A Big Sad Thing

I’ve been trying to figure out how to write a blog post this month. I’ve been thinking of a Richard Scarry book that we loved as kids, mostly because of how much my Dad hated it. Did you ever read Mr. Frumble’s Worst Day Ever? The poor pig just can’t catch a break. Dad would grumble about reading it, and we’d choose it over and over again. 

As I learned in counselling years ago, sometimes when everything feels hard at once, it’s because there’s one Big Sad Thing underlying them all. 

My Big Sad Thing has been my friend Rashidat’s pending deportation date. We’re still writing letters to her MP and to the Minister of Immigration, imploring them to grant this hardworking, community-oriented mama and her boys Permanent Residency here, but the date is drawing nearer and nearer. 

I welcomed Rashidat to a Host home almost 4 years ago now, just weeks before the pandemic hit Canada. 

We’ve celebrated Eid together with fried chicken and new Giant Tiger outfits for her kids in a parking lot. 

We made Christmas planters together. 

She came and weeded my wildly overgrown garden with me when I was pregnant and nauseous. 

We stood together at a vigil for the Afzaal family who was run down by a white supremacist in my hometown of London. 

She gave Theo some sweet little outfits when he was born. She had a top made for me by her sister in Nigeria and shipped all the way here. She made me a beautiful bracelet. 

I don’t have a way to tie this up with a bow, or wax eloquent about it. It just hurts, friends. It just hurts. 

A taste of the profoundly hopeful side of Open Homes….hear it straight from some Guests, Hosts, and Companions.

And I suppose that’s the reality of this relational ministry. Sometimes Guests become friends, and their struggles become your own struggles, and their joys your joys. That sounds a lot nicer when you’re in the “joys” part. 

Mostly this work is profoundly hopeful. I get to see people take their first steps of their new life here. I see them on some of the hardest days, those early moments when they have to take a leap of faith to trust us, and I try to find ways to reassure them that they will find their footing. And then they find it, bit by bit, and I get to see their personalities begin to shine. We get to know them in all their multifaceted personhood and it’s a delight. We eat each other’s food, laugh together, celebrate successful hearings, furnish their first Canadian apartments. 

But this is a Big Sad Thing. And I’m not going to skirt around that with faux hope or package it nicely. 

All I’m left with is: would you pray with me that my friend Rashidat doesn’t have to get on that flight? She begins to observe Ramadan this week, and it would be the most wonderful gift if she received some good Ramadan news.

Thank you as always for your support. It allows me the freedom to walk alongside Guests and friends in the good and hard seasons. I need to strengthen my fundraising network to keep up with the demands of baby expenses. Three ways you can help are to 1) forward this email to someone else; 2) talk with your church about becoming an Open Homes partner church; 3) or talk with me about hosting a small fundraising gathering over coffee or wine.

I'm back!

It is surreal to be sitting back at the same desk, staring out the same window, at the same backyard, when so much of my identity and daily life has profoundly shifted. Wild how babies do that! 

To be honest, I was very nervous about coming back. How would Theo adapt to daycare? Would I even remember what I do here? I can be a very all-or-nothing person--would I be able to give Theo the attention he needs and pilot this ship? 

It turns out that my worrying was for naught. Within the first week I set Theo down at daycare and he immediately crawled away from me to play with blocks. Bye Mom, I’ve got friends now!

I’ve been a Companion for a Tanzanian Guest while I was off. Here’s Theo enjoying a cuddle with our friend.

Some differences between my stay-at-home new mom life and OHH life: 

• Apparently days of the week matter now? I keep getting confused about what day it is. 

• I can hop in the car in minutes. No diaper bag, no planning around nap schedules, no thinking about where and when I’ll be able to breastfeed while out. It’s disorientingly simple!

• I miss my little guy. The best part of the day is going to pick him up.

The one thing that isn’t different is the ways that people who arrived here as refugee claimants bless my life. So many of them have become good friends that I never had to step back from the community we’re all creating together--it carried me. Meals, visits, text messages, hugs, new faces, excuses to do fun seasonal Hamilton activities together...

It has been a bit of a wild ride for the team while I’ve been away. They welcomed 25 new Guests! This past summer many East African refugee claimants wound up in Canada, and you may have seen the news reports that showed them sleeping on the streets of Toronto and Hamilton. Heartbreaking stuff. Open Homes rose to the occasion and partnered with various organizations to welcome as many people as possible and our Christmas party showed the fruit of that labour--a whole crew of Kenyans sang a Christmas song in Swahili! I wish I could share it with you, because it is a real delight, but these folks are still in the early stages of their journeys so it wouldn’t be safe. 

Such sweet welcome cards for new Guests from Calvin Christian School’s grade 2s!

I have been delighted to see how many new Hosts and Companions have joined in since I left. This ministry is thriving. There are big challenges, sure, the housing market being at the top of the list, but Hamilton churches are *in*. 

This week we welcomed a new Guest (a Kenyan) and next week I will start leading a new Kinship Circle for another new Kenyan. The number of emails to volunteers I’ve written this week that have started, “We haven’t met yet, but I’m Danielle...”!

Thank you so much for your continued support for this ministry while I was away welcoming another kind of newcomer, my sweet little social butterfly. 

Prayer requests:

• For a dear friend who is in the midst of deportation proceedings after being cheated by a dishonest lawyer. I can’t say more for the sake of her privacy, but may she be able to stay in Canada. 

• For a Guest with an upcoming hearing who is quite nervous. It is hard to over-emphasize the way people’s lives can hinge on this one hearing! 

• In thanks for the whole Open Homes team and the ways they worked together while I was off to welcome so many people. Prayers too for deeply restorative rest for my coworker Alison, who took on a significant portion of the extra leadership work. 

• For wisdom and good conversations as we continue adapting this model to better meet the needs of refugee claimants. It will likely be no surprise to you that the housing search has only become harder, and creative solutions are needed. 

• Thanks that my coworker Noha is now full-time with us!!! This is a HUGE answer to prayer. Prayers for her as she builds her fundraising network, and thanks for the progress she has already made. We love her.

Showered with Love

Just popping in from maternity leave to share a few shots from a recent Open Homes baby shower for baby Theodore. I can’t wait for Theo to get to know these dear folks who love him already and have showered him with blessings.

We had a blast soaking in the love of our community. The pictures of the onesies crowded with messages in Arabic, Spanish, and English make me tear up! (And obviously the food was amazing…as always.)

I can’t close this blog without getting spicy about all the news coverage of Roxham Road recently, from the premier of Quebec decrying the numbers of refugee claimants the province is welcoming to federal politicians playing political games with refugee lives. The majority of my Open Homes friends crossed the border irregularly at Roxham Road, but only because they were not allowed to cross at other official border points due to the Safe Third Country Agreement between the US and Canada.

Closing Roxham Road isn’t the answer—it would only feed smuggling networks and further endanger refugee lives.

The answer is cancelling the Safe Third Country Agreement so that refugee claimants can safely cross from the US to Canada or from Canada to the US, as also happens. That’s exactly what the Canadian Council for Refugees, Canadian Council of Churches, and Amnesty International are trying to do by challenging this agreement in the courts, on the grounds that the US is not in fact a safe country for all refugees, due to their practices of detention (including solitary confinement and often lack of sufficient access to the asylum process) and inadequate protections for refugees fleeing gender-based violence. This case is currently awaiting for response from the Supreme Court of Canada. I’m really proud that the Church has been a key part of this case.

You can see the Canadian Council for Refugees’ full statement here.

Last post before maternity leave!*

It’s a strange thing to be 8 months pregnant during the Christmas season. 

1) I have no idea how Mary walked for several days to get to Bethlehem. Apparently only the wealthy had donkeys, so that placid donkey ride we see in religious art was more of a multi-day waddle. (No wonder she gave birth upon arrival!) 

2) As the world gears up for Christmas, I feel myself relaxing into this steadily darkening month and readying myself to hibernate with baby. We’ll sleep at odd hours, be awake in the dark, and not leave the house for weeks. 

3) As my belly stretches tighter and tighter (seriously, how is it possible that baby will keep growing for 5 more weeks?!), I see the Open Homes team and network stretching to take on my roles while I’m off on maternity leave. People are stepping into new responsibilities, with a new Kinship Circle Leader, new communications volunteer, new administrative volunteer, and more. We’ve always said that we’re a network, and I see that network stepping up as I prepare to step back for a season. It’s a beautiful thing. 

An Open Homes friend enjoying the blossoms at the Bayfront…May will come again, friends!

I’ve been especially excited to see my coworker Noha, who started as a Kinship Circle Leader (ie. leader of groups of volunteers that surround and support refugee Guests) just this May, already beginning to lead and mentor another new Kinship Circle Leader, Darlene. It has been an absolute delight to coach her and to see her skills continue to unfold. 

The end of the year is a great time to take stock of 2022, to look back on the ways that God has led us through and provided for us. 

One of the best days of 2022—our 4th anniversary party!

Here’s a quick snapshot: 

• Guests welcomed: 27! 

• Guest families: 14

• New Hosts: 7! (I have to pause to highlight this. In the fall, we ran out of Hosts temporarily because various Hosts had life circumstances that led them to postpone their next hosting situation. But God provided, our network stepped up, and within a month or so, we had several new Emergency Hosts and 4 new Host families. As many ministries struggled to reinvigorate their volunteer network after a couple years of intermittent lockdowns, this was a huge encouragement to us.)

• Emergency Hosts: 6 (These folks step up on short notice to open their homes in emergency situations, whether because a Guest has been evicted from their long-term accommodations or because we want to welcome a new Guest but their Host won’t be ready for a couple weeks. We love our Emergency Hosts!)

• New Companions: 11

• New Kinship Circle Leaders: 2

• Canada Ontario Housing Benefit subsidies: 6 families! (This is the subsidy I talked about in my last post that we gained access to by getting on The List. 

• Guest hearings: 6! (One family is still waiting for their hearing response, and we pray with them for a big YES.)

• Anti-racism Advisory Team members: 4

• 2 summer picnics, 2 RentSmart trainings, 1 Run for Refugees, 1 anniversary party, 1 Christmas party, and many church presentations. 

Meeting with the Ontario Shelter Coalition—stellar refugee welcomers and advocates from across the province. We learn so much from these folks.

It hasn’t been all joy and progress though. Some challenges of the year...

• We’ve been hearing stories of sexual abuse that Guests suffered before they came to us, due to miserly low OW rates and inaccessible housing. Women and children, especially, end up sleeping on someone’s couch and vulnerable to the whims and wills of that person because they don’t have other options. Some are supported in beautiful, sacrificial ways. And some are left instead with trauma. This is the face of the housing crisis. It makes my blood boil. 

• Grants we thought we’d get that we didn’t. We will keep knocking, and learning the tricks of the trade. Big thanks to Indwell staff for offering essential advice along the way. 

• As I wrote about in my last post, it is increasingly hard to find long-term housing for Guests on Ontario Works. Something’s gotta give. We are so thankful for the landlords, both Christian and otherwise, who have knocked a couple hundred dollars per month off the rent for a unit and passed up other possible tenants who look like more of a “sure bet” on paper. But increases to social assistance rates and densified urban housing that’s on bus lines and close to services is so desperately needed. 

An Open Homes community member enjoying a show thanks to our partners at Welcome Inn.

Please hold these things up in prayer, and pray too for the Open Homes Hamilton leaders as they take the leap into this next year without me. They will absolutely do great, but I know there’s some anxiety there. 

One more thing: since one of our key start-up grants has run its course (thanks NewGround!) I could use a bit of a bump in support to sustain me through my maternity leave. Thanks to so many of you, my support is relatively stable, but with the increased expenses of having a little person around, a bit of a bump would help. Would you consider making a donation to my salary as part of your year-end giving? 

*You may see some more posts from me during mat leave, if the writing itch gets to me. But either way, you can stay in the loop with Open Homes Hamilton on Facebook or just send me a note and I’ll get you added to the general Open Homes newsletter list. The welcome goes on without me!

Let me leave you with a song that my friend Jesse wrote for the No Room? event back in May. As we get ready to welcome the Refugee King this Christmas, may our cities become cities of refuge.

A Very Good Day

Though the housing market may have cooled in Hamilton, rental prices continue to climb. The average price for a one bedroom apartment in the city in July is now between $1500 and $1600. For one bedroom! 

Meanwhile, the rates for Ontario Works (OW) and the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) have been the same since 2018. A single person on OW gets $390/month for shelter. That’s a QUARTER of what the average one bedroom costs. I can feel my face heating up as I write this--that’s legislated poverty. Once they combine their shelter allowance with their basic needs allowance (meant for food, clothes, bus fare, etc), they get $733 per month. That’s still less than 1/2 of what they need to rent a one bedroom. 

This means that Guests have to cut deep into their basic needs budget to have a shot at affording even a room in someone’s house, and we end up in the position of encouraging people to access food banks and community food fridges to make ends meet. It’s the worst.

Almost every refugee claimant starts out on OW, even if their English is strong, even if they have transferable skills. That’s because they usually need to support the basic documents for their refugee claim within 45 days after beginning their claim, with the support of a lawyer. Details on where they’ve lived, worked, and travelled for the last 10 years, family members, and the full narrative that explains why they’re seeking Canada’s protection. (It used to be 15 days pre-pandemic!) This narrative will be referenced in their refugee hearing, so it’s very important to get it right and Guests visit their lawyers multiple times in those first weeks.

(Ajiaco!)

And now that pandemic-related delays and staffing shortages at the Canada Border Services Agency are keeping some people from doing the very first step of the process (called an eligibility hearing) for months, some can’t even get OW at the beginning and it takes months to get a work permit! So some of our friends who run into these delays are having an even harder time finding their long-term apartment. 

Don’t worry, I’m getting to the good news. 

For all these reasons and more, we’ve been trying to access additional government subsidies for Open Homes Guests. If they come through a city-funded shelter, they are eligible to be referred to various programs that can top up their social assistance so that they can find a safe, reasonably affordable place to stay. But we’re not on that list, so our people haven’t had access to these subsidies yet. 

(STUNNING artwork by Nina Schuurman-Drenth for our community. She used pictures painted by our community at a recent gathering as the base for her collage.)

So the other day, with the support of super-volunteer and former City housing staff Bruce, I met with City staff members working in the homelessness prevention and subsidized housing areas. I was ready for us to be underestimated: we are small and still relatively unknown compared to the big players. And I’m a young woman, which does not always play in my favour. So I put on my boss-lady red lipstick and got ready to make our case, with a lot of helpful coaching and planning from Bruce the Saint. 

Thankfully, Bruce had them smiling before I even figured out their video call system and entered the virtual room. And they were lovely! 

(Apparently the key to smooth hummus is blending in ice cubes. Who knew?!)

In 45 short minutes, we got 2 big wins: 

• One of our Open Homes friends, an elderly Iraqi Kurdish woman, has been on the Access to Housing waitlist for subsidized housing for more than 2 years. This is not unusual--some people wait on that list for almost a decade. Cruel, but true. But this woman has my heart and her landlord recently upped her monthly rent by an illegal $200/month, so I was ready to knock on every door I could find. (Channeling my friend Jess Brand, who always says to leave no stone unturned when searching for housing for marginalized people.) They looked up her file, advised us on adding a certain building to her list, and guessed that she would receive a call in the next few months. (!!!!!) I was over the moon, and still am. When my coworker Noha told her the news, this elderly woman with a hunched back and really difficult varicose veins jumped up and said “Alhamdulillah” over and over again. (That’s “praise God” in Arabic.) She is so dear to us, and I am crying again thinking of how happy she was. 

• They also agreed to connect us to the gatekeeper for The List. (That’s the Coordinated Access System, the gateway to subsidies for our Guests.) It’s far from a done deal, because resources are scarce and larger, more entrenched organizations already have their pieces of the pie, but we have a shot at being at the table. Pray with me that they see how refugee claimant-supporting organizations like us and Micah House fit into the puzzle of the city shelter system. After all, we receive referrals weekly from other organizations that are on The List, and relieve pressure on their organizations and on the whole system by welcoming refugee claimants into supportive environments. 

(The Kurdish prescription for pregnant women: eggs, yogurt, bread, cheese. I can live with this.)

It was a very good day. 

In other news, Dan and I are planning to welcome our own little houseguest for a long-term stay of 20+ years in January. I’ve been learning about pregnancy foods from all over the world! Nigerians recommend spice, my Kurdish habibti recommends milk products (we are very much on the same page), and my Yemeni friend made me samosas and hummus. Oh, and there was a Colombian soup called ajiaco that a friend made for me as well, but I’m not sure that was pregnancy-related. Just delicious.

(It has been *so good* to gather with our community again this summer. Photo cred to Ki Moon Song Media.)

Menamen, Fried Plantain, Saga Saga, and Arepas...

It has been too long since I shared an update here! Sorry, friends. Life rolls on and before you know it, 4 months have passed. I always begin to come alive again in the spring though, so credit this belated blog post to the buds on the red maple by our gate and the daffodils in the garden.

The greatest joy of the past few months has been having tea (...or menamen...or saga saga...or fried plantain...or arepas...) with Guests again. The joy of sharing a simple meal together is irreplacable. There's something about a shared table that has the power to bring us together and lessen the power of the many things that divide us, at least for a time. We all have to eat. Maybe that's why one of the central practices of our faith is a meal?

Our side yard. It’s been so fun seeing it come alive, since this is our first spring in this house.

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that I have been zeroed in on enacting the goals of last year's anti-racism process. I can be a bit of a bulldog when I get hold of a goal, for better or for worse! This time for the better, I think.

So I'm so excited to share that we have an Advisory Team! Three women of colour--an Egyptian-Canadian theological curriculum developer, an African-American pastor/fundraiser/anti-racism trainer, and a Salvadoran-Canadian healthcare worker--are meeting regularly to review our policies, communications, progress on our anti-racism goals, etc. We need to be accountable to people of colour, since the vast majority of Guests are people of colour but the majority of our partner churches, volunteers, and donors are white. Unless we find intentional ways to submit to the leadership of people of colour and hear critiques of our work, we will very likely miss important opportunities and quite possibly do harm.

I am so jazzed that these women said yes. They are powerhouses, with diverse immigration pathways to Canada, a wealth of experience working with refugees and immigrants, and things. to. say. We are not worthy! You'll hear more about them in the coming months, I'm sure.

Our hosting room. Sharp-eyed members of my family will see several contributions from my Grandma here.

On the home front, Dan and I become Hosts a couple weeks ago! It's already helped me to understand the experiences of Hosts. So many Hosts come to me in their first weeks of hosting wanting reassurance that they are doing well and that their Guest is comfortable. I get that now! It is a bit of a vulnerable experience, inviting someone you don't know into your home and hoping that you send them enough signals of welcome that they feel comfortable. So I'm telling myself what I've told many other Hosts and trying to be open-handed about it all, offering connection but not demanding it. Hosts and Guests always settle into a new normal as they figure each other out, and we are getting there too.

Our Guest is lovely. She has cooked delicious Turkish meals for us several times, and seems to be able to create something beautiful with limited ingredients and 2 vegetarians to contend with. Our diet choices are confusing for many newcomer friends, but we adapt together!

Learning a new dish called barbunya from our Guest. Mine is definitely not as good as hers—apparently the trick is a healthy dose of olive oil.

Here's another lil somethin-somethin' I've been working on. Enjoy! Would love to hear your feedback if have any—and feel free to share it!

In less exciting news, I have been going on quite the learning curve for grant applications, thanks to some generous support from Indwell staff, Andrea at IAFR Canada, and a 5-star volunteer named Fady Mekhael. Unfortunately that learning curve involves a lot of unsuccessful grant applications. As in so many things in life and especially in this work, relationships are key, and relationships grow step by step. But this week we received a grant from the Charis Foundation for professional development for our team! It's a matching grant, so we'll be working to raise $5000 in the coming months.

And here's the best news of all: we are over the moon about a possible new hire in the coming weeks, the culmination of much of our work in the last year, including our anti-racism process...more news to come soon, I hope!

I love when you drop me a line after you read this, so I get to hear a bit about your lives too. Please do share!

12 Christmas Gratitudes

I’ve been laughing at all those posts going around social media like this one…can anyone relate? With news of Omicron and governments mulling increased restrictions again, it’s enough to make me want to curl up with some eggnog under a blanket and pretend the world doesn’t exist. Anyone else?

But when I look back over the last year, even in the midst of a pandemic, I really am grateful for 2021. Although I would have loved to actually sit down with refugee friends more often over a meal, the development and growth of Open Homes over this year has left me with a lot to be thankful for.

1.       So many friends had successful refugee hearings or appeals! For some of them, the process was easier than it would have been—instead of driving to Toronto early to beat traffic, they simply logged on and did their hearing over a video call. This brought its own set of policy challenges and advocacy needs, but I am grateful that some government offices are providing more online options.

2.       Long-term housing for several Open Homes guests – Social assistance rates have not kept up with inflation, and now that Hamilton’s housing costs are skyrocketing, every housing search is a challenge. (Can you imagine finding housing for $390 per month? That’s the shelter rate for a single on Ontario Works. That is cruelty.) But, despite everything, our friends keep finding safe places to live. Most often it’s a room in a family’s home or a shared one-bedroom apartment with a roommate. And every single one is worth celebrating! Our friend from Chad recently found a place for a reasonable price, with a roommate, in a building where he will be surrounded by community.

(A Guest who recently found an apartment!)

3.       The Safe Third Country Agreement will be reviewed by the Supreme Court of Canada – This policy keeps so many refugee claimants from seeking safety in Canada. It exposes them to possible detention and deportation in the United States. I’m so grateful for the organizations who are fighting for it to be overturned (Canadian Council of Churches, Amnesty International, and the Canadian Council for Refugees). We just heard this week that the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. May justice roll down like a river!

4.       10 anti-racism goals! I’ve written about this several times before, but I am so proud of our team for no longer giving ourselves the benefit of the doubt. We considered the power we hold, considered how to hear constructive feedback, and committed to concrete ways to more towards full belonging, including diversifying our leadership team.

(Gift bags for Guests from New Hope Church’s youth group.)

5.       We were able to start paying interpreters, thanks in part to a grant from the Hamilton Community Foundation. – I love this. I love being able to provide better access to information to Guests, and also being able to pay other newcomers to interpret and provide that access. It’s a win all around.

6.       You folks were so generous, and we’re growing! We are hoping to hire a new settlement guide (aka Kinship Circle Leader) in the New Year on a contract basis. We really need more capacity to be able to say “yes” to more of the calls from refugee claimants that come our way….and thanks to the generosity of donors and churches, we hope to be able to do just that!

(A whole crowd of St Clair Community Church kids rode in the Ride for Refuge!)

7.       17 new volunteers this year! People keep finding their way to us, and our network is now about 80 strong, including hosts, companions, interpreters, general volunteers, and leadership team members.

8.       A family will soon be reunited – Our friends Mohammed and Reham have been here for 3 years, while the rest of their family was in hiding in war-torn Yemen. They recently passed another hurdle in their visa process, and it looks the joyful day of their reunion is getting closer. We raised more than $3000 in 3 days to help their family get out of Yemen to visit the Canadian consulate in Oman. (You can still give here, if you would like:)

(A gorgeous cake that was donated for a recent Guest wedding! This was a real highlight of the year. )

9.       Other community members received status through the healthcare pathways program – The pandemic really revealed the way that our healthcare system depends on PSWs, and how many of those PSWs are newcomers. Though I wish the pathways program had been broader, I do celebrate with a couple members of our community who received status because they had served as PSWs during the pandemic.

10.       Our intern Chloe and her work on new volunteer training videos – There is a lot of settlement knowledge in our leadership team’s heads, and we are finding ways equip volunteers with that knowledge more effectively. I was so grateful for Chloe’s work on filming us and creating the first of a whole set of videos that will be used to train volunteers in key skills. Hopefully this means more refugee claimants welcomed, because there will be more who are equipped to welcome them.

(Chloe laughing with our friend at a rained-out picnic.)

11.       Our granters, donors, and partner churches – That’s you guys! This would be impossible without you. THANK YOU! We had a very successful Ride for Refuge year, thanks to so many of you. You are such an essential part of creating this community.

 A special shout-out too to the Hamilton Community Foundation, Charis Foundation, NewGround grant, and Canadian Baptists of Ontario and Quebec for grants that helped us weather the pandemic.

12.       Guests who have become friends…and even housemates! The big gift in all this are the relationships. When people get more settled here, and stick around in Hamilton, I get to see more of who they really are, outside of the crazy stressful situation of their first few months. It is such a joy and a privilege when these relationships continue and I get to call them friends. I feel so rich. (You can see a few of those friends in the video below—in case you missed it the first time around.)

Merry Christmas, friends! May the story of our Refugee King resound for you again this Christmas and fill you with hope.

We are People on the Move

I learned the other day that, at least according to a far-flung Rowaan family member who has done a lot of genealogical research, “Rowaan” is simply one of the Dutch ways to write “Rouen”, the city in northern France. (Check out the Wikipedia page for Rouen in Dutch if you don’t believe me!)

What’s more, this guy has traced our family tree back through the Netherlands to a Andrew (Andreis) Rouwan who was born in Scotland in 1560 and got married in Leiden, Netherlands in 1585.

As someone who grew up around a LOT of Dutch-Canadians and relates strongly to that story and culture, this is a twist. If this genealogical researcher’s theory is correct, then our family story somehow winds through France, Scotland, the Netherlands, Neerlandia AB, and now Ontario. (Don’t ask me how—the family tree he made is in Dutch!)

(Speaking of migration, we moved recently. This is our housemate Idrissa making some Malian tea. )

Migration is part of human life. Always has been. And as we see throughout the biblical story (think Paul, Jesus, Moses, Ruth, many members of the early church….) refugee journeys have always been part of the human story too, though the internationally accepted definition of a refugee didn’t come to be until the 1950s when the world was grappling with numbers of post WWII refugees that were, at that time, the largest refugee numbers in recorded history.

It’s thought-provoking, isn’t it? Migration isn’t the exception—it’s the rule. And the label we give ourselves is just about how far back we trace the story, which culture(s) we feel tied to, which communities claim us and are claimed by us.

And as the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation reminded me recently, I’m a guest on this land too.

(My fam riding in the Ride for Refuge. They did an amazing job!!)

Some highlights recently from my work with people-on-the-move:

• We got a call about a Colombian woman who was 8 months pregnant and needed a place to stay. Poor girl, flying so late in her pregnancy had caused some issues but she couldn’t go to her ultrasound appointment because Immigration had put her in quarantine for 2 weeks as a COVID precaution. So here she was, far from her family and her country, and worried about her baby in a hotel room for 2 weeks. Thankfully, we were able to find her a host family here, and amazingly, one of her hosts is a labour and delivery nurse who is well-connected in that field. So now she is settling in to her host home and has already been able to get her ultrasound and get connected to a midwife here. She has an eager Kinship Circle that’s supporting her as she gets ready for baby to arrive. It was a good week!

• I’ve been able to interpret for a refugee Guest from Chad as he meets with his lawyer. It’s a privilege for me to be part of those conversations, and to understand more fully what they’re like. They’re hard conversations for him. But I am grateful to be there as his French-English interpreter, rather than a stranger. And it’s great interpretation practice for me, so I’m grateful that he’s given me this privilege.

• Several Open Homes friends (whether past Guests or volunteers) had successful refugee hearings during the pandemic, so now that it’s relatively safe to have outdoor parties, we threw a party to celebrate them! A successful refugee hearing opens so many doors—people can apply for Permanent Residency, which means: access to OHIP, universities and colleges, and, most important for most people, reunification with their families. It’s worth celebrating! A volunteer videographer captured the video above at the party. I hope you enjoy this peek into our community!  

(Our friends’ daughter did a Climb for Refuge instead of a Ride. It was the cutest thing.)

And some things to pray about…

• We found out that we didn’t make it on the short-list for a big grant. We had really hoped that our Letter of Inquiry to a particular foundation would be successful so that we could hire 2 Kinship Circle Leaders with lived newcomer experience. It seemed like we were a great fit it, but it was very competitive and we didn’t get it. Now we’re searching for other opportunities that could help us fund these part-time positions, because we’re convicted that expanding the diversity of our team is the way forward.

• Housing searches are only growing more difficult, and we are looking for a new housing search volunteer to help out. Our friend Sarah has been taking the lead on housing searches for Guest after Guest with tenacity and patience for 3 years now, and she’s going off on maternity leave. We need someone with similar grit to take up that role—maybe it’s you or someone you know!

• My dear friend had her refugee hearing last week and is waiting to hear the result. Please pray that her refugee claim is accepted!

Thank you as always for your support and interest in creating communities of belonging with refugee claimants in Hamilton. I feel my village behind me!

Sweet Awkwardness

Lechuga. (Lettuce.)

Calabaza. (Pumpkin…or squash.)

Tomate. (Tomato.)

A new guest’s orientation to their host home recently included a tour of the garden and swapping words for the goodies found there.

We ran stuck on the word for kale—not a big part of a Mexican diet!

As we continued through the house, I clumsily translated instructions about how to use the washer and dryer, where the outlets were, and where the guest could store their food. I completely forgot the word for “light” (luz!), but gestures can do a lot.

Thankfully, “Star Wars” needs no translation, nor does “Harry Potter”. A LEGO Millennium Falcon was immediately recognized.

(How I feel about getting to have Open Homes gatherings again! Hanging out here with our new intern Chloe.)

Despite the vast power difference between hosts and guests (guests are living in the host’s home, after all), there is often a sweetness to these initial meetings. They’re awkward. The host is clumsily trying to make the guest feel at home, sometimes trying out some words in the guest’s language and trying to read cultural cues that they don’t yet understand. The guest is, of course, in a situation that they’ve probably never encountered before. Both are trying to bridge the gap in their own ways. Both are (usually) reaching for relationship across cultural, linguistic, and racial divides.

As much as we’ve spent the last year at Open Homes reflecting on power in our program and how to minimize the vast power imbalance between ourselves, hosts, and refugee-d guests, I still find these initial meetings sweet. They each have to put themselves out there.

The host may love hospitality and meeting people from other cultures in principle. They may even have hosted before. But when the moment arrives of opening the door to someone who you’ve never met and yet are going to live with for the next 3 months, there’s a bit of uncertainty. Will they be comfortable here? How will we get along? What are their first impressions of us? Am I doing this right?

(If a Haitian person invites you for supper, do not say no! We had enough for 2 parties here.)

I don’t want to overstate this—obviously the guest is much farther beyond their comfort zones than the  host is. Obviously the guest has been forced to flee from everything they’ve ever known and embark on a courageous journey to seek safety, while the host is still literally at home.

And yet—there’s an opening for relationship, for possible mutuality and exchange and learning, between people who might never have otherwise met. I love that moment. There’s a naked humanity to it that lays bare our need for connection, for belonging. The host chooses a level of vulnerability that can invite relationship, rather than holding refugees at a distance. It’s not support for refugees in general, or in principle, but this person, here, now, in all their individuality and contradictions. The guest chooses to live in a host home rather than a shelter. (Though it’s often a choice that is constrained by a lack of options, it is nevertheless a choice.)

(Some volunteers at a recent gathering. Photo cred for this image and the two before it to an Open Homes guest.)

We try to smooth that initial meeting as much as possible, by…

• Giving potential guests information about our program in their own languages, ideally in a written format but at the very least explained through an interpreter;

• Sharing the host’s “house rules” (eg. quiet hours, clarity around alcohol use) with the guest to facilitate clear communication, even where there are language  barriers; and

• Showing guests pictures of the home and the family ahead of time.

There’s only so much that can be done to level that power imbalance and make guests feel safe, but there are a few things we’re working on.

We realized that the host family usually receives more information about the guest than vice versa, and we’re working on setting up more mutual information sharing and expectation setting at the beginning. We also know we have to do better at making honest feedback possible—we’re working on setting up a complaints process and communicating it well to guests so they know who to talk to there’s a problem. (And not the same person who’s been supporting them, like me—in case that person is part of the problem.)

But beyond all that learning and un-learning, it’s that awkward cultural exchange, those unlikely friendships across just about every barrier imaginable, that got me into this work and keeps me doing it. There’s nothing quite like it.

To more awkward cultural exchanges and more beautiful learning from each other!

PS. If you enjoyed this post or learned from it, you could help me out by sharing it with a friend or posting it online. I have to step up my support raising so that my full-time hours match my full-time support, and getting the word out helps!

(One of our first guests (R) recently had a successful refugee hearing! Here he is with his hosts—still hanging out more than 2 years later.)

Joel's Story - World Refugee Day

What is it like for a refugee claimant to arrive in Canada? And how does Open Homes Hamilton support newly arrived refugee claimants?

Open Homes volunteer Joel shares here about his experience in Canada so far (including his time as an Open Homes guest) and what he would like Canadians to know about the refugee experience. He’s a remarkable guy, and I’m excited for you to hear part of his story.

His story is just one of thousands—not everyone has such a positive experience at the border, that’s for sure. But I am glad that he did!

This video was created for New Hope’s World Refugee Day service. Churches and organizations around the world mark World Refugee Day on (or near) June 20. It doesn’t really matter when we set aside time to hear refugee voices together. But the Church is missing out if we don’t listen closely to refugee voices and allow them to transform us! Refugee stories weave their way all throughout scripture, and the call to welcome the stranger into festive kinship echoes throughout God’s instructions to God’s people. God’s people are often refugee-d people, and they/we are always called to welcome refugee-d people. It’s not optional. (If you’re looking for some summer reading, I can’t recommend “Refuge Reimagined” highly enough! It’s transforming the way our team sees our work.)

Three Great Things and One Hard Thing

Have you ever heard how our brains tend to stick like Velcro onto negative thoughts and experiences, and positive ones slip from our grasp like butter off a hot Teflon pan? The metaphor comes from a neuroscientist named Dr. Rick Hanson.  

That idea has been stuck in my head ever since I heard it in a podcast months ago, partially because my behaviour confirms it daily. Maybe you relate?

This week was an excellent example—three BIG, exciting, long-awaited things happened at Open Homes, but my brain is stuck on a really challenging experience with a guest last week.

We had to turn away a refugee claimant due to his behaviour. It sucked. He had spent 2 weeks in quarantine and was just about ready to go to his host home. His hosts had prepared his room, talked with their kids, learned a bit about his culture and language. It would have been a great host home, and still probably will be for another guest someday. The kids were even learning some simple Arabic phrases!

But one red flag had become two….and then three…and in the end he eliminated all his options with us due to his poor behaviour and angry outbursts. It was a profoundly disappointing and exhausting week.

(Mood. /Reminder to myself to keep the expectations a touch more reasonable.)

We’re debriefing the experience and learning from it, and we did get to work with a really fabulous interpreter and cultural guide through the whole experience. We also got connected to a great mental health shelter in town, although he didn’t end up consenting to stay there.

Refugee claimants are people. And people are complicated. Sometimes people make choices that are not in their best interests, especially when they’re dealing with mental health issues and trauma, but they have the right to make those choices for themselves. And their choices have consequences.

That’s certainly a lesson I learned while working at 541: respecting people’s dignity and not patronizing them sometimes means calling them to better behaviour. And sometimes, after many chances and conversations, a line needs to be drawn. It’s a heartbreaker every time that we’ve had to ban someone from the café for a season or revoke their bathroom privileges because they were endangering themselves or others. You can’t force people to make good choices. All you can do is give them the information and support to make their own choices, and offer plenty of grace along the way.

Thankfully, this man has basic English, understands the bus system, and can certainly advocate for himself, so he’s going to be okay. But it was hard, and I wish things hadn’t ended the way they did.

(Got to deliver a mask made by an Open Homes community member to a new guest, along with a welcome card from some kids.)

That leads me to the first BIG, GOOD announcement:

Good thing #1

After 2 years of building support and the guts to make the jump, the time is here: I’ve officially left my job at 541 Eatery and Exchange and gone full time with Open Homes/IAFR Canada! I’ll miss my coworkers at 541. Their resolve, boundaries, sense of humour, creativity and compassion during a pandemic that has hit members of our community very hard, and willingness to fight for our friends have been amazing to watch and participate in. But I am excited to get to give my full attention to Open Homes and to have the time to give it all I’ve got.

More hosts! More guests! More intentional and robust training for new volunteers! More church partners! And above all, leaning more deeply into this vision of creating communities of belonging with refugee claimants.

I will need to keep building support, so if you’re reading this and you’re not a donor yet, but you’re interested, please reach out! Or maybe you have a friend who you think might want to invest in this work. I couldn’t do this without all of you standing behind me.

(It’s so key to connect guests to other community supports, and the Refuge medical centre is an amazing support for newcomers in Hamilton. It was great to learn from Terri, though it made me angry to hear of the unsafe situations many newcomers are working in during COVID. Look into Amazon’s compliance with COVID regulations and respect for worker dignity…it’s not good.)

Good thing #2

We just found out that we were awarded a $15k Pandemic Response Fund grant from the Hamilton Community Foundation!! This money will…

• Allow us to pay for new guests’ quarantines so that we can safely receive new people

• Fund interpretation and translation so we can make our gatherings (even online ones) as accessible as possible

This is huge for us!

GREAT thing #3

And the best news of all…our friends who have been separated from the rest of their family for more than 2.5 years FINALLY heard that their Permanent Residency has been processed! It’s just a matter of time now before they get to have a big, joyous reunion here in Hamilton. Our friend has supported his daughter, who needs 24/7 support, by himself for 2.5 years now, while sending money back to support his family in Yemen and learning English. Suffice it to say that Yemen is not a good place to be right now.

We are going to have such a party when the rest of the family gets here!!

Trusting the Seasons

While the work at Open Homes Hamilton hums along, it’s been hard to know what to share here.  So much of it has been foundation-laying work...

• Beginning to re-envision our volunteer training so that volunteers are more equipped to recognize power imbalances between them and refugee guests, and so that they have tools to lessen those power imbalances.

• Building relationships with other refugee shelters and learning about the latest changes in government policies—often very confusing and contradictory. (I am so grateful for these networks to help us provide excellent support to refugee claimants in the midst of confusing government policies.)

• Applying  for a pandemic adaptation grant from the Hamilton Community Foundation—fingers crossed that we get it! It also includes money for interpretation so that we can make our gatherings more accessible to people who are learning English.

(Thank you cards for the BIPOC folks who shared their input on belonging and welcome with us.)

• Surveying people of colour about what true belonging and full welcome look like to them, and how we might be able to set up healthy ways of hearing feedback, both from past guests and from other people of colour in the community. Open Homes is led by 4 white women, and we know that because of the skin we walk around in, we just don’t know what living in this country and this city is like for our refugee friends. We need to do serious listening, serious power-sharing, serious learning to hold this work responsibly. This is just the beginning!

• Coming up with an honorarium policy to make sure that we’re thanking people who interpret, translate, or share their refugee stories. This work is so valuable, even if there’s no degree or training attached to it, and we want to show appreciation for that lived experience.

• Starting to meet with Jeff Neven from Indwell regularly for mentoring in nonprofit leadership. (A huge gift!)

And so on! Not very photographable work. Lots of Zoom calls, Google docs, and spreadsheets, without the usual visits with refugee claimants to share tea…or doro wat…or samosas…or coconut bread. (Alas!)

It has felt a bit like this *beautiful* print by Jessica Boehman…a time of quiet, of preparation, of wintering. Although maybe not so tranquil and lovely! There’s been a bit more dying to self through the hard wrestling work of anti-racism than tranquility…and dying isn’t fun! But it is necessary, as winter teaches us. We needed to take this time of introspection and re-evaluation in order to be able to welcome refugee claimants, not as permanent “guests” in Canada, but as full-fledged members of our community and our society, with the right to shape it and change it and flourish here. (And the work certainly isn’t over!)

And, as the new leaves come out on the blackcurrant bush in my backyard, I’m excited to be able to share with you that we’ve recently welcomed two new refugee guests, for the first time in 13 months! Our season is changing.

• A woman in her 30s from Zimbabwe

• A man in his late 20s from Ethiopia

Both have already been in Canada and had tried to establish themselves in Montreal, but the language barrier for English-speaking refugee claimants there often pushes refugees west to Ontario.

They’re both in quarantine now, one with a long-term host who has a separate suite in the basement, and the other in a hotel room paid for by the City of Hamilton. We’ve been busy figuring out how to support them from a distance, and how to encourage their relationships with their Welcome Circle of volunteers as well. Thankfully, they’re both young and speak fluent English, so this hasn’t been too difficult. A good way to restart!

(Anyone else?)

I am leading the Welcome Circle supporting the woman from Zimbabwe and, let me tell you, it is a delight! A couple nights ago we gathered online and we were all in stitches from her hilarious stories. I did not think that my work would include playing “Never Have I Ever” and swapping embarrassing stories over Zoom—but I am glad it does.

If you take nothing else away from this post, remember this: THANK YOU.

We were able to weather 13 months without a new guest, as a new program, because of donors like you. Most refugee shelters depend on receiving small rent amounts from refugee claimants (the shelter portion of their social assistance cheques) to help keep the lights on and their staff paid. We don’t—our staffing relies on donations, and we don’t have a physical building. So while other shelters were stressing and wondering if they needed to take on different clients, we didn’t have to.

So I’ve been able to focus on this essential foundation-laying work and not sweat the money details too much. I can’t thank you enough for granting me that freedom and that trust.

(The advocacy session with the good folks of Meadowlands Fellowship CRC.)

Here are some ways that you can join us in prayer:

• Permanent Residency (PR) for a past guest and his daughter – Once someone has  a successful refugee hearing, they need to apply for PR before bringing any family that is still overseas to live with them here. Unfortunately, there are currently more than 40,000 PR applications in the queue! This means our friend has been waiting almost two years *after waiting for his refugee hearing* to bring his family here from Yemen. Thanks to advocacy by Meadowlands Fellowship CRC, our MP is working to advocate to the Minister of Immigration to expedite this file, which is a fairly extraordinary move. But the wait is so long. His daughter is 12 and needs her mom. And the family is in danger in Yemen.

• Reopening of the border – It is wild to me that hockey players and snowbirds have been able to cross the border, but not refugee claimants seeking protection. It exposes deep injustice in our society—whose needs count? Whose voices matter?

• Many community members with upcoming hearings – Thankfully, the government seems to be processing refugee claims a bit more quickly, so many of our community members have hearings coming up. These are huge moments in their lives, and a lot is riding on it! Pray for just judges, competent lawyers, calm minds, and dependable technology (since the hearings are all virtual).

• An undocumented man who we are hoping to welcome – He is currently in a Niagara hospital, recovering from some really significant health challenges, including COVID-19. We’ve had the support of a doctor in our network as we figured out how best to advocate for and support him. We are hoping his rehabilitation continues so that we can welcome him soon!

• Vaccine access – We are helping community members to make vaccine appointments and it’s enough to make me pull my hair out. The system here in Ontario is absolutely maddening and inconsistent. Pray that some of our most vulnerable friends are able to get vaccinated! In Hamilton, less than ¼ of the population are people of colour, but 47% of COVID infections are among people of colour. Talk about inequity.

And here’s a way that you can join us in advocacy:

Advocate for refugee claimants to be declared essential travelers! We can be safe AND welcome refugee claimants. We’ve done it with hockey players. To me, this is a no-brainer.

Here’s an advocacy campaign from the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers with an easy-to-use tool to contact your Member of Parliament.

A few parts of 2020 that didn’t suck

On my 30th birthday last year, I pulled away from a house in an east end suburb, the kind that’s so new the dirt is still not scabbed over with grass and there’s not a tree in sight.

In the car with me was a tiny Iraqi Kurdish grandma who probably wouldn’t reach 5’ on her tiptoes. She spoke not a word of English and I spoke not a word of Kurdish or Arabic, so we drove in silence to Micah House to meet the translator while I cranked the heat to try to keep her tiny desert-born frame warm in the depth of a Canadian winter. 

Now whenever I think of Alal*, I can’t help but smile. She speaks a few more words in English and I have gathered a handful of Kurdish and Arabic phrases. She calls me her “binta” (something like “daughter,” I think?) and she is very dear to me. We’ve smiled wordlessly at each other over innumerable cups of tea, Kurdish yogurt soup, cheese, mint curry, chicken. (It turns out Kurdish people appreciate dairy products at least as much as Dutch people do!)

Although I haven’t been able to spend much time with her recently, Alal is a gift of 2020 to me.

(Another gift of 2020: this staff photo, which I find hilarious and my coworkers find…less so. Forgive me? I think it has “American Gothic” vibes.)

I don’t want to paper over the losses of 2020, but you’ve heard enough about how difficult this year has been. It has been hard that we haven’t been able to welcome a new refugee guest since March. We recently were close to welcoming a new couple from Colombia through a partnership with the Colombian Refugee Association here in Hamilton, but with the new lockdown announcement it didn’t seem wise. (We were able to offer them support for their accommodations in another way—grateful for that.) It has been hard to cancel all of our in-person gatherings, when eating together is the best shortcut across language barriers. It has been hard to shift our volunteer orientations to an online format and struggle with WiFi connections. 

So much has been hard, and to be honest I am quite content to stay home and hibernate for a couple weeks for Christmas. To power my brain down a bit and rest from the complicated decisions of 2020 sounds pretty nice!

(This also didn’t suck. I liked this. A scene from one of our picnics in September, with a refugee friend from Mali.)

But at our leadership team meeting the other morning, we reflected a bit on the things that we *could* do in 2020. It turns out that 2020 did bring many gifts to Open Homes Hamilton, along with the stresses and losses and challenges. 

Here are a few of the things that we’re glad to have been able to do in 2020. God has been faithful, despite it all. 

• 7 guests found long-term apartments! - Despite discrimination, despite pandemic rules, despite online viewings, despite unending logistics to coordinate moving teams safely, despite mobility issues, despite OW and ODSP rates that are unbelievably low in today’s rental market, 7 more refugee claimants now have safe housing. YES!

• Church partnerships - We started the year without a single finalized church partnership, and we find ourselves at the end of 2020 with 3! Meadowlands Fellowship CRC, St. Clair Church, and Eucharist Church. Pretty cool that they come from 3 entirely different denominations as well. These churches have committed to being connected to the work we do in various ways, from praying for guests to gathering furniture for guests’ first houses to contributing host homes to taking offerings. 

• Small education grants for guests - Getting some training or Canadian credentials can be an important part of settling into life in Canada. It was exciting to be able to give small education grants to 3 guests to help with their education--one for accountant’s training and two for Personal Support Worker courses. 

• Vision! - I find the words “we build communities of belonging with refugee claimants” rolling off my tongue a lot these days. They feel right. And having had these conversations sets us up well for strategic planning, grant writing, communications, etc. 

• Finding safe ways to stay in community - It was strange to be talking about creating communities of belonging with refugee claimants...and not being able to see anyone! But we were able to gather online twice during Ramadan (once to eat an iftar meal “together” and once to learn about what Ramadan means to Muslims), enjoy some smaller picnics together in September, and the other night more than 40 of us gathered online for a Christmas party. It was wacky and chaotic, but so fun!

• Grants - We’re grateful to have received grants from 3 organizations this year: the Charis Foundation, Diaconal Ministries Canada (their New Ground grant), and the CBOQ (a Baptist denomination). We’re very thankful to our granters!

(Dear 2021, please bring back times of eating together with friends. Pretty please. Also, more injera please.)

• New volunteers trained - 16 new people joined our network and were trained this year, from hosts to church point people, advocates to companions. We especially love it when people with lived refugee experience join our network, and that happened several times this year. (Recruiting more volunteers who have been through their own refugee journeys is definitely a priority for us, for so many reasons.)

• Anti-racism trainings - I’ve written about this a lot, but this was huge. We took a bit of a leap of faith as a team to work with Leading in Colour, and we’re so glad we did. 

• A very successful Ride for Refuge - 6 teams raised more than $16,000 for our work, a portion of which went towards getting our rent advance program started. Newcomers often struggle to make the deposit for a new apartment, and an Ontario Works program to give them a bit extra to cover the deposit is often too slow to get the apartment. (And requires confirmation from the landlord...who usually won’t sign until the deposit is paid. It’s a real catch-22.) With this money, we’re able to provide small short-term bridge loans to help people pay the deposit. They pay us back one they receive the OW money, so we should be able to cycle through the same money over and over again. 

• Many guests took steps forward in getting settled in Canada - From apartments to jobs to graduating into a new English class to buying cars to successful hearings to getting their kids registered in school...refugee claimants kept putting one foot in front of the other. In a year that we’ve all had to find new reserves of resilience, refugee claimants have a lot to teach. 

Now to hide under a rock for a bit. Or really, to sit beside the fire and crochet. 

Peace out, 2020. 

Zzzzz…..

The Christmas story is a refugee story

“So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod.”

— Matthew 2:14-15a

The modern refugee protection system was established after World War II as the world said “never again” to the horrors of the Holocaust. But people had been fleeing across political boundaries to seek safety long before then. Including Christ himself.

When I get discouraged about the ways that Christ has been used to justify and prop up the powerful at the expense of those with less power, I try to remind myself of the Jesus I meet in Scripture. The Jesus who was born to an occupied ethnicity under the thumb of one of the largest, most powerful empires the world had ever seen. The helpless infant who had to be carried to safety by his peasant parents because a power-hungry king was trying to kill him. The homeless teacher who was executed by the state and religious leaders for upsetting social structures by preaching that the Kingdom of God was near.

Jesus was a refugee.

If you’d like to order the t-shirt above, you can do so until next Monday, November 30! Just follow this link, and if you’re not in Hamilton, I’ll find a way to get the shirt to you once it’s printed. The proceeds will go to welcome refugee claimants into communities of belonging in Hamilton, through Open Homes.

Here’s the song that will be my soundtrack this Advent season, as we wait for the arrival of the refugee king.

A Consequential Love

This week marks four years since these two dorks tied the knot. And what a 4 years it’s been!

7 new jobs between the two of us, a cross border move and immigration process for Dan, a dog that brings an inordinate amount of personality into our lives, and turbulent times that made us question a good bit of what we thought we knew about the world and ourselves.

I know less about some things than I thought I did, but here’s something I do know: love will unsettle you, make you see things from a different perspective. Love will make you see yourself in high definition when maybe you would have settled for an out-of-focus picture.

Love means I can’t let myself off the hook or make excuses when I notice negative behaviour patterns. (Did I always crave control this much?! What about those bursts of anger? That competitive drive that I just can’t turn off? Ugh.). Love means working on myself, because I can see up close how my shadow sides affect someone else.

Love means the other is not a prop in the story I tell myself (and the world) about myself. Some of the shine has come off that story, but I think I have some new emotional resilience and dialogue skills in its place!

Why am I saying all this in a blog about refugee welcome? Because of this page in Austin Channing Brown’s I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness:

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Especially this line: “my experience has been that whiteness sees love as a prize it is owed, rather than a moral obligation it must demonstrate.” Oof.

Love is sometimes used to soften the drive for justice, not undergird it. Calls for love often sound like calls to soften the message, to prioritize white people’s feelings over BIPOC access to safe housing, or the right to not die in the streets at the hands of cops, or the right to show up as their full selves and not have to pretend to fit into white norms.

Here’s another thing I’ve been learning the last 4 years, and especially during this pandemic as our Open Homes leadership team wrestles with what it means to be 4 white women leading a program that’s meant to welcome and house refugees (who are overwhelmingly people of colour):

Anti-racism has unsettled me. I have to wrestle with how white people have often used Christianity to oppress people of colour, whether that’s the KKK using Christian language and symbols in their ceremonies, churches in Canada sending nuns and priests to “kill the Indian, save the child” in residential schools, Reformed hero Abraham Kuyper’s theology being used to construct the system of apartheid in South Africa, or present-day churches putting limits on BIPOC members’ full belonging in  a myriad of ways. Where has my theology been shaped by white supremacy? Am I missing out on the voices of Christians of colour? This wrestling sucks. It is uncomfortable. The days of knowing “the answer” to every theological question are no more for me, but I pray that my days of dependence on God are just beginning. (I am very very grateful to have found companions on this journey in Kenosis groups and a BIPOC theology reading group!)

Anti-racism has made me see myself in high definition.

Anti-racism means I can’t let myself off the hook. We already do guest debriefings, but do we have ways for people to tell us safely if they experienced discrimination of any sort in our programming? What would it look like to be held accountable by people of colour, since we know we have blind spots and biases?

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What a guy. Love him!

Anti-racism means working on myself.

Anti-racism means the other is not a prop in a story I’m telling the world about myself. When I would like to post a picture of myself with a guest…am I honouring their full humanity? Am I eager for people to see me? Am I building my personal “brand” by using this picture?

And I wonder if that’s because anti-racism is in some ways another word for love. A fierce love, a love with teeth, a consequential love that honours the full humanity of BIPOC people (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour).

So at Open Homes Hamilton, we’re trying to aim for a consequential love, a love that has consequences in the real world that are actually positive for those we claim to love. Not assumed consequences—just because our intentions are good, doesn’t mean our impacts always are. (And even our intentions might have shades of wanting to “save” or “fix”!)

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The inimitable Katie at our visioning discussions this summer.

We have a lot more talking and wrestling to do, but I’m so encouraged by the cohesion we’ve already had as a leadership team around the direction we need to head. It’s not really fun to realize that despite our best efforts, we could cause harm if we’re not intentional and continually shaped by robust feedback from people of colour and especially people with lived refugee experience. But people have engaged transparently and courageously and worked through some discomfort and disagreements. Just feeling really lucky to work with the people I do!

Things we’re working on now…

• Working with Leading in Colour, a BOMB organization that provides advocacy training to young BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour) and also provides anti-racism consultations and trainings to groups like us. So far, I can’t recommend them enough!

• Thinking through how we might expand the diversity of our leadership team.

• Developing a policy for paying honouraria when people of colour share their lived experience with us.

• Revising our photo policy so that we continue to respect the confidentiality and safety of current guests, but are able to share more photos of past guests with their consent, so that our social media more fully represents our community. Under our former policy, the faces that showed up in our newsletter and on our social media were mostly volunteer faces or covered-up refugee faces. We set up that policy with good intentions, but in reality our communications ended up quite white.

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This stuff isn’t sexy! Revising policies, wrestling with anti-racism training, having hard conversations as a team…none of this photographs well. No cute photo-ops here.

But neither do some of the most loving moments of marriage—choosing to listen when you’re tired, washing the dishes even when you’ve done them twice this week, being careful what I share about Dan without his consent, having hard conversations with tenderness and grace when something is out of whack, staying curious about his perspective instead of assuming I know what he’ll say. (All you people who have been married far longer than 4 years are probably chuckling at me! We are babies. We know nothing.)

But you don’t get to the joy of real community without the difficulties of real love, right? So here’s to 4 years of marriage and here’s to a lifetime of learning a consequential love.

Some other things that are going on…

• Surgery! - I’m waiting to hear the date for a second surgery on my arm in November. The surgeon will remove some stuff that’s blocking my mobility and take out the metal they put in last year. I’ll be mostly out of commission for 2-4 weeks while I heal and work on physio, but I’m hoping that I’ll gain 10-20 degrees more range of motion in my elbow. Right now I have about 100 degrees of range on a good day, where most people have 130 to 140.

• A past guest finally has a date for their refugee hearing! This is encouraging. The Immigration and Refugee Board is still at only about 30% capacity, so long waits for hearings have gotten even longer. Pray for our friend, that he would be well-prepared, that his lawyer would be competent and not miss any relevant info, and that the board member deciding his case would a person of compassion and integrity.

• We are ready to welcome a new guest, and are just waiting for a referral from a Toronto shelter! We’re praying that the right person comes our way. We have 4 new host families—a huge blessing in COVID times.

• Our leadership team is going through a lot in our personal lives. Could you pray for strength and wise pacing for us?

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My parents and our friend Lucy in the Ride for Refuge last month. How cute are they?

Some good stuff.

I’m all about thrifting and buying less stuff, but I can’t practice what I preach when it comes to books. Pretty soon the walls of our apartment will be so covered in books that we won’t have room for any other decorations.

I love to write in my books, to add my own input to the margins (whether that’s “YES!” or “this is BS”), underline the good stuff, dog-ear the pages, and sometimes add stars to the dog-ears of the underlined pages if the book is really rocking my world.

One book that has stars on its dog-ears on its underlined pages is Radical Gratitude by Mary Jo Leddy. I want to say this book changed my life, but the truth is that I’m still working on allowing it to change my life. Mary Jo calls me out of the pit of despair where I sometimes live into my best self, grateful for the gift of each new day and ready to pour out my gratitude in generosity and hospitality. (It’s probably time to read it again, because some days I set up a couch in the pit of despair and settle right in. Which can also be necessary—can you be fully human these days without being *really* sad sometimes?--but writing about Prophetic Lament by Soong-Chan Rah is a post for another day.)

The gratitude Mary Jo describes is not a gratitude for middle class comfort or illusory Western progress. It’s a grittier and more fundamental gratitude for life itself, for the Creator who makes loaves multiply in times of scarcity, who can walk on waves, a gratitude for the strange arithmetic of grace. This gratitude is fuel for a life of seeking justice—the life of Mary Jo, the majority of which has been spent at Romero House refugee house in Toronto is a testament to that. (Read the book, seriously.)

As a way of practicing that gratitude, I want to share some things I’m grateful for at Open Homes Hamilton recently.

These strange times have been strange for us too—our last 2 in-house guests found long-term apartments recently, and we’re guest-less! Since the borders are closed, only the tiniest trickle of refugee claimants are arriving in Canada these days, and we’re getting creative in strange times, like everyone else.

And yet…there is so much to be grateful for.

• Stable long-term housing for guests! – A single person on Ontario Works (OW) receives $390 per month for shelter, and a bit more for basic needs (eg. food). The average rent for a one bedroom apartment in Hamilton is $1,367. Add discrimination against guests for their race, OW, or immigration status, and you can understand why we really party it up when a guest finds safe, affordable housing. Thanks to our stellar housing search volunteers, a network of creative companions, unbelievable patience and resilience on the part of guests, and the occasional Christian family who offer long-term accommodations at below-market rates, we keep finding safe long-term apartments. Honestly, this is nothing short of miraculous to me.

• City grant! – Last week we heard that we received a City of Hamilton grant that will allow us to quarantine new guests in a hotel for 2 weeks before placing them in a host home. This is a huge gift. It means we’ll be able to welcome a few new guests again—probably secondary migrants who started out in another city like Montreal and Toronto at the beginning of the pandemic and have now decided to move to Hamilton. Yippee!

• Church partnership agreements – We’re in the process of discussing partnership with 3 Hamilton churches, from 3 different denominations. These churches will commit to engaging with Open Homes in a variety of ways and we’ll commit to supporting their learning about and involvement with refugee claimants.

• Safe Third Country Agreement overturned - Many Open Homes community members had to cross the border at unmarked border points, like so many other refugee claimants. The Safe Third Country Agreement between Canada and the US is the reason--if they tried to cross at an official border crossing, they would be sent back to the US, even if they wouldn’t not safe there. Even if they may be detained there. Thanks to a brave refugee claimant plaintiff who was turned away by Canada and ultimately detained in solitary confinement in the US, and thanks to the support of the Canadian Council of Churches, Amnesty International, and the Canadian Council for Refugees, this agreement was overturned by the Federal Court recently. We pray that this decision will mean that more refugee claimants can seek safety in Canada!

• Racial equity review - The Black Lives Matter movement has deepened our leadership team’s thinking around racial justice in the past several months. The reality that we are 4 white women (and teams made up mostly of white volunteers) running a program serving people of colour has hit home for us. We know that because we do not have Black skin, we experience the world differently and we will have blind spots related to the impact of our programming on people of colour. That's why we are working towards a racial equity review of our model, and setting up feedback/accountability loops that will help us to evaluate future decisions for their racial equity impacts. You can read more about the thinking behind this here on the IAFR blog. I am *so* thankful for a team that sees the need for us to do some deep thinking around this, and to submit ourselves and our programming to the insights of people of colour.

• Ride for Refuge – 6 teams have signed up to ride, walk, or hike for Open Homes Hamilton. Wow! Some of them are getting pretty creative, from challenging their members to bike the equivalent of the “last leg” of a refugee journey (often from the Fort Erie border crossing to Hamilton) to hiking 200 kilometres of the Bruce Trail as a family.  

The biggest gift of them all are the refugee guests themselves, people who have chosen to trust us. I pray and hope that we will be worthy of that trust.

I’ll leave you with this poem from Mary Jo Leddy:

We are grateful.

You have given us this day

and have given us this way

to say Thank You.

We thank you for giving us

what we need to be grateful.

We offer back to You

                all that we have

                all that we are.

We know our thank you

is as fragile as we are

--it can be crushed

by the care of the moment

--it can disappear

in the heat of the day

--it can be blown away

by the winds of suffering.

And so we ask You

to take our small thank you

into Your great act of Thanksgiving:

You, Lord of the loaves and the fishes,

You who are from God

with God and for God,

You in whom it is all

Yes and Amen.

(Mary Jo Leddy, in Radical Gratitude pp. 69-70)

A Lament and a Resource List

Our Open Homes team shared these words and this resource list with our network this week, and I thought it would be good to share here too. (Sorry to those of you who will get this twice! Or not sorry—this is that important.)

---

Dear friends, 
 

Our hearts have been heavy this week. Maybe yours have too. 

If we feel this bone-weary and sad watching the news of violence against Black people and protests in the US and Canada, we can’t imagine how exhausted and exasperated people of colour must be to see their community members dying in the streets. 

There is so much that could and should be said--about the history of racism in Canada, about our habit of thinking it’s so much better here for people of colour, about the ways our white skin shields us from the constant un-belonging that POC folks are subjected to--but people of colour have already said all of that better than we can. That’s why we’ve listed some resources below from people of colour for you to consider.

We are left thinking of the faces of refugee claimants that we meet. Will they encounter more violence or suspicion in this country that they sought out as a safe haven? What comments will they hear? Will they see themselves represented in books, videos, media as full humans, or as stereotypes? Will their voices be trusted, their perspectives be welcomed, their gifts be celebrated? 

We pray that they will be. And we commit to working alongside them towards full belonging. We know we have a lot to learn. We know too that being white women managing a project in Hamilton for refugee claimants (who are overwhelmingly people of colour) means that we have a responsibility to keep listening to people of colour, keep learning, and especially to keep un-learning our own racism.

Racism lives in each of us. It is a long journey to see where we assume that white ways are best, white faces are best, white cultures are best, and to replace these deep learned behaviours and attitudes with solidarity and true love, but it is a journey deeper into being the people God has called us to be. 

May this be a moment when we choose to listen to voices that might say things that make us uncomfortable. May God give us strength, love, and courage to hear the call to repentance from people of colour now, and to respond. 

With love and deep lament, 

The Open Homes Hamilton leadership team

(Katie Karsten, Sharlene Craig, Alison Witt, and Danielle Steenwyk-Rowaan)

PS We hope the list of resources below will be helpful to you. We have chosen (almost) all Canada-specific resources, because it is so easy for Canadians to tell ourselves that racism is a USA problem, not an us problem. The majority of these resources are by people of colour, because they know best what racism looks like. There are so many great resources out there--these are all ones that we’ve personally looked at and learned from. 

---

Join...

If you are a white person who wants to gather regularly with other white folks to figure out where racism hides in your own heart and commit together to choosing a different way, let me know.

An anti-racism organizer and friend named Bernadette Arthur started this network of groups for white people to do our own anti-racism work, while being accountable to people of colour. They’re called Kenosis Community Groups, after Christ’s example of self-emptying (Philippians 2), and there may be a new group or book club starting online in your area.

Read...

• The Skin We’re In - Desmond Cole

• Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada - Lawrence Hill

• Jesus and the Disinherited - Howard Thurman

• ‘Racism exists in Canada:’ These are the stories from people who have lived it as eyes turn on U.S. after George Floyd death in Minneapolis (Toronto Star, June 1, 2020)

• Black Toronto residents 20 times more likely to be shot dead by police, study says (The Guardian, 2019)

• 'We're called terrorists:' HWDSB anti-bullying session hears from Muslim community (CBC News, March 2020)

• Facebook post from Shad  (Shad is a Christian rap artist who was born in Kenya, grew up in my hometown of London ON, and has since lived in Toronto and Vancouver. His words about learning how to behave to not arouse the ire of white people hits hard--he’s from the same place as I am.)

Watch...

• Dear White Peacemakers (webinar with Osheta Moore and Global Immersion Project, password: peacemaking)

• Parish Collective webinar on anti-Asian racism in the time of COVID-19

• The Skin We’re In (CBC Firsthand episode with Toronto journalist Desmond Cole)

• Being Nice is Not Going to End Racism - (9 minute YouTube clip by anti-racism educator Robin diAngelo. Note: when she talks about “whiteness” she is talking about the attitudes and structures that keep white people in power at the expense of people of colour. When she says that “whiteness” is a problem, she is not saying that the simple fact of having white skin is a problem--she is talking about power structures.)

Listen...

• Colour Code (podcast from The Globe and Mail)

• The Secret Life of Canada (A podcast run by a Caribbean-Canadian woman and a Mohawk/Tuscarora Indigenous woman, uncovering the stories of Canada that we weren’t usually taught in school. Check out especially their episodes on Birchtown, NS and the history of Black nurses in Canada.)

Black-owned businesses in Hamilton to support 

• Huge thanks to Open Homes Hamilton co-founder Brittani Farrington for starting this list!

• And here’s another (longer) list

Hamilton sources to follow and support: 

• A Shared Table

• Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion

• Decolonizing Christianity Canada

• Empowerment Squared

• The Space Youth Centre

"...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

Enough.

I've been thinking recently about what it means to have enough.

I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that one of my early responses to this pandemic was, "If the economy crashes but our savings somehow survive, maybe house prices will be low enough that Dan and I can actually break into the market!"

Yikes.

My thumbs have been itching to scroll through online shopping sites. The wizards of online retail know this and everything seems to be on sale. Some of the targeted ads are a bit off (necklaces with Islamic blessings or services to send money back to family overseas, anyone?), but some have earned themselves a few clicks.  

There was an impulse to find a way to help too, don't get me wrong. But there are also other instincts, instincts that don't make me want to snap a picture and post a humblebrag on Facebook.

One of our guests, a seamstress from Nigeria, lending a hand sewing masks.

Our capitalist, individualist society tells me: gather a bit more for yourself. Pad your savings account just a little more. It would be irresponsible to expect anyone else to take care of you. You've failed somehow if you need to depend on others. And failure is shameful. So don't fail.

But the Bible has a pretty different message. Sure, hard work is praised in books like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, but accumulation and putting our trust in our savings isn't exactly a biblical message. Think of the Israelites gathering manna in the desert--if they took more bread than they needed for the day, it simply rotted away.

Or Jesus' prayer: "Give us this day our daily bread."

The reality is that I have people to fall back on. I come from a middle-class family, a middle-class church community. I have a wealth of connections, many of whom would step up if I was down on my luck. As a white Canadian, our country's systems are made to support me. I can advocate for myself, and I know there are others who would and do advocate for my demographic as well.

Chances are, I'll be okay. My privilege insulates me from suffering and want in ways that people of colour, refugee claimants, people with disabilities, and Indigenous peoples in this country (to name just a few) are not protected. Many of the folks we serve at 541 Eatery and Exchange don't have those protective networks or privilege either, though I hope we have "added strands to their safety nets," as one of my coworkers would say. How can I be looking outwards in solidarity right now, rather than inwards?

A modern-day widow’s mite.

A friend texted me recently: "I think this Sabbath permission is literally aiding the whole world's healing right now....We are learning about how to be humans."

I think she's right.

What if we could set some captives free? What if we're the captives who need to be set free from the constant anxiety of "just a little more and I'll be safe"?

Maybe you've seen the examples of people banding together and choosing generosity and solidarity over the impulse towards a scarcity mindset. Who would have thought that we could learn how to come together at the exact moment that we have to stay at least 6 feet apart? It's beautiful, and I hope it lasts even if this COVID purgatory drags on through the summer. I want to lean into that impulse towards generosity, to celebrate the ways I see generosity, gratitude and hospitality springing up around me and within me.

It's this kind of vision that inspired Open Homes Hamilton. Did you know that early Christians kept "Christ rooms"? Inspired by the words of Jesus in Matthew 25:31-46, these Christ-followers kept literal spaces in their homes for the traveler or the poor. They took Christ at his word--that God himself could be found hidden in those on the margins. This tradition was later re-invigorated by Dorothy Day and the Catholic Workers during the Great Depression. Not the best time to found a nonprofit! But there was enough.

Here are some ways I've seen people choosing generosity in times of scarcity:

• Just as social distancing was ramping up, one of our guests needed to find a new place to live. His hosts are doctors who are on the front lines, responding to people experiencing homelessness, and they needed the apartment he was in to self-isolate from their own family if they were to contract something. He was always supposed to leave at the end of March, but the midst of a global pandemic is not a good time to look for a new place! But another former guest stepped up to share his apartment. How beautiful is that? It wasn't the people with extra who stepped up--it was another refugee claimant.

• Our friend Mohammed texted me recently. He was at the grocery store and wanted to know what we needed. He's on OW, but he wouldn't let me pay him back for the butter we needed, which he delivered right to our door.

• Another friend sent me a surprise donation this week. She and her husband felt lucky to both still be employed when so many others have lost their jobs, and they wanted to make a few donations to support organizations whose fundraising prospects may have dimmed. (Like Open Homes!) I was really moved.

• One of our regulars at 541 just got out of a stint in the West 5th mental health wing. I'm guessing it was COVID anxiety-induced, based on how he was acting before he was hospitalized. A couple days later, he returns to the restaurant as I'm handing out lunch bags and waves me over to the front door. He hands me a $10 through the door.

• And there are so many more examples! Our housemate 3D printing face shields upstairs, our friend down the street rallying women in the neighbourhood to sew face masks, our guest sewing masks in her little apartment with a sewing machine donated by her companion, the 541 regular who has made bottles of hand sanitizer and is donating cases to organizations like ours...I could go on and on.

Our housemate Brad 3D printed face shields for medical professionals in our house!

At Open Homes Hamilton, we're looking for ways to support hosts and guests through these challenging times.

Hosts have found their guests' stays extended indefinitely from the usual 2-3 months until...who knows? They have all been so gracious and understanding about this, and I pray that this extra time quarantined together will lead to stronger relationships instead of frayed ones.

Our guests have either just celebrated Easter alone or are looking forward to the beginning of Ramadan in a couple weeks, without the usual community celebrations that would usually mark that time. We are reaching out to our church partners to ask for hampers of groceries and cleaning supplies to help guests feel a little less alone and a little more supported.

And we'll be starting to raise money soon for an emergency fund to help guests on tight Ontario Works budgets manage the extra expenses that might come up, whether from buying new clothes online because thrift stores are closed, buying 2 weeks of groceries at a time instead of visiting the food bank, or other needs that they couldn't prepare for. When you live on OW, you don't have margins--you can't. (Let me know if you're interested in contributing to this fund!)

Making some Malian tige dege (peanut sauce) for a former guest from Mali who’s now quarantined alone.

It is hard to know what the future holds for Open Homes. No refugee claimants are allowed to cross the border right now. Who knows when they'll be allowed to enter?

But I am trying to remember: I have enough. There will be enough to share, because God's economy works differently. May I remember this long enough to extend my networks to people who aren't protected in the ways that I am.

PS Another way you can stand with refugee claimants right now is through advocacy. The Canadian government has made the extreme choice to turn away refugee claimants who walk across our southern border, partnering with the USA, a country that is not exactly known for protecting the rights of those seeking safety, to do so. When the pandemic started, we had been allowing refugee claimants to cross and then quarantining them for 2 weeks, just like any traveller returning to Canada, but now the door has slammed shut and those needing protection are left without options. There are other ways to welcome refugee claimants safely, if we think with creativity and compassion. You can take a few minutes to contact your MP through Amnesty Canada here.

Inshallah Baby

This morning I was jotting down a quick list of guests' names to remind myself to invite each of them to our next Learning Circle: Odell...Mohammed...Idrissa....Patrick...Suad... I was struck by the gift of it all--I get to be connected to each of these people and help them get off on the right foot here in Hamilton.

One has shown me the lace that she made (!!) to edge her hijab. We show off the few words we've learned in the other's language: shaay (tea), good morning, alhamdulillah (praise God), baby, supas (thank you), rice, bas (good). When she sees me, she says "inshallah baby" (if God wills it, baby), mixing her language and mine to give me the universal blessing of grandmothers. (Never mind that I'm not exactly focused on babies at the moment. Ha! I'll focus on the sentiment behind it.)

Another guest really bonded with the baby in his host home. The host sent me a video of the two of them absolutely racked by giggles. Kids can often cross language barriers in a way that we adults can only dream of!

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From Iraqi Kurdistan all the way to Hamilton.

Another guest loved to gather with friends from his country in his hosts' living room and sing worship songs together. Another beautiful video to receive!

(I’d love to share these videos with you, but we don’t share images of guests’ faces online for their safety. We don’t always know their stories or what they’re fleeing from, and can’t be too careful with their safety or that of family and connections back home. So you’ll have to use your imagination.)

Then there are the shared meals, watching an Arabic version of American Idol in the living room while a friend does his prayers in the next room, the birthday party for a past guest, the pictures of Yemen before the war, the former guest who has become a companion to a new guest (alongside the very host who welcomed him!), the discussions of the Canadian political system...so many sweet moments of connection amidst the spreadsheets, grant applications, insurance questions, and meetings.

It is all such a gift. May I remember that the next time I'm trying to contact a guest's Ontario Works worker during a quick break in a frantic day at 541, or our team is pulling our hair out over figuring out tenant insurance!

I’m so grateful to those of you who allow me to do this work through your financial support. This wouldn’t be happening without you, and the immense privilege of it all is not lost on me. Thank you!

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The place where (almost) all our guests’ cases are decided. The judges of the Immigration and Refugee Board have so much power over the lives of our friends.

I brought one guest to his refugee hearing a couple weeks ago. It's only the second time I've sat in on a refugee hearing. You can get either the morning or afternoon timeslot for a hearing at the Immigration and Refugee Board in Toronto.

Both times so far my friends have had morning slots, which means trying to beat the rush hour traffic to get into Toronto by 8 30 am. Both times we've arrived more than an hour early, but you can't chance being late for a refugee hearing! Everything hangs on whether a given judge on a given day finds your case credible. Some judges are known for believing hardly anyone's story, regardless of how competent their legal representation is or how straight-forward their story lines up with the definition of a refugee:

Suffice it to say there are many flaws in the system. But, unlike what some would have you believe, refugees aren't just waltzing into the country.

The hearing rooms themselves are pretty nondescript for the life-and-death dramas that play out in them. Just some mass-produced tables arranged in a square with office chairs around them and a larger desk with a computer at the end for the judge.

After some nail-biting waiting, the judge arrives, hopefully having already read the details of the case in the documents that the guest’s Legal Aid lawyer has submitted. After some basic introductions, and my promise that I am present simply as a fly on the wall and won’t participate at all, the judge and lawyer launch into some legalese. The judge begins to question the refugee claimant on the details of their story, sometimes pressing for more information, some repeating the same question at several points to see if they get a different answer. They are trying to decide if the refugee claimant needs protection and if their home country is unable to provide that protection. And, of course, whether the person before them is telling the truth, which isn’t necessarily a culturally neutral endeavor. It is nerve-wracking, slow-moving, and procedural. Every word seems to count.

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Tea at a host home. I drink a lot of tea these days!

I can’t imagine going through it myself—I think I would be a wreck being cross-examined by some who comes from a different culture than my own about my decisions surrounding my safety, especially when that person’s decision could either send me back to danger or grant me the freedom to live and move freely in my new country.

The hearing I attended last month was postponed at the last minute—the case file was being shuffled between three different Immigration and Refugee Board offices and someone had sent a key email at 5 pm on a Friday that one of the other offices hadn’t received in time. So the judge just didn’t show up to the hearing, assuming it was cancelled, and didn’t communicate this to the lawyer or the refugee claimant, who had sweated bullets all night and all morning. *sigh*

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I haven’t been as faithful keeping in touch through this blog as I’d like to be, in part because I’ve been writing a column for the Christian Courier every month that I was struggling to keep up with.

I’ve let that go now to have more time to focus on blogging and fundraising, but you can still go back and read my old columns if you’re interested. Here’s one from last month: Inconvenient Hospitality. Enjoy!