EVERYBODY'S CHALLENGE - Jesuit Refugee Service | USA

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William Yeomans SJ Waiting in joyful hope Extracts from ‘The <strong>Refugee</strong> Experience’, The Way supplement, no. 64, spring 1989. Fr Yeomans worked with JRS Asia Pacific. He died on 8 January 1989, a few months after the article was sent from Thailand. Generalisations are always dangerous (a good generalisation!) and when they are used about refugees, they are positively harmful. An indication of this is the simple fact that each refugee camp has its unique spirit, its own feel. It is vital that those who work with refugees become sensitive to this. That takes time. I go to work with the refugees not as one who is bringing something to them, but as one who has first of all to learn what I should bring. In initial emergency situations it is clear that food, shelter, medical attention are major needs and must be met as soon as possible. That would seem obvious and simple. It is not. People who are starving, homeless, friendless so easily lose the sense of their human dignity. It is not enough to give them what they need. I must give in such a way that my giving restores their self-worth, their human dignity. In such a way that their hope and trust in humankind are re-kindled. This gives a whole new understanding of why Jesus insists so vehemently in word and gesture that he is a slave to all. Even as a teacher he is a slave. He gives as if he were receiving. Working with refugees, I realise more and more that unless I give myself it would be better that I gave nothing. There is a world of difference between self-indulgent pity which makes me feel good and the compassion of Christ which makes me realise that I am an unworthy slave. I am only doing what I ought to do. One of the worst crimes I could commit against refugees is to expect them to be grateful… When refugees first became news, there was a great worldwide surge of emotion, pity, outrage, indignation. This gave rise to a flood of aid in material and personnel. At present, the current phase is compassion burn-out applied to individuals and organisations. The refugee phenomenon is no longer dramatic... The refugees have become a nuisance to governments of some host countries. They are 82
a ‘problem’ for which there is no foreseeable solution... In addition many do not qualify for acceptance in a third country. What is going to happen to them? A prolonged stay in a refugee camp is literally soul-destroying... The humdrum of routine is a crossroads. One road could lead to another camp which often is merely an exchange of routine. Another road leads, all too easily, to a rationalised discouragement in one form or another. The apathy and lethargy, even loss of hope, so many long-term refugees’ experience, can seep insidiously into the spirit of the refugee worker. We work without joy which is worse than not working at all. A third road invites us to go beyond the slough of despond, to go into and through to a renewed and refined and more realistic hope. It is the road that leads to the realisation that the best possible service we can give the refugees is to be with them, to stick it out with them, to hope against hope with them. This road leads to a whole new dimension where material aid, teaching and so on, are justly revitalised and lived spiritual values find their true place. What do you do for the refugees? You share pain and sorrow, you hope joyfully, you believe in them, even the thieves, thugs and liars, you love them. The rest is incidental... As I said earlier I cannot enter fully into the minds and hearts of the refugees I serve. But I can and do, I hope, learn from them. Each camp is unique. And in each camp you find the sublimest of human values and the vilest of inhumanity. Kindness and cruelty grow together and we who try to serve the refugees must learn to wait in joyful hope for the harvest. William Yeomans SJ 83
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EVERYBODY’S CHALLENGE Essential D
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Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) is an
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Mark Raper SJ/JRS Liberia 2000 JRS
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in this service. As one JRS group r
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Mario Almeida SJ/JRS Albania 1999 T
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20 years of JRS Letter sent by Fr G
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I wish all the courage and strength
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new 3 , the 33rd General Congregati
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esponsibility. The 34th General Con
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5. JRS gives priority to accompanim
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c. A written understanding or a par
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lies with the Provincial or Confere
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JRS communications to the Province,
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Michael Campbell-Johnston SJ in El
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The Society of Jesus and the refuge
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It is not intended that the JRS bec
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Page 36 and 37: Now it is time to consider the kind
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Page 42 and 43: What Don Pedro had in mind when he
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Page 48 and 49: Review of the Jesuit Refugee Servic
Page 50 and 51: vegetables and firewood. At night t
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Ban Vinai William Yeomans SJ Ban Vi
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