Mission Trip - ME?

The spiritual nudge. To DO something.

It usually is not a trip though. In fact, it has never been a trip. This time it is.

A conviction - "a nudge" - is the essence of being a Quaker or a Friend. It is terrifying, sometimes. You want to say, "Oh, God! Again?" Conviction of the most raw kind comes in many forms, but a true conviction has the same elements for me. I feel the same way I do when my parents ask me to DO something. Groan. Sometimes I even want to do it. In fact I usually do. But I know it will be somehow painful, and probably also life-changing. The thing to do usually involves controversy and questioning by numerous people. With me, it often involves the questioning of my intentions or motives, because I don't live the most ...faithful Christian path. 

For some reason, some people do not think I am capable of having a conviction and following it. I have been questioned to the degree that I am wary of telling many people when it happens, and am likely to give them another, less comprehensive reason for my actions than the real one, just because others expect less genuine motives. The only people I really trust to believe me are members of my Friends meeting, and then not even all of them. I trust them to believe me, because they've been through previous convictions with me since my childhood. They know the side trails I've taken from my path. They know I loathe coming to them.

I wanted to be sure it was a true conviction, so I asked my meeting for a clearness committee. We've met once, and they are excited for this trip. I guess it is a true conviction. 

I was going to visit my sons in Phoenix. I wanted to participate in something that had to do with immigration. After reading article after article, watching video after video, and after reading prison reports and Amnesty International reports, I have come to the conclusion that my country, the U.S.A. is on the verge of an ethnic cleansing. I feel in my gut that we are committing atrocities. I feel in my bones that it is growing into something incredibly ugly, and this ...nudge... is telling me that I have a hand in stopping it, even if it ultimately takes my own life. 

So I asked some of the people concerned about the same problem if there was something I could participate in. They invited me to go out into the desert with them to fill water tanks. 

Me??? From Ohio? Really?

I've had fabric in my basement for months, and I still have not made flags for the water stations. I rarely show up for committee meetings. I haven't helped with the Plummer House Project, or with the Olney Farm, even though I was passionately involved in the initial committees that started those. I have failed in carry-through. I suffer from what my childhood friend, and fellow daughter-of-a-Quaker-minister dubs "apathy." Well, ....I was convener of the Peace and Human Relations Committee for a few years, and we did stuff. Actually, we did a lot of stuff. But I was having lots of convictions then. 

I have gone to nursing school, worked as a nurse, been the primary income earner of my family, put children through college, bought a house - can you see that I am attempting to talk myself into the fact that it is OKAY for me to go on a mission trip? It feels so arrogant and voyeuristic. 

Today, I spent a couple of hours looking up some of these places. Oh wow, the church at San Xavier, where the Day of the Dead walk ends is AWESOME! And it is on an Indian reservation. I don't really care about all of those casinos. But there is a Friends Meeting in Pima, and a year ago in November, according to the handy Google search, they hosted a discussion on immigration. 

I wrote to the clerk of the meeting telling them I was coming. I feel sternness and eldering coming my way, but perhaps I could stay in Pima overnight after walking 7 miles across an Indian reservation, and go to meeting-for-worship there. 

My clearness committee thinks I need to apply for my MSN in Forensic Nursing, even though I'm broke and have student loans the size of a house payment coming up in December. This nudge is turning into something kind of big. I'm hoping that I don't get shot. But Joel and Larry have been doing this for a long time, and they are still alive. My country does not need to live through an ethnic cleansing, and I want to tell them so.