Dear Ones of St. Columba's,

This Sunday is a big one for us as a church community. We will be blessed by a visit from our Bishop, Greg, and given an opportunity to stop for a moment and celebrate who we have been, who we are, and who we are becoming. After our formal worship is done, we will continue to celebrate with a feast, and then with a ribbon cutting ceremony for our Community Garden for Refugee and Immigrant Families. 

Our Community Garden started with a phone call last spring, from Tyler and Lindsay who work for the International Rescue Committee and Forterra respectively, wondering if we would be interested in being considered to host this garden. Little did they know that having a community garden on our property was a long held dream of this place, part of our desire to offer sanctuary, food, and connection with the earth to our community and our more vulnerable neighbors.  We said yes almost immediately, and before summer was done the blackberries were cleared and families from Bhutan, Congo, and South Sudan, as well as others, were growing fresh food on the acre of land that had been cleared and prepared for them. Through this ministry we are able to offer hope and healing to refugees who have been forced to flee their homes. For many of them growing food is a familiar activity, a way to ground and connect to the earth and each other in the midst of a foreign and confusing new life. 

This ribbon cutting is timely for two reasons. First, yesterday was world refugee day, a day when people everywhere are noticing, marking, and lifting up the plight of our planet's refugees - our fellow human beings who are being displaced by war, violence, famine and other horrors that many of us cannot fully comprehend. I am proud of us at St. C's for taking seriously the call of our faith to welcome the stranger. Truly we have been blessed by this, and found many angels among our brothers and sisters who have been forced to flee their homelands. (Hebrews 13:2) 

The second reason this is timely is the situation on our nation's southern border, where refugee families are being torn apart from each other as they cross into our nation seeking asylum or refuge. Much of the conversation around this has been about who started it, and who is to blame. I wonder if this is a way of avoiding facing this horror that our country is inflicting on families - families that are, in all the important ways, just like us. They love their kids, they need their parents. They would not be coming here if there was life, liberty, or hope in the places from which they flee. It does not matter who started this. What matters is that it ends.

There are many ways that you can take action to let our politicians on both sides of the aisle know that this is not who we are. There is a prayer vigil at St. Mark's Cathedral tonight, with a walk to St. James Cathedral. There are many direct actions and protests. You can call your congressperson. You can educate yourself through a variety of media about why and how this came to be. 

Most importantly, we can continue to be a faith community that welcomes the stranger, and supports families who have fled their home countries. We do this by the supporting and loving the people and families in our congregation who were born in other places. If this is you, please know that we cherish you and are so glad that you are among us. We also do work by offering food to anyone who needs it at our food bank, which just yesterday served 35 people and gave away 20 pounds of fresh squash from our garden along with emergency food. And we do it by opening our land to be shared with those who have lost their homeland, so they can build new lives and relationships here. We do this whenever we get close to God's reality - which is the reality that in the realm of our God, we are all family, we all need each other, and when one part of our human family is traumatized and harmed there are consequences for us all.

Please pray for children who have been separated from their parents at our border. Please pray for all of us, on whose behalf these actions have been taken. Please pray for each person who is engaged in the difficult work of surviving in a land that is not home, and finding life and hope in confusing times. And continue to pray for each other, and all who are served and loved through our life together at St. Columba's.

I am so grateful to be your priest, and to be in this life and work with you. 

With care and gratitude,

Alissa