On turning 70 years old, I celebrate and give thanks to life for all its

given me and for all its taught me. I celebrate and give thanks for its
having taught me that life is about never-ending struggle, and that if I
want to live, I must struggle, and struggle if I want to live.

Oscar with Rev. Linda Jaramillo, Executive

Ministerof Justice and Witness Ministries and a member of theUCC Collegium of
Officers, its official leadership body 

I celebrate and give thanks for having experienced extreme material

poverty and for daring to transcend it without envying or hating anyone.
I celebrate and give thanks for having been exposed to experiencing in
the flesh prejudice, discrimination and racism for being Puerto Rican,
for my dark skin, for my size, for not knowing how to speak English,
and even for speaking broken Spanish, so I could learn a gratifying
lesson that the only race is the human race, and that all of us human
beings are fallible and imperfect.
I celebrate and give thanks for having been exposed to war, so that I
could walk in the shadow of death, feel the death of others as if it were
mine, and without being conscious of it, become a sower of death,
devastation and destruction of a people that could be my own people.
I celebrate and give thanks for having been permitted to survive war
and dare to seek another path, a new way of thinking, and to find
sublime ideals and new goals.
I celebrate and give thanks for being obligated to learn to think
critically, to sub- merge myself in my people to understand that their
marginalization, invisibility and lack of voice were things I also
suffered, and to appreciate and love my identity and not allow those

who hold the reins of power to define me.

I celebrate and give thanks for being offered the opportunity to serve
the most just and noble cause I know the struggle for the
independence and sovereignty of my Homeland and for a better and
more just world.
I celebrate and give thanks for being permitted to serve this cause with
much love and compassion for more than 4 decades. I celebrate and
give thanks for being permitted to survive more than 3 decades in the
gulags without deviating from my chosen path and with my spirit and
will stronger than before going to prison.
I celebrate and give thanks for being a member of a precious and
valiant immediate and extended family, for putting me at the side of
those great human beings who are compaeros/as in the struggle, and
for allowing me to have been born in beautiful Boriken/Puerto Rico
that piece of the planet that has become the garden of Eden of America
and the world.
I celebrate and give thanks because I can still fill my heart with love
and com- passion every day.
Much love to all. In resistance and struggle, Oscar Lpez Rivera