En ingles, ni tampoco en espanol... This is a phrase I have sat with since I began immigration work as a Jesuit Volunteer, and one that follows me every day. How do you explain the unexplainable? How do you make logic out of (un)luck? How do you communicate when the party that has the most power is unwilling to have a conversation? You don't. You just keep going.
This has been one of the stranger Christmases I have had in 24 years. It was full (llena) of the usual breakfast foods, long run, mass going, family present opening, big Christmas Eve dinner, Christmas movie(s) festivities, but this year was hard to celebrate. As my uncle likes to say "You can't unring a bell" (You cannot unknow what you discover to be true) and my job these past few months has shown me quite a bit.
How do you fully celebrate when you know that your country is holding survivors (who are brave enough to run to save their lives) as criminals? How do you fully lean into joy when you have heard countless people ask you, "Do you think it is possible that I am out by Christmas? By New Years? Is there any hope that I will be reunited with my spouse? My brother? My child?" How do you stay happy when you have heard a coworker say to a client "Feliz Navidad" and the response is: "Pues, aqui todavia es Navidad, pero no esta Feliz" (Well, here [in detention] it is still Christmas, but it is not merry"?
You don''t, at least not in the same way.
You are snippy with your family and the emotions are too big to hold. You weep in church over one thing and then keep crying over up-teen things. You swear and you cry some more and you sit in prayer with the people who lost their children to Herod's cruelness after the birth of the Christ-child so many years ago. You are walking with some of those children now, caught in yet another web of government fear over the unknown.
What do you give when you are powerless to stop a system from grinding someone to dust? You give your tears. You give your whole heart.
And you hold onto their faces and you pray for them by name when you can. You remember the laughter and the "la ninas" and the mutual recognition of shared humanity. You hold onto hope and lean into joy as resistance.
You continue to see Christ in the face of each one of them. You have a Christmas mixed with big emotions. You realize that Christmas was just the beginning, and nothing about it was simple. So you lean into the complicated and say "Amen and Adelante."
Emmanuel. God with us. So now let's live like it.
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