It was my hope that this week I could switch the publication day of E-pistles from Friday to Tuesday. Many of you have commented that receiving this missive on Friday is too late to have an impact on Sunday events, and many of the clergy take Fridays off. I am happy to oblige, but the pace of life at Diocesan House meant that, for this week anyway, I was only able to push back the transmission time by one day. I hope to do better next week!

This past Saturday I joined with about 100 other Arizona Episcopalians at Naco, on the Mexican border for a "border procession." It was not a political event. The marchers carried no signs. We simply wore yellow t-shirts with the words in Spanish and English, "God has no borders." We had gathered for two reasons. The first was to dedicate a new aid facility for those whom the INS had caught and returned to Mexico. Many of these folks are penniless, sick, or at least in need of food and water. A group of church people from this side of the border has converted an old taco restaurant into a clean, welcoming space, where the weary can find rest and help to return to their homes in Mexico or parts south.

Following the dedication, we walked to the local Roman Catholic Church for some music, words, and an agape meal of bread and wine. Our presence there was to show solidarity with our fellow Christians living in the shadow of the billion dollar wall being built by our government. In my remarks, which were picked up by the local paper, I commented that people tend to like walls, for we think they can protect us from our real or imaginary enemies. God, however, does not like walls, and whenever we put them up, God knocks them down, whether at Jericho, Berlin, or (eventually) in Mexico. No matter how much money we might spend on walls, no matter how many high-tech devices we use to keep people apart, the wall being assembled on our border hasn't got a chance. It too will end up in the dust bin of history, a rusting relic of man's inhumanity to man.

Of course, I got a lot of hate mail (almost always from non-Episcopalians). Rather than suggest a humane response to the immigration issues, they preferred to call into question my patriotism or my sanity.

Today I came across another commentary on immigration, not at our Mexican border but in a totally different setting, in the Middle East. The geography is different but the issues are the same. I've reproduced it for you below.

Someone asked the organizer of Saturday's walk, Border Missioner the Rev. Seth Polley, "How come your group is walking today." His answer? "As long as they are walking, we will walk with them."

Let's keep on walking.

+Kirk

On the Net: http://www.azdiocese.org/dfc/newsdetail_2/312 

 

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A Final Thought

 
The World Council of Churches and the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC) organized a public hearing last week on migration which was hosted by the Armenian Catholicosate of Cilicia in Beirut, Lebanon. The hearing is a precursor to a Global Ecumenical Network on Migration meeting held later in the week.

Migration "is a fact of life. It is as much an instinct to survive as it is an inevitable consequence of globalization. We can neither turn our backs on it, nor control it," declared a statement of participants at a 15-16 April Public Hearing on Migration held in Beirut, Lebanon. "Migrants are not commodities, illegal aliens or mere victims, they are human beings."
Around the world, people are leaving their home countries in search of safety, freedom or a better life, the consultation heard. These migration flows are a challenge to churches as migrants bring their own traditions and values into local parishes or create their own religious communities.

At the same time, participants acknowledged, churches need to live up to their mandate to act and speak out in favour of the weak where migrants and refugees are being victimized. These global phenomena and the way they play out in the Middle East were the focus of the hearing.

Welcoming the stranger is not optional for Christians. Nor is it conditional." said World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary the Rev Samuel Kobia addressing the hearing on Tuesday. The church should strengthen its hospitality in an "era of new forms of migration", whilst being an "advocate and defender of the right of people to move freely within their own nation and leave their home and live elsewhere in search of their God given right to life with dignity," he added.

Reported in Ekklesia via Episcopal Cafe

On the Net: http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/news_reports/welcoming_the_migrant.html