A Short Debrief on our Borderlinks Experience

We finished our time with the Borderlinks delegation.  Since I last posted, we did a great deal of processing with the group and within ourselves about what we really learned from the experience.   Yesterday I wrote about the harsh reality of the border for the undocumented men, women and children and about heroic deeds of women and men in Tucson who are keeping the faith with the folks who attempt this perilous journey.

Today I want to share some of the takeaways for myself and others.  We did a reflection activity today that really made it easy for each of us to think about our time and experiences these past few days.  We were asked to imagine the experience was an animal and to relate pieces of our journey to parts of the animal.  HEAD- What we learned.  HEART- What we felt.  EYES - What images will we remember. NOSE- Smells that caught our attention.  EARS - What we continue to hear - the stories or words that stuck. HANDS- What individual action will be take? FEET - What will we do with others?  TAIL - What do we leave behind?

Here are some of my responses and a bit of what I remember shared by others.

HEAD - Reality of the horrors of the current immigration system for those coming from Mexico and Central America.  Good, courageous and faithful people and groups who live near the border, at least in the Tucson and Nogales sectors on both sides of the border, are working to save lives by any means possible. The system is broken.

EARS - The stories from helpers, migrants, lawyers, priests, community activists.

EYES - The faces of the people we met along the way. The artifacts found in the desert, abandoned in an attempt to survive or with death. Bullet holes shot into a wall in Nogales, Mexico that were part of an incident in which a boy was killed with 26 bullets.  He was on his way to pick up his sister at school.  The Nogales community is trying to get justice for the death of Jose Antonio, aged 16 at his death.  The WALL on the border.  Steel in sand.

Street memorial where Jose Antonio was killed.  Notice the bullet holes.

HEART- Shocked, compassion, sadness, deep concern, hope, outrage, hopeless, stunned.

NOSE - The posole at the Kino Center.

HAND - Blogging, my sabbatical work, finding others in the community who are concerned, volunteering, vigils at detention centers.

FEET - Mike and I will collaborate on a service at our church, Bellingham Unitarian Fellowship, on May 3, about our experience on this journey.  We will gather others in our area who have done work with groups like No Mas Muertes to plan a forum.  We will see if we can get interest in showing some of the documentaries at the annual "Doctober Film Festival" at the Pickford Cinema in Bellingham.  I like the idea of a Border to Border Solidarity theme.

TAIL - Ignorance about what our government policies are destroying the lives of families and impacting children for their whole lives.  We left our presence as a sign that others care and are paying attention.

There were many other wonderful things said by my group members that I have not captured in today's post.  In our closing ceremony we were asked to take a stone and share with the group what it represents that we will be taking home.  I have my stone in my pocket.  It represents a new piece of the foundation of my sabbatical learning and how I will view the impact of the immigration experience on the families we have the privilege of serving in our state and region.

Thanks for reading.