“The way we are, we are members of each other. All of us. Everything. The difference ain’t in who is a member and who is not, but in who knows it and who don’t.” – Burley Coulter in The Wild Birds, by Wendell Berry

Across the globe two waves of people ebb and flow, washing up, then back into each other like waves at the beach, roiling where the water that rushed to the sand loses momentum and falls back toward the ocean, just as the next wave pushes past it. Water lemmings rushing to their own demise. 

These are the human tides rushing to get out of somewhere, and the waves of people rushing to get into somewhere else. 

According to the UN Refugee Agency almost 70 million refugees wander the world, including 41 million displaced in their own countries,  fleeing turmoil, famine, war, drought, disease. The very uncivil war in Syria spiked a large increase since 2011. 

You’ve seen the images of frightened families lugging everything they can carry, dragging their chins and bins down dusty roads in a long stream, desperate to leave behind whatever demon is tearing up their lives. Where are they going? Away. Just, away. 

They’ve cast their lot on their god and on their hopes that the milk of human kindness will somehow give them succor in whatever crowded, dirty, hungry, dangerous camp they land in next week or next month when they “arrive” at this safe haven. 

That human teat is drying up. 

Witness the wave of wanderers who washed up on the beach of the Mexico-American border and are now hunkered down waiting for a chance to present their plea for asylum to a skeleton crew of U.S. judges, operating under a “first, deny” mandate. Or the governments – and citizens – of Greece and Turkey who are saying “no more.” Stemming the easy movement of refugees from any European Union nation to another is a significant – if unspoken – element of the vote for Britain to leave the EU. 

Post-racist societies? I think not.

In October, for the first time in years, an entire month passed with no refugees officially resettled in the United States. None. The U.S. has been generous in the past with refugee resettlement, although not as generous per capita as some other nations. Under the current administration, the cap is 18,000 per year, a historic low at a time when the number of refugees is at a historic high.

This, as thousands wait for their applications to be considered. Many are huddled in squalid camps in the shadow of ports of entry, wondering where their children are, from whom they’ve been separated. Others wait in camps on the other side of the world, victims of conflicts in which we meddle – to keep the oil safe, and our access to it, secure.

Resettlement agencies, funded per capita by the number of refugees they resettle, are laying off workers and some are closing altogether. If/when our country is more open to welcoming “the tired, the poor, the huddled masses” whose industry has helped to make this country strong, resettlement agencies may not be well positioned to gear up smoothly to start again conducting their business. 

Veteran’s Day prompts such thoughts. I’m one of America’s last draftees, destined for the Army in September 1972 when my draft lottery number came up one. First. Uno. Clarity. 

America has been involved in global conflict for my entire life. Every day, if you count the unresolved status of the Koreas. “All we are saying, is give peace a chance,” we sang as students, marching Easter morning while Viet Nam still raged. 

Of the 195 countries in the world, we have troops in 177.  Some would say the presence of American troops IS giving peace a chance. Others would say the presence of our troops in other countries is the seed that grows the tree of resentment, whose fruit is conflict.

Geography is a wicked stepmother.  I’ve stood with my foot on the spot where the states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah meet. An inch or two either way and I’m in another state. 

A baby born on the south side of the river is Mexican; born on the north side is American. The pregnant wife of a Russian oligarch flies to Miami to have her baby and suddenly an americantsky grows up in Moscow.   

As Wendell Berry’s character Burley Coulter says, “We are members of each other,” whether we know it or not.  

Somehow the attitude that “I’ve got mine, too bad about you,” seeped into the mantra of humanity. Freedom isn’t a pie, where there is less for me if I give you a slice.

When we close our arms, our doors, our hearts the body suffers. How many of the 5,000 children in American custody – separated from their parents in a misguided and cruel effort to discourage people from South America from trying to come to the U.S. – will never be reunited with their families? Some are too young to remember their own names, to say nothing of their parents’ names, or from what town and fear they fled.

            We are members of each other. As the Bible says, we are members of the same body. (Romans 12:4-5) 

            Today, my heart part hurts.