From the beginning of his reflection, Bp. Whalon exposed the problem. He wrote, "As hundreds of migrants continue to drown in the Mediterranean, European leaders wring their hands and plan to 'do something.'" People like to make plans. When a person is a refugee, they don't really have plans or the means to follow through on plans that they may be given. Being a refugee is a status that no one wants and far too many people have. While teaching refugees, I sought out their understanding of where they were after being being separated so quickly from their native countries and families. Interestingly enough, none of my students understood themselves to be foreign or strange to where they were. They became a part of where they had been placed by whatever agency had moved them. I had also just moved and didn't find myself to be a stranger where I had moved since I stayed within the United States. To the others, we were strange indeed. I found myself, without planning, identifying more with the Muslim refugees than with the American Christians around us. The difference was not necessarily being the stranger; rather, we didn't have everything planned out. Thank God!
Unfortunately, the local community that we had moved to did have it planned out. They liked things the way that it used to be. They were very busy trying to teach us how to live in this new place as though we had never seen snow, experienced a community of people before, or knew how to live at all. We had, apparently, moved because we were either criminal or had an ulterior motive to seek out something we hadn't deserved. We were certainly not a part of the way it used to be and that upset every strategically placed apple cart there was when entering into the new community as an equal. Refugees and migrant people tend to move because of the way it used to be. The good ole' days that were being referred to hadn't happened for those who were the strangers.
I disagree with Bp. Whalon's statement, "We are on a journey, pilgrims, wayfarers, and when we arrive, we will recognize our destination." Yes, dear Bishop. We are on a journey. We are pilgrims and wayfarers. We even attempt to keep from piracy; however, we don't ever really reach our destination. Once we arrive, the journey has ended. I believe that we are called to be wayfarers on our journeys without a specific destination. I believe so because I want to be of earthly good. I am not someone who is heavenly-minded, probably even to a fault. I like multi-purposed practicality.
Our faith calls us to welcome the stranger. When we do that, it is important to realize that some people don't want to be welcomed. I greeted my new neighbor when she moved in. She found it to be intrusive. She took it as a contest. She decided that I needed to be as she wanted because she didn't know me. I do agree with Bp. Whalon that the home grown threat is greater than that which we understand to be the stranger. She claims to be a townie. A townie who has now tried to run me over with her car because she has decided to teach me how to live my life. She's close to half my age, I have nearly completed two graduate degrees, I chose to welcome her at the beginning, and she has tried to control the whole environment since she showed up. Yet, we are countrymen, apparently. Unfortunately, she found what we had in common was a threat more than community. She is planned.
Economically, welcoming the stranger has been a good experience in my life. I have been able to learn and grow a garden which was a beta prototype for mission urban farming in my future life. The community taught me to do what I couldn't find in a text or on Youtube. They gave to me what I didn't have to be able to build and thrive as we both welcomed the stranger. In order to welcome the stranger, people have to actually trust what is new. People who live out of their woundedness tend not to welcome new people as they have been harmed. The unknown equaled lazy to some people. Economically and socially, I have been blessed by those around me whom have wanted to share without needing to probe for motive. Actual hospitality doesn't seek a motive. It cares for the human being through dignity. It doesn't even need to probe for poverty or wealth.
Sharing doesn't even require trust. Sharing requires inclusion and a lack of dependency on material wealth. Those whom need a caste system to live and promote their own greed, vanity, and fill a Godless voice within them can't share. Welcoming the stranger doesn't require a specific protocol unless a title is necessary to people. False piety requires more pomp and circumstance than anything else. Trying to cover up the insecurities that we all face in our daily lives show that we are in need of being welcoming.
As I tear the garden I built apart, I have thought about the strangers whom I have welcomed in the past several months. The problem we face in our faith and in our communities is that we welcome the stranger and even give gifts at the beginning. At some point, giving me an object doesn't mean that I need to change my life to be what you want it to be. If welcoming someone means that the person has to change to be someone else's expectation, it because it is inhospitable. To give me something to build so my basic needs and the needs of others are fulfilled, but to look the other way when violence it taking place is unconscionable. To only plan is neglect. To turn away from the outcry of real problems is merciless. To hand me a trinket and not care about my humanity or to hold presumed protocol above human life denigrates every person living on the planet.
Presumption changes whether or not a person is welcomed in the long run. If I am new and the result is that I owe my life story to a group of people, then it is because they presume that they know better than I about how to live my life. My neighbor probably thinks that I owe her now. Because she was welcomed, she thinks she owns life. Bp. Whalon also wrote, "And good manners require not only these, but also to do everything in such a way the person does not feel ashamed to be so needy." St. Vincent de Paul had the same point of view. He said that people needed to love the needy so much that the didn't resent them for their help. The neighbor resents me for including her as an equal and for understanding her as an adult from the second I met her. Why? I am beneath her in her estimation.
Children, whom haven't been taught to share, need everything their way. Adults whom try to train other adults to be their definition of what this are still frightened of the stranger. If I had to choose, the better way to love people as we are called to do is to care less about whether or not the person has good manners and more about whether or not the person is cared for. If the person is rude, but is starving. Cure the hunger. Rudeness normally subsides. Beyond the golden rule in Bp. Whalon's document is an ethical call for human dignity.
Whalon's reflection brought this to my mind from Eucharistic Prayer C in the Book of Common Prayer:
At your command all things came to be: the vast expanse of
interstellar space, galaxies, suns, planets in their courses,
and this fragile earth, our island home.
By your will they were created and have their being.
Some people don't seem to understand that they have not created the world. Most refugees know that they did not create the universe and cling to their faith. My faith compels me to consider when I think of welcoming the stranger with God's help. It causes me to reflect and question:
Who made me as I was knit together in my mother's womb?
