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To All People of Good Will who read this blog from time to time:

Sr. Phylis speaking at a town hall meeting

The end of the year approaches, and with the Grace of God, we will mark another moment along our way.

This weekend offers us all some time to review last year’s list of resolutions, and see where in this new year we might act more kindly, walk more humbly, and feel more compassionately (speaking for myself!).

We might get a chance to offer a heart-felt prayer for peace, for a time for the beauty that beckons us all to have its moment with us, and bless us.

And, if we are of a generous heart, we might, too, take a moment to break out the checkbook to offer a tax-deductible contribution to a worthy cause.

As for the cause, I offer you Proyecto Juan Diego, a 501 (c) 3 charity, is a community-based program that has done phenomenal work in my old neighborhood of Cameron Park. Proyecto Juan Diego is directed by Sr. Phylis Peters, a Daughter of Charity who brings her own generosity, compassion, and, so very welcomed as well, a stubborn, hard-headed conviction that things can be better, and, by God (yes indeed) they will be.

Proyecto Juan Diego’s programs are too many to mention, other than that they serve the poorest people in the nation. They  work, comprehensively,  with youth, the elderly, those who are sick, and those who are ready to bring some change to their community.

Your donation will yield many times its value, I assure you.

You can read about them here: http://proyectojuandiegoinc.blogspot.com/ and there is a place there in which you can contribute online.

Or you could write them at this address:

Sr. Phylis Peters, DC

2216 Eduardo Ave.

 Brownsville, Texas 78526

(956) 542-2488

(956) 542- 2334

Cheers!  And Happy New Year!!

Child Abuse

I sat across from him, a boy who would turn eighteen years old in a couple of weeks. He looked into my eyes for a few moments, sizing me up. Then, looking down at his hands, he started speaking in a quiet voice.

He was telling me about his life. A Central American who, at twelve or thirteen years of age, he had escaped his particular experiences of violence by heading for the United States.  The details were excruciating. His matter of fact tone was disturbing. It was as if, for all of his life, all he knew was pain and, for all of the rest of his life, that was what he expected.

“My stepmother once told me that she was going to teach me how to make tortillas. So she took my hands and pressed them on the comal (a grill). The pain made me faint…and then she did it again. Another time, when my stepmother was angry at me, she stripped my clothes off of me held me in a tina (a washtub) that she had filled with cold water—she had had someone bring her some ice from the cantina and had put that in the water, and then, after I was shaking, she pulled me out and she beat me on my back with a leather strapped that she had soaked in the same water. I was only five or six years old.”

He told me this the very first time that we met.

When we talked, the child about to become a man was detained with other minors who had been caught by the border patrol. In a week, when he turned 18, he could be detained with adults, many of them with violent criminal pasts. He was nervous about being caged with violent men.

Those in charge of his case knew his story, and seemed indifferent. Appeals to their common sense were ignored. When he woke up on the morning of his 18th birthday, he was indeed picked up by border patrol agents who then jailed him in a section of the adult detention center designed to hold the most violent of the prisoners.

I remember my 18th birthday being one of the special ones in my life, a pause in time to note that I was indeed, growing up.

I was not, on my 18th birthday, taken away by armed men and put into a room with violent (and much older) men.

The usual response I have heard to these sorts of stories is something along the lines of an exasperated “We can’t be expected to take care of the entire world!”  I think  that I understand that sentiment. But this child is not in his country, he is in ours. He is right here, in our midst, and has been placed in a horrible situation. He is one amongst many, and his story is by far not the worst one. But his story is now mine, as well and I find that unsettling.  

I plan to meet with this child again, this time at that prison, in the adult visiting area. He may well ask me why he is being held in this place. I may well have to explain to him that he is there because we are afraid of him. He who is now afraid of us.