The debates around asylum seekers and the complex nature of the global refugee crisis often involve more heat than light. This is me trying to throw a little bit of light into the mix. The story of the suffering Somali Refugee Abyan has gone through at our hands has led me to shed tears, and led me to cry out for something different. Something that breaks this cycle.
Love, love is a verb.
Love is a doing word.
Feathers on my breath.
Gentle impulsion
Shakes me, makes me lighter. — Teardrop, Massive Attack
The story of Abyan, the pregnant Somali woman (allegedly) raped on Nauru, has been belting my brain about this week, and my heart. It’s such a compounding of personal, national and international tragedy that it has driven me as close to despair as the story of Aylan Kurdi. Abyan’s situation is the result of many evils, and she has been tossed around on an ocean of horror — literally even — from Somalia, to a journey involving leaky boats and people smugglers, to Nauru, and into the hands of this evil man.
I despair at the lack of options on the table for Abyan at every step on this journey. I despair at the lack of choice. I despair that her dignity has been taken from her — a little more — at every turn. And that I, as an Australian, have been complicit in some of this, and that we in our prosperity, have the potential to offer dignity and freedom much earlier in the piece, and the responsibility to offer it now. As costly as this will be for us in dollar terms. The problem is that we keep trying to outsource this cost to our government, to be paid for by our taxes, sure, but we want to wash our hands of the decision making, and keep them clean when it comes to dealing with the mess. Our government — our politicians — then become the people we send in to clean up our horrid mess, and we crucify them because their hands get dirty. That doesn’t seem fair either.
I was blown away by many things at the recent Faith and Public Office Conference (12 of them here), one was the metaphor of ‘dirty hands’ — the cost that comes with being someone who bears responsibility in public office, who has to navigate complex moral issues on our behalf, and bear the cost of often attempting to choose the lesser of two evils in order to do good. Politics can be a messy game. It’s easy to throw stones from the sidelines so that we never dirty our own hands. It’s easy to get outraged, to grandstand, to say “not in my name” — but to never put your name on the line, like our politicians have, and to never offer to get your hands dirty.
The catch in this situation — in Abyan’s story — is, I can’t see a good or convenient way out of this mess, like many can. I absolutely recognise that other people think differently on this — and are free to. But, I’m not sure the ‘clean’ answer was not simply for our government to allow her pregnancy to be terminated. Some may argue that this is the ‘least messy’ option, or even a good option, but as a Christian who believes life within the womb is human life, I don’t think ‘termination’ is a ever a ‘good’ option (it may be a least bad option — like in situations where there’s a genuine choice between the life of a mother, and her child). If I’m being consistent, it always involves the ‘termination’ — the death — of a human life. At 14 weeks, this life within Abyan, is moving, it has a beating heart. It has just learned to “grasp, squint, frown, and grimace. It may even be able to suck its thumb.” I know this because when you want to keep a baby, you treat it as a life from the moment you know it is there, there are websites and books where you read about this stuff, and you chart the milestones (especially on the first, after that, it’s all a bit passé until they take that first breath and you know you’ve run the pregnancy gauntlet).
Despite the obvious (and consistently drawn) link to unborn children in the film clip to Massive Attack’s Teardrop (featured above), I think the song is about the cost of life in this messy world (here’s a little account of the life of Elizabeth Fraser, who wrote the lyrics, including what she says the song’s metaphor means for her). I think it, both lyrically and in the video, explores the cost of life lived with death — or mess — or our broken humanity — as an ever-present consequence. The fragility of life. It’s better, perhaps, not to be born into this world, except that birth is the path to life, and life itself is inherently good. Even though it hurts. I think it offers stumbling love — love as a verb — as the solution for us as we navigate this together.
Teardrop on the fire.
Feathers on my breath.You’re stumbling into all…
You’re stumbling into all… — Teardrop, Massive Attack (I took a while to settle on the ‘official’ lyrics of this song, because nowhere on the internet seems to agree, but José Gonzalez’s cover is relatively clear)
What does love look like here? For Abyan? In this mess? Love, I think, looks like being prepared to stand beside Abyan, to bear some of the cost, to lay down something of ourselves for her sake.
I should be filled with the same grief at the picture of an ultrasound of a refugee baby ‘terminated’ — aborted — as a result of our solution to this complex global issue as I am by the picture of a child who fled evil but didn’t make it into the care of a nation like us. I don’t think Abyan should be forced to carry the cost of this evil — any of it — perpetrated on her for the rest of her life either (I expand on this a bit in the letter below, so before you send me hate mail, read that, and then send me hate mail). In isolation, there’s no ‘good’ outcome here — but people aren’t meant to live in isolation, we’re meant to carry the cost of evil together. To dirty our own hands for the sake of pulling someone out of the mud of these horrors (in part, lest these horrors also pull us into the mud).
Ultimately what happens to this life — this baby — will be, and should be, Abyan’s choice. But at the moment, at least if we’re talking about this pregnancy as involving a life, she has no good options. We all make life and death choices about those we have a responsibility for, every day, I’m about to feed my own kids a healthy breakfast — and the choice not to serve them an unhealthy breakfast will shape their lives. But this isn’t a decision she should make alone, and it’s not a decision she should make confronted with only terrible options. That sort of decision compounds the horror of this horrible set of circumstances. I like the idea, throughout the Bible but best articulated in Deuteronomy, that our decision making is generational. That we shape the people who come after us as we make decisions that end up being decisions made on their behalf — and what marks out people who follow the living God of the Bible, is that we choose life at every turn, even if it costs us — a pattern we ultimately see in Jesus, but one that’s there in the opening books of the Bible, this was the choice facing God’s people in the Old Testament:
“I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants” — Deuteronomy 30:19
This choice is harder than it sounds. The Old Testament is the story of people failing over and over again to choose life. Making messy decisions that compound messy decisions. Generationally. We need to choose life over and over again — at our cost — to break this messy cycle in our lives. This, again, is modelled at the Cross, where Jesus chooses his own death, in order to bring life to others. He gets his hands dirty, and pays the cost. So we might live, and so that we might take up our cross and offer to lay down our lives, or get our hands dirty, for the sake of others.
I was challenged by all this — the brokenness of this situation, the ‘dirty hands’ metaphor, and the example of Jesus as a way out, the call to ‘choose life.’ So I wrote to the Hon Peter Dutton MP, the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, and offered to get my hands dirty. Well, in a generational sense, I offered my family’s hands.
Robyn and I have offered to adopt the unborn baby, and find some way to also care for Abyan. The ‘why’ is a bit buried in the letter. So here it is:
“I’m moved to offer this generosity because I believe that this offer has first been made to me. That as a Christian the model of “getting one’s hands dirty” to solve a product not of one’s making is found in Jesus, whose hands became a bloodied mess as he solved the problems of our making at the Cross. This offer is me taking up my cross.”
I should have said “we” here, because Robyn, without hesitation, said yes to this crazy idea. And I love that. Adoption like this may not be what Abyan wants, it probably isn’t, but I guess my desire for her is simply that she have choices beyond the choices she faces today. I want for her, and for the many like her, that they have not just the same decision making capacity, dignity, and freedom they’d have without the suffering they’ve experienced and fled from, but that this would be increased because they have the offer of stumbling love from their global neighbours to add to the mix. So our offer, really, is an offer to love Abyan according to whatever terms she, and our government, might allow.
The tragedy is that there are many Abyans. The global refugee crisis creates stories like this every day. We’ve heard Abyan’s story because it has been brought to our attention, but our responsibility extends to Abyan, and beyond. Are you prepared to dirty your own hands? Maybe it’s time you told someone, someone who has had their skin in the game — via politics — for some time. Maybe it’s time we stopped haranguing — however gently — and started offering our empathy, and our assistance.
And so:
Dear Peter,
I’ve been praying for you, and your office this week (and for many weeks, but especially this week). I lead a church community in South Bank, Brisbane, and some of our number are refugees in the community on bridging visas. I’ve heard their stories and I know just how complicated the refugee issue is globally, and locally. I know its a situation where there are no ‘good’ or easy solutions. That millions of people have been displaced, are hurting, and are needing care. I want to make the following offers, and I explain why below.
1. I would like to find a home for Abyan’s child, it seems that a decision has been made that this child will be born. I would like to spare Abyan from as much cost involved in this decision as possible. And I would like to pay it. I’m sure there would be people in our church community who would be willing to adopt Abyan’s child, because I spoke to my wife this morning and we would be happy to adopt this child. There may be others more fitting. But somebody needs to make this offer.
2. I know this one would involve invoking your Ministerial prerogative, but I would like to offer our community’s care to Abyan, so that if she wishes, throughout her life, she might have a relationship with this child. But I would find housing and an appropriate amount of counselling and care for her within our community, or the wider Christian community in Brisbane.
My prayer for you, offered every time a story like this hits the paper, is that you would continue to act with wisdom and increasingly act with compassion. I think we can always have more compassion, and the refugee crisis is getting worse, so our compassion must keep increasing. I believe the outpouring of offers of support from within the Australian community in response to the Syrian crisis is a turning point and an example of what this might look like. People in the community stand ready, willing, and able to open our homes to those in crisis. We’re prepared to open ours for as long as it takes.
I’m moved to offer this generosity because I believe that this offer has first been made to me. That as a Christian the model of “getting one’s hands dirty” to solve a product not of one’s making is found in Jesus, whose hands became a bloodied mess as he solved the problems of our making at the Cross. This offer is me taking up my cross.
I know this situation is complex. It’s a mess — and not of our making. It’s horrific and I thank you for bearing the cost of that horror, seeing and knowing things that most of us would wish to remain ignorant of. Making decisions on the basis of data that we don’t have.
I know also, that in our prosperity, Australia has a role to play in providing that care and this role is often outsourced to the government. We want to wash our hands while yours get dirty, and at our worst, we want to point at your dirty hands as evidence of a lack of compassion, when we could instead be extending them to help.
I read the story of Abyan and her rape on Nauru with horror. Horror because there is no way that I, as an Australian, put her in this situation, as much as the people smugglers and her decision to get on a boat with them, and the horrors in Somalia are also responsible. This is a horrific situation and it is a confluence of global and local horrors. It grieves me, and moves me to compassion, as I trust it does for you too. But I know there are no easy solutions.
This situation grieves me in a slightly fuller sense, too, because like many in our community I believe there is a human life quickening in the midst of all this horror. A human life who is not guilty of the crimes committed in Somalia, by people smugglers, or by the rapist on Nauru. A life that will join an ocean of casualties from this refugee crisis without the freedom to choose between a UN camp or a rusty boat. As a Christian who believes in the inherent dignity of life — both Abyan’s and this child’s — I should feel the same when I see a picture of an ultrasound as I did when I saw that traumatic photo of Aylan Kurdi. I recognise this child’s life is in the hands of his mother, where it should be, we all have responsibility for the lives of those around us, and we all make life and death decisions, of sorts, in myriad ways, every day.
I’m not seeing many choices on the table for Abyan though — she does not have the freedom we might expect in Australia to make these life and death decisions. There aren’t that many ‘good’ options on the table here, because good options cost someone something, and good options are hard to find in situations that just seem to leave everyone with dirty hands. But I believe in these situations you’ve got to offer your hands for the sake of others. Especially if you ever want to credibly speak out against people making decisions who have offered their lives in service to our country and its interests. So, this is why I have made this offer, and why I continue to pray for you and yours. For wisdom and compassion.
I know that conventional lobbying would involve me starting a petition or something at this point. I’m not interested in playing that game. I’m interested in offering costly solutions to complex problems. I will share this letter with my network, online, in the hope that others will be moved to offer the same response to situations like this, but I want to assure you this is not an act of grandstanding, this is jumping the fence and asking to play on the field.
If you have any other ideas for ways our church community could help bear the cost of this global crisis, I would love to hear them. You, your family, and your department are in my prayers. Thank you for serving us as a member and minister of our government.
Regards,
Nathan Campbell