Every Friday a pocket of us gather in front of 26 Federal Plaza. We use silence to be heard as we walk around the building for about an hour and a half. Dressed up on our clerical garb and our stoles on our shoulders. A parade of crazies for many as I see the startled looks of countless of others. Every time we go by the front, we break our silence as we raise our hands toward the building and send our prayers as arrows to pierce the walls of injustice in front of us and make a dent in the hearts of those who work in the machinery of death that destroys our families and orphans thousands upon thousands of children. Today, as I walked for the fourth time, an unknown woman stood besides me. There was a well known anguish in her sobs. She stood there, shaking besides me and praying out loud: "Yes God, yes. Listen to our prayers. Change those hearts of stone" I still hear her sobbing. That and that of countless still haunts me. A sobbing that has not been answered by this administration that is bent in destroying our families and communities. Over two million deported and counting.
I have been organizing, educating, protesting, and working with immigrant communities in various capacities for the last twenty years. What I have learned and what the stranger has taught me is priceless and I cannot begin to describe it in words. Suffice to say that I have found my salvation in welcoming and embracing the other as they remind me of how I am embraced. Allow me to expand and tell myself in a story. I was the vicar priest in St. Theresa's Parish back in the days and had the mid-night mass. After the celebration when everybody of the community went home to wait for Santa, I made my way to the diner. As I came in to drink a cup of chocolate and sat on the booth, I saw a young mother with her child on her arms. The child, about two years old, was playing with the scarf of the mother, who was making an effort to put him to sleep--mind you, it was 2am! At that moment, the front door opened, and an old, wrinkled man came in. All of us physically moved away from him, as a wave of a foul smell slapped us on our faces. As we were retrieving, I saw the man in rags, and his toes showing from the opening of his shoes, wearing a smile that gave way to an empty hole in his mouth, were the front teeth were missing. He approached the counter, drawing his body close to the young mother and the child. Next thing I saw was the child jumping from the arms of the mother onto the empty arms of the stranger. The mother, and all of us, had a look of fear on her face. The old man picked the child and gave him a peck on his forehead and handed him back to his mother saying: this is the best Christmas gift I have ever been given and then he left.
Who are you in the story anyway? Most of us have the tendency, at least I do, of thinking of ourselves as the little baby. Let me suggest that we are more like the one who stinks and whose lives are falling apart in the seams and find ourselves begging. The one who jumps onto our empty arms is the stranger who saves us from ourselves.
Who is saving you?
The answer came to me this morning as I stood with arms outstretched in front of the building, as I walked in silenced and heard the sobs of an unknown mother, that woman next to me, longing for her missing children.
