"When I go up there, which is my intention, the Big Judge will say to me, Where are your wounds? and if I say I haven’t any, he will say, Was there nothing to fight for? I couldn’t face that question."

~ Alan Patton, Ah, But Your Land Is Beautiful

Yesterday at the Refugee Welcome Center here in Lille (France) a young woman wanted to show me the scars that prove the reasons she fled her home. I think, is there any right response to such an offer? I think, "If Jesus offered to show me his scars, would I look or turn away?" I think the response to such an offer must always be contextual. I think such an intimate, vulnerable offer is always, always sacred ground.

It is not uncommon, actually, that people want to share their scars with me, which perhaps makes sense in this certain vocation, one that involves an invitation (and/or obligation) to bear witness. I’m aware of what might compel people to share these markings, especially in situations where, whether in order to save their lives, or exigent circumstance, or lack of another witness, they feel they have no other choice.

Yesterday an elder student stopped by the Refugee Welcome Center right before closing time to apologize for not being in language class; she hadn’t wanted to miss, but she’d been imprisoned. She’d gone for a routine immigration appointment and there was a mistake in her file; all the sudden, she found herself in detention five hours away, awaiting deportation. It had taken a few days to correct; she had just been released. Imagine your mother or your grandma, having fled for her life, and then being put in prison in the land where she’s sought refuge, thinking she’d be cast off again into uncertainty and danger due to a clerical error. Imagine her being so conscientious that she’d go apologize for not being in language class straight after. That lady is a world-class act.

Yesterday was hard because, while I live and serve in France, I am an American, and again in the US the path to safety has been cut off for so many people who bear the marks of survival and who are legally looking for home. Moratorium on refugee resettlement. Denying the universal human right to seek asylum at the southern border. Vows to mass deport. And when the powerful close the door on the vulnerable stranger, I think we shut the door on Jesus. I think we shut the door on ourselves, on our own humanity.

Yesterday was a day where past experiences of US immigration policies flooded my body, while I sought to stay with the gift and comfort of each divine Image-bearer in my path here in France, with the oceans of joy, hope, and sorrow that we carry. While I tried to stay present to myself and all the things I am processing and grieving. Even an ocean away, I can feel myself slipping into hypervigilance. During the last round of a Trump administration, I lived in community with asylum-seeking brothers and sisters at IAFR's Jonathan House in the Twin Cities, MN. Sometimes, in those years, my therapist would have to bring me back to reality by repeating, "You are safe. Your [asylum-seeking] housemates are safe." Eventually, my body and brain would believe it, only if long enough to think, "Thank God that’s true. Thank God every moment that’s true..."

I remember the shifting rules that caught people sideways and always with a new take on how to dismiss asylum. I remember the individuals who kept their immigration appointments fully aware of the risk to themselves, the harm of dehumanization to themselves or their family. I remember the churches and other faith communities that despite everything agreed to bear witness - who housed asylum seekers in their buildings, who sheltered neighbors at risk of deportation, who surrounded an ICE van with a detained church member inside. I know many preparing on the ground for round two; my heart is with you.

If you don’t remember or know what I’m talking about, then I guess it wasn’t your reality. Such precarity wasn’t and isn’t my reality either; I’m aware only to the extent that strangers-turned-kin have permitted me to live alongside and bear witness with them, by grace. By exigent circumstance. And so please hear me when I say that there is nothing inherent or acceptable about such precarity; it is systemically constructed, imposed too often on people fleeing danger, and it must stop.

Last week the IAFR Lille team visited an exhibit on the art of exile at the regional Louvre Museum an hour away in Lens. There we saw the accompanying painting, from Cameroonian artist Barthélémy Toguo’s "Sharing" series (photo). The melded bodies with heads lifted to the sky are supposed to demonstrate how sharing lies at the heart of our human experience, how we all look up in expectation of blessing and divine hope. I think it’s promised, friends. I think, like Jesus said (because Jesus said), it’s here. But it may look a little more than we expect like a wounding, this side of Glory…

These days and these years may require something of us. It may take something of us; it may write its stories on our bodies. But it is already writing itself on the bodies of our most vulnerable kin. If we share each other’s sacred wounds, will these scars sing new songs?

Let’s see.