Brian on 6th street bridge
dividing South from North
My friend Brian and I ended April with our 5.2 mile pilgrimage from the office of the Archbishop to the office of the President of Marquette. We called it the Works of Mercy over the Works of War walk. We were asking the Archbishop to do the works of mercy with 1.1 million dollars in church funds resulting from sale of properties in Milwaukee poorest and most segregated area of the City, North Central Milwaukee. On the other end we delivered a letter asking the President of Marquette to Stop Teaching War and Killing on campus at Marquette.
At the Archbishop’s office we could only leave the letter with receptionist. At the entrance administration office at Marquette, Brian, who is not banned as I, ran into security guards and an aide to President who took letter. There was no media and we maybe we did not accomplished much. But we did what we thought should be done and felt satisfied.
At this morning faith sharing session the question was “What can be done?” It was a question from life of Dorothy Day who enjoyed reading the Great Russian authors who asked this question in their novels. We really did not have any answers but we all agreed that we need to follow our conscience as best we can. Dorothy Day’s answer to this question was to do the “Works of Mercy” and resist the “Works of War.”
Talking about what in conscience we believe and still not doing it sometimes can be too much even for friends. I was talking this morning to a friend I greatly admired about the three recent police shooting of persons with mental illnesses. She seemed to be defending the police so, as like a kid, I started to take the viewpoint of the ill person and their family and friends. She did not want to hear this and so dismissed my comments and we went on. Something similar happened at the end of faith sharing today when someone asked me about the 1.1 million we are trying to get to serve the poor. One member of our group said we should not be talking about this anymore. So again I stopped.
However, today when we were taking a position with our walk there was no need to talk about what we were doing. We both knew the statements we were making by our walk from Archbishop’s office to the office of the President of the University and there was no need to talk about it. Instead we had a nice walk through an area of the city my friend was familiar with and I was not. I got to know where the record shops, bars and comic book stores were and was not in this historical part of town, Bay View and Near South Side area.
Tomorrow is the May 1st Immigration Walk in Milwaukee which calls for fair and just immigration reform. It will be much larger than our two person walk but will it have more results, outside of news coverage. Maybe so, but for me the pilgrimage of the Works of Mercy over the Works of War was enough walking for the week
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