12/2/22

By Josh Rubin

Each of us comes to this Journey for Justice with their own story. The story of what we see along the way is too big for any one person to tell. For each of us, it will take an effort to make sense of what we are looking at, and a special effort to tell the stories of what we see.

Each of our stories is like a strand. The story of our Journey is like a strand, spun to become warp and weft of our testimony. Each attempt to tell the story is an attempt at making sense, to ourselves and others, of what we see.

Some stories, many of which we see in the media and hear from the mouths of others, are ways of NOT seeing. Chaos at the border is just such a story. It is a story that refuses to look. It prefers to draw a conclusion that ignores any sense of obligation, any sense of shared humanity. It is a get-out-of-guilt-free card. Often the card is played by people who worry that what they have, their position in life, is precarious, and threatened by “invaders” who want to take it from them. Many of them have good reason to worry, but not about an invasion. They are misled. It is a story recited to frighten. To distract.

The job we have given ourselves is the job of looking. Or maybe, it is better to say that our job is not looking away. The plight of those on the other side of the border is not easy to look at. The border does more than stop pilgrims from crossing, it also blocks our vision. And hard also is looking at those on the other side of the tracks: another social border that shields us. But when we look, when we see, when we overcome, when we Journey, we become strands of hope, and when we weave them, a different story begins to take shape.

The Journey begins.