heaven Archives - Held By His Pierced Hands

From One Refugee to Another

The other day, I was scrolling through Facebook and stumbled across this reflection from a young man I met while hoboing, reprinted here with permission. I think Stephen’s thoughts are important in terms of both our response to refugees and our understanding of our relationship to this world. He’s not talking about the politics of how to vet refugees or help them to integrate into society, he’s talking about compassion. I’m convicted.

The statement about how America is a nation of refugees and immigrants and therefore it is fundamental that we should open our doors to the needy is important, as is the argument that Christians should extend charity to the needy regardless of whether they are our countryman or a foreigner because all people are our neighbors, but I want to point out a problem with both of these arguments for the Christian. Actually, a fundamental problem with these arguments from the perspective of any Abrahamic religion. Bear with me.

Both these arguments, “we are Americans/we are Christians: our country should be welcoming,” are fundamentally false because, for any follower of Abraham’s God, this is not our country.

IMG_20151208_154307 A refugee is someone who has lost their native land and has been forced to wander, looking for a home. To be human is to be a refugee because this is not our true country. We are not citizens of this earth. Once we were, but those days have long been lost to us. Ever since we willingly gave the throne of this world to the Adversary we have been refugees in flight, desperately seeking a new country.

Now for Christians there is hope. We believe Jesus came into the world, laid siege to the bastion of Satan, and broke through. He has called us to a new home, our true Home, beyond this world. There we are seeking to be, not here.

So please, my brothers and sisters in Christ, remember this: when you consider helping a person in need you are not considering welcoming a refugee into your home. You cannot. You have no home. You are extending a hand to a fellow refugee as you both flee the same evil, and perhaps sharing with him the Way to safety. You and he are both in flight, and both hope against all hope that when you reach the walls of the True Country its Ruler will be merciful and open the gate.

Stephen Brown is a Christian, a husband, a father, and a med student, hopefully in that order.

Feels Like Home

There’s something about the word “home” that’s always sparked a feeling of longing in me. Simon and Garfunkel’s “Homeward Bound” was my favorite song for much of high school,¹ promising a place all my own where someone was waiting for me. In college, I found myself praying the chorus of “Feels Like Home” more times than I can count, aching for a place where I belonged. Lately I’ve felt “Let Me Go Home” running through my soul when I’m sitting with Jesus, my heart desperate to finish my exile. And today, I find tears in my eyes every time I watch the end of “The Wizard of Ahhhs.” (The whole thing is incredible, but I start getting wistful at 4:30.)

I guess home’s always felt like more than just the place you get your mail. It’s a place where you belong, where people miss you and love you flaws-and-all but challenge you to be better. It’s a place where you can sit and let the stress melt off, where you can be real. It’s a place where no one judges you for sleeping in and you don’t have to ask where the spatula goes. It’s a place where you don’t have to make small talk, where you can sit in companionable silence or pour out the mundane agonies of the day. It’s a place where you’re totally comfortable and pushed out of your comfort zone. It’s a place where you fit.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had a home.

Not just the two years I’ve been officially homeless, either. For years before that I was in other people’s space, never truly settled. The house I had in Georgia–five years ago–was kind of home. It was my place, anyway, where I could be real. But even there something was missing. There wasn’t a community that loved and challenged and supported and stretched me. Maybe for most people there isn’t. But that’s what my heart’s been longing for lately.

These past few days–after a week with a community of young people who are truly seeking Christ–I’ve realized just how much I want a home. And it’s not just the little things about feeling comfortable raiding the fridge or knowing where things go. I visit any number of homey places and lots of families who are incredibly hospitable. No, it’s the knowing and being known that I long for. It’s friends I can cry with who I see more than once every six months. It’s being able to turn off, to quit the small talk and the answering of the same questions I’ve answered a million times while still being drawn into deep reflection.

I was praying on this tonight, asking the Lord if this longing for a home is his way of leading me to settle down or if it’s just more of my restless heart longing for heaven. I started thinking about how the chapel I was in, my “home” chapel, didn’t even feel like home despite the fact that I’ve been going there (on occasion, anyway) for almost 15 years. Despite the fact that I’ve spent more time there than almost any other chapel in the world. And then it struck me.

This chapel is home.

This chapel is home and the cathedral is home and the random airport chapel with a tabernacle tucked in the corner is home, too. The side room on an Army post with an office chair facing the makeshift altar is home. The Cathedral of Notre Dame and the Basilica at Notre Dame² and the roadside chapel are home.

Home is where he is.

Home is where I belong. It’s where he misses me and loves me and challenges me to be better. Home is where I look at him and let out a deep breath, all the forced cheerfulness sliding away to show how very tired or confused or hopeful I am. Home is where I have to wrestle with the issues I try to avoid. Home is the Eucharist.

On Corpus Christi³ Sunday, I could meditate on the Eucharist as the consummation of our marriage with Christ. I could explain the Eucharist or defend it using Scripture or the Fathers. I could muse on why God gave us the Eucharist. But all I can think today is that the Eucharist means that no Christian is homeless. It’s the reason I’m alone but I’m not lonely.

Everything Jesus promises in John’s Last Supper is fulfilled in the Eucharist. “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” he begs. “Where I am, you also may be.”⁴ “I will not leave you orphans,” he promises. “I will come to you.”⁵ “Remain in my love,”⁶ he commands, knowing that it will be possible only because he comes to us. “Your joy will be complete…and no one will take your joy from you,”⁷ says Christ our joy, and draws us deeper into his embrace. And to hearts weighed down by the sorrows of this life, our God made weak whispers, “Take courage. I have conquered the world.”⁸

I know my solitary hobo life isn’t natural.⁹ And maybe one day my longing for home will find some fulfillment in a place I belong and a community that calls me to holiness. But I don’t think I’ll ever really feel at home. This restless heart of mine will never find rest in this world because this world is not my home. The closest I’ll get this side of heaven is the taste of heaven I receive each day, the God who’s the same wherever I am, whether I’m lost and alone or surrounded by people who love me. The Eucharist is home.

Happy Feast of Corpus Christi. May we find fulfillment only in Christ, our hope, our joy, our home.

And the inspiration for “Derivative Bound,” a pre-calculus project for the ages. [↩]
See what I did there? [↩]
Shoulda-been-Thursday [↩]
Jn 14:1, 3 [↩]
Jn 14:18 [↩]
Jn 15:9 [↩]
Jn 15:11, 16:22 [↩]
Jn 16:33 [↩]
For now, I hope it’s supernatural. When it becomes merely unnatural, I’ll stop. [↩]

This Our Exile

I’ve loved St. Damien for as long as I can remember. A Belgian priest, he was a missionary to the people of Hawaii when he volunteered to go to Molokai and minister to the lepers who had been left there to await death. When he arrived, the colony was in chaos. The patients were ripped from their families on the other islands and taken by boat to the peninsula of Kalaupapa, a small area of land bordered on three sides by the Pacific Ocean and on the fourth by sheer cliffs, including the tallest sea cliff in the world. As their ship approached the island, they were thrown into the water to swim to shore where hunger, lawlessness, and despair awaited them.

The Cliffs of Insanity have nothing on Molokai. Via Forest and Kim Starr.

Father Damien instilled order, erected dormitories, and cared for the sick; more than that, he offered hope and salvation. Ordered to keep the lepers at arm’s length to protect himself, he chose instead to live among them as a brother and eventually found himself their brother leper. He was rejected and slandered, forced to live without benefit of confession except when he shouted it to a priest on a passing ship. He died slowly and painfully, rejoicing to die like Christ as he had lived like Christ.

You're even allowed to make phone calls from the plane--assuming you have decent coverage, which I never do. Down with Virgin Wireless! — You’re even allowed to make phone calls from the plane–assuming you have decent coverage, which I never do. Down with Virgin Wireless!

Because I lead a charmed life, this week I got to go to Kalaupapa. I boarded the tiniest plane I’ve ever seen (9 passengers) and headed to the island where St. Damien and St. Marianne Cope gave their lives to love the poorest of the poor.

Coming from the mainland, when you land in Kalaupapa, it’s hard (for a minute) to feel sorry for the lepers. This is paradise, after all. How can you complain when you’re surrounded by such beauty? Sure, you’re imprisoned, but it’s not exactly Siberia.

A perfect image of what Molokai is: a graveyard in paradise.

After I got over rejoicing in how far I am from the polar vortex I escaped, though, I began to think. It’s beautiful, yes. Stunningly so. But all there was to do was wait for death. These exiles knew they would never see their families again; palm trees and bright blue waves don’t make up for the anguish of separation. On clear days, they could see their home island of Oahu in the distance: close enough to see but impossibly far. In all the good things they experienced, there was a poverty, even after St. Damien brought order and hope. No matter how good things got, there was an unfulfilled ache underlying every moment. They wanted to go home.

I’ve been feeling this exile more strongly lately. I’ve been longing for home. As beautiful as these islands are, as delicious as the fresh pineapple and kalua pork are, as kind and loving as the people I’ve met are, I want to go home. Not to my legal address, but Home. This life of ours is an exile, a season far from the one we love with only hints of the land we were made for. This world may be magnificent, but the foretaste of joy often strikes me as insipid, the glimpses of beauty washed out. We were made for so much more and when I stand on the shores of Molokai, I feel the yearning of the mothers, the children, the friends who would have traded paradise in an instant for a lifetime at home.

Impossibly far, and yet still we hope. — Impossibly far, and yet close enough to hope.

A sweet priest who is kinder to me than I deserve recently introduced me to his congregation as a hobo, but specified that “hobo” really stands for “homeward bound.” I guess that means we’re all hobos, all of us pilgrims working our way through a beautiful land of exile. It’s easy to mistake the way stations for the destination, easy to fill our hearts with promise and lose our hunger for the Promised. When our prison is paradise, we sometimes stop yearning to be free. We settle for what this world has to offer and forget that this world is not our home.

Don’t let satisfaction lull you into complacency, nor difficulty drag you into despair. When all is well, remember that you were made for so much more than the small pleasures and even the deep joys of this life. When life is hard, remember that this is your exile; your homeland awaits. Memento mori, my friends, and rejoice.

They had a stamp you could put in your passport! So now my passport certifies that I've been to Israel and Kalaupapa. Apparently, that's it. — They had a stamp you could put in your passport! So now my passport certifies that I’ve been to Israel and Kalaupapa. Apparently, that’s it.

P.S. If you want to boost my ego (not that I need it), you can head over to Bonnie’s and vote for me for the Sheenazing Blogger Awards! And when you’re not voting for me, be sure to vote for my sister: A Blog for My Mom. If you don’t read her blog yet, start. It is literally my favorite thing on the internet.