my borders are wide

Oh my, a lot of life things have happened lately. Adventure and sunsets and riding down mountains with our heads out the window and the wind blowing through our hair and crisp fall air blowing all the aches out of our souls. We ran away a lot last week, in moments when we felt like we would implode if we didn’t get out of the same four walls and away from the same people and out into air that didn’t feel choking and into places that felt less haunted. And of course the places we ran away to are haunted by last weeks tears and laughs and everything in between, so this week we throw ourselves into schedules and pretend last weeks problems will be over because at some point we just decided we were annoyed with ourselves. Or at least I did, but that’s irrelevant. One adventure I have been on this week though, was a class trip to Clarkston, Georgia. (I know, I know— to all of you elementary students out there worried about losing your field trips, they do still have them in college. There is still hope.) I had never in my life heard of Clarkston, Georgia, and for those of you like me who had no clue what the significance of this place is: it’s a refugee resettlement city near DeKalb. As in approximately 30 minutes away from my hometown, this city where born-and-raised Americans are the minority and there are more languages and nationalities than you can count. But for the record, they sing the National Anthem with more fervor than any American I’ve ever heard.

There’s a school there, run by an immigrant, Luma, who started out as their soccer coach and became their friend, their voice and their chief, fighting for them and their opportunities daily. The Fugees Family, they’re called. And what a family they are, made up of tribes and clans and nationalities, historic enemies and hated neighbors, now friends. Now families, bonded together through language barriers and different religions by soccer, and hope, and maybe just the general fight to find something to look forward to every day. Each student and player has come from a war-torn country that flowery language doesn’t do justice; every single one of them has a horrific history. Some have lost parents or siblings or relatives or neighbors, in brutal cruel horrific ways but I promise you every single one of them smiled at us while we were there. The refugees were placed in Clarkston by the government and after eight months, left to fend for themselves. Of course, the small town took the influx of refugees with less than southern hospitality and there have been many abrasive situations on both sides, and it isn’t really my job to say who is right or wrong. But in Luma’s words, “the state of Georgia, in general, hasn’t been too welcoming of the Fugees”. You can read their story in Outcasts United, but mostly imagine coming from a place where education isn’t too much of a priority because everyone is running for their lives, seeing unthinkable brutality at a young age, and then being placed in country whose language you can’t speak in a town that is hostile or hiding at best. The Fugees have had it worse than most of our worst nightmares even dared to go.

So, with that in mind we drove up in our school bus with timid expectations. And oddly enough, these beautiful people in this strange, broken town took me back to Nicaragua. A few students from the Fugees school took us on a tour of their town— where they live and where they shop or play soccer or hang out. Part of me thinks we all had to have been blind to not immediately take action and do something because how on earth have we come back here and not changed at least something? There was a moment in Nicaragua when we got off of the bus to go visit a business and I kid you not, when the bus stopped at the street I thought to myself, “surely we aren’t walking down that street.” Because it was covered in trash and unrecognizable masses , and we did walk down that street, but what was a thousand times worse was that people lived there. In Clarkston when we took a drive through the ‘apartment complexes’ I had a similar moment. Not necessarily that the roads were covered in trash, but that there were people living in buildings that were half burnt down. Let me say that again: there were families living in buildings where half of the building was burnt down. There were families living out of their cars and buildings so run down you just assume no one could ever live in them, except of course people do. The nicer areas are the dangerous ones, with shoot outs regularly. Gang activity is prevalent, as is poverty and drugs and everything else you tell your kids to stay away from. Here, in Georgia, in the United States was a town that reminded me painfully of the places in third world countries that I go to on missions trips, and I want to know how on earth that can be.

More than that, I want to know why an official in our government leaned across his desk and whispered to Luma, ‘Muslims kill Christians all the time.” I want to know why he felt he had a right to say that, when clearly she is living more like Christ than he is, and she’s a Muslim. Christ didn’t hide from the poor or complain that the needy masses came to Him; He didn’t screen them to see if they would try to kill Him. He ran to them. He went out of His way for them. He put Himself in danger to bring them closer to Him and I want to know why Christians these days make x’s with their arms in reference to refugees coming over. I want to know how people can see other human beings just as worthy of the world as we are living in terrible conditions and not want to change it. Because I can’t even begin to understand. At all.

Muslims kill Christians a lot, ISIS is targeting Christians. ISIS is targeting the world.

But not all Muslims are like that, in fact most of them aren’t.

In my Cornerstone class today we read an article, and because I’m not friends with my professor on Facebook I’ll admit:: I didn’t read the whole thing, but one thing we focused on is the story of Eric Rudolph. (( here’s the article, feel free to take a look http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95286690 )) Eric Rudolph claimed to be a Christian. He was sent to Christian identity groups, quotes Scripture and fights for ‘the army of God.’ But you know what else he did? He bombed the Atlanta Olympics and an office in Birmingham, he grew up on the belief that ‘Jews are the spawn of Satan’ and when asked if he was responsible for the bombing of Birmingham, he responded proudly. And we sat in class saying, “I pray and hope that people across the world don’t associate us, as Christians, with him’ and wondering how he got his religion out of the Christianity we know. Because Rudolph was bred off of hatred, his role models fed hatred to him, they taught him the way they knew and thought, and it killed two people, injuring dozens. And you know what, Muslims everywhere are saying the same things about ISIS, wondering how they got their religion out of the Koran, because it’s not at all like what they believe. Muslims everywhere are sitting in their classrooms praying that we don’t associate them with ISIS.

But we do. We screen Syrians for terrorism before they enter our country, and the state of Georgia has declared that we won’t accept them into our borders. And you know what, the city of Clarkston stared down the governor and said, ‘No, actually, we’ll take them. Send them to us.’ Because, as my teacher reminded us constantly while we were there, the refugees in that town, those helpless kids who news flash: are just like me and my friends and your children, are the people our government is trying to keep out. Those kids who laughed with us and welcomed us into their school without judgment or hesitation are of the very religions and countries that our nation now holds up our arms in the shapes of x’s to. The ones we callously say, “Keep ‘em all out” about.

And I don’t understand.

I’ll be one hundred percent transparent and say that for a really really long time, I was terrified of Muslims. Terrified. Because you know what? In the media and in our culture, that’s exactly what we’re taught. We see terrorism and think Muslim. We see Middle Eastern and think terrorist. We see Muslim and think terrorist. The words are synonyms, almost interchangeable, because in our culture we are taught to be afraid. Just as Eric Rudolph was taught to hate in the name of Christianity, we have been taught to fear in the name of patriotism. So I ask you, sort of straightforwardly, what are you teaching?

Because you’re teaching something, and you’re teaching someone.

The thought that we would close our borders to people who are literally running for their lives, that we would shut out those who desperately need our help, makes me sick. Physically, mentally— I can’t explain this natural instinct but I know that there are people all over this world that I love dearly. In Sweden and Spain and Italy and Albania and Honduras and Nicaragua and England and Mexico. The world is brimming with people dear to my heart, of all nationalities and backgrounds, and to think that someday they might be in trouble or running for their lives, and this country that I belong to might just close their doors on them. I can’t fathom it.

It’s almost a Holocaust, in a way. This keeping our hands out, not getting ourselves dirty or in trouble, not putting ourselves in the mess feels a little bit like indirectly being responsible for the people we left out to dry. And I pray that is not the kind of country we are becoming, or heaven forbid the kind of country we have already become.

Of course, I’m really bad about thinking about us first, and it could be for the best interest of our country to close our borders. And I know, I know that ISIS has said they will use the refugee crisis to spread their kind and naturally, that’s a red flag for the refugees. But how can you tell that mom who just got raped publicly and repeatedly in front of her children who also just watched their father and brother or sister get murdered that they can’t enter into your country? How can you doom them to the same fate as those that died before them? How can we not offer them shelter when the world has treated them so cruelly? At what point do we lose the title of nationality or religion, and strip it all down to the fact that we are all humans, who have the same rights and the same needs. That at the end of the day, if we were to put ourselves in their shoes, what would we want them to do for us?

And apart from that, let’s not forget that our history is built on the backs of immigrants, that we are the Great Melting Pot. The minute we lose sight of who we are as a country and react out of fear, is the moment they win. Because that’s what they feed off of: fear. Terror. It’s in their name and their identity and their breeding.

Jesus did not shy away from the leper, He healed them. He let the bleeding woman touch Him, He let the defiled near Him, He ran to the hurting and the poor and the impoverished, so why are we not doing the same?

I’m white, upper middles class, I’m an American, I’m a woman, and more than that I’m a woman of God— I’m everything ISIS hates. But I say, and granted I know very little about politics, let them in.

My borders, they’re wide. And they’re wide open.