Rosa Gutierrez Lopez is spending her second Christmas at the Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church.
Next to Rock Creek in Bethesda sits a six-acre church campus shrouded by old cedar trees. For a year and two weeks, this has been Rosa Gutierrez Lopez’s home, sanctuary and site of confinement. This year, for the second time, it is where she will spend Christmas.to seek protection from deportation at a house of worship — one of the “sensitive location” categories where Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are discouraged from conducting enforcement activities.
Meanwhile, the church’s 1,000 or so members have learned to practice what the Rev. Abhi Janamanchi, the senior minister, calls “the fragile art of hospitality.” More than 200 volunteers, from Cedar Lane and 26 other D.C.-area congregations, help facilitate the day-to-day lives and logistics of Gutierrez Lopez and her family.“It has been an adjustment — both for Rosa and for the community,” Janamanchi said. “We can talk about these issues, intellectualize, but to see, actually see . . .
When the children are at school, Gutierrez Lopez busies herself with yoga, classes, and meetings with activists and lawyers.when a volunteer pointed out that she had not been in a car for several months, Gutierrez Lopez suggested a joyride — up and down the church’s parking lot.“At the end of the day, this is still confinement, and she knows that more than anyone,” Janamanchi said. “But somehow, she manages to find these real moments of joy.
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