Which one is home?

This past week end I did a number of baptisms in the local parish and the names of the children baptised – Su Jin Lee, Anastasia and Estella Dravitzki and Lilarose Fernandez-Mc Donald - reflected the cultural diversity that is so obvious now in the local Catholic community in New Zealand.

A few days later I read a story in a book by Jonathan Sacks called “To Heal a Fractured World” about Sara Kersenbaum. She was a white woman in New York in the sixties when race relations in that city were particularly fraught. A black family had recently moved into her neighbourhood and the children of that family were picking up a strong message that they were unwanted and unwelcome. Everything seemed to say to them “you do not belong”. Then Sara arrived on their doorstep with food and drink and a warm welcome. One of those children was to write later about the impact on his life of that simple but courageous act of kindness that created a sense of belonging where one did not seem possible.

So I find myself pondering, yet again, the question of what it means these days to belong.  Belonging is one of those fundamental questions that, along with questions about identity and purpose, have to be answered anew with changing circumstances. A great many more people than ever before in world history, whether by choice or circumstance, now straddle at least two places – their place of origin and their place of residence. Which one is home? This is a question that is very familiar to missionaries. I felt it anew just recently when I returned from time “at home” in Ireland to find myself “welcomed home” here in New Zealand.

Where once we might have been forced to choose between them, now both where people originated and where they reside need more than ever to be seen as part of what it means to belong. I recall the story told of the missionary, who in his eagerness to show that he wanted to make the place where he was assigned his home, burned his old passport in front of the people only to find that the people then wondered whether they could trust someone who could cut himself off in this way from his ancestors and his heritage. For these people belonging was not a matter of either/or options. To be at home in the new one needed to bring all that was best from the old.

Where once it took at least a hundred years for people to cease to be outsiders or “blow-ins, the need is greater now than ever for a more ready acceptance of newcomers. If this can happen the sense of alienation that is naturally felt in the early stages is less likely to be prolonged to a point where it turns septic.

So I was struck by the reflections on World Youth Day in Wel-Com, the Catholic newspaper for Wellington and Palmerston North Dioceses. The New Zealanders who were present at that event spoke of how important it was to celebrate their “Kiwiness” while at the same time delighting in a renewed sense of belonging to a world wide community. This is an example of the both/and thinking that seems to be required if we are to deal in a positive and constructive way with the changing face of belonging in our world.

Jesus challenged his original hearers to redefine who belonged to the community of faith. In his life and ministry Jesus broke down many of the barriers that seemed to signal to certain people or groups that they did not belong. Jesus was much more inclusive in his thinking and acting than was the pattern of his time. He seemed to focus more on what people had in common and what drew people to each other than on all that distinguished and separated them from each other. He suffered at the hands of those who resisted his radical redefinition of the community but he opened up a new life to those who could live with the kind of answer he gave to the perennial question “who is my neighbour?”

Fr Pat O’Shea resides at St Columban's, Lower Hutt, New Zealand

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