Skip to main content

Will the Border Burst our Bubbles?

I will forever remember last week's celebration of communion at Friendship Park for a very simple reason- the blowing of bubbles across the border.

I brought bubbles because I knew there would be children in attendance and I figured bubbles could float across the border without violating the new rules at Friendship Park which forbid the passing of material across the international boundary.

Border Patrol officials tell us that drugs and other contraband have been passed through the fence at Friendship Park, and I do not doubt that this is the case.  What I can attest from my hundreds of hours at this location is that instances of this kind of illegal activity were extremely rare in the days when Friendship Park was truly open to the public and were easily controlled by routine Border Patrol supervision of the park.  Still, the new rules at Friendship Park are very clear and no material  - not sandwiches or tamales, not chicle (chewing gum) or pulseras (bracelets), and certainly not bread and juice for our communion services -  is to be passed between the two nations.

At first we were disappointed when we discovered  - as perhaps you can tell from this photo of Michele -  that even small bubbles could not squeeze through the dense mesh of the new border fence at Friendship Park: 


But then ... what shall  we call it? ... not exactly a miracle, but something quite wonderful to be sure.   Michele  figured out that by sliding her bubble wand through a crack between two panels of the fence, she could blow from the Mexican side and propel bubbles into the United States.  The result?  Here is Stefany leaping to catch a Mexican bubble that Michele blew not across, but through, the border:


As far as I can tell, this improvisation does not consitute a violation of U.S. customs law ... but please note that no formal ruling has been issued on this, so perhaps we should reserve judgment.

When it came time for communion things got more serious, not because we celebrate the sacrament with somber spirits, but because the the great sacrifice of Jesus reminds us how challenging it can be to try to follow in his footsteps ... and all the more so when we try to live out our faith while living on the U.S.-Mexico border.
 
After communion Michelle, who is doing mission work in Tijuana and has graced us with her presence the last few Sundays, asked if she could share a prayer. As she prayed her words became ours and so I invite them now to become yours:

Dear God,  Thank you for bringing people together even through the border. I repent on behalf of my nation and ask for forgiveness for the things we've done, the people we have enslaved, the persecution, the wrongs we've allowed. God I pray for repentance, convcition, and transformation in the hearts of our government and the Mexican government. I pray that you would move upon their hearts so that there could be peace and restoration to the relationship between our nations. I pray for the families separated by this border that they would have strength and faith that you are sovereign and that you will make a way. So we declare in faith that you are a God of love, of justice, of peace, and relationship and we will see change. We love you. Amen.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THE HUBRIS OF INCLUSION: Thoughts on the Future of the United Methodist Church

The United Methodist Church was born in a specific time and place, in the mid-twentieth century in the United States of America. Protestant denominations were ascendant, and with them a brand of "ecumenism" that would only decades later be recognized by those who championed it as culturally bound to the white "mainline." Mergers were all the buzz, including the one that created the UMC in 1968, and Methodists embraced their new denomination as partial fulfillment of a dream of "Christian unity." As the historian Robert Handy noted in his wonderful little 1971 book,  A Christian America: Protestant Hopes and Historical Realities , leaders of the new denomination thought of it as "a kind of unofficial national church." Because they sat at the midpoint of mainline American Protestantism in so many respects -- ecclesial, theological, liturgical -- it was easy for them to assume that as all churches became one, pretty much everyone else would eventua...
3 comments
Read more

Methodism's Many Pasts and Futures

From the time the brothers John and Charles Wesley first convened a "holy club" of friends at Oxford University in 1729, Methodists have declared theirs a pursuit of “holiness” or “Christian perfection.”  For early Methodists, the pursuit of Christian perfection led inevitably to disagreements about what it meant to live a holy life.   As early as  1741 the Wesleys distanced themselves from their closest collaborator, George Whitefield, over his Calvinist teachings.  And while Wesley proclaimed himself to possess "a catholic spirit," his practices - not least, his own refusal to conform to the conventions of Anglican parish ministry - were widely perceived by his contemporaries to be divisive or even "schismatic." Methodism on the other side of the Atlantic retained this same spirit, which should come as little surprise since it was born in an act of separation - in 1784,  Wesley consecrated Thomas Coke as Superintendent, setting in motion the cre...
2 comments
Read more

On the 40th Anniversary of Friendship Park

Imagine the First Lady of the United States punching a hole in the fence on the U.S.-Mexico border.   Imagine her publicly lamenting that there was a border fence at all. In fact this scenario doesn’t need to be imagined … because it happened forty years ago right here in San Diego County.   The date was August 18, 1971 and the location was “Friendship Park,” the small cement plaza on the U.S.-Mexico border, at the southwest-most corner of the continental United States. The First Lady was Pat Nixon, who had been a prominent champion of our state’s public parks when her husband Richard Nixon was Governor of California, before being elected President of the United States.    She came to Friendship Park to inaugurate the surrounding area as California’s Border Field State Park.    After planting a tree as part of the inauguration ceremony, Mrs. Nixon approached the large stone monument which sits at the heart of Friendship Park.   The monument commemo...
Post a Comment
Read more