"You are always welcome here!"

Spiritual Formation at St Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Tucson - Epiphany Season 2016

During Epiphany season our between-services course was entitled, “Welcoming the Hidden Christ – Meeting the Challenge of Migration and Hospitality,” from the Gospel saying “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” (Matthew 25:35) We discussed such questions as: How can we as a community offer respite for refugees and strangers? What actions are we, both individually and as a community, taking to welcome the stranger — the hidden Christ? Engendering lively discussions among ourselves, we welcomed presenters from local organizations that offer hospitality to migrants and refugees.

First we had a visit from John Heid of Casa Mariposa who reconnected with old friends Carol and Kate Bradsen, and Fred Bevins. Casa Mariposa through its Restoration Project has provided hospitality to recently released detainees (from ICE - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and visited people in detention in Eloy. (“Nourished and empowered by the Spirit, the Casa Mariposa community seeks to live in right relationship with one another, the community, and the earth through hospitality, simple and sustainable living, playful spirituality, and peaceful, prophetic action. The Restoration Project is work carried out by the community of Casa Mariposa in support and solidarity with women and men being held in immigration detention centers in Florence and Eloy, Arizona.”) In addition they witness to the challenge of migration and hospitality through participation in community events such as the Día de los Muertos Pilgrimage to Mission San Xavier del Bac, the All Souls Procession through downtown Tucson, and the Binational Las Posadas at the Nogales Sonora/Arizona border.

Toetie Oberman and Sang Yeon spoke to us about the work of two ministries of Lutheran Social Services of the Southwest, Refugee Focus and Center. (“LSS-SW resettles approximately 1,000 refugees each year as they strive toward previously unknown goals, strengthen newfound bounds, and courageously rebuild their lives. Services include: pre-arrival housing, case management, English classes, navigating transportation and basic public services, employment support, after-school activities and tutoring for children, programs to develop self-sufficiency and skills for women, and immigration services. CENTER is a hub for refugee students, parents, teachers, schools, volunteers, and other nonprofits that work with them across Tucson.”)

Sunday February 7^th, we plan to greet Jamie Flynn from Alitas, a program of Catholic Community Services of Southern Arizona. (“The Alitas Program serves migrant women and children who have left their home countries to escape violence and poverty. We provide care, short-term shelter and help to reunite with family members in the U.S.”)

Refugee Focus and the Alitas Program welcome refugees from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The other local agency that provides hospitality to refugees arriving from overseas is The International Rescue Committee of Tucson – and they will be with us to celebrate Mardi Gras!

During Lent our spiritual formation course will be built around the ancient practice of lectio divina (sacred reading) …

St. Andrew's Episcopal Church

Tucson, Arizona

"You are always welcome here!"

http://standrewstucson.azdiocese.org/

sparks

 

John R. Leech (USA): Recently I have observed and participated in a variety of border and immigration ministries in southern Arizona and northern Mexico, from hospitality (el comedor, Kino Border Initiative, Sonora) to deportation proceedings (Special procedures court, ‘Operation Streamline’, Tucson federal courthouse), from keeping vigil at el Tiradito shrine, remembering those who have died crossing the desert, to training with Tucson Samaritans, and serving at the comedor with Samaritans of Sahuarita and Green Valley.

I have spoken with members of St Michael and All Angels and St Andrew’s Episcopal Churches in Tucson, and with volunteers of the Casa Mariposa/Restoration Project, who have been meeting people at the Greyhound bus station in Tucson, people recently released from detention by ICE/Border Patrol.

This autumn the big news had two parts. First, the Tucson bus station began receiving eighty people a night, women with children, released with instructions to appear for a hearing within a month at an immigration court – presumably near family already in the United States – lest an order for removal close their case. No warning. Just dropped off.

Second, the incredible news that the Border Patrol has flown a thousand kids from Texas to Arizona and then put them into a warehouse (I’ve seen it from the road – it is meant for pallets of flour, not for people) in Nogales, AZ. These are unaccompanied minors from Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras), refugees from violence and extreme poverty. The warehouse serves as a temporary (promise: 72 hours) detention facility. It is on La Quinta Road near the truck crossing into Mexico.

The ongoing need for change in policy and practice, compassionate work for change and a deeper understanding of our fellow human beings – exploited and caught in the middle of a gigantic and ongoing crisis – and the need to reach out in love across boundaries: all this continues.

One thing I have been thinking about lately is that this situation is similar to so many others in humanitarian relief and development work: there is an immediate crisis that gets our attention – and an ongoing problem that needs lasting sustained effort.

All of a sudden on our own southern border is an immense influx of refugees, in two remarkable groups, women with children seeking to be reunited with their families, and unaccompanied minors, mainly teenagers but also younger children, who have been sent north without adults.

Preponderantly these people have come north through Mexico from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Why? Besides a sell-job by human smugglers, there are economic and political reasons for this migration.

People come to Arizona to work, to re-unite with their families, or to find and begin a new chapter in their life.

We need to practice a theology of hospitality – a spirituality of migration. We were strangers once too. So – an ongoing need is there. The need for change – in our national policies, in our practices of welcome, in our influence on conditions in other countries, in our attitudes toward the ‘foreigner’ – continues.

(“Sparks of the Light”, Coracle, the quarterly magazine of the Iona Community, Winter 2014, 13-14)  

http://iona.org.uk/media/coracle/

prayer for the migrant

Prayer for the Migrant, from the program at the conclusion of the pilgrimage to San Xavier du Bac Saturday 31 October 2015 organized by Derechos Humanos to remember those who have died crossing the desert in the past year:

Creator, full of love and mercy, I want to ask you for my migrant brothers and sisters. Have compassion and protect them, as they suffer mistreatment and humiliations on their journeys, they are labelled as dangerous, and marginalized for being foreigners.

Make them be respected and valued for their dignity. Touch with your goodness the many that see them pass. Care for their families until they return to their homes, not with broken hearts  but rather with hopes fulfilled. Let it be.

migrant spirituality reading list

 

Suggestions for Further Reading – Migrant Spirituality

(Cadged from Marjorie King, Suzanne Hesh, Bob Phillips, and Roxanne Ramos)

Readings about migrants in Southern Arizona

Ferguson, Kathryn, Norma A. Price, and Ted Parks. Crossing with the Virgin: Stories from the Migrant Trail. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2010.

Regan, Margaret.  Detained and Deported: Stories of Immigrant Families Under Fire. Boston: Beacon Press, 2015. This Tucson Weekly columnist takes an intimate look at the people ensnared by the US detention and deportation system, the largest in the world.  Using volatile Arizona as a case study, with special attention to the separation of families and the treatment of women, she conjures up the harshness of the detention centers and travels to Mexico to report on the fate of deportees stranded far from their families in the United States. The book is a humanizing and rare glimpse into the lives of those caught up in the US immigration enforcement cycle.

Regan, Margaret.  The Death of Josseline: Immigration Stories from the Arizona Borderlands.  Boston: Beacon Press, 2010.

Urrea, Luis Alberto.  The Devil’s Highway: A True Story. New York: Back Bay Books, Little, Brown Publishing, 2004.

Migration and the Church

Brown, Robert McAfee. Unexpected News: Reading the Bible with Third World Eyes. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984. 

Carroll, M. Daniel R.  Christians at the Border: Immigration, the Church, and the Bible. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, Baker Publishing, 2008.

Campese, Gioacchino, CS. El Via Crucis de Jesus Migrante, The Way of the Cross of the Migrant Jesus. Liguori, MO: Liguori Press, 2006. 

De La Torre, Miguel A. Reading the Bible from the Margins. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2002.

Groody, Daniel G. and Gioacchino Campese, editors. A Promised Land, A Perilous Journey: Theological Perspectives on Migration. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008.

Kim, Fr. Simon C., compiler. El Via Crucis: The Migrant’s Way of the Cross. Liguori, MO: Liguori Press, 2013.

Maruskin, Joan M.  Immigration and the Bible: A Guide for Radical Welcome. New York: Women’s Division, The General Board of Global Ministries, United Methodist Church, 2012.

Myers, Ched and Mathew Colwell. Our God is Undocumented: Biblical Faith and Immigrant Justice. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2012.

Shaull, Richard and Richard Falk. Naming the Idols: Biblical Alternatives for U.S. Foreign Policy. Meyer-Stone Books, 1988.

Soerens, Matthew and Jenny Hwang Yang. Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion and Truth in the Immigration Debate, Westmont, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009.

Bowden, Peg. Land of Hard Edges: Serving the Front Lines of the Border. (Tucson: Peer Publishing, 2014)

Dear, Michael. Why Walls Won't Work: Repairing the US-Mexico Divide. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013)

Oscar Martinez, The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail. (Verso, 2013)

Montoya, Mace. The Deportation of Wopper Barraza: A Novel. (2014)

Cross-Border Tour Suggested Reading List (Border Community Alliance)

The Country Just Over the Fence, Paul Theroux, article NYT 2/26/2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/travel/nogales-mexico-a-few-steps-and-a-whole-world-away.html?pagewanted=all

A Culture of Cruelty: Abuse and Impunity in Short-Term U.S. Border Patrol Custody, No More Deaths, 2011, http://www.nomoredeaths.org/Abuse-Report-Culture-of-Cruelty/View-category.html

The Devil’s Highway: A True Story, Luis Alberto Urrea, Bay Back Books 2005

Documented Failures: The Consequences of Immigration Policy on the U.S.-Mexico Border, Michael S. Danielson, American University, Report prepared for the Kino Border Initiative Nogales, Arizona, U.S.A. and Nogales, Sonora, Mexico with funding from Catholic Relief Services of Mexico, http://www.jesuit.org/jesuits/wp-content/uploads/Kino_FULL-REPORT_web.pdf

La Frontera: The Border, blog by BCA board member, Peg Bowden, www.arroya.org

Manifest Destiny | Luis Alberto Urrea | Orion Magazine
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6813/

Mexico: What Everyone Needs to Know, Roderic AI Camp, Oxford University Press 2011

Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070: A Case Study for State-Sponsored Immigration Policy, an honors thesis by USF graduate student and BCA/FESAC summer 2012 intern Ryan Murphy is available by contacting BCA at the address below.

Why Walls Won’t Work – repairing the US-Mexico divide, Michael Dear, Oxford University Press, 2013.

Two Nations Indivisible: Mexico, The United States, And The Road Ahead By Shannon K. O'Neil, Oxford University Press, Inc. 2013

Border Community Alliance

In partnership with Fundación del Empresariado Sonorense A.C. (FESAC)

La Entrada de Tubac / 2221 E. Frontage Rd., Building F, Suite 201 / Tubac, AZ / 520.398.3229

Mail: PO Box 1863, Tubac, AZ. 85646

Kino Border Initiative (KBI) Movie List 

By: Roxane Ramos

Over the past two decades, many films have addressed the trials and struggles, hopes and dreams of families and individuals who cross the U.S.–Mexico border to seek a better life and to be with loved ones. In addition to the titles listed below, there are also My Family (1995), Sin Nombre (2009), and A Better Life (2013).

Now a classic and one of the first movies about the struggles and hardships facing those who choose to migrate to the U.S., El Norte (1983) by Gregory Nava relates the experience of a teen-aged brother and sister who flee the violence of their home in Guatemala for the promise of a better life in Los Angeles.

Among the four narratives Alejandro González Iñárritu includes in Babel (2006), one details the interwoven lives of a San Diego family and their undocumented Mexican nanny and how crossing the border to attend a family wedding can result in painful and irreparable consequences.

Under the Same Moon (2007), directed by Patricia Riggen, makes palpable the dire and complicated decisions faced by separated families. An adolescent boy leaves Mexico after his grandmother dies to seek out his mother who works as a maid in the U.S.

In Who Is Dayani Cristal? (2013), actor and activist Gael García Bernal retraces the journey of a migrant who died along the stretch of desert known as “the corridor of death,” providing a rare view of what migrants experience on el camino. Each year 400–500 migrants lose their lives during the crossing. For more information about the tragedy of migrant deaths in the desert, please see this article from the KBI July issue of Passages: www.kinoborderinitiative.org/deaths-in-the-desert/.

Documented (2013), a film by Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist José Antonio Vargas, recounts Vargas’s experience of migrating to the U.S. at the age of 12 from the Philippines to live with his documented grandparents. Vargas speaks out about his undocumented status in the hopes of illuminating the challenges of mixed-status families and advocating for policy change.

https://www.kinoborderinitiative.org/kbi-movie-list/ July 14, 2015.

KBI Reading List By: Roxane Ramos

The list below covers only a small selection of the books available about the migrant experience, immigration and border life. They include works of fiction, non-fiction volumes, art books, memoirs, and children’s books, and all help to inform us about the issues of immigration, cultural challenges, family separation and even basic survival.

Non-fiction:

The Devil’s Highway: A True Story
 Luis Alberto Urrea, Little, Brown and Company, 2004.

Enrique’s Journey
 Sonia Nazario, Random House, 2006.

The World of Mexican Migrants: The Rock and the Hard Place 
Judith Adler Hellman, New Press, 2008.

Dead in Their Tracks: Crossing America’s Borderlands in the New Era 
John Annerino, University of Arizona Press, 2009.

Crossing With the Virgin: Stories from the Migrant Trail
 Kathryn Ferguson, Norma A. Price and Ted Parks, University of Arizona Press, 2010.

Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.–Mexico Border
 Rachel St. John, Princeton University Press, 2011.

Run for the Border: Vice and Virtue in U.S.–Mexico Border Crossings 
Steven Bender, NYU Press, 2012.

The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail 
Oscar Martínez, Verso, 2013.

Up Against the Wall: Reimagining the U.S.–Mexico Border
 Edward S. Casey and Mary Watkins, University of Texas Press, 2014.

Memoir:

Becoming Dr. Q: My Journey from Migrant Farm Worker to Brain Surgeon
 Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa (with Mim Eichler Rivas), University of California Press, 2011.

Crossing Borders: Personal Essays 
Sergio Troncoso, Arte Público Press, 2011.

Taking Hold: From Migrant Childhood to Columbia University
 Francisco Jiménez, HMH Books for Young Readers, 2015.

The Land of Hard Edges: Serving the Front Lines of the Border
 Peg Bowden, Peer Publishing, 2014.

Fiction:

Women Hollering Creek and Other Stories
 Sandra Cisneros, Vintage, 1992.

The Long Night of White Chickens
 Francisco Goldman, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1992.

Under the Feet of Jesus
 Helena María Viramontes, Plume, 1996.

Mother Tongue 
Demetria Martínez, One World/Ballantine, 1997.

The River Flows North
 Graciela Limón, Arte Público Press, 2009.

The Madonnas of Echo Park: A Novel 
Brando Skyhorse, Free Press. 2011.

Art:

Ambos Nogales: Intimate Portraits of the U.S.–Mexico Border
 Lawrence Taylor, School of American Research Press, 2002.

Crossings: Photographs from the U.S.–Mexico Border 
Alex Webb, Essay by Tom Miller, Monacelli Press, 2003.

Curating at the Edge: Artists Respond to the U.S./Mexico Border
 Kate Bonansinga, University of Texas Press, 2014.

Children: My Name Is Jorge (poems for ages 4–8)
 Jane Medina, WordSong, 1999.

My Diary from Here to There/Mi diario de aqui hasta allá (for ages 7–10)
 Amada Irma Pérez, Children’s Book Press, 2002.

From North to South/Del norte al sur (for ages 6–9) 
René Laínez, Children’s Book Press, 2010.

In my Family/En mi familia (for ages 7–12) 
Carmen Garza, Children’s Book Press, 2013.

Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote: A Migrant’s Tale (for ages 6–9)
 Duncan Tonatuih, Harry N. Abrams, 2013.


Return to Sender (for ages 8–12)
 Julia Alvarez, Yearling, 2013.

https://www.kinoborderinitiative.org/kbi-reading-list/ July 14, 2015.