Refuge for the Heart

 Only from the heart can you touch the sky.

 Rumi

Every few months I get together with a group of women for a giving circle.  Our purpose is to raise money for an organization that is making positive changes in the world.  We usually have a speaker come to the Circle and we have been very fortunate to attract the most amazing people to come speak to us.

Recently we had the founder and Executive Director of RefugePoint Sasha Chanoff, and a woman named Jenny (I have changed her name to protect her privacy). Jenny is a refugee from Kenya and RefugePoint has been a lifeline to her and many other refugees in Africa by providing them with medical and basic needs and helping relocate them from very dangerous situations to safety.

There were only 15 women at our Circle that night and the setting was very intimate.  Jenny started to tell her life story.  Both of her parents were killed in the Rwandan genocide when she was only five.  I was sitting right next to her and, as she told her story, I felt my body move back from hers.  As she spoke, my mind was trying to distract me.  I felt my heart quiver and want to shut down.   I thought  “what is happening to me? How can I not want to hear this? People are suffering and I need to listen.  I need to help.” I took a deep breath and tried to sit very still and stay open to hear her story.

She said the family that took her in abused her and at 6 years old she began to beg on the streets for a year until one day another child stole her money and he beat her.  As her story continued,  I felt my discomfort rising yet I managed to stay totally focused and present.  Her journey was long and filled with twists and turns and the pain of every word she spoke scorched my heart.

As my heart stayed open, my thoughts turned to “How could one human being treat another like this?”  Yet I realized that was the question that kept trying to shut my heart down.  That was the question that created such fear and mistrust in my mind for the world’s future and it can cause any heart to shut down completely. The pain of human cruelty can be too much to bear for many of us so often we shut our hearts down to deal with the situation.  It is one of our survival mechanisms to dull the pain that we fear may kill us or make us feel hopeless for the future.  But when we shut down our hearts, we are closed to those beautiful moments of life that run so deep they reach our soul, and give us hope and purpose in our lives.  These beautiful moments drive us to make a difference in the world and help us thrust forward in life.

As Jenny’s story neared the end, she said “I met RefugePoint and they housed me, fed me and relocated me to the United States.”  She now lives with a family in Philadelphia and is starting college in June. My mind and my heart repeated what she said. “College in June!”  My heart skipped to the sky.  Every part of my body felt a euphoric high for the joy of life.  Feeling hopeful about the world, I returned home to Maybe.  And I realized had I shut down completely there would have been no opening to take pleasure when the light does come in.

If you want to take a look at the work that RefugePoint is doing: www.Refugepoint.org