on formulas that don't breach the surface (sentences, questions we think we must ask or not ask even when we really want to just mingle, meld, collide into another.) We don't know how to breach the surface for true resonance or responding (just like spiritual language has become so co-opted that it's hard to articulate any sort of experience without it sounding cliche or church-y). 

But we all fall back on the formulas that don't allow for spontaneous or new encounters, we don't meet anything in a new or unique way. Our language and rituals and ... I guess the social structure confine us to the same ways of relating- even if that leaves us without genuine human interaction. And those formulas also conceal how we really desire to interact or encounter an other, a "You." There's always such an enormous gap between people, unsure of how to be vulnerable, how to be intimate-- how to give ourselves. But I wonder at that, what language do we need to undo and what questions lead us into people? He says- "try to meet every person, situation, and object in its own way." (But to me that seems so hard) It's a task of extraordinary attentiveness, and I think challenging our nature of trying to categorize and order things, reducing all experiences to routine and repetition vs. encounter. I think there's an aspect of needing to cultivate our capacity for wonder- not just at beauty or scenery, but wonder at the mysteries of another person, developing our desire for exploration. (but how to do that?) It's like the craving of authentic cultures, of some new place to travel, always seeking something new (for the chance of its profoundness)-- but all of that desire can be captured in the desire to travel into another person as well. "Allowing the encounter of another to disturb, disorient, unsettle us" so we continue becoming. Paying attention.

I feel like that is so hard for our culture, because we get so used to entertainment. And so few people appreciate silence and quiet but that's so central to encounter or true relationships, the continual opening and vulnerability and acceptance of unknowns in each other and even to ourselves, and the potential for change and evolution and cycles and growth. And he talks about seeing people as a whole, neighborless, seamless You that fills the firmament (when we are encountering them, that sort of intense focus, being truly present and attentive to encounter-- expanding how we interact, so we do not experience, but stand in relation too.)

I could go on and on... its such simple concept, but it is exactly what I have been wanting to read and dwell on lately... that aching to travel into others, to explore... and allow others to emerge, not trying to order, control, or possess them, but to reach out for that genuine human interaction. I think mainly that is what it means to love others- to appreciate and hear them as who they are. "Nothing else is present but this one, but this one cosmically." Then he ties it into God too. The life of spiritual beings is "wrapped in a cloud but it reveals itself, manifestations, it lacks but creates language. We hear no "You" and yet feel addressed'; we answer- creating, thinking, acting: with our being we speak the basic word unable to say "You" with our mouth." 


(I think this articulates so much our struggle with relation to God, he created language but doesn't use it audibly for us, yet we sense Him, we try to speak back but are stuck in words.) "But how can we incorporate into the world of the basic word what lies outside language? In every sphere, through everything that becomes present to us, we gaze toward the train (the edge, the hem) of the eternal You." (He uses You here as being/ that which we encounter or can be in relation too.) We perceive a breath of it; in every You we address the eternal You." This excites me about God... His permanence, His hidden nature and yet... it beckons to me.  

"It is up to you how much of the immeasurable becomes reality for you... it does not stand outside of you, it touches your ground, and if you say "soul of my soul" you have not said to much."

The Little Red Brick Home

Remember that night, we spoke casually till your limbs began itching for the doorframe, only then did you ask, “Why are you standing on the table?” I couldn’t explain that I needed to. So I said, “I just want to.” But you understood, and threw a tantrum for me so we could laugh instead of cry. I collapsed on the ugly couch. 

We talked about hanging family portraits in the stairwell of people we should belong to, mostly grandpas from National Geographic who are slightly eccentric and sisters from Africa whose bold gaze continually startles me. We don’t have fathers or mothers.

Some days we laugh in two-part harmony.  An atomic high-five skipped down the passage of our eyes when I lead him through the door and passed you in the hallway.  Beneath my barely concealed joy and mildly discreet contentment you knew the interior of my head was pin-balling. 

I externalize my secrets by accident, like the day the dishwasher snowed on the kitchen floor after we’d packed up the entire house to rave music and cursed the bug kingdom from A to Z. I’m still up for inventing the PA system so we can interrupt each other abruptly and she won’t have to use her cell phone to call from downstairs to upstairs. 

We plan anti-party-parties with one-hand-count guest lists.  My mood hop-scotches like scanning the radio, but you don’t mind.  We co-exist in our compulsive movement, talk of foreign lands, of turquoise tiles, of sunflowers on the table till the map falls off the wall. You beg me to write that feminist poem, so we can put it on the fridge. You’d probably even find a sticker for it, like a mother.

Remember the night I locked myself out and came to your door:  and in the morning we felt inebriated by the bullet-like joy that had pierced us, we stayed in bed, basking in the luxury of sabbath sundays, whispering like sisters, finger-puppets and gangster yoga poses in borrowed sweat pants till the laughter tilter-worlded. We ate fig cake for breakfast.

Yellow leaves plastered the ground and we walked till our feet hurt, trying to walk something out of our soles. Sudan is red. I read Nietzsche aloud to you along side the Bible and we break our broken hearts into pieces of laughter and shouts to cough out of our body. I read your palm, your eyes, and write it down in poems and you say, "screw you, Meg Brauckmann, for stealing my soul." 

You scribbled “manual labor” as your dream job, and I knew you were mostly serious—because we need messy hands for our messy hearts, sediment on our fingers to ground us. We turn up the music, so we can say what we want. But the sound beneath the song is always fear and love, fear and love, and every once in awhile: home.