Oh, Forget It

Leaving the grocery store carrying the few items I had purchased in my half-filled shopping bag, a young man approached me from a parking space between two cars in the parking lot. He wore a small toque, a light gray jacket, no gloves and said quietly, “Can you spare some change?” Whether it was my startled eyes dancing between my mask and my parka, or perhaps, wisps of grey hair poking out from under my hood, or maybe it was because I was starting to put down my groceries, but he quickly added with a smile, “O, forget it” and walked on.

Forget it indeed! How can I forget it? It has become a little bit like purgatory is going to be because I keep reflecting on the incident and remember that my first thought was, “Thank goodness I had decided not to bring my big purse but only a small change purse deep in my pocket.”

Only after that internal sigh of relief did I begin thinking about what I should have done or could have done for the young man. My relief then turned to feelings of guilt because he was probably in his late twenties and his beautiful smile revealed a missing front tooth; I could have offered him the bananas in my bag; I could have given him the Tim Horton’s gift card in my pocket that still had $6.00 on it.

I don’t really know why the young man wanted some “spare change”. He wore no mask and couldn’t have gone into any store around our area to make a purchase. Maybe he needed to buy a mask, not food? I’ll never know but I do know that I pray someone will give him whatever help he needs and when they do maybe I’ll be able to forget it and walk on.

-Sister Elaine Cole, csj

When Did We See You Homeless?

There are cases of women who manage on several occasions to escape rape in one country, get to a neighbouring country, only to be threatened with even more danger there because of negative political involvement between the two countries. Consequently, they are left with no place to go and with little or no hope (Canadian Council for Refugees).

“It is easy to walk away from Justice as a cause but much harder to walk away from the person who has knocked at the door” (The Other Face of God: When the Stranger Calls Us Home, by Mary Jo Leddy, p. 68, Orbis Books, 2011).

Why are refugees desperately knocking at our door, seeking safety and security in Canada, met with insurmountable odds? Why is it nigh to impossible to be heard?

One reason is that refugees who are already here are caught in the present immigration laws for sponsorship. The law is that if a refugee here can prove that he/she has enough money to look after a family member for 10 years, he/she may sponsor only parents and/or grandparents or orphaned single brothers or sisters 22 years of age or less and still studying. Jason Kenney, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, is seeking to limit the requirements even more.

A second reason is the length of time it takes to sponsor a refugee: it takes six months just to have the papers sent from the local immigration office overseas. Then there is a waiting period before the visa office involved calls the refugee(s) for interviews and starts medical and security checks. Consequently, it often takes another year or more. In contrast, just to have the same sponsorship papers sent to Nairobi, Kenya, it always takes more than another year. Then the sponsor and refugees are notified to not even contact the immigration/visa office for 90 months, i.e. seven and a half years! "Protection delayed, protection denied." For more information, see the Canadian Council for Refugees Nairobi Report; the "Waiting For My Children" exhibit; and the Canadian Council for Refugees Nairobi action statement.

Put yourself in the position of a refugee who has safely arrived in Canada via Nairobi and is now trying to settle into the new country. Would you not spend most of your time worrying about the safety of your two younger siblings back home whom you cannot help, knowing that they are on the run from being raped and are spending their energies just seeking safety; when they have no one, no place to welcome them? How effectively would you be able to focus on getting settled in this country? What medical problems might plague you? For the overseas refugees left in limbo, the longer they have to wait for resettlement the more difficult it will be for them to settle and integrate into their new life here.

“The spiritual challenge of this time and place is to find the true center, the new center of our lives. It means allowing our lives to be thrown off center and embracing the disorientation that this implies” (The Other Face of God: When the Stranger Calls Us Home, by Mary Jo Leddy, p.54, Orbis books, 2011).

If we are willing to insert ourselves into the life of a refugee, may our lives be thrown off centre, and may we embrace the disorientation that is theirs and become a voice for the voiceless and a host for the homeless. “May we find it harder to walk away from the person who has knocked at the door..." and thus work for justice for that person and all refugees.