People With No Names, The Undocumented: #124

OIL on canvas 11" x 14".  He may look like a young boy, and he is.  But he is the FUTURE and not the PAST.  Nelson Mandella died yesterday...and he was amazing, and great, and a species changer, BECAUSE he chose the FUTURE,  not 'the old way of doing things' and of 'being' in the world.

People With No Names, The Undocumented: #123

These are two 6" x 12" oil on canvas panels side by side.  Depicted are two women waiting to be fed in a deportee dining room run by the Jesuit ministry The Kino Border Initiative. Today, the Advent scripture readings include the story of Jesus feeding the multitudes with seven loaves and a few small fish.  Every single day this miracle of feeding the multitude, with compassion, happens just steps from the walled border between Mexico and the U.S.

People With No Names, The Undocumented: #122

This 11" x 14" oil on canvas portrait is a recently deported Mexican worker.  He is young, best friends with young man in #121, and the two of them will try again and again to get back to the United States to work. They have seen a place where there are jobs, and they want to get back to that place.  E.J. Dionne Jr., an opinion writer for the Washington Post explains:
                           "Pope Francis has surprised the world because he embraces the   
                            Christian calling to destabilize and to challenge. As the first leader
                            of the Catholic Church from the Southern Hemisphere he is
                            especially mindful of the ways in which unregulated capitalism has
                            failed the poor and left them waiting."                     

People With No Names: The Undocumented #121

This 11" x 14" 'portrait' of a deportee in Nogales, Mex.  On this, the first day of Advent 2013 we are admonished to be 'awake' and to 'watch'.  "The night is advanced, the day is at hand".  We still don't know exactly WHEN Jesus is coming again...but we do know that we should 'watch carefully' the events unfolding around us.