When In Rome: A Tale of Food and Migration
Last week I visited Italy for the first time, mostly in Rome and one amazing day in Florence. It was a work trip with four colleagues from Baylor representing the Texas Hunger Initiative, Spirituality & Public Life and Baylor Missions. We had gone there to explore partnerships for future mission projects.
While I was there, I did as the Romans…no, I did as a tourist. I walked—A LOT, I took pictures of ruins—ALL THE RUINS, I bought leather products, and ate way too much gelato. The only thing I didn’t do was take up smoking, which I contemplated in order to eat more gelato.
Why Italy? Our prime focus was to talk with agencies that work in the areas of food security (aid, programs, sustainable agriculture) and migration (direct service, job training, education). Rome is the seat for global food programs and it is also a first location for many refugees and immigrants coming from Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. As a matter of fact, while we were there the news flashed about a boat of refugees in the Mediterranean that Italian government would not permit to come ashore.
Over a span of five days, meeting with nine organizations, what emerged was a strong link between migration and food insecurity. I had not quite expected this, but it made sense. People don’t flee their communities because things are okay. People flee what they know and take a step into the unknown out of sheer desperation.
While our team was busy exploring possibilities, building relationships with key leaders and dreaming of ways to engage our students, we learned of a crisis back home—Texas. While I was sympathetically listening to the plight of the hungry and homeless across the pond, families that had fled to the US, out of desperation, were being separated in my own backyard.
How? Why? We are America—land of the free and home of the brave. But what I see these days does not look like the America I know and love. Not the America who received my ancestors from Ireland when they fled a famine. I see fear and hatred--not everywhere, but in places with enough power to make swift and inhumane decisions.
As I’ve continued to reflect on what is happening around me and how I can/should respond, I keep thinking about my mother. Today, had she lived, she would be 85…on this very day, June 29.
Mama was the most courageous woman I’ve ever met. I’m sure I didn’t think of her that way during my teens, 20’s or 30’s. It wasn’t until I began to look in the rearview mirror of my younger years that I saw her through adult lenses. And now, 14 years after her passing I see things so much more clearly.
She married at 15, had my oldest brother at 17, followed by brother #2 and 3 over the next 8 years and finished up with me at age 31. There’s no doubt in my mind that my mother loved being a mother. She did it well. But during her childbearing and raising years she also had to endure the physical consequences of being married to an abusive alcoholic.
I was around 3-years old when Mama decided it was time to leave her “familiar” in order to protect herself and her children. It was the late 60’s in the Deep South and it was rare for a stay-at-home mother of four to leave her middle class home and only source of income and file for divorce, but she did. If she was here today and I asked how she had the courage to leave, I think she would flash her sweet smile and say, “Oh Pumpkin, I wasn’t brave. I was afraid your oldest brother would do something out of anger and be imprisoned for protecting me, you and your brothers.” Desperation.
I saw Mama cry for herself and us only a handful of times. But behind those tears were the eyes of a woman with grit, determination and perseverance. She was very courageous. When I see photos of immigrants and refugees fleeing their “familiar” to parts unknown, behind their tears I see mothers and fathers with that same grit, determination and perseverance to seek protection and a better life for their children and themselves. The flee because they don’t want their children in gangs or enslaved in sex trafficking. They flee because they are hungry. They flee because they are afraid. Desperation.
Whatever we call this current state of affairs—humanitarian crisis, refugee crisis, migration, loss of morality, let us be reminded that there is an opportunity to follow Jesus’ command to love God and love neighbor as ourselves. I have to ask myself, “If it were me…if I had taken the same path as my mother, for example, what decision would I make out of desperation? Who would help me? Who would love me?” Because that’s what Jesus is saying, right? Love your neighbor as yourself. How can I best love my neighbor on the border of Texas and across the Atlantic? How can you?
Until we can answer that question…Lord have mercy; Christ have mercy.