The headline sends a shiver up my spine. My shoulders grow heavy with grief. The leaders of our nation have closed the doors, again, to our brothers and my sisters whose homes have already been stolen from them, by the hands of war.
I think of our Syrian friends from Lancaster. I think of the women who have made the sisterhood soaps I bathe with. I think of my cousin who sees daily the trauma in the faces of the displaced people she works with. I think of Million, the man my parents shared our home with for a year, when he came in the 80’s, fleeing civil war in Ethiopia. These are not numbers. These are mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers in distant lands, who have had to flea for their lives. Never has our world held more displaced people than it does today.
And our land of the free, this home of milk and honey, who once welcomed 95,000 refugees to its shores each year, has all but shut the door on the world’s most vulnerable. We’ve locked up children in private prisons to pack the pockets of the rich. We’ve closed the door on asylum-seekers, fleeing violence. The island peoples, whose homes have been washed away, are not allowed to work here. And the refugees are all but banned.
Lady Liberty bows her head in sorrow, in shame.
It is hard to know what to do in these troubled times. On days like this, everything seems so meaningless. Laundry. Football games. Rehearsal. The temptation to despair raises the red flag.
Today is an invitation to prayer. To lighting a candle. To sitting in stillness. To inviting the pain, allowing the tears, to holding the heaviness in my heart. I cannot shoulder it. The only place strong enough to hold this grief is the heart. And so I stay. I stay long enough until my guilt transforms to compassion, breathed out as prayers for those most vulnerable. And then I ask, “what is mine to do, today?”
Today, I will write. I will raise my voice about the injustices of our nation. I will speak on behalf of the refugee, the immigrant, the earth. I will invite my friends and families into spaces where they can hear the stories and make friends with “the other.” I will listen to the stories of the immigrant students I work with. I will not shrink back when they cry, reliving the trauma of the earthquake, of their move to the US, of the loneliness and the struggle. I will continue listening, continue telling stories, and continue praying,
“Oh God, what is mine to do, today?”
- To learn more about the refugee crisis and donate to resettlement and aid, visit: CWS.org
- To meet a refugee family resettled in the U.S. and participate in a cross-cultural experience in Lancaster, PA, visit: Bridge: Global Experienced Local
- To support the rebuilding of war-torn places like Syria, so refugee families can return home, visit: Preemptive Love
