Refugees Knocking On Our Door: Let's Open Up Our Hearts

 

“It is the obligation of every person born in a safer room to open the door when someone in danger knocks.”            --Dina Nayeri, author who fled Iran as a refugee and settled in Oklahoma

Can we as Americans agree upon anything these days!? Well…just maybe…yes.

With the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban after our “forever war” finally concluded on August 31, hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees have fled that nation, with 50,000 and maybe more, already in the United States, or on the way. Every single one of those fellow human beings, at some level, are traumatized and heartbroken at having to leave their homes and homeland. They are about to land in a new place where the language will be unfamiliar and the customs and the culture and just about everything else too. They will be arriving with not much more to claim as their own save the clothes on their backs.  They will need housing and jobs and language teachers and guides to help them acclimate to their strange new world.

They need our help.  Now.

And in something just short of a miracle, tens of thousands of Americans are responding with welcome and generosity and mercy and doing so across political and social and religious divides. Just ten days ago I put the word out in the part of Massachusetts I call home, and asked on a community online bulletin board: can anyone help? Within 48 hours more than 100 folks had volunteered to lend a hand and reach out to people they’ve yet to meet. 

The folks who volunteered, who heard about what me and the church I serve are trying to organize—welcoming refugees—they came from every walk of life and every corner of this part of the world. I’ve heard from fellow Christians and my Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters. Connected with my Catholic neighbors through Catholic Charities, who will be shouldering a big part of the load.  I’ve been contacted by churchgoers and non-churchgoers, and an elderly man with time to give and a single Mom barely making it on her own, but so wanting to help.  And these folks hail from cities and towns and villages.  Different political parties, I’d bet, too

The same phenomenon is happening nationwide.  As one refugee settlement worker said in a recent New York Times article, “We have never seen anything like it.” Krish O’Mara Vignarajah is the chief executive of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, a faith-based agency with offices in 22 states. She and others like her find the work even harder now because of the hundreds of refugee resettlement agencies in the United States that have closed their doors or severely cut services for lack of government funding and support, in the past five years. 

The last Presidential administration was not the biggest proponent of embracing refugees or welcoming the oppressed and downtrodden from other countries. But seemingly overnight (or at least it feels that way) America is once again rolling up its sleeves and laying out the welcome mat for these strangers from afar. It was only generation ago at the end of another long war, that 140,000 Vietnamese refugees found a place here.

Why is this happening now?    

Maybe we as a nation are waking up again to the truth that so many of us are heirs of a past immigrant, or refugee experience. The Irish who fled their homeland because of the potato famine, a humanitarian disaster in the mid-1800’s. Jews fled here because of persecution. Others came for economic opportunity. We are in large part, a country of immigrants, and at our best we dare to lift the torch of freedom for all the world to see. When we remember that so many of us are from somewhere else, it teaches us that opens hand and open hearts are what mark the best of humanity, not high border walls, or closed doors.

So too, many of those volunteering to give assistance to our Afghan friends, are doing so out of a moral impulse whose roots are found in most faith traditions. At their best, people of God know, absolutely, that to welcome the stranger, and to give refuge to the vulnerable: it is among the most noble thing that we can do as the children of a merciful God.  And regardless of faith, deep down in our hearts as humans, I think we all know what the decent and right thing is to do when it comes to people in need, such desperate need. 

Just help. Help.

Perhaps it’s time to polish off the engraved plaque that adorns the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor and remember the stirring words that welcomed so many people to our shores, penned in 1883 by the poet Emma Lazarus. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Now that is a welcome! 

(If you’d like to help, I recommend contacting your local offices of Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services, or other refugee resettlement agencies near you that are coordinating this massive effort. Contact your congressional representatives as well.)

             

 

              

 

The Hidden Epidemic: Overdose Deaths In America

“There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain. And we all look for ways to make the pain go away.”            --Sherman Alexie

One hundred thousand deaths.

That’s equivalent to the whole population—every woman, man, and child—in places like Quincy, Massachusetts and South Bend, Indiana and Albany, New York and West Palm Beach, Florida.  One hundred thousand deaths: that’s forty-thousand more deaths than happened in the entire Vietnam War, from 1956 to 1975. Thirty times more deaths than happened on September 11^th, 2001. It’s equal to three full capacity baseball games at Fenway Park or two sell outs at Yankee Stadium.  No matter how you add it up, 100,000 people dying is a huge number.

One hundred thousand souls lost. That is how many people died in the United States in 2020 from drug overdoses, the most overdose deaths in one year in the history of our country.

In just twelve months, more people died from this cause than in car accidents (38,680) or by suicide (44,834). That’s 273 deaths by overdose every single day last year in our nation.  West Virginia had the highest death rate at 53 deaths per 100,000 people and Nebraska was the lowest at “just” 8 deaths at that rate.

Though, of course, there is no “just” when it comes to the pain left behind for loved ones and communities when someone takes drugs, ingests, or shoots up, to the point where it kills them.  As a pastor I witness first-hand what drug deaths and drug addiction do to people and families and communities. It guts a family, splits it apart, causes so much misery. It can hollow out a neighborhood. I’ve seen the hell that it is to live as a drug addict, people who wrestle with that demon and sometimes can get clean and sober and begin to recover, but far too often, are instead overcome by this disease, and eventually taken by it.

There was a time when drug addiction was viewed as a moral issue or a question of a person’s character or lack of will power. Thank God that is not, for the most part, our society’s attitude anymore.  The truth is that drug addictions and other deadly addictions, like alcoholism, are a mental illness. Addicts are caught in the grip of a mental obsession, as powerful as any other affliction of the mind or soul.

One of the saddest parts of this overdose epidemic is how little our media is reporting about it these days and how unaware so many of us are about a problem that is not very far away from any place in the United States. You’d think 100,000 deaths would warrant a national outcry. An overdose could be as close to you as your neighbor’s house next door or on Main Street downtown or in the city you visit for work or play. Drug addiction doesn’t care how big your bank account is or where you went to college or the color of your skin or the place you call home. It is everywhere among every class, in every zip code, among all demographics.

I’m sure part of the reason this story has flown under the radar is because of COVID and all the other intense stories that have dominated our collective lives in the past 18 months. A wacky and weird election. Climate change becoming all too real. The collapse of Afghanistan. We are all living through unprecedented times and yet, we must not allow the tragedy of drug overdoses to remain invisible, in the shadows.

Nor should we forget that so many overdose deaths and struggles with opioid addiction are a product of despair. Human despair and spiritual suffering. People losing all hope because they can’t find a job, or the factory closed for good, or they were evicted from their homes, or they can’t feed their kids, or they feel trapped in an unsafe neighborhood. There are so many people in so much pain in our world.

We could just turn away. It’s tempting.

Addiction is so ugly in how it plays out and yet: as humans and fellow children of God, we can’t ignore the truth that 100,000 of our neighbors and friends and co-workers and children died in 2020 because of this national scourge. We can pray for those who struggle, absolutely, and we can act as well. Advocate for more and better and less expensive treatment centers. Show compassion for addicts. Push for anti-addiction education in schools and houses of worship and in our communities. 

A single death by overdose is one too many but 100,000 deaths is catastrophic. Lord have mercy. God help us all to do something, to do anything, to help and maybe even save, these suffering souls. These our fellow Americans. 

One hundred thousand deaths. Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy.

 

 

 

 

         

             

     

 

 

Who Needs "Normal"!? To Each, His or Her Own Hot Dog.

“’Normal’ is nothing more than a cycle on a washing machine.”  --Whoopi Goldberg

Just please give me a hot dog, you know, a "normal" one.

Normal. Fried on a grill until juicy and seared, then cradled in a soft white bun, then slathered with yellow mustard and topped by fresh diced onions. This is a how a hot dog is supposed to taste, especially in summer, right? At least in Boston, my hometown.

That’s how I best love to eat the humble hot dog, enjoyed by millions of us here in the United States, where historic lore reports this culinary treat was invented by a German immigrant, working out of a food cart in New York City, sometime in the 1860’s. That anonymous chef called their offering “dachshund sausages” for its shape, hence the moniker hot “dog”. According to the National Sausage and Hot Dog Council (yes, that’s a real thing), last year Americans consumed some 20 billion hot dogs, which works out to seventy tube steaks for every person. 

Hot diggity dog!   

Wait. What’s that you say? You don’t like to eat a hot dog in the same normal way that I like to enjoy my hot dog???!!! You put ketchup on it!? Use grey fancy mustard?! Well, la de dah! Or listen to this! I’ve heard some folks slather their hot dog with bright green technicolor hued relish, tomatoes, pickles and then top it off with celery salt? Apparently, that’s how those wacky Chicagoans like their dogs. What gives?

 (Though I must confess it’d be fun to try one if given the chance.)

Or there was a time at Yankee Stadium when I asked for a hot dog and was served a “dirty water” dog; that’s when the meat is boiled in a concoction of water, vinegar, cumin, and nutmeg. Nutmeg!? Hmm. But it did taste good. Just last week in Cincinnati my friends got me to order a Coney dog, a mini hot dog parked in a little bun and covered in chili and a heaping mound of grated orange cheese! I really enjoyed that version too.      

Which just goes to prove: to each his or her own hot dog. When in Rome eat a hot dog like the Romans do, though I’m not sure our Italian friends even know of hot dogs but what the heck. Why not top a dog with tomato sauce and mozzarella and maybe even sliced pepperoni? I’m sure someone, somewhere, has actually prepared a hot dog thus and enjoyed it too.

Conclusion? There is no “normal” way to fix and enjoy a hot dog. Or live this life either.

If there was one standard prescribed way to live, to eat, whatever: how boring life would be. Bland. Predictable. As monochromatic as a black and white movie and as tasteless as a white bread and mayo sandwich. Because if you think about it, there is no “normal” way to do many, most things, whether cooking up a hot dog or choosing who you love or what your family looks like or believing in God (or not) or supporting a political candidate or figuring out the place you want to call home or, well….

Maybe it is not normal to expect this world to conform to whatever you or I deem to be normal. Maybe, instead, it's abnormal to demand normalcy. Maybe the miracle of this world is how amazingly diverse we are: as human beings, as Americans, as citizens of God’s creation and yes, as consumers of tube steaks.

God: the same God we are told, in the book of Genesis, who created this beautifully diverse world and at the end of that process, looked at all that was made, and God declared it not just good, but very good. VERY GOOD! People of all colors and cultures and animals as tiny as a gnat and as large as a whale. A planet ranging in geography from the bone-dry deserts of the Middle East to the wild and wet rainforests of South America, to the frozen places at the poles.

If the Creator intentionally created this world of diversity, something tells me we ought to embrace diversity too. Diversity of thought and lifestyle and politics and education and culture and hot dogs too.

Sure, I love my Fenway Frank and yet…that Cincy dog was delish too and my New York dog was delectable and that Chicago hot dog? I can’t wait to try one. 

Now please pass the mustard and onions.