Dear Friend,
I’m sure like you, I’ve been glued to the news coming out of Minnesota, where there have been multiple fatal shootings by federal ICE agents in Minneapolis in recent weeks, including another just yesterday.
Friday night, I was on the phone with one of my dearest friends who lives there, a legal citizen, originally from South America, married to an American, who drops her kids at school with her passport in her purse - just to feel safe. I’ve also been in touch with a friend in my seminary group who is in Minnesota with her teenage trans son, trying to decide whether to take work calls from the school parking lot - just in case.
I asked both of them the same question: So it is as bad as the news says it is?
They both said some version of the same thing: the air is as tense as you couldn’t possibly imagine.
From what I’m hearing, it’s 20 below, so cold that when you step outside your glasses fog up only to discover it’s frost. The streets carry a quiet that isn’t still, exactly, but strained. And every now and then, you come up on places where neighbors are gathering around fires. For warmth, sure, but more so to be together, to work together, to stand with each other in this unbelievable-believable moment.
I’m also paying close attention to how different members of clergy from different faith traditions are responding.
I read Nadia Bolz-Weber’s substack and she shared this: “My best friend lives in the Twin Cities and told me that last week, ICE was setting up in the parking lot behind a Lutheran church, not realizing the quilters were there that day. The women confronted them, asking if they were proud of what they were doing - and suggested that, if so, they should go set themselves up in front where more people could see them.
They left.”
On my seminary thread, one of my cohorts shared words from a local Jewish Lakota leader that landed with similar clarity: “The most effective thing that we’ve seen is neighbors. It’s nobody else’s responsibility but yours to confront ICE and stop them. You don’t have to do this alone. But you are not free to leave the situation. I’m just a very ordinary person who’s in a very ordinary circumstance. When they ask, “What did you do when they were going after your neighbors?” I’m going to say: I did what I can.”
And so this Sunday, my meditation, my prayer, and my action are centered on one word. Neighbor.
During the LA fires, I once wrote about “becoming the neighbor you’ll need” and how the running joke in Los Angeles is that you never really know your neighbors until you really need them. And this moment in history IS one of those times. Whether it is military presence in American cities or the steady acceleration of climate disruption everywhere, the truth is simple. We need our neighbors.
Which immediately raises the next question.
Who counts as our neighbor?
