I was moved to post this brief article from TCCTA:
The polarized and polarizing discourse of the present tempts us to speak in abstractions like immigration policy and “the law,” and so we easily forget that each of those 124,000 students is a human being like us or our son or daughter — individual people with aspirations and potential, dreams of possible futures, hopes for fulfilled lives. These people are caught in the gaps between our abstractions, at home and not at home, willing to contribute but uncertain.
Like so many of us, I am a late son of immigrants. My great-grandfather, an apprentice baker in northern Germany, felt God’s call to become a pastor, leave his home and his family forever, and travel to Texas to spread a gospel of love and social justice — a path he chose in response to a war for independence that he perceived as a conflict over slavery.
I am proud of that story, including its many ironies — like establishing a small, inward-focused cultural and linguistic community here, in spite of the Great Commission. But that story is grounded in the heartbeats of my family — heartbeats invested here, by choice, in this language and this land so far from home. But isn’t it merely some number of heartbeats spent here that made this place home? Or is it words, repeated until they lose the accent of home?
We have challenging issues that we must confront, as a society, and as individuals: Who do we want to be? Who have we been? And who have we really been?
In this debate with our pasts and our abstractions, take a moment to ask yourself: What language must a dream speak? Should dreams be assayed by heartbeats? How many heartbeats spent in a place does it take to belong?
