IN the week that the Conservative government won a legal battle to send refugees ‘for processing’ to Rwanda, Dame Kristin Scott Thomas read this poem at The Royal Carol Service at Westminster Abbey:

Refugee by Michael Guite

We think of him as safe beneath the steeple,

Or cosy in a crib beside the font,

But he is with a million displaced people

On the long road of weariness and want.

For even as we sing our final carol

His family is up and on that road,

Fleeing the wrath of someone else’s quarrel,

Glancing behind and shouldering their load.

Whilst Herod rages still from his dark tower

Christ clings to Mary, fingers tightly curled,

The lambs are slaughtered by the men of power,

And death squads spread their curse across the world.

But every Herod dies, and comes alone

To stand before the Lamb upon the throne.

You don’t need a Christian faith to feel the searing sadness of the line ‘fleeing the wrath of someone else’s quarrel.’ In just seven plain words, the contemporary poet and priest Michael Guite summons up the tragedy, pity and terror of wars that have punished the vulnerable for centuries.

While in the UK cash registers tinkle and children dress up in sheets and tinsel to perform the nativity, starved, freezing, people are fleeing warzones, persecution and torture. Just as Joseph and a pregnant Mary are believed to have done over two thousand years ago.

So, what to do? I hear MPs say that ‘they’ shouldn’t come here from countries in Europe that are ‘safe’. The idea that the UK should not take in any refugees at all is the very epitome of a ‘little England’ approach.

Not only do refugees bring skills that our country conspicuously lacks, it is surely our duty to share the responsibility with other countries of housing the desperate.

‘No man is an island’ said John Donne, another poet and priest (1572-1631). He makes the point here that as humans we are all part of the same ‘body’, that we share the same life and death experiences.

‘No Man is an Island’

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

At school, learning this poem, I found it dark, threatening and depressing. Today, in this week of poignant memories, reading about the tragedies and joys of other peoples’ lives right across the world, I find it inspiring. We are part of a global human family, we do have the capacity for love and compassion if we choose it, we must somehow find a way to take neighbourliness global.

So I hope for a loving 2023