We are all refugees
On the way back from Greece, I decided to extend my flight a few days to see some other parts of Europe, and I squeezed as many sights, museums, and tourist traps as I could into the few short days I was able to take:
I feasted on waffles with my Swedish friend near Malmo, gawked at the curiosities in Freetown in Copenhagen, and had my breath snatched away by the awe-inspiring majesty of the Stegasteinen fjords in Norway. I sped around London, where I toured the British museum, snacked on fish and chips, and fulfilled a childhood dream by reading Lord of the Rings over a plate of piping hot shepherd’s pie at the Eagle and the Child, an unassuming pub which happens to have the distinction of being the place where J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis would gather with their book club to share early drafts of Narnia and LOTR over pints of Irish brew. With only a day left, I took in Paris at 1000 rpms: dashing between Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, Montmartre, and one or two local eateries before hopping on the train to Charles De Gaulle airport for my flight back to San Francisco…
Back in California now.
There is no shortage of food here. No unruly generator to wrestle with. No strange men speaking strange languages... And, In a way, it’s relieving. I can sleep in, relax. I am about to start a part-time job, and in a few weeks I will probably be starting a software bootcamp that I am enrolled in: here in the Bay, an entry level software engineer can make 100K/yr, no problem. The oppressive air of stagnancy, uncertainty, poverty and brokenness that you feel in Moria… is nowhere to be found here. If I walk down the street from my house to the manicured park at the end of the road, I’m treated to a stunning panorama of the Bay that features the cityscape of San Francisco as its centerpiece. For the past few months we’ve been watching the skyline warp and grow like a sine wave, cranes busily maneuvering back and forth as they erect the Salesforce tower, which, when it is finished, will be the tallest building west of Chicago...
No, this is not Lesvos, and the only thing we seem to have in common with Greece is the Meditteranean climate — and even with that — it’s warmer here, the weather consistently balmy, hovering between 60 - 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Here, everything is in motion, everything growing, developing, shooting upwards as relentlessly as the Salesforce tower, and the sky seems to be the limit. People start multi-million dollar businesses out of their garages. You can meet people who are retiring at age 30 (or younger)… There’s Opportunity, Potential, Innovation, Achievement, all so tantalizingly accessible, and beckoning, “come! partake!”
So why is it that it all has no charm for me? Why is it that my heart is restless to get back to Moria?
When I look back even at that short jaunt through Europe, the experiences I cherished most were not the paintings and the cathedrals, or even the breathtaking views, but the smattering of people I happened to meet along the way: new friends in Norway and Sweden; Cuthbert, an art student I met at the British Museum; a Syrian family — young mom, dad, two kids — panhandling late at night in a crowded alleyway near Notre Dame; a band of desperate-eyed Senegalese street-vendors hawking miniature eiffel towers along the banks of the Seine. The last group I struck up a conversation with because they had resembled so closely some of the Gambian friends whom I had made back in Moria. (Meeting those street vendors in particular, made me sad, because I realized that for many of the friends I had made back in Lesvos, even if they did make it out, and into Europe, this might be their fate — selling unwanted trinkets for a pittance in the streets of some crushingly immense European city.)
The last Sunday before I left Greece, we attended the Oasis one more time.
The preacher gave a simple message,
“I hope that all of you make it into Europe. But I won’t lie to you, like the smugglers who have lied to some of you. It could be that not everyone in this room will make it to Europe. Some of you may be very deported. It makes me very sad to think that even one of you might not get to where you want to go, but that is the truth.
But there is a bigger journey that we are all on — volunteers, and refugees, Europeans and Africans, Americans and Arabs alike. We are all on a journey of life. We’re all refugees, and there is a final crossing we all have to make. All of us will either be with God, or apart from God, forever. I hope that all of you will be with God in the end. But I will not lie to you. Some of you may not make it. Some of you may choose to reject the God of love. But I want to tell you and to remind you that this journey is different from the journey into Europe. With God’s country, we are ALL invited to come in. We can all find asylum in Jesus, every single one of us, no matter what we have done, no matter what background we come from. He loves us so much that he proved it by becoming a man, becoming Jesus, and being with us, bearing our sins, and dying for us. As John 3:16 says, "For God so loved the world, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
I was reminded of a quote from C.S. Lewis’s essay, The Weight of Glory:
“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors… It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.”
"What’s my life going to be about?” I’ve been asking myself that question, over and over again, since I’ve come back from Moria. It’s a complicated question to answer, and I’ve never been the most decisive person… But I know at least that the question isn’t really about what career path I choose, nor what city I end up living in. The question I need to answer, every day, regardless of where I end up, or what titles are attached to my name, is “Am I going to love?”
In the end, aren’t we all refugees?
In Moria, the challenge was to see past the foreignness of the refugees to respect and love them as brothers, and the challenge here is similar: It’s to see past -- past the facade of familiarity, the facade of mundane proximity -- and recognize that here, too, in my neighbor, and my roommate, and my supervisor, and the panhandler on the street corner, and everyone in between, is a person to respect, love, and lay down my life for.