We posted some reflections from Sandy Strachan a few weeks ago about her volunteer experience in El Paso working with immigrants. Here are her final thoughts.
Am I glad I went? Yes.
As one friend and I agreed, this was a “very meaningful exercise in futility.” The most gratifying aspect is that there are SO MANY dedicated individuals and organizations seeking to demonstrate humanity, love and justice to those in need. As for the immigrants themselves, what I saw at Casa Romero and in Juárez was a group of resilient individuals making the most of terrible suffering. They worked – in the kitchen, mopping floors, cooking. They were kind and polite. They loved their children. They talked about their lives but with a stunning lack of bitterness. This gives me hope now and into the future.
I realize immigration isn’t everyone’s issue. There are far too many other concerns, all valid – racism, climate, health care, drug abuse, the income gap, sexism, LGBTQ rights, the political stalemate, the loss of values, mental health, plastic in the ocean — Lordy, Lordy!
But pick one, make it yours, work hard in your community. To quote Elie Wiesel:
“I swore never to be silent whenever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Whenever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must–at that moment–become the center of the universe.”
From Loretto Convent, El Paso, 2019
The sheets on my little bed
are woven from a rich, bright red.
They’re old and soft, and form a nest
for me to take my nightly rest.
But sadly they don’t just entwine me,
the crimson sheets wrap round and bind me
til sleep eludes and disappears
and I am left with only tears,
For broken lives and broken dreams:
A tiny girl, one day a beauty, who calls every woman “Mami” because hers has disappeared along with her unborn brother. Her father works and wonders where his wife is, how she is, if she’s being fed, being raped. He wants to imagine she’s fine and will be found, that she’ll come back, that they will live happily ever after – and maybe, even forget.
An old man, abandoned in the desert by his coyote, alive now because of the kindness of the patrolman who found him.
A single mother whose son was shot eight times for saying hello to a stranger; he was taken from her, isolated, finally found. Metal pins jut through his arms and ankles, but he is back, if not home.
We are kidnappers. We are people who “disappear” others in hopes the rest will just go away. We torture people with the unknown. We are forfeiting our very souls.
The blood red sheets remind me, every night, that my heart is bleeding and that I don’t want to be a bleeding heart. I want to be a warrior, a woman with a strong heart, a woman who is vulnerable and who never ceases to feel another’s pain.