JPIC (Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation)

Monday, October 18:

Faith and Migrants: Living with the reality of change

I’d like to begin with some brief biographical details. I am currently working in local government in the United Kingdom, in the London Borough of Southwark, as a social cohesion specialist. My job title is Community Cohesion Co-ordinator and the fact that most local authorities in the UK now have at least one full time cohesion practitioner is an indication of how this area of work has grown in importance. Indeed community cohesion is very much a growth agenda across the globe, with one of its principle driving forces being the reality of migration, the fact that perhaps like never before the world is on the move and we are living in an age of mobility.

The London Borough of Southwark is one of 33 local authorities in London. It has a population fast approaching 300,000, out of a total London population of approximately 8 million people. Tomorrow I will speak in more detail about the demographics of Southwark, its vital statistics, and its challenges of social inclusion and cohesion. I’ll also share a little on the responses Southwark and other parts of London are making to the realities of what is now frequently referred to as a situation of super diversity.

Prior to joining local government I worked with the BBC as a presenter and producer of programmes about religion, ethics, and communities. Before that again I worked in my home country of Ireland - the Republic of Ireland - as a programme maker for RTE (Ireland’s national television and radio network) for 6 years.
I served as a Catholic priest for 10 years, most of which was spent in parish ministry, including my final appointment in the city of Belfast at the height of its sectarian war. In 1994 I took leave of absence from active ministry to undertake a postgraduate programme in communications and development studies at the Kairos Communications Institute, under the direction of the Divine Word Missionaries. I also used this time to discern my future direction in life and ultimately decided to leave the priesthood. But then again, you never really leave the priesthood, do you? Or at least it never seems to leave you, and I believe that I am priest still in the ordinary details of my baptized life as well as in terms of the contribution I quietly make in the context of my current role and responsibilities. I say “quietly” on the basis that Her Majesty’s government doesn’t pay its civil servants to be priests as well.

After post-graduating in Christian Communications and Development Studies, I continued to work with Kairos and SVD as a radio and television producer until 2002, the year I moved to the UK. I also served for one year as Editor of The Word magazine. Of all the material we produced at Kairos in those days (under the guidance of the late and truly great Michael Melvin SVD, who opened so many new vistas for people like me), I would single out three pieces of work:

An 8-part TV documentary series on the enduring relevance of the New Testament for contemporary society (Ever Ancient, Ever New), a radio reflection for Good Friday called The Clown Crucified, and a TV documentary about the Marian Shrine of Lourdes, called Faith, Hope, and Plastic.

For some that was a provocative title, for the national network it was a perfect fit, and for us as programme makers and Christian communicators it summed up neatly what Lourdes is all about, and how you find there a co-existence of commercialism and faith alongside human stories of hope.

This is how that programme ended.....

Roll DVD

So, that’s a little bit about me, and I wanted to begin on a personal note because I think our point of departure this morning needs to be inward looking. I’m aware that introspection has had a bad press, particularly in the world of psychoanalysis. But I think that any opposition to introspection is best dealt with by thinking of it in terms of wondering what to say, or rehearsing a narrative that could be made public: ‘How do I know what I think until I hear what I say?’

At its simplest then, it’s just a case of doing a little self-examination. And those of us who have been brought up on a diet of conscientious examens shouldn’t find this to be alien territory. Except it’s not about recognizing our sin and calling it by name. It’s simply a case of telling our own migrant story.

A little poetry often sheds some light, and adds a fresh perspective. It also captures truth and that’s why I often use it, and stories, in my work in London.
It’s amazing how poetry speaks to ordinary people, like you and me, and we in turn can learn to speak our own poetry too.
I’ll give you an example of the latter in just a moment. But first, these verses about being a pilgrim, by one of Ireland’s greatest poets, WB Yeats, from his poem “When You Are Old”:

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

He wrote it for a woman he was in love with, but the love was unrequited and the poem is one of subtle seduction. For our purposes, however, the object of the exercise, you’ll be glad to hear, is not to seduce or be seduced. Our focus instead is, as I mentioned, inward, introspective, personal. What Yeats calls, “the pilgrim soul in you.”

I also mentioned how we can speak poetry too, and I promised an example. It’s from a project I’ll introduce you to more fully tomorrow: Peace by Piece - profiles of Muslims living in Southwark. For the project we took their photographs and we interviewed them. Then we brought it all together in a touring exhibition and we published it later as a book.
The idea was simple: to provide a platform for the moderate voice of Islam, to help Muslims counter stereotype and prejudice where they existed, and to demonstrate the ordinariness of Muslim lives, a great many of whom were migrants. One of those lives was Erbil Celebi, a London taxi driver. This is the poetry he spoke on the subject of jihad:

“People misunderstand jihad. The prophet Mohammed - peace be upon him – said that the biggest battle of all is the one with your ego. Battling with your ego is like riding a wild horse. It tries to throw you off a few times. It’s a rough ride but if you hold on long enough you can rein it in and teach it to dance”.

So, for Yeats it’s “the pilgrim soul”. For Celebi it’s the alter ego or second self. For people of faith, it’s the slow work of God. For all of us it’s the journey we’re on.

SPACE for questions, comments.

Our focus over these days is the reality of migration and the migrant experience. And I think to enter in we need to have an understanding of what it’s like to be on the move, displaced, dispossessed, detached, at sea.

I suggest that one of the ways in which we might do this is to explore the transitions and transformations that have happened in our own lives. There will be time this afternoon to do this in a more expansive way, but I’d like you for now to begin thinking of one such experience you’ve had, of a time when life’s circumstances and God’s grace have conspired to take you to the edge of opportunity.

Of course, human beings are not good with edges. We find them frightening, or restricting. I recall one day on the London underground, The Tube, seeing a young man in front of me with this legend on the back of his t-shirt:

If you’re not living on the edge you’re taking up too much space.

And it captured for me how in cities like London, Sao Paolo, Shanghai, Mumbai, and so on, space is indeed at a premium and people consequently live on the edge, both physically and metaphorically.

Margaret Mead, the great American anthropologist who died in 1978 said this about cities:

“A city is a place where there’s no need to wait for next week to get the answer to a question, to taste the food of any country, to find new voices to listen to and familiar ones to listen to again.”

Margaret Mead said something else that was powerful. It’s perhaps her most famous saying:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has”.

Life to the power of one. Life to the power of you and me. Life to the power of faith-filled people.

Closer to home, we all live on the edge when we experience the fear of letting go. There’s a short poem by an English poet, Christopher Logue, a veteran of the Second World War, about this. It was apparently written in 1968 for a festival being held to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the death of the French poet, Guillaume Apollinaire (the man credited with coining the phrase “surrealism”).

It was quoted by the current President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, at her inauguration. She used it to challenge people from different traditions and mindsets - chiefly Protestant and Catholic in the case of the Ireland she addressed in the late 20th century - to let go of distrust and ancient hatreds. Since then new challenges have presented themselves, including economic recession and the impact of migration on a small island nation. There are several variants of the poem floating around, but this is the one which seems most common:

Come to the edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It's too high!
Come to the edge.
And they came,
And he pushed,
And they flew.

So, where have your edges been? When have you been challenged to take flight? When has life made of you a migrant? It could be:

A reinvention you’ve undergone (perhaps partly or fully imposed, or freely chosen). A complete change of direction. A time when you felt like a stranger in a strange land, either physically or metaphorically. A loss that you’ve lived with, of a job, a person, a role, a relationship, a home.

2002 was one such year for me - a time when all kinds of things seemed to be conspiring together to take me to the limit.

I emigrated to the United Kingdom. I left loads of work behind in Dublin to take on a part time job with the BBC. I knew it was a risk but it was the best I could get at the time. My mother seemed lost completely to Alzheimer’s disease. My brother took his own life. Another died of cancer six weeks later. I entered into a relationship, which didn’t work out. I sold my home in Ireland. I bought another in England. Our small family business and homestead disintegrated under the weight of mismanagement and alcoholism, and the whole lot had to be sold off.

I remember thinking at the time that 2002 was my annus horibilis, the phrase brought into popular use after Queen Elizabeth II used it to describe ten years earlier, 1992 - the year that the marriages of her two sons Charles and Andrew broke down and Windsor Castle caught fire.

A sister wondered if we were cursed. I told her I didn’t believe in such things. And then at night I wondered too.

But of course it had nothing to do with being assailed by forces of darkness. It was simply life and how it can take a turn for the worst, and sometimes several bad turns in quick succession. On reflection, I decided, particularly after the tragic deaths of my two brothers, on three things, and I wove them into an editorial for The Word magazine:

Life is short, life is precious, and life is partly in our own hands.

I had of course professed these beliefs before, but now there was the added value of bitter experience, and the realization that suffering can indeed do one of two things to us: it can make us better people, or bitter people.

I realized too that some of the changes and challenges were of my own doing - emigrating, leaving a good job behind, selling my house when I didn’t really have to. The others were from without and I had little or no control over them - the deaths of my brothers, my mother’s descent into Alzheimer’s sickness, the loss of our family home.

The physical distance between England and Ireland is small, but it was nonetheless an experience of migration. My whole life seemed on the move. Everything was shifting and changing, and I did feel like a stranger in a strange land. I also had to improve my working situation from part time to full time, if I was to survive financially.

I recall driving the long commute from the English west midlands to the south west (a 180-mile round trip each day) and thinking to myself, “There’s something missing. There’s something not right”. I felt detached, dispossessed of something, and I felt it day in, day out.

In time my annus horribilis became an annus mirabilis (year of wonders or miracles), but only when I realized how I had grown through the experience. How I had survived, as people do.

The difference of course was that I hadn’t been forced to leave my own country. I left a job behind and I had at least half a job to go to. I also enjoyed all the benefits of being an Irish and EU citizen, and how as an Irish person we have an automatic right on the double to remain indefinitely in the UK. We have it for being Irish, and we have it again for being citizens of the European Union. It’s a uniquely happy situation that Irish people find themselves in.

But it did give some insight into the migrant story and the pilgrim soul. I learned to embrace change and decay, if not willingly then certainly eventually. I gained an understanding of why some people migrate, and the challenges they face. Especially the challenge of making a fresh start, of putting down roots, of leaving behind the safe and familiar and launching into the deep unknown. I didn’t face the struggle that many migrants do of seeking justice in the form of access to accommodation, education, healthcare, work, and of course the right to fully belong, in terms of “indefinite leave to remain” or permanent residency.

But I’m mindful of these realities and I try in my work now to help meet these needs for migrants by influencing policy and practice at local government level, feeding that into central government, ensuring that the services we deliver locally meet the real needs of migrants, by empowering migrant communities and individuals to fight for their rights, by working to promote cohesion and integration for migrants (Welcome Packs and induction programmes being small tangible examples), by challenging assumptions among settled communities that migrants are “here to take our jobs and our houses”, or that they have no interest in working for a living.

The story of Sylvia Wachuku-King from Sierra Leone, chair of Southwark Refugee Communities Forum.

I believe that the human story can be a powerful way of reaching and connecting communities. It can dismantle barriers, counter prejudice and stereotype, point up similarities, dispel misconceptions, and promote meaningful interaction. In our experience in Southwark the use of arts and media formats have proved particularly effective at exploring the commonalities of the human condition, and we’ll take a closer look at some of these tomorrow. We’ll also look at the difference a faith perspective can bring to the realities of migration and inequality.

As I mentioned earlier, Her Majesty’s government doesn’t pay me to be both a civil and sacred servant, but I do find that faith and cohesion are frequently cross-cutting.

There’s also a wider recognition of this fact across the United Kingdom and it’s evidenced by the proliferation of interfaith initiatives that are government-funded and are all about harnessing the passion and enthusiasm of faith communities for building a more cohesive, inclusive society. And that very much incorporates outreach to migrants.

So, that’s largely by way of overview and introduction to my contribution to this gathering. I also wanted to personalize what we’re doing from the outset. And to that end we’re setting aside some time this afternoon for participants to reflect on some of the questions raised.

1. In the light of this morning’s presentation, what has been your personal experience of migration?

2. What are the greatest needs of migrants and how might they be met? Try to reach a consensus on a top three.

3. How might the relationship between migrants and the wider community be improved?

4. How can we empower migrant communities to seek justice?

5. What do we need to do to bring about institutional changes that will benefit migrants?

By Michael Cleere