Between Boston and Baghdad

Last week my mind trained on the war in Iraq more than it did on the homeless in Boston. On Friday I left St. Francis House early in the afternoon in order to finish packing for the journey to Washington and the massive antiwar demonstration on the National Mall. The next thirty-six hours were some of the happiest I experienced this year. I yelled myself half-hoarse that warm, sunny Saturday, passing by the halls of power, demanding that God’s will to peace be done. The road trip proved just as enjoyable as the march, as the conversation kept running mile after mile.

Yet even in the midst of the jubilant journey and peaceful procession, I could recall what brought me there. My mind was on the war precisely because of the homeless. With the billions of dollars we have sunk into remaking Iraq in our own image, we could have been investing in urban renewal, including job training and housing development, and counseling services—mental health, legal, and financial—to rebuild the lives of our homeless and the communities in which they wander. Harnessing the talent of our young, strong men and women and the treasure of our most generous fellow citizens, we could have rebuilt New Orleans and all the communities ravaged by Hurricane Katrina and returned hundreds of thousands of displaced brothers and sisters to their rightful homes. Yet what have we done all this time? We have made war, begetting more wars. We have destroyed lives, thereby destroying the better parts of our own lives. We have caused uncounted numbers of Iraqi men, women, and children to flee their cities and towns, with refuge in Europe or the United States their last hope. Homelessness … that is what we have “created” in Iraq.

During the march I wore the rugged metal cross given to all the homeless men and women who attend Common Cathedral, the street church led by Ecclesia Ministries. The word “Ecclesia” is engraved into the curvature of the cross. It reminds me that I am the member of a spiritual assembly whose unity transcends time and space in Christ. How fitting, on that mild winter day in Washington, to bear witness to the worldwide assembly of displaced persons within one of the largest assemblies I’ve joined, itself the product of myriad pilgrimages. All of us felt called to disperse from our particular communities to remember the living and the dead dispersed from theirs. The homeless soldiers, unable to return because of redeployment … the homeless Iraqis, unable to return to their native soil because of mass violence … the homeless in America, unable to return to the places once theirs because of the blind negligence of their brothers and sisters.

This war hurts all the homeless. For every day we let the strife fester, we do violence to the least among us here and abroad, and the vain cause for which we fruitlessly fight undermines the genuinely righteous causes for which we must vigorously fight. And all the while, God watches and hides.