"...Pray that I might have the grace to let you be my servant too"
There was a time when I didn't really understand this line in a popular Christian song: "...will you let me be your servant, let me be as Christ to you...pray that I might have the grace to let you be my servant too."
I have this vivid memory of the wedding of my grade 1 teacher, Ms. Platt. I was in grade 3 by then, but my brother Brendan was in her class, and that class got to participate in the ceremony somehow, so our family attended. Ms. Platt and her new husband sang The Servant Song to each other, and those lines above confused me. I understood the part about serving others and being like Christ to them...but allowing them to serve me? How does that fit in?
Serving others, yes. My parents had a sign on our fridge at home (and I think they still might!): "Jesus first, others second, self last."
But being served? What?
Over time, I've come to understand that line, and because of it, that song is now one of my favourites.
This week, these two quotes from the creator of the podcast The Protagonistas brought this to my mind...
We're all meant to serve, and we're all meant to receive. Always being a receiver is hard, and if you feel locked into that position, it can even feel dehumanizing.
Maybe that's why my friend insists on giving us some of the food he gets from the food bank. It makes us uncomfortable to receive some broccoli and KD from him...but when I try to resist receiving it, he talks about wanting to give back some of what Open Homes has given him. I suspect it's not just a warm fuzzy feeling of gratitude. It's an assertion of his dignity, his ability to contribute. So we happily eat his KD and broccoli.
The truth is we all need each other. Isn't that the lesson of this pandemic too?
In the words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr: “In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be....This is the inter-related structure of reality.” (Letter from Birmingham Jail)
A guest’s iftar meal during our call. Yummm.
And now I'm seeing, with a lot of help from writers, thinkers, and friends who are people of colour, that there can be a kind of racism in this need to always be the helper, always be the protagonist in the story, the hero figure.
I see racism now in those "white teacher goes to inner city school and motivates the Black kids" stories. They make me cringe these days. The other day I watched the movie "The Grizzlies"--more or less a Canadian version of the same story. Young white teacher from the south (ie Ontario) ends up in a remote village in Nunavut, sees the problems brought on the Inuit by generations of colonization and white people thinking they know what's best for them (eg residential schools)...and then thinks he knows what's best for them and starts up a lacrosse team for the youth in his school. The kids go south for a tournament and gaze in wonder at the skyscrapers in Toronto. The community celebrates. And I cringe.
The white person is the savior figure here. Yikes. (I follow an account on Facebook called No White Saviors from Kenya that makes this point over and over again, especially as it relates to missionary activity driven by and centered on Western Christians. I recommend it, but beware--they pull no punches!)
Roo begging for Syrian food. Honestly Roo, I would beg for this too.
A caveat: when I try to apply this lesson to our work with Open Homes, the follow-through isn't always straight-forward. Real life is nuanced and complex and multi-faceted. This doesn't mean that refugee claimants don't ever need help or advice. Obviously that's part of why we exist--we connect refugee claimants to housing, we help them adapt to life in Canada, we surround them with circles of support. Part of our work is to be on the lookout for ways they might need a word of guidance to help them adapt to their new homes. It would be negligent for us not to help someone who comes from a Muslim majority country where credit cards are frowned upon to learn how credit works in Canada and how to manage it, for example.
But if we slip into a posture of always giving and never receiving, if we see guests always as guests and never as hosts in their own right, if I am looking for what I can teach guests and never or rarely what they can teach me, then something in my heart needs a deep adjustment.
That's why we celebrate so much when a former guest becomes a volunteer or a donor. (Which has happened a few times now!) They are helping us to live more deeply in our value of mutuality, and modelling the kind of community that we so deeply want to become.
A snapshot of our online iftar. I could have cried for joy to see all these dear faces! (Faces of guests are hidden for confidentiality.)
Last week we gathered online with some guests for an iftar meal, the meal at the end of each day of the month of Ramadan when Muslims break their fast. It was another way of helping people feel connected, even while we have to be apart.
In a way, we were guests at *their* meal, invited into their tradition.
I hope that opportunities like this iftar prod us, and volunteers, to keep thinking about that transition when a guest leave a host home and becomes more independent from us. I pray that we give people space to serve and give so that guests aren't locked into perpetual guest-ship but get to be hosts. Maybe part of that transition is changing our language when that shift happens, from "guest" to "member of the Open Homes community."
Hospitality is wonderful, and it's at the heart of what we do. But if we only offer hospitality, we miss out on mutuality. We miss out on receiving from folks, and they miss out on getting to be hosts. Receiving hospitality--what D.L. Mayfield calls "the life-changing magic of couch-sitting"--is just as important!
"...pray that I might have the grace to let you be my servant too."
Prayer requests:
For guests who are searching for apartments in the midst of a pandemic -- The apartment search is such a challenge! Please pray for that these 3 guests would find safe, affordable places to put down roots.
For hosts whose guests' stays have been extended indefinitely -- It is not easy to go through all this social distancing with extra people in your house, especially without a clear end date. We are thanking God for our hosts and their patience and sacrifice.
For refugee claimants who would otherwise have crossed the border from the USA into Canada and can't now because irregular arrivals are being returned to the USA -- This situation is constantly on my mind. People cannot get to safety, except if they qualify for a few narrow exemptions in an agreement called the Safe Third Country Agreement. The USA continues to deport people, even if they test positive for the virus, so people who are turned around by the RCMP can be forced to return to dangerous situations. Surely there are ways to safely quarantine and care for refugee claimants, even in the midst of a pandemic! I'm concerned about an erosion of refugee rights.
For refugees and newcomers who are on the front-lines of the fight against COVID-19 -- This pandemic has revealed just how many of our friends work in jobs that are considered essential services and yet often have tenuous job security and few rights: people in meat packing plants, PSWs in long-term care homes, people working through temp agencies in multiple locations to make ends meet. We pray for their protection from the virus, and we pray that their sacrifices would be acknowledged by the Canadian public through greater respect and protection of rights. We need newcomers--it is both a spiritual reality and an economic one.
For the internally displaced people in Bamako, Mali who lost their homes in a fire recently. (See picture above) How much must these people endure? Their homes were already built on a dump.
PS Clearly I've been thinking about mutuality for a loooong time...here are two articles I wrote, one 6 years ago and one at the beginning of 2020, that say basically the same thing. I'm a slow learner.
-'Benevolent' Racism? - Christian Courier, February 24, 2020
-Repenting of a White Savior Complex - Do Justice, June 16, 2014