Now that they have all been rescued, I think it’s safe to talk about how the world responded to the Thailand Soccer team that was trapped in a cave, in contrast to how America is treating refugee children and families on our southern border.

It is heart-warming to see how the world responded to these 12 trapped boys and their coach, sending supplies, food, water and volunteers from around the globe.  Experienced cave divers just began showing up, knowing that their particular expertise could be helpful in such a dire situation.

No effort was too much and no expense too great in the frantic attempt to rescue these boys.  Certainly, this was a made for TV event.  Twelve young boys and their soccer coach stranded in a damp and black cave as the monsoon rains brought a swift and murky stream of water blocking their path to safety. The death of one of the rescuers and the thought that the coach taught the boys meditation to help them focus on the stillness within, all made this remarkable story even more captivating.

On the other hand, had these 12 soccer players been refugees fleeing unspeakable violence from Central America, they would have found scarce offers of help – even though their plight would be just as dire.   The reports of brutal murder and violence sparking the current refugee crisis in Central America would place these same boys in an equally untenable situation, with their lives in danger.  In the northern triangle of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, women and girls are facing daily risk of rape, murder and extortion and are becoming prisoners in their own homes – too fearful to venture out. 
 
Stay and risk being murdered, raped, enslaved, and mutilated– or risk a treacherous and long march to safety through Mexico to the United States.  That’s the choice these women, men, and children face.  But there is no rush of food, supplies, money and volunteers to help.  There are no TV cameras stationed on site 24/7.  Even the traditional nonprofit organizations that usually provide assistance in a refugee crisis are reticent to help.

Why do we spare no expense to save one set of children, but then turn our backs on another?  The world saw the young soccer players as people – as children of God and worthy of all costs to save them.  But, are these refugee children from Central America any less worthy?  To coin a phrase from a 1980s movie, are they “children of a lesser god?”  Instead of being saved from certain death and whisked away for the best medical care available, these families who are fleeing violence are treated as criminals.  They are placed in handcuffs, and the children are separated from their parents.  And, every effort is made to send them back to the very violence that drove them to our borders. 

The difficulty may be that the refugee families present us with an adaptive problem ; one that requires us to confront our values and how we view others.  It requires us to cross over political, ethnic, and national boundaries.  In short, it asks us to look at ourselves in a new way and to look at these families with a new heart.
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Some may wonder why I keep harping on this southern border refugee issue.  It is because the plight of these families and our hostile response to their plea, forces us to confront who we are as a people of God.

Our response thus far flips the narrative around.  It is we Americans who are stranded in a dark cave unable to see the light of God in the eyes of these refugee families.  It is America who feels vulnerable and threatened by the rushing water of integration that will be washing upon our shores by 2044 when we become a nation where white people are the minority.

It is we Americans who are waiting in darkness, fearful of what we don’t know and of what we imagine our future to be.

Perhaps – like the soccer team – we should embrace the darkness, using it to quiet our minds and hearts and to tap into the stillness of our soul.  Perhaps we should wait in the darkness and listen for the voice of God.  And what will we hear?  We will hear that we must “act justly ,love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.”
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At least, that’s what I hear.
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It feels like the world is on the verge of a significant paradigm shift; one that will shake the foundations of all that we know. 

When major institutions become rigid, when they are propped up with artificial support so they might remain standing, but can barely function – it is then that one should be on the lookout for paradigm shifts. 

That certainly sounds like the world we’re living in today.  Our historical allies are now our enemies.  Our former enemies are now our friends.  The effectiveness and legitimacy of our government institutions is called into question.  Our elections are suspect.  The American public has voiced its support on issue after issue such as gun control, immigration, minimum wage, health care, environmental sustainability, climate change and more – but yet our government continues to pass legislation ignoring the voice of the people and in support of special interests.  Inequality has grown, and wages have stagnated while at the same time corporations have garnered record profits and a lucky few families have become opulently wealthy.

Thomas Friedman, a New York Times columnists recently wrote a fascinating and insightful article, asking the rhetorical question:  Why are so many political parties blowing up?  Friedman writes that here in the USA and across the world, people know that the system is out of balance, but they don’t know what will fix it.  And so, they are voting for dramatic change.   Any change.  One need only to look at recent elections in America, Mexico, Italy, France and Germany- to name a few examples.

The three issues driving these changes, according to Friedman are:  Climate change, a growing geo-political economic interdependence and technology in the workplace that reduces the need for workers.  These changes are creating winners and losers; countries that are maintaining growth and order and those that are not.  And, people are fleeing from those countries where growth is stagnant, and disorder is on the rise.  In these countries, according to the article “there is not enough order, sustainable land or industry to hold people” resulting in staggering 68 million migrants across the globe, which includes 25 million refugees.
    
In summary, the world is changing beyond the capacity of our current political infrastructure to keep up.  People are suffering.  They are frustrated and are either voting for change or they are voting with their feet and moving to countries perceived to provide more opportunity and more order.  We are witnessing a profound global shift that will only worsen if we are not thoughtful in our long-term response.

I want to talk about a framework for making decisions in uncertain times – both personally and as a country.  This will require some of you to bear with me.  I hope you will.

What if we crafted a decision-making protocol that fostered a “win-win-win” ideology where every critical decision is weighed on how it impacts others, how it impacts ourselves and how it aligns with our values.  Check out the matrix at the end of this article for an example.

The Christian gospel tells us that the greatest commandment is to love God with all your might and to love your neighbor as yourself.  The Jewish bible provides similar teaching. 
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There are three aspects to these tenets:  1) Love God, 2) Love your Neighbor, and 3) Love Yourself.   For this to work, each decision will need to satisfy all three criteria.  It’s like baking a cake with five ingredients.  If you leave out any ingredient – the cake falls flat.   Let me explain:

Love God – The majority of people on this earth believe in some type of Divine energy or presence.  From that belief flows a set of near universal principles such as the “golden rule”, or be kind to strangers, or care for the poor or protect the environment.   We should use our belief in God, or our belief in these common principles to guide us.  As a Quaker, I ask myself “what does God ask of me” in this decision or in this situation.  Or said differently – what do our common values say about what we should do?  For example, what do our common values say about rolling back the protections for pre-existing medical conditions?  Or about separating children from their parents?  Or about spending $600 billion annually on military defense?

Love of Neighbor – This should be an easy one, but it isn’t.  We are told – across religious disciplines in multiple ways - that we should “love our neighbor as ourselves”.  From a policy perspective this would translate to: Don’t create policy for anyone that will treat them unjustly.  The difficulty may be in defining “neighbor” correctly.  Immigrants, poor people, people with no health insurance are our neighbors.  But so too are taxpayers.  We need to consider both.  Remember, this is a “win-win-win” exercise.  Who is the neighbor we are helping when dealing with a parent who shouldn’t be driving?  Is it our parent, or the people s/he may kill on the road?  Or both?  Defining our “neighbor” in this exercise is a critical step.  This is why a commitment to the win-win-win principle of this process is so important.

Love of Self – Now, this isn’t about self-adulation.  This is about recognizing that we are all children of God and we should treat ourselves with the same love and respect that we provide to our neighbors.  Focusing our deportation efforts on immigrants who have criminal records is one example of a policy that emulates love of self.  We want to honor our immigrant neighbors, but we also want to protect ourselves from crime.  A policy that tries to strike that balance between fair immigration standards and ones that screen out those with existing criminal records seems prudent.

I have been using this triple love rubric to guide my daily decisions for a while now, and, it has made a difference.  In more than one occasion I changed what I was going to do because it didn’t fit with the win-win-win criteria. ​ I ask myself three questions:  1) How does this bring me closer to God?  2) How does this help my neighbor?  3) How does this honor myself?
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I encourage you to try it.  The world could use some love-love-love right now. 

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.