Is Lent a curse on refugees?
Added Monday 19 March 2007 :: Category: General, International :: »
In his blog ‘Roaming and Rooming with Refugees in Uganda’, Patrick Hume wonders if there isn’t something amiss in urging refugees to take on some new hardship for Lent. “Are they not permanently in Lent?” he asks.
Imagine starting Lent in a refugee camp! What can one dare ask of refugees in a Christian community to do at this time of year? How can a hungry person fast? How can a poor person give alms? How can a person who has pleaded on their knees with God for their lives be asked to pray? Are refugees not permanently in Lent?.
Here in among the refugees if one gets meat on today I say: eat it. Here if one gets money I say: spend it on your own family. Here where God is honoured and obeyed without question I urge more work and less prayer. I wonder what lent can mean in a community that has been brought to its knees in abject poverty. Can a God require any more grovelling? Are Christians not meant to celebrate the hope given in lent, not crawl into further submission and rejection! Here daily life is one of sackcloth and ashes – how can one celebrate the season of Lent?
Lent the season of fasting, alms, and prayer is not new to the ordinary daily life of the refugee. As a guest among refugees I feel like saying eat as much as you can, keep all the money you get for yourselves, and as for prayer, take some courage from Job and curse God for your plight.
But is that enough? Have I missed something? Is not the root of Lent to transform us in some personal way? Perhaps even in the harsh lives of the refugees Lent can be celebrated. Lent that does not look to Easter is a hollow and meaningless. Lent is meant to bring us into new relationships to heal old relationships. Lent is empty if it is seen as concerning me, true lent heals and makes the celebration of relationships and friendships holy.
Where does this lead the African refugees? Maybe if we consider the culture of excess we can see how Lent might impact on a Sudanese refugee. Time is in excess here. Yet men can sit around and do nothing – let the women wait on them. There is a challenge here for men to assist the women in their lives. As for women, there is also time to assist the neighbour who is ill, fetching water, listening to them, cooking for the ill. There is a time for children to study. There is a time for all “to work” in the small personal projects – be it cleaning, digging, repairing, listening.
Instead of cutting, paring, and pealing back we need to look at what can cause good relations to flourish in whatever community, real of virtual in which we find ourselves. Lent could require us to dance more than mourn, to have a fiesta out of the meagre supply of loaves and fishes. It Lent is a celebration then we should smile like the many refugee children.
As I thought further, I wondered if we in Ireland could not also look at Lent as refugees. Christmas is ingrained in our psyches as the season to care for the poor, the season of gifts and almsgiving. Lent calls us to something deeper, to transform our old or worn friendships, our frozen relationships, our sworn enemies. This is a season where we fundamentally celebrate forgiveness. Resurrection can only occur in the context of friends who forgive and are forgiven. We are all refugees; we all need to rediscover relationships as forgiven forgivers – a renewed resurrection.
