Migrating toward Spiritual Dignity.
My dad returned from Greece yesterday - not even a potent potion of Parkinson’s, Spinal Stenosis, Chronic Bursitis, and Dupuytren's Syndrome could keep him away from the spell of celebrating with his patriots in the village, from coming home to the (h)earth of his birth and the integrity of his name.
That name carries with it the labor of migrating at fourteen: dirt-poor, uneducated, never having seen a city, leaving his family to rise out of the poverty and fear of a post-war communist agenda that sought to strip people of faith itself. With it, he carried an unsettling mix of homemade spanakopita and spirited community alongside memories of severed heads on stakes — of neighbors disappeared, of a world that demanded blind allegiance or death of body and soul.
In the past few years, a wheelchair at the airport signaled coming or going home - a well-earned seat in Polaris and a filet mignon that I could cut with a fork. But this was the first time my dad needed to be transported beyond the threshold of Uber drivers, buses, and taxis. It signaled decline and discomfort.
This was no filet mignon … this was Spam!
That’s what we ate when my dad’s partners betrayed him — he worked harder and brought home less. Not that I complained, because Spam was delicious with scrambled eggs!
But their gain robbed him of the dignity (worth) of his work and the justice of rest and renewal. He worked 14 hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week, to restore what was taken with so little thought and effort.
Still, there is an eternal spirit in his heart that forgives, and a fierce resilience that continues to persevere in honor of being chosen to travel so far away from home:
That something was left behind, and something carried forward, brings purpose to all we do.
The rest is the classic immigrant story - joyful and painful, rooted and unrooted, coming and going, present and vanishing, seen and unseen - like the Bruno Cataland sculpture above.
For every immigrant, there is loss, suffering, and displacement - the inescapeable human condition being uprooted and fragmented by circumstances beyond their control, in constant transition due to migration and life changes — the way the migratory patterns of birds, butterflies, and billionaires are affected by shifts in the (physical, spiritual, and fiscal) environment; these circumstances call upon skills and attitudes of flexibility and adaptability.
That doesn’t mean that a Monarch Butterfly stops being a Monarch, only that it has adapted to the changes in the pathways that have united with other butterflies.
Under the best circumstances, immigration is an opportunity for mutual growth, the simultaneous departure and arrival of the human spirit. And, how that spirit is treated - how it is perceived and received (you remember the story of filoxenia) - will determine the quality of what is returned.
Immigrants are not criminals or lazy. They are the lifeblood of labor, the courage of nations, the reminder of our own families who once crossed oceans with little more than faith in tomorrow. Criminals, rather, are those who betray dignity, who weaponize ideologies that divide and devour the human spirit.
Which brings us here, on Labor Day, to this truth Dostoevsky gives us to hold close:
“Equality is to be found only in the spiritual dignity of man, and that will only be understood among us.”
Labor is not only about wages and rest, but about the recognition of spiritual dignity - that in every person, beyond class, color, or country, there is an immeasurable worth. This is the equality worth celebrating, protecting, and passing on.
✌🏻