I have a granddaughter who will be two years old in mid-July.  Given what has happened on our southern border, I can’t help but to imagine what it would be like to have her ripped from my arms by some burly border guard.  My heart breaks at the thought of seeing her deep brown eyes look at me for help and for answers as she begins to kick and cry because a stranger is grabbing her from the comforting arms of her pop-pop.  I imagine that I begin to cry as I am marched away in handcuffs and I hear her voice – and only her voice – pierce through the cacophony of sobbing children and barking officials as she cries and struggles to get free.  I further imagine that I am frightened and humiliated and angry all at the same time.  I can’t protect this precious child.  I can’t predict what will happen to her.  I am the person she looks to for comfort and safety and I have failed her.

I have a good imagination and using it to better understand the brutish tactics our government has taken with immigrants on our border is an exercise I recommend to all.  It is only by putting ourselves in the place of others that we begin to better understand the depth of these callous actions forced upon children and families.

By using our imaginations to place our loved ones in harm’s way we can see these actions as a personal affront, as an assault on our loved ones, as a threat to the very core of who we are as a people.  By using our imaginations in this way – the atrocity on our southern border becomes very personal.  It is no longer about them.  It is now about us.

In years past, we could see that immigrant families were just like us: they wanted what we want.  They yearned for a better life.  They wanted good schools and safe streets for their children.  They wanted work that will allow them to live with dignity.  They still want these things, but now the dynamic has changed and has a deadly undertone.  According to a new Brookings report, many of the families showing up at our southern borders are fleeing violence.  As stated in the report, “More than 40 percent had a relative who was killed in the past two years. Thirty-one percent knew someone who was kidnapped; 17 percent knew someone who disappeared.”  Knowing this makes our government's actions even more obscene.

It would behoove us to gain a better understanding of the unauthorized immigrant population in America.  The Migration Policy Institute provides a helpful profile of the 11 million unauthorized immigrants currently in the country.  Surprisingly – 58% have lived here for ten years or more.  The majority are working (64%), have a high school education or better (50%) and many own a home (31%).  Contrary to some opinions – unauthorized immigrants contribute more to the national economy than they take out.  This makes sense when you think about it.  The majority are working and paying taxes, yet they are ineligible for most public benefits such as welfare or food stamps.  Even more astounding, the Social Security Administration estimates that unauthorized immigrants are contributing billions of dollars into Social Security every year, with little hope of ever recouping those funds because they are not allowed to receive them.

And so the facts tell us that all immigrants provide a net gain to the American economy, including those who are unauthorized. Our imaginations and our values tell us that the actions our government is taking on the border are an affront to our sense of decency and humanity, especially in the face of the violence they are fleeing from.  You wouldn’t know it from the rhetoric, but an astounding 75% of Americans think immigration helps our country, as evidenced in a couple of recent public opinion polls.

Thomas Jefferson said that the government you elect is the government you deserve.  Is that true?  Do we deserve this government that debases adults and separates children from their mothers?  Do we deserve a government that – time and again – offers up policies that are contrary to our history and our values? 

America is a country of immigrants.  Nearly every person in this country today can trace their roots to a desperate ancestor who braved an immigrant journey to these shores seeking a better way of life (except for those who came her in slave ships). 
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My paternal grandparents came here in the early 1900s from western Ukraine.  My maternal grandparents came at about the same time from the region around Naples, Italy.  I am only here because of them. 

In that respect – I am an immigrant.  

We are all immigrants.  We are all just “strangers and guests” in this world.
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And, we should demand better.

The separation of children from their parents at our southern border feels like an assault on our American values because it is raw and in our face.  We can hear the sobs of the children in the heart rendering recording by the news group ProPublica.  We can hear the taunts of the guards calling the cry of children a symphony just waiting for a conductor.  We can empathize with the parents on what it would feel like to have our children literally ripped from our arms with no way to see them or communicate with them after.

But why do we seem so surprised?  We devalue children and families all the time here in America; especially children and families of color.  We have not only tolerated but have seen large segments of our population support atrocious actions.  Consider:
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•  During the 200 years of slavery in America, families were ripped apart and adults and children sold separately to the highest bidder
• We codified a portion of our American Constitution allowing slaves to be counted as only three-fifths of a person.
• We tolerated the genocide of Native Americans – including the slaughter of women and children – in order to gain land, gold and timber for the expansion of the country.
  
• We passed Jim Crow laws and treated lynching – a means of racial terrorism - as a community picnic.
• We accept that 22% of all children in the USA are living in poverty, but an unbelievable 75% of Black children will experience poverty in their pre-adult years in America.  And this is in the face of growing research that shows how living in long-term poverty exposes children to life-long learning and health disabilities.
• Or consider the disparity of how we treat opioid addiction now, compared to crack cocaine addiction in the 1980s.  Crack was an “urban problem” and addressed through aggressive law enforcement and long mandatory prison sentences.  Opioid addiction is a rural (and white) problem and is deemed a public health crisis.
• The overcrowding of our prisons in America is directly attributed to the “war on drugs”,  and as one result, Wisconsin now has the highest rate of Black incarceration in the country.

It is appropriate to be outraged at our treatment of refugee families on the borders.  But, let’s not kid ourselves that this is an anomaly. 

There appears to be a darkness in the American soul; one that comes out when cynical politicians and others motivated by greed fan the flames of xenophobia and pit us against that “other” who we are told threatens our existence and way of life.

But there also seems to be a better side of us; one that will take to the streets and mount protests at the sight of children being used as pawns in a geo-political game of immigration.  This is the American paradox.

Perhaps it is accurate to describe Americans as a kind-hearted people who have a darkness in our soul that causes us to do horrific things when we believe we are threatened. 

As long as we treat those who are not familiar to us as outsiders – we reinforce the belief that some are not worthy of our attention, of our dollars, of living next to us, of being treated humanely, of being loved.

If we allow our neighbors, our friends, our relatives, our politicians, our TV and radio personalities to whip up a frenzy about who is worthy and who is not, then we are tacit supporters of actions such as those we see today on our border.

The Quakers believe there is that of God in everyone and as such, every person is to be treated tenderly and with love.  That sense of the divine within is not unique to Quakerism.  Practically every major religion teaches that each human is a child of God and should be treated with love and respect. 

The word Namaste comes from eastern religions and is one most often heard in western cultures in Yoga classes.  The deeper meaning of the word is one that can provide us an example of how to treat others – even those who seem to threaten us. 

Namaste means “The Divine light in me acknowledges the Divine light in you.”

For many, it is easy to recognize the divine light within a six year old Guatemalan child partially wrapped in an aluminum blanket, sobbing for her mother while sitting on the floor of an American detention center.  It may be a bit more difficult to recognize the divine light of a black family with a couple of teenage boys who want to move into the house next to you in suburban Wisconsin.  But we must. 
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Namaste

I’m starting on a new phase of my life, and I hope you will join me on the journey.  The decision to start afresh wasn’t an easy one. 

Some have noticed that I haven’t written any posts since February.  The reason is that I was in a state of spiritual and emotional transition and didn’t want to write anything until I arrived at some clarity. 

What kicked off my dilemma was the decision to start collecting social security benefits in July of this year.  At first, I didn’t think this decision was a big deal.  It would provide a steady income stream and I could just keep on working with less worry about securing contracts and managing cash flow finances. 

But then something funny happened.  I needed to order new business cards and I became paralyzed in that thought.  It would have been simple enough to just email the company and order a new batch, but I felt that there was a deeper question brewing.

This decision about receiving social security grew into something unexpected.  It started me thinking about full retirement.  I could lay down my blogging and consulting work and just live life as a retiree.  I could become a professional volunteer.  I could audit classes at UWM.  I could spend more time sailing or hanging out with my granddaughter.  I could buy a boat and work on it.  I could visit museums and events during the day.  I could write a book.  In short – fully retiring would open a whole new world for me. 

As I watched myself deliberate over this decision, I came to realize that there was a lot of “me, me, me” in my thought process.  What could I do, where could I go, what would I gain.  When I recognized this, it rubbed up against my Quaker sensibilities.  I realized I wasn’t praying enough.  I wasn’t digging deeply enough into my soul to hear the voice of God guiding me.  Or – was God telling me to kick back and just enjoy life?  The fact is, I didn’t know.

I considered asking my Quaker friends to form a Clearness Committee to help me discern my path, but thought I’d dig a little deeper on my own before I went that route.  (note:  a clearness committee is a group of friends who will sit with you and ask open ended questions – helping you gain “clearness” in your thinking.  They are not there to advise, or fix, or suggest anything.  The basic premise is that God is guiding the person seeking clearness and perhaps they only need help defining the questions to ask of themselves.)

I realized that my prayer time had deteriorated significantly since my son and his family moved back from Portland and came to live with us.  We never had five people living in this house at one time and especially not with a sweet but very active two-year old toddler.  So, my first step was to get back to a daily prayer routine.

That turned out to be a good decision, because the answer came to me during prayer.  And the answer was as clear and practical as it could possibly be.  The answer was to just be me.  Just be myself and work on the issues I care about and work with the people whose values I respect.  If work comes my way – then do it with joy and do it well.  If work doesn’t come my way – then I will follow whatever way opens on this journey and pursue what is meaningful to me in this community and in my life. 

On the outside, it doesn’t appear that much has changed, but on the inside, my entire paradigm has shifted.  The retirement benefits will allow me to more completely surrender to the leadings of that inward voice of God.

I intend to stay focused on building community and creating change using the skills that are unique to me.  I will continue blogging.  I will continue working on issues I care about and helping communities build collective impact initiatives.  I will be doing all of this as me, Mike Soika; not Imua Grace and not as the Center for Learning Communities. I will be laying down the blog site of Imua Grace and I will eventually be laying down the Center for Learning Communities.

I realize that nothing has changed, yet everything has changed for me.  Its as if God has hired me to be his change agent.  And I’m ready to take on the job.
 
Please Check Out:
My New website
My New Facebook site (which I haven’t populated much yet)
My New email address:  [email protected].
 
Please note: I will eventually be retiring my Learning-communities email account – but that won’t be for a few more months.