Crossing

Update

Let me just say that I am very glad that March is over and that it is April.  I led three delegations of varying lengths and was sick with a bacterial infection for a whole week.  So, I was either on the run or sick in bed for the whole month with no in-between states.  And Grampity, who is a member of Waverly and a very influential man in my life, passed away.  He was one of my conversation partners when I was contemplating participation in the YAV program and we had some lovely talks about alternative ideas of mission.  He will be sorely missed, but his memory lives on in every one of us.  I also found out that my mom is having back surgery in early May.  All of this to say that it was an overwhelming and emotional month!

But April has so far been rejuvenating.  Mike and I have now been together for over a year and are still going strong.  He is enjoying his program called "YAMS": Young Activist Media Squad, filming and editing videos as well as talking about activist opportunities in Tucson.  It is great to see him involved in something that he is passionate about.  There is a new educator at BorderLinks named Rachel, who I've been hanging out with a lot.  She has a wonderful energy and knowledge about issues of sustainability and justice.  We went on two of the March delegations together.  Paul, one of Mike and my good friends from Beloit, visited us for two weeks.  It was wonderful to spend some quality time with him!  We went out into the desert one night and sat under the stars together.  I've decided that it is something that I want to do more often.  The weather is starting to get hot, but still has a nice spring breeze to it.  I miss the midwest in spring, but Tucson has its own nice touch to the season as well.

I had a wonderful celebration of Easter with great people this year.  Emily, Catie, Mike, and I attended Southside Presbyterian Church for the Easter service and then went to brunch with some wonderful women from the church.  One of them was 92 and the coordinator of the Democratic Party in her area as well as a strong member of the League of Women Voters.  I would love to be like her someday (meaning right now).  Then we headed over to a potluck with some wonderful friends, new and old.  The potluck reminded me of the potlucks that we always had at Beloit.  Such wonderful and yummy food!

Sister Lil Mattingly, a Maryknoll sister who has been at BorderLinks for the past for years, leaves tomorrow for New York.  We've been celebrating her time here for the past month or so, but it is so hard to realize that she is actually leaving us.  She has been such an inspiration to me with her stories of work in Bolivia, of her protest of the School of the Americas, of her time on the border.  I can only hope to emulate her energy, enthusiasm, and passion for justice and respect in the world, and her warm and welcoming soul.

Thankfully, April is a slow month, but May will pick up again.  I'm taking this month to catch up on letters, to work on May delegations, to take some time off, and to attend a conference in Phoenix called Crossing Borders: Encountering God.  It should be interesting!

Crossing

A few weeks ago, I stood on U.S. soil next to the border wall dividing Douglas, Arizona from Agua Prieta Sonora.  If I would have been able to move a foot or two forward, I would have been in Mexico. But the wall, made of metal pieces slapped together, kept me on "my" side and "the Mexicans" on their side.  The closest that I was able to get to Mexico was to peek through tiny holes in the metal.  I peered through a few of the openings, noticing the same light brown dirt and dust, plastic trash, and many houses just yards away from the wall.  Without this metal obstacle and the dusty roads on either side of it, it would have been impossible to determine where Mexico ends and the United States begins.  It felt unnatural to be so forcefully divided.

I was down in Mexico leading a delegation from a
University in California.  The wall was the closest that we could get to Mexico because of the University's insurance concerns about going to Agua Prieta and Nogales with the "growing violence" in Mexico, specifically in Ciudad Juarez.  (Which to me is like telling someone in Ohio that they shouldn't go to Illinois because Chicago is dangerous...but don't get me started on that).  But this inability to cross into Mexico brought up some interesting food for thought.  Usually, I would have an easy time crossing into Mexico, but this was not the case.  Is this what it feels like for those people trying to get into the United States, but who can't: annoyance? frustration? anger? resentment?  It was weird to be stuck on one side of this wall that divided this geography that appeared exactly the same.  As I watched people crossing back and forth between Mexico and the United States, my experience was transformed into a fuller understanding of the unnatural and arbitrary divisions that we create.

This was further complicated during one of our dinamicas called the Legal Immigration Simulation, when one of the participants shared that 10 years before, she and her family had crossed through the Douglas/ Agua Prieta area without documents.  She had crossed through the same area in which we were standing, maybe even the same place that I stood as I peered through the border wall.  How strange that she couldn't step foot into the country in which she was born.  How strange that she was now stuck on this U.S. side of the border.  How strange that the closest that she could get was to peek through the openings of the metal barrier, only to see the same dirt, the same dust, the same trees, the same trash.

Little experiences like that hit me everyday.  How strange it is to be down here!