Feeling Seen

I Stand Here Ironing – Tillie Olsen

‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’ – John Keats, ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’

They will welcome refugees

And ask, Who is my neighbour?

Beauty is truth, truth beauty

I stand here admiring

The greatest affront to them

a handsome Arab father

laughing   cooking food to share

abundantly   a citizen

of cities that are legend

and living stone   his children

planting roses   promises

Beauty is truth, truth beauty

I stand here admiring

They will welcome refugees

And ask, Who is my neighbour?

Your place is to have no place

Your face is an enclosure

opened by greater powers

You hold out an empty plate

Petitioner   the natural

condition for you   loser

They want to feel compassion

They will welcome refugees

And ask, Who is my neighbour?

Beauty is truth, truth beauty

I stand here admiring

The children look like children

in family photographs

of my family   could be

children of my family

this should not make a difference

but it does   oh   subtle   fall

all dead   are equally real

Author bio: Anthony V. Capildeo OPL is a Trinidadian Scottish writer of poetry and non-fiction. Recent work includes Polkadot Wounds (Carcanet, 2024), and an essay series on touch and mourning. They are Writer in Residence at the University of York.

Politicians must rule in favour of God’s will for planet Earth

Researchers have concluded that industrial and agricultural emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and other GHGs threaten to change the climate rapidly over the next 100 years and beyond. This may have dramatic consequences for both people and the environment. Much uncertainty remains, but the message is clear: climate change poses a risk to future generations, and this risk needs to be taken seriously. While the first steps to combat climate change have been taken, the most difficult decisions still lie ahead. It is not just governments that must act: progress will only be made if there is widespread support from all sectors of society, including local authorities, NGOs, relevant industries, communities, and individuals. For policy-makers it means incorporating climate change considerations into their day-to-day and long-term decisions. For corporate executives, it means including the potential costs of both climate change and actions to minimise them in their business and investment calculations. For individual citizens, it means favouring climate-friendly products and services and adopting climate-friendly habits and lifestyles.

Indeed, climate change exists here and now - there is mounting evidence that it may already be responding to humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, the issue of climate change is a reality for today’s world.

The international community must act, and we must reconstruct a reverence for God’s creation that allows us to have the strength and courage to do everything we can to respond to climate change. The international community has made some momentum on climate change, yet it must do more. The issue was addressed in the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Since the Convention entered into force in 1994, governments have been quantifying their national greenhouse gas emissions and developing strategies for dealing with climate change. Tougher emissions – control targets, more rigorous national policies, and intensified international co-operation have been high on the agenda, especially since the Kyoto conference in December 1997 and the subsequent debates. Governments adopted the Convention in response to the dramatic progress scientists have made in understanding how the Earth’s atmosphere system works. So while there has been some progress, it is a shame that Trump has taken the USA out of the Paris Accord, a revolutionary agreement. Clearly, certain politicians – even those who claim to be Christians – are not understanding the threat of climate change for what it is.

A religious perspective, then, might give policy-makers and politicians the incentive to act over the long-term to help resolve this critical issue. Genesis gives us two creation narratives – the first proclaiming, “and God called the Light Day” (Genesis 1:5) and the second stating, “Lord God made the earth and the heavens, and every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew” (Genesis 2:5.) These both tell the story of creation, but with a contrasting style. In God, creation has a depth of meaning that shows that man-made climate change can not be declared as the work of God. Just as the scorching east wind, like the Arabian sirocco, destroyed plants and grass, so God was understood to destroy human pride (see Psalm 103:15-18; Jeremiah 4:11). Just as a plant springs up, fresh and green, only to be withered before the blast of the hot desert wind, so human empires rise, only to fall before the face of God.

Examining the Bible helps us to realise, then, that man’s obsession with consumption is negatively affecting God’s creation. Namely, our effect on the environment has led to pollution and a slow destruction of the environment. This moral failing and the immoral activities of humans on earth seems to be separating man from God. The failings involve extraction of natural resources without regard for future generations, and turn our resources into merely something to barter and exchange. For example, pollution is contributing to complications with our natural health. In addition, unsafe production methods - full of human errors due to use of artificial systems – create a mode of consumption which is certainly not compatible with what God intended.

The dogmatic notion that God has ceded the earth to man, and therefore it is the right of man to plunder and abuse the resources without concern for God’s spiritual creations, can be interpreted as disobedience to God’s will and what he had intended for mankind. We must understand the grace of God and the interior help of the Holy Spirit must intercede and assist in our personal decisions as well as those of policy-makers, moving the heart and turning it to God as well as opening the eyes of the mind and giving us joy. Surely this will allow Christians to long for truth as well as an understanding of it. Through looking after God’s creation and realising how we have affected our natural environment, we will be able to reconstruct our relationship with God.

Empowering the Homeless

by Sarah Fuller

As a guest at the Giuseppe Conlon House, I find homelessness depressingly damaging. The population of refugees, asylum seekers with the right of an appeal, the homeless rural population and those not eligible for housing benefits seems to be missing from the official government figures and data used to determine the overall number of those who are really homeless.

When I found myself admitted into Giuseppe Conlon House, it was clear that, as a homeless person who is type 2 diabetic, it was not just a lack of decent housing that was the problem. There remained the responsibility of family, physical and mental wellbeing, relationship breakdown, immigration, leaving my family, and the bereavement that followed.

I was in the situation of not knowing what to do, who to turn to and how to deal with these serious stressors. My feelings of depression, unhappiness, and disappointment were so severe, I became a perpetual seeker of help. The question remained what kind of help.

The clinical depression I was going through contributed to low moods with difficulty sleeping, change in appetite, hopelessness, pessimism

, and even thoughts of suicide. The disorders and anxieties I have mentioned above are and have been a limiting factor for me in achieving my full potential. Being homeless, without a decent roof over my head, is a serious contributing matter in all this anxious neurosis.

My GP was helpful in one respect: how to feel less lonely. She explained to me that being unwanted is the worst disease that any human being can experience. And that loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important. She suggested I tackle my lonely lifestyle first. She suggested examples like having time for voluntary work: ever since she introduced me to Groundswell, a national charity that supports homeless people, I’ve tried to take more control of my life. I have greater influence on the services I use and aim to play a full role within the community.

I have tried most of the therapies and suggestions put forward by the surgery, such as massage and aromatherapy, attending a theology group, and therapeutic sessions for those who have been victims of persecution and domestic violence. Not to forget chess, puzzles, crosswords or scrabble that I enjoy playing as well. I tried all the above to deal with loneliness.

But I realised that loneliness doesn’t mean social isolation. This was the first lesson that I learnt. As I believe I’m generally a nice and kind person. This is based on the feedback I have received, from people of all walks of life with whom I’ve happened to interact. I have to admit it is not just easy or simple to get on with everyone. Not because I don’t want to get on with people but sometimes due to issues and things beyond my reasoning, I try to avoid fellows who invade my privacy that can cause despair. This is not to say intrusions are unwelcome. I like intrusions that are necessary for health.

It was through focusing on these activities, that I found empowerment and self awareness, and therefore the ability to treat my mental health issues and also address the serious barriers to finding a home.

Giuseppe Conlon House is for me an emergency solution. It has alleviated the problem of not knowing where to turn. Here, I’m no longer facing the diseases and symptoms that come with homelessness. For instance diarrhoea, which may pass as a minor inconvenience to the well-housed, can present a major hurdle for a homeless person.

There remains the task of uplifting my soul, establishing a hopeful future. And getting out of homelessness. At the moment my situation is: firstly continuing with what works for me, and secondly continuing at Giuseppe Conlon House. Both these require a process of adapting to changing environments, to growing up and ageing, to healing when damaged, to suffering. Lastly, tackling my homelessness embraces the future and so includes anguish and the inner resources needed to live with it. This aloneness is an aspect of the human condition, and out of it grows my creativity.