“We are defined not by our borders but by our bonds.” Barack Obama
After eight years our hopes to live deeply in Winson Green and also connect widely for community leadership capacity building is gaining momentum. God’s love and shalom is flowing, but in so many unexpected ways.
As I travelled to Kyiv last week I was conscious that times and places often choose us more than we choose them. Over the years I’ve helped design and teach an MA programme with colleagues and students at the Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary in Kyiv. Now the seminary is open again after missile attacks earlier in the year, I felt it important to be there in person again to teach. Here is my journal entry from Saturday as I travelled there.
(Saturday 22/10/22)
I’m at the Poland-Ukraine border, changing trains. We’ve been waiting over an hour now, it’s after 10pm and it’s started to really pour down on us, with the temperature plummeting. Must be about 800 of us lining up, soggy coats and bags, right around the corners. Conscious of families with small children returning and how determined they all look. Also that lots of kindness is being shown to each other. The shared light blue plastic poncho, for example, are on Brand Ukraine and very much appreciated.
A few hours later a lady in front of me in a bright yellow fluffy coat starts rifling through her soggy bag. She pulls out an umbrella. “Now she does this?!” I smile out loud. It’s interpreted by her friend and soon others around are smiling too. Small mercies.
Eventually lights come on in the shack we are waiting in front of and the line slowly shuffles closer to have our passports and papers checked. Sharon has organised lots of diverse papers and I’m grateful they are in order and easy to access as I move closer. I just hope this doesn’t take too long as the train is due to leave soon. What if I’m rejected? Or miss this train? Where would I stay tonight? I shuffle forward with more intent. In the end I only needed my passport and once stamped, I made it through passport control and ran onto the platform. I make it to my seat on carriage 5 with four minutes to spare. It’s warm inside and I have plenty of room as my two colleagues seats are empty, needing to drop out at the last minute. I have 14 hours till Kyiv.
My mind races to other borderlands. Birmingham-Sandwell Councils in our neighbourhood and the complex campaigning for a new high school and secure homes there. The England-Scotland borderlands where we walk the St Cuthbert’s Way and finish on Holy Island with Change Makers. The Thai-Burma border and our recent time in Mae Sot with the Civil Disobedience Movement activists piloting the Change Incubator programme.
What do these diverse borderlands have in common? Suspicions, often complications and inefficiencies, even danger. For me too a sense of call to edges where centres of power often have little control. Creativity, co-operation and innovation seem more possible here. Unlikely people bond together.
Safely on board the train I contact friends and family praying for me. Amy ‘signalled’ a text that her friend recently visited Kyiv with Doctors Without Borders. I replied, ‘I think a doctor might be a bit more useful here than a theologian right now! Can only give what’s in our hands to give though!’
There are small televisions throughout the carriage showing repeated cartoon driven messages, silently, but with Ukrainian subtitles. Some seem to be adverts for items like headache tablets, but some others are ‘duck and cover’ public announcements in the case of missile strikes. It’s getting real.
I settle in for the overnight train journey, and listening to Billy Bragg, start to doze off and ride into the dark unknown. What will tomorrow bring beyond the borderlands?
Please pray for us in Winson Green and bonds beyond our borders.
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Blessings,
Ash Barker
Seedbeds.org
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Great writing Ash and thanks for the heads up about the border queue. Last night I got near the front and helped people load their heavy cases up and down the stairs and on to the luggage racks. They said that even the fact that outsiders were prepared to visit Ukraine keeps their hope burning.
Love u love Billy Bragg !
Your border experience was v moving . We have just had an afternoon fundraiser at St Marks for Ukraine – with a squeeze box player & cowbell singer from Kiev – 200 came , raised $5000 David P