Among the least of these
In a land not thought of very often
He sits bare-footed and considers
The embers of his morning fire
Then banks them down in ashes.

There is a message in the wind
Which blows through him when he speaks
Of the moment having come
When the son of man sees treasure
In the life of his brothers and sisters,

Sees how much the water means
That flows in their wells, the beans
And squash that grow in their fields,
The vines they keep that entwine
The lives of all around.

I wrote this poem a few years ago after listening to a radio discussion about the second coming of Jesus. It occurred to me that were Jesus to come back, he would more likely do so growing up in a Matamoros colonia such as my son, Tom, and I had visited with a church group a few more years back to help finish building a community center; more likely than him coming from a middle or upper class US suburb.

Before that visit, I’d never understood that there might be something like the Mexican Dream, but there it was. Buy a piece of land. Any will do, almost. The colonia we visited, Derechos Humanos, was stretched along the bank of an open sewer forty or so feet deep. The roads were dirt. Much of the transportation was provided by mule drawn carts. Then build what you can to live there–a shack, a tent, even–and then keep building as you can afford to.

Build the shack in front. Start your house in back. When it has the barest minimum finished space, move in. Then the shack’s space becomes garden and yard and then room for additions. Have you ever noticed how many one story Mexican buildings, houses included, built with cement pillars and the space filled with blocks, have rebar sticking out of the pillars? No one’s explained it to me and I’ve never asked, but I believe that is to make building the second story easier. It’s a very hopeful architecture.

If you drive around Matamoros you can see many colonias built along the same plan that now have substantial communities, many walled in and gated now. I remember from one of my Christian phases the precept that impressed me the most was always to care for the poor–”the least of these.”