“I lost my mind this week.”
When I texted my Afghan friend that “…this must be painfully hard,” that’s how she answered. She’s trying to get her parents out of Kabul, and she was hoping I could help. A few weeks ago, I wrote about our visit from the State Department, but I don’t have a direct line to them! Never […]
Join Us For The Refuge Coffee Run
“Community is the fruit of our capacity to make the interests of others more important than our own.” — Henri Nouwen And, we might add, real community is FUN. That’s why we created the Refuge Coffee Run: To remind us all that putting others first is fun. To call attention to the beauty that ensues […]
Staging a coup against the cycle of offense
Dear friends, Years ago, my husband told me I could bottle my indignation and sell it on eBay for a fortune. It was funny then, but I’m happy to say it’s less true now. Which is weird, because the more I’ve learned about the injustices of the world (and I’ve learned a lot since then), […]
Forgiveness
Last week we talked about love. This week (of all weeks!), can we also talk about one of the grittiest works of love: forgiveness? I remember reading about Corrie Ten Boom’s radical act of forgiveness when, in 1947, a former-Nazi guard from Ravensbruck, the camp where her sister Betsie died and where she suffered, approached her after […]
Deciding To Love
If you’re on social media, you’ve probably seen the phrase, “I don’t know you, but I love you.” How does that sit with you? It’s a definite improvement on “I don’t know you, but I hate you,” which I haven’t seen anywhere as a meme, but it is the basic sentiment behind most xenophobic communication. […]
If Kings and Sultans Can Do it, So Can We
Heval, Rabbi Joshua Lesser, Kitti, Gracie Moore at our “Standing With Our Muslim Neighbors event in 2019. Photo credit: Chase Moore So, a Kurdish Muslim cardiologist and a white American Christian met for coffee… sounds kind of like the beginning of a joke, right? I met my friend, Heval Kelli just as Refuge was getting […]
Ali’s Story
Photo Credit: Taryn Schultz Like many refugees, Ali Mohammed has never known a life without war. His homeland, Sudan, was at war when he was born and is at war still. If you’ve met Ali here at Refuge, you know he has an easy smile, that he speaks softly and articulately, and that he makes […]
How to Engage
Furaha, Leon’s wife, at the baby shower. When I have a meeting with someone at Refuge for the first time, I often warn them that we may get interrupted. There’s a tragic version of interruption, and most refugees know that too well. Many of them had interrupted educations, interrupted careers, interrupted livelihoods, family members whose […]
Play
Photo Credit: Joe Gonzales I confess that I love to play. And I really love it when I can give people some hope that they can play, too. Hope that they can live freely enough to quit being in control for long enough to breathe. I know this is not the only thing people need, […]
Somayyah’s Story
Somayyah shows me the mug she found in the gift shop at The King Center in downtown Atlanta: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” ~ Martin Luther King […]
