The sign I held in protest is coming apart; the glue is losing its grip. It leans against the wall behind the open door to my study out of sight, but when I close the door to work at my desk in peace with quiet, I always see it, and I make no attempt to fix it. I prefer it now as it is. It reminds me of what I once did, and the so much more I need now to say and write on many issues and topics with the years, hopefully many, that I still have to write and move.
When the families, the children, were separated at the border, a grammar and high school friend, now an environmental and political activist, invited me to join him at a protest rally in downtown Los Angeles near the City Hall and I decided to attend. It was my first major protest since I semi-participated in one at my college campus during the Vietnam War. I hesitated at first in going, shades of adolescent uncertainty in not knowing how to attend, what to do, or where to park, etc. I also considered the preachings at church, teaching that Christians should not protest but rather were to submit to the government – especially to the then current administration – specifically submitting by always supporting, either actively or with silence, every policy or action deemed by the church conservative, Christian, or scriptural, all designations seemingly of simultaneous and coequal importance and sanctity. I decided to go.
I would participate to protest the treatment of the children. I would go to provide an example to my grandchildren of being concerned for the right and good of others, and to bring my faith actively onto the street. I figured out how to make a not so little sign. I provisioned my backpack with water and snacks of almonds and cut apples, and left for downtown all by myself. I’m sure I was a peculiar if not downright funny sight to some! I was to meet my friend downtown, but we never made the connection, both of us soon hemmed in and surrounded by the swelling crowd in different locations.
After the rally, in our house I kept the sign near, safely behind the door to my study, a convenient place, as I did not want it to disappear or just be thrown away. I wanted it visible to remind me of the plight of the children, in a place where it will still energize me at a very deep and thoughtful level. When I see it, it also continues to speak to me of those who committed and supported this trauma to the families and the lasting scarring of the children, either by their active support of this deliberately cruel policy, or by their smug, calculated silence. I did not then, nor do I now, possess a simple solution to this complex and knotty humanitarian problem, but I wanted to be one of those voices protesting the separations, advocating for the children, and voicing a way of seeing and understanding the human suffering different from those, without the eyes of Christ, coldly viewing the damaging separation of the children and their harm only in terms of a potential conservative political gain. I also wanted to be at least one of the voices within my church crying out to the Lord for these children, for their protection from harm, for His care and compassion, and for the power of His grace upon them for their good. And all this encompassed within a protest sign, now leaning against the wall in my study coming apart, because the clue with which it was made, is losing its grip.
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