Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

Reflection: We Are All on the Move

Florence Haas
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Palo Alto, CA

Today Phyllis will present to you her talk on studies about immigration which found we are all on the move. I suspect we are called by some inner drive. People have been migrating since the earliest times, long before countries or borders. And animals, birds, and fish migrate. Plants have many ingenious schemes to get their seeds carried so they too move to new places. It looks like it’s in the makeup of living things and probably an evolutionary aspect to keep living things always adapting and looking for new opportunities.

One day I watched with amusement a horse straining his neck reaching over a fence eating the grass on the other side, not any greener than the grass in his pasture, and realized animals also look for better opportunities. Last week an alligator visited Cape Cod — the residents were not pleased and removed it, but I give the alligator credit as a newsworthy explorer.

We all have stories to tell about our families’ travels. My ancesters were German-speaking people from Central and Eastern Europe who immigrated to the United States after the Civil War, and before that had moved from Germany to Slovakia, Prussia to Switzerland, and long before that were probably involved in the Wandering of the Peoples, or “Volkswanderung” as it’s known in German — Barbarian Invasion to the rest of the world. My Great Grandfather Martin Haas Sr. grew up in Leipzig, Germany, and after serving his stint in the Kaiser’s Army, moved to Ohio because he saw Germany headed for serious trouble, and didn’t want any of his descendants to endure what was coming. Yes, I’m grateful to him for his foresight, and for making a good life for our family here in the United States, sparing us the horrible suffering in Germany because of the wars. Our family stories have been recorded in books published by our relatives; for further information about my heritage I’m sending my DNA sample to the National Geographic Genographic Project, which will send me a map of the path my ancestors took out of Africa to wherever they went, along with DNA markers indicating groups of people from whom I descended.

And I’m an immigrant of sorts — after graduating from college, opportunities in northern Ohio were scare so I moved to California for further study and work, one of the many who came to universities like Cal and Stanford, and stayed. My sisters, brothers, and our adult children have also moved and now we have our family members stretching from Portland Maine to Honolulu and Seattle to Florida and points in between. Most likely you can say the same about your families. Who doesn’t love to travel — we’re always seeking new opportunities, new friends, new frontiers, new ideas. My search for new ideas led me away from my childhood home and religion, immigrating, as it were, to California and the Unitarian Universalist faith.

As a librarian, I am gratified to assist people who have come to the United States from all over the world, and like many before them, know the place to go to get started is the public library. I never get tired of their wonderful enthusiasm to build a new life here and am glad to be one of the U.S. citizens who can welcome them.

I have my own thoughts and feelings about legal versus illegal immigration and would like to see us find a way to keep better track of those entering our country. Like we do with library books, we could barcode each entry and then check folks in and out as they cross our borders, and could mark them overdue, but I realize people are different from books. I hope system will be devised to take the sting out what’s happening now, as well as useful and effective. The Native Americans are also in my heart today realizing that immigration has had a very negative effect on them, and in some ways the current immigration is difficult for those of us who have lived here a long time. Nobody said it was easy.

This week we’ll celebrate the Fourth of July, and America — the hope and dream of those needing to escape poverty, tyranny, long for justice, and want a better life. I’ll be marching with the Los Trancos Woods Community Marching Band in the Redwood City Parade playing my snare drum and see the many hundreds or thousands of people of all colors and nationalities lined up to watch it, each one dressed in some silly red, white, and blue costume, cheering, holding and waving American flags, and it is thrilling. Such is the power of the American Dream.

 

Sermon: Immigration Touches Everyone by Phyllis Cassel