Home Office Vigil - From a women's perspective

Photo by Malavika Pradeep on Unsplash

Once again, a vigil was held at the Home Office today, 17 March 2025, to commemorate the thousands of refugees who have died, trying to reach a place of safety in Europe.

Barbara Kentish writes:

We heard today from a brother who simply asks the international community for a humanitarian system, a recognition that ordinary people are destroyed in the current world order. And we heard from the gospel reading Jesus's simple message - Be compassionate, as your heavenly Father is compassionate. Give and it will be given back to you.

How do we keep on being compassionate, calling for compassion, giving compassion in this broken world? I want to share an experience I had recently which struck a chord, and showed me one or two ways we manage to keep on feeling and showing this compassion.

A week ago we celebrated International Women's Day, and I was asked to talk about our Home Office Vigil from a women's perspective, which I found difficult, as the people we commemorate are women and men, probably more of the latter. And the people who come to pray are women and men. Reading through the months of stories for inspiration, however, I did come across stories such as this one that we read a few months ago, which seems very immediate, because it is one woman, and she is named, as is her child:

A mother and baby from Senegal, both called Touré, died on a boat adrift for over a week in the Mediterranean. A bag containing the baby's food fell into the sea, and he starved to death. His mother died from exhaustion and grief. Their bodies were thrown into the sea. What an agony for that mother.

There seem to be more women recorded amongst the deaths of those travelling from Senegal via the Canary islands. Maybe this is a recent trend. Women travelling are nearly always more vulnerable than the men. Such desperation, to make them take to the boats. But to think of one example, one woman, one baby, brings home an immediacy that numbers can blunt. A name, a person.

In my Women's day celebrations I met women involved in craft work, whether art, knitting or weaving. This resonated with me, as I love making things: I do lots of crochet work, making jumpers or cardigans. Creative work really restores the soul in some way, even though most of the finished products will never see any art galleries. It's our need to contribute something to the world, to celebrate the beauty around us. How do we create beauty in this broken asylum system, where so many lives are ground down or simply damaged? We create together, we cook together, we sing together. We make beauty. And that is where God gives back, a hundredfold, pressed down and running over. I am going to read a poem by a Lutheran minister that was read at my gathering on International Women's Day. It's called ……

To Weavers Everywhere

God sits weeping
The beautiful creation tapestry
She wove with such joy
Is mutilated, torn into shreds,
Reduced to rags,
Its beauty fragmented by force.

God sits weeping.
But look!
She is gathering up the shreds
To weave something new.

She gathers
The rags of hard work
Attempts at advocacy,
Initiatives for peace,
Protests against injustice,
All the seemingly little and weak
Words and deeds offered
Sacrificially
In hope, in faith, in love.

And look!
She is weaving them all
With golden threads of Jubilation
Into a new tapestry,
A creation richer, more beautiful
Than the old one was!

God sits weaving
Patiently, persistently,
With a smile that
Radiates like a rainbow
On her tear-streaked face.

And She invites us
Not on1y to keep offering her the
Shreds and rags of our suffering
And our work,

But even more -
To take our place beside Her
At the Jubilee Loom,
And weave with her
The tapestry of the New Creation.

Marchiena Rienstra (Presbyterian minister and poet).