Kinship, Part 4: A Theology of Migration

Episode Topic: A Theology of Migration

The issues of migration and refugees are complex and often controversial in our modern world. In his new book, A Theology of Migration, Fr. Dan Groody, C.S.C. uses the liturgy of the Eucharist to explore a new perspective and deeper understanding of the journey of migrants and refugees, and how the Christian faith intersects with our understanding of justice. In this session we will draw on our understanding of kinship to dive deeper into the topic of migration, and how we might reconsider our preconceived notions of this complex and challenging topic.

Featured Speakers:


Read this episode's recap over on the University of Notre Dame's open online learning community platform, ThinkND: go.nd.edu/ef5bb0

This podcast is a part of the ThinkND Series titled Kinship. 

Thanks for listening! The ThinkND Podcast is brought to you by ThinkND, the University of Notre Dame's online learning community. We connect you with videos, podcasts, articles, courses, and other resources to inspire minds and spark conversations on topics that matter to you — everything from faith and politics, to science, technology, and your career.

• Learn more about ThinkND and register for upcoming live events at think.nd.edu.
• Join our LinkedIn community for updates, episode clips, and more.

Transcript

0:06

Welcome to the final installment of the Kinship series of our inspiring conversations. For those of you that don't know me, most of you here in the live audience, certainly do. I'm Tom Schreyer and I have the privilege of being the founding director and the inspired leadership initiative here at the University of Notre Dame. It is our program. For those people who finished their chosen career to discover, discern and design, Who they want to be in the next stage of their life. I truly do want to thank you for participating in this series. We're both excited and humbled by the level of participation that we've had with this series. Over the course of this year, we've had over 1300 participants ranging from our ally fellows who are here present with us, to those of you on live livestream to faculty and friends of the university. And those 1300 represent 34 different countries across the globe. So it's really been a true pri privilege to have an opportunity to engage with all of you during the course of this year. And part of that engagement and what we will facilitate at the end is an opportunity for everybody to interact in a live q and a. So we really, truly hope you'll enjoy today's installment and we really want this experience to be both engaging and inspiring. Before we start I'd be remiss if I didn't thank all of those people who've been incredibly instrumental in making this come together and let their talents and time to bringing this together. In particular, the alumni Association, which has created this amazing platform ThinkND which is the platform that we have the. Luxury of being able to be a part of. I have the great opportunity to introduce our guest and my friend father Dan Gruy. Father Dan serves as vice president and associate Provost for undergrad, undergraduate edu education here at the University of Notre Dame. He's also a trustee. And a fellow of the university and an associate professor of Theology and Global Affairs. And importantly, he's also a priest. Father Dan has been gay, been engaged, and we're incredibly thankful for this from the very beginning of the Inspired Leadership Initiative as both a faculty and program advisor, and he continues to be very engaged in the program through his work. Father Dan is recognized internationally as an expert on migration and on refugee issues. He recently wrote and published a book right here. And so for those of you who have not yet acquired Christmas gifts or Easter gifts, maybe even more appropriately you're welcome to acquire one. The book is a Theology of Migration, and that's gonna be the basis of our conversation today as we explore the Theology of Migration. And we hopefully do that in the context of kinship, which has been our theme. So Father Dan, thank you so much for joining us. It's just a joy to have you. So I'll just start by asking a broad question. What intrigues you about the subject of migration and, why is it that it's become so important to you? Yeah. I, this issue found me more than I found it and I really grew up moving through different parts of the East Coast. My family was, my dad worked for the phone company and so we moved around a lot. So this whole theme of movement and change was part of my growing up years. But but when I was an ex, when I was in high school, I was an exchange student in Uruguay, Argentina. These very turbulent years during the dictatorship and the people in Latin America really touched my heart, I think. And it planted a seed that I wanted to continue to explore. Years later, when I was in the seminary, I went to Chile and lived there, Chile and Peru. And so by that point, as they say in Spanish. I said at that point, I say I, when I later went back to Mexico, I said I wasn't born in Mexico when Mexico was born in me. And I'd say that more, more generally. So there was a co naturality, I think being with in Latino populations. But at the same time that I was interested in studying, Latinos and working pastorally among migrants and refugees I was also interested in. The spiritual journey. And so I think a lot of my work really became oriented around the inner migration and the outer migration. So talk a little bit too about how that connects to your vocation as a priest and how that may, how that intersection came about, right? Because you talk about how your interest in migration started, very young in life. Your interest in your vocation may very well have done the same, but maybe just talk a little bit about that intersection. Sure. Nothing that I'm doing is anything I thought I would be doing. But it's more than anything I asked for or imagined. This was not part of my plan. And I think so much of it was about saying yes to God, and God interrupted my plans. I had a different plan for my life. I was working with cellular when it started, so I was in charge of what is now Verizon or their database. It was 250 customers in the database. But I always say I went from one communication business to another. And and still part of the wireless communication business if you will. I thought I was just gonna go work in corporate America and raise a family and so on. But then God gave me a blessed confusion for enough period of time. But I knew something more was being asked of my life. It took me a long time to, to explore that, and that's one of the reasons why I got into the issue of spirituality. But I also knew that spirituality was connected to a life and a faith that does justice. And so that also opened me into serving and being present to people who were coming from underserved and poor backgrounds. And I think they, they touched my heart. I, surprisingly and paradoxical, they very much enriched my life and gain my heart in a very special way. Having had the pleasure of knowing you for a number of years father Dan. I know you have, some amazing stories that have really influenced and I think in many ways animated and become a part of you. Do you have any stories you can think that you can relate to us, as it relates to this topic of migration and personal experiences that have really made it personal for you? It became very personal. I start the book off with a story about when I was working with a Hispanic family in town here in South Bend. They had just arrived. There were 14 kids of the family living in a very small room in an apartment. And one, I, they were of the first families I met and they were of the first, they, I was one of the first people they met, and so they reached out to me a number of times. But there was one time when I was really surprised because I got caught early in the morning. At this point, they were all undocumented and. And they, this one daughter said, gosh I'm scared to death. It's five o'clock in the morning. So I get outta bed and I go, oh my gosh. And she said she says, I said this is Margarita. She says, I can't get to work today and I'm still waking up. And I says what's wrong Mar margarita? She says, my car won't start. So I said she says, I connected the cables and the cables melted and I don't know what to do. And I said I said, Marita. I said, I don't know what to do either because I don't know anything about cars, but I says, I'll be right down. She says, wait, hold on one second. She says, my sister Christina wants to talk to you. Christina was 17 years old and nine months pregnant, and she says, I'm going into labor. So I was suddenly wide awake and at that point I rushed down to the hospital and then the mother said to me, she says, just keep walking back and forth. She said that labor pains may go away. And so I thought she's done this 14 times. She's got a lot better idea what this is like than me. And as it turns out, I had this long odyssey where we went to the hospital and when I got there I sat down next to Christina and I said, Christina, hold my hand. And then the nurse came and she says, who are you? And it's not saying father at a time like that might not be the best thing to say. So I said look, I'm just a good friend helping out here. Yeah. But she gave birth to a child and the child's name was was Cara A little Christ. And I think seeing the Christ child born in her midst. Emits this life, death reality of migration has been my kind of longstanding question is where is Christ's being born in our midst? Emits What is a reality is both times of pain and suffering, but really of new life. And and generativity. I know from having had the pleasure of Seeing the environment that you live in, that there are images of migration throughout, right? Both from the Grody family migration to also something which is incredibly touching to me. And whenever you bring guests to your place, I know you explain it to them which is a very special chalice that sits within the context of your room. Can you maybe talk a little bit about that? Cause I think it's something that just is incredibly striking. Sure. At the heart of the book, I was very intrigued by the fact when Pope Francis was elected, The first place he officially went to after leaving the Vatican was a place in Lampedusa, and he heard a story about a group of refugees that were coming off of the African coast, probably Tunisia. And they ran into problem. They could pack up. The 700 people knew these boats and the boat capsized and only eight people survived. And they survived by clinging to a fishing net in the middle of the ocean when the fishermen saw them. Instead of saving them, they actually cut their nets and cast them to die into the ocean depths. And Pope Francis heard about this story, and he was so moved by the indifference to these migrants that within eight days he went down to this harbor and he celebrated mass. And he used a chalice made from the driftwood of a refugee boat. Wow. And that intrigued me on many levels as a human being, as a Christian, as a priest, as a theologian, and say, what does it mean to use a chalice made from the drift foot of refugee boat? So I, I stayed with that question for a number of years. And and that's a kind of important part of the book of trying to see the God who migrated into our human world, if you will, and our sinful, broken territory in order to help us migrate back to our homeland. We're on the topic of Pope Francis. One of the really powerful parts, I think as you enter into the book is the fact that Pope Francis was kind enough to actually do the forward. So maybe you could just give a little bit of context around that and maybe just offer your thoughts on what he had to say about what you wrote. I never anticipate Francis would write the introductions of the book. And but I had good friends who actually knew Francis from Argentina. And they're the ones who asked. And I thought, ah, he's not gonna do it. He's so busy. He's got so much stuff going on as I can't imagine. So when we presented it to him he said, no. He says, I wanna read it. And and he did. He was gracious enough to do it. So to me it, it happens those kinds of connections. Ha. That was a friendship connection that happened, but it's a, it's an issue that was dear to his heart. I also knew that this was right down the line of the message that he really wanted to communicate to the world. And in fact, I had been working in this. Theme for 15 years or so before he was elected. And when he was elected and he started speaking about it you could tell the spirit was at work, trying to really it's not rocket science, really, it's about the dignity of the human person. It's about understanding our connection to one another. It's about also how we understand Christ's connection to the least in the last of our society. And that's the heart of it. So maybe talk a little bit about what those central ideas are that are in your book That Pope Francis says really are, maybe reflect a deep understanding of the issue. Maybe just share with us some things that you think about as being the most central ideas that we've throughout the book. One story that really is, I think also at the heart of this is 23 years ago, I went down to Texas and right at the border between El Paso and Mexican side they celebrated mass and it was a binational mass. So half the communities of Mexico, half the communities in the United States, and there's a wall right in the middle, and they brought the altar together at the wall. And they celebrated one Eucharist in the midst of this divided political reality. And that captured my imagination. And I said, what does it mean to celebrate the Eucharist amidst a divided political reality? And what I realized, it's the narratives. I'm not a political scientist. I dialogue with them. I'm non-economist, so I'm a theologian. So I was really interested in faith questions about who we are before God. And as we look at this issue of migration and who we are as migrants in this world, the Eucharist became the core of this. So I took the structure of the Eucharist, which has an introductory liturgy of the word, liturgy of the Eucharist and a communion, right? And I said, that's the structure of the book. It took me a long time, a little slower. It took me a long time to get there but I eventually said, this is the structure of the book. And part of it was to really say that the operative narrative of migration is about othering the person who is the migrant. The core of the eucharistic narrative is about uniting us. So it's really about moving from our otherness to oneness. So it's a theology of communion ultimately. So threaded in there is the fact that there is contention around the topic of migration, right? There's no other reason why you'd have to celebrate the Eucharist with a wall separating the altar. Talk a little bit about in, in your mind, why is it such a contentious issue for people? I don't know. Okay. And I've often wondered that, but this triggers more things than where people, than almost any other issue. And very volatile. I have a whole kind of growing file of hate mail that people will send me over time and and I was working with the Bishop's Conference very closely on a lot of these things, and I remember going through their files of hate mail all the time, and especially people who are Catholic writing hate mail about migrants. And so you do a bit of an x-ray into that and you say what's going on in the human heart? And why does this issue trigger so many things in so many people? It's not a hard issue on some level to understand. I, what I do say is that this issue is both very complex. And if you don't understand the complexity, you really don't understand really the different dimensions of this. But it's also very simple issue at the same time because it's about people who want to seek a more dignified life, and it's about respecting their humanity and helping. Them really be know who they are as children of God. But I think that it triggers stuff in us, and I think there's many different reasons, but I've often wondered whether in the end they not only symbolize who we are in their world, in this world, but they expose it and in exposing it, they actually reveal our own vulnerability. And I think we can react so strongly against that vulnerability that it can make us lash out. So it's easier for us to take refuge in, I think. More shallower understandings of our humanity and our identities of who we are, of a clan or community or state or a nation, rather than a deeper more liberating identity of who we are as children of God. And if we actually ground ourselves in that identity, then we understand that the mission is to build bridges and not to create walls. And but I think as I look at this, at the faith context, the heart of the book, if I had to say in one, one sentence, Jesus was, Undocumented in the sense that he was born in Bethlehem. He was illegal in the sense that he was born out of wedlock. And he was an alien because he really was from another world. So he is an undocumented, illegal alien who migrated from his homeland to our world. So that we, and as we celebrate these days of the Paschal Triduum, it's about his death on the cross. It ultimately h helps us. Migrate back to our homeland so that we've become naturalized citizens again, is really to be truly who we've been created to be. I sometimes hear you describe yourself as maybe I'll call it a theological cardiologist. And so in that context how do you try to heal the hearts of those people that perhaps don't see the topic of migration in the same way that you see it? I think it all depends on human, it all hinges on human freedom. I do think my way of being in the world is more of a cardiologist. I just tend to have x-ray vision and just just try to pay attention to what the deeper levels of what people are going through. Certainly in this book The Native Americans, you just say that the long journey of life is between the head and the heart and back again. I think that's what the journey of this book is about, or from the head to the heart to the feet and back again. But when it comes time to people who trigger on issues of migration and they, simply that is a question of what's really going on in the heart. And sometimes you have to do that deeper surgery to say, what's, why does this cause so much pain or tension or frustration for you? And But I think it all hinges of on human freedom because you either are open to being let in the door to basically this is God. If God, if you're open to let God into the door, I think you can't see it quite that same way. But on the other hand, if you close it out, there's not much anybody can do to really change. So hinges on change. Yeah. Wonderful. So maybe just to connect us a little bit with kind of our broader overall theme. Of kinship. And as we think of kinship oftentimes in the context of what Father Greg Boyle has said in a number of his different books, but it's not serving the other, but being one with the other. Jesus was not a man for others, but he was one with them. There's a world of difference in that. So maybe talk a little bit about how you might correlate that with the theology of migration that you talk about. Yeah, the, there was a, I remember one time I think we were in Guatemala, and this one nun from a migrant shelter said, she said, so if the migrant is not your brother or sister, then God is not your father. And and I think this is all about friendship and being a priest, researching this space was always just a unique opportunity, but also delicate in terms of the ethics of how it would work. But, I think cuz I was a priest, there were, doors would open and otherwise wouldn't. And we lived, we went to many different contexts to to reflect on this issue. But I think underneath it try to pay attention to what was going on, in people. So I. And when you really see everyone's the same on this. So it's not like they, they are migrants and we're not. It's like we're all migrants. And that's the whole point that our journey through this world is as migrants. And so therefore it's not us and them, but it's all of us. So the theme of kinship is critical in this because it's a shared humanity, right? And I think it's a shared humanity that's hopefully migrating towards that communion where we can actually see our interconnections with one another. So another Geography that we've sometimes talked about in the past is wan. And I realize that may not be used directly related to this work, but in, in some ways I think it is at least from what I've come to learn from you and from the experiences that you've had around that. Maybe just offer a little bit of commentary cuz that I think while today the headlines may not be Rwanda, there are other parts of the world that are experiencing similar kind of situations to what we're experienced there. Sure. So my journey with migrants began with economic migrants then moved into Working with refugees, but then it also genocide survivors and then victims of human trafficking. When it came time to rewind, I was just giving a talk in New Hampshire once, and I was laying out a little bit the landscape with migrants. And then I had just said more or less, just in a few words, they said, an example of a refugee is people who fled from places of violence and persecution. I said Rwanda would be one such area. 1990, early nineties. There they, a million people were killed in a hundred days. And And so after the, the talk, a woman came to me and she said, she says, thank you for mentioning Rwanda. She says, I'm actually from Rwanda. And so it was one of those moments, Tom, you remember the commercial a number of years ago, like it said, when EF Hutton talks and then everybody became silent. People listen, when a survivor of genocide talks, it's I was like, Been like all years. And so I just was such a moving conversation. And afterwards I said to her, I said, look, I can do anything for you. Not knowing why I said this. Don't hesitate to contact me. So she calls me back two weeks later, she says, yeah, there is something. She says, my husband and I survived through the genocide. We lived in the hotel, what was known as Hill Towanda. She says, we wonder if you could help us write a book on the search for God from the context of genocide. And in terms of discernment, this was like right between the eyes I just said. Absolutely. I just knew that this was a project I'd love to take on. But the next thing I said, I have no idea how to speak about God from the context of genocide. We worked on this project for a year together, and then I thought, this is too big a project for the three of us. And so I said let's get a team of people together. And we went down to Rwanda. We went to the places where they killed. They had further engagement parties. They had 130 family members. Three months later, after the genocide started the a hundred of them were killed. And so we would go to, say, mass over their graves and to, to journey with them with their families. But that to me was powerful to, to be. And I think I. Some of the driving questions is how do people believe in God emits the unbelievable circumstances, right? How do they find hope in God Amids? What seems like a hopeless situation and how do they find the capacity to love and what seems like a godless situation? So those drove I think a lot of the research questions we work with, Yeah. Yeah. No, it's an incredible, incredibly powerful story. And I love how you say discriminate right between the eyes. My guess is the one right between the eyes, right to your heart, right? I think that's so talk a little bit about how you think about. The work that you've done, the theology that you've done, and the role you have today here at the university. I think, you now occupy an incredibly important space, undergraduate education's at the heart of this institution, and and you also have governance and senior leadership role. So talk a little bit about how you see all those elements fitting together at this stage in your life. I think God alone knows how they fit together. I, I, coming back to that fundamental yes to God and trusting whatever God calls me into, even if I don't know where it's going. The one difference is today, I don't worry about it as much as I did when I was younger. But this was one of those ones when they first asked me, he says where do you see yourself going? In, in the years I had and I said, yeah, I'm really good. Where I am really good, where I am, I really what I was doing. I love the research, love the teaching. We were teaching the Heart Desire class and so I was really fine with that. And so I was really surprised to be invited into administration quite honestly. And I was like, I don't, I even said, Tom Burch says, look I dunno how this is gonna work. I said, I'm basically a cardiologist and you're asking me to be a hospital administrator. So I said, But because I didn't really seek to do it, I actually feel strange freedom to do it, and I'm surprised how creative it is and I'm actually surprised by how many of the experiences that. Have formed me over the years shape. A lot of what we're doing now, I think the work, even with transformational leaders, some of our underserved, whenever anyone comes to me from an underserved background, all these kind of experiences come back to me and it just immediately, connects with. So it's just now seeing how we can scale this differently and how we can have institutional impact, with some things that were more interpersonal or more kind of scaled kind of Local communities are now saying how can Notre Dame. Really contribute to this. I was one of the things I do in my current role is to interview the candidates for valedictorians. And one of the things I do ask is if you were to speak to a freshman, you know about Notre Dame, what would you wanna say? And they said, these are unbelievably accomplished students. And they said, the whole person take care of the whole person. And I think that's so important, Notre Dame, and I think that. That is what our job is. How do we educate the whole person? That's kind of DNA for holy Cross spirituality, but it's been fleshed out in this beautiful institution, and I think so wonderful to see this bare fruit in our graduates. It doesn't surprise me at all. I think he was just heartened back to. Your story on the victims of genocide in Rwanda. This was not a story you felt armed or ready to tell you. You told it beautifully and counseled them through that. This is just a different challenge, right? But drawing from the same gifts and strengths that you have. So I think in many respects you were called to it and now you're right in stride is from what I could tell. So does that make sense to you? It does, and I've learned just. Be yourself and what you're doing. And I think I also say to my team is, I want you to be yourself and what you're doing. And I think we have a wonderful team, together. So I do it in concert with a lot of great people. And so I think that's, it's, it's part of the really fun working here. Notre Dame is be with great people and it's part of the distinct development of this institution too. I think that's really beautiful. So maybe just bringing it back to the book before we open it up for questions. As you are there elements of the book that we haven't touched on or are there things messages from the book that you want people to take away? And also I just ask you, maybe it's not directly related. It's gotta be challenging to think about who the audience is for a book like this. So maybe weave that into your commentary as well. But, coming from an academic institution, but having a story that's relevant to a broad audience. I'm not sure I expected to, I didn't expect to be an academic either on this and I think one of the things I've learned over time, and there's so much credentialing that has to go on along the way, but one of the things I've found my journey about is, in the beginning you wonder, can I do this? Can I write a book? Can I do these kinds of things? But over time you have to say I've been given a message. And I think the older I get, it's more or less how do I actually tell that message as authentically as I can. So there's other people that could write a different book about migration, and I think I actually had to, I had to really come down to say, what is the message that I knew that I was given? And what I was forming and shaping in my heart, and how do I tell that as, as honestly and authentically as I can? That became a guide for me in terms of that. I think there's, when you enter into a space in academic, you think like, how am I supposed to tell us or what other people want me to say or how do I sound like an intellectual or whatever that may be. And that, that's not, that's a very confining sort of process, but I think. What I didn't realize is that when I came into the academic world, I wa I still wanted the freedom to do what I wanted to do, which was, to still basically be in the migrant camps. Yeah. What I didn't realize is that the academic process demand, which demanded nothing but the most rigorous and intensive thought process I came through to discover freedom that I didn't know that I had a capacity. I didn't know I had. And that was an important thing of how disciplined sacrifice and even long days, long nights, long meanderings through this saying that there's a message and that in the end, coming through with an articulation of a narrative. So I think the message of the book is saying that there are narratives about migration, but they're our own narratives. And I think ultimately we bring those narratives into. Christ's own narrative. There's a transformation that happens and so much what Pope Francis has been saying is, how do we have this encounter with others? And I think for me, the encounter with migrants and refugees, and as my life was so enriched by them, is I confronted the narratives that were dominating the airwaves about who these people were. They said, these don't match. And so the theological and really academic tasks became to say, How do I really re-articulate that narrative in a way that's more life-giving? Yeah. So I'll close my questions, then I'll open up to everyone else. John McGrew was kind enough to join us for an inspiring conversation last week. And we talked about another geography that I know is near and dear to your heart, and that is the Amazon. And so maybe just talk a little bit about some of the discussions that came up last week and how that fits into kind of your overall picture of this kind of broad topic of different geographies, different people in migration. I definitely operate out of an anthropology of friendship. And again, it's some friends that I had worked with in, in Rome on a committee who were from the Amazon and from Argentina had invited me to work with them on this new university of the Amazon. So they had a senate on the Amazon. The Pope convened that after the end of that Senate, the Pope actually asked that That we started University of the Amazon, and then he looked to some friends in Argentina Yeah. To really help spearhead that. Wow. And then they came to me and said, can Notre Dame helping this? Yeah. And we had a meeting last week with us. We had 30 faculty together. Wow. And it was so fun to put this idea in the room. And boy, every, it just, first of all, I'm, I was amazed at even working here, like the capacities of our faculty and the different work they're doing and the research. At such high levels was so impressive. But to see sort of something like this, which I think concerns us all, if the Amazon or the lungs of the planet, if the Amazon goes, then, so does our abil ability to breathe and so I think to really put the best of our efforts at the university together, it's a service of something important, all of humanity. That's a great mission. Yeah. I think it also just highlights one of the, I think. Positive surprises people regularly have here, which is you'll bring a topic to bear that isn't necessarily studied directly and you'll bring it up and you'll just be incredibly, positively surprised at the breadth of knowledge and understanding and research that's done on a topic. And just convening a group like that is just an incredible experience in and of itself. I think. I think a number of people in our audience are fellows here who've been interested and passionate about different topics. We'll find, they make connections amongst faculty that didn't exist before because of the fact that the topic hadn't really been surfaced in such a way. So with that, I'm gonna open it up to questions. I've been blessed to spend some time in this field and in so doing, I've come to understand this among the world's, most significant issues currently. In fact, as you're aware ours is dubbed at the age of migration, but at the same time, we also discuss, and even lament. The degrees of marginalization of peace building and migration related concerns within the church and theological studies. What practical steps do you suggest at the local and institutional levels to elevate these topics to central aspects of Christian identity and practice? Yeah. And there's a lot of different dimensions, I think to that Tom. And I think one of the things that at least I try to highlight, and I think it's important to do, is to bring out the narratives. I think when you hear the stories of people, what they've gone through you can't help but be moved by the challenges and suffering. If we're not moved by them, then we have bigger problems in migration. That I think we need to be concerned about. So I think you're right. There are four ways in which I think we can look at this issue. There is a pastoral response, of how we help people and their direct needs. There is a a role of advocacy in terms of trying to change laws and have just legislation. There's a role of education, I think, in trying to teach people about this. And also there's the role of research. So I think all of these are ways in which, at the very personal local and communal national level is necessary. But what I would advocate, a change of heart is necessary and an openness to a change of heart is really necessary for real transformation to happen. So a question that came in from one of our livestream participants, Sam from Fort Worth, is. What keeps us from realizing our unique and universal identity as a migrant, that's a little beyond my pay grade in terms of having access. Doesn't mean you're not gonna try to. But I think it is a point of contemplation of saying, what keeps us from seeing that interconnection to one another? I think as I was going along this, the issues of identity kept coming up and marijuana and some of that blazer. We did research, I remember working with the Slovakian Border Patrol, as well as our own border patrol in different places. And I couldn't help but come up against Anne Rwanda, issues of our identity. So identity's necessary. I say here at Notre Dame, it's interesting, like when you arrive in alumni Hall as a freshman, you see everyone's oh, I don't know where I am, and I don't know. Where I belong. And then suddenly you're given a shirt and you're saying you're part of alumni, and then you look next door and they have a red shirt, you have a green shirt, and then you say, I'm alumni, and they're Dylan. So that means we're good and they're bad, and but then, so identity formation is necessary, but then. When the first football game comes, its shifts. Suddenly we are nd right? So there are these evolving identities that we have and I think the question is, can they actually bridge build into bigger identities? And I think what happens is people short circuit too quickly on their identities. And like even in the Olympics, I always look for medal counts at the end of the day in medal count. I wanna make sure we're being Russia in the wintertime and China in the summer. And so that, but then when I see the Russian skater go like this, or, then I know that there's a bridge and a bond that's much deeper than my national identity. And I think that's the key is yielding to deeper identities that make us human. And there wouldn't happen to be a particular Olympic sport that you have a fondness for, wouldn't, I don't think so. No. I could guess, yeah. All right. Another question here, Luis. Thank you so much Dan, and congratulations today for the day of Bridgewood. And I think there is a lot of Word to do. I think you mentioned a book about the migration at the center times. And as well, the difference is ways that migration symbolizes were in the world. I feel ashamed what happened in Mexico about the 40 migrants died and this attention center. But this week here in the immigration week at DO Dame Fall, we saw an Instagram mention about, A notice to all white Americans. It is your civic duty to report any and all illegal aliens There are criminals, America's a white nation. So we'll have a challenge on how to deal with this in the hearts and minds of many people here and everywhere. What are the concrete steps we should do in order to work in the defense and raise the idea of image of God from migrants and refugees? Yeah. First, Elise, you do such great work in Mexico with people, and so you're confronted with us daily and you're confronted with helping people who've been who suffer from the effects of that kind of discrimination. In my earlier research on this I built on a concept coming out of the work of Ignacio and John Sabrina, which was saying that the migrants today really are living out a contemporary way of the cross. And they're experiencing economic crucifixion in their poverty, a political crucifixion and being considered illegal aliens, social crucifixion in their marginalization. And the list goes on, but often, sometimes an actual crucifixion, if you've ever really worked with the some of the teams, the medical teams, as part of our research, so some of the medical teams that actually rescue these bodies in the desert. That have died from heat stroke and dehydration. I remember going into the emergency rooms of Arizona and other places and talking with people after they were rescued from the desert. That's one kind of hell and I think it calls us to contemplate a deeper level to see how the migrants themselves are the crucified peoples of today, and that they also are a place of hope and resurrection. That was always my. Paradoxical discovery is that it that sometimes emits these most hopeless circumstances, you would find a life and a joy and a vitality. But the church is always being born on the margins. It's never on the center. And so I think to that person, I would say if they cannot see themselves or the humanity or Christ in that other migrant then they are the aliens because they become so alien from their own humanity and so disconnected from their social relationships with others that they have deported their own soul. Question from Sammy in sa in Sassafras Springs. What do migrants most want and need? I think get into the heart of what can those of us who haven't had the opportunity to engage as much as you have or movies has? What can we do? A flood of stories just came to mind when you're saying that, and I'd often ask them that. Yeah. Now I went there with the last judgment in mind. So I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was naked, I was sick. I was in prison. I was estranged, They have the whole package, if among the least and the last. So I said if I'm seeking to know Christ, I'd say, what do you say about this? But one of the things I would ask them is, if you had to be in this situation or preach on a Sunday, what would you say? And the common denominator, and I could think of when we were in African coasts, when I can think of, so many different contexts when the common denomin ever says, we just want to be human. Wow. And I can even remember one very painfully, I would go to the, after they would deport people and send them back over the border. I remember this one guy, he was coming up from Guatemala and they deported him. And so I said, what are you seeking? And he said, he's, he says, I'm an accountant in Mexico. Actually, he was from Mexico. He says, I was an accountant in Mexico. And he said, I came here to work in the fields. He says, because my family needs medicine, and this was so painful. He goes, I will be your slave. Wow. I will be your slave, but I have to help my family in Mexico. Or one guy, another guy from Mexico on the border said to me, he said, he says, nothing is more painful than your daughter coming to you. Say, I'm hungry. He says, I will go 10 miles, a hundred miles. He says, I'll go to the other side of the country, but nothing's more painful than saying I'm hungry and you don't have any food to feed her. He's, that's the, those are the stories. So what they want is dignity. What we all want. It's what everybody wants. It's not just they want it, we, it's this dignity. They want to be able to provide for their family's education opportunities, freedom, persecution. There was one, I was in Bulgaria at a refugee camp, and I remember this. I had, I was in plain clothes. I was with the delegation with the bishops that we were all plain clothes. And this one guy comes up to me and he says I'm a, starts off the conversation, he just says, outta the blue, says I'm a Christian. He's most of my conversations don't start that way. It'd be nice if they did but just start off. And he says, I'm a Christian, so I said, why are you a Christian? And he says I just fled Syria. And I said he said, and ISIS came to me once when I was in Syria, and they said, are you a Christian? He said, yes. And they said, why are you a Christian? He says, I'm tired of the war. I'm tired of the violence. I'm tired of the hatred. He says, and I want peace, and only Christ gives me peace. And he says, he came back at the end of the day and he says there were police around his house and they had killed his parents. They killed his brothers and sisters, and he was all alone. So he says, he says, and I'm a Christian. He was like, then he took him around to the migrant committee. He says, this is Joseph, and this person was a Muslim and now they're a Christian. And he went around and it was like meeting the early church. It was just like the persecution. And by some accounts there's more religious persecution today than in any other point in history. We don't often see it or feel it. But boy, when you see it up close it, it impacts you. Yeah. It actually reminds me of a story professor Clemens told in the context of integral human development, right? And that one of the most powerful, important things around dignity is noticing people regardless of who they are and where you seek them, right? So I think that's and bringing out as this moves towards the theology of communion, again, there's parts that structure around the Eucharist, right? One of the arguments I make is that, That the real presence is actually making real, the presence of those who actually are excluded from society. So there's a way of understanding the migrant eucharistically and not just what happens in the church and receiving Christ in the sacrament of his body and blood, but how his presence is real also. In those who are excluded and marginalized. Yeah, I having read this a few times now just that connection between the Eucharist and migration I think brings a number of things in a very powerful way to life in a really beautiful way. One other question, which is very appropriate for the time of year, I think, is how does a theology of migration inform a tangible. Incarnation, life of migration in light of the tridium. I often ask my students, I said, if you were part of God's Advisory Council what would be your advice to him to save the world? And generally they work on it. They go off to committees and they come back with their plans. And generally they they come up with a couple different options, but usually they fall out in a couple different lines. One is, The shock and awe plan. It's just just show yourself and scare people to death, the second is like the money and power plan. Like just be somebody powerful with money and influence. And the other is the kind of fame and glory plan. Be somebody really famous, no one comes up with the Bethlehem Jerusalem plan. It's so counterintuitive. And this is why I think one of the chapters that I would say I was probably most nervous about doing the biblical section, but when I read through it, it's one of the most ones I like. And there's one there about. The Virgin Mary and and the illegal alien. And I, and it really did dawn on me at that point that when Mary was betrothed to Joseph, she had this event and she basically received somebody into her room who was, from another world and actually was, and this was outta wedlock. And so we asked why would God choose to save the world in this way? And I say if this does not confuse our us, we're probably not reading the text as deeply as we should. And I think as we enter into these high holy days, this should disrupt our imaginations, about what matters, what's important, and the fact like they can't help be compelled by the extreme humility of Christ, right? To say that God, who had every right to, do a shock and awe plan comes in humble estate. And when you read Philippians too, you get at the heart of the migration of God is doward mobility to save us. And so I think he not only opens up a door to migrate back home, but he gives us the strength and power to do and that's why I think these days are all about how we reestablish a return migration to God. Wow. Without which we couldn't make it back. There's other questions here from the audience. Hi, father Dan. I was gonna ask a question about the biblical area. And you mentioned the sorry, I'm. I'm making mess. Okay. You mentioned the kind of politically divisive nature of refugees and the migrant crisis, and I wanted to ask you I've noticed online people debating a the very fact that the Holy Family themselves were refugees and the gospel of Matthew when they flee Hart's persecution and fleeing to Egypt. And I, I know people. Use that story to defend their ministry of and protection of refugees. And then I see their opponents are twisting the biblical text to avoid calling Jesus and Marion Joseph themselves, refugees. So I wondered, I just wanted you to reflect on that a little bit. The fact that people are willing to take what's very clear in the biblical text, which is that the holy family themselves become refugees and flee into Egypt, and people are willing to say that, no, that's not what happened. It can't be just to protect their own. View that the refugee and migrant crisis is not important. Yeah it's really striking how, I don't, that's one text in particular that you cannot deconstruct to say that they did not flee because of a well-founded fear of persecution, which is the grounds for being a refugee. Herod was on their back. They were clear signs that he was going to kill this child if found. And they fled to Egypt because they knew their lives were in danger. The, any way you read that biblical text, it is not a faithful reading of the biblical text on that. There's room for interpretation in other places. What happened once they got there? Even getting into the extra biblical literature about what happened once they got there, I thought in researching this book was really quite fascinating. In Egypt, they have a bunch of shrines and places where, they had, some of these things and those require a lot more kind of intellectual scrutiny about that. But underneath even those narratives, and I approach this more from a narrative perspective, not just a historical critical perspective. You as a biblical scholar would be more versed and frankly in that. And that's why I say in the book, this is my approach, but I think there's other scholars that need to really look at this from different ways, including biblical scholars. But there is, Indisputable evidence in the text that Jesus fled because he was being, and his family fled because they were being persecuted. Thank you. I think we have time for one more question. We'll pick it from the audience here if we can. Otherwise I'll allow Dan off for some final thoughts. Anyone else? Anybody else have one? Otherwise, oh, wait. That problem. Thanks, Dan. Okay. Thanks Dan for your presentation today. I think you're on. We can hear you. Okay. While you describe yourself as a theologian and looking at it from the theological perspective as citizens here in the States, what should we be doing in terms of advocating for policy with our government and the way in which we go about our immigration status? For others, this I really wanna highlight the work at the Bishop's Conference. And they're often a lot of the unsung heroes and behind the scenes workers on this. I was lucky for the last 12 years to work on their committee on migrants and refugees, and we'd often go to these sites of concern where their refugee crisis were really hot and active. On that they do a lot of advocacy behind the scenes, that people don't see. The United States has resettled more refugees than any other country in the world. And the Bishops conferences resettled more refugees than any organization in the United States. And if you were to take just the work of the Bishops Conference alone on the refugee issue, they'd be the second largest reseller, refugees, in the world. And they actually work very extensively in the advocacy thing and looking at. Do these policies uphold human dignity? Do they keep families together? Do they recognize do they recognize not just national sovereign rights, but international duties as well and and really international solidarity? And and I think they also are trying to look at not just this issue as a symptom, as a problem, but as a symptom of deeper problems that really need to be rectified. So I think they're always trying to keep the human. Face of the migrant in the policy equation. This gets so banted about. By politicians for political gain. It's pathetic actually the way they get used. And so I think, they're often a good place to look and there are a lot of other advocacy groups I think, that are trying to do that. There's others that are anti-immigrant groups that are very slick as well, and sometimes very well funded and very well mobilized, so I think this does get battled out a lot in policy on that. But I think those, these organizations are important once to link with as we try to fight it rather than just alone, but together with these groups. So do you have anything you'd like to close with before I wrap things up here, Dan? Just that this was a labor of love. I think my life has shifted in working in God's vineyard and a sort of a related way, but a distinct way I think in terms of my work in undergraduate education. But I'm just so thankful to God for the migrants that I've met in this process who've illumined for me what it means to be human. And I think what it means to journey through this world. And to me that's been a spiritual experience and an emotional experience a liberating experience. And I often get my reference point, by, when things get tough, I often will get, I'll root myself in the lives of some of these folks who have inspired me and touch my life. And I have no idea how this is gonna speak to people but I knew that if I didn't finish this book I would've left so much on the table. And I leave it in the hands of God of how it's received, but I'm just so grateful to have been part of this research for probably the better part of 25 or 30 years. Dan, it's it's very clear. It's a labor of love and it comes very much from your heart. And I'm sure everyone feels as I do, you can just tell that this is something that is really rooted. Deeply within you and and you just articulate so beautifully really all aspects around this. And so we're very thankful for you. I'm thankful for you for joining me here today, and I'm also thankful to all of you for joining us and those on the live stream as well. This is the last, as I mentioned of this year's inspiring conversations. Next year our topic will be leadership in public conversation. We'll look forward to kicking that off next fall. And if you have missed any of our prior sessions, please feel free to look on ThinkND edu. Thank you everyone.