Recommended Reading

Lives of Refugees and Migrants Inspire Hope in Anxious Times

Amid daily headlines announcing economic meltdown, the impulse to cling tightly to what one has is powerful. It is perhaps a counterintuitive message for this particular moment in America, but one San Francisco area nun suggests that the best, most rewarding response we can have to uncertain times is a welcoming, open-hearted posture to foreigners in our communities who have survived far worse than a job layoff—and may have a great deal to teach us about the things in life that truly matter.

As a young Sister of Mercy in 1980, Sr. Marilyn Lacey stumbled, quite by accident, into the world of international refugees and migrants. Since that time, she has served countless refugees and migrants through Catholic Charities in San Jose, Calif., through working in a refugee camp in Southeast Asia, and in her current role as Executive Director of Mercy Beyond Borders, a nonprofit that provides education and seed capital to women and girls in southern Sudan.

Honored in 2001 by His Holiness The Dalai Lama as an “Unsung Hero of Compassion,” Lacey insists that the joy is entirely hers:

“According to an African proverb, a person who sees something good must tell the story. I have seen something good, and friends who know of my experiences with refugees have prodded me for a while now to write a book."

"For years I have dismissed the idea, but the truth is that I am a happy person living what I feel is a fascinating life. Perhaps that’s rare enough in our troubled world to justify this account of the source of my joy, found in the ordinariness of welcoming the strangers in our midst,” writes Lacey in This Flowing Toward Me.

In her first book, Lacey recounts the stories of a remarkable gathering of men, women, and children, and in the spirit of Dead Man Walking, she invites her readers to move beyond the limits of their usual comfort zones to welcome the strangers around them.

John Fensterwald of The San Jose Mercury News wrote, “We’re living at a moment of great anxiety in America, when families are legitimately worried about losing their homes, jobs and retirement funds . . . . Sister Marilyn tells us that in showing compassion to refugees, we learn how blessed we are and how little we need to get by. In America, with the occasional help of strangers, there is the chance to start over.”

Read an excerpt of This Flowing Toward Me here.