So I got in a car wreck yesterday.

As I sped toward catastrophe, completely unable to prevent the collision, I didn’t have any major breakthroughs. I didn’t see my life flash before my eyes. I didn’t meet God. My thoughts were oh shit, oh shit, and oh shit, and it wasn’t until I had pulled off the road into a parking lot that I even took stock of the damage– the fate of the possibly injured other driver and the state of my own crumpled car (which will cost more to repair than it’s even worth).

I didn’t cry and I didn’t tremble. The other driver called the cops, I called my insurance and my dad. And then I got out and leaned against my car and I felt the afternoon. I felt the sun on my face and the asphalt beneath my feet and the tree branches waving in the breeze like they were my own arms. I stared through the hedgerow beside me at the busy street. I didn’t process anything other than the fact that the world was moving, full of sound and energy and soft yellow light.

Can panic and peace coexist? Maybe so.

Then the cop came, and by the grace of God he was one of the nicest men I’ve ever encountered. In a place where I was at fault and feeling unmoored, I was met with a kindness so deep I am certain I didn’t deserve it.

My head still hurts a little and I spent a lot of today resting. It kind of shocks you, to realize that sometimes you just can’t react fast enough to prevent something that was already set in motion. In that moment, I lost everything I could control. I lost every ounce of power over what was about to happen to me. I didn’t even remember to pray until after it happened.

But I am fine. Repeat: I lost any and all control over my life for a few eternal moments, and I am fine.

I don’t know why I was protected that day, when so many other people have lost their lives in almost identical situations. It’s a question I can’t answer. But I do know, now more than ever, that my life does not belong to me. It’s a wild and beautiful vitality born long before me, already spinning into a far distant future I will never see.

An Icelandic artist named Bjork once said that all is full of love. She said that we’ll be taken care of, that it might not come from the sources we would expect, but that we have to trust it all the same.

It’s been my experience that I am pretty damn limited in my ability to see and understand these sources. I know several people who don’t feel able to see or believe in them at all. I don’t think it changes the fact that all is full of love. We will be taken care of.

Citizen Sanctuary

The Sanctuary Movement was a religious and political campaign that began in the early 1980s to provide safe-haven for Central American refugees fleeing civil conflict. It responded to restrictive federal immigration policies that made obtaining asylum difficult for Central Americans.

Between 1980 and 1991, nearly 1 million Central Americans fled to the U.S. In El Salvador, the military killed over 10,000 people. In Guatemala, government-backed paramilitary groups killed 50,000, disappeared 100,000 and perpetrated 626 village massacres.

Congress forbid foreign aid to countries committing human rights abuses, and it is well documented that the U.S. provided funds, training and arms to the Salvadoran and Guatemalan governments throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

 Because admitting these governments’ abuses would bar the U.S. from providing further aid, the Reagan administration instead argued that Central Americans were “economic migrants” fleeing poverty, not governmental repression.

Sanctuary formed as a reaction to these policies. In 1980, Jim Corbett, Jim Dudley, John Fife and a handful of other residents of Tucson, Arizona began providing legal, financial and material aid to Central American refugees.

Their decision to do so—and therefore openly oppose federal law—was inspired by a mixture of shocking refugee stories, personal encounter, political sympathies and religious conviction.

Movement members likened Sanctuary to the “Underground Railroad” of the 19th century: Refugees coming through Tucson would make it to Nogales (the nearest border town in Mexico) and find refuge at El Sanctuario de Nuestra Señora Guadalupe (Sanctuary of Our Lady of Guadalupe) Catholic Church. With help from the head priest at Our Lady, they would travel across the border to the Sacred Heart Catholic Church, whose steeple was visible from Mexico. There they could find shelter, food, legal advice and perhaps a little money. The two churches kept in constant contact, and priests and lay people traveled frequently between parishes.

36% of Sanctuary congregations were Catholic, 22% were Presbyterian, 36% were Quakers, 28% were Unitarian, 2% Jewish, 10% came from university campuses and 1% from seminaries.

Secular groups also embraced the Sanctuary Movement, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, legal aid groups, liberal members of Congress and student organizations. Sanctuary supports wrote articles for The New York Times, The Washington Post and Time Magazine. The entire city of Berkeley, California declared itself a sanctuary.

Writer Barbara Kingsolver popularized the movement in her 1998 novel The Bean Trees, in which she provides a fictional account of a Sanctuary member housing refugees in her Tucson home.

Many of the Sanctuary supports were prosecuted or thrown in jail.  Our government, in maintaining economic ties with oppressive regimes, oppressed its own people.

This is a story that needs to be told.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

QUESTION authority figures

KNOW your country’s history

EXPLORE news from unbiased sources

WITHHOLD judgment

Related articles

• Unitarian Universalists Focusing on Immigration (timesunion.com)
• VIDEO: Refugees plead for sanctuary in NZ (bbc.co.uk)
• Sudanese Refugees: Interview With Professor Helen Ware University Of New England (radioadelaidebreakfast.wordpress.com)
• Sanctuary Cities bill in danger! (alicelinahan.net)
• Guatemalans bury 9 killed by guerrillas in 1982 (sfgate.com)
• ShelterBox Responds to Deadly Central American Storm (prweb.com)
• Kidnapping And Torture Victims Seek Justice On Day Of The Disappeared (huffingtonpost.com)

Spoken Word Salvation

His name is Propaganda.

His mission is simple: Take the message of Jesus Christ to the streets.

A far cry from the “frozen chosen” stereotype of the Protestant church, Propaganda (real name Jason Petty) spits spiritual rhymes worthy of the spoken word elite. In Petty’s mixtapes, theology and musical theory combine to produce songs at once jammable and profound.

White-collar denizens of the conservative religious hierarchy may well balk at this unconventional method of proclaiming the gospel. Truth be told, however, Petty’s music is reaching an audience too long excluded from the love of God.

Who did Jesus himself hang out with?

Page after page of the Bible reveals Him spending time with sinners, with tax collectors, beggars and prostitutes. With the very people who, in today’s society, would be least likely to listen to the mediocre white-bread soft rock clogging Christian radio’s airwaves.

Petty’s raps put the language of Jesus Christ into the language of the people who need Him most.

Culture clash? Yes. Does it work?

You bet.

WHAT YOU CAN DO: 

TALK to the people in your community and your church

VOLUNTEER at a local shelter or soup kitchen

LISTEN to Propaganda’s music and follow his blog at http://www.myspace.com/propaganda