All Saints Church has been involved in collecting and delivering aid to refugees in Europe and further afield for several years. Just this year Rowley Surridge, one of our churchwardens and Project Leader for the All Saints European and Syrian aid trips has been to Calais several times in 2017 and again this year, with a further trip planned this June. The refugee situation has not and will not go away and refugees are returning to the Calais and Dunkirk area despite the closure of the “Jungle”.
 
Why does a small church in Cornwall get involved in an international crisis? As Christians we are called over and over again by the words of the Bible in both Old and New Testaments to help others, particularly those who are victims of injustice.
 
Deuteronomy 10:18-19 reminds the Israelites:
“For the Lord your God...loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing.  You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” 
 
Leviticus 19:33-34; 24:22  instructs them:
“When the foreigner resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the foreigner.  The foreigner who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the foreigner as yourself, for you were once foreigners in the land of Egypt:  I am the Lord your God.”
 
 and the gospel of Luke tells us: Luke 3:11
“Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.”
 
Matthew 8:20 records the words of Jesus: "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head."
 
Jesus, and therefore Christians too, belong to a people indelibly marked by stories of Exodus and exile. Like the millions of Syrians today, Jesus and his family were forced to flee their home and find refuge. In Jesus’ case the destination was Egypt, the very place that his family’s ancestors fled in the time of Moses. We believe that God will bring justice to the world and right wrongs  as part of that he will also ask us to account for our actions:
 
Matthew 25:35-40
For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
 
Further information on ways to get involved with the Cornish response to the refugee crisis can be found on our website http://www.asht.org.uk/refugee-crisis.html. We also have several initiatives to help local people in need, one of which is Acts 435  http://www.asht.org.uk/acts-435.html.
 
Revd Jeremy Putnam

What speed does God move at? That is the question we were asked to ponder during the seven week course “Live Godspeed”. The title comes from the theologian N.T. Wright who explains that as God came to us in the incarnated Jesus in first century Galilee, God’s speed is a walking pace. In other words we need to “slow down to keep up with God”, to live our lives in the moment and to be present to our surroundings and the people around us in a way that isn’t possible if we are swept along by 21st century hurry and anonymity.

The course challenged us to examine our lives and the ways in which we were not present to God, each other and our communities. Do we take the time to see other’s virtues as well as their faults?  Do we feel that we “belong” to where we live, are we truly known by those around us? Do we feel like pastor and theologian Eugene Peterson that “there is no place on earth without the potential for unearthing holiness”? How can we practice stability in our modern, transient society and re-humanise our towns and cities? 

The Bible has many stories which examine being known and present: from the Genesis account of Adam and Eve in the garden hiding from God and choosing not to be known, to Jesus being present with people that society didn’t even consider worth acknowledging let alone being present with, such as the Samaritan woman described in John’s gospel chapter 4 verses 4-26. In fact the story throughout the Bible is of God with us, culminating in His ultimate presence within our flawed and messy world through birth, life, death and resurrection in the human person of Jesus.

Those of us who attended the original Godspeed Course have been trying to live the lessons learned. We are exploring mindfulness, vulnerability and being fully present to God where we are and in the body we have. N.T Wright says that it is useless to complain about our rushed and shallow culture but that as Christians we must subvert it instead. We can do this in so many ways-by taking the time to learn somebody’s name, or even just smile and make eye contact in the situations where it is so easy to say “I haven’t got time”;“it doesn’t matter”; it’s not my problem”. Why not chat to the cashier in the supermarket while you are packing your bags or maybe that person you always try to avoid…. 

Being present and known by others enables us to recognise the image of God in one another and those who we may consider “other” but whom we can bring into the loving community of the Kingdom of God as brothers and sisters. However, to know ourselves and others takes a lifetime and can only be done in community. So perhaps it is time to start meeting together as a group again to practice mindfulness and being present and encourage each other to be present to the world around us.

Information about the Live Godpseed course can be found at https://www.livegodspeed.org/. Do speak to Revd Jeremy Putnam if you are interested in attending the next course which begins on 8th November. It has the potential to change your life and that of those around you.

This month's article was written by Kirsty Basram (Parish Administrator) who attended the first Live Godspeed course at All Saints Highertown.

The smell caught me off guard. I had already brushed off the powdery residue of toxic raindrops on my bear arms and wiped the crud off my cheeks as I came in off the streets. And now a fume that carried a sickening sense of forgottenness was scraping at the back of my throat as I crossed the threshold. This dilapidated orphanage in some backwater industrial zone of Suceava was nothing short of shocking. From no fault of its own, what once stood as a life giving infant sanctuary was now debased; spoiled by an arrogant death that smugly showed off its stench to any good intended visitor.

P%$* and s*!& came to mind before the fact I was in the company of motherless children. I felt like a bloody tourist.
​
I was 16 and had signed up for a Christian mission in Romania to build a church and do some street evangelism. In the summer of 1992, before the cotton wool world of risk-aversity emerged, I spent a few weeks with a Romanian family in a block of flats that overlooked the city. From this height I was expecting to see a city scape or maybe even the ominous Carpathian Mountains to the west, but instead nothing other than the thick layer of smog that covered everything. Pollution had saturated the clouds and whenever it rained it bubbled like a fizzy lemonade on the pavements. The smog acted as a oppressive reminder that nothing had really changed since the fall of communism and the assassination of Nicolae Ceaușescu in 1989, well at least not yet anyway. The country’s economic system had collapsed entirely, barely getting by with a GDP growth rate of -12.4%, the lowest in Romania’s recorded fiscal history. Money had no real value anymore, so many people paid with items that had a much higher value, like milk, potatoes and beans.

I had arrived in Romania as part of a mission team that carried aid like clothes and medical supplies. We also had kid’s toys, lots of kid’s toys. The UK had reacted with a knee jerk and there were lots of aid trips going over with all sorts of donations.
After spending a week digging out a trench for a new sewerage system for the church build, the team decided to take our donations to a nearby orphanage in Suceava. Aside from the smell which was just simply impossible to ignore we were told that there were 10-12 nurses on staff at any one time, for the 400+ children that were accommodated. Children from new-borns to teenagers were separated on each floor of the concrete multi-storey complex.

I remember the building feeling more like a prison than a hospital, but it had a similar layout to both. Long corridors with rooms off each side. Large windows in each door allowed you to look in on the desperate occupants. Some rooms had larger windows beside the door, so you could check more carefully without the need to enter. Light switches were on the outside of the room.
As we toured the corridors I began to feel increasingly more uncomfortable with my own life at home. I felt embarrassed that we had thought to bring toys, and even ourselves. Mickey Mouse and I were about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike.

The smell was getting worse.

We were led up the stairs to this first floor dedicated to children aged 2 to 4. We passed a room filled with cuddly toys and unwrapped gifts, we paraded passed another containing cot mattresses. Then after a few more paces we stopped outside a room with two children in cots. One, a girl, seemingly dead, still, pale and eyes wide open, the other a boy. If it weren’t for the other boy’s crying lament I would have thought it was a morgue. The nurse checked the girl and reassured us she was breathing. The boy wouldn’t stop weeping.

I didn’t know who this boy was, what his name was, or where he was from; but at that moment I had never felt more connected to anyone else. His tears were my tears. I don’t mean in some westernised empathetic sense, the kind that signals to the virtue before the humanity, but in a sense that i was feeling lost, entirely lost. I don’t know why I did what I did next. Maybe I just felt compelled to do something, to prevent this 'feeling of being lost' entirely overwhelming me. Maybe it was the combination of the soiled mattress, the cold walls, the crying, the smell of urine catching the back of my throat, the girl laying lifeless, and Mickey Mouse in the room next door. I was nothing, I was lost, and yet I had to do something.

As the nurse turned to leave the room, I walked over to the boy and held out my hands to offer an embrace. He reached over the cot side bar and I lifted him up and out. His arms clung to me like a limpet on a jagged rock. His head rested in my neck, shaking and convulsing, hyper-ventilating. His body had resorted to a kind of physiological revulsion over the circumstance and his surroundings. He wouldn’t let go.

This was my conversion experience. The day that death died. I had come to Romania to share the good news, but I had at times slipped into thinking that I had brought Jesus with me. That I had something that others needed and wanted. The truth is I had nothing. I was lost. I hadn’t even contemplated the idea that Jesus might have already been there.

Yes, I was a Christian. I had a sense of mission. I wanted to do good and share the message of God’s love. I knew Jesus was light of the world, and that his Church was like a prism refracting his light in the darkest of places. Yet, in this orphanage I was lost, I had nothing. I couldn’t even say Dumnezeu te iubește, God loves you.

This boy. In my arms. He was like Christ to me. I’d read about Jesus appearing to Paul on the road to Damascus, I had heard about the fisherman being called out of their boats, and how Thomas had seen the wounds of Christ and believed. I didn’t think it would happen to me.

This boy was Christ to me. I had nothing, and he held on. I was lost, and he found me. Most of the time humanity hates and attack what it has good reason to love. I hated poverty, I hated the stench and my lostness in it. And yet, in a worldly sense, this boy I held and every other child in that orphanage was more lost than I will ever be, and more hated than I will ever be – hated so much that their lives are seen as burden. But in that embrace and my conversation to really let Jesus into my life, I remembered that hope is not some vague belief that all will work out well, but as Richard Rohr puts it, ‘biblical hope is the certainty that things finally have a victorious meaning no matter how they turn out.’ Now I believe in generous justice, a God who met us in the poverty of Christ and spoke to us in the terminus between dark and light.
​
I have always wondered about that boy, where he is now, what he's doing. In my searching for him, I keep finding Christ.
If you want to know how to respond. Speak to your nearest Christian about Jesus, and/or lookup www.whitecrossmission.com

Revd Jeremy Putnam