At the beginning of December, my students and I participated in a march in solidarity with migrants in transit through Mexico. We walked 20 miles along the train tracks from Huehuetoca to the Methodist church in Apaxco, joining two migrants from Honduras: a father and his 16 year old son.
We started out well, and I naïvely thought it wouldn’t be as difficult as I had imagined. After awhile, though, my backpack started to weigh on me and the sun grew stronger. I slipped on a greasy part of the tracks. I was okay (just covered in grease), but my water got carried off by someone who had stopped to help. My boots felt tight. I was thirsty. I began to wonder if I would make it the rest of the way. We were walking such a small percentage of the journey from Mexico’s southern border to its northern border, yet we were exhausted.
I felt tired and sweaty and thirsty, and as I observed homes and restaurants off in the distance, I felt far from everyday Mexican life. My anger grew. No one should have to live this way, traveling clandestinely and running into thieves, drug cartels, gangs, and exploitative government agents, but U.S. and Mexican immigration policies make it so. I felt in my body a little of what migrants feel every day, and that cemented my frustration with how we treat other people and what our governments have done to do cause this situation. I felt that pain and fatigue in my body, and I won’t soon forget it.
We walked north, towards Mexico’s northern border. The goal is the U.S. for most and Mexico’s industrial northern cities for some (they say there is plenty of work in cities like Monterrey). As we walked, I thought of the U.S. at the end of this 40-day journey—the U.S. on the other side of the border marked by walls and the unforgiving Sonoran Desert. The U.S., my home. I thought of my family waiting for me for Christmas. Some of the people that walk the train tracks towards the north also have family in the U.S. They also think of the U.S. as home. They walk day in and day out to get back there.
Before we began our trek, I had received good news. Isaac, my partner of three years, had gotten approved for a tourist visa to travel to the U.S. After two previous failed attempts and a few years of hoping, this time he had finally been approved. I felt ecstatic—he would finally know my home and my family—and yet on this walk it felt bittersweet. As we walked kilometer after kilometer with our faces towards the U.S., we knew in a few weeks we would fly there together, but we also knew that we couldn’t take along our new friends. Why were we more deserving of a safe travel than them?
When it came time to fly to the U.S., I also thought of my friends from Deportados Unidos en la Lucha. They go to the airport to meet the three planes that arrive every week filled with people getting deported from the U.S.. I was at the airport to fly in the opposite direction. My friends are deportees who call the U.S. home (or a home) and who have family still there who miss them every day. Why am I more deserving of a trip back home than them?
The truth, of course, is that I’m not more deserving. We’re in this situation because of the unequal political and economic power distribution between the Global South and the Global North. We’re in this situation because of xenophobia and racism and racial profiling. Therefore, we can and should give a blanket to a migrant in transit and offer work to a deportee, but we also have to work to dismantle our unjust systems.
On Sunday, February 18, we celebrated Migrant Sunday in the Methodist Church of Mexico. In preparation for the day, I wrote a liturgy and an essay that were sent to all Methodist pastors in Mexico. Below is a translated version of the essay I wrote:
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Every year when we as the Methodist Church of Mexico celebrate Migrant Sunday, we have the opportunity to reflect upon what has happened this year for the migrants among us.
Unfortunately, this year brought us a lot of bad news. The U.S. government continues to deport Mexicans (among others) in impressive numbers. In Mexico, these deportees receive little or no help from the government or civil society. In September, the United States announced that it will cancel the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which protected from deportation certain undocumented youth. Because of this decision, many Mexican young people are at risk of deportation from the U.S. In November and recently in January, the U.S. government declared that it would end Temporary Protective Status (TPS) for Nicaraguans, Salvadorans, and Haitians, in addition to the Sudanese. The members of these communities with TPS could be deported once their protection ends and eventually could try to transit through or live in Mexico. There are already communities of Haitians that have established themselves in Mexico—especially on the northern border—when they were not able to enter the U.S.
The demonstration “One Year with Trump” was organized by Deportados Unidos en la Lucha and took place outside the U.S. embassy in Mexico City. The group brought articles collected from deportees arriving to the Mexico City airport, including the white plastic sacks given to migrants to hold their belongings.
Mexico continues to be a difficult trajectory for migrants in transit. From the southern border to the northern border, migrants in transit face violence—including sexual violence—at the hands of Mexican society, drug cartels, the government, and sometimes other migrants. The Mexican government continues to deport more Central Americans than the U.S. Many people suffer human trafficking or are mistreated by the coyotes that guide them (for example, the cases of more than 100 people dying of thirst and abandoned in the back of semi-trucks).
Thousands of migrants every year walk along the train tracks of the train nicknamed “La Bestia.” On this journey, they face extreme conditions, including violence.
Throughout this year there were also many happy and hopeful stories: the visas, residencies, and citizenships that were approved; the graduations of im/migrants or their children; the migrants that have found home in their new place of residence; the groups of migrant activists that have come together to fight for their rights; the new opportunities for work and education; and the communities that have welcomed foreigners. It is important to recognize the injustices, but it also important to celebrate the victories and the beautiful moments.
The gospel reading this week is Mark 1:9-15. In this passage, Jesus is baptized by John and receives confirmation that he is the son of God. Afterwards he spends 40 days in the desert, where he is tested by Satan. Following the desert, Jesus goes to Galilee to proclaim that the Kingdom of God is drawing near.
If we read these passage with the lens of migration, the first thing that draws our attention is the desert. The desert is an image and experience extremely present for Mexican and Latin American migrants that have crossed the desert to reach the United States. In addition, it is an important symbol in the Judeo-Christian imagination: the time that Jesus spends in the desert reminds us of the experiences of Moses and Hagar in the desert and of the 40 years that the Israelites spend there. All of those biblical figures are also migrants. Hagar is an Egyptian woman that is thrown out of Abraham’s home twice (the first time pregnant and the second time with her son) and experiences thirst in the desert as a result. Moses is an Israelite but lives in Pharaoh’s house and flees to the desert, where he lives for years, gets married to someone outside his community, and builds a whole new life. In the end, he returns to liberate his community from slavery, and he guides the Israelites for 40 years in the desert but never enters the Promised Land.
With his experience wandering in the desert, Jesus shows us his identity as a migrant and an aspect of his incarnation: he experiences with us the difficulties of life and temptation. The theme of Jesus as a migrant can be found throughout the gospels. Other gospels tell us of migrant baby Jesus born in Bethlehem, of migrant child Jesus that flees to Egypt, and of Jesus the adult who does not have a place to lay his head (Mt 8:20).
Jesus’s time in the desert follows his baptism. Baptism in the Christian life announces the end of an era and the beginning of a new era. It is significant that the time in the desert goes together with his baptism because the desert is often a space of liminality and transition. For Jesus it is a part of his transition to enter his ministry. For the migrants on their way to the U.S., crossing the desert is a rite of passage; the space of the desert marks the change between their place of origin and their destination. For those that transit through Mexico, the path of the train “the Beast” is a part of their rite of passage and their transition.
It is following his time as a migrant in the desert that Jesus goes to announce the gospel—that the Kingdom of God draws near. His good news come out of his suffering, his tribulations, and his temptation. After such a difficult and heavy experience, perhaps you and I would have offered a more pessimistic or hateful message. After a year of such injustice for migrants of all kinds, we could draw negative conclusions—that the situation will never improve. However, Jesus comes out of the desert with a message of hope and justice. His hope and his fight for justice are based on a drawing near to the human reality, and that’s how we realize that his gospel is not something empty or shallow. Jesus knows our context, but he also knows that the Kingdom of God—a kingdom of justice, love, peace, and equality—will prevail.
In the same way, we can familiarize ourselves with the situation of the migrants among us, seeing all the injustice, division, violence, and sadness, without concluding that all is lost. We can follow the example of Jesus and of activists by recognizing the reality but at the same time seeking to change the world. The migrant journey through Mexico is difficult, but there are churches like the Methodist Church “La Santísima Trinidad” [1] in Apaxco, State of Mexico, that have organized themselves to offer hospitality to migrants. There are borders that divide us, but El Faro: the Border Church[2] meets on both sides of the wall between Tijuana and San Diego to celebrate a binational Eucharist. There is human trafficking, but Dreams[3] goes into various migrant detention centers in Mexico to accompany migrants and to detect victims of trafficking. Deportations interrupt lives and divide families, but groups such as Deportados Unidos en la Lucha[4] in Mexico City and Dreamer Moms[5] in Tijuana are fighting for their rights. I invite you to investigate and get to know the reality and the inspiring work of migrants in your region.
The challenges are great and the realities are complex (Jesus knows it well), but Jesus invites us to participate in bringing the Kingdom of God on earth. This Migrant Sunday, let us celebrate the victories and the beautiful moments, let us recognize the injustices and the suffering, and let us commit ourselves to seeking the Kingdom of God and fighting for a better Mexico and a better world.
To close, I offer a litany that I wrote:
For welcome upon arriving to a new community, we give you thanks. For the feeling of being at home, wherever that may be, we give you thanks. For work and educational opportunities, we give you thanks. For policies that open doors to us, we give you thanks.
For bridges, we give you thanks.
For generalized violence that causes us to flee, we ask you for justice. For governments that deport migrants and divide families, we ask you for justice. For human trafficking and coyotes that abuse us, we ask you for justice. For communities that don’t accept deportees and returnees, we ask you for justice.
Kenya is already feeling the effects of climate change. The widespread poverty, recurrent droughts and floods, inequitable land distribution, overdependence on rain-fed agriculture, and few coping mechanisms all combine to increase people’s vulnerability to climate change. For instance, disadvantaged people have little security against intense climatic actions. They have few resource reserves and poor housing and depend on natural resources for their living. Floods and droughts have caused damage to property and loss of life, have reduced business opportunities, and have increased the cost of transacting business, as recently witnessed in most parts of the country. Climate change and variability are considered to be major threats to sustainable progress. The areas likely to feel the greatest impacts are the economy, water, ecosystems, food security, coastal zones, health, and the distribution of populations and settlements. Africa is considered vulnerable to climate change’s effects largely due to lack of financial, institutional, and technological capacity.
Has Climate change officer ( missionary )working with Pan African Climate justice alliance ( PACJA)
In order to successfully deliver the strategic plan on how to address the climate change issue, PACJA uses an approach that integrates research, advocacy, partnerships development, capacity building, and awareness creation.
Advocacy comprises the core business of PACJA. The Alliance undertakes evidence-based advocacy aimed at improving the policy and laws regarding natural resources management. The research work that PACJA supports, the partnerships it develops, and the capacities it strengthens are all supportive of the advocacy function.
Local communities that are key custodians of natural resources remain vulnerable to climate change, have low adaptive capacity, and lack sufficient capacity in the sustainable management of natural resources. PACJA mobilizes and coordinates capacity building efforts targeting the community and other key stakeholders.
PACJA recognizes the knowledge and information gap in society about climate change and larger environmental and natural resources values and threats. PACJA uses a comprehensive knowledge management approach in creating awareness of effective climate/environmental threat coping mechanisms and wise use of natural resources.
PACJA also supports and facilitates research to generate new information and knowledge that is both used internally to support climate resilience-building and natural resources management, making the same available to other stakeholders for use in a variety of ways.
PACJA recognizes the importance of developing and sustaining strategic partnerships. The Alliance continues to identify and strengthen partnerships with a variety of stakeholders ranging from small community support groups, religious organizations, civil society organizations, private businesses, government institutions, and international networks.
Are you willing to support the missionary work of helping people of Kenya with climate change issues and how to eradicate the issues that cause disaster in Kenya?
Your action today can save millions of lives tomorrow so support GOD’s work by promoting the work of Global Mission Fellows. Show your love to God and to people by supporting this mission work of addressing climate change issue.
The poem “Fern Hill” by Dylan Thomas, is a magnificent weaving of the spell we cast upon ourselves. We are enchanted by the desire for times past, for innocence, for the power of knowing nothing outside of the gate of the front yard. The last two lines of the poem read:
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea
I first heard the poem when I sang “Fern Hill” with my University Choir. My understanding of it was all wrapped up into the images of green British countryside and the pastoral nostalgia of a man’s yearning for his childhood ignorance. I did not expect these lines to follow me to Tanzania. In the small town of Tarime, desperately searching for a role to take on, this poem now reads in a tone much more sinister. It names the prison I have build for myself. Sticking to “what the research says” and the most progressive models of community organizing are what responsible people do, right? It is best to maintain a structure that is familiar and recommended. If a community doesn’t respond well then there must be something wrong with them, not the plan. Just like a mind palace, I know where everything fits and how to get there as long as no one interferes. These plans keep me green, fresh, and hopeful. They keep outsiders irrelevant and inhuman.
As long as I have these expectations and have confidence that they will be met, I am shielded from a reality in which these expectations and my supposed knowledge are not enough. Whole systems are built to protect green bubbles of expectation. Missionaries are sent out, NGOs are formed, political parties created to implement these expectations and to insist that things are better because of them.
Green and dying
So money is raised, rousing speeches made to cheering audiences, all with confidence that we can make change, that we have the answer and the means to that end. We talk about success so loudly we fail to hear the dying just beyond the fence. We fail to realize that insistence on This Way kills the chance for A Way. But who cares? We can only see as far as the green grass of the front yard.
I sang in my chains like the sea.
We create our own prison, we never reach the land because everything we touch becomes part of the green green sea and we never see the dying. For Thomas to write this, he must have at least glimpsed something beyond the “apple boughs” and the “dingle starry.” It must have scared him, for this poem is indeed a longing for those chains, for that green prison. Maybe this is not the most hopeful message, but it is a message that we must hear. As people of God we are called to step outside of the gate, to set aside answers to questions that no one is asking, and to see the dying.
The Good News is that in seeing how we destroy ourselves, we have an opportunity for life. We have opportunity to do what we fear we cannot do outside of a singing prison. If we let go of the illusion of green, we allow the possibility for spring to blossom in its time.
“The child will never leave the field of vision of his parents because it is their duty to watch over him …”
Our feelings are often powerful but equally contradictory when we talk about children. We feel great joy when a mother gives birth to a child. We are anguished and angry when we find ourselves in front of a child who takes our bag or wallet out of the street or engages in drugs and juvenile delinquency.
If our feelings can distort our perception of the child, should we still turn to society?
The importance given to children in society depends on their respect for beliefs, tradition, social norms, taboos and good morals. This means that a model child will be better seen than a child in identity crisis.
The situations and circumstances of our lives shape our personality and influence our perception of children in crisis. These are: our education, our cultural background, our personal history, the mass media (social networks, films, magazines, the internet, etc.), our academic and professional training and our country.
But what about God? How does God see children in crisis? Does God have a plan for them? Do they occupy a place of choice in their Father’s heart?
The divine character of the Heavenly Father is revealed in the father’s relationship with his prodigal son in the parable of Luke 15. The father is moved with compassion for his “lost” son and runs to his neck. The stake is neither the obedience of the law nor the name nor the moral but it is the mercy that takes precedence and that goes beyond everything. This is what God requires in our relationships with children in crisis.
God has a project of life and salvation for the child in general and for the child in crisis in particular. In reading Psalms 127 and 128, four key words tell us about the value given to children; the children are:
An eternal heritage
An award
An arrow
An olive tree
The child is called to enter into God’s plan for his life and these needs are physical, mental, spiritual, social and emotional. The child also needs warm relationships, protection, to be taught in the way of the Lord in a life environment conducive to his growth and fulfillment.
Our duty is to intercede for children in crisis, to act for their salvation, to pay particular attention to their situation, to provide for their needs…
If we want to see children in crisis as God, we have to get rid of all these negative influences that often distort our vision of things. We must therefore understand the divine character of the Father, God’s plan for the child, the value of the child and its needs.
The Book of Fellows 