Preaching in/and the Borderlands. Группа авторов
2020
Contributors
Charles L. Aaron, Jr., coeditor
Codirector of the Intern Program
Perkins School of Theology
Southern Methodist University
Dallas, TX
Sarah Ellen Eads Adkins
Executive Director
Neighbors Immigration Clinic
Lexington, KY
Jason Crosby
Copastor
Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, KY
Miguel A. De La Torre
Professor of Social Ethics and Latinx Studies
Iliff School of Theology
Denver, CO
Becky David Hensley
PhD Student, Joint Doctoral Program in the Study of Religion
University of Denver/Iliff School of Theology
Denver, CO
Robert Hoch
Pastor
First and Franklin Presbyterian Church
Baltimore, MD
Melanie A. Howard
Assistant Professor of Biblical and Religious Studies
Fresno Pacific University
Fresno, CA
J. Dwayne Howell, coeditor
Professor Emeritus of Old Testament and Hebrew Campbellsville University
Campbellsville, KY
Gerald C. Liu
Assistant Professor of Worship & Preaching
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, NJ
Heidi Neumark
Pastor
Trinity Lutheran Church/Iglesia Luterana Trinidada
New York, NY
Harold J. Recinos
Professor of Church and Society
Perkins School of Theology,
Southern Methodist University
Dallas, TX
Owen K. Ross
Director of Church Development
North Texas Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church
Rhonda Thompson
Director, The Nehemiah Center
First Baptist Church, Montgomery
Montgomery, AL
Lis Valle
Assistant Professor of Homiletics
McCormick Theological Seminary
Chicago, IL
Michael Waters
Pastor
Joy Tabernacle AME Church
Dallas, TX
They Cross the Border
Harold J. Recinos
they travel with homes stuffed
into small bags, sleep in fields,
on hard dirt floors, bus station
benches, on tractor trains, beside
the rivers that have for centuries
rounded hills, and beneath distant
stars hanging like lanterns in an
ancient sky. along the underground
railroad on the long walk toward the
border, light on the walls of Spanish
speaking shacks open their eyes to
the simple frailty of life, the voices
fled in grief, the choking feeling in
the company of other women and
children walking away from endless
poverty and violence that they will
be changed and their children by the
year’s end no longer recognized. in
lucid moments they stare at evening
stars blinking stories of hate waiting
to include them at the border, offering
quiet prayers to God who hides in the
black patches between dots of celestial
light forgetting to comfort them. they
have ambled Sunday shoes dark in less
than forty days, El Norte drawing near
with each brown step, children insisting
with occasional tears they can keep the
pace, giving illness in their long days
another name, trying to reach America
scrubbed fresh with dreams, hoping when
they come up against the southern wall
they are not named poison, or living filth
by the Lilly white people living behind
the locked door who stopped emptying
their years of memories made complete
on the land whose border their names
crossed to become another country
1
This Is Just the End
On How not to Go Mad These Days1
—Cláudio Carvalhaes
You see all these buildings, do you not? Truly I tell you, not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down . . . Beware that no one leads you astray . . . And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed . . . all this is but the beginning of the birth pangs. ‘Then they will hand you over to be tortured and will put you to death. Many will fall away, and they will betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because of the increase of lawlessness, the love of many will grow cold. But anyone who endures to the end will be saved. we raise our voices together and hold each other hands2
I have been telling my family and my friends that it is good to be here with my Latinxs community as we see and hear about all of the disasters and horrors done to our people at the borders. Better to be together, to cry together, to go mad together, to sing and pray together, to draw near each other in some form of warmth and solidarity! The brutal immigration policy separating children from their parents and then putting them up for adoption showed us again what this country is made of. Something that the indigenous and the black people of this country already knew way too well. With this uproar against immigrants and especially the Latinxs people, it seems that it is becoming clearer for other people that:
1.We, minority people, live in a viciously angry, merciless and racist country.
2.That the State rules with clear necro-politics of ethnic cleansing.
3.That our identity is that of a foreigner, socially