DISPLACEMENT

 


DISPLACEMENT

 

The word 'displaced' brings to mind lines of refugees, fleeing war, famine, or persecution. There are plenty of examples in our present world, those whose homes and livelihoods have been destroyed in an armed conflict, others driven out through ethnic cleansing, and those who are  fleeing poverty, risking all for their future and that of their families. And now we can add those displaced through climatic catastrophes, through fire or flood or rising sea levels. These have lost absolutely everything and have been displaced  through no fault of their own. As for going on holiday -

 

Sometimes people choose to displace themselves, longing for it, with the cosy reassurance that their homes and families, their familiar lives will still be there when they get back. But international travel has been forbidden for so long -  and this is hard for some to bear. Holidays have become a requirement of our lives. We long for 'a break'. We want to go somewhere different, not to lose ourselves but to find ourselves. And to do that we displace – a matter of choice. The word 'holiday' comes from 'holy day', a religious day, festival or celebration, a day when we re-source ourselves, tuning in to the cosmos, to nature, to God. And in past times countless numbers of people chose to absent themselves from all that they knew, leaving everything to go on pilgrimage, sometimes for as long as a year or more, sometimes just for a weekend. The idea was that we should stop identifying with our familiar material lives, so that we are free to tune in to God.

 

But today, we are all displaced. We haven't had to flee fire, flood or bombs and guns. We haven't had to leave our home or immediate others, partners, pets etc. (rather we have had them inflicted on us). But all the same, the carpet has been pulled out from beneath our feet, displacing us from the world we used to know, from our touchstones, from what we took as our old familiar reality. A virus has forced us to isolate, cutting us off from real contact with others, obliging us to live via a screen. Jobs have disappeared or changed, our town centres have emptied not just of people but of shops, leaving a void at the heart of our commercial and social setting. And if we do go out, masks have covered our identity, confusing our reading of the other. The familiar world is still there, and yet not there. We have been displaced to an alien planet and nothing will ever be the same again. Our inner resources are being severely tested.

 

So, why do we not use the opportunity to tune in to the cosmos, to God ? Why do we not draw our strength from spiritual sources ? We have forgotten how. The one food that can re-source us when there is nothing else has become unfamiliar. We need help. But all we get from our TV sets is distraction, which we watch gladly, anything to block out this unfamiliar period of our life and the one path that will lead us through it. No wonder we are depressed and alienated. Jesus said, 'Feed my sheep,' but many are starving while their shepherds cannot reach them. Those of us who pray, let’s pray that we all see displacement as an opportunity to mine new resources and reconnect. 

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