Migrants

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Love of Home and Homeland

Minneapolis is special, a place my husband and I love and are proud to call home. There are countless reasons.  But consider this…

Brian O’Hara, our Chief of Police, is married to Wafiyyah (Wafia) O’Hara who is a Lieutenant in the Newark (NJ) Police Department. Lieutenant O’Hara is the highest ranking Black woman and Muslim in the NPD. They have two sons whom they are raising Muslim.

Our Jewish mayor, Jacob Frey, recruited Chief O’Hara to come to Minneapolis.

What perspective do you think Chief O’Hara brings to his policing duties?

Our twin, Saint Paul, just elected a Hmong immigrant woman to be mayor replacing an African-American man.

Why do you think our sense of community and civic culture would be such a threat to the current administration and Christian Nationalists?

As with people everywhere, Minneapolitans will fight to defend what we love. In messing with our city, ICE and the DOJ have made a big mistake — they don’t seem to have had a clue what they would be up against.

On this MLK weekend I am reminded of what Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy, said at the opening of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama:

There are good people who literally want to turn back the clock, and we’re just going to have to be resolute in not allowing that to happen. It’s not the first time in our history when we’ve had people express really violent racist things from that office. What we have to do is to commit ourselves to making it the last time.

Love of home and homeland is not unique to Minneapolis. That shared love compels us all to create that more perfect union envisioned by our Founders. The forces of exclusion and oppression have always made a big mistake — misunderstanding our heritage by not appreciating what and whom they are up against!

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If Not Now, Then It’s All Meaningless

Well, chalk up one more for the record books — Christmas 2025 is a wrap! Many will have sung O Little Town of Bethlehem, Silent Night, even Frosty the Snowman. Some of us made our biannual appearance at church (except for funerals, of course, or fewer and fewer weddings now and then).

Most of us have our trees disassembled with ornaments from the past tucked away in boxes until next year. Gifts have been hung in closets or tucked in drawers. Some may even intend to send thank you notes, digital to be sure! Others will return gifts not to their liking or to make sure it’s precisely the correct color or complimentary fit.

The whole spectacle and pageantry can get rather tedious year after year causing us to breathe an exhausted sigh of relief after “the Holidays”. Where is the meaning of our spirited greetings, the sentiment of frantically sent cards? Conjured memories are fleeting and we yearn for the elusive wonder and mystery of Christmases past. We settle for “Maybe next year!”

With growing certitude I’m finding when our rituals and stories do not find grounding in our current lives, in the very reality we experience here …now, all our efforts to conjure some fantastical past is sorely incapable of satisfying our hearts’ insistent hungers. Christmas’ redemptive word of hope for a suffering world — racked with conflict and fraught with greed and self-absorption — gets packed away with the artificial Christmas tree to be forgotten for another year.

But the Word still comes, takes flesh and finds expression! Take this, for example, from Pope Leo’s Christmas Day homily:

…brothers and sisters, since the Word was made flesh, humanity now speaks, crying out  with God’s own desire to encounter us. The Word has pitched his fragile tent among us. How, then,  can we not think of the tents in Gaza, exposed for weeks to rain, wind and cold; and of those of so  many other refugees and displaced persons on every continent; or of the makeshift shelters of  thousands of homeless people in our own cities? Fragile is the flesh of defenseless populations, tried  by so many wars, ongoing or concluded, leaving behind rubble and open wounds. Fragile are the  minds and lives of young people forced to take up arms, who on the front lines feel the senselessness  of what is asked of them and the falsehoods that fill the pompous speeches of those who send them  to their deaths. 

If not here? Now? When? Where?

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Pope Leo’s entire Christmas Day homily may be found at http://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/homilies/2025/documents/20251225-messa-natale.html

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A Christian Nation

While brushing my teeth I often ruminate on whatever is upper most in my curiosity at that particular moment. This morning it was about the contention that America is a Christian nation. What even does that mean?  What ever does this imply for for Jewish, Muslim, Hindu Americans?

About the time I was warily navigating around a recent root canal, the Lord’s Prayer came to mind. God, how many times in my 74 years have I rattled off those words?  “…Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done” grabbed my attention. What might this even mean if we actually were a contemporary Christian America? You know, that “…on earth as it is in heaven” part!

Some ask, “Have you accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior?” Isn’t it at least consistent, if not required, that we ask whether Jesus is accepted as our national Lord and Savior?

Here’s the rub… do we go deep enough with these questions?  Are Jesus’ concerns and associations our concerns and associations?  His mission, His values; our mission and our values? Quoting the prophet Isaiah, He clearly told us what he’s about… 

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4)

Are we on board? Or, does the acceptance of Jesus in our lives function as a “salvation insurance policy” collectible after we’re dead? Perhaps a Baptist preacher said it best, “Sometimes our faith can be so heavenly minded it’s no earthly good!” Clearly, the pastor wasn’t preaching Joel Orsteen’s “prosperity Gospel” primarily used to rationalize obtuse wealth and a self-serving contortion of divine favor! 

Here’s my honest observation… “Christian” too often appears as an adjective we tag onto whatever we want to justify or to “baptize” what we want to believe. If this is not so, we who would profess Jesus as our Way, Truth and Life must subject ourselves to honest self scrutiny to legitimate our claim. This isn’t Liberal or Conservative, Left or Right, Democrat or Republican! It’s simply Christian!

We must critically judge whether we can muster sufficient evidence to validate that we as individuals, families, congregations — as a nation — merit the name Christian.

Here’s this 74 year old’s reluctant assessment… Capitalism is actually our religion, consumerism our currency of grace, materialism our standard of virtue and money our God!  Are we willing to consider whether our prayer is more accurately, “My kingdom come, my will be done on earth and in heaven.”?

Jesus sets a truly high bar for any claiming the appellation “Christian”. He explicitly gives us the ultimate criteria in what is our “Final Judgment”…

Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ (Matthew 25)

Again, this is not Liberal or Conservative, Democrat or Republican! It is the Scriptural litmus test for whether we and this nation are, in fact, Christian.

Rinsing toothpaste from my mouth, my eyes fixed on the mirror. A pang  of discomfort and soul searching found apt release in my spitting into the sink.  Again, staring at myself in the mirror, I commiserated with those folks who start leaving Jesus because His is a “hard teaching’” (John 6). My reflection transported me to Caesarea Philippi, “Who do you say that I am?”(Luke 9). 

Jesus begs a response profoundly more momentous than most of us are willing to fathom!

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Shocked, Right Here at Home

I was shocked, personally challenged, finally proud.

How could it be? A land-locked state in the geographic center of the contiguous 48 has the highest per capita rate of resettling refugees! It has no ports of entry favoring coastal states. In fact, it can’t even boast of an international airport.

This state is rock-ribbed conservative and solidly “red”. It’s hard to get my head around the fact that the state with the highest per capita rate of resettling refugees voted for Donald Trump by a wide margin and has a solidly Republican delegation in DC, Republican governor and a state legislature dominated by the GOP.

The highest per capita rate of resettling refugees of any state in the nation belongs to my home state, Nebraska. This fact come as a complete surprise and challenges many stereotypical presumptions. Though I often feel alienated by the state’s conservative politics, this statistic makes me very proud.

Well, maybe I shouldn’t be so shocked.  The fact was reported Monday on the front page of The Washington Post [link].  The story reaffirms what I know about the place I will always call home — Nebraskans are inherently good, generous, fair, hard-working, welcoming and kind.

I’m proud so many new-comers will receive their introduction to our country through the hearts and help of middle-America Nebraskans. But I dare not lallygag in complacent satisfaction too long. Clearly more than a few inaccurate presumptions and lingering stereotypes need challenging — on all sides, from every perspective!

More than at any time in my life we are a nation at odds, separated within closed enclaves of social homogeneity, separated into antagonistic camps willing to listen only to arguments that bolster narrow preconceptions. As a nation too many of us are hardened, intolerant, even angry.

Often enough we get shocked back into reality by seemingly innocuous facts. Yes, rock-ribbed conservative, Trump-loving Nebraska quietly — and likely with no forethought of intention — surfaces as the state with a distinguished openness to refugees.

How can this be? Perhaps we need to base our judgments and opinions more in fact than presumptions we want to believe but are not true. Perhaps we should come out from behind walls that separate, categorize and define us long enough to discover the truth about one another — precisely the truth about those different from ourselves.

With all this still rumbling within my thoughts I stumbled upon the review of a new cookbook under the title, Binding the Nation in Its Love of Meatloaf [link]. At my age I have learned to take nothing as happenstance or mere coincidence.

When New York Times colleagues Frank Bruni and Jennifer Steinhauer concocted their idea to write a cookbook neither knew that Mr. Trump would become president. He had agreed to contribute a recipe before the election. The authors had already taken their cue from the divisiveness they saw in our country.

Bruni observes, “I don’t think meatloaf can save the world, but I certainly think in the coming tomorrows there will be a healthier appetite for comfort.” And with a prescience you’d expect from reporters of their caliber they explain, “It’s a quintessential American dish that can bind a nation!”

The Times reporters are surely onto something! Beyond comfort we are hungry for a renewed sense of community, the sort of familial warmth that keeps me going back to Nebraska as my favorite place for Thanksgiving dinner.

Could it really be as simple as sharing a meal? It’s certainly a good start. Plenty of precedent — religious and national — suggests breaking bread together can lead to shocking and challenging results, the sort that will truly make us proud about who we once were and might still become once more.

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Reagan was Right!

Never imagined I’d ever be saying much good about the man. But given the recent brouhaha about the morality of building walls — What, for God’s sake, has our nation come to? — President Ronald Reagan sounds refreshingly relevant.

Walls never work as an instrument of national policy. With renewed appreciation and complete agreement, I recall the iconic Republican conservative saying some thirty years ago in Berlin: “Mr Gorbachov, tear down this wall!” Amen to that!

Whether Presbyterian Donald Trump is or isn’t a good Christian is none of my concern. (Actually it is, but not here!). Neither was it of interest to Pope Francis if you read what he actually said during his press conference onboard the return flight to Rome.

President Reagan, however, was certainly on solid ground politically and in terms of the Judeo-Christian roots of this country. How so? Somewhere over the thirty years between Reagan and Trump’s rhetoric we have become rabidly individualistic, selfish, even nasty.

Somehow we need to rekindle the best of our Judeo-Christian heritage — not that which is exclusionary and divisive, but that which celebrates our common humanity, builds solidarity and takes solace in mutual reliance on one another.

This is the message of the Bible right from the start.  Genesis, Chapter 1 — humankind is created in the image and likeness of God. All of us, no exceptions! Yes, this is the first principle and foundation of Judeo-Christian teaching.

We profess this to be equally true of Muslims, Hindus, Hispanics, Asians, Blacks, Gays, the poor, the vulnerable, other nationalities, women as well as men — you name it! If you are human, you are created in the image and likeness of God!

Mr Trump, you are no more righteous, worthy or deserving than any you’d wish to wall out or deport. In fact, to the extent you fail to see the human dignity in any such as these, especially the least among us, you fail as a good American. For even our founding documents enshrined this truth as self-evident, all are created equal.

Mr. Trump, tear down your walls! What are you afraid of?  What is it you need to defend?  Could it be that deep down you harbor some lingering self-doubt whether you, too, really are created in the image of God?

Rest assured. Yes, you are — even you!

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My Lenten Shake-Down

My spiritual foundations are being shaken to their foundations. On a practical level, I’ve presumed that God became human in Jesus because we had screwed things us so badly that God needed to “work our salvation” through the passion, death and resurrection. Today something else seems to be struggling to break through.

Steeped in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, my “fix it” mentality still deeply colors the way I have interpreted Jesus’ Incarnation. Even more, my presumption about the Son’s mission has pretty well determined the way I have “observed” the season of Lent — Jesus came to save us because we had created a mess and couldn’t fix it for ourselves.  We’d do well to realign ourselves with Jesus’ plan of action.

Though this traditional affirmation remains true, it’s not the whole truth. In fact, it’s only a sliver of the truth and can distort and impoverish a fuller understanding of Christ. That’s what seems to be rattling my foundations these days. It’s a work in progress — it’s God’s doing, nothing I can cause, simply a grace I hope to apprehend.

Christopher Pramuk’s Sophia: The Hidden Christ of Thomas Merton has had me captivated for the past while. Masterful. Meant to be savored. Perhaps the most significant book I’ve read in the past five years. Not easy, but solid theology that is also spiritually satisfying. Reading something today caught me off guard and sent my head spinning:

The incarnation … was not an afterthought following a failed creation. Christ is the Word, the uncreated Image of God, who has already decided “from the beginning” to enter fully into humankind.

Okay, so what’s new? We’ve all heard that before. It’s simply another way of saying what Paul writes in his Letter to the Colossians (1:15-17). Yes, I’ve “believed” this. I’ve even parroted it in my own words. Today these former formulations seem conceptual, abstract. True, but cognitive!

Here’s what flipped my apple cart, left my head spinning:

the heart of Christian spirituality [resides in] the discovery of our true selves already resting in Christ, not “out there” as a separate Object, but “as the Reality within our own reality, the Being within our own being, the life of our life.” (Merton, The New Man, p19).

With images of Pope Francis praying at the Mexico/US border yesterday fresh in my mind, Merton’s words stopped me in my tracks: “If we believe in the incarnation of the Son of God, there should be no one on earth in whom we are not prepared to see, in mystery, the presence of God.” (New Seeds of Contemplation, p296)

The church teaches virtually the same thing: “In Christ, God became not only ‘this’ man, but also, in a broader and more mystical sense, yet no less truly, ‘every man.'” (Gaudium et spies, #22).

Again, I have long ‘believed’ these words. I have often parroted them. But have they really sunk in? Are they deep in my bones such that I see in others — each and every other, especially the poor and marginalized — the human dignity of Christ?

That’s my challenge as we enter this second week of Lent. God did not become human in Jesus as an afterthought due to our having screwed things up! Incarnation leading to salvation has always been God’s intention from the beginning. How do I get that truth in to my bones, give flesh to this “Word” in my life?

Perhaps we need to spend less time in our church pews and more time at border crossings, less time meditating on the crucifix and more time attending to the many forms of personal crucifixion people endure today.

Christmas and Easter are not dualistic polarities on a salvific timeline. They are the self-same singular impulse of a loving God from the very beginning. Don’t know about you, but this pretty well turns the table on many of my traditional Lenten presumptions and practices.

Getting my head and heart around this will take some doing, certainly more than the forty days of Lent.
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Sophia: The Hidden Christ of Thomas Merton by Christopher Pramuk. A Michael Glazier Book, Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN (2009), pp 179-180).