Category Archives: migration

This Kingdom Called Home 

Madge Saunders (1913-2009) is one of my heroes. So it was an emotional moment to see the exhibit about her that I had lent to the Great Exhibition of the North at the Hancock Museum in Newcastle this evening.
Madge was a pioneer: minister, missionary, intercultural advisor, anti-racism activist. She came from Jamaica in 1965 to serve those she called her Sheffield people. She was based at St James Presbyterian Church in Burngreave where she is still affectionately remembered. It was good to see her placed alongside other great women of the North. She shares a space in the exhibition with
Emily Davison, suffragette;
Jessie Reid Crosbie, writer, teacher, educational reformer;
Barbara Castle, MP;
Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst, suffragette;
Barbara Hepworth, artist.
Many others can be discovered in otherparts of the exhibition.
I look forward to bringing students from Silcoates school here later in the summer, to discover the rich tapestry of life, ideas and culture of the North and to dream dreams for their own future. It’s an amazing multi-layered exhibition and it’s wonderful to know that Madge is celebrated here as she so greatly deserves. She has indeed come home to the North.

Janet Lees, 21.06.2018
I was minister at St James Sheffield 20 years ago, and met Madge Saunders in Jamaica in 2002.

Inner Farne

St Cuthbert died on Inner Farne and there is a small chapel dedicated to him amongst the seasonal migrating seabirds:

Strong stomached were the saints
Who to Inner Farne for solitude came.
Annually their congregations would increase
With raucous crowds of visiting terns.
Today the pilgrims brave the seas,
Salute the seals, gasp at the maid’s brave route,
And gently tread their way to the chapel door.
Mindful of the egg strewn path,
Where Cuthbert still cradles Oswald’s head.
On the rim of the font in the yard,
An artic tern, an epic voyager,
catches my eye before soaring skywards.
Try it, you might like it, it seems to cry.

In our life and our believing
The love of God

Inner Farne 23.05.2018

My ancestor was a wandering Iraqi

Now seeC3RkpTxWIAAYRGdms a good time to affirm this. My first weekend retreat with @LCStBen to study the family ties we have to that ancient wandering Iraqi, coincided with a ill judged move to exclude certain people from a country largely made up from the descendants of both ancient and modern wandering people. A move that seemed to have been orchestrated by the ignorant and bigoted. Or else why did they not know themselves as descendants of that Ancient and faithful Iraqi.
Of course he’s not my most recent ancestor. The ones I remember best are the fish sellers of North East London. The one lot with the fish barrow selling in the streets to poor, often immigrant households. My grandmother a good neighbour to those of different races and faiths, turning on the lights on the Sabbath. The other lot, the fish shop owners with open hearts and table, generous to growing families.
But if these were the ones I had grown up knowing, they’re just the latest in a long line stretching back centuries, across continents to that wandering family from the middle east.
This weekend we revisited that ancient story and recalled the twists and turns of life over several generations and from a culture far removed from our own that has shaped our understanding of faith.
Abram and Sarai set out from Ur with flocks and herds and family members. Along the way they twist and turn to right and left, sometimes righteous, sometimes foolish. There are plenty of ‘leave it out Phil’ moments and dramatic music.
But there are also many highlights, points when half dead and essentially impotent, that wandering Iraqi is lifted up by God and receives new life. It’s all in the ‘h’. With added ‘h’, breath and life are added and these two ancestors are reborn as Abraham and Sarah.
The story’s not yet over. We all need new life after all.

In our life and our believing
The love of God

Cartoon shows Lot and his family approaching Zoar, a small place according to Genesis 19

Mary’s story

Over twenty years ago a friend of mine, called Mary was detained by Border Control Officers. This is her story as I remember it.

Mary was my friend, a black woman I understood to have been born in Britain some twenty-five years previously; she worked in the local social security office. We went to the same church and sang together in the choir. I had known her about two years when she and a fellow member decided to marry. She asked me if she could borrow my wedding dress (I’d got married about 6 months previously) as she didn’t have a dress. That was fine: it fitted her, we were the same size.

About a week after the wedding, she was detained at work and taken to a detention centre near us. We visited her regularly and her husband often stayed with us too. A different story emerged that Mary was from Tanzania and in the UK illegally according to the Border Agency.

During a visit to see Mary one afternoon, she told me that she had indeed been born in Tanzania and grown up there. In fact she had a daughter who lived there with her parents. She had come to UK via Germany, first as a student and had then overstayed after her visa expired. She had made up the story of begin born in Britain. She was crying and apologising for not telling me the truth.

She was deported back to Tanzania. Before she left UK I gave her some money and bought her a new pair of shoes as she asked me. Mary was the first friend I had who this happened to. Although it happened 20 years ago, it’s still happening now to more people like Mary.

I was not angry with Mary. I was angry that the situation we were both in had her as a migrant and me as not a migrant. Mary was my friend and she had worn my wedding dress. This is the time to think of Mary’s story, that the poor be lifted up and for us to show mercy.

In our coming and our going

The peace of God