Sanctuary

I’m sitting on a cane chair in the sun porch off my parents’ bedroom, telling my dying mother that I’m pregnant with her second grandchild. I’ve just got off the bus from the university and I’m feeling a bit shaky because the poor university GP didn’t know how to approach telling me that the pregnancy test result was positive – an occupational hazard in a clinic that serves students. I’d reassured her “we’re TRYING to get pregnant,” but the experience had been less celebratory than I’d hoped, clouded by the knowledge of my mother’s terminal diagnosis.

She’s lying on the daybed, hasn’t started the chemo that tried to extend her life a few months yet. She looks well, like herself, and the fact of her dying-ness is hard to reconcile with the spring sunshine and the reflection from the water of the lake out the window. She’s happy. “Darling, you’re so lucky. You’ll get to understand how much love can expand. You can’t fathom right now how it is possible to love another child as much as you love Bella, but you will. That’s the miracle.”

It is this idea of expansion - of infinite capacity for growth - that I think of when I think about love, and love’s companion abstract nouns – compassion, generosity, kindness, hospitality, even, and you must excuse the intrusion of language from another time, another place, charity.

All the old stories have it so. The feast that replenishes itself for the hungry; the traveller who shares their meagre food with the stranger on the road; room made for the outsider; sanctuary offered to the unknown. All our traditions have this story, of entertaining angels unawares. Our new stories riff on these tropes – we ‘pay it forward’, have Random Acts of Kindness Day, give the parking ticket with time still on it to the stranger in the street.

We know, deep inside our humanness, that my mother’s words are true. Love expands to fit the people we need to love, hospitality takes on as many hungry people as arrive at the marae for the tangi, generosity rewards the giver just as much as the receiver. This understanding of the immeasurable capacity to be human gets called many things – some call it God, some call it spirituality, some call it goodness, others don’t worry about names, they just get on with listening to it.

Right now, 59.5 million people are displaced, homeless, worldwide – victims of war, of genocide, of ethnic cleansing, of climate change impacts, of despots and non-functioning governments. In 2015, at least 2500 have died in Europe’s seas, on Europe’s beaches, trying to reach sanctuary.

Our hospitality – our manaakitanga – can expand to take more of these desperate people. We know that’s how it works. We can put another potato or two in the pot, some mattresses on the floor, dig out the out-sized children’s clothes, and share what we have. We know we can do this, and we know why. Because we have an infinite capacity for love, compassion, kindness, hospitality, generosity, goodness. We know how this works – Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. How? Because we make sure of it