The Immigrant is my Brother

The Immigrant is my Brother

“You must not mistreat or oppress foreigners in any way. Remember, you yourselves were once foreigners in the land of Egypt.” Exodus 22:21

The immigrant is my brother, the foreigner is my son,
the stranger is my sister, the refugee is my daughter.
I will be their asylum, I will be their sanctuary. I was
a stranger once and I needed refuge. I was
seeking sustenance once when few listened,
looking for a place to take me in as a friend.

There were troubadours among them, songsters who
sang stories of long treks to freedom. They played with
sorrowful hope, they sang with joy like jesters,
they invited us jokers to learn their tunes. The chords
were native to their lands, their music helped them cope
with vacillating orders from an empire that closed their ears
and chanted words of arrestment to the ones who spoke with
open throats about their dreams.

They fired up their grills and cooked for the neighborhood.
Everyone was welcome, everyone had a chair. Their children
played
like children play all over the world. Language separated us some,
but not enough to keep us away. The day was warm enough
for water balloons and beer. The sun showed up and embraced
our outdoor cantina while we laughed at the toddlers trying
somersaults on the lawn.

I would be a clown for them, I would make them smile,
I would tell the ancient stories of slaves who found a way
to leave the oppressive state. I would tell them God is
on their side,
the persecuted are always the passion of the Divine. Children
always know what love looks like and they teach it to us
if only we will listen. If only we will observe them.

The undocumented is my neighbor and today we shared
a moment outside the lines of judgment and strict legislation.
The undocumented is my friend and today we learned
there are far less differences than people create. The
undocumented is the man who fed my dog today and
I was the one who tickled his child and ran with him across the lawn.

Their Faces

Their Faces

(“Do not mistreat or oppress aliens, orphans, or widows…” Jeremiah 22:3b)

Have you seen their faces?
Or do you merely repeat the phrases you’ve read
that crawl across your screen?
Have you seen the shredded clothing hanging
from razor wire
in the river?
Have you listened to the babies cry,
do you understand the language that
drives the numbers through drought and desert
just to live without dying?

She wasn’t yet fifteen years old
and knew the streets far too well.
She was marked for resale,
she was a loss leader priced by
a shadow manager
and paraded at night on concrete.
She still had friends, high school girls
still wishing for prom. They knew her face
better
than the bargain hunters who bought her,
than the wheeler dealers who sold her.
They found her, midnight blue, hiding under
a dark gray hoodie. They invited her, childhood friend,
to a house with husband and wife, and two wide-eyed
preschool brothers. It was

Impossible.

Until someone dropped off a mattress,
another shopped for new clothes. A judge gave
emergency custody to a family that had no idea
what they were doing. But they did it, and so did
dozens of benefactors who surrounded that home
that housed a teenage prostitute for a fortnight.
Fourteen days, phone calls every hour, a family
one hundred
miles away took her in. She was no longer an
emergency, no longer a hidden face at night.

Have you listened to the babies who
have no voice but
your own? Have you touched the mud stretched faces
of crackling tears? Have you believed that, though you
are only one,
and they may be a thousand,
that fish and loaves can still be multiplied.
Can you open your hands to touch the faces that once
were only phrases on the news?