Last night I had a conversation on the phone with one of my
dearest friends. We’ve been
friends for over two decades which is a long time for someone my age.. perhaps
it’s a long time for someone of any age.
In a matter of seconds, our conversation went from a mere sharing of
stories.. of catching up… to her crying and me feeling immensely helpless to
comfort her.
In simple, she was crying because sometimes rules don’t make
sense, and life is unfair, and people fail to be compassionate or reasonable or
open. In detail, she was crying
because in a few months she is to be married to a man who isn’t an American
citizen and his mother was denied a visa to attend the wedding. She was denied a visa because our
government fears that after attending the wedding, she won’t return home.. that
she will stay here unlawfully. And
so, a mother is denied the opportunity to witness her only son get married.
It is interesting to me how boundaries get drawn. For instance, who was the first person
to ever hold up a flag, draw a line, and say, “this is mine and you can’t come
here without my permission.” And
after that, who was the first person to accept that as reasonable… to agree
that one human person could claim territory and own territory and sell
territory. I’m not sure I
understand how anyone has the right to limit which parts of this vast,
beautiful, unique world, one can visit and explore and be in awe of.
Of course as I write this, I am sitting in my parent’s
backyard… I am at the house that we have owned since I was two years
old. I love my house and I am glad
that it is “ours”. I am happy to
have my own bedroom, my own things, my own space. It makes sense to me that this is the way the world works.
What doesn’t truly make sense to me is how the world got
divided.. how the world got divided into lands that formed countries, citizens,
rules and regulations about who could go here and who could live there and who
was and wasn’t allowed to buy property or attend their son’s wedding. I don’t understand when being right and
having control began to take precedence over being compassionate, and sensible,
and human.
One of my favorite parts of the Bible is the first creation
story in the first chapter of Genesis.
God reminds man and woman that they are to be stewards over creation;
that they are to enjoy it and be fulfilled by it and watch over it. God gave us all the world; what an
amazing and inspiring gift. Often
I think we have taken that gift and we have gotten greedy with it. We have forgotten that we didn’t earn
any of it, that perhaps we don’t deserve any of it, that it was a gift. Instead, we cling tightly to the piece
that is ours and we spend countless time and money making sure that no one else
has a share in it without our permission.
It reminds me of a story that one of my professors told me
in college. He was talking about
the way they sometimes try to catch monkeys in places like Africa. Supposedly, they cut an empty coconut
in half and inside they place an orange, then they glue the coconut back
together. After doing so, they
drill a small hole in the coconut, small enough for a monkey’s hand to fit in
but too small for an orange to come out.
Then they wait. Sure
enough, sooner or later, a monkey will come, stick its hand in the hole, and attempt
to retrieve the orange. It will
stay there stuck, unable to pull the orange out. It will continue to stay there even after it sees its
captors closing in. Unwilling to
merely “let go” and give up the orange, it will allow itself to be caught.
I think that perhaps that is a good analogy for our
society. We have a difficult time “letting go”… we don’t want to let go of our possessions, our land, our
borders, our right to have things the way we think is best. And so, we hold on tight. In the mean time, we get caught. We fail to realize that in holding on
too tightly to such things, we lose ourselves. In such instances, we risk losing our integrity, our joy,
our fulfillment, our gratitude, our humility, our humanity. We risk forgetting that there is
something larger and more important than us.
In the end, my friend and her fiancée will probably just end
up having yet another wedding. All
will be well and they will move on.
Nonetheless, it saddens me.
It saddens me mostly because in the past year alone I have
been blessed to travel to Spain, Haiti, and Guatemala… not for a wedding, but
just because I could and because I wanted to. In each of those places I found immense beauty, joy, and
hope. I am saddened because while
I am confident that those things can be found in the United States too… I am
afraid that so many people from across the globe may never be allowed to see
it.
