Happy Thanksgiving!
As we wind down the office for the Thanksgiving break, I have much to be thankful for here at the Immigration Center.
Over the last year, the Center has grown in leaps and bounds. We’ve hosted authors and musicians; we’ve helped dozens of people apply for U.S. and Irish citizenship; we helped raise money for the Commodore Barry Club; we even survived our first gala.
And I owe all of this to you and the incredible support you’ve given me over the past year.
So thank you everyone! I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday.
And in the spirit of thankfulness, I wanted to share the beautiful prayer Fr. Mac wrote for Anne O’Callaghan at our recent gala. Many people in our community will be unable to spend Thanksgiving with their families – this poem is also for them.
The undocumented the uninsured the un-franchised
(neither Democrat nor Republican)
Unnoticed unless we bother to look
Seasonal workers straw hats bobbing in the fields
on our way to the ocean
or with baseball caps and bicycles
quietly and early off to work
cleaning the restaurants and hotels that host us
We see them at “servicios” storefront money wiring agencies
sending their few new dollars home to their distant family
Refugees and immigrants fleeing from God knows what
to God knows where - well, here!
Women learning English at welcoming centers.
Babies in arms or at home with others
working a different shift
More recently living in fear of the authorities
the police Homeland Security
El Salvadorans (and Irish of course)
Eastern Europeans Liberians Ethiopians
Haitians and Cambodians
Fleeing tsunamis earthquakes or hunger or oppression
Mercy Lord have mercy
Thank you for Anne and her workers
and her Welcoming Center
She helps us with a hospitality required of us all
by way of nothing more than sisterhood and brotherhood
And who is my neighbor?
A wounded healer herself knowing the perils of migration
Bless all the peoples of these historic migrations
these wanderers give them Good Samaritans
Which is to say make all of us welcoming
Bless Anne Bless her workers
Bless the food we share
May we share food and more with those
who have so much less
Amen! Amen!
John P. McNamee
