This year is fraught with paradox (blessed with paradox?) in so many ways. A way that I am finding personally frustrating is this: the more I feel / believe / experience / need to say / think the less words I have to give an explanation. The less desire / drive / ability I have to write it all down.
The sheer totality is often just utterly exhausting to me, and I don’t feel like I have “the right” words or “the perfect” words so I write no words at all. And then I get frustrated with my lack of explaining and lack of ability to process and share and I get overwhelmed by it all. I don’t know where to start and stopping seems easier.
At least in the moment. It seems easier than trying to find words that encapsulate feeling and don’t seem trite or glib or overdramatic.
But running from it and/or holding it all in is no way to live. And I want to live fully. So, I’ll start again.
The week before Easter (Holy Week) is one of my favorite weeks of the Church year. Consistently, it has been a “thin space” for me, one where Heaven and Earth seem to touch in unexplainable ways. As a consequence of this, Holy week tends to be both beautiful and heavy for me, as I feel the weight of suffering and the grace of redemption more acutely. Holy Week this year was one of the hardest work weeks I have had.
On Palm Sunday, the reading of the Passion linked me to the person who accompanied me throughout Holy Week and continues to do so during this Easter Season: Joseph of Arimathea.
I’ve been thinking a lot about privilege and power lately and the Venn diagram of those two things. Those with privilege somethings don’t have the power to stop the suffering. I’ve felt this year how painful that is.
I am fully aware that people that look like me have made policies and done things that have irreparably harmed my clients. White supremacy, xenophobia, and nationalism all have real consequences and as a white, US, woman working in immigration I feel that burden and do whatever I can to re-empower my clients. At minimum, I do my best to not re-traumatize them, which is sometimes just not possible given the work that I do and the system that my clients must go through.
While I hold all the privileges of my race, nationality/citizenship, and socio-economic status, etc. I am powerless to fully alleviate my clients’ suffering. I can’t change what they went through in their home country. I can’t provide them with a lawyer. I can’t make it so that they don’t need to ‘prove their worth’ to the US Immigration System. All I can do is walk with them, guiding them through the process as best as I know how. And all this year, I’ve struggled because that does not alleviate all of their suffering.
So, in a rare moment where I had all of the words I was looking for, I wrote:
Arimethea
It’s always the overlooked ones
That I feel teach me the most.
A different one every year
Like an unexpected re-introduction
To a long lost friend
And this year
Joseph, oh Joseph of Arimethea
You have captured my heart
Are stuck in my head
And I can’t stop thinking about your bravery
That often goes unspoken
You were one of them
Belonging to the group of those that condemned
But you said
No.
Not in my name.
Not on my watch.
Yet, your no was not powerful enough to stop
Our Lord from being crucified.
But you stayed.
Oh Joseph your persistence in not giving up
On advocacy
On love
On doing what is right in the face of
everything that is wrong
Is breathtaking.
So Joseph, you went
And used your connections to ensure
A proper burial
Before the sabbath
For our Lord.
You gifted him dignity in the face of death
And you gifted those who loved him an ounce
Of closure.
You couldn’t stop his crucifixion
But that didn’t stop you from doing whatever you could.
Joseph, sweet Joseph
Inspire us to act
To engage in everyday acts of resistance
Even when the end result is not what we
Would have chosen.
Keep us questioning.
Keep us brave.
St. Joseph of Arimethea, patron saint of leveraging privilege, pray for us.
As we continue to live in a world and operate within systems that are hell-bent on oppressing and making people suffer, how can we be like Joseph?
What I am not saying is that doing the “little things” lets us off the hook for fighting for systemic change. On the contrary, actually. Jesus’s crucifixion ultimately brought salvation. These modern-day crucifixions and sufferings are wholly unnecessary and simply need to stop.
But I can’t stop the pain of a people who watched their spouse/father be abducted and found dead, or of a woman who has been abused so many times she believes that abuse is normal. Or the terror of children that their parents might be deported. Or the fear my clients have when they go to court. I can’t stop exclusionary border policies like MPP and Title 42. I can’t change the fear and pain my clients had or the danger they were in when Title 42 returned them to Mexico the first, second, or third time they tried to cross. I can’t change the fear that the “mara” (gang) will kidnap or kill the people that you love. I can’t stop the wheels of an Immigration System that is both intent and content with grinding my clients to dust.
At least I can’t stop it today. I cannot make the past disappear, nor can I guarantee a future that is safe for any of my clients.
But while I fight for these crucifixions to end, how am I leveraging my own privilege to alleviate the suffering of the people right in front of me? How am I doing what I can, where I am to show mercy?
How are you?
St. Joseph of Arimathea, patron saint of leveraging privilege, pray for us.