When Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration Eileen McKenzie was a little girl, she recalled her dad quoting a line from Robert Frost’s poem Mending Wall: “Good fences make good neighbors.” Sister Eileen now lives and works at the U.S.-Mexico border in Nogales, Arizona, where she has come to see fences and walls in a much different light.
In her recent blog post on Messy Jesus Business, “Good Fences Make Good Neighbors?”, she reflects on her experience at the Border and the reality of the wall that separates communities. During a visit to the Customs and Border Patrol central office in Nogales, she notices that officers refer to the structure as a “fence,” but to Sister Eileen, it feels nothing like the simple, friendly fences she once imagined.