With the refugees I think about a time a little less than four years ago, when my daughter Olivia and I arrived in a little Spanish town called Las Cabezas de San Juan, a three day walk from Seville. We unloaded our backpacks on a bench in the Plaza Mártires del Pueblo near the church just as it got dark. It was a church evening-- maybe a Saturday-- and several well dressed locals gathered nearby to chat before going to Mass.
"Maybe someone from the church will take us in tonight," I said to Olivia. "If not, we'll sleep on benches the way we did in Dos Hermanas."
"Okay, Dad," she said.
An internet café was located at the other end of the plaza, and after we ate a little bread and cheese I walked over to it to get online and communicate with the world. By the time I had returned to our bench, Mass was over and people filed out of the church. I made sure the sign I carried on my back was visible. 'Peace pilgrimage to Egypt,' it said in Spanish.
"Okay," I said. "Let's see what happens."
But nothing happened. No one even paused to read the sign. No one looked at us. We were invisible.
"Christians!" I said. "Okay Ollie, your turn to use the internet."
"Okay, Dad," she said, and she headed to the internet café.
I watched as the evening Mass participants chatted together and then went home for the evening. It wasn't going to rain, so it wouldn't be so bad sleeping on benches in the plaza.
Before long I noticed a man standing nearby, watching me. He looked rougher than I did, though I'd been a month on the road.
"It's cold," he said.
"Not so bad," I said.
"No, it's cold," he said. "I know how it feels. You need a place to stay tonight."
And he walked away.
I sat on my bench and watched as the plaza thinned out and people went home for the evening. Olivia and I wouldn't sleep until the plaza was nearly empty, which meant staying up late as there were always some people around.
I noticed the rough looking man who had spoken to me passing by, and then passing by again. He seemed agitated. Finally, he stopped in front of me.
"I have a house where you can sleep to stay warm," he said.
I paused to consider this offer. He looked like an addict, or an alcoholic. He looked like someone we might try to avoid. But the people coming out of the church had thought the same of Olivia and me. They had thought we were people to avoid-- people who were dangerous or unpleasant-- and they had made us invisible. I wasn't going to be like them. If this man had the courage to offer his home to us, I would have the courage to accept.
"Okay," I said. "Thanks. But it isn't just me. I am with somebody else."
"That's fine," he said. "You are both welcome."
"In about half an hour my daughter will return and we can go to your house then," I said.
So with the refugees now I think about this man, Francisco, who had once been homeless himself and though he had nothing to feed us with he took us in to his house for the night. I think about all the good citizens of that Andalucian town, well-dressed church-goers who listened to a homily, maybe about helping out the stranger, and then ignored the strangers just outside their church. I think that they must have been good people, but people who were afraid. They probably put money into the poor box that night, for the church to distribute, but the idea of contact with people in need may have terrified them, and the difference between Francisco, the outcast who helped us, and the church-goers, the good citizens who ignored us, was that Francisco had not only compassion but courage, and the church-goers were afraid.
Before Olivia and I had begun this walk, which began four years ago and ended two years ago in Egypt, she'd asked me about my pacifism.
"What about World War Two?" she had asked. "How could pacifism have stopped the Nazis?"
I'd thought about that before and I didn't know how it could have stopped the Nazis and I had decided then that pacifism wasn't about defeating Nazis in that way.
"I hope I would have had the courage to take in Jewish refugees," I had said. "That's how I would have contributed to defeating the Nazis."
And with this current refugee crisis I think about those who took in Jewish refugees in Europe and risked their own lives and their family's lives by doing so, and how looking back through the safety of time we all believe these people who hid Jewish refugees in their attics were heroes, and we all believe we would have done the same.
Yet so many of us believe that by taking in Syrian refugees, we are acting naively. So many of us believe we must protect ourselves at all costs, like people in a half-full lifeboat kicking away those who are still in the water for fear they will swamp the boat. But I believe that some 30 or 40 years in the future, when the grandchildren of refugees are playing with our grandchildren, history will look on those who helped the refugees as those who stood up against fear, and history will view the xenophobia of the times as something disgraceful.
As I write this, local police have made several arrests in Alsdorf, a town just 10 kilometers from where I live. Those arrested are suspected of being involved in the recent attacks in Paris. Three kilometers in the other direction, in the village of Bourheim, I have recently made friends with a family of Syrian refugees. I can focus on Alsdorf and what's happening there and see every local Muslim as a potential terrorist, or I can focus on the family in Bourheim, asking myself what I can do to help them. The choice is either fear or compassion. For me it's an easy decision.
