THE GOOSE OF OUTRAGEOUS SELF ASSUREDNESS

My favorite video on the internet this week

My best bud

JR. Forasteros

sent me this video on Insta this week, on a post that said “This is the Goose of Outrageous Self Assuredness. Take from her example, her ludicrous and excellent poise in the face of bullying, and be confident in your place, your course, your equal validity.”

I watched this a whole bunch of times and I laughed a lot and also was reminded how many of you here at Imaginary Friends hate geese. Maybe this will soften your collective heart.

Canadian geese, by the way, mate for life, and generally don’t pick a mate until they’re two years old, because they have morals and stuff.

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US Immigration and Christianity

One thing that consistently bothers me is when I see some of my co-religionists talking about immigrants to the US in really gross, weird terms, usually picked up from some extremist politician (I HOPE that’s where they’re picking it up).

What I’m talking about is when people start saying immigrants to the US are all rapists, murderers, dregs of the earth, lazy, and so on (despite, of course, tons and tons of studies that show that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes — especially violent crimes — than natural born citizens¹).

Lately what I’ve been reminding Christians when I hear or see this kind of anti-immigrant rhetoric is this: the majority of immigrants to the US are also Christians.

This makes a lot of sense when you look at the places people are coming from. A lot of immigrants living in the United States came from Latin America, for instance, an heavily Christianized set of cultures. Mexico and central and southern America make up around 60% of the immigrants living in the US.

In fact, globally Christians are the largest population of migrants:

This second study is over a decade old, but it’s very interesting just to see what the breakdown of religious immigrants in the US were at that time (this is mostly focused on legal immigration, but if you read all the way through there’s some extrapolated numbers about unauthorized immigrants as well).

Christians being anti-immigrant is really weird and sad to me, because in the past Christians have been big drivers of positive immigration to the US… in my area, for instance (the northwest), there’s a large population of Russian migrants who came to the US in the late 80s through the 90s, most of them evangelical Russians who were SPONSORED by evangelical churches in the US.

Anyway, that’s not to say that Christians today aren’t doing great and amazing things for and with immigrants (or, ya know, BEING immigrants), but it just makes me sad when I see other Christians sharing weird anti-immigrant rhetoric. I just want them to understand that this is also anti-Christian rhetoric.

There are lots of great Christian ministries and other immigration orgs out there, and I almost don’t want to list any because I know I’ll miss some great ones (and I know I have friends working at some of these, too!). But here are a few if you’re interested in more info or looking for ways to get involved in a positive way:

World Relief
Christians for Social Action
The National Immigration Forum
Evangelical Immigration Table
Interfaith Immigration Coalition
Catholic Charities USA
Global Refuge

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What I’m reading right now

You may have heard of or read the Southern Reach trilogy (ANNIHILATION being the first book) by Jeff Vandermeer. It’s “weird fiction”… a really strange series of stories about an alien invasion (?) in a section of the US coast, and the various people dealing with it.

So what I’m reading now is ABSOLUTION, the fourth book in the trilogy (FINE FINE THE FOURTH BOOK IN THE QUADROLOGY), which takes place before all the other books. Yes, it’s a prequel. I don’t generally love prequels, but honestly Vandermeer is such a great writer and these books are so confusing and strange that I’m enjoying it regardless.

I’ve reread the original trilogy a few times, so I’m really looking forward to seeing where this book takes me. I’m a little creeped out (there’s a “poem” in the original trilogy that I just skip over now… just can’t read it, something’s wrong with it), but having a good time still.

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Most of a picture of Bruce

It’s Fall around here!

Peace to you this week,

Matt

1. I was gonna put links but as a natural born citizen I am a little bit lazy. Go Google it if you don’t already know this.