Last weekend, church friends, my husband Ted and I migrated to Nashville to see the basketball Razorbacks play in the Southeastern Conference Basketball Tournament. Ted and I have attended the SEC or Southwest Conference tournament every year but one since 1985. We're committed Hog fans. It's a fun time, especially when we win at least one game -- which we did this year for the first time in eight years. Fans of the 14 SEC teams migrate from north, south, east and west.
The trip to Nashville was very different from the one I took in January to study immigration issues at the United States' border with Mexico, and on to Guatemala and El Salvador. But there were some similarities.
On both trips, I found myself a minority. At the SEC Tournament, 90 percent of the fans wore Kentucky blue, and it's an odd feeling to be wearing red when a thunderous crowd is spelling C-A-T-S around you. Also, I don't speak Spanish, although my skin tone and features didn't stand out too much in a culture of dark hair and eyes in Mexico and Central America.
The issue of being a minority was more evident in my status as an American citizen. Even in these other countries, I had more privileges than most of their citizens: the freedom of movement from one country to another, the financial means to make decisions and be able to act on them, and an optimism and expectation that I would be treated with dignity and respect.
The migration stories I heard on my study trip were very different from my own stories of traveling across state or international borders. Men shared what it feels like to be unable to support your family and how dehumanizing it is to feel so helpless and hopeless. They told of leaving behind the people and communities they love for the hope of earning enough money to live, and allow their families to live. Their culture of strong, close-knit communities -- where most interaction and living is outdoors -- is very dissimilar to the culture they find in the United States. The men's stories were accompanied by tears and explanations of too much loss to bear, even if they cross the border.
We heard stories from men and women whose limbs were severed when they were sucked under the train migrating through the Mexican state of Chiapas. We heard stories of women raped by those they trusted to guide them across the border. We listened as women talked about their fears for their teenage sons, who are threatened by gang-members to either join or be killed. The women talked about their struggles to support their families when abandoned by husbands who left for the United States and never were heard from again.
Sitting around, processing what we were hearing and seeing, my group also heard another, more familiar migration story: the story of Mary and Joseph. I'd never thought much about Mary and Joseph being immigrants, but they were. First, they traveled across "state" borders from the region of Nazareth, where they lived, to a different Roman region. They went to Bethlehem, to be counted for tax purposes, because that was the home of their cultural heritage. That migration was a state-forced migration, back to their region of origin.
Then, when Joseph was warned in a dream that he should flee to Egypt with his family, Mary and Joseph and their infant son traveled from what we now call Israel to Egypt -- a very long way. (It took 40 years for Moses' group to migrate.) They feared the ruler of their country. It's enlightening to think of baby Jesus as a migrant, with his parents making that dangerous, arduous journey to save his life. There are more similarities between Jesus' story and those of Central American and Mexican migrants than the stories of my migration. Jesus and his family had few resources, and their moving was neither for pleasure or study, but due to issues within their own nation -- much as our Latin American brothers and sisters experience.
Migrating. We all do it, whether it's across state lines, for shopping in Tulsa, to the Hogs' NCAA tournament game in Jacksonville, Fla., or a spring break trip out of country. Jesus did it. It gives one pause to think.
NAN Religion on 03/21/2015