Spiritual Refugees

America is an extraordinary country. Prior to the Asians who came to the Western hemisphere millennia ago were peoples from what is now Africa. The Africans were members of the original human diaspora. They sought new lives for themselves and their descendants, as did the Asians and their descendants whom we call Native Americans. Like Europeans who came later, both groups were explorers.

All of them were searching for new lands. Many — not just the Europeans whose history we know best — were escaping social, political and economic hardships. The Puritans were hardly the first to land in the Americas to escape religious and political persecution. All of the groups brought their experiences at being persecuted with them. In due time, all of them persecuted others.

It is not a tradition one should want to repeat.

Think about different sorts of refugees you have met in your lifetime. Like me, you may have known some Russians who escaped Lenin when their freedoms, lands and wealth were taken away. Other Russians I met were peasants who escaped with little more than the clothes on their backs. I have known women and men from all over Europe who escaped middle twentieth century fascism. Their relatives were not always so blessed. Likewise, there were Europeans who came in more recent decades. I have met people who are in the United States from all over Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Each has their own story to tell.

Some came to study. Of those, many stayed to work and live while others returned to their homelands. Some stayed less willingly than others. Conditions had changed in their native lands. It became unsafe for them to return. They changed. Governments changed.

Life changed.

We readily acknowledge the outward, apparent reasons someone might leave their country to settle in another. How often do we look at the more subtle reasons?

Indeed, how often do we observe the men and women we know who have lived in the same town, sometimes in the same house, all of their lives? Do we even think about whether or not they may be refugees?

They might be refugees of a different sort.

Unexpected. Quiet. Living simply. Without ostentation or complaint. Giving no explanation for the beliefs and ideas they hold close.

For their interior lives.

There are many people in this world of great spiritual depth. To varying extents, they appreciate the prevailing spiritual and religious beliefs where they live. Looking at them, it is impossible to see any difference between them and the world around them.

No one wears a large scarlet S on their chest.

Yet, their personal beliefs go beyond the societal norm. Their beliefs go deep to the center of their existence. They have their work lives. They have public lives.

Beneath all of that lies a deeper reality. Their quietly lived spiritual life is their real life. They are refugees from a world that lives entirely on the surface. They see glimmers of God everywhere in their lives, however easy or difficult.

The unfathomable Voice of spiritual creativity lives deeply, profoundly within them.

Some of them are refugees from another part of the world. Some of them stayed where they have always been. All of them have sought after a Dream that cannot be caught. They have done this all of their lives. They can see their Dream. Feel it. Hear its whispers.

The Dream is never tamed.

Never caged and put on exhibit.

Not long ago I heard someone say that you can’t sledgehammer open a flower. If you could take a sledgehammer to spirituality and beat it into submission, it was never real.

For all of the times one might be told to get in line, to be and act like the rest of society, it can’t always be. That is a false notion held by the one who speaks. The truth is something untouchable, yet always touching our souls.

If we are gutsy enough to stop trying to beat our lives into submission, we blossom.

At the moment we dare to look inside our spiritual closet, we stop being refugees. Acknowledging the unacknowledged opens our eyes.

We stop running from reality.

We turn to our interior lives.

To find out that we are at home, wherever we may be physically.