The Oasis

The Oasis is a church for refugees that was started by Mennonite missionaries, many of whom also volunteer in the camp. Getting to know the Mennonites has been a real privilege. The woman all wear head coverings and skirts, which can seem a bit alien to someone who’s unfamiliar with Mennonite culture, but they are all very down to earth and gregarious, and they have an incredible work ethic. Several of the guys have a background in construction, which has proved to be a huge asset in the camp. They welded two BBQ grills last week, and this week they started working on an outdoor kitchen for the refugees, which they are building mostly from salvaged pallet wood.

Attending the Oasis was an incredible experience. I wish you could be there, because my description simply won’t do justice to the experience… But I’ll try to paint a picture for you:

When we arrived, we all sat down on the ground and took our shoes off (which is what most Middle Eastern Christians are used to). As people arrived from camp and trickled into the room, the keyboardist, one of the African refugees, gently played some tranquil piano music, and I saw several people bowing their heads in quiet prayer as we waited in an atmosphere of quite expectation. Then the presider began the service by asking the congregation, “Where are people here from?” There was a moment of silence, and then a woman called out “Zimbabwe!” Then others began calling out, “Congo!… Iran!… Iraq!… Afghanistan!… Pakistan! Congo! Nigeria! Balochistan!” The list went on and on — and after each country/people group was named, the whole congregation cheered and applauded. After the last country had been named, we all stood and sang:

Open the eyes of my heart, Lord

open the eyes of my heart

I want to see you….

holy, holy, holy...

There is power in the name of Jesus

To break every chain…

As the rich harmony of voices filled the room, I was reminded of the passage from the book of Revelations, the last book in scripture, which describes a scene in heaven of people from every tribe, nation, and tongue worshiping together. And there at the Oasis, it was like experiencing a little bit of what the Apostle John was writing about. Around me were people from different countries, different languages, different skin colors, different cultures, different socioeconomic classes — in other words, people with plenty of reasons to feel divided and alien — singing together about our common, uniting experience of God’s mercy and grace. Some people had their hands raised, and their faces lifted towards heaven, some people swayed and danced along with the music, while others bowed their heads and sang quietly. Some people were in tears. All thoughts of Moria — with its fences and barbed wire, its tents and food lines, and carrying papers around constantly to show to police officers — were forgotten as we sang songs of worship and praise.

The camp can feel dehumanizing; this was the opposite. It was an affirmation that every person in the room is more than an animal, more than the chance result of random collisions of molecules. It was also a declaration that there was, and is, a reality beyond the merely physical reality of the refugee crisis. The journey that each of the refugees is trying to make into Europe — the journey that they may never complete — was eclipsed by the greater reality that we are all, refugee and volunteer alike, fellow sojourners on a journey to God’s country. I found myself moved to the point of tears.

The pastor preached a message about forgiveness. He read the words of Jesus, “Unless you forgive your brother from your heart, your sins will not be forgiven.” It was amazing because there were people there who have had family members murdered, who have seen their babies killed in bomb blasts, who have every reason, every right, to hold a spirit of judgment and vengeance and hatred in their hearts against the people who have violated their security and destroyed their lives. But the Pastor preached about how God’s grace and healing is available for us so that we can forgive and be free of what people have done to us, and he invited us to pray and to forgive anything that had been committed against us.

I was reminded of a quote from the speech that Barack Obama gave in 2015 after the Charleston Church shooting:

"...That’s what I’ve felt this week – an open heart. That, more than any particular policy or analysis, is what’s called upon right now, I think – what a friend of mine, the writer Marilyn Robinson, calls “that reservoir of goodness, beyond, and of another kind, that we are able to do each other in the ordinary cause of things.

That reservoir of goodness. If we can find that grace, anything is possible. If we can tap that grace, everything can change. Amazing grace. Amazing grace."

I went home that day thinking a lot about what I had experienced there at the Oasis. Why had it moved me so much?

I think it had presented to me an answer to a question that I had been struggling with, a question that I had not quite had the courage to articulate, but had been simmering in my heart — “What’s the point of what we’re doing at Moria?”

It’s a question that I suspect every volunteer has to wrestle with, because when you’re there in the camp, you get slammed repeatedly with the painful awareness that you cannot help people in the way that they really need. We can pass out food, fix up their tents, but we don’t have any say at all in the asylum process, which is what really matters, because If the refugees don’t get asylum, then all of their time here is pointless… Or is it?

Being at the Oasis gave me pause.

Psychological researchers say that there is one huge factor that determines how well someone can recover from the trauma of a crime that has been committed against them. It is forgiveness. People who choose to forgive their victimizers are able to heal and rehabilitate. But people who choose not to forgive also cannot heal. Even if their conditions change, they don’t move forward. They miss opportunities to grow. They become permanently crippled by what has been done to them. And for the people in the camp, who still have open wounds, who have PTSD, who have traumatic memories that torment them, late into the night… They are poised at that same crossroads. If they do not forgive, they will become permanent psychological invalids, even if they are granted asylum. But if they can forgive — if they can do the unimaginable, the supernatural, and tap into that “reservoir of goodness,” then they can experience real healing.

So my job here as a volunteer is so much more than to do manual labor… It’s a chance to show genuine compassion — and in my prayers, and in every interaction with a refugee, show a brotherly respect and kindness which can testify that regardless of how bad the physical conditions of our situation might be, there is a reservoir of goodness available to us all.