holy listening

If I’m a holy anything, I’m a holy listener.

My ears are the most important part of me.

Listening is sacred to me.

When I hear the word ‘immigrant’ I close my eyes and see the face of one of my students, who I wrote about here -

 https://www.scjustice.org/i-send-tomas-to-you/

I look through old Life Magazines and see photographs of people putting on tattered coats, holey shoes, and red scarves; picking up battered suitcases that are taped around the sides to keep in their meager, precious possessions; and leaving the lives they know and love in hope to make a better life free from violence, disease and extreme poverty. 

In the life of my student and his family, in the faces of the people in the pictures, I see human beings. 

I was an immigrant once, you know.

 

I was welcomed into the country of Mali in west Africa, and I was cared for and loved by my friends there. 

I have made a promise to care for and love immigrants around me as my neighbors in Mali cared for and loved me.

I wrote this poem to help us see the human face of immigration, feel the hearts of immigrants, and know ourselves in the lives of the immigrants around us.

Go now in the name of the immigrant, the human being, the holy stranger. 

Go now to make neighbors out of strangers. 

Go now to make friends out of enemies.

Go now with an immigrant heart.

http://www.musepiepress.com/fibreview/issue27/trevor_scott_barton1.html