We Do Not Fear People Whose Stories We Know…
Back before the Twin Towers fell and the Pentagon was attacked by plane, before there was a US Department of Homeland Security, way back when ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) was known as the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service,) – a lifetime ago and yet still less than fifteen years have passed – I served as a Legal Tech for an immigration law firm in Washington, DC. I was a twenty-something white woman, with southern working class roots and a damned fine Midwestern liberal arts college education, figuring out if I wanted to go to law school.
In addition to filing forms at the law firm, I was a narrative gatekeeper. In search of asylum, an HIV-waiver, a work visa? Sit down in that chair and tell your story to me, in all its intimate and gory details. My job was to take your story and craft a narrative that would compel government officials to consider your case favorably (or at all, in some cases).
It was extraordinary work. I met families from Iran, the Philippines, Malaysia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, the United Kingdom, Sri Lanka – from all over the world. Each had an extraordinary story – some that were exciting, some that made my stomach turn, some that broke my heart open. After just a few months of working with the firm, I added Tums® to my requested office supply list and I went through them by the bottle.
I was angry that any human being had to share the excruciating details of their torture and their trauma to a recent college graduate and pray that she told their story well enough for an officer or a judge to grant them grace. I was angry at how much harm was inflicted by my country on people who had already suffered much harm in their country. Soon I figured out that I did not want to grow up to be a lawyer. I did not want to risk growing immune to the power of these stories or becoming complicit in the process. What I wanted to do was work for systems change.
Many years later down the winding road of my life, I found myself standing in an ICE office for hours. I was bonding an immigrant – the friend of a friend of a friend, ripped away from his family and hauled out to detention in rural Louisiana.
Memories of dozens of stories from the cases I had worked on flooded over me as I waited in the reception space during the long stretches between each step of the ICE process.
I remembered the proud father terrified that his extremely Westernized daughter would be stoned to death if deport to their home country.
I remembered the gay man who had seen his friends killed for daring to hold hands and who had fled his homeland in fear of his own life.
I remembered the woman raped by an elder of her church and denied the letter of good standing that would have allowed her to become a citizen.
I remembered the sweet faced Latino youth who was infected with HIV while in detention in the US and then denied status because he was HIV-positive.
I remembered their stories and the stories of so many others who struggled to create a better life for themselves and their families here in these United States.
Because I know their stories, immigration will always be a moral issue for me. Because I know their stories, I will not buy into the dehumanizing stereotypes being peddled to me and my fellow patriots. Because I know their stories, I will stand – in an ICE office, in the pulpit, in the voting booth, in the interwebs – on the side of love. I invite you to stand on the side of love, too.
That’s What Bearing Witness Is…
Let go of what you know
and honor what exists
Son, that’s what bearing witness is
Daughter, that’s what bearing witness is
~ David Shannon Bazan, Bearing Witness
Less than 15 miles away from the city of New Orleans as the crow flies – or 25 miles if you drive along the every curving Mississippi River – there is a parish (county) called Plaquemines. From the town of Braithwaite to White Ditch, water flowed in over top the river levee just over a month ago. Hurricane Isaac slowly swirled across southeastern Louisiana on the 7 year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the Flood of 2005. When the city of New Orleans stayed dry and the power was restored within a week, most of us breathed a sigh of relief and tried to pick up where we had left off – beginning new school years and new jobs, or simply a new season, transitioning from summer to autumn.
On the long stretch of road along the east bank of the Mississippi River, it was another week before the water drained away. Still today the houses, tombs, and trees washed over the road are being cleared away. You have to see it to believe it. And few people have seen it. It’s a rural commuter community downriver. New Orleans did not flood. Next news story.
Driving along highway 39 with Rev. Tyrone Edwards, I was reminded again of the importance of bearing witness. It restores us to our humanity, to our connection with all that is. It is certainly spiritual practice.
I knew from talking on the phone to partners in the area that the situation on the ground was intense. In addition to houses, cemeteries, and trees uprooted and washed around, dead animals and rotten fruit had to be cleared off of the roads before people could return home – or at least return to where their home had been. It was so hard to imagine that only a half hour outside of my (fairly) functional city, there was utter devastation for hundreds of families, homes, farms, and an ecosystem. I had to travel there, to bear witness to what exists.
So it is with many things, the importance of this journey to bear witness – white people doing the hard work of letting go of what white people “know” to acknowledge and begin to undo the racism that exists, men letting go of their conditioning of superiority to honor the truth of women’s long struggle within sexism, heterosexuals realizing that there are other ways to love, cis-gendered people recognizing that trans-gendered people are living their own truths…when we are willing to let go of what we know and honor what exists, we bear witness to some extraordinary truths.
On Thursday, I journeyed over a bridge, through a tunnel, and on a ferry to bear witness to a community bearing the consequences brought about by forces beyond their control – coastal erosion, chemical spills, underfunded engineering, climate change… As the ferry pulled away, taking me back to the city, a brilliant rainbow arced over the flooded gas station where I had met Rev. Tyrone Edwards earlier in the day. While there is no Genesis promise that Plaquemines Parish will not be flooded again, the rainbow is still a symbol of promise. We can offer the promise of bearing witness to each other – letting go of what we know and honoring what exists. This is what bearing witness is, beloveds. May we find the courage every day to make the journey.
Yes. Thank you. I love you.
This week I attended the memorial service of a beloved soul light. First my professor, later my friend and colleague, he was a Jesuit priest whose very life was a prayer of compassion and grace.
There is a Unitarian Universalist story about prayer that goes something like this:
Dear Whomever,
Please…
Thank you.
In many ways it captures the human elements of life – a craving for intimacy and ultimacy, uncertainty, need, gratitude. It is possible to ask the universe at large and to say thank you in general, though this is not always a satisfying prayer.
My Jesuit friend taught this Unitarian Universalist another way to pray. He said that there were really only three essential elements to any prayer and they could be prayed through almost any life situation or stages of faith. The three elements are:
Yes.
Thank you.
I love you.
Yes. Thank you. I love you.
Yes. Yes to the divine spark within me, yes to the calling to ministry, yes to showing up to my life and my work with all my human imperfection, yes to the joy and the sorrow, yes to this sometimes difficult and always beautiful world. Yes.
Thank you. Thank you for the gifts of breath and water and beloved soul lights. Thank you for radish sprouts and coffee and journals with blank pages. Thank you for songs and symbols and stories. Thank you for connection and communication and Carnival. Thank you for sight and insight and the darkness too… Thank you.
I love you. I love you, spirit of life and love, creator and created, that which was and is and ever shall be. I love you, source of hope and diversity, comfort and challenge, interdependent web of all existence. I love you.
Yes. Thank you. I love you.
It is a prayer I can pray – come hurricanes and high water, elections and power outages, while waiting for a holiday or for results from the lab. It is a prayer I pray each day.
My Jesuit friend used to say that he wasn’t a great theologian, but that he did know how to put deep spiritual understandings into ducky and horsy language. It was this gift, in fact, that made him a truly great theologian – one who will be deeply missed by all who encountered his gentle wisdom.
Yes. Thank you. I love you.
