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)

Standing With Those Who Stand Against Us

The New York Times ran an article yesterday headlined “Obama Wins Unlikely Allies in Immigration.”  According to the article, a group of influential evangelical leaders have joined President Obama’s efforts to promote immigration reform.

One of those leaders says in the article,

I am a Christian and I am a conservative and I am a Republican, in that order….There is very little I agree with regarding President Barack Obama. On the other hand, I’m not going to let politicized rhetoric or party affiliation trump my values, and if he’s right on this issue, I will support him on this issue.

Why are these prominent evangelicals switching tracks on this issue?  It’s because they’ve had a chance to build relationships with ministers whose communities are affected by current immigration policies.  And they met those ministers working against marriage equality.

Their presence was a testament, in part, to the work of politically active Hispanic evangelical pastors, who have forged friendships with non-Hispanic pastors in recent years while working in coalitions to oppose abortion and same-sex marriage. The Hispanics made a concerted effort to convince their brethren that immigration reform should be a moral and practical priority.

This is really painful, and it’s hard for me to wrap my mind around people fighting for their own civil rights, while also actively fighting to deny the civil rights of other people.

It makes me want to turn away from the immigration issue, particularly when there’s some logic to the argument that “Hispanics are religious, family-oriented, pro-life, entrepreneurial….They are hard-wired social conservatives, unless they’re driven away.”

But if I turn away too quickly, I miss the gem hidden in this article:  forged friendships led to real change.

Now, the word “forge” has two meanings, and both are helpful in this case.

One meaning, “to copy for the purpose of deception,” is what we mean when we talk about forging a check or a signature.  In this case, I think it’s good to acknowledge that there’s sometimes a “fake it ’til you make it” quality to our friendship-forging with people who are different from us.  If we act like friends long enough, if we practice the skills of friendship long enough, sometimes we may discover that we truly have become friends.

The second meaning, “make or shape (a metal object) by heating it in a fire or furnace and beating or hammering it” also reflects the reality of friend-making with people who are different from us.  It is hard, painful, sweaty work.

At the Girdwood Forest Fair a few weeks ago I purchased a metal hook forged in the Matanuska Valley, home to Sarah Palin, home to a whole lot of people who really, really don’t like GLBT people.  I had a brief, friendly conversation with the blacksmith who forged the hook, and the hook is now holding a birdfeeder on our deck.  I have no idea how he feels about GLBT people, but we share a commitment to remembering how to make real things.  Given more time, and enough energy and heat, perhaps we could forge a friendship on the basis of that shared commitment.

The idea that relationships change people is not new.  When I began the process of coming out, I learned a lot from the Presbyterian group That All May Freely Serve.  One of the primary strategies of TAMFS is “personing the issue.”  It’s a slow and difficult process, but change happens when we know (and learn to love) someone who is GLBT, uses a wheelchair, has crossed the border “illegally,”  and yes, even someone who voted for Prop 8 in California, even someone who wore a red shirt at the Anchorage Assembly last summer.

The work of love knows no limits.  We live in a fractured world, and standing on the side of love will sometimes mean standing with those who stand against us.  In the forge of such friendships, old ideas die and new ones come to life, and we all are changed.

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.