ARIZONA/SONORA BORDERLANDS REFLECTION: Two Psalms

ARIZONA/SONORA BORDERLANDS REFLECTION: Two Psalms
CPTnet, 8 June 2007

After completing her all-night shift at the Migrant Resource Center,
19-year-old Rachel Liberto returned to her fellow Christian Peacemaker Teams delegates bearing a precious gift. Located on the Mexican side of the Douglas/Agua Prieta border crossing, the Migrant Resource Center daily receives over a hundred newly deported Mexican and Central American migrants, offering them food and drink, basic care for their blistered feet, an orientation to services available to them in Agua Prieta, a kind word, and a listening ear.

Late that night, one migrant sat beside Rachel and asked if she would read Psalm 22 aloud to him

"I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint--Thou dost lay me in the dust of death--"

The Psalm captured so much of what Rachel and her fellow delegates had heard about the treacherous journey from Southern Mexico to Arizona. This journey, taken every day by thousands of men, women and children, claims the lives of hundreds every year, and the hopes of an inestimable number. But in the face of this kindly man from Oaxaca, and in the impassioned, raw words of the Psalmist, the reality of the crossing struck Rachel with a new power.

Some hours later, Rachel greeted one last weary migrant, Margo, a young woman from Chiapas. As Rachel tended to her horribly blistered feet, she motioned to the Bible in Margo's hands. Did she, Rachel asked, have a favorite Psalm? "Yes," she said, "Psalm 23."

"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want; he makes me lie down in green meadows--"

Rachel listened to Margo as she shared some of her story. In tears, she recounted small pieces of her journey and the sacrifices it required. Her mother had died five years before and left her ill father to take care of Margo and her younger sister. Margo told Rachel that her family has gone days without food. Rachel glanced up at Margo's face twisted in sadness. She did not know if there were consoling words to say so she slowly stroked Margo's swollen shins and stared blankly into the pink tub of antiseptic water. In time, Rachel finished bandaging her blisters and stretched clean socks over her feet. As they parted the two new friends embraced one another.

The next morning Rachel told briefly of her night at the Center, of her new friends, and of the two Psalms they set before her. She read the Psalms aloud and invited the others to join her in silent prayer.

Rachel and her fellow delegates pondered the realities of the migrants' experience with grief and amazement. What conditions would lead a mother to leave behind her family, including her one and only child, a four year-old daughter, to risk her life for a dreadfully unreliable promise on the other side of an invisible line? Who is this strange God who lays migrants "in the dust of death" and "in green meadows"?

[Participants in CPT's May 24-June 4 Borderlands delegation were Carin Anderson, Christopher Moore-Backman and their baby Isa (Tucson, AZ), Rachel Brocker (Beaverton, OR), Erin Cox, (Chicago, IL), Martha Hayward (Negaunee, MI), Rachel Liberto (Seattle, WA), Lois Mastrangelo (Watertown, MA), Kyle Navis (Spokane, WA), Tyler Schroeder (Centennial CO), Martin Smedjeback (Sundbyberg, Sweden) Rick Ufford-Chase (Tucson, AZ) and John Williamson
(Spokane, WA).]