Not a snappy post title, but there you go.  Serious stuff.

The BUGB yesterday put out this statement (which I've copied rather than linked, apologies if formatting is doolally) which is encouraging and challenging.  Some joined up thinking, working with other bodies and other faiths, and long term focus...

Call for a National Refugee Welcome and Resettlement Board

Statement by the Revd Lynn Green, General Secretary of the Baptist Union of Great Britain

In response to the outpouring of public support, including a number of clear expressions of concern from local Baptists, we join with others in calling for the formation of two new bodies to enable a co-ordinated response to the growing refugee crisis.

 While government agencies might manage the process of re-settlement, including the provision of professional support, we believe there is a vital role for civic society, the private sector, local citizens and other stakeholders to play alongside this. This is a vision that has been developed by Citizens UK, and we believe it is right to add our own support to this.

The successful resettlement of people with extreme and complex needs, will require significant support and it is particularly important that the substantial resources of faith and community organisations are not under-utilised at a time of such crisis. It is equally important that these organisations are able to work alongside and connect with professional agencies where this is required.

We share the belief that this could be effectively achieved by the establishment of a National Refugee Welcome and Resettlement Board, which in turn would work to establish and build a network of local Refugee Welcome and Resettlement Committees.

Historically, volunteers have been at the forefront of welcoming, befriending and even housing refugees in their local communities - notably in the cases of the Kindertransport, Ugandan Asians and the Vietnamese boat people. However this needs to properly connect with the activities of Government and non-governmental agencies. Historically, there were co-ordination boards and committees to fulfil this role, but these no longer exist, so new institutions need to be created.

Following the Prime Minister's commitment to increase the rate of Syrian resettlement to 20,000 over the next five years, and the reduced capacity of local government and refugee charities in a time of austerity, the need for the voluntary capacity of civil society organisations to assist in welcoming, befriending, mentoring, teaching English, finding appropriate housing and other tasks is greater than ever.

1 The National Refugee Welcome and Resettlement Board (NRWRB)

The NRWRB has the potential to bring together diverse national civil society organisations, leading private sector voices, and key public sector institutions. All would share a deep and long-term commitment to refugee resettlement, significant human and financial resources spread across a broad geography, and a commitment to mobilising voluntary effort to assist the state led resettlement process.

Civic members could include representatives of the Faith communities, Citizens UK, the British Red Cross, Avaaz, Save the Children, 38 Degrees, TUC etc.

The role of the NRWRB would be to organise the resources available on a national scale to support refugee resettlement programmes. Its key role would be to complement the work of other established agencies by helping to interface these with the activities and offers of help that emerge from local communities.

2 Local Refugee Resettlement and Welcome Committees (RRWC)

The NRWRB would develop guidelines for the formation of local RRWCs in areas where resettlement will happen and help provide coordination for their activities. Wherever possible existing local groups and community initiatives will be supported to form such committees, supplemented by a core of local affiliates of the national members of the NRWRB. Where they do not exist and significant resettlement is planned the NRWRB could support the initial convening and formation of such a committee.

The focus of the committees will be to support the local council and other relevant agencies in welcoming and supporting refugees. 
 

The Revd Lynn Green is General Secretary of the Baptist Union of Great Britain

It's getting quite scruffy now, a well-loved, well-worn, permamnently stained, pilled red duffle coat.  Definitely an air of the Paddington bear about it.

Bought in BHS in Coventry on a gloriously sunny Sunday morning five years ago (12th September 2010 for any fellow date-aholics) as a nose-thumb to being sensible, as a 'yaboo sucks' to cancer, as a moment when just for once I followed my heart not me head and treated myself to something I've always wanted.

It has served me well, keeping me warm during the icy cold 2010/11 winter, topping off festive outfits at Christmas, reminding me of how far I've travelled, and of the need to be a bit spontaneous now and then - that a little frivolity is actually good for the soul.  And this week, on a dull, chilly Wednesday, in an otherwise warm and sunny week, it had its first outing of 2015.

So I'm not fussed that the stains won't come out; that it is pilled where the velcro on my wrist splints stuck to the fabric or that it undoubtedly looks a little tired.  It is my rebellious red duffle coat, and I love it!

Yesterday morning I shared a short communion service with an older couple in their home, a monthly privilege where we sing well-loved hymns, share bread and 'wine', pray and then have a cuppa and a chat.

Yesterday afternoon I was visiting someone in hospital on the day they were allowed to go 'off the ward' to the hopsital cafe for the first time.  Along with a relative and a friend, we shared a cuppa and a chat, and then I prayed with them.  That was communion too.

This afternoon, with some other volunteers, I'll share tea and biscuits, play dominoes, sing redemption songs and listen to a speaker with a group of people, and quite possibly a dog.  Communion.

Coffee club in the pub, walking club on the hills (on the increasingly rare occasions I get there), meeting to plan a wedding ceremony... communion

Which is partly why I don't 'do' sacraments, or, if I must, why I'll have a 'sacramental universe'.  How is it a 'means of grace' to share in a religious ritual and not to hold the hand of a person who is anxious or grieving?  It isn't.  Pace all my sacramental friends, grace, like communion, comes in many kinds.

Today I discovered it has a name - tonsurephobia - the fear of haircuts, and that it is not at all unusual.  This post has nothing to do with being a minister and everything to do with being a human being.

I am a tonsurephobe... the thought of booking a haircut makes me anxious, when the day dawns my stress levels rise and by the time I walk through the door my heart is pounding and it feels as if I am shaking.  I take a deep breath and get on with it.  Afterall, I'm a big girl, I've ostensibly chosen to do this, it is meant to be pleasurable, and people  always tell me it looks nice afterwards. 

But I hate it. (Hate getting it cut, I mean, not hate the cuts I get)

And it is only the tonsurephobia that makes me do it, because the thought of ever having to go to a hairdresser out of pure necessity makes me more anxious than going voluntarily.  So there you have it!

I'm not very kind to myself about this.  I tell myself it is ridiculous, that even if (when) I don't like a haircut it will grow again.  That there are real things to be scared of, and hairdressers really shouldn't be one of them.

Five years ago yesterday I had 15-16" chopped off my hair (I measured the plait, it was a good 14") ready to start chemotherapy.  It had to happen, but I was so paralysed with fear that I had to get someone else to book the appointment for me.  Recently, the memory of that has been uncharacteristically vivid.

In theory, of course, I could choose to grow my hair again, but for various reasons I don't.  And they are all tied up with the tonsurephobia which is, I now realise, connected with powerlessness and lack of choice in the face of people wielding hair scissors.

The first such experience I know only by report... when I was small, the nextdoor neighbours persuaded my parents to cut my hair short on the pretext that it would thicken it up... I am told I looked like an orphan, and my parents were so horrified they did not cut it again for a very long time.

The next experience was at the age of ten.  My parents wanted me to try for a scholarship to an independent boarding school, which involved staying over for two nights.  Trying their best to disguise the fact that this was a family living on benefits, a mobile hairdresser was called in to colour (wash in wash out) and curl my hair... let's just say I hated it.  Hairdressing as fakery, and not chosen.  I didn't get the scholarship either (thankfully - the school closed a couple of years later).

Thereafter, I got my Dad to trim my hair, and so was in my late twenties before I went near a professional hairdresser.  Asking her to give it a 'good trim' of about 3", her inability to cut straight resulted in at least 12" being lopped off.  I was not happy and took to trimming my own dead ends off ever after, not really caring if it was level of not.

And then at 47, at almost no notice, it had to go.  Of course it had to happen, and the hairdresser was kind and gentle, the cut was careful and attractive.  But it was not a happy experience.

So my tonsurephobia is all about powerless and lack of choice, about not being listened to, or consulted, about not having an alternative... which means I never, ever, ever want to be in a place where I have to have a haircut that I don't ostensibly choose to have... which means I have to be brave and get it cut regularly even though it's a stressful experience... which means today I stealed myself and went to get it cut, and even though others tell me it looks great, I'm not so sure... but I'll get used to it and it will settle and then grow!

If I step back from me, and my particular rationally-based irrational fear, I begin to understand how other people's phobias and foibles might arise.  And, I guess if I put my minister head (with its freshly cropped hair) back on, how church and Christianity may be similarly anxiety causing for other people.

Yesterday, as part of our monthly theological reflection group I shared this retelling of a familair parable that I had found on line...

The Good Samaritan Retold – Again

I guess we all know the parable of the Good Samaritan?

On one occasion a British politician stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

"What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.'”

"You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?”

In reply Jesus said: “A Syrian refugee was going down from Hungary to Germany because his country and family had been attacked by robbers.  They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead.  Many politicians happened to be going down the same road, and when they saw the man, they passed by on the other side.  But a German politician as she travelled, came where the man was; and when she saw him, she took pity on him and 800,000 of his fellow refugees, she went to them and bandaged their wounds and took them all in.

"Which of these politicians do you think was a neighbour to those who fell into the hands of robbers?”

The British politician replied, “That's no way to reach a long term solution to the problem.”

And Jesus wept.                                  

(Steve Bunn)

It's very challenging, and it's meant to be.

It also serves as a keen reminderof the tension between short term urgent responses and long term, lasting solutions.  The British politician is cast in the role of the baddy - and yet there is truth in what he says... responding to an acute humanitarian need  is not of itself a long term solution.  The point of the story, or at least as I heard it, is that the British politician justifies his inaction in the here and now rather than really advocating a long term, thought through, solution to an impossibly complex set of circumstances.  Self-righteous refusal to engage - the attitude we ascribe to the Pharisee and Levite in the orginal.

I remember either hearing a sermon or reading a reflection on the original parable, that pointed out that this, too, was an acute repsonse to a specific incident, not a long term solution to the problem of attacks by robbers on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho.  The instant, humanitariin response is essential, is indeed the demonstration of neighbourliness.  But it isn't ever enough, at least not in a disordered world where the root causes of violence, injustice, poverty, religious fundamentalism etc continue unabated.

The German politician in the story is a neighbour to those she helps... but the British politician has a point too, just not the one he thinks he's making.  It isn't ever as simple as 'either/or' it has to be 'both/and'.  Fish and fishing rods.  Aid and agency.  We have to be neighbours here and now - to recognise and respond to the human need of others.  We also have to take a long term view and work towards a day when such crises are old history.

What makes Jesus weep is self-righteous inaction, the denial of humanity in oneself or another.  It is a challenging story, and so it should be.