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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