Immigration journey...

I posted this on Quora but it seemed fitting to post it here. Future posts will add some detail to this series of events. It is enlightening and will shed light onto the current immigration debates taking place in the media.

What has been your most expensive travel mistake and what did you learn from it?

Arthur Ort, 20 years wrestling with religious truth, voracious reader

Updated Wed

The chain of events started when we arrived at the gate in Heathrow after an 8 hour red-eye from Boston in February of 2015.

“Can I see your UK Visa?” we were asked after the customs agent looked at my wife’s Jamaican passport.

“We don’t have one,” I replied.

“I’m afraid I can’t let you in,” was the reply.

Our worst fears were realized.

As a US Passport holder this wasn’t an issue. I was good to go. For my wife, a Jamaican citizen and US Green Card holder, this was not to be. We had the Schengen Visa which had taken us on some late night, rapid fire trips to New York, Washington DC, Cleveland and Chicago to obtain. With the Schengen Visa arriving the Wednesday before our departure, we thought we were finally good to go.

The following night while surfing the Web I found a site that mentioned the need for a UK Visa as the UK is not a part of the Schengen countries.

Curiously, my wife overheard a conversation about the need for a UK Visa as she was filling out papers for the Schengen Visa while we were in Chicago as I drove around the block several dozen times waiting for her. One was not needed was the consensus on the subject.

That was apparently not true. I had a meltdown. We were were flying out early that Saturday.

I called my wife’s sister-in-law who is a British citizen who had worked for Customs twenty plus years ago when she lived there and she said that sometimes the agents have latitude as to who they’ll let in.

With airline tickets, train tickets and a two-week itinerary planned canceling just didn’t seem like an option. With the feeble hope of her words we decided to brave it.

We got through Boston without incident so thought maybe, just maybe, we’d be ok.

At 7 a.m. in the morning (2 a.m. eastern US time) in Customs at Heathrow my wife was denied and escorted away. I went out to face my wife’s sister and her husband and tried to explain what had just unfolded.

Several hours later, a canceled Euro Pass and the purchase of a pair of plane tickets to France (hundreds of dollars on such short notice) our stay was extended.

We were able to experience the vacation of a lifetime through England, Wales, Belgium and northern France with her sister in Bristol and a good friend in Lille, France.

On the last leg of the journey, a p.m. return trip from Charles de Gaulle to Heathrow after our two weeks were up we were met with words that sounded very familiar when we presented our tickets to board:

‘We can’t let you board,” said the gate agent.

Denied again, this time at the gate. The transit visa through Heathrow expired at midnight on the day of travel, not 24 hours upon landing. The flight was held, our luggage removed. Add a hotel room to the bill.

So very grateful for Isabella from Air France who booked the hotel for us and changed our flight times to the next morning or we would have had to book new tickets as well.

After a whirlwind night, an early flight from CDG to Heathrow and a scramble and last minute decision to avoid having to go through security and missing a flight, we ditched our luggage at Heathrow and headed back overseas, elated at being free.

Upon arrival in Boston, we were once again met with words that were becoming hauntingly familiar:

“Please come with us,” my wife was told by two individuals who approached her at the booth where her passport and biometrics were scanned.

I was left dumbfounded. She was, once again, detained. You’d think my wife was a universally wanted criminal.

Hours later we learned that immigration law is different than US law and ‘did the crime, did the time’ does not apply. Petty crimes from thirty years ago in the moral purity of immigration law as it applies to those deemed worthy to be in the US are still relevant today and have the potential to make a green card holder inadmissible and, ultimately, removable.

Four years and thousands of dollars later (and still accumulating) we are still dealing with the trip with an immigration court date looming in January of 2020.

What have we learned? Aside from the particular ‘how not to travel' advice of that trip and more about immigration law than I can ever have imagined, we have felt at a deeper level than the media narrative at least one of the ways in which immigration law is broken.

We met incredible people through this journey, from the initial customs agent to those customs agents at Heathrow we talked with, to Isabella at Air France at CDG, to all the people we met through our doing it wrong travels and through all the people we’ve met navigating immigration law.

Though it is not easy, we have learned to find joy, hope and celebration in the midst of trials.

Systems fail and bad decisions are often made but people remain awesome.

P.S. Our luggage that we assumed was lost forever showed up at Pittsburgh the Tuesday after our return.

Sometimes when you (think you) hit bottom...

The day after my last post, I made a decision to change my mindset. It wasn't instant and it wasn't some pep talk that did it (I'm an INTJ, I'm just not wired that way). But I decided, with a sprinkle of faith, that I would pause before allowing my thoughts to run away with me. That was the decision.

It was conscious and it was intentional and it actually brought me some peace I haven't felt in quite some time.

Without going into the details of my work (which I may, over time, do but that will turn into a book), I walked in to one of our facilities and ran into the one of the ownership's family who I've grown to know a little bit. For some reason she thinks I am positive and always cheerful. I can't say I always feel that way but sometimes God will allow people to see you a certain way.

We talked for a while and ended up on the subject of gratefulness and she proceeded to remind me how fortunate (religious folk would say 'blessed') we are to be employed and employed at a company where management cares about people. And it hit me hard. She wasn't trying to push this on me, it was just conversation, but I was instantly convicted. For all my complaints about work are, in the end, my issue and my attitude, though perhaps not visibly displayed, has been ungrateful.

Later that day, another high ranking management team member gave a leadership presentation at a local community development agency using John Maxwell's 15 Invaluable Law of Growth. Our pastor is a certified Maxwell Life Coach and it's good stuff by my 'self help fatigue' often sets in and I struggle to listen to more of it as after a while it's easy to miss the good stuff in the midst of the sameness of it all.

But today, I was open. I have much respect for him and was excited to hear his presentation. He touched on two of the laws and they too hit hard.

Good management of bad experiences leads to great growth. I have not been managing bad experiences lately and have not been growing. In fact, I have been allowing the pain to control me and dictate my mood, my decisions and my overall well-being.

And like a punch to the gut, gently, was the law of the rubber band. A rubber band only works when it is stretched and it is right at the point of tension where growth, where stretching, occurs. I have not been allowing myself to stretch; I have been an old, worn rubber band ready to break.

And then...as if that wasn't enough.

On Quora, where I frequently find myself lately, I voiced an opinion about a Biblical topic of which I have a surface level understanding and was met with an incredible exposition and, after some banter in the comments section, words of cool refreshment poured straight out of Scripture that reminded me without Him I can do nothing.

It was the coup de grâs, the trifect, the three pointer at the buzzer. It was the Holy Trinity giving me a nudge. 

I am in His embrace even in the midst of my struggles laid out over the past few months and years here and He is letting me know that it's ok and to let go, to surrender. Because when we do, we find Him there and, as Scripture says, His yoke is easy and His burden is light.

Circumstances don't necessarily change; we do and our circumstances look different.

New Directions

Today is Monday, May 20, 2019. I'm taking this blog in a different direction, we'll see where it goes.

As much as I wax philosophical about religion and matters of faith, even life in general, the reality is that we are struggling. Not without hope but struggling. This is the reality that all of us are either facing or running from or some combination of both.

But even though it is rough right now, there is good and we are grateful when we get outside of ourselves and see the sun above the clouds.

And comparatively our struggles pale in comparison to the struggle of others. And this too is a struggle because of our limited view. I struggle because even though my struggle is what we might called a 'privileged struggle' it is still a struggle nonetheless and comparative guilt doesn't help.

So how to get out of the mud? How to reach out and help others? This is the challenge.

I think I have a limited view of helping others. I have a monetary view in mind because our struggles are monetary and we are unable to help others this way without putting ourselves in a bind which will further exacerbate the problem.

So when we have 'gift offerings' at church I feel shame and guilt because I do not feel we can afford it yet there is the warped sense of 'if you do this, God will bless you' as if it is a formula. Yet God also wants us to be responsible, no?

Are we not debtors (our current situation due to some poor choices made a while back) slave to the lender? Should our focus be on responsibly managing what he gives us in the way of finances rather than looking for a 'formula' that equates giving to freedom from debt?

Always questions. I don't think I understand the obsession with finances in the church. And perhaps it is a flaw in me, a sore spot, rubbing salt in the very same wound of the fear I have of everything falling apart.

I put on video exactly what our situation is as a document as we progress. Our house is falling apart, our budget, while we are sustaining, is in a vulnerable even volatile spot, my wife's immigration hearing is on the horizon (which has cost us our tax refunds for the past four years), daughter has a third child on the way in a less than ideal situation, suffering from an impinged shoulder (getting better but still limiting), cars are in need of 'stuff' and in terms of a future we are not well prepared.

So, at 50 years old it feels as if we are starting over and the way my attitude has been lately it appears that 20 years of faith has come up short. And perhaps that's as it should be. Perhaps I have not yet really learned what it means to surrender and I am still self-reliant.

Top 5 (Or More) Before/After Books

The Bible almost goes without saying as the influential book of my life. That being said, below are my Top 5.

• Dao De Jing (Cleary translation; Henricks translation) - this is the one that started it all. I became fascinated with this one when I started seeking. Can't recall when I actually picked this up but pretty sure it was some book of the month club. It seemed 'mystical' and I was already 'facing East' by this time as I had perceived all things Christian as power mongering, manipulative and fearful. God was seen as an abusive task master and the whole 'Jesus saves' thing creeped me out in the worst TBN televangelist stereotyping kind of way. The Cleary version was the version I was reading when I was at a Youth Hostel in Idaho and it all became clear in an instant, just before my peak moment at the top of Yosemite Falls.

• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - this is the book that saved my sanity. I had tried to read it in college because it was one of those books that seems to be a rite of passage. I tried and it didn't sink in. I was more interested in drinking. So while this in some sense pre-dates the Dao De Jing, it was not until years later in the midst of what was becoming a mid-life crisis in my twenties with alcoholism on the doorstep that I picked it up to read it. I literally took two days off of work to finish it. One reading. It didn't fix me; it made me realize that I was not alone.

• Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis - I discovered Henry Corbin through the book Sacred Drift (which enlightened me to the joyous and wild world of ‘heretical’ Islam). This book challenged me and puzzled me and pushed me and frustrated me but it also provided me with an opening to a more ‘mystical’ tradition to be found in Christianity. I always want to see what the author is seeing and without trying to bend it to my beliefs and this book pushed me in ways unfathomable as it introduced an entire universe that was new to me and gave me a 'pro' view of the 'Gnostic' texts of the New Testament. ‘Heretical’? Absolutely. Here was an alternate view to the Incarnation with full embrace of the mystery rather than rejecting it on historical or other grounds. I can’t even begin to tell you how deep this goes. I still revisit this from time to time as I see in Corbin a very 'Eastern' view and have since learned how he was influenced by the Eastern Church, especially Russian authors.

• The Roots Of Christian Mysticism - second only to the Bible in influence, this introduced me to the Church Fathers and literally saved my Christian faith. This book sent me down the path of where I am now and my leanings toward a more 'Eastern' view. Interesting that I was drawn to the Eastern religious traditions yet could never abandon my faith in Christ and here is the meeting of the two. Other than the Bible, this book is the most underlined, rabbit-eared, worn and taped up book I own.

• Mystical Theology Of The Eastern Church - an intellectual sojourn through a tradition foreign to me but one that fit with what I had discovered in reading the Bible. This was a fit; the 'West' view wasn't (and still isn't). It gave concrete language and an intellectual framework around what I had discovered within my own studies and what I found wanting within the ‘western’ tradition in which I was raised.

The books below are up there and a major part of the journey but fell just shy of having the impact the books above have had.

1. The Power of Myth - this one may have been in the mix of the two books noted above, can't recall. This was the book that put words to thinking 'mythically' as the literalism with which I was supposed to take the Bible wasn't happening. At first, 'mythically' meant the whole thing was made up, fiction, a myth. I began the quest into the eastern religions as, it seems, is a rite of passage for many who rebel, drawn to the exotic, the opposite, the mystical flavor of things foreign. I outgrew this when I learned, over time, that he was as fundamentalist as any fundie and I realized he missed an entire tradition within Christianity of the 'charismatic' variety. 
2. Sacred Drift - this one put the 'fun' in fundamentalism as his stories through the world of Islam opened my eyes to the variety contained within it. Anarchy of the religious sort was appealing. Picked this up on a whim at Twice Loved Books in Youngstown. This was my guide of sorts as I began my journey into the world of Islam. It remained a personal favorite until the secrets of the author were revealed via the Web and, true or not, it made me realize that anarchy only goes so far and, taken to its extreme, can be a dangerous weapon that will take us further than we want, or should, go. 
3. Qur'an - Pickthall translation. My intro to Islam which started on the Beliefnet forum. I would eventually 'graduate' to Muhammad Asad's translation which, unfortunately, appears to be wishful thinking from a convert from the West, no matter how educated. This was a seven year journey that would take me to and through 9/11.
4. Theology and the Church - the latest addition. Adding intellectual depth to the Trinity.
5. Christ In Eastern Christian Thought - the latest addition to the book and an entirely new path. I had no idea how deep and how long debates about Who Christ is went on and it through this I've gone much deeper into the Eastern Orthodox tradition and it has brought a bright light into my search.