In this post, I write about a lecture I attended. To reference the slides from the lecture, here they are.
I had a wonderful Monday. Not even as Mondays go, but like, a wonderful day that just happened to be Monday. For a teacher, or for anyone, Mondays can be a ride on the struggle bus. So I was surprised to find myself full of energy and contentment as I walked from my apartment a total of eight minutes to The University of Arizona Poetry Center. I still can’t believe that I live practically on U of Arizona’s campus. I barely go there, but that’s another story.
I arrived 20 minutes early (which means I must really care). I got a good seat in the aisle of the far left bunch of seats. I could see everything perfectly (visibility is stuff old people care about, like me). I felt the energy of the place as the seats filled in. I couldn’t help but feel my privilege. I live eight minutes from a lecture that’s free to the public where my thoughts can be stimulated and my perspective can be challenged. The topic? The Bible as a Text of Migration. I even had a notebook and pen.
In true Tucson style, everyone was dressed casually. I looked at a woman who halfway smiled at me. I asked: “Is this seat taken?” and she coyly smiled and said: “Not by me.” I settled in, happy about the perfect angle to stare into the soul of the lecturer. My seat neighbor was downright beautiful. Her blonde and white strands of hair were all in place in her perfect bob that was punctuated by one strand of hair that was out of place. I believe this strand’s purpose was to convince me: “She’s real, I promise.”
I felt it right away. The space between us that is called lived experience (which is a phrase I’ve never understood. Experience has to be lived by definition. And still I want to use it for emphasis). When you attend something like this, you are nervous to be called out for what you do not know. And you don’t want people around you to think that you don’t know anything on the subject, so you find a way to weave in your “clout” on the topic without saying it directly. In this way you are defending your seat in the audience, which is silly because everyone is there to learn something. Still, you don’t want anyone around you to think that you don’t know anything and that your ignorance is what brought you there. In reality, what brought you there is your concern for immigrants and you want other people to recognize that because human beings want affirmation for just about everything. Unless they are running across the border and then they are seeking survival and shelter and affirmation is the last thing on their minds. A strange hubris of education mixed with experience mixed with status wells up in the people in the audience. “Has anyone else here lived in Guatemala and seen their students from Peace Corps service in different parts of the US now, working without papers, fighting for a better existence and sending money home?” Freud was onto something when he theorized the ego.
This woman and I filled the space between with us bits and pieces of our experience proving ourselves to one another without realizing we were consciously doing so. I could see it in her funny smile: “You haven’t lived what I’ve lived” and I’m sure my posture emitted the same. Humans.
First a gray-haired woman with a microphone introduced the lecture series from the department of Religion at U of Arizona, then handed the mic to a man who gave a typed-and-read-off-a-piece-of-paper-with-a-bald-patch-forming introduction to our esteemed speaker: Jacqueline M. Hidalgo. After much anticipation in these introductions, including the interruptions from the audience i.e. the retirees in the back who yelled out: “Can’t hear!” and another woman to the religion professor: “Swallow it!” referring to the mic…. Oh, Tucson.)
An observation: I noticed that both “introducers” pronounced the “H” in Hidalgo and I wondered if they asked her how to pronounce her name. She is a Latinx studies professor and the head of the religion department at a school in Michigan or Wisconsin or somewhere very cold. I watched her nod passionately when her presenter read from his typed paper about June 2018 where Jeff Sessions quoted the Bible regarding the decision to refuse asylum to victims of domestic abuse and gang violence. The Attorney General quoted the Bible: I would cite to you the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes Sessions said during a speech to law enforcement officers in June 2018. The professor explained with indignance that this scripture was taken entirely out of the Judean context and outlined the actual purpose of Paul’s message. Dr. Hidalgo’s head nodded up and down in agreement.
She took the stand. The lecture began (after another request that she yell into the mic). I felt so happy and eager to be hearing from someone who has studied the Bible much more than me with a humanitarian lens, and can shed light from that point of view on how we should consider The Border.
I could sit here and regurgitate the notes of her lecture, but you had to be there. However I will frame the key points for you:
She sets the groundwork first by clarifying a few things: First she explains what she means when she says “The Bible.” She shows images as she says: “There are many Bibles, interpretations of it and varying canons.” For the sake of the ease of use of language, she is referring to the Christian Bible as one book (even though there are many Christian Bibles). An important point and not one to overlook. She earned my respect with each passing sentence, and I wanted to stand up many times and shout “Yes Lord!” but remembered, I don’t believe in the Lord. You can’t take the South out of the girl. The second important note was that she clarified the terminology she will use for migrants. She will not say immigrants, because she will not be referring to crossing political borders tonight. She will use “unauthorized resident” because she puts the responsibility on the government to authorize them, rather than framing them as trespassers.
To the key points: The Christian Bible connects to migrants these three ways. A side-note before I delve in: Dr. Hidalgo was a pale-skinned, short-haired person. She read from her iPad line by line, as if each word and how she chose it was incredibly important. She did not want to leave her lecture up to the synapses in her brain to make connections in the moment. She arranged every word in advance. This stood out to me as Dr. Hidalgo spoke. The other thing that stood out to me is that, in my ignorance, I would not know that this woman was Latina if it wasn’t for her name. And she probably hears this a lot: “I thought you were white!” and I wonder how that must make her feel. I wonder what it must be like to work in a state up north and to be a professor of Latinx studies and be mistaken for a white person all the time. I wonder how that has affected her. But my mind was taking note of her ethnicity in a way that I wouldn’t have if she had simply been white, does that make sense? Somehow it mattered in my mind that she was Latina and a Doctor of Religion involving the Christian Bible. As if the Christian Bible can only be spoken to in English by white people…. Would anyone make this observation out loud? No, at least I damn well hope not. But it’s the same feeling I had when the lady pastor speaking on the panel wore boots and a skirt, since pastorship is a male-dominated world. Was she trying to seduce us? Did her church expect her to dress a certain way because she was a woman? Had anyone told her to cover her legs before? I damn well hope not. But I noticed my thoughts anyway, and they bothered me. And I had to mention them here because I felt my bias making a cramp in my brain.
Back to the Bible and it being a text of migration:
Nope, one more thing: I noticed that Mrs. Hidalgo was beautiful. And that made me more comfortable with listening to her. Obviously what she said mattered more. But then I remembered that this is nothing more than microaggression: society says with billboard after commercial after comment that a woman’s beauty is the first layer that determines her power. Intellect comes later. For men, this is not so. We accept their authority no matter their attractiveness, beer gut or balding head. A woman has more than a strand out of place and we pity her. Of course, we don’t consciously notice this which is why it is “micro” aggression. Go ahead and disagree with me because I already know some do and will and that is where we are in the world: wanting to believe that women are equal to men but holding entirely different expectations for them.
Back to the Bible and it being a text of migration. The Bible is a text of migration because of the:
1: Literary representations of migration in the Bible (“migration is a crucial element in the Bible throughout and early on” she says), and I quickly jotted down ALL of these verses because I had to send all of them to my Dad.
Exodus, Joshua, Ruth 2:9, Isaiah 40-55, Matthew 2, 1 Corinthians 16:1-4, 2 Corinthians 8:1-9;15, Galatians 2:10, Romans 15:26-27, Acts 11:27-30, (Remittance) Acts 24:17, 1 Peter 1:17 & 2:11, Hebrews 11:8-10 and 13-16, Revelation 2:17, 20. In case you’re the sort of person who knows the Bible well enough to know these references. She said: “Paul could be understood as a migrant worker” which segued into the next connection to migrants:
2: The Bible as a product of migration. She provides myriad texts to support this (please see slides if you’re interested). I am fuzzy on the details, but she proved her point by citing many books surrounding on this topic.
3: The Bible is a text that migrates, I am also fuzzy on this point but I remember her talking about how the Bible as a text has migrated from culture to culture and context to context since it came to be. It has been canonized countlessly and related to in incredibly different ways, by different religions and peoples, throughout its existence.
And folks, while all of us get an intellectual high off of some of this (and that is just fine), I think the most salient point is how she relates the Bible to the Border.
And that is to say that as much as the Bible has been used in different ways by different figures in the news (all men, to no one’s surprise): Jeff Sessions, Governor Deval Patrick, and Marco Saavedra;
She says, and I repeat, she says (and I wrote this down word for word): “We do not need need a Biblical text to affirm migrants’ stories.” She goes on to explain that the Bible DOES NOT have one clear message and we cannot relate to single verses that way either, as if they have one undeniable message.
She finished her lecture by referring to Saavedra, the Dreamer from the Dream 9, who came to the United States when he was 3 years old. He had a trial to seek political asylum in the States after he lived here his whole life. “In 2012, he turned himself in to border agents in Florida, and was detained, so he could publicize conditions from within a detention center. That effort put him in removal proceedings and resulted in the release of 70 immigrants. It was the subject of a documentary, “The Infiltrators,” which won two awards at the Sundance Film Festival this year.”
Her powerpoint is full of references to books I’d never heard of nor taglines I’d ever considered: Naomi Daonda who writes that telling stories is meaningful in the act of telling the story and not the sharing of a text (isolated from the context in which it was first shared). And what about this title for warm fuzzies: White Men’s Magic: Scripturalization of Slavery. That and a million other titles that I am unlikely to read but am hopeful I will, are on the powerpoint slides. I felt appropriately small. (I am not patting myself on the back, I am saying that it is important that I feel small. I have learning to do).
My mind was fairly-well emerged in these fascinating titles. But what stood out to me the most was that she said about Saavedra at the end: “His story does not matter because he can defend it with the Bible. His story matters because it matters.” I could not agree more.
And we all took a breath. Time for questions.
She clarified that borders often cross people, instead of them crossing the border (specifically referring to many Mexicans in this country who lived in places that used to be Mexico before the US absorbed that land and the border moved). An important distinction.
The lecture ended and we took a break.
I did not need to get up or stretch my legs. My brain was doing aerobics already. I still couldn’t believe this lecture was taking place 8 minutes from my doorstep and I wanted to pinch myself. The woman to my left, the one with the perfect hair and doubt-filled smile, got to talking to me again. She said that a migrant knocked on her door because he had run from the helicopter. “Helicopter?” I asked. She explained that Border Patrol sends down helicopters so as to kick up the dust and scare the migrants traveling in groups so as to separate them. I had never heard this before and wrote it down. I didn’t want to forget this specific tactic dripping in malice.
I, in turn, shared a bit more of my story: “My Dad is a minister and knows the Bible (Christian Bible) very well. I wonder if he has considered this perspective on the text. He is a republican and I’ve talked to him a lot about the subject of immigration and undocumented immigrants, but we disagree on many points.” She continued with her own story, telling me that before she moved to Tucson from Minnesota (or one of the cold M’s I can’t remember) and before she went to Mexico and heard the peoples’ stories of life on the border, she was a diehard republican. And then shortly after her visit to the border, she was walking past a car and saw a bumper sticker that said: “Don’t Believe Everything You Think.” I am familiar with this quote and believe in it. She said: “I am 7th Day Adventist which is as conservative as it gets, but I am the most politically liberal person now in my community. When my mindset began to be challenged, I began to read the history of Arizona. This land used to belong to Mexico and we bought it from them for 31 cents an acre. I began to share this research with my husband and I took him with me, too! We are both very liberal now. So keep the faith” she said to an agnostic.
Maybe I will, I thought, still an agnostic.
The lights dimmed and the panel presentation began.
My Dad is one of the people I respect most in this world. I have to make that very clear before I publish this. Thank you for reading and please check out the link to her powerpoint to learn more about this fascinating intersection of Religion at the Border.
I will leave you with this thought: The flag of Arizona has a border that runs across it. The sun only beams north and stops at the horizon line, but its shape dips down below the border that I interpret as referring to life below the border. There is a fine line and we are ever in two places at once in Tucson: Amexica. And for those trying to cross here, we have to hear those stories and understand the worlds they escaped. All of this matters very deeply as we talk about religion and the border for the story that it tells and who that story impacts. It matters borrowing from Dr. Hidalgo because it does.
