The Migrant Spirit
April 15, 2006

Life is richer and more complex than it seems… this is also the experience of those who believe and who seek to maintain a vital unity, like a tree branch with the tree’s trunk, with the reality which gives meaning to life.
Those of us who live the Christian life don’t have a monopoly on the Spirit. Many diverse paths crossing the horizon of the religions are authentic proposals to live what we Christians call “spirituality.”
We try to express with that word those vital elements that allow a human, Christian maturity to grow and flourish in us. These elements depend greatly on ourselves, but even more on that other reality that surpasses us.
The men and women in the Gospel were certain that the energy driving them bloomed from the mission and person of Jesus. Taking Jesus’ path as one’s own is what identifies a Christian. To walk in the Spirit is an experience that unfolds itself from the person’s interior— it is not something that comes from outside. Yes, it is clear that we come to faith through witnesses close to us. We all remember friends, dads, moms, grandpas, teachers, etc. who led us through their own example to him who is the way, the truth and the life. Nevertheless, it is not until people exercise their own option for faith that they can live from the deepest part of their vital sap. From this experience and this experience alone is derived the disciple’s life adventure.
Outside influences play a role at this point. For every historical situation demands a concrete and particular expression of that inner “spirituality,” an appropriate way of connecting to Jesus’ path.
Migrant spirituality has its own special features:
a) Migrant spirituality is subterranean: Personal identity and cultural values survive in the roots. Migrants find themselves forced to learn the values and practices of the dominant culture where they are seeking to live. Their children, growing up immersed in that dominant culture, become strangers to their parents. Over the years, this tension (involved in learning the new language, in responding appropriately to the demands of work and relationships) forces migrants to displace their cultural and personal identities. Their identities aren’t lost, they go underground. It just takes a certain gesture, or encounter, or song to awaken them, bring the buried identities to the surface. They should never be given up for lost. They go under the surface for survival’s sake.
b) Migrant spirituality is provisional: Migrants cultivate an attitude of openness to whatever comes. If you’re stopped by “la migra” (=”ICE,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement) because you don’t have “papers,” you know you can be deported and so you have to leave everything behind. You have to live the present moment as profoundly as you can. If you have work, you take the fullest possible advantage of it. Everything else becomes irrelevant, because you’re not certain you’ll be working tomorrow. Your own fragility—without bank account, health insurance, credit card—makes you free.
c) Migrant spirituality is transgressive: Every formal legality that has to do with the country that receives you—and every moral normativity too—becomes relative. Life is the only value. Migrants seem, measured against all legal and cultural benchmarks, to be naïve, foolhardy, ignorant, rootless, without values…but, in the fearlessness of their lives it is possible to recognize the radical honesty of their behavior and also to surmise that there is a current that drives them. The future would not be possible for them if they did not pass beyond the narrow bounds of the “legality/illegality”mindset imposed upon them..
“If our consciences have nothing to charge us with, then, brothers, we can be sure that God is with us.” (1John 3:21)