itellyouarise

This image is likely a familiar one, it was my Facebook homepage banner for more than a year.   This symbolic little house is actually made up of  something I dumpster-dived. I think it’s meant to be the tip-top piece of a garden climbing frame to train plants over and it’s wound all around with stray bits of remnant wool from the Footscray Salvos Winter Warmth crafternoon projects.

This little prayer receptacle came about initially because housing conversations are always ones of potential and possibility, fears and hopes, needs and dreams – my own and those of others. It’s hard to hold “space” for all those conversations in your head and your heart, especially over time.  It occurred to me that a gift of faith is having the comfort (and discomfort) of verses such as this in Philippians 4:6-7 “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.  Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds…” I’m not always that good at praying regularly but the prospect of somewhere to ‘hold’ all that felt too much to ‘hold’ was a powerful one and a visible manifestation in the world of putting down what I carried was a very helpful, and healthy, for my less visible inner world.

Over the last year, this little house has been a receptacle  and companion for prayers public and private, communal and individual, at home and away, morning and night… prayers over grace, dinner, stories, stones, and tears…

It has borne witness to the ending of the community house at Droop St and the journey of finding home for Hawo and Omar and their children Falis, Istanbul, Yehye, Hibo, Dihabo and also for ourselves: Maria and Eddy, Bron and myself relocating within Footscray to a five bedroom house and soon joined by Tekitah.

The latter of us were in our new place for perhaps 3 months before we discovered (through a planning permit notice getting hammered up in our front yard) that we would need to move again and, just like that, a shadow was cast over our sense of security and place. How do you develop attachment in a place you will not stay? How do you put down roots? All those conversations and yes – prayer… about people, place, priorities… community and commitments, calling and capacity…

We know a golden moment of deep-abiding joy when Maria gets news of residency.  She will not need now to fear being separated from her son or leaving their life here.  But there had been a kind of equilibrium to the status quo that was removed with the “asylum seeker” status and somehow, in short order, you become ineligible for many of the support systems you have solely relied on for the duration of that long road home.  After filling in the same identical form fortnightly and monthly over so many years there are now new ones – Centrelink, ID, healthcare/concession cards, housing applications, job applications…

The most recent move sees Tekitah, Maria, Eddy and I in a cosy 3-bedroom on a busy Footscray road.  I unpacked the little house along with everything else and it has sat waiting for its moment… I had some idea of “unpacking” the desperate wisps and slips of papery prayer into the layers of our new compost bin. Turning crap to good purpose is good theology.  How can what’ we experience, for better or for worse, serve us going forward in material and immaterial ways… in substantive and transubstantiated ways?  I wanted to mark the end of the season that has been. Honoring it but saying clearly:
We are done. We are home.

Some how I didn’t get around to it yet, though I can’t say I knew…

This week Centrelink have cancelled Maria’s benefit and the vagaries of the hospitality industry see Tekitah looking for a new gig.  We are given to know that our understanding  of home and security remains a fragile one (and there are more forms to fill in).

So, our journey is not over yet.  We know that the communities that work are communities of necessity and we need each other.  We’re going to keep praying and telling stories and reflecting on what home is – personally and politically speaking –  a bit of sacred and ordinary radical hospitality.  Please know that you are welcome to join us here if you want to travel alongside.