Reflections on Service and Solidarity

One of my colleagues today asked me a question. "How has your transition back to regular life been?" At first I was taken aback. I mean, I was only gone for four nights and four days. It's not like I'd have reverse culture shock (which unlike reverse racism is a real thing) or something.

So I thought about her question and responded with the idea that somehow my trip to the border had turned out to be just what I needed. That sounds selfish doesn't it? But really, it was retreat-like in the way that I met so many wonderful people, including some of the most inspiring and powerful women ever. I never had to rush. My days were planned for me and all involved deep thought, intensive listening, and the chance to stand in solidarity with the act of service. If you know me, you know this is an environment in which I can thrive.

One of the most profound moments came in our final hours of reflection. As we sat in Eileen's living room in Tucson, one of our Welcome the Stranger members read Rachel Naomi Remen's essay entitled, "Helping, Fixing, or Serving." I don't think I could have picked a more perfect reading. It was so poignant to our experiences throughout our time in Tucson, Nogales, and Arivaca. And it was poignant to some other things happening in my life right now as well as I am working closely with a new immigrant mother and son in the Twin Cities. 

If I can focus most on standing in solidarity with others and serving along side them, I will be able to let go of my need to fix and help.

Remen says it best in this segment, "Serving requires us to know that our humanity is more powerful than our expertise. In forty-five years of chronic illness I have been helped by a great number of people, and fixed by a great many others who did not recognize my wholeness. All that fixing and helping left me wounded in some important and fundamental ways. Only service heals.

Service is not an experience of strength or expertise; service is an experience of mystery, surrender and awe. Helpers and fixers feel causal. Servers may experience from time to time a sense of being used by larger unknown forces. Those who serve have traded a sense of mastery for an experience of mystery, and in doing so have transformed their work and their lives into practice." 

As you may imagine, Remen's essay is connected closely to Mother Theresa's philosophy of service as well as principles of Buddhism and thoughts around ego.

My four days with our Welcome the Stranger delegation and Loretto Co-members were full of service and acts of solidarity.  In Nogales we washed dishes side by side with recently deported men and women. We shared meals with children in need. We listened intently and took notes. We asked questions. We walked in the desert and distributed humanitarian aid. We held candles and sang in a vigil for people for have lost their lives crossing from one country to the next. And we broke bread together. Okay, I actually gave up bread for Lent but you know what I mean. 

We did not try to find a solution or solve a problem that is out of our reach. 

And so when Kathy read the excerpt below from Rachel Naomi Remen's essay, all the pieces fell into place for me. Do you struggle with the need to fix or help? 
If you have a few minutes more, read on. 

Serving is Different From Helping and Fixing

       English Hindi Spanish Tamil        

--by Rachel Naomi Remen (Mar 18, 2013)

In recent years the question how can I help? has become meaningful to many people. But perhaps there is a deeper question we might consider. Perhaps the real question is not how can I help? but how can I serve?

Serving is different from helping. Helping is based on inequality; it is not a relationship between equals. When you help you use your own strength to help those of lesser strength. If I'm attentive to what's going on inside of me when I'm helping, I find that I'm always helping someone who's not as strong as I am, who is needier than I am. People feel this inequality. When we help we may inadvertently take away from people more than we could ever give them; we may diminish their self-esteem, their sense of worth, integrity and wholeness. When I help I am very aware of my own strength. But we don't serve with our strength, we serve with ourselves. We draw from all of our experiences. Our limitations serve, our wounds serve, even our darkness can serve. The wholeness in us serves the wholeness in others and the wholeness in life. The wholeness in you is the same as the wholeness in me. Service is a relationship between equals.

Helping incurs debt. When you help someone they owe you one. But serving, like healing, is mutual. There is no debt. I am as served as the person I am serving. When I help I have a feeling of satisfaction. When I serve I have a feeling of gratitude. These are very different things.

Serving is also different from fixing. When I fix a person I perceive them as broken, and their brokenness requires me to act. When I fix I do not see the wholeness in the other person or trust the integrity of the life in them. When I serve I see and trust that wholeness. It is what I am responding to and collaborating with.

There is distance between ourselves and whatever or whomever we are fixing. Fixing is a form of judgment. All judgment creates distance, a disconnection, an experience of difference. In fixing there is an inequality of expertise that can easily become a moral distance. We cannot serve at a distance. We can only serve that to which we are profoundly connected, that which we are willing to touch. This is Mother Teresa's basic message. We serve life not because it is broken but because it is holy.

--Rachel Naomi Remen, adapted from a transcript in the Noetic Sciences Review

Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D. is Associate Clinical Professor of Family and Community Medicine at U.C.S.F. Medical School and co-founder and medical director of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program. She is author of the bestseller, Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories That Heal.
Helping, Fixing or Serving?, Rachel Naomi Remen, Shambhala Sun, September 1999. 

Let me introduce you

Susanna, Leonardo,Tito, Sylvia

Let me share their stories 
with you.

We met Susanna at Nazareth House, a shelter for women with no where else to go once they are deported. Susanna spoke English without even an accent since she 

moved to Phoenix when she was eight yearsold. At 29 years of age now, Susanna is 

fighting her deportation case with a lawyer in hopes that she can get back to her four 

children, ages 13, 11, 6, and 1. Susanna didn’t apply for DACA status because she 

had been afraid, but in hindsight she wishes she had. 

She was picked up while driving her kids home for a traffic violation and that was the last 
time she saw her children. Susanna's 21 years of living in the United States and the 
knowledge that her four children would lose their mother didn't stop her deportation. 
She was stopped on February 4th and we met her on March 2nd. Susanna also leaves 
her husband and job as a dishwasher behind.

The eight women we met at the shelter spanned the ages of 21 to 61. Their stories were 
varied and their eyes were full of pain. Without Nazareth house, these women would be 
on the street and prey to cartel members who want to traffic women and/or drugs.

I met Leonardo while serving alongside the Missionary Sisters of the Eucharist and other 

Minneapolis delegation members at El Comedor. He told me to call him Leo (like DiCaprio). Leo was a framer for a construction company in Mesa, Arizona. We spoke in English since 

he had been in the United States for 15 years. He shared his story of getting pulled over for having a tail light out and realizing that he had forgotten his billfold that day as well. In an 

instant, he was put in jail and deported within days. He leaves behind three children and one on the way. Leo told me that he doesn’t have any money to pay the coyotes to cross back 

across the border, so he will have to find his Mexican family in a city he hasn’t seen in 15 

years.

Leo told me his story with tears in his eyes and then thanked me for listening and for being 

at El Comedor in solidarity with him. As our group exited El Comedor to walk back across 

the border to the U.S. side, Leo was talking to his kids on the phone in English and 

crying, “Put mommy on the phone sweetie. I know, just go get mommy.”

Tito is one of the directors of HEPAC*. He shared the mission and vision of this house of hope and peace and how his dream is for a better education for all children. 
Tito told us about the history of Nogales before it was divided 
first by a fence, then by a wall, and then by a bigger wall. 
A city that was once full of neighbors, mainly sustaining themselves on farmland and agriculture, was divided. 

Tito remembers playing volleyball with kids on the U.S. side of 

the fence when he was little.  The fence served as the net.

Tito told us about the 97 factories that took up residence in Nogales

after NAFTA and took up fertile lands, changed the environment, and exploited workers. 

In Nogales, running water has restrictions for homes.   

Sometimes it may only be available for a couple hours a day. While 

the factories face no restrictions and even have paved streets, 

constant electricity, and internet. Much of Nogales neighborhoods 

still do not have paved streets and owning a computer or having 

access to the internet is a rarity.

Tito stated plainly, “The humanity workers and the people of Nogales is not considered. 

TV’s, cellphones, and other THINGS can be brought back and forth across the border, but 

not people/employees.

Most factories pay their workers about 80 pesos per day. This is almost $5/day. 

More uncommon are the factories that are super proud of their wages because workers 
receive $8/day. 

What we often don’t realize is that regular items at the store have a cost very close to 
what the cost is in the United States. Toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant, feminine 
supplies, school supplies, etc can be completely out of reach for a large portion of the 
population. 

Tito also talked about the working conditions as he has toured factories where workers 
are in constant contact with chemicals without protection and no ear protection when 
working within very loud machines. And if someone gets sick, their medical insurance 
and support is cut off.

“I usually call this modern slavery,” Tito said.

And finally, let me tell you about Sylvia. I don't know much about her. I only know that from the moment Sister Alicia began speaking to the new group of deportees at the Comedor, she was in tears. She folded her hands tightly in prayer as her tears grew bigger and fell faster. Sylvia sat in a small cluster of three young women at the table closest to the tiny kitchen. Once her tears started falling, they never stopped. I knew her pain was too fresh to engage in conversation so instead I can only wonder. I wonder if she was a victim of the border patrol's practice of scattering or family separation. I wonder if she has been hurt or violated. I wonder if she will end up at Nazareth House.

Immigrants who cross the border have to walk several days through the Sonoran desert where depending on the time of year, temperatures can drop below freezing (at night) or soar well above 100 degrees during the day. The Border Patrol has many sophisticated sensors and tracking devices to track these undocumented immigrants, but the tactic of scattering (also called chase and scatter) means they purposely bring helicopters close enough to small groups of people in the desert so that they run in terror and get separated. This means people are alone in the desert and are more likely to get lost or even die. This also means that family members are often separated and belongings can be left behind. Another way to scatter is with horses so that the border control will force many to flee into the unknown desert while managing to capture some.

Family separation is also a purposeful tactic. This means that if family members are deported from the same court, they will purposely be brought to different cities in Mexico when released to deter them from crossing again. This leads to more emotional trauma, fear, and additional drain on financial resources to cross more miles before reconnecting. Additionally, if an undocumented immigrant is picked up near El Paso, Texas they may be released in Nogales, Mexico so that it is harder for them to find their original crossing and/or coyote. These are complicated methods that are difficult for me to describe, but the purpose is to separate family and deter immigration through emotionally and physically harmful practices. Is this really who we are?

I wonder what made Sylvia cross the desert border in the first place. Certainly her story must involve family in that she is either hoping to reunite in the United States or find work to support her family in Mexico. I do not know if Sylvia will try to cross the border again. If her desperation overtakes her fear, she may.

The stories of Susanna, Leo, Tito, and Sylvia are just a handful of the stories being told daily in places like Nogales, Mexico. These are real people. If you haven't met anyone who was recently deported or who has risked everything to cross the border from Mexico, perhaps these stories will help make these people a little more real.

HEPAC Community Garden

*HEPAC welcomes volunteers for the day or to stay on-sight to assist with everything from their garden to educating children and adults.

Desperation

To be honest, I'm too exhausted both emotionally and physically to truly reflect appropriately on my day in Nogales, Mexico with the 'Welcome the Stranger' border delegation. So I'll need to come back to today in the next day or two.

What I can do is ask you to reflect on a time when you have either experienced or witnessed desperation. What does it feel like? What does it look like? What would you do for yourself or for your family when you are in the midst of total desperation?

These questions bring me back to the WHY that was absent from the court system yesterday and the WHY that was so very present today when we heard over and over again from mothers and children at HEPAC, Tito when talking about José Rodriguez's death, women sharing stories at Nazareth house, and recently deported migrants at El Comedor. You can google any of the places and find our more about their mission.

I'm learning more about immigration law and changes that have taken place since the 90's, repercussions of NAFTA, the financial and emotional cost of migration and deportation, and the very real lives that are changed in an instant when a tail light is out or a workplace is raided.

One of my biggest Ah-ha's today involved water. As our group walked back over the border from Nogales, Mexico to Nogales, Arizona (once one city without a wall),  We walked out of the border patrol office and I immediately spotted a sparkling automatic drinking fountain and water bottle filler. How ironic that just steps away there is an entire company that cannot drink tap water and must boil or pay for drinkable water. Additionally there are often restrictions so that people may only have a couple hours of running water in a day. Of course these restrictions to not apply to the factories that have taken over the pastures of Nogales. Yet I am offered the privilege of my citizenship which also affords the privilege of clean drinking water within reach at a moment's notice.

Have I experienced desperation? No. No I haven't. And I think I know why.