Hurricane Refugees and How We Help

On Tuesday night, I got a Facebook post to a group from a neighborhood friend asking if we'd help a pair of Bahamian refugees who had just arrived.  While most of us in South Florida have been moved by tales of Hurricane Dorian survival, she's one of few people I know personally who has opened her house.  She wrote to the neighborhood group seeing if we had gift cards, clothes, food, anything we wanted to donate.  She also talked about the possibility of hiring the couple.  They're hoping to save money to go back to rebuild.

She has a cottage, which they've been using as a home office and the occasional guest room.  On Tuesday, she went to the Palm Beach airport to pick up a couple who had left the island with literally only the clothes they were wearing during the storm--everything else is washed away. In South Florida we're hearing these stories. Planes and choppers land where they can, and take as many people as they can safely carry away. People are coming over even if they don't know anyone, even without papers, even without any resources.

Last night I met the couple.  I have put off moving a lot of stuff from the cottage back to the house, but we're expecting my sister-in-law to move in this week-end.  She's bringing stuff of her own.  So when my neighborhood friend wrote to the group asking if we had odd jobs for the couple to do, I immediately thought about hiring them to help with the moving of the boxes. 

When I got that e-mail on Tuesday, I felt this odd sense of relief.  I've been beating myself up for not getting the cottage ready, and by Tuesday, it was clear I wasn't going to make it.  I had decided that I would get the sheets and towels clean and clean the bathroom.

With their help last night, the cottage is much closer to being ready than it was this time yesterday.  Hurrah!

We also had a chance to talk to them.  Their story of the storm is truly scary--they talked about being able to hear the nails of the roof being sucked away by the winds, for example.  But they also had determination to put their lives back together again.

One might argue, what choice do they have?  But we know that lots of people don't survive this kind of trauma, especially in the face of such overwhelming loss.

When I sat down this morning, what I really thought I'd write about was my friend who saw the stories and reached out to do more than most of us will do.  She's not one of my church friends, but she has a stronger moral core about some issues than many of us do.  I've been interested my whole life in an essential question:  can we be good people without going to church?

That's not really the question.  Of course we can.  The real issue that intrigues me is a larger one:  how do we decide to be faithful to our positive moral foundations and what makes us fall away?

I have said before that if we can find a wholesome church community, then we'll have more support in our quest to stay faithful than we might otherwise--and that's especially true if we live during times when the larger culture doesn't agree with our positive moral foundations.

I have been distressed about many of the decisions of the Trump administration, but the idea that we would deny Bahamians temporary protected status baffles me.  I suppose the couple I met last night might be lying about their losses, but it seems like an extreme way to swindle people.  They have no desire to stay here forever, but they need to earn some cash so that they can return with a generator and a well to rebuild from nothing.  They can't stay on the island--there's very little in the way of shelter, and the infrastructure (electricity, clean water, roads) is gone. 

I tend to be more sympathetic to refugees of all sorts than this current administration.  We've got a huge country and lots of resources.  I also understand those who worry about the long term consequences of opening our borders to everyone.  But sheltering people who are suffering a certified humanitarian crisis--who could argue with that?

Sadly, our president can argue/tweet/bluster.  And people of faith and conscience will do what we've always done in the face of a culture of callousness--we will open our homes, share our resources, pray for the larger world, and maintain hope for a better future.