Before the preacher started, she said, “Jesus tells us the moral to this story right up front. But I want you, as you’re listening, to write your own moral.”

The story goes like this:

One moral jumps out at me immediately: those in power will never do the right thing unless we make their lives too uncomfortable for them to let the status quo continue.

At a meeting I was at recently, an activist described the tactic of “birddogging” like this: When a person in power (elected official, judge, whoever) refuses to talk with you, you just show up wherever they are and ask your questions. You disrupt business as usual in order to pursue the justice you require.

During that meeting, it seemed like some folks were uncomfortable with this practice.

So, a second moral to this story, particularly for well-behaved white folks: If you ever think that a tactic that an impacted community, minoritized group, or vulnerable person is using is too disruptive, remember the widow and the unjust judge – and that Jesus approved of the widow’s tactics. (v 7)

This story is also about accompaniment, through its absence. How would it have been for the widow if someone with more power – in today’s terms, maybe a straight, cis, white man – had gone with her each time she petitioned the judge? Not to speak for her, her voice was strong. Not to impose, but at her request.

If the widow had been accompanied, she wouldn’t have had to face this struggle alone. More, the judge would have seen that she wasn’t alone, that she had friends with more power. Even more, the judge would have known that someone with power was seeing his injustice every time he turned down the widow’s request.

To be present, to be seen, to be a witness: the three essential tasks of accompaniment.  

This gets to a third moral: look for the people who are fighting fights for survival in the face of injustice and ask if they want you to go along with them.

Because nothing will change if we all stay comfortable, and tactics that seem “disruptive” to you might mean survival to someone else. We’re all in this together.

From time to time, when meeting with my volunteers, we write flash blogs together: 10 minutes to get down our thoughts on a common prompt. We're practicing expressing ourselves and being less scared of blogging. ​I'm not going to exactly write to this prompt because I'm in a little bit different place than my YAVs in "mission service"

Here's what I think: Saying "mission service" is just a softer way to say "mission." It's what church progressives say instead of "mission," when we want not to associate ourselves with colonization and the extractive, destructive, imperialist history (and present) of church mission. We say "mission service" to maybe indicate that we recognize the power dynamics and that we're here to serve, not to impose, the word mission is in there because we're from a church but it's just, like, mission-adjacent.

Is mission service really a different thing? (Not unless we make it so?)

It's more important, I think, to wrestle with what mission has meant and what we want it to mean now. "Mission" has meant force, displacement, violence, erasure, charity, assimilation,  empire, going-out-to-civilize. (Has there ever been a good mission?) To me, anyway, mission means well-intentioned (mostly white) people perpetuating global colonialist power dynamics. It's always "mission to."

In the best light, I'd like to think that mission service can at least point us at shifting into a "with" framing. "Service" to say being with people, working alongside (still problematic), entering with humility.

When I was "in mission service" myself, as a YAV, I told a group of mostly-white seminarians that they were my mission field, and that I was with them to proselytize a gospel of demilitarization and open borders. They didn't appreciate being the recipients (subjects) of my "mission service." I hope that discomfort stays with all of us, and we don't practice what we don't want practiced on us.

From time to time, when meeting with my volunteers, we write flash blogs together: 10 minutes to get down our thoughts on a common prompt. We're practicing expressing ourselves and being less scared of blogging. ​

Forget the borderlands. Think about liminal space. 

Liminality, the quality of being on the edge of something. At the threshold. 

The borderlands are two thresholds embracing, that space in the middle where you're not quite in one place and not quite the other. When the line between two things is wide enough, where are you when you stand on the line? Imaginary lines, intangible boundaries that fear makes tangible. The wall that hate built. 

Gloria Anzaldua called the border "una herida abierta," an open wound. But it's not just about the border itself, the wound itself -- the borderlands are the tender place on either side. 

The U.S./Mexico borderlands, a place I love. A place that is neither place. Here, in the Sonoran desert, partially in Mexico and partially in the U.S. Here, on colonized O'odham lands, which stretch across the border on either side, enduring past layers of forced separation. Here, in territory populated by javelina, chiltepin peppers, saguaro cactus, ocotillo, hummingbirds who migrate north and south above the border wall. 

The Constitution-free zone, where the 4th Amendment doesn't protect you if Border Patrol decide to search you or your car at a check-point. 

A low-intensity conflict zone, where helicopters, drones, ATVs, armed agents, surveillance towers, underground sensors, are all common. 

Place of oversaturated sunsets. Of imposing geological formations. Of thorny plants that appear dead, until they leaf out suddenly in the rains. 

​Come and see. 

We are calling to tell you we are free.

I can’t sleep. I can’t stop thinking about this:

At my church I sit on one side of the long white plastic tables; our guests sit on the other. I ask their names and if they’re traveling with anyone, how old their kids are. I write down their contact’s name and city and then dial their phone number and pass the phone across the table. “If you want to say hello to your relative, tell them how you are, then I can explain how they can buy the tickets for you to arrive to their place.”

People mostly nod, take the phone, and talk with their cousins or brothers-in-law or family friends or whoever it is who will offer them a safe place to stay while they fight for asylum. I try not to listen. Our guests have very little privacy, and it feels like the least I can do is try to give the impression their conversations are their own.

On Wednesday there were three people doing this intake work, while I managed paperwork and made connections. I wasn’t working so hard not to listen. Maybe that’s why I heard it, over and over - we are calling to tell you we are free.

“Hola, tía! Estamos llamando a decir que estamos libre.”

“Cuñado, habla María. Estamos libre.”

“Oye, hermano - estamos en Tucson, Arizona, estamos libre.”

We’re free. We’re free. We’re free.

I’ve been free my whole life and I’ve never once called someone to tell them I’m free. ​

Today was my third guitar lesson. My teacher, generous human being that she is, greets me each time with a print out of a song she has selected just for me and the YAV sing-alongs I will someday lead. This week it was Woody Guthrie. You know, “this land is your land, this land is my land,” and “this land was made for you and me.” I immediately thought of Colombia.

The Colombian conflict is all about land.

.

That’s it, that’s the whole message. If you understand that, you understand the whole thing.

.

Of course, there’s a chance you don’t understand it, not fully. I certainly didn’t. Not until I sat in a circle with a whole community driven off their land, not until I heard ex-combatant members of the FARC talk about land with their own voices, did I understand a fraction of what it really means. It’s possible I still don’t.

I have a theory that it’s nearly impossible for someone brought up in my circumstances to really understand what land means to a campesino. I’ll go through the identity markers again - white, U.S. passport, middle class, highly educated - and throw in a few more: raised in the suburbs, only distantly related to farmers (I don’t think my grandpa’s dog breeding place counts), nearly always have bought my groceries from a supermarket, lived in four different states.

If you share some or all of those labels, my theory is that you can’t understand the deep relationship a person has with land that they rely on to sustain their life, either. Or the deep trauma of displacement and loss of that land. Maybe it’s a U.S./Majority World disconnect. 

Issues of land reform motivated the campesinos who would become the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to take up arms in the 60s. Land reform is one of the six major pillars of the Peace Accords. Issues of land reform motivate ex-combatant members of the FARC into active political life today. Issues of land reform impact the daily life and plans for the future of thousands of Colombians.

One woman in Currulao estimates that 60% of all Colombia has been displaced. Documented percentages vary - the UNHCR counts 7.7 million people displaced within Colombia, about 21% of Colombia’s total population - but 60% rings true to her, from her experience. In 1991, three of her brothers-in-law were killed by armed groups. When the armed groups came back, her family was forced to leave their land. In 2000 or 2002, her family was forced to sign a paper that said they voluntarily sold their land.

Her pastor interjects - “The government says land will go back to those who lost it, but that’s mostly not true. A few have returned to their lands, but most won’t.” He adds, “Recently, maybe last year, they killed two campesino leaders who were working to get land back.”

Unpicking the complex violations of land ownership in Colombia is a nightmare, one that millions of people are living out. Some people have been displaced off their land and forced to sign false sale documents, making it extremely difficult to prove they were forcibly displaced and difficult to have their land restituted. Some people have been displaced off of land that was subsequently planted with African oil palm, which eats up the soil and leaves it dead. Some people have been displaced off of land that was then sold to multinational corporations for palm oil or bananas or other export crops -- good luck getting the land back from a powerful MNC with governmental pull. Some people were displaced from land that is still occupied by armed groups. Some people were displaced from land where they had lived for generations without formal deeds, so they can’t prove the lands were theirs to begin with.

And land is everything. Land is food, land is a dignified living, land is heritage, land is self-sufficiency, land is life, land is the essence of being a campesino. ​

What are you thankful for that you didn't think you would be? What are you thankful for that you didn't used to be thankful for? What has surprised you with an upwelling of gratitude, something you were dreading, something you didn't look for but were thankful arrived? 

It's not an easy question. Not a simple prompt for a ten-minute exercise (sorry, YAVs). In this time approaching Thanksgiving, it's easier to list the things that I've gotten used to being thankful for: the beauty of the desert. The work of my volunteers. Snuggles from my dog. Good food. Good weather. I am thankful that my life is full of such good things, and I recognize how easy it is to get used to the goodness. I don't feel thankful for good food, I just know I am. 

Vidalia (not her real name) was the first woman off the ICE van in the Inn Project parking lot, the first of 16 new arrivals. She started asking questions right away, as I led the group down basement stairs to where they could rest. I listed what we could offer: bathrooms, laundry, food-- "Burritos? No mas burritos, por favor!" Vidalia called down the stairs, "no more burritos, please!" before erupting with laughter. The rest of the group chuckled, and I assured them that we don't have any burritos here, no, not like ICE with a scoop of refried beans in a a tortilla, we have other food, good food. 

At the table where I filled out paperwork for each family, Vidalia laughed with me at my fumbling with phone numbers and phone calls (both harder in Spanish). She passed her phone across the table to me and I entered the WiFi password, so she could call her family member from her own phone. I continued with other families, seeing Vidalia on the phone out of the corner of my eye - sitting on her cot and crying. 

Laughter is all that's left, sometimes, when you're trapped in a system you don't understand and that doesn't care for you. 

Later on, I answered a call on the site phone. I thought the person asked for Vidalia , so I passed the phone to her. After a brief exchange, she looked up at me before getting up and taking the phone to another woman. It's for her, she said, not me.  

I hit my head theatrically and laughed at myself, apologized, said something about how phones are hard. Vidalia smiled and pulled me down in a hug, arms wrapped around me very tightly. It's okay, she said, thank you so much. 

Feeling strange, I realized it was the first time I had been hugged in days. I was flooded with gratitude. I don't know how to receive this grace. 
​
Later, Vidalia showed me a cut on her scalp. What happened? I asked.
It's from when I crossed, she said, from jumping off the wall. 

Tucson is a small town inhabiting big city sprawl. It's a city of 1,000,000, in the metro area, but feels like much less. I yell in my car when I have to circle the block once for a parking spot in downtown Tucson, and white-knuckle the wheel feeling overwhelmed when I visit my sister in Seattle. I crane my neck in bars and coffee shops, sure that I'll see someone I know. I'm usually right. 

Tucson is brown and flat and covered in harsh sunshine. Front yards are gravel, unless you're planning to waste money and precious water on irrigating grass year-round. Front yards are dirt brown. The mountains are rock brown. The buildings are more different adobe-brown, except for where they're blue or purple or green or rose. We live in a valley surrounded by our brown mountains, Catalinas to the north that orient us home. 

Tucson is diverse, and siloed.  Anarchists and activists, defense contractors at Raytheon, Air Force members and families on base, refugees and volunteers, headquarters of the biggest Border Patrol sector in the United States, artists and engineers at the U. Tucson can be whatever you are, if you stick to your part of town. Tucson can be bigger than you imagine, if you cross the mental borders of the biggest roads and your usual haunts. Everybody has dated everybody, because the everybody you know is carefully matched set. 

Tucson is raw and polished. Ferocious fighters who block buses and fill court rooms, boutique hotels and young professionals in urban infill districts. 

Tucson is a hunger for water, for recognition, for justice, for independence and every one's right to their own way. 

​I sort of work in education. 

The partners of this program -- other individuals and organizations, the city of Tucson itself, the border, the desert -- bear the lion’s share of the educational work we do together. My part of our shared work is to set up opportunities for the volunteers, and help them process what they experience. I facilitate encounters with new ideas: with the border, the idea of borders, the single harsh permeable boundary between the U.S. and Mexico, the multiple lines in Tucson that separate race and class, the looming presence of the Border Patrol, the volunteers’ own privilege. I ask volunteers to consider, for instance, how it might feel to inhabit a different body and see the green-slashed white trucks creeping around town. I try to coax or push them into recognition of how institutions and policies impact our bodies, our neighbors’ bodies, our neighborhoods, our lives and deaths.

“Border enforcement” is one way to say, “institutions and policies that kill.” “Militarization” is another way. 

Each year, the structure and pace of learning are different. With a new group of people catapulted into this context, I spend the first weeks sussing out what they might be ready to encounter. Some people want to talk during about the harm of white people calling the police during the first week. Others are still struggling with the concept of white privilege in the 10th month. Still others I don’t reach at all, or can’t. 

I wonder, every year, how I can best begin this work of concientizacion, continuing from wherever our volunteers are when they arrive. I know that building rapport is key. If my volunteers don’t trust me to stay with them through what is hard, they won’t let me invite them into hard conversations. And yet, if I work too hard to keep them in a safe place, they will remain insulated from the realities I want them to encounter. It’s a balancing act: how can I discomfort and destabilize my volunteers enough that their worldview becomes porous, without pushing them into defensiveness?

Every year I look for new resources, new tools, new experiences, new ways to reach into the lives that have led the volunteers here and gently ask, “Would you consider this other idea? This other way of life? This other view? Let’s work through it together.” 

Less than 24 hours after I bought it, I had finished The Line Becomes a River by Francisco Cantu. I devoured this book, this unflinching and profoundly personal story of border life. This is first book I have read that feels like living in the borderlands. A book that helps me to feel -- not just know, but feel -- that I am part of this border paradigm that dehumanizes and destroys beloved human beings. 

Cantu is clear: people are being destroyed on both side of the border and both sides of enforcement. He illustrates some of the complexity of the Border Patrol, without excusing or condoning its violence. Instead, he shares the impact that his time in the Border Patrol had on his own heart and spirit, inviting the reader in to see how supporting a dehumanizing institution is itself dehumanizing. 

I bought this book hoping it would be a good resource to read and discuss with my incoming volunteers. I read Cantu’s descriptions of the historical construction of the border with gratitude, thankful that he offers the past in an accessible way. I read his graphic depictions of violence and death -- the reality that we live in -- with mourning, and misgiving. 

The question I am left with, finishing this vital, luminous, horrifying, heartbreaking, book, is - can my new volunteers handle it? Would it do insuperable harm to our fledgling rapport to introduce this witness to violence? Torn, I wonder: If I protect them from this, if they need protection from this, will they be able to endure these borderlands?

If I protect my volunteers from bearing witness to violence, from having a felt experience of dehumanization, white supremacy, and “moral injury,” am I really protecting them? Or am I protecting their privilege? Where is the line between protection and enabling? How can I begin to disassemble the blinders of citizenship, whiteness, wealth, education, in a way that encourages, nurtures people to reach up and out and begin to peel back for themselves what keeps them blind? What will be too much, what will push them fearfully or angrily back toward ignorance, distance, and comfort? 

I talk about my program as a nest, a safe place where people can reflect, grow, experience, explore. True, we have to build the nest new every year, together. It doesn’t exist just because I say it exists. 

The point of a nest is to leave it. To jump toward the ground. 

We might not read this book in the first month of the program, but it’s too important not to share. We will read it together later in the year, discussing lo dificil y lo duro when my volunteers trust me not to let them fall alone from the nest to the desert floor.