El Paso Is Not a Mess

_{El Paso star by artist Candy Mayer}

Every once in a while new folks come to town and remind me what I love about El Paso. Whether it’s someone volunteering for a year with the Annunciation House network or a college or church group wanting to experience a weeklong border orientation, people who visit El Paso for the first time always leave having been surprised by what they’ve discovered and changed by the experience.

This time her name was Theresa.

She came to El Paso, along with two other women, for several weeks of orientation with the Maryknoll lay missioner program before she was to leave on assignment in Kenya. Maryknoll is a Roman Catholic organization that accompanies people in foreign countries living on the margins. It promotes nonviolence, justice, compassion, and care for the earth. For years Maryknoll offered its orientation in New York. But this year they moved it to El Paso, which, for Theresa and her friends and family, was a concern.

Somehow going to Kenya didn’t seem to be as much of an issue.

When they discovered Theresa was headed for the southern border, her friends warned, “You won’t be safe there. El Paso is a mess.”

And she believed it, too.

After all, most Americans only know about El Paso through the news or social media, the sound bites that refer to “illegal invasions,” “criminal caravans,” and “drug cartels” flowing like wild, unmanageable streams through the Rio Grande into the U.S. TV images show poorly dressed, brown-skinned people cozying up on downtown streets under Red Cross blankets and makeshift homesteads. Or lining up outside Sacred Heart Church for the luncheon meal.

From what’s presented on your screen, it’s easy to think things are crazy and unsafe in El Paso.

Until you spend some time here.

Like I have. Here I am mashing potatoes as I join some of my many friends in preparing Sacred Heart’s annual Thanksgiving meal for the poor and the migrants.

It’s been nearly 10 years since I first came to El Paso to volunteer. More than 7 since I left my Virginia home and moved here. So I was anxious to hear what Theresa had to say about this community I easily came to love.

Tall and white, Theresa stands out in El Paso. She’s a minority here, as am I. She’s also older and has lived in various U.S. states, so she’s got some experience with different types of communities.

During their six weeks with us, Theresa and her little group participated in local events and ministries on both sides of the border. They visited some of the many humanitarian organizations, went to migrant shelters, listened to folks accompanying the marginalized, and participated in the everyday life of the culture.

As she was nearing the end of her stay, we gathered at a friend’s home, and I asked about her experience.

“El Paso is such a gentle place,” she offered.

The word “gentle” struck me. I’d not heard that adjective used to describe El Paso before.

She explained how she had thought her rural community back in Kentucky was the gentlest and warmest community she’d ever known.

Until she came to El Paso.

“People are even gentler and kinder here.”

She gave me one example that sounded very familiar.

Needing to buy some groceries last week, she’d gone to the local Albertsons with only $23 cash to spend. No credit card. When she got to the checkout, she realized she’d not estimated her costs well, because the total was $25 and change. She explained her situation to the cashier and asked to remove some items.

“Hold on,” the cashier said. “I’ve got my Albertson’s card. I can apply it to your bill and I bet that’ll take care of it.”

But even with the card, her new total was $23.57. Still more than she had on her.

Then the bagger stepped in. “I can take care of that,” he said. And he dished into his pocket for the needed change.

Theresa left the store with everything she’d intended to buy and genuine gratitude for the kindness of these two strangers.

“I couldn’t believe how both of them stepped in to help me,” she said. “I don’t know of anywhere else in the U.S. where this would happen.”

I heard the surprise and delight in her voice. And I was delighted with her.

Because, at a time when our country is sourly divided, when we teeter on the verge of denying “outsiders” the basic right to seek asylum, when our politicians can’t risk acting humanely for fear of losing their power and status, I find myself turning to El Paso with deep gratitude.

This is what I would like the world to look like. Generous, gentle, kind, and welcoming.

No, El Paso is not perfect, and, yes, it’s a bit messy. But it is not a mess.

Come to think of it, not unlike a stable in Bethlehem where a baby was born so many years ago.

Rescuing an Alien

Sharing a happy ending here – so far – to my last post, and I apologize for taking so long to write it.

Early in June, Sofia, the asylum seeker I had attempted to sponsor, was released from detention! Yay! Thanks to the work of Las Americas – an immigrant advocacy nonprofit in El Paso that provides pro bono and low-cost legal services to asylum seekers. I serve on the board of directors of Las Americas, which is how I initially learned about Sofia’s situation.

I hadn’t mentioned it in my last post, more for her protection than anything, but Sofia was being held at Otero County Processing Center. A privately run facility known for its hellish conditions, Otero is located off a New Mexico desert highway about 40 miles northeast of El Paso. Approaching this windowless, concrete building surrounded by high fencing with barbed wire, you’d have to wonder if you’re at a “processing center” or the county prison next door.

No doubt about it. Otero is basically immigration jail.

So it makes sense that, after her nonsensical third denial for parole, Sofia was so distraught, she asked to be deported, willing to risk the death threats she’d received back home in Colombia rather than remain imprisoned and subjected to the hostility of her detention officer. Take that in for a moment. After all she’d been through, facing the threats back home felt no worse than what she was facing in detention.

_{Photo credit: The Otero County Processing Center on Jan. 4. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)}

Fortunately, the immigration judge did not act immediately on her request, and since Sofia is a client of Las Americas’, the nonprofit filed a complaint against this officer on her behalf, which prompted ICE to release her on bond, for a lesser amount than what’s usually requested.

Knowing that applying for bond from a local nonprofit would take several days, I offered to front the money and take her home with me. I’d get reimbursed later. The critical issue was to get Sofia out of there.

But releasing asylum seekers from detention is never quick nor simple.

It took about a day and a half of dealing with crass, curt, and intimidating ICE employees before everything was approved and Sofia was released to me. This included an unnecessary return trip to Otero the second morning to replace my check that ICE had mishandled.

It didn’t matter how inconvenient or unreasonable their request was. I had to comply. To not return would jeopardize Sofia’s freedom. They had all the power. They were in control of the life I wanted to free.

This experience gave me just a tiny taste of what immigration attorneys and paralegals handling asylum cases deal with every day. The terse and offensive responses from those in authority, the steady push upstream against a forceful tide of anti-refugee, anti-asylum decision makers. This is the system social justice and human rights advocates are working against. But no matter the frustration nor the seemingly impossible odds, they do it in exchange for something invaluable – the dignified life of another human being.

Welcoming Sofia into my home was a complete gift. Proof that a special bond can exist, even between two strangers.

During the three days she spent with me before moving on to stay with a relative while awaiting her court hearing, Sofia viewed everything with a child’s exuberance. From the moon and stars in the night sky, which she hadn’t seen for months, to a cheap new pair of shoes that I bought to replace the thin, blister-causing pair that she’d been given in detention. She praised the simple meal I prepared for her first evening and insisted on preparing a Colombian-style dinner for me the next, along with cleaning my floor and acting as my secretaria, wanting to do whatever she could to assist me. I met practically her entire family via FaceTime — husband, daughter, parents, mother-in-law, cousins. Their immense gratitude felt humbling.

Sofia is one of the lucky ones.

More than 80 percent of asylum seekers do not have legal representation and must simply languish in detention until their asylum case is decided. Most likely they’ll be deported. No matter how solid their credible fear case. It’s rare to win asylum without an attorney, especially if your case is decided in a state like Texas. Most asylum seekers are totally ill-prepared to legally represent themselves and they face intimidation from the ICE agent, from the judge, and from the government attorney questioning them as they attempt to defend their case while clad in detention-assigned prison garb.

I think of all the people who flee their country with legitimate fear of violence and death threats, only to be met at our ports of entry with such incredible resistance and dehumanization. Nowadays asylum seekers must be lucky enough to land an appointment through the CBP One app if they want to even be considered. It doesn’t matter what dangers you’re fleeing or what you’re facing while waiting in Mexico.

And then I think of the hundreds who make it here only to be locked up in detention facilities. They remain in the shadows, their voices unheard, their abuses often unnoticed.

(For more explicit information on the conditions in immigration detention, check out this El Paso Matters article on Otero: https://elpasomatters.org/2021/01/05/ice-detainees-at-el-paso-area-immigration-facility-face-systemic-torture-new-report-says/

That’s why being able to help release even one person, one “alien,” from immigration detention was a grace beyond description. And nonprofits like Las Americas are a true blessing.

So I’ll give Las Americas a plug here and say that the org doesn’t have nearly the funding it needs and is unable to take on more clients. No matter how desperate the person. If you’d like to support people like Sofia and the work of Las Americas, please donate at https://www.las-americas.org/donate

And remember:

“Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” (Hebrews 13)

Nothing Is Missing

Fourteen years today since David passed. Sometimes I wonder, will I ever find such profound love again?

Is it possible for someone to love me as much as David did? But even if I never find such another love, I know that I’ve been given a gift that many never receive. A taste of my belovedness. Through the eyes and heart of another. That’s what David’s love has given me.

And still does.

Yet it’s just a taste. For I have had moments in which I’ve so powerfully experienced my belovedness that I could barely take it in. Moments that I can only describe as mystical.  Because they came out of nowhere and filled me with a “knowing.”

A knowing that, without a doubt, I am loved beyond measure by an immeasurable Presence.

Yet that knowing slips away so easily. In the day-to-day living, I keep forgetting. Or questioning. Even doubting. Like Thomas in this past Sunday’s gospel reading.

“If only you have eyes to see, you will see me everywhere.”

I do want to “see.” But sometimes I need more. Sometimes I need to touch and love the wounds – in myself and others – before I can remember who I am and whose I am. Before I can remember that I am the beloved.

And that nothing is missing anywhere.

Several years ago when I was going through a low point in my aloneness in my log home in Virginia, I reached out for spiritual help. Out of nowhere, I received these words as a reminder.

“Do you not know that your entire being is encompassed by my love?”

Since then it has become like a mantra. Words that I repeat when I need them most.

They remind me that not only I, but everyone and everything, is encompassed by this love.

Recently I took a few days silent retreat simply because I wanted to listen more deeply. I wanted to put aside what I thought I knew, and discover something more, and different, about this Mystery we call God. But I couldn’t get away from this all-encompassing, self-emptying love that made itself known to me and within me in various ways. A love that assured me – again – that nothing is missing.

At times I still feel the sadness of losing David so soon. But I don’t get lost in nostalgia, regrets, or self-pity. Rather, I feel my longing more keenly. A longing to be ever more present to this ever-abiding, interabiding love that gives itself to me every day. And longs to be known and trusted.

If only I have eyes to see.

Nothing is missing anywhere.

No Limit

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.

_{Cathedral in Ciudad Juarez plaza}

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.

_{Volunteers serving lunch}

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.

Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa (Photo by Jim Forest/Flickr)

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.

Christmas Past

Like Ebenezer Scrooge, this holiday I’ve been visited by images of Christmas past.

Reading this story was a Hovey family Christmas tradition

Christmas Eve 1993. My husband, mother, aunt/godmother, and a very pregnant version of myself climb the high stone steps of St. Anne’s Church, which towers above the city of Fall River, Massachusetts. The city of my birth and childhood. The city where my then-living family members gathered for Christmas.

It’s a windy night, and David grabs my petite 4’9” auntie’s arm to keep her from being whisked off into the sky like Mary Poppins.

I’m on my own.

But I feel so heavy, I doubt there’s any chance I’ll be lifted off anything. Inside the dimly lit church with familiar scents and statues of favorite saints, I’m reminded of my childhood. I attended Catholic high school up the block. And Mom worked at St. Anne’s Hospital across the street for years. This was my foundation. French ethnicity and strong Catholic roots. Mom’s faith meant everything to her. It carried her through a hellish ordeal and inspired me along the way.

During the service, as Mom stands on one side and David on the other singing carols in his beautiful baritone voice, I feel a wave of such love wash over me and settle in my belly. After Mass, Mom uncharacteristically pulls the priest over to bless me and the child I’m carrying. A miraculous conception. A child for whom I’d longed and prayed for years. And now, his arrival appears imminent.

I remember the priest’s outstretched hand, Mom’s eyes glistening with tears, her voice cracking with emotion, and my heart so full and warm, causing me to tear up as well. To be so graced with this gift of life inside of me, a gift I’d willingly surrendered to God, deepened my spiritual journey. And helped me toward the next threshold.

St. Anne’s Church

Christmas Eve 2008. I’m standing in another pew, in another church. This time in Charlottesville, Virginia, where I live with my little family of three. Flanked by my now 14-year-old son on one side and my husband on the other, I feel David reach for my hand as he croons Angels We Have Heard on High. My favorite Christmas carol. My heart swells with warmth, tenderness, and comfort. I know how blessed I am.

But I couldn’t have known that this would be our last Christmas together. And there’d soon be another threshold for me to cross. Another invitation to surrender what I couldn’t control.

Sometimes I think, what I wouldn’t give to hear David’s beautiful deep voice beside me again. But just like Dickens’s Scrooge, I am shaped by my past Christmases. By those whom I’ve loved and lost.

And had not grief and unexpected deaths visited me, I wouldn’t have discovered the strength of the courage and confidence, fortitude and faith that I have now. I would not be the woman I am. Nor would I live where I do.

It seems my heart had to be broken to enlarge its borders. To expand my family circle to include the larger human family.

Which brings me to Christmas past, 2022.

Two days before Christmas, I’m standing not in a church pew but in a seemingly endless snake of a line at the Seattle International Airport. My third long line since arriving here, nearly 24 hours earlier. I’ve endured two canceled flights, slept in a chair overnight in terminal C, lost track of my checked luggage complete with Christmas gifts, and am swiftly losing hope that I will even make it to my son, Davis, by Christmas Day.

But I’m not alone. There are hundreds of other travelers in this airport, just as tired, frustrated, and anxious as I am to get to their loved ones. I notice a single mom trying to keep her two boys under 7 entertained as we barely crawl forward. An elderly woman with a cane sits on the luggage scale since there’s no place else to sit except on the floor. We’ve been here since 3 p.m. and it’s now almost 9:30!

During these 6 1/2 hours, I’ve turned to my spiritual practices time and again. Leaned on my willingness to accept what is before me and out of my power to change. In the process, another image has come to my awareness.

An image of a line even more uncertain than this one. A line of thinly clad people who aren’t waiting in a warm, enclosed shelter with bathrooms and food options. A line of migrants I’d left behind in downtown El Paso, on the streets outside Sacred Heart Church. And, even more concerning, a line that has formed on the other side of concertina wire waiting for Border Patrol. They sleep on the cement along the Rio Grande and light tiny fires as they attempt to keep warm overnight, remaining hopeful they’ll be able to enter the U.S.

These people have no other options. They have no home to return to. They are poor and powerless in ways I’ve never experienced.

A line of migrants waiting to be processed

Of course I’m not denying I would have felt huge disappointment and melancholy had I spent Christmas Eve in a hotel room alone. But these disturbing images put things in perspective.

And reminded me again of a powerful Love that was born among the poor more than 2,000 years ago. The ultimate surrender into uncertainty.

At the end of A Christmas Carol, Scrooge vowed to keep the spirit of Christmas in his heart and to live it all the year ‘round. May I have the same intention. To carry the light and love of Christmas into whatever situation I find myself. And to willingly accept the next threshold.

I Am Belfast-I Am You

It’s been a couple of months since I’ve returned from Ireland. In some ways, the Emerald Isle feels very far away. In others, I’m still there.

How does one explain carrying a sense of place deep within you? A place that had been foreign to you only months earlier?

Maybe an experience I had in Belfast will help.

One morning during our 8-day Northern Ireland Retreat, Gareth dropped us at an East Belfast theater for a private screening of the documentary I Am Belfast. Written and produced by Mark Cousins, it’s a touching, creative, poetically powerful film, in which a female actress embodies Belfast, as she introduces us to all aspects of herself. Her history and architecture, her multi-faceted characters and neighborhoods, her acts of senseless violence and profound kindness, and her spirit. She doesn’t hesitate to reveal herself. Never flinches from showing her many variations of shadow and light. She excludes nothing.

I listen and watch, intrigued by this strong yet gentle elder who leads us along her neighborhood streets where children play and detonated bombs once left broken homes and body parts.

I hear attitude in the voices of her residents. Notice a daring, do-as-you-please energy, the kind that’s been unleashed after being held back for so long. I notice, too, how her slow gait carries the wounds of immense suffering alongside the desire for unrestrained joy. Like a contemplative, she silently strides through a whirl of emotions.

As she guides us through her environs, she’s clearly enamored with parts of herself. Pained by others.

This place feels very familiar.

A Belfast mural of the two inner wolves

There, in Belfast’s struggle between her inner unrest and desire for unity, I find myself. In her self-righteous, take-it-into-your-own-hands rebel who wants her way, I see myself there, too.  And I relate to her quiet peacemaker willing to take risks that define courage, although I’d not consider myself courageous.

I resonate with Belfast’s pride, too. She once was the shipbuilding capital of the world, only to later fall into embarrassment with the sinking of her glory, the Titanic. As an American, I can’t help but recognize that pride, along with the turbulence brewing in my own country, as I watch Belfast’s political divisions turn violent. Yet I also feel her humility and hope in the peace she has acquired, however precarious it might be.

She’s a mix of contrasts striving to include and accept all that she is. For decades she was at war within herself.

Oh, yes, she’s very familiar.

It takes much inner reflection before I finally recognize that I am capable of experiencing and expressing everything that Belfast does. I am that rebel who bombs innocent people or builds walls around his neighborhood to keep himself safe. Just as I am that benign shopkeeper who shelters the wounded and forgives those who killed his wife and daughters in an indiscriminate bombing.

I am that nationalist, that loyalist, that terrorist, that monk, all rolled into one.

There is nothing I’ve seen in Belfast that I’m not capable of. And that my country is not capable of. No matter how much we deny what’s been percolating under the surface for years. Or would like to believe ourselves to be the one-sided, all-benevolent, greatest golden place that there ever was.

As Franciscan Richard Rohr often says, “everything belongs.” And not only does it all belong, but it all lives inside of me. Inside of us.

We cannot separate ourselves from the other, no matter how hard we try. We cannot separate the parts from the whole.

Yes, everything that lives in Belfast lives in me. Lives in us.

I am Belfast. I am you.

Into the Woods

“There is no argument needed for the necessity of taking time out for being alone, for withdrawal, for being quiet without and still within. The sheer physical necessity is urgent because the body and the entire nervous system cry out for the healing waters of silence. One could not begin the cultivation of the prayer life at a more practical point than deliberately to seek each day, and several times a day, a lull in the rhythm of daily doing, a period when nothing happens that demands active participation.” 

— Howard Thurman

I had to go into the woods to remember.

To get my “forest fix.” To be fed and filled up. And something even more valuable – to listen again in the silence for “the sound of the genuine.”

A little over a week ago I was driving through Montana with my friend Kim. Camping and hiking and inching our way back down to New Mexico. And spending lots of time in the wilderness in between.

Montana was new territory for me. And I loved it, in spite of the torrid temperatures and smoky skies from raging wildfires.

The key was traveling with a childlike delight, expectancy, and gratitude. And I did feel grateful. Grateful to be able to take this trip, to spontaneously land wherever Kim and I decided to settle, to experience the spectacular beauty of places like Beartooth Highway, Custer National Forest, and the Glacier Lake trail where an abundance of wildflowers and flowing streams greeted us at every turn.

At the end of each day, we’d settle into an unreserved campsite in a national forest. Another reason to be grateful. Because these days, to find a campsite when you haven’t reserved in advance online as tons of travelers do, is magical. It was always a hit-or-miss situation when we rolled into a campground in the evenings, ready to call it a day. We often nabbed the last site, even at a campground just 16 miles outside of Yellowstone National Park. We were both amazed that night!

Often after dark, I’d gaze into too-numerous stars dotting the sky, not wanting to go to sleep. How could I close my eyes before such majesty?

In the mornings, I’d meditate near some body of water. Not hard to find here. Whether sitting on a rock while water roared and gushed over stones before me or in a chair on the shore of a silent, serene lake, I felt inner joy in the stillness.

“I never want to leave,” I told Kim. She was quick to acquiesce. A longtime admirer of John Muir and a native Montanan, Kim could easily live in the wilderness.

Interestingly, Kim is a rock person. I’m a tree person. Sometimes I would simply stand and breathe with my back against a tree, my feet planted on the earth, my body sensing the vibrations of life surging through it.

In its silence, simplicity, and single-hearted focus, the forest speaks to and nourishes my soul. I love the insights she desires to impart when I am quiet and reflective, whether sitting motionless on a rock or standing against a tree. The forest reminds me of the Breath of life breathing life into everything. The constant giving and receiving evident in the life all around me. How everything dies in the forest, only to be reborn in some other form. A spaciousness that is always present.

And yet I discovered, too, that, even in the woods, it can be challenging to be still.

One evening I planted myself on a huge rock in our campsite while Kim went off for another walk. Gradually I felt the spaciousness bidding me to go deeper. I sat quietly, put aside my reading and writing, and simply paused into the silence. It took a few moments before I could be still enough to connect with that space between thoughts of what are we going to eat tonight, when will Kim return from her walk, will I see a bear? That space between the constant flow of words.

As I let go, I simply breathed into the immediacy of the moment. A moment in which I recognize that everything is sustained.

A moment that whispers, “You need not try so hard.”

The wisdom of the forest imparted in the stillness. A response to an issue I’d forgotten I was carrying. Another reason to be grateful.

“As we listen, …there is a sound of another kind – a deeper note which only the stillness of the heart makes clear. It moves directly to the core of our being. Our questions are answered.”   (Howard Thurman)

A Long Apprenticeship

During the early months of the pandemic, when people were dying regularly and COVID was still new enough that some news outlets attempted to publish the names and photos and brief bios of the dead, I started praying for those who had passed on, most likely, alone. I searched through the news clips, read their stories, and closed my eyes with their image in mind. Energetically, it felt right to accompany these souls as they transitioned. Unexplainably, it felt powerfully healing. A loving gesture offered to strangers. My own heart space softened and expanded in the process.

But, as COVID-infested months continued, that sweet spiritual practice dropped out of my daily ritual like a New Year’s diet resolution the second week in February. I forgot about it. I stopped striving to search for names and stories. I left the dying to make their own way into a peaceful transition. Or not.

It was easy to do. To lose the incentive to pray for and care about strangers. Not because I’m a cold-hearted person. But I’m human, and there’s a weak, self-centered, displeasing side of me that I’d prefer not to own. But here it is. Sometimes I’m lazy. Sometimes I lose focus. Sometimes I grow indifferent or even impatient with the demands of people dying and suffering, even if I’m the one who has placed those demands on myself.

And now it’s happening again. Showing up in something else that has been going on for a long time – a lot longer than COVID. Immigration at our southern border.

It might be easier to understand why I feel this way if people were crossing illegally on my property and trashing it along the way. Or if I belonged to a far-right anti-immigration group. Or if I were just an average joe watching too much negative news about an inflated “crisis.”

But I’m none of those. Just the opposite. I’m someone who’s accompanied migrants and asylum seekers for nearly five years in El Paso. Someone who’s heard a myriad of painful, sometimes horrific, stories. Who’s seen the effects in fearful faces and bent bodies. And someone who’s been graced a million times over by encounters with these humble, lovely people blessing me with their gratitude and faith.

It’s been more than a year since I stepped inside one of our temporary shelters to accompany asylum- seeking families that have been vetted and are ready to move on to their sponsors. And now volunteers are needed again. And I’ve willingly and gladly agreed to go.

So, why has this side of me shown up? This internal tension?

I suspect it’s because, just like the commitment to strangers dying of COVID, what is being asked of me is unending. It’s neither comfortable nor convenient. Nor is the outcome within my control.

And it’s asking more of me than I fully realized when I said yes – yes to an open-ended commitment to love better, to be of service to my human family, to grow in spiritual maturity.

I am clearly still an apprentice.  

Yet, I’ve been fledgling along in this apprenticeship for more than 30 years, studying the path of my spiritual teachers. Teachers labeled mystics and saints, contemplatives and criminals. All of whom have been led to places they would rather not have gone.

Why should I be any different?

Still, I was disturbed by what I had been feeling, so I quieted myself and listened within.

“This tension is a holy thing.”

I heard, and I understood, that those far greater and more advanced than I am have experienced such tension. Why would I not feel tension as I struggle to say yes and put down my preferences?

And then I remembered a quote from Jacob Boehme, the 16^th century German mystic, that one of my spiritual teachers had given me. A quote that deeply resonated: “I, God, press through your branches, into the sap, and bear fruit on your boughs.”

Does that not sound like tension?

Just as the sun presses through the ground, creating the tension needed to bring forth the seedling buried under the surface. Just as the pressure of warming temperatures causes the sap to flow through “a wound or tap hole” in maple trees – (a description I found from a maple tree farm website. No kidding.)

All these metaphors arose to help me understand that the transformation of this apprentice will take what it takes. And it is God who makes manifest the fullness of love that lies latent within me.

Brave Enough

This weekend a friend and I braved the cold nights to camp under the stars. Luckily, we landed in the last campsite available at Three Rivers. Right across from a gathering of Mexican-Americans camped beside a conservative cowboy from Montana. It was one of those teaching moments. The kind that can simply slip by if you’re not paying attention.

As I set up my tent, the camp host came over to chew the curd with the like-minded Montanan.

I could feel negative energy percolating as the talk turned to politics. Statements spewed with slander flew over the silence as the host created outlandish claims about hundreds of thousands of illegal crossings in recent weeks, stolen elections, and the need to dissolve the Bureau of Land Management, which, I must note, had provided him and his family with a home for the last four years. Finally, he uttered in disgust, “I’ll never vote again.”

My hopes of settling into a serene landscape, leaving behind all political drama, had been dashed.

Kim and I quickly hit the trail, delving deep into the forest where we were welcomed by silent, soothing trees, and a nurturing, gurgling stream lapping over stones. An escape, yes, but when we returned to our site, Montana Cowboy was itching to socialize.

Across the way, our neighbors were enjoying each other’s company, and, as most non-native English speakers tend to do when relaxed together, they were chatting in their first language. Kim mentioned how she enjoyed hearing Spanish again, as we sat down to nurse our local beers.

That’s when Cowboy Dan sauntered over, Bud Light in hand, ready to chat. He asked if he could join us before plunking down on the other end of the picnic table. I’ll admit upfront that I had a bias toward this man before he even sat down. I need to acknowledge that, because this is exactly what keeps me from opening myself up to strangers. And yet, it’s what I “preach” about – how we need to stay open to “the other,” someone who’s different from what you’ve known, or think you know. It turned into a pretty blatant example of how I need to take my own advice.

_{Image by Raventhorne on Pixabay}

But it took me a while to recognize that. Especially when Cowboy Dan opened up about our Mexican-American neighbors. He didn’t have anything against them, he said. “I just wish they’d speak English.” A “wish” I’d heard uttered much too often over the years, in ways that made me tense up.

Kim had an immediate retort. “I’m glad they’re speaking Spanish. It helps me practice.”

Not that we could even hear what they were saying, but it seemed like a courageous response. I joined her bravery.

“When I was a kid, I used to be embarrassed by my relatives when they’d speak French in public,” I offered truthfully. “But I was glad when I got older that I knew how to speak French like my ancestors, and that I’d learned a second language.’

He softened. “I studied French in high school,” he offered. “Never remembered any of it.”

A bit of shyness appeared in his visage, encouraging me to venture further.  “Well, that’s understandable if you never use it. What’s your ancestry? Where did your relatives come from?”

“I was born and raised in Arkansas.”

“But what’s your ethnicity?”

He honestly didn’t know. Said he’d never looked it up. He offered his grandmother’s maiden name with a question mark, as if I could decipher the clue to its origin.

That’s when an inkling of understanding seeped through, softening my own bias. Now I understood that being American was all this man knew or cared about. He had no family history. No ancestral storytelling about old world traditions, about arriving in this country and the hardships his relatives had faced.

I began to wonder about Dan. What made him who he was? But my wondering didn’t stretch far enough to keep inviting him back to our table for further conversation.

And that disturbs me.

Through that experience, a question arises. How are we to be with one another? If we are ever going to heal the divides between us, how can we better “be” with one another?

The words “courage” and “holy fool” come to mind. Because, it does take courage to step out and be vulnerable and open enough to speak honestly about what’s important to me. What I’m passionate about. And to listen to the other person in return. Someone whose opinions are formed in their own experiences. Just as mine are.

And do it for love. Trusting that something holy can happen in the midst of it all.

As Amanda Gorman noted in her beautiful poem she wrote for the inauguration:

 The new dawn blooms as we free it

For there is always light,

if only we’re brave enough to see it

If only we’re brave enough to be it.

Just what does it mean to be brave enough to be light? I think Cowboy Dan gave me an opportunity. And I missed it.

Close to Home

It can feel scary to write about something so close to home, so deeply personal. But my hope is what I’m about to share will help others.

As I watched the images of an out-of-control and dangerous mob throng the steps and inner sanctuary of our Capitol, home to our democracy, some very unsettling and familiar feelings struck me. Feelings from trauma experienced as a child and a youth, when I was violated. At home. In a place where I was supposed to feel safe and protected. But instead, I learned early on just how vulnerable and powerless I was. Anyone who has been violated in their life, and been powerless to control the perpetrator, understands.

Whether it’s a child or woman who’s been abused and not believed, someone who’s been marginalized, any minority whose voice or rights have been suppressed, or anyone whose life has been dismissed, viewing what unfolded at the Capitol that Wednesday would’ve been all too painful. It surely must have felt unsafe for many of us.

Although I am no longer a victim nor a child, the anger growing inside as I watched the chaos and terror unfold was real and full of energy. Anger turned to rage and disgust in the ensuing hours – and even days – over the lack of adults in authority able and/or willing to swiftly take responsibility and control, end this terrorist attack, name it for what it was, and make people accountable. Eventually I recognized grief coming from a tender and young place in me.

I knew I needed help.

I also knew that whatever inner work I would do around this wasn’t about simply helping me feel better. If I were going to follow through on my intent to courageously speak out against injustices, to take action as needed, I wanted to come from a clear, more grounded and loving stance. Otherwise, my response would be muddled in reactionary anger and pain.

Some time ago I made a commitment to bravely face whatever in me needs healing so that I could be a more open-hearted, loving participant in life. Part of that commitment means being willing to see the other in myself. Even those who act in ways that upset and disgust me. And be able to still love them.

Sometimes it’s too hard to do that alone. And this was one of those times.

In the days that followed, I reached out. Not only to a skilled, spiritually-grounded professional to help me honor and express these emotions, but also to inspirational guides. I thought of those who had long endured injustices and yet courageously acted while grounded in love.

John Lewis came to mind.

I decided to invoke his spirit to teach me how he’d stood so strong, nonviolently, and with love, even in the face of brutal beatings and possible death. I didn’t have to wait long before he “responded.” I was searching my podcast app for something when Lewis’ interview with Krista Tippett in “On Being” popped up. I thought maybe it had been recorded some months before he died. But it was from 2013!

 Certainly not a coincidence.

Listening to this man was balm for my soul. He was clearly embedded in the ideals of justice and democracy, of love and mercy, and yet had the courage and clarity to be willing to suffer for the greater good. I recognized embodied service and intentional suffering in his actions. I marveled at how he genuinely sought and saw the divine in each person.

John Lewis and his “beloved community” had studied and practiced and learned how to respond with nonviolence to what they knew would be a violent reaction to their aspirations of justice, racial equality, and the treatment of all people with dignity. It took strong faith and patience and a recognition that the true work starts within.

Close to home.

Lewis and his beloved community were never victims. They were too strong and clear-minded and intent on a higher purpose. They not only believed, they proved that love is stronger than hate.

I know that joining a risky, nonviolent civil rights movement was a lot to ask of people. But it was the way of real change, for the greater good, regardless of how slow that change seemed to take place.

This is what is asked of us again now, in this painful time of transformation in our country.

We, too, must move forward nonviolently in courage and truth, with a clear mind and strong heart, intent on what is just and good and loving. We must be the light, not the victims, in our American home. It starts with us.