trash

 So here’s the story as best I remember it from Sunday afternoon of the Tucson festival of books: Luis Alberto Urrea told us about Negra and her daughter Nayeli whom he first met when Negra was seven years old and living in the trash dump in Tijuana, where he was a relief worker, and he became friends with her and has known her ever since but when he went back years later with an NPR radio crew to interview her and her family, they decided to have something special to eat and they had shrimp but this was the first time Negra’s daughter Nayeli had ever had shellfish and she went into anaphylactic shock so they jumped back in the NPR van and drove back into Tijuana in search of a clinic and they came to one. This is her only shot to save her… he was holding her and she was getting cold. She was hardly breathing and they got to the clinic and then went to the door and the doctor came out, put his hand up and halted them: No, Indio, she is Indian, and we won’t treat her here. At this point, Luis learned about the power of the media, he says, even for a small one, a forgotten one, like Nayeli’s daughter, the Indian girl from the dump. The NPR producer had his microphone with him. He pulled it out, put it in the doctor’s face and said, do you mean to tell me and you mean to tell our audience, our large audience in the United States, in Mexico, in Canada, in Latin America, in Europe, and in Spain that you won’t treat this girl because she’s Indian?! Oh you misunderstood me he said, and then he treated her and her life was saved, the little one the forgotten one. I want to remember that story because our Lord was both the little one and the Savior in his own story. Will you look at David who is the shepherd? He was the forgotten one, the kid they always just left out in the field when something important was happening and it was God’s prophet who made sure he was in the picture … so Jesus, from this small little village, on the edge of the empire of the time on the edge of Israel became the savior of his country and of humanity, and he did it not forgetting that he was both lamb and shepherd. When we look at Psalm 23 “the Lord is my shepherd” and then we listen to the gospel, we may want to remember not just the ninth chapter of the gospel of John but the 10th, which is when Jesus says, I am the good shepherd, I know my sheep and my sheep know me …. he know he says as a shepherd, my sheep know my voice. And elsewhere he talks about the shepherd going after the one lost sheep and leaving the 99 behind to search for that lost one sheep… so I tell the story because it relates to our Old Testament lesson and our Psalm and our Gospel reading because we are often in the place of Jesus, of being in God's hands as he works in the world: we are the ones who are called to not forget the little one, to be oh, assistant shepherd, as it were, to go after the last little one, and bring it back to life.

Garbage: at the Tucson festival of books, Sunday afternoon, 5 March 2023, Luis Alberto Urrea told us about this episode in “this American life” — on the experience of people who live in the trash dump in Tijuana. Another episode in this true story is found online at:

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/249/garbage