Close your eyes and try to imagine life as you have always known it turned upside down. Your country is engaged in a civil war. The leader of your nation is a dictatorial tyrant. The members of the opposing factions are revolutionaries. You just want peace and to be left alone but that is impossible. The differing sides fight one another year after year. The beautiful city where you live has been reduced to rubble. You exist in a kind of ghost town because most of your friends and neighbors have already fled the destruction. Your children have no school to attend, no playmates, no security. They roam through piles of rubble and entertain themselves by exploring abandoned homes and buildings. Food and basic necessities are scarce. Your life has turned into a living hell. Your home is no longer a refuge. You reluctantly realize that the only option for you and your family is to leave the place that you love.
Giving up is not an easy decision to make. You are departing from a lifetime of memories and possessions. You carry only a change of clothes and perhaps a few precious mementos from the life you have known. As you exit you look back at your tiny corner of the world, perhaps for the very last time. You have no way of knowing what lies ahead. You have taken a forced leap of faith. Your heart is broken. You tell yourself that property and things are unimportant and that it is in the people that your true joy lies. As long as you are with your loved ones, you believe that you will ultimately be okay. Somehow you know that reality is never as simple as that, but you do what you must do. You embark on a journey into the great unknown. You begin again and hope for the best.
This morning as we enjoy the comfort of our own lives there are refugees from Syria and other troubled nations fleeing from war and persecution. They may look different from us and speak in tongues that we can’t understand but if we were able to talk with them we would learn that they are very much like us. They would rather be enjoying the routines that defined their days before political, religious and tribal fighting upended all that they had ever known. Their children are like our children, wanting to play and laugh. They are innocents caught up in forces over which they have no control. All that they desire is to keep themselves and their children safe but the world can at times be so cruel.
Most of these people now live in deplorable conditions in tent cities swarming with rats and infectious diseases. They await permission to travel to distant places where many of the citizens deplore their very presence. They are viewed with disdain by strangers who fear them. They are seen in the abstract, as nameless masses rather than the individuals that they are. Sometimes their situations become so painful that they take desperate risks to find a semblance of sanity. They never chose to be in this position. It was thrust upon them through no fault of their own and yet they are reviled by so many.
Throughout the history of the world there have been people reduced to becoming nomads because of the heartless decisions of those in power. The Israelites were enslaved by the Egyptians and later roamed in the wilderness in search of a home. Humans have been sold as slaves by warring tribes. My own grandparents lived in poverty and hopelessness in the Austro-Hungarian empire. Their entire way of life was threatened with extinction by a government that refused to even allow them to speak their own language. They left for the opportunities and promise in the United States, a place that did not always welcome them. They persisted but their early years were filled with challenges and ignorant prejudice.
My sister-in-law and her family had to flee their homeland of China when she was just a small girl. They left wearing layers of clothing and heavy coats with valuables sewn inside the lining. Their journey was treacherous and filled with uncertainty. Like today’s refugees they were forced to leave a world that they loved for one that they knew little about. They left behind people who had been important to them, whom they might never again see. Their move was traumatic but necessary. Had they stayed they may have been imprisoned or punished by being reduced to a state of poverty. They had no recourse but to leave and to hope that they would find a new home where they might be content.
After the fall of South Vietnam many of those who had sympathized with the losing side also had to escape. They found sponsors and homes all across the United States. I taught some of them. They proved to be fine people, outstanding citizens. They adapted and learned and worked just like my grandparents and my sister-in-law did. They enriched the American landscape.
There are many reasons why the flood of refugees from the Middle East may frighten Americans. We have witnessed terrorist attacks and we worry that jihadis may be hiding in the ranks of the ragtag people seeking asylum. Losing even one life because of a cavalier and unchecked sympathy for the masses seems to be too high a price to pay and yet our common sense tells us that the likelihood of ordinary families aspiring to become murderers is slim. We have to ask ourselves if we can possibly be so cold as to turn our backs on people who are suffering so much. Each of us no doubt has a story of an ancestor who sought out our country to escape from some form of persecution. Even the British branch of my genealogy points to individuals bound to lives of servitude in England who preferred the freedoms of the new world. It is in all of our natures to want to find liberty from tyranny.
I understand that the world is overwhelmed by the problems in the Middle East. I realize that there are truly evil people who hate us and wish us dead. I know that our resources are limited and we can’t possibly solve every problem in the world. Still, I look at children living in hopelessness and squalor and I wonder why we can’t be more open to offering them a way out of their misery. In the end we all want the best for our kids no matter who we are. We take a risk every single day that our goodness will be thrown back in our faces. There is no guarantee that we are not already breeding monsters who will one day do us harm. An ugly aspect of the human experience is that there are horrifically deranged people in every culture, every part of the world. It is neither more nor less likely that we will find such sorts within the people that we choose to help. It is simply a reality of life that those intent on destruction will find a way in spite of our best efforts. We needn’t punish an entire group base on an isolated fear. It has generally been an American tradition to open our hearts and risk being hurt from one for the good of the many.
We may be protected by the oceans on the two sides of our country but we are not isolated from the rest of the world. Their problems ultimately become ours and hiding our heads in the sand has never worked out well. Our finest moments as a nation have been when we opened our arms to welcome the newest immigrants and refugees. Most of us would not even be here if earlier generations has turned our ancestors away. We are a land of many colors, multiple ethnicities, different cultures. All of us blended together are what America is all about. I think that we do indeed have room for more.
Those of us who are Christians are all too familiar with the story of Jesus and His family. He was born in a stable because his parents were traveling to fulfill the demands of the census. The roads and the byways were crowded and there was no room for them at the inn. Let us not be guilty of turning away those who need our help. Let us find room at our inn.
I am not among the wealthiest people that I know but if I compare myself to the entire population of the world I am indeed rich. I never achieved fame for the work that I did and none of my blogs have gone viral. Mine has been a rather quiet life, mostly routine and average. On the other hand if I were to consider the quality of the friends whose company I have enjoyed I would have to admit to being blessed beyond measure. It is in the people who have crossed my path and stopped to share extraordinary moments with me that I have become a woman of distinction. Perhaps there is no more interesting and accomplished person among those with whom I have shared a cup of tea than Seng-Dao Keo. 
ck when I was in high school my mother encountered a man who had once lived across the street from her family home. He and his brother had rented rooms there. Mama said that she had developed a crush on this man’s brother mostly because he was a student at Rice University and she always had a thing for highly intelligent men. Nothing ever came of her fantasies and she moved on into adulthood only to one day have a chance meeting with the old neighbor. She learned that the man was a widower, having lost his wife to cancer. He was lonely and raising children much like Mama. I suppose it was inevitable that he would eventually ask her out on a date. It seemed as though they had much in common but nothing might have been further from the truth.
There are a great number of people complaining about the state of the world these days and admittedly we have a mess or two on our hands but in the grand scheme of things our fate is actually less difficult than that which mankind has endured in the past. A brief look at the history of the world confirms my grandfather’s favorite witticism that “these are the good old days.” We sometimes forget about the hardships and discriminations that people who came before us bore. We talk of a war on women but even the worst chauvinist pigs can’t compare with the treatment of our grandmothers and great grandmothers, not to mention a sizable number of ladies in other parts of the world even in modern times. It wasn’t that long ago that African Americans were slaves or that their children were prohibited from staying in hotels or eating in restaurants that were open to those of us lucky enough to have white skin. I’m Sharron Burnett rather than Sharron Gonzalez because when my father-in-law adopted my husband he insisted that Mike keep the name with which he was born lest he encounter prejudice. We still have much to improve but in general the world and our country in particular is a far better place than it was when I was still a young girl.
All It Takes Is A Little Love 