Pulling into the clinic parking lot at 11pm on a Friday night and discharged by just after noon the next day. It felt like most of our time there was spent waiting for an IV to finish drip-drip-dripping into my wrist on Saturday morning so we could go home. The birth itself was quick. Quicker than I could have imagined.

I’m sitting on our bed now. There’s a window to my left and to my right. West and east. Outside the west window is our oversized kiddie pool, just big enough for an adult to stretch out and float. It’s full of water again now. I would have submerged myself in the late afternoon heat yesterday, but I had a baby in my arms. And, I’m bleeding.

That Friday evening, now over two weeks ago, I was in the same pool, playing with my daughter and husband. It was the weekend and, more than that, work was out for the holidays. When I got out of the pool to dry off I caught a glimpse of my belly silhouetted against our house. The same silhouette I’d watched grow on our hallway wall, lit up by a nightlight, as the weeks wore on and I made more and more frequent trips to the bathroom.

I had been having contractions here and there since the early morning, but nothing too noteworthy. I had still attended our weekly staff meeting, still walked Lydia around the block in her stroller at midday to put her to sleep for her nap. I texted our doula a picture of my daughter and I in the pool. “Birth tub?” I said in jest. It wasn’t until nearly 9pm that I told our families that I was in labour, and that perhaps tonight would be the night we’d go to the hospital.

A little later Andrew was putting Lydia to sleep and I was back in the pool on my own. I sat in the cool water under the string lights and, further above, the dark canopy of the Toborochi tree. Now I breathed deeply to cope with the incoming pain of each contraction. While the next one crested I moaned and held on to the side of the pool as if clenching the deck rail of a boat at sea. The once-distant storm of labour was now rolling in.

When Andrew called the doctor and reported that I was, at that moment, in the bathroom throwing up, he advised we come in immediately. As we (read: Andrew) gathered our things and prepared to leave the house, I felt about as helpful as a seasick deckhand.

Our friend arrived to spend the night with Lydia and witnessed me in a state few others have. (She later shared that, in those days leading up to Christmas, I had given her new insight into the experience of Mary — the least I could do!)

Out the door and in the car. I told Andrew there was no need to rush as he accelerated past lively restaurants and nightclubs. Perhaps he knew better than me. The doctor was waiting on the front steps of the hospital when we arrived. It was quiet and dimly lit as they rolled me into a consultorio in a wheelchair I’d at first refused. Between strong contractions I eased myself onto the examination table. A turning of gloved fingers and a one-word assessment: “Completo.” It took a moment to register. Completo. Complete. 10 centimeters. Fully dilated. What?

“Let’s not have this baby in the elevator,” he said as we made our way to the labour and delivery room, now accompanied by our doula.

I was in and out. Barely returning to the room, to the people around me, before another contraction mounted. For a couple of them, I stood on my feet, clinging to Andrew while the downward force made me question if this baby might fall to the hospital floor.

I heard the doctor ask what position I wanted to be in to push. I gravitated towards the couch right in front of me, perhaps solely because of its proximity. With my knees on a pillow on the floor, I leaned into the seat of the couch, burying my face in my hands. I heard my own voice crescendo with each contraction and then quiet down, partly listening in, as if from the outside, partly yielding to it, welcoming it from within.

I thought, ever-so-briefly, about the other hospital guests who might be trying to sleep. But another narrative counteracted my self-consciousness: this is my voice, this is my birth song.

And so, he came to us — caught by the hands of his Papá — gurgling out sea water in exchange for air.

I sat in a pool of blood and received him into my arms. Him screeching, me wide-eyed and reeling.

This is life, bare and boiled down to its essence.

This is just one possible account of his birth. Perhaps he will tell another…

Francis Arthur Bauman. Hello. Welcome. Thank you.

This particular year, though, I don’t need to rely on my outside environment to signal the season to me. As of tomorrow, I will be 39 weeks pregnant. I am no stranger to waiting and anticipating; I’m living my own Advent these days. My perspective has shifted on the familiar story in the gospels… I picture Mary in early labour during the journey to Bethlehem, and I wonder who her midwife might have been.

I want to capture something of this time, which is at once universal and singular. Pregnancy changes my perspective on being human. More than once I have found myself looking out over a crowd of people or watching passersby from the bus and thinking, “Wow — they were all in a womb once,” and, as a form of consolation in my anxiety about childbirth, “…and they all found their way out!”

Strangers and friends ask me “Cuando viene el bebé?” (When’s the baby coming?). I shrug my shoulders and insert some variation of “Who knows?” Last week my colleagues were placing bets on the date and hour the baby would be born. For me, though, time is now more fluid than ever, the stuff of moons and tides but definitely not certainty.

I have heard it said that pregnant women are at once deeply connected to this world and detached from it, living on another plane. I feel that especially in these final days (or weeks). I cry more easily, not knowing exactly why, and I welcome the tears. (Meanwhile, my two-year-old daughter tells me “No llores,” (don’t cry) and I wonder who taught her that — definitely not her mother!) I think that this sentiment of here-and-elsewhere must be most true in the experience of childbirth itself where, as the intensity heightens, the birth-giver goes off into ‘labour land,’ sometimes returning to the room between contractions, sometimes not. At once vacant and fully embodied, far-off and completely present.

At this stage of the game, I sense that ‘birth prep’ (whatever that is!) must give way to trust. A little bit reminiscent of the days when I would cram with increasing fervour for a university exam but eventually need to put down the textbooks and the notes, throw my hands in the air, and know what I knew, nothing more and nothing less. Of course, birthing new life is nothing like this. There is some degree of knowledge that helps; I’ve done my fair share of soaking up information from books and friends and (begrudgingly) Instagram. But, for me, the ‘preparation’ is more about a slow, slow process of reconciling myself to the unknown as the event approaches. It’s anxiety yielding to trust. It’s opening to the vast array of possible outcomes. It’s becoming reacquainted with the realities of life itself.

I am not in control.

I am vulnerable.

I cannot avoid pain.

Joy will also find me.

My body is wise.

This will change me.

I do not know what the future holds.

Life is fragile.

Life is beautiful.

All things are held in Love.

And I finish there for now. See you on the other side…

On Wednesday evening, I breastfed my first child for the last time. It was the final day of a string of 844 days doing the same thing again and again and again. At first, luchando with a proper latch and feeding at one-hour intervals. Later, in growing familiarity and ease. Eventually, accompanied by words: “te-ta,” “tetita,” “quiero tetita, por favor”…

In April I found out I was pregnant with our second child. I wasn’t sure how much longer nursing would last. Early June brought Lydia’s birthday and I googled whether the WHO gave out certificates for making it to two years of breastfeeding (their official recommendation). For the record, they don’t.

I spent the equivalent of a master’s degree on this ‘project.’ I don’t have a thesis to show for it. Just — just! — the oh-so-slow process of watching a person grow. Of spindly newborn legs turning plump with time, and then those same telltale mid-thigh rolls disappearing almost completely with toddlerhood. (I noticed last week that there was just a trace of them left.)

I was told before she was born that I would spend lots of time watching shows or reading while breastfeeding but most of what I did was watch her, read her. I’ve never given that kind of presence to anything, anyone before her. And I’ve never been so forced to be with my own thoughts for periods of time that it often felt outside of my control. Sometimes I felt trapped — I just wanted to be free of this responsibility. Sometimes, I yielded and prayed. Often big, wide-open prayers for the world. For mercy. For Palestine.

Who would understand what it means to wean a child? It’s an absurd question because of course there are countless mothers who have been here, who are here even in these same days. But there is something singular about this experience. It is mine and Lydia’s and no one else’s.

(All grief must be that way, and all joy, too.)

It’s a strange sadness; it doesn’t really make sense. I’m less than three months away from starting this breastfeeding process all over again. You would think I’d welcome the break. I do. But that’s only a fraction of the story. The whole story is so much more colourful. It’s nothing that can be distilled into one sentiment. It’s held all of the ambivalence of motherhood itself: euphoria and exasperation happily coexisting.

But how did it go, that last time? It was a holiday here in Santa Cruz. She had just had a late afternoon bath. I sat cross-legged on the living room floor on my yoga mat. She came to me and sat in my lap, wet hair, skin to skin. Not unlike those earliest of days when everything was new and tender and fresh. She wriggled and hummed to herself. She playfully slapped me (no.) and gently stroked my skin. She reached up and wiped my tears. Eventually I encouraged her to say “chau, tetita” and “gracias, tetita,” which she did. Then, she wandered a few meters away and pretended to take photos of me, bringing an invisible camera to her eye and making clicking sounds. (Andrew had just taken a few photos of us.) I laughed at the naked photographer and smiled for the camera. She came back to my lap one more time and then, that was it. Chau tetita.

I wouldn’t actually say she’s weaned yet. It’s one thing to stop breastfeeding, it’s another thing entirely (I imagine) to stop asking, to truly let it go. She keeps telling me that she just got back from daycare (even when it’s not the case), her consistent time recently to tomar la tetita. Last night in bed she started crying when I told her “No” and then I cried, too. I don’t know how much she understands, I don’t know how much I do, but we share this grief. It’s ours.

When Lydia is fully and truly weaned, I imagine this psalm, Psalm 131, that I’ve know for many years will become something new to me. What is a weaned child like with her mother? And what is that mother like with her child?

That, for me, remains to be seen.

my heart is not proud, O LORD, my eyes are not haughty
I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me
but I have stilled and quieted my soul
like a weaned child with its mother
like a weaned child is my soul within me
o people of God, put your hope in the Lord, both now and forevermore

Ironically, I miss my husband and my daughter, the same ones who I’ve dreamed of having just a little bit of distance from when it feels like I’m needed nearly all the time. I feel like a traveler in a foreign country, loitering at cafes with no home to return to. I hear overplayed songs in English coming from a nearby speaker. “Stay with me, cause you’re all I need.”

It occurs to me that, while I have often grieved the loss of my single life - of solitude and adventure and late nights and prayer retreats — I don’t really miss it at all. I want the life that I have now, the very life that I longed for back then. (I have heard this sentiment before, in the form of sappy social media posts, and responded with a subtle eye roll but, right now, I feel it for myself.)

Lydia’s sleeping through the night now. For the first time in over two years, I can do the same. What a luxury. And, at the same time, I think I would miss them too much if I went away for a night. Who have I become? Who am I becoming?

I walk through the plaza, bustling with life on a Sunday night. Families with tiny babies on their first big outing, street vendors, shoe shiners, chess players, some kind of youth evangelism campaign with speakers blasting from the steps of the cathedral. (The Jesus I know would turn the volume down a few notches.) I feel eyes on my belly, which does anything but disappear in this skirt I’m wearing. Do they wonder where my husband is? Wonder why I’m alone? Or are those just my own wonderings?

I size up the heads of the smallest babies, shuddering at the thought of childbirth. (I wish this wasn’t the case, but it’s where I’m at.) I try to imagine what it will be like, remember what it was like, to have a baby.

I looked at my daughter this afternoon as she slept, and sized her up, too. The way she took up almost half the length of bed — how she’s grown! (How has she grown?)

How is it that so much of her growing has come from this life-connection to my body, that we are now preparing to say farewell to? (Thank you, body.) And thank you for what you are doing now, and have been doing for the past six months, caressing this tiny form, rocking it in the hammock of your pelvis, cushioning it from the light blows of a toddler wanting the comfort of your lap, wanting you more than ever.

Life. Far too beautiful and far too fragile. How is one to bear it?

...

I arrive home earlier than expected after getting the mass time wrong. Lydia is still awake (this was going to be perhaps her first night falling asleep without me). Andrew asks how my time was and I say “I missed you,” tears welling up in my eyes. “Mamá está llorando,” Lydia says. She comes near to me, reaches out and wets her finger on my cheek. “Donde te duele?” she asks. “Mi corazón,” I reply. “Yo quiero ver,” she says, as she starts lifting up my shirt.

Soon I am back in my usual position with her, lying on my side, in the dark, nursing her to sleep, waiting as her energetic toddler body gradually stills, letting my breathing deepen that hers might, too. Reminding myself how just an hour ago I was missing her so much. A couple unsuccessful attempts to break her latch and then, yes, she is asleep.

Later I lie in my own bed, unable to sleep. My finger traces around my belly button, finding the just-skin-deep spot where my baby is close enough to feel the contours of…an arm? Somehow grateful for diastasis recti, that this natural spreading of my abs might not be so much a problem to be rehabbed down the line but a soft place, a window in flesh, to reach out and touch my child.

Eventually I settle, too, and all three — four — of us are asleep under a full September moon.

“Voy a toser,” she said, and marched over to the bathroom. *cough cough*

A moment later she returned to me and said, “Vení, Mamá, para hacer esto,” and made a stroking motion in the air. I got up off the couch and came with her to the bathroom, crouching next to her as she sat on the stool in front of the toilet and ‘coughed.’ I stroked her back the way she had stroked mine five minutes earlier when I was the one throwing up, and for real. So I guess this is where we’re at, ‘playing’ morning sickness. It certainly makes it a little bit more bearable.

Just before I ran to the bathroom, Andrew commented, “You’re almost halfway through your pregnancy.” That must have been what put me over the edge. My sister-in-law, upon hearing the news months ago, had said, “This time will be different.” And it has been, but not in the way I had hoped. I still feel nauseous often and was throwing up at least every other day until I started taking medication. Now it’s just - just! - every few days or so, at any time of day, or night. I look forward to the day when I will be beyond this, and then I think about what it’ll take to get me there: childbirth. And then what comes after: long nights of nursing and rocking while nursing a healing body. When does it let up? When does it get easy? Or, at least, when does this still-new mom sleep through the night?

And yet. Being Lydia’s mamá has been, without a doubt, the delight of my life. I have given up so much, and she has filled me up in ways I will never be able to express.

I was thinking recently about all the sensations of motherhood. About the nausea and the sensitivity in the exact place met by the searching mouth of a toddler in the night and the little hand that sometimes strokes my side as she feeds with a gentleness that could only come from a half-asleep child and the quickenings - they call them - of another child who I am just coming to know and who will demand more and more of me until, one day, will demand nothing of me at all.

And mortality. How can one mother without fearing death? (Please, if you know, do share.) The absolute wonder of bringing a new life into the world seems to be paired with an equal and opposite fear of losing them. But this is what we do, this is how we carry on. I hope this child will be a peace-bearer. Amen.

I’m writing here about pregnancy, my second pregnancy. I write for myself, for my child, and for you, listening and witnessing. Thank you.

To try to write about this experience feels at once daunting and redundant. Necessary and needless. Singular and superfluous. It’s the most human thing, to carry a baby, and it’s also the most personally transformative thing that has ever happened to me.

So, write I must. And perhaps, for all the times this has been experienced before, in all of its nuance across time and space, to be able to carve out moments to write and reflect about this process isn’t so common at all. (I can sit here now behind a closed door because my husband is with our almost-two-year-old daughter - dressing her, feeding her, playing with her, taking her to the potty, brushing her teeth, listening to her constant monologue mixed with kids’ songs en español.)

What, I wonder, would Mary have written for herself between her Magnificat song and the matter-of-fact statement (no doubt penned by a man) that ‘she gave birth to a son and laid him in a manger?’

Surely she experienced the same tidal rush of hormones at the onset of pregnancy, the full spectrum of feelings, the nausea, the aversion to foods she used to enjoy, the aversion to unwelcome advice?

(I wonder if Mary herself might be a friend to me on this journey, as we walk towards Christmastide due dates, and the fullness of time.)

On Friday, during a staff meeting and devotional time, I shared with my colleagues that I am pregnant. There were whoops and cheers and lots of “Felicidades!” afterwards. I suspected at least one person would say “I knew it!” - ‘you seemed exhausted’ or ‘you were eating constantly at your desk’ or ‘you had the cara de embarazo’ (whatever that is). Multiple people did seem to know, but it was because of Lydia, not me: the way she had been clinging to me the past few days, always wanting “Mamá!”...the fact that she’d been lying down on the ground recently (nothing to do with her being nearly-two), or sticking her head between her legs - all, apparently, sure signs of a pregnant mother! Now that they all know, I suppose I’ve consented to the stream of commentary, and the more subtle shift of attention from me as an individual to me as the bearer of a child.

For myself I need to find ways to honour and nurture the life that is growing within me while not neglecting my own life. This body is home for me, too.

It’s different, the second time around. The positive test didn’t rock me like it did the first time. Our daughter was right there with us in the bathroom, and she waved the double-lined stick around as if it were a new toy.

It’s sobering, the second time. I know, more or less, what is coming… the first trimester nausea that had me bent over the toilet bowl as a morning routine, the expansion of body and the diminishment of self as this tiny stranger demands more and more of my interior territory, my attention, my sleep. The ruthlessness of birth, the way it carried me to the fine line between life and death. The solitariness of it - what is happening in my body and what is my work to bring into the world, no matter how surrounded I may be by care and support.

I know more, and, at the same time, I know less. I want to yield to the losses while giving myself space to grieve them, I want to yield to the small deaths that allow life to come into the world, I want to contemplate the mystery of this new person, now just 0.1oz, who somehow will command all of my love, and more.

The springtime and summer that Andrew and I were considering getting married, we read a book together called The Means and the End is Love. It's a collection of essays on marriage, bound in unassuming card stock, and published by a young theology student as his thesis project. Filled with honest anecdotes and unapologetic conviction, it’s about as far from a how-to manual as you could get. And it's the only marriage book we really touched. (Apart from the wedding planning book a friend lent me which told me absolutely nothing about how to plan for a pandemic.)

According to the author, Kurt Armstrong, “Love is fundamentally grounded in mystery,” and I can certainly get on board with that.

At times, I have resisted love. Marriage has unearthed unconscious beliefs that I’ve carried with me for a long time… It’s revealed the conditions that love has come with. “I am loveable if…” and conversely “You cannot possibly love me if…”

The thing that I cannot get over, and probably will not (until death do us part), is that this isn’t how love works. Love is not so much a characteristic of our relationship as it is the landscape where we find ourselves. You are here.

A few years ago, I participated in a prayer practice called the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises. There was no easing into this year-long “retreat in daily life.” It began with several weeks spent contemplating our “darkest dark” …the place where our pain or shame was so deep that we felt God’s love could not possibly reach us.

I remember how agonizing it felt to spend so much time dwelling in darkness (and meanwhile seeing everyone else around me pleasantly getting on with their lives). But what became apparent, little by little, is that God was indeed present in my pain.

“And if God’s love can reach you in your darkest dark,” my spiritual director noted, “There is nowhere God’s love cannot reach you.”

Andrew and I are quickly approaching one year of marriage. In this first year, it’s as though I’m learning this lesson of love all over again. Yes, in your weakness and your frailty, you are loved. Nothing can hinder love’s reach into the darkest depths of your life. And as with all mysteries, if you feel confounded you’re probably on the right track.

“But!” I hear myself protesting, “People are finite—we cannot possibly love without limits! Look at the divorce rate. Look at all the evidence stacked up against love!”

I stop myself. Is this love? Where can I look to find love?

Ah yes. There it is.

There he is. An infant at a woman’s breast, with lungs that were just moments ago filled with fluid and now take in cold air and a heart that pumps oxygen to tiny fingertips. Love in all vulnerability, love in the arms of human fragility.

When I look closely, I see that love is personal, intimate, and engaged. And when I step back and look up, there it is, too.

Love in the first breaths of a baby; love in the air we breathe.

“Only when we travel to the depths of our sorrow do we discover a joy that we thought was impossible.”

- Becoming Neighbours

One thing I’ve learned through writing a book is that you end up with words out there in the world, attributed to your name, that you actually have to…well…live by.

During my years of neighbouring and being neighboured by refugee claimants, I was confronted, almost daily, with the paradox of joy and sorrow. I regularly witnessed celebration, laughter and joy emanating from people whose lives had been turned upside down. I wrote that line in Becoming Neighbours out of what I had seen and heard. I knew, as an observer, that it was true, but I’m not sure that I had really experienced it.

In this season, I’ve been living mainly in the last part of that sentence, thinking, at times, that joy might be impossible. When it gets dark, I know logically that I have experienced joy before, but I cannot relate to the feeling and I struggle to imagine it returning…ever.

But, today, if you were on Napier Street just before noon, you would have seen me running down the street in a bright blue rain jacket, dodging puddles while dribbling a basketball. Andrew followed behind me, probably somewhat surprised to see this new side of me, the almost-thirty-year-old-woman with all the bouncing enthusiasm of a seven year old boy. And if that's not joy, I’m not sure what is.

This morning Andrew and I celebrated Orthodox Saint Nicholas Day, having been unprepared for the unorthodox one on December 6th. (One perk of being newly married is you get to make your own traditions!) We gave each other stockings filled with small gifts. Inside mine was a basketball pump, with its accompanying basketball stashed in the closet. After seeing a new outdoor court go in at the elementary school down the street, and reminiscing about my glory days in high school, I had mentioned to Andrew that I’d like to have a basketball.

So there we were this morning, air-balling and pretend alley-ooping our way around the court. I stayed a while longer on my own and a passerby hollered “Who’s winning?” “Me, myself, and I!” I called back.

The invitation I sense, in a season when joy is scarce, is to simply be open to it when it comes. And then to call it what it is.

Anticipate joy.

(I’m expecting, once again, that I’ll need to read this later and trusting that there will be grace to live by these words.)

‘Peace, peace,’ they say,
when there is no peace.

- the prophet Jeremiah

…

“Imagine peace”

- sign outside the Vancouver Art Gallery

…

“We can only live into what we have imagined.”

- Curt Thompson

I’m trying to imagine peace, but I’m having a hard time. And if I can’t imagine it, how can I live into it? I spent much of this week looking for peace…and coming up short.

The refrain that kept going through my head was the words of Jeremiah the prophet: “‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.”

Don’t let me be another voice spouting cheap peace at the expense of integrity…wholeness (which I believe is peace, peace in that deep sense of the word ‘shalom’ — where nothing is broken and no one is missing).

Recently, my inner life has been anything but peaceful. No wonder it’s challenging to have eyes for peace in my outer world. In the language of the enneagram, I’m classified as a number nine, the ‘peacemaker’. I bring a grounding presence to my interactions with people, and I seek harmony in relationships…sometimes to my detriment. ‘Peace, peace’ when there is no peace.

While a guise of peace probably got me through a lot of roommate relationships, being married collapses the distance required for that kind of…well, dishonesty.

I can’t hide, though sometimes I wish to. An illusion that I was ‘easy to live with’ has gone out the window. I lose stamina for talking through things, for living in tension. And still, life continues. Simple escape is no longer a solution when you share the same bed.

This week, Andrew and I started to see a counsellor together. In our living room, with this stranger’s face pressed up against our computer screen, we answered questions. “How did your relationship develop?” “What do you fight about?” “What are you hoping for from counselling?”

“Peace.” I didn’t say that, but, if I’m honest, I think that’s what I want. Just a bit of peace and quiet. Is that too much to ask?

I have a hunch that, rather, it’s not enough. Ask for more. Seek the peace that is costly, that does not minimize or eliminate the chasms that open up between you, within you. Pursue peace that has room for your grief and despair. For your not knowing. Peace that surpasses your understanding.

What I cannot understand, let me imagine.

Imagine peace that is not found within this warring world, or even your warring mind, but peace that finds you. Peace that takes on flesh and takes up residence in your worn relationships, your waning resolve, your weary body.

Imagine peace.

…

This piece was prompted, at least in part, by a question that came first from my husband and then from my father.

“Could you write about what you’re experiencing?”

“I wouldn’t know what to say...” (I still don’t, but I’m working on it…)

In order to reflect on what it means to wait in the darkness — and there seek hope, peace, joy, and love — I’m committing to write something here each week until Christmas. Consider this field notes on those four themes. I invite you to join me, in the darkening days of a Pacific Northwest winter, watching and waiting for signs of light.

…

On Wednesday I waited at a nondescript intersection in Richmond for five and a half hours. I wasn’t waiting to cross the street, or for the light to turn green. (In fact, I saw it turn green about 165 times, give or take.) I was there — at the intersection of Ackroyd and Cooney in Richmond, BC — waiting to get into the Service Canada office to apply for a new passport.

The day started in downtown Vancouver, where I was told in no uncertain terms that there was “no chance” of me getting in and I would be better off returning at 4am the next day. Despite my affinity for early mornings, I felt a bit bewildered at this prospect; I took the metro line to the next closest passport office. When I arrived at 10:30am, there were already about 30 people waiting outside. I took my place at the end of the line and started making bets in my head about how long this might take. I knew there was a chance I would wait all day and return home with nothing to show for it. At least I didn’t have anywhere to be for the next seven hours…

From what I could tell, one hour in, the line was only advancing thanks to queue defectors — likely folks who had to get back to work or figured there was no hope of getting in today. Some of us were stubborn enough to stay. And stay we did while the line inched along at a speed of approximately one meter per hour.

As I entertained the thought of waiting all day, something unexpected happened. I found myself settling into this particular place, with these particular people. I remembered childhood outings to run errands with my mom in the small town where I grew up. Inevitably an innocuous trip the grocery store would turn into a two hour affair. “I’ve done this before,” I recalled. “I know how to wait.” I even found a sense of comfort in the thought that I had nowhere to be but here.

I lifted my gaze from my patch of sidewalk. Above the apartment buildings and power lines across the street, there were towering pine trees. I admired them silently. There was a cold wind, but, as far as I could read into the sky, no threat of rain. At one point, the sun broke through the clouds, casting shadows of the cars passing through the intersection. I felt it on my skin, too, with surprising satisfaction.

In front of me, a woman with dark eyes peering out between a furry hood and a mask motioned for me to look up. A single crow was perched in the tree right above me. I stepped aside and a moment later missed a splat on the sidewalk. Two hours in, the Chinese woman behind me offered to hold my place in line if I wanted to go get some food. I did. I came back with a steam bun and two sesame balls (one paid for, one given) and I found hand warmers, too… which meant I could read a book without getting numb fingers. Around the three hour mark, the Japanese man in front of me offered me a seat, which I accepted with some convincing. A young man joined the queue behind me, swapping out with his mother every couple hours. He entertained me with his entrepreneurial ideas and on-the-spot career planning. “If we’re having to wait this long, I bet they only have two people working up there… I think I’m going to apply!” As we got closer to the lobby door he remarked “You know what they need right at this corner? …A hot dog stand!”

At this point, four hours in, I had almost given up hope that we would get in today. But, curiously, it was beginning to feel like a ‘we.’ One by one, as people were admitted into the lobby, I felt genuine excitement and gratification on their behalf. Even if the rest of us didn’t make it, someone who had waited since 9am was going to get in just before closing! But when the young entrepreneur exclaimed “There is hope!” to our small cohort of wait-ers, I still felt a bit skeptical. At this point though, I certainly wasn’t about to head home.

Just ten minutes before closing, my turn came to enter the lobby. It was such a relief to be inside a building with heat. (As if what I had been waiting for all day was just to warm up, never mind the passport!)

A walkie-talkie system informed the lobby when another person could be sent up to the passport office on the third floor. I began clapping for the people ahead of me when their time came, and others joined in.

“Okay, send another one up,” crackled through the commissionaire’s device. It was me.

It felt like a true ascension of some kind to ride the elevator. “Long day?” I asked the man receiving my application. “They’re all the same,” he returned in monotone. “Right, it was me with the long day,” I thought. Five minutes later, the application had been submitted, and I was back out on the street, heading away from Ackroyd and Cooney.

I bit into a crispy sesame ball as I walked back towards the metro station, feeling grateful for the day, its miraculous outcome, the still-warm hand warmers in my pocket, and even for the waiting.

In retrospect, I conceded that my young friend was probably right. “Yes, there is hope.”

*Reader be warned: this piece is riddled with unverified ‘facts’ and figures.

Four years ago I stepped off a plane, arriving at YVR after a year of living abroad. There at the airport to greet me was Loren Balisky, co-founder of Kinbrace, a community in East Vancouver where refugee claimants and their hosts live side-by-side. I lowered my unwieldy backpack into the trunk of his car, and we drove across the city to Kinbrace, my new home.

It’s hard to remember what it was like to travel internationally, when today even crossing into the neighbouring health authority could result in a $575 fine. But what about when travel is a matter of survival? When we speak of “essential travel,” what could be more “essential” than escaping persecution, war, or gang violence? Mark Glanville’s engagement with the realities of COVID for asylum seekers (or refugee claimants) rings true for me, and reminds me of the early days of the pandemic in the Kinbrace Community.

The global dynamics that force people to leave home do not stop when a pandemic breaks out. Kanori and Mohammed are two men who arrived at Kinbrace during the first few months of the pandemic. While travel was restricted globally, they were on the move out of necessity. And, though they came from vastly different parts of the world, they both came to call Kinbrace home.

Rooted in the Christian tradition and the biblical imperative to welcome the stranger, Kinbrace has always aimed to receive refugees as brothers and sisters...as family. This welcome takes place in two houses with one lively, shared backyard (complete with a trampoline, basketball hoop, gardens, and a chicken coop). Within the houses there are six independent apartments for refugee claimants and three for hosts (typically Canadian individuals or families), as well as a large kitchen and office space. While hosts live in the community long term, refugee claimant residents spend three to six months living at Kinbrace when they first arrive in the country. For people seeking safety, Kinbrace is not only a temporary shelter, but—just as critically—it is a place of belonging.

All of this came into focus for me when the first COVID-19 restrictions caused our world to shrink to the size of these two properties. We who were living at Kinbrace at the time struggled to decode public health guidelines that were aimed at the average nuclear family. Meanwhile, our “bubble” contained twenty people between the ages of seven months to seventy years hailing from six different countries on four different continents and speaking five different mother tongues. In an unprecedented way, I found myself confronted with the challenges of living in a community amidst such diversity. Like most other families during the pandemic, we rubbed each other the wrong way, got into disagreements, and somehow wound our way to reconciliation (time and time again).

But, unlike most families, we faced other challenges, too. Work permits and refugee hearings were indefinitely delayed, leading to heightened uncertainty about the future and prolonged separation from spouses and children, many of whom remained in countries with limited access to health care. We felt, and continue to feel, the profound personal impact of systems-level stalls in refugee claim processing.

A year ago, we were sitting in the backyard for a weekly sharing circle, listening to each other one by one as we expressed our concerns. As the meeting reached its conclusion, a woman named Samya who had been quiet for most of the evening spoke up: “Could we pray?” she asked. Her simple question stopped me in my tracks. Of course! I thought. (But why didn’t I think of that?) What other response could possibly match the magnitude of these individual challenges and this collective uncertainty? So, there in the backyard, Samya stood up, bowed her head, and prayed for us and for our world. Samya’s question, I believe, is an invitation to the church. It is an invitation to cast our gaze beyond our present realities towards the life-sustaining love of God. And, in doing so, to enlarge our imaginations from self-preservation towards congregations and communities that truly enfold the stranger. To reconsider, in the Kingdom of God, who might be included in our “bubble.”

This morning I found a perch at a coffee shop to continue editing my book… half tinkering with sentences, half staring off into space. As I typed away, something caught my eye and I looked outside. Someone, rather. There stood Firuz and Salma, faces masked and waving enthusiastically.* I rushed outside to say hello.

I shared nine months of life with this couple at Kinbrace. They are probably the age of my parents, and they adopted me as a daughter of their own while we lived side-by-side. Meanwhile, Firuz would also call me “Mrs. Boss,” claiming that I was the woman in charge at Kinbrace. If I passed by during his daily routine of sweeping the back patio, he would bring his work to a halt, hold his broom at his side, and we would share a formal salute.

It’s not the first time this has happened. A few weeks ago I was working at another neighbourhood cafe. At one point, I lifted my gaze to discover the duo who had taken the table next to me were Malena and her mother, two women who used to call Kinbrace home. These former neighbours continue to build lives beyond Kinbrace, their first community of support in Canada. (To hear a podcast interview with Malena, follow this link: https://migration.ubc.ca/global-migration-podcast/season-2/episode-5)

In my work of writing, I depend on these run-ins. They call me back to the people from whom my words cannot be divorced. Just before spotting Firuz and Salma, I had written: “…And with 79.5 million people forcibly displaced from their homes, we cannot afford to lose sight of our humanity.”

In a world of forced displacement and mass migration, we need human contact. We need tangible reminders that every social phenomenon is a human phenomenon. Forced displacement is something that happens to people… people with faces and names and stories.

Sometimes it takes a distraction from the task at hand to draw me back to what is central. It may only be through my ‘peripheral’ vision that I see what cannot be missed.

*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of my former neighbours.

The photo was taken at Kinbrace last spring. Look closely and you’ll see Firuz in his own familiar ‘perch.’

At Kinbrace, our lives revolve around arrivals. Next week alone, three new families will enter our doors, receiving temporary housing and wrap-around support during their first few months in Canada. It’s almost unheard of to say three welcomes at once, but, then again, it seems rather fitting given the season...

I have been shaped by the Judeo-Christian tradition and, each year in the weeks leading up to Christmas, we mark the season of Advent. Filled with anticipation and preparation, stillness and contemplation, it's a season whose very name means “arrival”.

I think about the families who will be welcomed next week, first setting down suitcases in a new apartment, meeting the staff one-by-one, attending their first Tuesday dinner with a degree of trepidation, discovering a neighbour who speaks their mother tongue, sharing tea with our Hosts. I think of our long history of “strangers” becoming family as trust—imperceptibly, yet undeniably—grows between us.

A friend of mine just had her first child, and in the excitement and angst-filled days leading up to birth, she bemoaned: “A stranger is coming to live with us!”. We laughed because it was absurd...and because it was true. A stranger, yes—but a stranger who will be, and already is, family.

Mohammad is a friend and former resident who always reminds us of this reality. “When I come to Kinbrace,” he says, pulling up a chair at Tuesday dinner, “I’m with my family. It’s like being back in my parents’ home with all our relatives.” I watch a two-year-old climb up on his knee as he strikes up a conversation about the latest football match. Yes, he’s among family here.

As we anticipate three arrivals next week, Mohammad reminds me to expect family to show up at the door. Unknown, and yet kin; unfamiliar, and full of God’s glory—like a child in a manger.

…

But the season of Advent is really about two arrivals. The child in the manger is the first. The second? The long-awaited arrival of goodness and justice that will spill over into all things; darkness being overwhelmed by light. We’re not there. And many days this is painfully evident.

For Mohammad, while he is safe in Canada, his family awaits protection. All is not well.

Every arrival is also a heart-wrenching departure. Our celebrations inevitably get cut short, and our nights are not-so-silent. Living in the tension between Advents, we can’t really say “welcome” without acknowledging that we haven’t arrived.

At Kinbrace, this means that hospitality happens in community; we receive each new neighbour with an offer of solidarity. So our welcome gets fleshed out at the dinner table, and on walks to the grocery store, and in a quiet grief shared.

I want to invite you into next week’s three arrivals: three opportunities to recognize family in strangers; three “welcomes” which acknowledge that finding home is unfinished business, and what’s needed along the way is friendship.

Consider how you might offer your own gift of welcome. May hope stir in you this Advent season.

Esther arrived with autumn. She had been travelling on a business trip in the United States when she was faced with an impossible decision: return to her Central American country of origin—and certain persecution—or seek safety by crossing the border into Canada—and endure an indefinite separation from her husband and two children. The choice that led Esther to our doors was motivated by survival, which was evident in the way she arrived—carrying one small suitcase. On a warm September afternoon, I watched Esther walk through the back gate and set down her bag. Then, she straightened up and took in her new surroundings with all of her senses but one; Esther was visually impaired—she had been blind since birth.

During her first week at Kinbrace, Esther asked me if I would take her shopping for clothes. I agreed, though I had never guided someone with visual impairment before. As we boarded the number twenty bus and made our way downtown to the mall, I was a haphazard combination of overly cautious and nearly negligent. At times, Esther would practically drag me along, laughing, and other times, I would forget to warn her when the sidewalk abruptly ended. But we got through it, and once we had successfully found her some new clothes, we celebrated with hot drinks.

As we sat outside the mall at a little patio table in the sun, I looked at Esther, her hands cupping her coffee, and I marveled at her trust. She had come to Canada seeking protection, but she had to assess the safety of her new environment without the aid of her eyes. Though she was unable to read facial expressions and body language, she openly received the welcome of new neighbours and Kinbrace staff. She was both incredibly vulnerable and remarkably trusting. She had accepted the offer of my outstretched arm, entrusting her very self to me—a stranger. Her trust, freely given, invited my own, and in the weeks that followed, Esther became the neighbour I would go to for guidance…for the outstretched arm of a friend.

*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of my neighbours.

During the holy season of Ramadan in Tanzania, observant Muslims break their fast with a hot drink called porridge. (And yes, it’s a drink and not a breakfast cereal.) Typically consumed at dusk, this steaming beverage combines the spiciness of black pepper, the tanginess of tamarind, and the sweetness of cane sugar. These flavours join in a roux-like base of flour and water, giving porridge a thick and creamy consistency...and, perhaps, its name.

…

Spicy.

Bahira and her two children arrived at Kinbrace in the early days of 2020, after journeying from Tanzania (pronounced, so I’ve learned, “Tan-ZAN-ia” — little did I know I had been misplacing the emphasis all along!).*

The day after their arrival, Bahira and I ventured to No Frills. When I knocked on her door, she emerged for our grocery shopping trip dressed to the nines: an emerald green head covering with gold details, jean jacket with faux fur collar, East African batik skirt, chunky white tennis shoes (the kind that are too cool for me).

We searched for ginger—a whole bag full—halal beef, and diapers. I pointed out the unit prices in tiny print and the weigh scale in the produce department. She held herself with an unpretentious elegance as we walked the aisles...which later left me wondering if she had ‘no frills’, or if she had all of them...

Tangy.

In July I said a temporary farewell to Bahira and her kids. (After three years of intentional community living at Kinbrace, it was time for a break.) Six weeks later, I walked through the back gates once again and was received with an immediate “Auntie Anika!”. Mosi, Bahira’s daughter, embraced me; I was home. But home looked different now. In the time I was gone, some neighbours had transitioned out of the community and new ones had arrived.

Kinbrace now had a distinctly African flavour. Out of six apartments, five were home to residents who hailed from the continent of Africa: Kenya, Algeria, Tanzania, South Africa, Nigeria. As we gathered in the backyard for a community dinner, someone commented on the new demographic: “Kinbrace is Africa now!” Bahira came back with a sassy first response: “It was about time!” she said, just loud enough for everyone to hear.

Sweet.

At the end of October, Bahira and her children found their permanent home: a cozy basement suite in Mount Pleasant, right on my regular bike route.

Before they left, the Kinbrace community — residents, staff, host community, and volunteers — gathered on Zoom to share memories and words of blessing. JM, Bahira’s 18-month old son, walked right up to the computer and rolled his cars back and forth in front of the screen as the sending blessing progressed.

That evening, I asked Bahira if she would teach me to make porridge, that special Tanzanian drink which she had first shared with me during Ramadan. On the night before their move, she invited Andrew and I to her attic apartment. With the kitchen cupboards loaded into boxes on the floor, we gathered around the stove and watched as Bahira combined ingredients. Tamarind, black pepper, flour, water, sugar. It all simmered away as her son sat at his high chair watching cartoons in Kiswahili. Bahira divided the porridge into three mugs and and we drank in that last evening...spicy, tangy, sweet.

…

The following week, I was biking home and saw the light on at Bahira’s new home. I stopped, felt for the latch on the gate, and knocked on the basement door. I heard a familiar “Auntie Anika!” as Mosi saw me in the doorway. “Come in!” motioned Bahira. She gave me the grand tour while Mosi demonstrated the dance moves she had learned at her new school. JM happily rolled his cars back and forth on the floor.

*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of my neighbours.

A couple of years ago, I was sitting with a friend on her living room couch while a party of some kind buzzed around us. (I have a way of finding the corners at parties.) As we talked, I told her about life at Kinbrace and how much of it happens as the fruit of spontaneity: a conversation on the stairs or by the gate; a child looking for a playmate; an unexpected dinner invitation. She listened with nodded understanding, and then asked if I’d heard about the ‘vow of availability’. I hadn’t, but I was intrigued. (It turns out that this comes from the Northumbria Community, where modern-day monastics live together by vows of availability and vulnerability.) That day in her living room, this friend gave me the gift of language which so aptly describes my experience—and my ongoing commitment—alongside refugee claimants at Kinbrace. I may not have taken a vow of availability, but it certainly describes the posture of openness—to people and to God—that I want to cultivate.

…

On Friday afternoon, I was reminded once again of the fruit of availability. It was one of those windy and sunny (sun-swept?) fall days, and I headed out for a walk, rather aimlessly. As I approached the train tracks that cut diagonally across East Van, I turned down the street with a pedestrian overpass—a conspicuous turquoise chain-link structure. I walked up the ramp, then paused in the middle, standing directly above the tracks. I looked at the garbage below, cut through by a path for a train. I looked up—the North Shore mountains. I kept walking.

Just before I popped out the other side, I recognized the person approaching; it was her eyes—between head scarf and mask.

“Firouzeh!”*

“Anika!”

(This is real, human ‘facial recognition’.)

Before any small talk, she was whisking me away. “Come to my home!”

Although I knew that her family moved close by when they left Kinbrace, I had no idea it was here, in the subsidized housing which straddles the neighbourhoods of Strathcona and Grandview-Woodland. I considered the offer for a moment, thinking about what I might have to get back to...

“I’m just on my way to pick up my brother from school. Come for tea! My mom will be so happy to see you!”

Spontaneity prevailed. “...Okay!” I said, as I followed her back across the street. She unlatched a gate which opened onto a patch of green in front of their street-level apartment. A buttercup lawn with an overgrown rosemary bush in the corner: a garden.

She knocked, and in a moment her mother appeared at the door, head uncovered. She hadn’t been planning to have a visitor today. “Hello!” I said. Her twenty-something-year-old son Rayi brought me upstairs to the living room and we talked about his job, and their new neighbourhood. One by one he asked how everyone at Kinbrace was doing.

Soon Firouzeh was home with her youngest brother Shahou in tow. Shahou has autism. “Do you remember Anika? Say hello!” said Firouzeh. He glanced at me and waved while his eye-contact carried on to more important things. He plopped himself down on a plush chair and set to work on his iPad, making happy sounds to himself.

“It’s his first year of school and he went straight into grade four!” Firouzeh reported. “All of his classmates love him.”

“I’m sure they do!” I said.

She pulled a binder off the shelf. “His support worker made this for him.” There was a photo of a smiling Shahou on the front, and inside were laminated photos of favourite foods and activities, with velcro backings.

Their mother came with green tea. Firouzeh told me all about her online high school classes, and the Korean dramas she’s been watching in her spare time. She spouted off the names of her favourite Korean actors.

Her mother spoke up. “Korea...air-o-plane!” she said, while making a throwing motion through the air.

Firouzeh laughed. “Oh, she jokes about putting me on an airplane and sending me to Korea!”

Shahou looked up at one point and noticed a plate of danishes on the coffee table. He ate one. And came back for two. And returned for three. “Shahou! Bas!” Firouzeh interjected, as she gently pried the pastry from his hands. He took one last defiant bite, and then just as happily surrendered.

My cup of tea was refilled and emptied again.

Firouzeh pulled a photo from the shelf. “This is my mother with Rayi when he was a baby,” she said pointing. “I think she is the most beautiful woman. And this is me and my father and my older sister. ...I’ll see them again one day.”

Eventually, it was time to go. I said goodbye at the door, crossed the street, and walked back towards the overpass, looking up at it as some kind of portal from one world to another.

“Come to my home!” What a beautiful phrase to have on the tip of the tongue. And what a beautiful world Firouzeh and her family inhabit...where time moves slowly, tea flows freely, and surprise visitors are always welcome. That ‘vow of availability’ was just the way in.

…

According to the Northumbria Community, “Avail­abil­i­ty is about being open to life: to God and to oth­ers. It is to be open to those who cross my path, believ­ing that there is good rea­son to give of myself, and receive from oth­ers, just because God loves us and gives us each oth­er, even if only for a time.”

*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of my neighbours.

Thursday.

I came into the backyard to find the stranger and his wife with brooms in hand. They were sweeping every corner of the back patio, which is daily carpeted in the leaves of a locust tree, succumbing to fall.

I asked about their grandchildren, and they set their work aside to show me photos on a phone. The stranger’s wife pointed to each round face and told me name and age. “They’re beautiful,” I said, followed by “Mashallah!” (The same Arabic expression of blessing that a neighbour once used on me when I became the mother of seven tiny chicks.) She smiled a swell of pride and returned to the sweeping.

…

Later.

It had been a playful evening of carving pumpkins and drinking spiced apple cider. The stranger, who was hesitant at first, took up his carving implements with the skill of a surgeon. (He was, after all, a surgeon for over thirty years before he came to Canada.) Sitting across the table from him, I asked if he would be my subject, and he happily agreed. “Should I include your ears?” I asked. “Oh yes of course!” he laughed.

As we carved, he talked. “One day I performed fourteen amputations,” he said matter of factly. “There was an explosion in the capital that day.” He paused. “The hardest procedure was on a mother of four… I had to amputate both her legs at the hips.” He stood up from the table and pointed, so it was clear. He sat down again and spoke softly. “I wondered if it would have been better if the explosion took her life… But then I saw her with her children and I knew...it is better to be alive.”

We finished carving our pumpkins, placed tea lights inside, and set them down on the freshly swept patio to admire.

…

Later still.

The stranger was standing at the sink, washing dishes.

“Am I your guest or your host?” he turned and asked me, sponge in hand.

“Umm…” I knew this wouldn’t be a straightforward answer from the twinkle in his eye. I deliberated.

“I am your host!” he cried, his enthusiasm spilling over. “In my country, you can be a guest in someone’s house for three days...after that, you are washing the dishes!”

...And what a host you have become, dear stranger.

On Monday night we celebrated thanksgiving—all twenty of us. In ‘normal’ times, thanksgiving is the event of the year in the Kinbrace calendar. It’s a time of welcoming back past residents and sharing feast-worthy food from a dozen different countries. We decorate the Grandview Church hall with string lights and autumnal-toned fabric draped from the ceiling. There’s live music. And it almost always ends in dancing. Kurdish dancing. Or line dancing. Or salsa. It’s a beautiful sight.

This year was a more intimate affair. For the first time in months, we were back in our regular dining room, rather than eating in the backyard. It was candlelit and cozy. We feasted on a classic Canadian turkey dinner (halal, of course) with sides of Palestinian green beans and East African chapati. There was joking and laughter...and babies crying. At one point, J started crying, followed by L, and then S: the domino effect, or some unspoken agreement among infants. A young man from South Africa called out “Who else wants to cry?” More laughter.

One tradition remained the same this year: at the end of the meal, with bellies full, we each wrote down our gratitude on a paper leaf, then took turns sharing around the table. At the end of the night all twenty leaves were strung up on the wall.

“Love, community, safety.”

“I am thankful for being here today and being part of Kinbrace.”

“My bike.”

“Shared meals.”

“New friends.”

“Freedom.”

After dessert, we helped clear tables and wash dishes. I took out the compost. When I opened the gate into the darkness of the alley, it took my eyes a moment to adjust. At first all I saw was an ember-y orange glow in front of me. I smelled cigarette smoke. Ah, it was Zahra.

“Ca va?” I asked. She said nothing, unless I missed her body language. I dumped the compost bucket with its characteristic slop and came back to the gate.

“Comment vas-tu?” Now she asked me. I hoped to exchange a few simple words, and then slip past to finish the clean-up and retreat to my upstairs apartment. But ten minutes later I was still there, compost bucket in hand. She let her cigarette burn down to nothing between her fingers; the orange glow was gone.

“I’ve started noticing that I speak in the past tense all the time,” she said into the darkness. “‘I used to do this or that’, ‘I used to have my job’, ‘I used to be with my family’. It is so hard to live in the past.”

A pause.

“And right now the future is uncertain, while you’re waiting for your refugee hearing,” I said (as usual, not knowing what to say).

“Yes, what future is there to speak of?...When my life is controlled by the people I had to run away from and the people who will decide if I can stay in Canada. I am between two walls. What am I supposed to do?”

As she spoke of past and future, I couldn’t help but think about the present. About the way Zahra puts up with the joking of her neighbours—her ‘brothers’ at Kinbrace—and the way she fires back with incomparable wit. About the older Afghan couple she graciously shares her home with, and the way she ‘shares’ her daughter with them, too—as honorary grandparents who are far from their own grandchildren. About the time she hosted me for dinner only days after she’d arrived at Kinbrace. About her spare-no-extra, exuberant hospitality.

This is what her life looks like, ‘between two walls’.

“Remember your doctor?” I asked. “The one who told you that you were strong before you gave birth to L? I believe that. You are incredibly strong, Zahra. And even when you are weak, God is strong.”

“Yes, my God is strong,” she said. “And God will give me strength to continue.”

…

Last week during our staff prayer time, we read and reflected together on the words of Richard Rohr. He speaks about the margins of society, where those who are excluded from systems cling to the edge. “We must go to the edge to find the center,” he says.

So there, at the edge of the property, just outside the gate on a damp October evening, we found something of the center.

Sometimes love feels like a heavy weight across the shoulders.

I saw my friend this morning—well, heard him first…his voice outside my window as he talked to an old neighbour. “Good to see you!” I know that voice well. Ahmad is a former Kinbrace resident who is a brother to me.*

(Before I go on, I want to say that I struggle to write about these strangers-turned-friends who I have shared life with at Kinbrace. I do not know how to use my words as instruments of peace, but I pray that this practice is a way of learning. I ask myself ‘What if Ahmad came across my writing? Or Zahra or Abdul?’ I fear writing in a way that could be objectifying, or mis-using the privilege of holding the ‘pen’. I have all kinds of invisible assets which render me all-but-immune to the experience of exile that my neighbours know so well. But I know that not writing is not the solution. So I press on...and pray for mercy.)

About a year ago I ran into Ahmad as I was on my way out of the house and we had an encounter that left its mark on me. He had just received a concerning assessment at the hospital and I was the first person he crossed paths with in the aftermath. In his distress, I tried to reassure him, telling him that he could always come back to Kinbrace for support. “We’re like family,” I said and, almost before the words left my mouth, he stopped me in my tracks. “No, we are family. You are my brothers and sisters,” he asserted.

That encounter affirmed something for me. I don’t want to live in simile, with clichés down pat and ‘there-there’ sentiments...niceties that allow me to keep my distance and move on with my day. If I believe that kinship goes far beyond flesh and blood, I want to live it. I needed Ahmad that day to catch me in my words. I needed him today, too.

A few weeks ago he had his refugee hearing—finally!—after two years of waiting in another attempted country of asylum, and another year and a half in Canada. (Meanwhile, he has been separated from his wife and his young children, who remain in his country of origin.) To our great delight, the hearing ended with a positive decision: he was found to be a convention refugee and deserving of protection in Canada. What relief!

Relief, and yet...still he waits. It could be some time before he is reunited with his family. (Family reunification for refugee claimants is a lengthy process that involves applying for Permanent Residence in Canada.)

“I will see if they can come sooner. I will talk to my lawyer,” he told me. “I have some savings. I haven’t taken a day off in six months...it's hard work, but it takes my mind off things.”

I long for complete and full relief for Ahmad. For a day off work. For a deep breath. Sometimes I doubt it will ever come—for him, and for countless other neighbours. I feel grieved for him and angry at the odds, ever-stacked against people seeking safety and belonging. In these feelings of powerlessness, sometimes I turn to prayer. I trust that—despite the odds—God is compassionate, faithful, and just. And I trust that it is God who is knitting us together as kin.

Please pray for Ahmad. My brother. Our brother.

*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of my neighbours.

That was a question I asked myself last week. I missed the opportunity to welcome our newest Kinbrace residents while I was sitting on the fourth floor—the surgical unit—of Mount Saint Joseph Hospital. The one I love was sleeping off the loss of his appendix while I sat in a blue vinyl chair and watched the steady drip of the IV.

My gaze found his left hand, which rested at his side. In a few short months I would put a ring on that finger.

I’ve been considering covenant love a lot these days. A book I was reading recently described marriage as “the decision to spend the rest of your life in an uncertain world sharing your unknown self with someone who is a virtual stranger”.

So it is possible to love a stranger. So it is happening all around us. So it is the story of every friendship, every marriage, every human family, every discovery of another person.

…

But could we love strangers while they’re still…strange?

One of our newest neighbours is an older man who arrived in Canada with his wife, leaving a country with a level of volatility that bombards news headlines. In the week that he’s lived at Kinbrace, we have had one conversation—just long enough to exchange names. (And, truth be told, I’ve already forgotten his!) My other two interactions with him involved only our eyes.

It rained hard last week, and as I headed out the back gate one morning, I looked back and saw him standing under the eaves. He was just outside his door, but looked as though he had no intention of going anywhere. It was his first full day in his new home, and he was taking it all in: the morning, the rain, the garden succumbing to fall. He saw me, smiled, and waved. The next day, I arrived home as it was growing dark. I noticed him again through his basement window, standing in the living room. Once again, he saw me, smiled, and waved.

I was filled with such a fondness for this person—no, much more than fondness. A thought crossed my mind...Yes, it must be possible to love a stranger.

…

And what if it’s not only possible to love a stranger...what if love of strangers is what we were made for?

I come from a faith tradition where love of strangers originates from a loving God. In the book of Deuteronomy the Hebrew people have just been freed from slavery at the hands of the Egyptian empire. God gives his newly-emancipated people new words to live by...laws which will be the foundation for justice and peace. In this context there is a covenant made between humans and the Divine—a marriage between God and his people. And in this covenant there is the most remarkable inclusion: the stranger. “So you must love the foreigner, since you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.” Love of the stranger, expressed in radical welcome, is at the heart of this new people God is forming.

Then comes Jesus of Nazareth, who, according to the apostle Matthew said “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” This is not just a sign of solidarity, but an intimate identification with the marginalized. Jesus is not only with the stranger; he is the stranger. Here love of God and love of neighbour are inextricably linked.

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In the hand of a lover, in the face of a neighbour, in the dying words of a saviour...I can’t help but conclude that stranger-love is not only possible; it’s what makes us human.

*The Means and the End is Love by Kurt Armstrong