World Refugee Day

Today is World Refugee Day, a day for raising awareness about the plight of refugees and displaced persons around the world. Reports this year are that there are more refugees globally than in any year past. Images of families and whole communities moving nomadically across the globe to find safety. Emotional and physical safety, in countries where they can breathe freely and live freely.

I have moved several times in my life, but moving from one place to another, is just not even remotely like the movement of a refugee. I have been able to choose my destination, choose the work I will be doing, choose what grocery store I will shop at and rest at night in safety. A person who is a refugee is ‘a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster’. Discovering the details that each individual, family and community face are challenges that each new country must meet with compassion and concern - not just for the refugees but for their citizens. Refugees are moved involuntarily, they are turned away from borders, they are put in camps and shelters never knowing if they will have enough warmth, food or bathroom facilities. The very fabric of families and communities are torn - not just ripped a little bit in one corner, but violently ripped apart and trashed. Heart and soul. 

It is easy to think of refugees coming only from Europe, Africa or Asia. Even though we welcome refugees and immigrants into our communities, it seems somehow distant. Someone else’s problem. It’s not really that close. But here on our own continent? Unfortunately, there is similar turmoil not that far from our own borders in the past week. I have felt helpless to do anything but push a ‘share’ button hoping that many others will do the same so that the world knows that refugees are not from across the pond, but are here with us as well as the political machinations that create the walls and dams to manage those that are seen as problems rather than human beings in need.

“Taking Mom’s hand, I whispered “Are we really safe, here?””

~ Alwyn Evans, Walk in My Shoes