In relation to the season of Advent she writes, “As you may know, I’ve been rather taken with this idea of refugia lately. Not only are we facing a pandemic and a climate crisis, but we are facing a whole convergence of crises in culture and in the church. What can we learn about resilience from the refugia model? In particular, I’ve been wondering what it might mean for Christians to understand ourselves as “the people of refugia.”
After all, as we know from the Advent narratives especially, God loves to perform mighty deeds with only the smallest, most obscure and unlikely raw materials. The stump of Jesse grows a branch and bears fruit. A young girl in a small town under an oppressive empire gives birth to a child. This is all part of God’s refugia way.”
Yes, these past 10 months have been challenging because of the Covid 19 pandemic and subsequent restrictions but I like to think that it is also acting like an incubator of sorts, giving birth to new thinking, especially new thinking about what it means to be church at this time and place. How can we emerge from this time with a new energy, creativity, inspiration, compassion, how can we become more fully what MLK called the ‘beloved community,’ where all can find a place at the table?