ACROSS THE LINES - Archive (2006-2020)

On Monday President Obama became the first U.S. President to  speak the word "gay" in an inaugural address.   And with the alliterative phrase "from Seneca Falls to Selma to Stonewall," he wove new colors - the colors of the rainbow flag, if you will - into the tapestry that is the history of the United States. But President Obama failed to break another inaugural silence, one that masks another form of denial that is as embedded in the American psyche as has been the denial that some of our citizens are gay.  By failing to utter in his inaugural address the names of our nation's closest neighbors, Obama joined with those who preceded him as President to indulge the popular fantasy that the United States is an island unto itself. The words which cannot be spoken by U.S. Presidents, it seems, are "Mexico" and "Canada."* I am reminded of the wooden cut-out map that American children are given to help them le...

On the U.S. side of the park, the vehicle road that cuts through the surrounding Border Field State Park is closed due to flooding, which means that only those willing to commit to a three-mile hike can access the historic meeting place on Monument Mesa.  And in Tijuana, the angle of the winter sun on the new dense mesh of the primary fence renders most visitors entirely unaware that there is even anyone present on the other side.  (To demonstrate, consider this photo, which shows what I look like to people who are standing in Tijuana and looking at me through the fence.) I am reminded of a certain period of Jesus' life - or, to be more precise, what we can glimpse of this period from the accounts left in the New Testament gospels.  I am referring to Jesus' upbringing - what Spanish-speakers would call his formación. The gospels of Matthew and Luke open with spectacular renditions of the circumstances surrounding Jesus' b...

In the imagination of Mexican children the event of Christmas is overshadowed by el Día de los Magos – the “Day of the Kings.”    The day, January 6, is called “Epiphany” in the church’s historic calendar (“epiphany” means “manifestation” or “revelation”) because on this day the light of Christ is said to have been revealed to the nations of the earth, represented by the three kings.   The day is important to Mexican children, though, for entirely more practical reasons – on this day, after twelve, long days of Christmas, they receive their gifts. During my time in Calexico (from 1992 to 1996 I was the Pastor of the Calexico United Methodist Church) one woman, Maria Isabel Roacho, was determined to see that the church do justice to the Mexican traditions of the Día de los Magos .   The children of the church would have already received their gifts – al estilo norteamericano; in the North American style – but on the Sunday nearest the Epiphany, Mari...

I still find it distasteful that I am prohibited from serving communion through the border fence at Friendship Park.   Would our nation’s security be compromised if I were allowed to offer people gathered in Tijuana a piece of bread and a swig of juice?     I am reminded of the inherently universal demands of the Christian faith and the inherently restrictive demands of the modern nation-state.   Perhaps some Christians do not experience this tension as a part of their struggle with the life of faith, but living on the border, as I do, I find it inescapable. Among the people who distinguished himself by the seriousness with which he treated the sacrament during the months in 2009 when I was serving communion through the border fence was a man I’ll call Manuel Ybarra.  Manuel had been deported in the fall of 2008, and was separated from his wife, Laura, and their three children who were living in San Diego. Most Sundays Laura, a U.S. citizen, w...