Immigrant Reflections

There is a New Yorker cartoon hanging in my office that my friend Bruce sent me.  Moses is talking to God in the burning bush and he says: “Yeah, I could walk all the way to Egypt. Or you could just free them yourself using magic.”

I wish God worked that way, especially now. But we are called to a journey not to a quick fix. We don’t know how things will play out nationally or locally, but we can build connections that will take us into the unknown future. That is the work we are called to.

I’d like to share the story of how one of my favorite poems was written. It is a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, whose father was Palestinian and whose mother was American. She grew up in both Ferguson, Missouri and on the road between Ramallah and Jerusalem.

She and her husband decided to take a 3 month trip to South America when they were married and in their first week, the bus they were riding was stopped and robbed. Everyone lost everything they had with them and an Indian man lost his life.

Soon after this happened, Naomi Shihab Nye wrote this poem:

“Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.”

I posted this poem on Facebook the day after the election. And it feels more important now than it did then.

We’ve been on the bus together for a very long time. We’ve driven the same roads, shopped at the same grocery stores, walked along the same river trail. But I think most of us have been staring out the window, not noticing each other. And this is more true in Bend than many other places. We use the term the “Bend bubble” regularly to say that it’s possible to live here isolated from any harsh realities outside.

Our country’s upheaval in recent months is breaking us out of our bubble.

And that is a very good thing.

We are realizing that we have been on this bus together, but have been so absorbed in our own worlds that we have not seen each other. We did not realize we had a part to play. We did not know our voices could make a difference. We did not realize we were connected.

This connection has the potential to lead us into action. Kindness is not a political position or a well-placed donation, it means listening to others’ stories and telling ours, and responding with courageous love.

Faith sets a table.

At the root of Christianity and indeed, many of our spiritual traditions, is this understanding of connection – that we are all on the same bus. It is why this table is at the front of our church week after week. Creating space for our neighbor is at the heart of what Jesus spoke and what has been a bedrock marker of true love for God.

And that means those who may be considered foreigners and aliens among us. When God gives guidance to Israel in the Hebrew Scripture, there is almost always a mention of the alien or the foreigner among them. The command is not to isolate or withdraw but to see, include and care for them.

I especially love Exodus 23:9: You shall not oppress a resident alien; you know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. 

“You know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” At the heart of all our stories is an immigrant story. We’re on the same bus and it’s time we start telling our stories and listening to the stories of others and building connections outside of the bubble we live in to make our church communities and the community of Bend places where we are in this together, where we are willing to be inconvenienced momentarily for the deep and lasting satisfaction of community.”

We need a different narrative. The narrative of division and rejection is not the narrative of our faith.

Our Facebook feeds and news reports will not give us a new narrative.

We must stop snacking on panic and fear and sit down to full meals of love and connection.

We have to believe, live and make real in the narrative that we are in this together, that kindness and compassion are our guidelines.

The biggest thing we have to lose is our isolation from one other.

The biggest thing we will gain is community and the embodied knowledge of what it means to love our neighbor.