It was uncharacteristically cold this past weekend in the Rio Grande Valley, with damp air, and cold earth that felt like an unwelcome visitor to the swaying palm trees. When Cain took his brother’s life, it is written that Abel’s blood cried out from the ground. Sometimes, it feels like the ground is still a place that carries the cries of our siblings. And we are, undoubtedly, our siblings’ keepers.
A lot has changed in a month, with the patrolling vehicles, cancelled immigration appointments, and fear of what and who is not known on either side of a razor wire encrusted wall. So, I did what I could to listen, to notice, to witness.
A group of South Central Conference clergy met last weekend in Harlingen, TX for a retreat at the border. We traveled to shelters where we met families who were fleeing violence and poverty in their home countries, many families who were separated from one another. Yet, amid the anti-immigrant rhetoric, and the heinous attempts to erase the humanity of human beings by insinuating that their existence lacks legality, I found the church. In San Benito, there resides an intentional community called La Posada Providencia, where multiple immigrant families take care of their shared home, cooking, cleaning, laughing, and learning. It was almost impossible to walk anywhere without a laughing child running past you.
The nun who works with this community showed off the new tile floors, telling us that a previous resident now has a successful business, and that he returned to La Posada to install the granite. A little boy jumped into her arms and proudly told us he’d just washed his hair.
What are we so afraid of?
We crossed into Matamoros to visit a tent city, the infrastructure was no match for the chill, and the kind of rain that stays in your bones. Yet the children played, their little feet unbothered by the cold. They lifted pan dulce to their mouths and the sugar stuck to their grins. I spoke French with a Haitian man who held a little girl in his arms. I gave her a gentle smile and offered my best attempt at Creole, but she buried her face in his neck. He laughed, “elle parle portugais.” Portuguese. She is from Brazil. He helps care for her because he lived in Brazil for 10 years after leaving Haiti. Now he waits in Mexico, He knows five languages. I can’t stop thinking of his eyes when he said he just wants his wife and children to be safe.
What are we so afraid of?
Later that day, the clergy gathered at the border wall. The sun had finally come out, and yet was eclipsed by cold bars, rust, and wire. Just a few miles south, women were selling nopales and elote. We placed one hand on the wall, and one hand on each other, and we prayed. We prayed the words we were taught by the man whose family fled to Egypt shortly after his birth, who reminded his followers that whatever we do to the least among us, we do to him.
What are we so afraid of?
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