What's happening?
Everyone wants to know what is happening on our southernmost border. It’s a hard question to attempt to answer, so I have been stealing the response of wise disciples, inviting the curious to “come and see.” Over the course of my travels the simplest and most honest answer I can give is this. Our southernmost border is home to one of the greatest humanitarian crises in our lifetime. And the Holy dwells there.
There have been bodies piling up in our southernmost desert since the late 1990’s. Mothers and fathers. Brothers. Sisters. Children. Thousands of dead, and thousands more, vanished before we had a chance to find them.
In 1994 our nation changed strategy for stopping migration across our southernmost border. We built walls and increased patrol in cities to push travelers into terrain we knew they couldn’t survive. We solved a migration problem by employing the landscape to kill people. We trusted that as long as they die “out there,” there won’t be any outrage over the loss of life “in here.” These decisions were bipartisan, endorsed on every side of the aisle. And…they worked.
Except, just as our border has become a politicized, dangerous place, it is true that borders and boundaries, in biology and theology and reality, are also places where new life flourishes. The margins are always places Jesus chooses to be. So our southernmost border is also a place where addicts who confess a faith in Christ install water containers along the most traveled migrant trails. Churches double as shelters for the recently deported. A coffee co-op energizes visitors and creates sustainable income for families to stay together. A garbage dump booms with vegetation as women learn to farm for their families.
So what is happening on our southernmost border? From what I have seen, the Holy is parading around, wearing the skin of faithful people, sharing good news in a hard place, calling us to pay attention. And our military is parading around, wearing uniforms suited for war, hanging razor wire on the opposing side of a wall painted in rainbows.
It’s the juxtaposition of these realities that leave my heart and head in knots every time I visit our friends at Frontera. Suffering and injustice are there. Life and love are there. And my nation and my God are on opposing sides of this particular battle.
It is a conflicted and conflicting reality. As a citizen of this nation I love, I’ll continue to insist we need better policy, that we must listen to research and experience that says walls are not the answer, that we must demand more from those elected to create policy who scratch their heads while bodies continue to fall. But as a follower of Jesus, I can’t wait for policy to be reality. We can’t wait for walls to come down when we have seen Jesus playing on the other side.
So I’m grateful for a relationship with friends who live their every day in this conflicted space, for the witness and love of Frontera de Cristo who continually challenge me to see the Good News, and work for that. And I’m grateful for a church family who is brave enough to endure my driving into deserted places, who has eyes to see the Holy dwelling beyond our walls.
What’s happening on our southernmost border? Why don’t you come with us, and see?
