“...the universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.”
Thomas Berry
I use to think of myself as being fairly intelligent, but I wonder if I am the wiser, or less so, by realizing how little I truly understand. I have lived here on the border with Mexico for ten years now and remain dumbfounded how people living within shouting distance of each other cannot understand each other’s language or that an imaginary line can create such differences in economic well-being.
Even small things can reveal surprises and stories. I use to find a lot of objects left behind by those crossing the border illegally while out hiking along the jeep roads and trails. Some of the things I would find were left behind when they were apprehended by the Border Patrol; things like cigarette lighters, nail clippers, and toothbrushes. These are considered potential weapons. Other things like backpacks, clothing, and personal objects are left behind when the migrants make their connections for transport north. Vehicles are packed with twenty or more persons at times. There is no room for anything except what they wear or perhaps what can fit into a pocket.
I would sometimes take found objects home. The lighters were handy. There were blankets, hats, nail clippers and all sorts of interesting things. In time these objects forged a connection that went beyond whatever practical use they served me. I say this in hindsight. It wasn’t my intent. I came to a fuller realization that there is no such thing as a small thing and no act without consequence. Sleeping under a blanket or holding something someone else has carried across the length of nations has meaning. I can’t say what it is and I fear defiling it by making feeble attempts. I often struggle to find words that denote significance without implying that something can be understood, but we all breathe the same air.
A few years back I was working as a RN in the emergency room. A SUV that was seen driving from a mountain access road was pursued by the Border Patrol and eventually halted when strips laid in the road for that purpose flattened the tires. The driver lost control. The vehicle was overloaded with nineteen or twenty passengers and it rolled into cars that had been pulled to the side by the police. If I remember right, nineteen of the injured were brought to our emergency room. There were others that were flown directly to the trauma center and others were taken directly to the morgue. There were no drugs, no weapons, just people looking to work or to reunite with family.
I understand the need for immigration control. I don’t understand how it mitigates our humanity. Maybe one has to be there, talk to these folks, see their hunger, their embracing of your smile or cowering in fear, to cover their wounds, or watch them die in order to see the weakness of our explanations and justifications. I hope not, although it does leave an impression. They are not concepts or statistics. They are people. Trust me, they are not so different from you or me and for all the suffering we inflict on these people I have come to believe that we, collectively as communities and as a nation, and we as individuals of these collectives are the greater losers for turning our backs on them. We lose a chance to honor something very worthy and to show gratitude for the good fortune we have.
I am trying hard to say something, a gut feeling about who we are and I risk compromising my effort by saying too much or too directly, so, please indulge me one more story, one more experience that has become part of the worldview I hope to share. The beauty of telling a story is that I don’t have to decide what it should mean for you. My great hope is that you listen with an open mind. The Christian mystic Thomas Merton said in his book, ‘No Man is an Island,” that “A person of sincerity is less interested in defending the truth than in stating it clearly for he thinks that if the truth be clearly seen it can very well take care of itself.” The onus is on me and if one person out there steps out of their citadel of concepts to be touched by the struggle of their fellow men and women, someone who would have contentedly and complacently kept their distance otherwise, I will feel fulfilled in my endeavor.
This too happened while I was nursing. At the time I worked in the Intensive Care Unit. A young woman was rushed across the border by ‘Cruz Roja’ ambulance service and left at an outlying hospital. From there she was flown to where I worked, it being the nearest place with a surgeon. This woman had been pregnant and in the early stages of labor when the doctors in Mexico discovered that she was breach and recommended that she have a caesarian delivery for which payment was expected in advance. She did not have the money and went ahead with a vaginal delivery that left her hemorrhaging. They were unable to staunch the bleeding, even with surgery. She arrived at our hospital in severe shock and was given many units of blood and went into surgery twice again that night. She remained unconscious. She was dying. Truly everyone did everything possible. Truly, it was too late. She was going to die a needless death. The border guards would not let her husband across to be with her for the lack of the proper papers. They had one other child.
Death was no stranger to those of us there that night, but there was something so poignant, so intense that it cast a spell over the whole hospital. Little was said between us. When someone would try to say something their words would falter and fade, sentences were left unfinished, tears shed and all night long something happened that I had never seen before or since. People came to see her: nurses, doctors, technicians, people who had nothing to do with her care. They came as if on a pilgrimage and stood by her bed unable to really comprehend what we were witness to. Sadness welled like a great ocean wave that one never knows from whence it comes or why and at dawn she died. Her husband never made it to her bedside despite our pleas.
I wrote a poem of sorts and it remains an expression of my experience that night:
“This sunrise
the priest sets the crucifix
at the bedside as
I watch
sadness bloom and take faith’s hand
for the last dance of a long night.
A small Mexican woman
dies from birthing a child.
All night
women came to embrace her
in love and fear
and beautiful incomprehension.
We were
the end of the line
of too many circumstances and injustices.
This sunrise
seems to hesitate while
sadness and faith dance on and on
into a new day.”
I recollect and reminisce on these events because it is like tilling the soil in the garden prior to planting. I aspire to fulfill an ache to explore what it means to be human, to be me. I do not hope to satisfy this ache, only to honor it. Sometimes it means turning aside from choices that are safer, more comfortable, or offer gratification of my immediate emotional needs. I am supported by a deep belief in our connections to each other and all that lives. I believe in an intrinsic inclination toward kindness. I believe this not because it is necessarily true, but because it is empowering. I am supported by you, and, I hope you find some support in me
Thank you.
Be well.
