Refugee Hope

 I eat lunch with a group of refugees every week. I drive home elated, saddened and burdened. These are brave men facing difficult circumstances. Coming alongside, I feel inadequate.

I can’t know this; what it’s like to be alone in a place, not knowing the language or the cultural norms. Falling with no safe-place to land.  To be a professor in Venezuela but a nobody here. He formulates a plan. He knows somebody who sells him an old car for a couple thousand dollars. Been carrying his life with him in a back-pack, through-country. His identification, registrations, originals of his doctorates and degrees, his whole life. Driving back to his apartment he stops inside a gas station. Leaving backpack—and keys—inside the car. Perfect target in a big city.

There are worse things stolen than cars. Dark stories abound, as if you’d want to dwell on these. One of the men, Henry, having flown from the middle east was put into a hospital for some serious surgery. In the process, without consent they removed one of his testicles. Smaller infractions occur in living situations; with management companies randomly trying to raise rent-rates and evict tenants unfamiliar with the law. So much treading of water that it’s a delight when somebody splashes up onto land!

The agencies working with this population generally come alongside to transition the refugee to life in Dallas. They provide them with housing, bed, kitchen, healthcare and a case-worker to help them navigate. Most are efficient as any big government agency like the post office or DMV. So when we found our Rodger hadn’t had a bed for two months it was a thrill to see individuals team together to find a bed (and a microwave), rent a truck and deliver them. Beyond the basics; Rodger has been able to obtain his permits and drivers’ licenses and to obtain numerous jobs; Uber eats, doing clean-up at a local hospital, then leaving that to clean carpets for a local company. The refugees themselves keep looking forward to these successes seemingly not paralyzed by the failures. Resilient human hope keeps them going, helps them move forward.

Some amazing stories are shared over pizza. Heartbreaking losses too. On a macro scale the odds look overwhelming; from fleeing home to flying here. If there’s a secret to their perseverance it is this. Hope lives in each small moment. Woven through each shared meal, the laughter and the bread are life-giving.

Photo by Alan Hardman on Unsplash

Lessons I Learned From The Immigrants

And if I sing let me sing for the joy 

That has born in me these songs

And if I weep let it be as a man

Who is longing for his home.

I spent my childhood in the company of immigrants and refugees. Dichondra and Bermuda, chlorine in pools; the neighborhood. Settled in. Life in the San Fernando valley. Yet our parents still smelled the salt water. Our parents; family names like Mitrevics, Oeffinger, Cardella and Fusillo. Fleering other lives to live this one; leaving pogroms, property and riches for the new world.

We observed like kids do. I told my close friend I could barely understand his mom because her accent was so thick. “What about your mom’s accent,” he asked with emphasis. I assured him that my mother had no accent. He swore his didn’t either. 

The accents are an echo of a land no longer lived in. A home that day to day life keeps at bay. Comfortable at get-togethers. Almost home again. Laughing in native tongue, breaking traditional breads; pirogi and Rupjmaize (dark rye). At times; quiet, lonely times, the pain is palpable. James A. Smith gives this example of what it feels like to be an immigrant, “You lose something of your upright bearing if you no longer have the soil of your own land beneath your feet; you feel less confident, more distrustful of yourself.” What’s my takeaway as the child of an immigrant?

Freedom is a painful process. Hardship is part of the process. Moving forward (a myriad of meanings) entails going from the comfortable known to the questionable unknown. Always trading something; cigarettes and soap buy the next border crossing. The journey isn’t about escaping pain. It’s about grasping freedom—inching forward in small increments toward greater fullness. 

There will always be a transient tension; the homeland behind you, hunger for all that ‘home’ implies ahead of you. Home is comfort not permanence. Being home is having a sense of ‘place.’ In a broader sense just as Jesus had no place to lay his head, he was able to find sleep wherever he laid his head.

Be hospitable to strangers. As God reminds us in the first testament, “Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.” By culture, compassion or both the mothers in the neighborhood were mom to their own children and their friends. They, my own mom included, often took in the outcast as well. As the sojourner is blessed he blesses others.

By faith Abraham lived as an alien in the land of promise, a seed of blessing to many. Freedom, tension, movement and pain are part and parcel of the process. This is the transient tension, setting out then settling down. Losing self, finding self, giving. Such are the lessons learned from the immigrants.

Photo by Alexandra Kikot on Unsplash