What has formed you? What matters to you most and how did you acquire these beliefs and commitments?
This coming week is Refugee Week, and the theme for this year is “healing”. Human connections to place and to one another are what hold us in belonging. We narrate our lives and form our commitments through our encounters with people, places and events, weaving stories and making meaning together.
As conflict and climate and environmental change force peoples to flee their homes, the global community needs to share the responsibility of a humane response to the plight of refugees. The theme for this year reminds us that healing can occur through storytelling, through community and also through realisation of our intrinsic interconnectedness as individuals.
Our community of St Andrew’s has a part to play in nurturing healing connections. We assist in providing clothing to newly arrived refugees through the Thread Together project, and support the Indooroopilly Refugee Hub food pantry, and, as both a community and as individuals, we can provide welcome and friendship. We can take the time to hear stories, recognising that even though someone may be a refugee, that is not the whole of their identity and experience. Telling and hearing the stories of the places, people and events that have shaped every human life reveals not only what is sacred, but also how much we share in common. Maybe this Refugee Week may be a reminder to us to take the time to get to know our neighbours better and hear more of the stories than we might find in media reports.
Tonight, and on the third Friday of every month we are hosting a talking circle at 6:30pm in the Undercroft. For the next few months in these circles, we will be reflecting on the places, people and events that have shaped our lives. Discerning who we are, and why, is an important pathway to recognising the presence of the Spirit in our lives, weaving and creating us as we live into our truest selves. As we enter into what is commonly known as “ordinary time” in the church, it is timely to trace the diverse beauty of our everyday human stories, the precious connections we share on this earth, and the sacred responsibility we hold to one another.
I look forward to the stories.
Grace and peace,
Sue+
