Letter from Jim (Aug. 26)

[smalleagle]

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

I’ve got a day where I can rest. Paul Schroeder and Simon Beckford arrived last night. Lois Martin arrived yesterday from Tucson, Arizona and will walk for a couple of weeks. Tomorrow Mather Miller and her son Patrick will walk, Sandra will also join us.

A joy to be walking in solidarity with undocumented people. It’s meant so much for me: it’s a healing experience. After every five-mile walk I feel so much better. I generally experience an ache in my jaw and in my neck but that usually doesn’t happen while I walk. Six hundred mg of ibuprofen followed by a pain reliever 15 minutes later frees me from the pain.

But it’s always a challenge for me to relate my own pain to that of others. A recent event that occurred at a detention center in Providence gives me ample ground to do just that. A man by the name of Hiu Lui Ng, a 34 year-old Chinese undocumented person died of cancer and those in this privatized detention center, better put a jail, ignored his pain: they felt he was kidding.

A couple of days ago I stood in front of the jail and tried to imagine the pain Mr. Ng experienced. I’m dealing with pain medication and trying to manage my own pain and here was this man hollering and his cries ignored by those who run the jail. It’s difficult for me to imagine the pain he was in. The violence; the lack of sensitivity for a man dying of cancer, it brings chills to my body thinking about it.

I have a caring community looking after me, Bob LaFarge whom I am staying with right now suggested that I put an ice pack to my jaw to deal with swelling and alleviate it. Yet Mr. Ng died without that caring because he was an undocumented person. What kind of a society are we creating?

For years I’ve always believed that it’s important to walk with the crucified of the planet and here in Providence I had a chance to express my solidarity with them in front of the detention center-jail. The Feds have incarcerated close to 700 undocumented people in it: the population has doubled over the last year.

I believe in posibilidad-possibility and it happens on this walk as I get a chance to meet others who decide to join me. It happens with people organizing events, maintaining a website where people can journey with us in spirit.

Sunday, I felt honored to preside over a communion service at a Methodist Church – An Open Table Community in Providence. It was the first time I’d celebrated mass in over 40 years. Something that was a wonderful surprise for me where I was able to talk about the impossible happening in history when Christ walked out of a grave and thus inspiring us to work for nourishing the impossible today: it happens when justice comes to the poor. At times it looks bleak as to how we’re going to create a politic and spirituality that includes the impoverished, the undocumented and that stays clear of building walls and detention centers. But we do what we can, a step at a time, mile at a time reaching out to others and proclaiming a world where everyone has a place.

Later in the day I spoke in Spanish to a Latino Congregation outside in the church parking lot. A joy to say I was with them; a joy to share Good News with them that undocumented people are changing the culture and spirit of our country for the best.

Members of the church intend to meet us in RI as we cross over from MA Thursday afternoon at 3 p.m. Perhaps some press will be there.

- Jim