Learning To Love The World Again
The wonderful poet Lisa Breger, who leads a monthly online Poetry & Spirituality workshop I attend, sent out a beautiful reflection recently well worth sharing. Lisa had been re-reading Mary Oliver’s lovely poem, “Messenger,” that begins, “My work is loving the world.” The line promoted Lisa to ask how can we love the world at such a troubling time? So many bloody conflicts. Our national secrets broadcast over an unsecure line and no one held accountable. The outrageous incident of a graduate student being snatched off a street by masked officers for writing an opinion piece. Thousands of migrants deported without due process. Thousands of federal workers fired.
“I don’t know how to continue to love this world, this world in this strange new room,” Lisa wrote.
She decided to do a google search asking that very question. A surprisingly insightful response came from AI:
“Loving a difficult world means to approach life with compassion, understanding, and a commitment to making positive change despite the challenges and hardships you encounter.”
Lisa’s search also recommended these actions:
- Embracing empathy
- Actively seeking to help others
- Focusing on small acts of kindness
- Acknowledging the complexities of situations
- Looking for hope even in difficult circumstances
Equally important was this recommendation: “Engage with the world in a proactive manner, even when faced with adversity.”
Many of my friends who are despondent over the attacks occurring against our judiciary, free speech and democratic norms are asking: Where is God? Reading Lisa’s reflection, it occurred to me that God is here, here in all the mess and tumult, as close to us as the air.
What do I mean by that? Perhaps this unfortunate period in our history is a wake-up call to return to our senses. The daily Mass readings during the liturgical season of Lent are both beautiful and challenging in reminding us of what God expects of us, as in this passage from Deuteronomy:
“Moses spoke to the people of Israel and said, ‘Now, Israel, hear the statutes and decrees which I am teaching you to observe, that you may live … Observe them carefully, for thus you give evidence of your wisdom and intelligence to the nations, who will hear all of these statutes and say, ‘This great nation is truly a wise and intelligent people.’”
Moses might as well be speaking to the U.S. in 2025. I read this passage and ask myself: Are we going to be a nation that is generous toward the less privileged, compassionate toward strangers, and protective of the vulnerable? Or do we want a government that extorts law firms, educational institutions and even other countries to get them to do our bidding, that labels dissenters as traitors?
The latter is not the America I want.
I am heartened, though, by the many positive actions taking place. This week, I received a long email from a Jesuit priest from Santa Clara University, whom I encountered through a mutual friend. The priest worked for six years in the Kakuma Refugee Camp in northwestern Kenya. The camp originally sheltered many of the so-called “lost boys” orphaned in the 1980s and 1990s during the civil war in Sudan. It now houses Africans fleeing from famine and repression in many surrounding countries.
Jesuit Refugee Service oversaw this camp, just one of the programs it has in some 58 countries. Or had, until the Trump administration in its first weeks gutted its source of funding — USAID — an agency that helped feed the starving, gave shelter and medical assistance to at-risk women and disabled children, and educated and trained thousands of young people.
Since then, the Jesuits have been working to publicize the truth: that international aid accounts for only about one percent of overall U.S. government spending each year. Aid to refugees and migrants accounts for a mere .0012 percent of the budget. This, despite the fact there are an estimated 139 million forcibly displaced persons in the world today, according to the U.N. — an increase of over 100 percent since 2016.
My Jesuit friend writes of a memory of the Kakuma Camp he says he cannot forget. “The children, some very young, recited a long poem in English and Swahili. And I remember so well one little girl, just six years old, kept repeating the refrain: I am an African child, give me a chance.”
The priest went on, “Give me a chance. The migrants and refugees we serve are not looking for a handout, for the narrow and pinched pity the great bestow on the small … God has made us equal to one another … Each of us is created in dignity, inalienable, permanent, irreplaceable … No one is lost to God, no one is exiled from God’s love.”
These thoughts reflect our calling as people of faith. And as people of faith, we must demand our government offer the same compassion and dignity we are called to give.
Jesuit Refugee Service is also advocating for a saner approach to the question of migrants and asylum seekers here in the U.S. The Trump administration has suspended programs for this group as well. Included among the 3.2 million refugees, migrants and asylum seekers allowed to remain in this country since 1980 are those who have made significant contributions in science, medicine, business, the arts and sports, according to a Jesuit Refugee Service white paper.
The Jesuits have placed handy “Take Action” links on the Refugee Service website for people wanting to write the White House or their members of Congress asking for the restoration of international humanitarian aid and the passage of comprehensive immigration reform.
The Refugee Service is also seeking reforms that cut the time immigrants must wait for legal status, that keep families united, protect children born to migrants in the U.S., and give law-abiding immigrants a speedy path to legal residence and eventual citizenship.
My Jesuit friend notes that Jesus, Mary and Joseph were also refugees at one time. As St. Paul reminds us in a Letter to the Ephesians, “We are strangers and wayfarers no longer, but citizens in the household of God.”
This is how we go about loving the world. This week, as we head toward the end of Lent and the coming of Easter, can we vow to love the world and those most at risk in it, a little harder?
For more on how to help Jesuit Refugee Service, please visit Take Action to Strengthen U.S. Refugee, Asylum, and Temporary Protection Programs — JRS USA
To learn about the Poetry & Spirituality online workshop sponsored by St. Mary Monastery, Rock Island, IL, please visit Spirituality and Poetry — Sisters of St. Benedict (smmsisters.org)
