Follow the Water: Immigration & the Colorado River

I like that the UU General Assembly’s choice to study immigration has provided a kind of filter through which I’m hearing the news.  Today on NPR’s Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal spoke with photojournalist Brian Frank about his journey along the Colorado River.  Here’s Kai’s intro to the segment:

The Colorado River flows from the Rocky Mountains in Colorado down through Utah and Arizona, along the border with California to the Gulf of California in Mexico. Flow might be too generous, actually. Because we use so much of the Colorado’s water in the American Southwest for both irrigation and development, what used to be a river is actually just a trickle by the time it crosses the Mexican border. Some years, it never even reaches the sea.

It feels to me like I’m engaged in a layer-by-layer unfolding of the issue of immigration.  It’s not as simple as “you didn’t come here legally so we’re sending you back.”

There are other things to consider.  Winona LaDuke’s Ware Lecture, coming on the heels of the decision to study immigration, reminded me to think about the issue in the context of how Europeans came to the United States.  How can we complain about people coming here illegally, I asked myself, when so much about the way “we” came to “own” this land was immoral?

This story about the Colorado River also prompts a question.  What moral high ground do we have to refuse to allow people to follow the water that we have stolen?  The answer, for me, is none whatsoever.

It’s easy to be so busy being self-righteous about other people not obeying little rules that we lose sight of our own transgressions.

Jesus had something to say about this:

‘Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgement you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbour, “Let me take the speck out of your eye”, while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye. (Matthew 7:1-5)

Social Witness at General Assembly

I didn’t know what to expect from General Assembly.  I read through all the delegate materials, but they were just words on a page.  My imagination tried to create a picture of what I would encounter in Minneapolis, but came up short.

I knew there would be workshops. And there were.  And they were pretty much as I imagined.

But the business of the assembly, the things I would be voting on as a delegate, seemed to focus on statement-making, something different from what I remembered from my days among the Presbyterians.  What is the point, I wondered, of all of us coming such a distance, at such expense, to agree upon a bunch of nice words?

For much of my time at GA, I felt like I was swimming in social justice alphabet soup.  AIW, SOC and CSAI swirled together in my mind and I wasn’t really clear what we were doing.  But at least the words were coming alive, and the concepts were becoming clearer in my mind.

Like some of the other first-time attendees and delegates, by the end of General Assembly I was still unsure of our process, and the rationale behind it.  I’m still thinking about the work we did, still trying to understand why we did it.

Here’s some info from the UUA’s website talking about the social witness process, and the rationale behind it:

The Fifth Principle of Unitarian Universalism affirms and promotes the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process. In keeping with this, the way in which our denomination arrives at consensus on various social issues is by a democratically agreed upon process called the Social Witness Process, named as such because we bear witness to social inequity.

The Social Witness Process is facilitated by the Commission on Social Witness. It currently generates two types of consensus statements, Statements of Conscience, which result from study and action on a selected issue, and Actions of Immediate Witness. For more information, see the Social Witness Process page.

After much debate, the 2010 General Assembly voted to adopt “Immigration as a Moral Issue” as a Congregational Study Action.  I believe that this means that member congregations of the UUA will be encouraged to study this issue over the next four years, and a Statement of Conscience may emerge from that work.

I’ve been thinking about immigration since General Assembly, and will write more about that later.  In the meantime, enjoy this interesting commentary from the new PBS show Need to Know.

Can I Stay in the Church?

One of the formative experiences in my adult spiritual life was participation in the Spiritual Guidance program of the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation.  I created the mandala included in this post during one of the program’s summer residencies.

When I was actively using mandala-making as a spiritual practice, I often posed a question, and let the mandala help me find an answer.  I created this mandala in response to the question, “Can I stay in the church?”

Even before I came out to myself as not-straight, even before I went into the desert as a Presbyterian minister and came out as an unemployed non-theist, even then the constraints of orthodox faith were tight enough that I was asking if I could continue to live and serve in the Christian tradition.

One of the great saints of Shalem, Tilden Edwards, had introduced the terms “exoteric” and “esoteric” to us earlier in the residency, and they half-consciously informed the mandala’s answer to my question.  The short form of the answer was, “If the church can balance the exoteric and the esoteric, I can stay.”

The outer rim of the mandala consists of exoteric symbols:  the sustaining sacrament of bread and wine, and the Christian story as told in the bible.  Within that ring are more esoteric symbols:  the water of baptism and the fire of the indwelling Spirit.  Sacred Mystery at the center of the mandala holds within itself the seed of Life.

It occurred to me during one of the chalice lightings at General Assembly that my understanding of the flaming chalice is very much tied to what I learned from creating this mandala: water needs a cup, and a cup needs water.  What I need in a religious community is a balance between reason and mystery, between structure and creativity, between passion and common sense.

So may it be.

Eco-Frugal at General Assembly

I chose the frugal housing option for General Assembly–a dorm room at the University of Minnesota.  And I plan to use public transportation to get from the airport to the university, from the U to the convention center and back, and then from the U to the airport.

I liked the idea of saving money.  Nostalgia for my student days influenced my choice.  And I hoped that this would be a learning experience about public transportation–particularly light rail.

Doing this alone in a strange city, though, has raised my anxiety level pretty high.  I emailed the UUA General Assembly staff, and they gave me the following information:  I can call “Meet Minneapolis” at 612-767-8000, or visit their website.

Once I’ve done that, I’ll post updates with what I know.  In the meantime, if you have information to share about how to negotiate this adventure, I’d love to hear it!