“Born in the night,
Mary’s child
A long way from your home;
Coming in need,
Mary’s child
Born in a borrowed room.”
Geoffrey Ainger
‘Twas the week before Christmas, and all through the office
Nothing was stirring, not even the...
Ok, I can’t think of a word to rhyme with office. But the point is that it’s not been a busy week at work, as you can probably tell given I’m writing this. My job tends to go fairly quiet in late December as the volunteers and staff I work with are too busy with Christmas events to do anything that gives me work. But a certain amount of work time this week has been taken up with thinking about the arrival of a large number of asylum seekers in the region, and what our churches might be able to do to help.
The numbers of people seeking asylum in Britain has been one of the big political issues of this year, as well as a humanitarian crisis, which of course should be far more important than political point scoring. In the endless debates about offloading people to other countries or crowding them into camps or hotels, the thing that seems to get lost is that these are people. Just people, like any of us, who want to be safe and have a future.
So, I’d spent most of yesterday thinking about this at work. And then last night I went carol singing with a group of volunteers from work. It’s an annual thing, Tesco at Clifton Moor is full of people doing their Christmas food shop and we stand by the doors singing and collecting for Action for Children (https://www.actionforchildren.org.uk/). People can be very generous.
And then we sang the carol quoted above, ‘Born in the night’ and I found myself crying. ‘A long way from your home.’ ‘Born in a borrowed room.’ Not just because I know there are people not very far away for whom that’s true. But also because there are people who would happily sing every carol about the baby born in a borrowed room (or stable) and yet mutter resentfully about the presence of children in that same situation in their own cities.
In the nativity story, Mary a Joseph were a long way from home when Jesus was born because of a government order. Soon after they were forced to flee their homeland because the local ruler saw the child as a threat. Today many people are seeking asylum because their governments make it impossible to live a reasonable life, or because of threats to their life, for reasons of gender, orientation, or religion. In the last week, for example, we’ve seen further clamping down by the Taliban on women’s education and freedom in Afghanistan, and further stories of protesters being arrested and killed in Iran. And that’s before we think of all those fleeing war in Syria, or Ukraine, or dozens of other places.
Obviously for many people life is difficult at the moment. The ‘cost of living crisis’ means many people are facing harsh choices, between heating and eating, between paying rent or clothes for their children. Many others will be just about managing, but worried what happens if things keep getting worse, or if the freezer breaks, or if they get ill. Safety nets don’t seem as safe as perhaps they once did.
But if we believe that this isn’t how our world should be, if we believe that we and the people we know should be able to be safe, and to have hope for the future, shouldn’t that be true for everyone? No matter what country they happen to have been born in. Saying we’re struggling too only makes us more like those seeking asylum, not less. It’s not a reason to prioritise helping one group of people over another, but a call to improve life for everyone.
Stories about huge numbers of people ‘coming over here and taking our jobs’ (despite being prevented from working while their asylum claim is processed) or alternatively ‘coming over here and living off our welfare state’ (despite being prevented from working while their asylum claim is processed) encourage us not to think of these people as people. There’s a dangerous tendency to blame those in need for their own situation- the long-rooted myth of the ‘deserving poor’. Carol singing itself has some of its’ roots in traditions where the poor, often children, went round the community essentially begging for food to get through the winter.
I don’t have a solution to the woes of the world. However the carol contains a reminder that Christmas is by no means the end of the story. In the end, God will make all things right. But that doesn’t mean we can sit back and wait. We are expected to do what we can in the meantime. People I know have been incredibly generous in opening their homes to refugees from Ukraine.* Others give financially or give their time to various projects helping those who have arrived in a strange country to a cold welcome. But I think one important thing we can all do is remember that the numbers arriving in this country are people, individuals. When we put a human face to the numbers attitudes can start to change.
Hope of the world,
Mary’s child,
You’re coming soon to reign;
King of the earth,
Mary’s child,
Walk in our streets again.
Geoffrey Ainger
*The contrast between public attitudes to Ukrainian refugees and to those coming from other countries is an interesting contrast in attitudes and I’m trying very hard not to use the word ‘racist’ because it’s unlikely to help.
