Don't Call Me a Stranger: The Cry of a Migrant

Don’t call me a stranger:
the language I speak sounds different
but the feelings it expresses are the same.

Don’t call me a stranger:
I need to communicate,
especially when language is not understood.

Don’t call me a stranger:
I need to be together,
especially when loneliness cools my heart.

Don’t call me a stranger:
I need to feel at home,
especially when mine is very far away from yours.

Don’t call me a stranger:
I need a family because mine I’ve
left to work for yours.

Don’t call me a stranger:
the soil we step on is the same
but mine is not ‘the promised land’.

Don’t call me a stranger:
the colour of my passport is different
but the colour of our blood is the same.

Don’t call me a stranger:
I toil and struggle in your land
and the sweat of our brows is the same.

Don’t call me a stranger:
borders, we created them
and the separation that results is the same.

Don’t call me a stranger:
I am just your friend
but you do not know it yet.

Don’t call me a stranger:
we cry for justice and peace in different ways
but our God is the same.

Don’t call me a stranger:
Yes! I am a migrant
but our God is the same.

--National Council of the Churches of India, found at Welcoming the Stranger: praying in solidarity with refugees from around the world, part 2: Lent and Easter, by the Jesuit Refugee Service, https://www.jrsuk.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Lent-Prayers-Pack-JRS-UK-2016.pdf

Maundy Thursday

Kneeling on Boston Common it’s the foot
Naked, resting in my lap with clean towel,
Socks, warm water waiting, that tells me
This is what happens after a cold winter
Of deep snow when you’re homeless in
Dirty socks and cracked shoes that don’t fit:
This foot, bloody, swollen, toes deformed,
I wash gently, first one, then the other, and
Never have I felt so close to Jesus, his feet,
Bare, pierced, bloodied, nailed to the wooden
Cross.

-- Sarah Rossiter, from the Christian Century, April 8, 2011

The Embankment

(The fantasia of a fallen gentleman on a cold, bitter night.)

Once, in finesse of fiddles found I ecstasy,
In the flash of gold heels on the hard pavement.
Now see I
That warmth’s the very stuff of poesy.
Oh, God, make small
The old star-eaten blanket of the sky,
That I may fold it round me and in comfort lie.

-- T. E. Hulme (1883-1917), English Imagist poet