All over this globe right now people are swarming. We move in swarms, in herds, in flocks, like locusts and antelopes and wooly mammoths, always moving toward water, always seeking food, always migrating toward safety for our young, and in our case, the case of our specific species, toward love and home, compassion. This is very old, this longing for welcome and home, almost as old as the longing for life that we share with all the other animals,and plants. I was a stranger and you welcomed me, says one ancient holy text. This is our shared experience as human animals. My father was a wandering Aramean, says another sacred text, one of the oldest in the Hebrew bible, and essential: we come from wanderers, all of us: aliens, exiles, migrants, flocks and families. The land belongs to no one, nor can it, in the end.
I’m not saying we should open the border, or abolish it.
I’m saying the wall is a travesty and a tragedy.
-Rev. Victoria Safford, “The Defiant Birds and Grasses”
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