Swine Flu, Strangers and Neighbors

Ah-choo!
God bless me! Don't let me get what you got!
Please God, save me from the Swine Flu!
We should close the borders!
Pigs are filthy. People who consort with pigs are worse.
God bless us!
God bless the US.

I have heard some of the most scandalous xenophobic claims in the wake of our mild pandemic. And I don't even watch Dobbs, Hannity or Limbaugh.

We are our sisters' keepers.
We are our brothers' keepers.
We are called to love our neighbors and yes, even complete strangers, as much as we love ourselves. Whatever we do (or fail to do) to and for those whom we deem completely undesirable and unwelcome we do to God-In-Human-Flesh.

Mexicans and other Latin Americans are indigenous to this continent.
The overwhelming majority of so-called Americans are immigrants and in some cases, abductees. The founding of the United States of America is an exercise in illegal immigration and attempted genocide.

The small Mexican town in which the 2009 H1N1 virus is believed to have originated is also home to a US pork production farm. There may be a connection, there may not. But the peoples of the US and Mexico are intertwined on both sides of the border.
Our economies - legal and illegal - are conjoined.
Our crime victims are linked by American guns and ammunition.

We should pray for all of the peoples on the American double continent, including and especially Mexico:
I pray for the Mexican people who are dependent on tourism and have barely recovered from the previous years' hurricanes. I pray for the people in Mexico who are being decimated by violence funded by American drug users and their Mexican suppliers. I pray for Mexican and other Latin@ immigrants who are subject to abuse, violence and even death in the US for working to support themselves and their families. And I pray for Americans of all ethnicities who scapegoat other people.

May we remember that we are all, collectively the image of God who became the womb-fruit of a human woman, to be more like us that we might be more like God.