Sunday, September 26, 2010

Week 44: Migration and Immigration


Migration and Immigration. How can one thrill the heart and the other weigh down the soul?

My eye is drawn daily to light and wings. At dawn a small flock of sandhill cranes pecks about a harvested corn field, backlit by rays of heaven, streaming and raising steam. At dusk dark shadows of flocks line up the length of power lines, facing the setting sun. Is this their form of prayer? These changes in time and season, in flying from one home to the next and back again, evoke wonder.

Changes of immigration law evoke dread. My friend, Gwen, described walking through the desert where many immigrants cross from Mexico to Arizona.

"There is nothing simple about immigration as it stands in these days. From a legal point of view there are no easy answers at all. But I am responsible for God's point of view. And there is only one answer in scripture for the stranger and the neighbor. That answer is welcome and respect."


If laws pass that make it a crime to aid immigrants without legal documentation, then our whole congregation could be sent to jail. Maybe that would be a good thing. Thirty eight states are considering such lawas. But hopefully another way through the wilderness will be found.

This coming week includes Worldwide Communion Sunday. If only the communion could be honest and equal between the communions of Mexico and the United States, between Nicaragua and Costa Rica, between Uganda and DR Congo, that would indeed be a miracle. Until then, the Mexicans and Costa Ricans, and Africans and African Americans and Native Americans (and German, Irish, English, Finnish, French and Swiss Americans) in our little communion seeks to grow in joy and justice.

The birds may lift my heart. But it is brothers and sisters I need to lift my soul. The flock of One God of All.

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