Dear Westwood Family,

On the final day of our recent Sierra Service Project trip, the 24 of us (19 youth and 5 adults) made a pilgrimage to the US/Mexico border area. We drove to an area known as Whiskey-8–a large gate in the new 30′ tall border wall, which allows access to the desolate space that exists between the two border walls we have built at our southern border between the San Ysidro port of entry and the Pacific Ocean.

Metal fences were first built on this stretch of the border in the 1990s; after 2006, they were replaced with a taller bollard fence. The first fence follows the straight line of the national border, up over mesas and down into canyons. Now, since 2019, a second fence traces a more level course – this tall, dramatic barrier cuts through hills and over natural valleys, several meters north of the older fence. Between the two fences, a bulldozed flat area is used as an “Open Air Detention Facility;” people presenting themselves at the border to apply for asylum are held here–not technically in the US–until they can be transported elsewhere.

Standing near the border fence, one of our adult leaders, Gaby Worrel, invited us to pay attention to what we saw, felt, heard, smelled, in that place. She invited us to imagine what the land looked like before these walls were built, and before this place was a national border. She told stories of her own growing up in the San Diego area, frequently crossing through the San Ysidro port of entry to spend weekends with her grandma in Ensenada, Mexico. We talked about the Tijuana River estuary, and the environmental impact of our border policies. We consider what we had learned about the Kumeyaay people who long inhabited this area, and are now divided by this impressive wall.

Even with the dramatic border walls that presently mark the land, lots of people pass between the US and Mexico, all the time. In 2023, there were more than 21 million vehicles crossings into the US in San Diego County. Here by this gate, signs now warn people not to get too close to the wall, lest they be detained by Border Patrol agents. At the point where the border wall meets the Pacific Ocean, Friendship Park used to be a place where people could meet up and connect across this boundary; since 2020, the Park that was dedicated to international friendship is totally off limits.

Since our visit, I’ve been sitting with my own experience of that place: of the beautiful birds in the wetland estuary, of the visceral smell of the binational sewage treatment plant, of the way the newest border wall cuts a scar across the natural landscape, of the dehumanizing inhospitality of that space between the fences, of the energy and vitality of cars flying by just across the fence in Mexico.

This year, the Sierra Service Project’s program theme is “Building Bridges.” During our week of service, we were thinking and working for ways to increase connection. At our national border, we have built dividing walls. Up close, they look more like a visual message–a kind of bizarre, imposing border art installation–than they do a practical way of marking a border. 

In so many ways and places, it’s tempting to focus our energy on the things that make us distinct–on divisions and boundaries. But, over and over, I keep feeling the pull of Jesus’ gospel toward breaking them down: in Christ we are no longer divided into male/female, into slave/free, into insiders/outsiders. 

One of the work projects that my team got to participate in was a collaborative art project, with an organization called Friends of Friendship Park. They are creating giant puppets – an eagle and a condor – to use in a celebration of a Day of International Friendship on August 16, with one bird on each side of the border wall. There’s an ancient story told by indigenous peoples of the Americas about these two birds, one representing the north and one the south. Their reunification, as the story goes, brings about a new era of healing and peace, and of living in harmony between humans and the planet.

It felt really hopeful to participate in an art project that’s helping imagine a different way of engaging our differences. Art, like our prayers and poems and theologies, helps us imagine and believe that a new world is possible. I’m grateful to be a part of that project, that day as we talked and prayed at the border wall, and every day as we seek to live toward greater compassion, justice, and love.

grace and peace,
Pastor Molly