Loving My Border Life

cactus fruits

The refrain to a 1987 R.E.M. song has stayed in my head all these years: “It’s the end of the world as we know it/ And I feel fine.” Back then, it rang true and I felt guilty. I have since decided it’s fine to feel fine, even in dire times, as long as I am doing what is mine to do. 

Dorothy Day wrote about the duty of delight. I love my life in El Paso/Juarez because both the people and the environment delight me, and reading is a constant delight, no matter where I am. I’d like to share just a few details about the people, the environment, and my reading, because all three are quite different from my life before mission.

Oh, these people I meet on the border! I am equally inspired by the helpers and the receivers of help – especially in places like the Opportunity Center (OC), where formerly unhoused residents become service providers, so that line almost disappears. I wish you could all meet the creative, committed lay people and the powerful, diverse religious women, who both hail from and have served all over the world. One Maryknoll volunteer just made it back from Lebanon and Palestine on her third try, in wartime, buoyed by the prayers of her beloved community. 

I’d also love to introduce you to the larger-than-life manager of the OC clothing station; the brave courthouse supporters and observers; and the resilient moms and precious kids I spend time with at Guiding Star and its maternity home, the Lily Pad, and the kids in Juarez, as silly and serious, charming and challenging as kids anywhere, and the men I visit at the detention camp, where rules keep changing to make visiting harder. One is a handsome young father with a college degree who came to the U.S. from Sudan at age four. He has 10 younger siblings, all U.S. citizens, and is almost certain to be sent back to a birthplace he can barely remember. I can’t change that. I can pray with him, and let him know someone cares. We are holding on to hope.

pomegranate flowers

It’s my second Southwest springtime, and I am awed once again by trees and flowers thriving in the desert dryness. I walk several miles most days, and even on familiar routes, I see new and delightful changes in every block. I have learned the names of almost as many new plants as of new people, like spiny mesquite and ocotillo; chinaberry, with its fragrant white & purple blossom clusters; white, pink, hot pink, and red oleander; palo verde, whose yellow flowers light up the landscape from spring well into summer. The many varieties of cactus now sprouting flowers and fruits, and the pomegranate flowers that will soon be fruits in my own back yard – and so much more. Even the rocks here are more colorful than any I’ve seen before, and the grackles are fancier.

Finally, as always, books! I have called myself a lit snob for a long time, but now my standards are even higher. As El Paso’s beloved Fr. Jarek Wysoczanski OFM* said recently, I don’t have time to read good books – only very good books. 

Fasting from my beloved good fiction for these two years gives me more time for poetry, spiritual/religious reading, and nonfiction (including border books, a genre in its own right). Let me share just one or two titles in each category. 

Wendell Berry, the poet I’ve been reveling in lately, is also a top-notch novelist, essayist, and philosopher. For at least 40 years he made it his practice to write a poem every Sunday. The 2013 anthology This Day collects hundreds of them. My copy is bristling with bookmarks, and it gains a few more each time I pick it up.

Marilynne Robinson, Pulitzer-winning author of Gilead, Home, Lila, and Jack, also writes nonfiction, with a strong theological bent. I read her Genesis last year and I am currently relishing The Givenness of Things. Though she’s a Congregationalist, not a Catholic, and her prose is more dense than his, her thinking often reminds me of Richard Rohr’s. Perhaps inspired by El Paso’s vibrant interfaith community, I have also fallen in love with the late great Frederick Buechner and read several of his many titles. I look forward to reading his novel Godric when I return home. 

Last week a Notre Dame Sister who has become a good friend put me onto Andrew Solomon’s 2013 Far from the Tree. It’s the fruit of a 10-year project, life experience, and extensive reading. He interviewed hundreds of parents whose children were not what they expected – most of whom have become better, deeper human beings as a result. Its 960 pages will keep me busy for a while, as it opens my heart to new categories of experience. 

There’s plenty of suffering in all those pages, and plenty of it here – much of it intentionally inflicted by the government’s “Christian” white nationalist agenda. I joined clergy and laity from El Paso and beyond to walk in solidarity with migrants on the feast of Oscar Romero, March 24. As we move through Eastertide, I pray to keep the Resurrection in focus without minimizing or denying Good Friday. Berry, whose theme is always what Popes Francis and Leo call integral ecology, unites our plight with that of our common home and suggests an antidote.

“…let us suppose
that Nature gave the world flowers
and birdsong as a language, by which
it might speak to discerning humans.
And what must we say back? Not
just thanks or praise, but acts
of kindness bespeaking kinship
with the creatures and with Nature…and like
the flowers, humble and beautiful.”

*You can order Fr. Jarek’s own beautiful new book,
about the work with migrants here in El Paso, at this link: https://tinyurl.com/2zwv59mx

Question for Reflection: What are a few everyday things that you’re delighting in the most during this season?