(#14/52) Juana Tobar Ortega Has Been in Sanctuary for 1 Year
Today Juana Tobar Ortega has been living in sanctuary for 1 year.
The church and friends of Juana and her family gathered to make recommitments to Juana at this, the start of what could be another year — to continue to protect her, house her, support her. To continue to be her neighbors. To continue to be her friends. “Juana, our friend,” they said.
After a year, the church is her home. When the congregation visits her, they enter her space and no longer the other way around.
What does sanctuary really mean? We see a little more clearly after a year. The priest of St Barnabas talks about the Celtic concept of “thin places.” Whatever distance existed between St Barnabas, a North Carolinian Episcopal church, and the Spanish-speaking charismatic Pentecostal Church where Juana worships has shrunken to the space of a meal and a mutual friend. Whatever distance existed between the US and Guatemala has thinned down to the space of a family and a church, a grandmother and her friends.
Sanctuary loosens the languages we know, removes the walls and rebuilds something completely new, uncharted and unlimited. But what we truly want for Juana, her family, and this new, recreated community, is what lies beyond the walls of this moment. Then, who and where will we be? That remains to be seen.
As filmmakers, we’ve watched Juana and her family go through this for the year, as we’ve worked on this film. While it’s continually difficult for them to be apart — with her husband and younger children living at home without her — they are also grateful that they’re still able to see each other once a week rather than years apart in the scenario where she would return to Guatemala, a country she has not lived in for 25 years.
#JuanaShouldStay because this is her home.
