A Letter to the Outreach Committee

A parishioner contemplates ‘home-sharing.’

November 2021: Refugees arrive at the Poland-Belarus Border (Photo image courtesy of Daily Sabah)

According to a 2018 World Bank Study, 143 million inhabitants will be displaced — forced to flee their homes, villages and cities— in the next 20 odd years.

That’s roughly 42% of the current entire US population.

What’s curious to me, right now, is the sense that if I randomly found this information — I wasn’t looking for it — how prevalent, how obvious, is the issue of displacement.

“Fill a void where others haven’t” which the Committee resolved, sounds like an ‘outreach’ mission statement.

An increasing ‘void:’ climate destruction forcing millions of inhabitants to flee their communities, cities and villages.

I have a friend who lives in Manville, New Jersey and who can’t sell his house — perhaps not in his lifetime — due to climate “redlining,”.

At least he has a home.

Others won’t have a home, perhaps in their lifetime and will be forced to wander from place to place.

And be constrained to live in places from which they are unable to move.

I do not have a clue where to begin to address this issue. Our representative institutions are more aligned with preserving the status quo than in serving the unfortunate needy whose presence places them and their communities in harm’s way.

I suspect that ‘we’ — not just (…church, mosque, temple, congregation…put name here) — are remorse in coordinating our efforts and ‘embracing voids.’

Faithfully…