Advent Reconciliation

Pictures from Scott Bennett from Advent 2007's La Posada Sin Fronteras at Friendship Park

http://www.flickr.com/photos/smbennett/sets/72157603486306430/

The Advent season is often filled with so many warm and sentimental memories – favorite foods, intimate times at home with loved ones, beautiful music that fills the air, gift exchanges with those close to you, care for those who regularly go without. Advent is also a time for reflection, repentance and mourning. It is a time to be with our fellow Christians, our families, but it is also a time to reach out to the suffering around us.

So, this Saturday, Dec. 13, La Posada Sin Fronteras celebrates Christian hope and hospitality by gathering as Christians on both sides of the border fence. They meet at Border Field State Park, where the border fence meets the ocean. La Posada sin Fronteras celebrates and mourns because it is important to remember the migration of Jesus, Mary and Joseph and the lack of a warm welcome that they found in Bethlehem. They anticipate the Jesus coming and they mourn the babies that died under the hand of Herod at Jesus’ birth. They celebrate reconciliation and mourn for the families of those who died crossing the US/Mexico border. They mourn as they remember the pain that many families have experienced as they have been migrants at some point in history. They mourn to remember that the borders they have are artificial, that this particular border did not exist prior to 1948 and may not exist again in the future. They mourn to confess complicity in creating them to protect “us” from “them,” and to confess that they continue to enforce these borders to protect the privileged at the expense of those who go without.They celebrate the unity in Christ, and they mourn the border as a symbol and sign of the divisions that separate brother and sister from one another.