There is no limit to the people coming. I’m told more arrive every day.
But I’m not at one of the shelters accompanying migrants in El Paso. I’ve crossed the border into Juarez to help at Nuestra Seῇora de Guadalupe Cathedral on the plaza where, under the auspices of the Missionaries of St. Columban, volunteers serve almuerzo (lunch) to some 400-600 migrants Monday through Friday. I’d heard they could use help, so I walk over the bridge on Thursdays. A sinfully simple undertaking for me, a white U.S. citizen with a passport.
Meanwhile, all U.S. ports of entry remain closed to asylum seekers as Title 42 continues to serve as a stopgap, causing a growing, seemingly endless number of migrants to make their way across Mexico and land in Juarez. When the number stuck on the streets began escalating, the Columbans and the diocese of Ciudad Juárez chose to set up tables in the parish hall and make sure they ate at least one meal a day.
People line up outside before the doors open. Men, women, children waiting for a free meal. No questions asked. All that’s required is that you stand for the benediction, eat quickly, and pick up after yourself so that we can seat the next round of folks. Fourteen tables, eight to a table. That’s 112 people per round. And tables will be filled several times before the day is over.
I hadn’t thought about how impractical love is until I started serving plate after plate of warmed-over spaghetti, beans, and rolls to table after table of migrants.
Here, unlike the shelters in El Paso, there’s no quantifiable outcome to my efforts. No one to call to come drive the families to the airport or bus so we can know they’ll soon be in the safe harbor of their sponsor. Instead, they eat and pool back onto the streets or their room, for those who have money to afford one.
When the spaghetti runs out – and it inevitably does – volunteers quickly improvise by opening can after can of tuna, corn, and peas, throwing in huge dollops of mayonnaise, to create a semi-satisfying alternative. That, too, may run out, depending on how many stragglers will show up before the cathedral closes its doors later this afternoon.
How do you even know if someone won’t show up in line again later? I ask one of the volunteers.
She shrugs. Her quizzical expression says, why does it matter?
I only do this one day a week, yet I notice I have attitude issues. I want assurances. Sensible rules. Measurable results.
When I volunteered in El Paso, we had order, a structure to the scenario of people arriving seeking asylum. We served a steady stream of migrants, but a manageable one. And many had legitimate claims for asylum. But not all. Still, there was a process. ICE would check each asylee, vet and bring them to our shelters. And we had a good system going, feed them, give them a hot shower and a change of clothes, tell their relatives to buy airline or bus tickets, and get them on to the next leg of their journey. It was a relatively smooth process. And I felt as though I was part of a humanitarian effort with a clear purpose.
Until the arrivals started to grow. And grow. Migration no longer a methodical ebb and flow, but a stubborn tide that refused to go out.
Now I wonder, and worry, where will it all end?
I grow tired rushing from table to table, balancing paper plates, Styrofoam cups with sugar-watery oatmeal. I react, interiorly, to diners who don’t acknowledge the plate of food I’ve set before them with a thank-you. I feel disgusted with the person who sneaks a second meal when so many still needing to be fed sit on folding chairs waiting outside our doors. And I’m beyond frustrated with systems of governing that create the kind of greed, exploitation, and desperation that causes so many to leave home and prevents them from simply existing. Some days I rant with better alternatives. As if I could rule the world. Or would be good at it.
Staring out at this sea of people, I’m secretly deciphering who deserves to be here. Certainly the woman who has stuffed her mop of unkempt hair into a faded black hoodie, stained with the dust of the desert. Her soiled jeans reveal bare ankles fit into sole-flapping sneakers. But not the Venezuelan couple at the next table, charging their phones while ignoring everyone around them. From his bright, obviously-dyed blond cropped hairstyle and her long curls cascading down the length of her clean black coat, I’ve deduced they’ve shuffled in from a hotel room.
I’m clearly no Mother Teresa. Nor Dorothy Day. Apparently, I can accompany people only so far.
Aware that I need an attitude check, I turn to my fellow volunteers for encouragement. Of course, there are stalwart, selfless Catholic sisters among us. Models I don’t even want to try to emulate. But there are also many sweet, youthful faces. I haven’t yet discovered what has brought these 20-something-year-olds to volunteer at least four hours of their weekdays to serve destitute people. But I’ve come to know a few of them. Like Jaime Jesus, the Venezuelan migrant, who arrives every day to tend to other migrants like himself.
At 23, he’s shouldering the responsibility of caring for his ill parents and younger sister back in Venezuela. The day his mother could only feed him and his sister and tried to pretend she and his dad had already eaten, he knew he had to leave home to support them.
On a break between wiping tables and waiting for the next procession to pile in, I ask Jaime about his job. I’d heard he was working as a barista at a local café. He says he starts at 3 p.m., which is basically right after he leaves here, and works until 11. Every day. Then he goes to sleep for a few hours until the alarm wakes him so he can check the CBP One mobile app. Like thousands of other Venezuelan migrants, he’s seeking a “humanitarian exception” to Title 42 to enter the U.S. But whenever he tries to file for an appointment online, the saturated system crashes. So, he keeps rising early and trying.
He makes me wish I had control over that process. I’d quickly decide who was worthy of a chance to apply for a “humanitarian exemption.” Jaime – worthy. Couple with the stylish haircuts – not worthy.
Incredulously, I ask, with such a busy schedule, why then does he volunteer here every day?
“It fills my soul to help my friends,” he says.
I stare for a moment, knowing that if I were him, I’d probably be napping right now, catching up on all those missed hours of sleep instead of feeding fellow competitors in the endless line to enter the land of opportunity.
While Jaime is learning English from us, I’m learning humility from him.
Unbidden, the words of Jim Finley, one of my spiritual teachers, come to mind. “Love won’t let us live on our own terms.”
That’s for sure. Because, if it did, I would naturally put limits on love, conditions that must be met before I can open my heart fully. No such conditions exist with Jaime.
Nor with God. Which is why, at the end of a full day, I choose to sit like an unlearned child in the silence of the lap of God. I need to mellow out and soak up that love. Again.
I settle onto my meditation mat and open the New Testament, expecting to practice lectio divina. The marked, tattered pages of 1Corinthians fall open before me. I’ve highlighted the infamous chapter 13 all over the place. Those overused verses at weddings that caused guests’ eyes to cloud over.
But my eyes fall to this line: “There is no limit to love’s forbearance, to its trust, its hope, its power to endure.”
No limit!
I read it again. I think of the migrants at the cathedral. I see Jaime‘s boyish smile welcoming them.
The message seeps in.
Am I being asked to live up to that? That kind of limitless love? Can I possibly get myself out of the way and let such an impractical, extravagant love order my life?
Certainly not on my own.
I close my eyes and open my hands. Waiting in the silence.
When the gong on my meditation timer app goes off, Nicholas of Flue’s ethereal ending prayer pops up. “My Lord and my God, detach me from myself to give my all to you.”
My God, my all? Yes, I know, it’s the only way.
Note: a version of this essay will appear in NCR’s Soul Seeing column this spring.
A Journey of the Heart 