Today, pictures dominate communication. Photographic images and art play a powerful role in how we understand and respond to our world. A picture accompanies almost every story. Some make little impression, while others, like specks lodged in the eye, can’t be ignored.
I couldn’t ignore the attached picture or get it out of my mind. It’s one among many of the heartrending images to appear during the present day migrations from Syria to Europe. I saw it on Facebook. The picture shows a tenderly wrought assemblage created with pebbles. It depicts a Syrian refugee family on the move, carrying all that they have. The Syrian artist, Nizar Ali Badr lives in Latakia. He gives his thoughts and feelings expression with what he has readily at hand – pebbles from a beach. He reaches out to our hearts through stones.
The day I wrote this essay, twenty-four Iraqi Kurdish refugees had drowned in the Aegean. It’s frightening. I want to help. The enormity of the problem intimidates me.
In 2015 upwards of one million refugees fled Syria, Afghanistan, Kosovo and other states seeking refuge in Europe. Nearly 3,700 migrants fled from North Africa and 700 died crossing the Aegean Sea. Members of European Union, not able to determine refugee quotas for each member state, are beginning to close borders. Member states don’t feel they have enough resources to continue accommodating migrants.
There’s a Biblical story, popular with many Christians. It’s known as the parable of the loaves and fishes.
Jesus takes to the wilderness to preach and teach. The word gets out. A crowd of five thousand shows up. At the end of the day, the disciples feel compassion for the crowd. They remind Jesus that the crowd is hungry and weary and they’re in a “remote place.” The disciples urge Jesus to “send the people away so that they can buy themselves something to eat.”
Jesus replies, “You give them something to eat.”
The disciples grow anxious; “That would take more than half a year’s wages. Are we to spend that much on bread and give them to eat?”
Jesus simply replies: “How many loaves do you have?”
“Five loaves and two fishes,” they reply.
When the disciples proceed to feed the crowd with what they have it turns out there’s sufficient food . . . and leftovers.
Preachers I’ve heard, see the story as an example of how faith overcomes obstacles. Perhaps that’s a part of it, but I understand the import of the story somewhat differently. To me the miracle is not that they fed so many with so little, although twelve basketfuls of bread and fish left over is no small feat. The miracle is revealed not in how the story ends, but near the beginning when the question is posed, “How many loaves do you have?”
The question changes the game and creates another paradigm. It challenges our minds and spirits to shift from despairing over our scarcity, to assessing our abundance. Acclaimed spiritual leader Fr. Richard Rohr puts it this way: “The flow of grace through us is largely blocked when we are living inside a worldview of scarcity, a feeling that there’s just not enough.”
Rohr sees significant economic and political ramifications in this scarcity mentality. “Our unhealthy economics and politics persist because even Christians largely operate out of a worldview of scarcity: there is not enough land, healthcare, water, money, and housing for all of us; and in America there are never enough guns to keep us safe. A saint always knows that there is more than enough for our need but never enough for our greed. In the midst of the structural stinginess and over-consumption of our present world, how do you possibly change consciousness and teach the mind to operate from mercy and graciousness? It will always be an uphill battle, and it will always depend upon a foundational and sustained conversion.”
The EU has twenty-eight member states. They vary in population, wealth and resources. America, despite the scarcity rhetoric of some presidential hopefuls, has vast abundance. Within each of the EU member states and the U.S., there are a variety of resources of all kinds to help the migrants to safety. I wonder if, when the resources are identified and then cooperatively pooled, how they might serve the process of addressing the humanitarian crisis the Syrian war has precipitated.
“How many loaves do you have?”
Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.
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