An extract from Kevin Rudd's 'Faith in Politics', October 2006:

"Another great challenge of our age is asylum seekers. The biblical injunction to care for the stranger in our midst is clear. The parable of the Good Samaritan is but one of many which deal with the matter of how we should respond to a vulnerable stranger in our midst. That is why the government's proposal to excise the Australian mainland from the entire Australian migration zone and to rely almost exclusively on the so-called Pacific Solution should be the cause of great ethical concern to all the Christian churches. “

And from last week’s London Tablet:

Lampedusa, a tiny Mediterranean island, welcomes thousands of tourists every year. But another few thousand each year risk their lives to reach the island. They set off on flimsy, often unseaworthy, craft, frequently paying traffickers thousands of pounds, and some die of thirst on the boat or drown in the high seas.

On Monday last week, Pope Francis chose Lampedusa as the destination of his first pastoral visit outside Rome. He cast a wreath of white and yellow flowers into the waters outside the main port, dignifying the discarded lives and drawing attention to their unmarked deaths.

Some of those who make it to the island are economic migrants seeking a better life; they may already have family in Europe and work lined up. Others are asylum seekers fleeing persecution in their home countries and seeking refugee status, which guarantees them – at least in theory, the protection of the international community.

The island’s immigrant reception centre, built for 850 people, by 2009 was found to be holding 2,000 people. According to Mario Marazziti, a founder member of the Sant’Egidio Community, the islanders are “an incredible example of humanity”, turning up with blankets, clothing and food when another boatload arrives in the middle of the night. “It’s like a regular earthquake,” he says.

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This week a somewhat entertaining, seemingly trivial legal dispute has hit the media. 

Toyota and Jetstar are tackling each other over the issue of  who owns the rights to the “star-jump”. 

You know the one, where the customer in the ad leaps for joy about the purchase of a car on the one hand, or the successful purchase of ultra cheap flight tickets on the other.

Reports are that Toyota has patented something like seventeen variations on the star jump.  

Jetstar are claiming rights over a  number of other versions.   It’s all to do with the leg action, whether the legs are straight of bent as the jump is performed!!

Meanwhile another boat capsizes off Christmas Island.  Riots continue in Cairo. 

People are flooding into Uganda from the Congo for fear of their lives.

A significant number of people in various aged care facilities across Australia are reported to be receiving appalling treatment. 

Hospital waiting lists are getting longer. 
Most mornings  the news features a shooting, bashing or stabbing in some part of Sydney.

Monsoon rains and floods have just killed hundreds in parts of India and Bangladesh.

Five-year-old girls are being sold off as promised brides in Pakistan as bargaining chips in tribal feuds, and some of us are spending money taking each other to the cleaners about who owns which version of the star jump! 

Is something a bit askew here?  Is our attention more easily distracted and entertained by a trivial star jump dispute while  the rest of the world shudders with the sounds of violence and corruption.

What’s that got to do with me? 

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Catholics in Syria are so fearful of losing their lives at any moment that they say farewell to each other at the end of every Mass, the Archbishop of Damascus has said, The Tablet reports.
              
Maronite Archbishop Samir Nassar told the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need that the country is locked in a "murderous stalemate" that is "stoking the fears of the faithful, who say goodbye to each other at the end of every Mass, so uncertain are they of a continuing future."

This little glimpse of human suffering in one troubled corner of our world, is a poignant reminder of the millions who live in fear all around the globe.

In Syria the fear is occasioned by ongoing political violence and the threat of religious persecution. There seems to be no end in sight and little to hope for. Fear of starvation marks the lives of countless others.

Fear of separation from loved ones is a constant for those living in places with governments who use fear as a means of holding on to power.

In our own lives, fear can colour the experience of every day if we allow it to do so. At least in our case, we have a choice in the matter, unlike the Catholics of Syria and others whose lives are bounded by a fear not of their own making.

Fear has its place of course and works well when we are in danger. It is present when we have experienced a past trauma and coming to terms with that fear can be the work of a lifetime.

It's possible however, for us to choose fear as our way of relating to the world and it is this choice that Jesus comes to remedy. We hear him so often telling us not to be afraid, to trust, to believe and to hope in God's Covenant with us all.

St Paul tells us that nothing at all can come between us and God's love now that Jesus has become the heart of our family, and that there is therefore nothing to fear.

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