Standing with Neighbors
Prepared message given as part of Three Rivers worship on Zoom, 5 February 2026.
Two weeks ago, this very same time, it was like 9:32 AM and I was out doing ice verification work where someone calls the state hotline and lets them know something's happening. They see someone at a neighbor's house and you go out and it's purely to document what's happening and also to offer care after someone's abducted.
I was feeling weary already and it was early in the ice. I call it the ice siege. I know it's the surge, and I realized I could pull into a Dunking Donuts parking lot and stop and join worship and listen to Kristina's powerful message about lowering our nets and ask for prayers for all of us in the small group.
And I was just settling into the small group when I had made a mistake and left my signal alerts on, and I saw there was a new alert for ice at the door of a deaf family's home, not far from where I was. And so I asked for forgiveness from my small group and prayers, and was so grateful even just for that little bit of grounding.
And I proceeded on my way and arrived to see ice just leaving, having taken someone from the home and there were multiple other responders, another verifier, another trained verifier, and a rapid responder from the neighborhood, from the community, and they had asked for an ASL interpreter if possible.
There was a woman who came as soon as she could who had like high school ASL,
and I didn't talk with the man left behind. I didn't try to, um, we'd already done one connection, the first verifier who'd been there. And then I didn't wanna overwhelm him and, , the ASL person was going to connect, so I left to take another alert. And he waved with this big smile out the window of his door, and I just stopped and held my hand up to my window.
And the other verifier had said, he was obviously in a lot of pain, and they were hoping to connect him with resources.
And, um, three Rivers has this great list of queries about faithfulness. If you haven't looked at 'em, definitely check 'em out. Two that have really stuck with me are:
• How have I experienced God's presence after I stepped into something that scared me? and...
• What does it look like to carry a concern together rather than alone?
And... what has cracked me open the most spiritually this past month, over and over is the people. It's been God's hands at work in the world. That includes friends hands, including friends on this call who worship here, and so many, many more humans beyond our friends community.
I have so many like stories like Kristina said, that I feel like I've been carrying. Our BIPOC organizational neighbors have really led the charge in helping us get trained up months ago. We started doing deescalation and ice verifier trainings that have been BIPOC led. And, probably one of the biggest moments was in this fall, , a dad was taken during drop off one morning at an elementary school here in Portland, and that really started galvanizing white folks to step up and do school watch. , So it's been this long, slow buildup, in terms of human infrastructure and signal chats, and over and over like the most regulated times before this past month and through this past month, have been in community. And I'm an introvert, so I need a lot of like downtime, and yet I've been amazed how much has come through. Like there were nightly verifier calls where we were encouraged to name our painful parts, our shocked parts, our exhausted parts.
I had calls with my good friend Meredith, who's here with my parents, sort of long debriefs. Not often because we were running around. There was care shown in the signal chats. When someone would get like a little revved up or inflammatory or frustrated, moderators would step in and ask if they might need something – remind us what we're here for, not chastising, but holding.
People would stop when I was out filming, you know. A mom of four kids under the age of seven who had very little capacity, and yet she was stopping every day trying to check in and just like trading names with the people I would run into would be these sort of connecting moments I feel like in time.
What I heard from friends – verifiers are asked not to do mutual aid work because if you're driving people or delivering food to them, you don't want your car to be unknown to ice, which as a verifier, your cars are much more likely to be made by ice. And so all these folks bringing food and offering people rides to work, and by folks I mean white folks, who were sort of, I feel like finally, Johanna said last week, like finding our place in the movement, listening to the needs that had been named by BIPOC folks and stepping into these roles and yet at the same time just feeling so conscious of, yes, leveraging our white privilege to do these different tasks and show up in these important ways, and yet that grotesque side of it where you realize, oh, like I've understood white supremacy, even viscerally sometimes, but this is like a whole new level of bringing it home to what we live under every day, right? The system and how I, as a white body person, have so little risk compared to all of our families hiding at home, afraid to go to work, afraid to go to school, and living every day. And, and I include, you know, black and brown body folks who are not immigrants, right in that danger, folks experiencing the most risk and the most danger.
Yeah. I experienced that sense of God's presence in community and, uh, the local clergy and faith leaders have been helping form a line at a factory nearby, to cover where ice is circling like sharks and for workers to be driven in by white drivers and dropped and dash inside. And a woman in a hijab arrived the morning I was there and brought donuts for us, these white clergy folk, and she had her pharmacist badge on and I, all I could think was, you're so vulnerable. And she said, this is the America that's supposed to be.
There's so many stories and I could go on and on. , And so many people, like I always had that moment when the notice came out about worship today that, um. Sarah's faithfulness and I thought so many people are being faithful. So, so many people, including in our community, and a , there's a song. I'm not gonna sing it, I don't think, 'cause I've gone way over probably time. We sang it last week at the pray-in at Senator Collins office. We've been singing it in front of the factory and like all the time in different places. It's called "We Rise" by Kacha Levine and your homework is to go and listen to find that. And listen, I'll find a link for it, but it really is the corporate body that is trying to remind us of the world we can build together. They were taking people from us months before ICE came in January and they're still coming, the alerts still keep coming, just maybe less frequent. And I ask for sustenance for all of us for the journey ahead.
Thanks friends.