The room full of religious leaders had a sombre look. An old man with a gray beard and compassion of Jesus in his eyes was speaking. He cried as he talked about our unfortunate brethren, children of our same God were finding themselves in Australia. Their homes had been bombed out, lively hoods ruined, education interrupted, they were crying for help. We should embrace them. We must support them. We should go and talk to them, make them feel welcome …. on and on goes on the old man.
Other religious leaders,
a Buddhist Nun, a Bahai cleric, a Hindu priest and Catholics, all nod their hands lest they are left behind in this chase for showing the best of their compassion. We must help them. One of them talks at length about a kitchen for homeless that his organization has been asked to run when God directly spoke to him, another thumps the table to prove how his rallies and lobbying has made a difference to these poor beings.
We must save the refugees who have already poured into our country, I nod my head in agreement. But is that all we can do, we must do much more, we can do much more, we can do something for our nation also. The crowd heads swivel towards me, some anticipating anger and others feeling like a player who is just about been defeated by an opponent.
We must narrate their stories, we must not hide them, we should take them to our schools and let them impart the graphic details of their misfortunes to our young impressionable minds. Let our children learn the importance of tolerance, especially religious tolerance, let our children learn about the value of law and order, let them learn the value of democracy from their stories. Let our children understand what can happen to a society that insists on no way but my way of faith, what can happen to institutes when democracy is stifled, what happens to its citizens when law sides with one side or the other.
There can’t be better teachers than these refugees to imbibe in us and in our children the far-reaching importance of a group of religious leaders sitting together around a table and expressing harmony, which is what this group was trying to do.