When I was younger, I was on staff at an Episcopal summer camp. There was a pastor who had been involved at the camp for decades and was a kind of guiding light for the staff. He would show up throughout the summer, typically to celebrate communion and share a brief word of encouragement. He would often repeat a phrase throughout each summer. Each homily would layer stories, prayers, and hopes onto that phrase. By the end of the summer, that phrase had become the summer’s motto; a kind of spiritual tattoo that had sunk down deep into each of our hearts. Lately, I find myself reflecting on one of these phrases: “Love is Spoken Here.”
I remember Rev. Byrd lifting up how, “out there,” one hears all kinds of things. One hears all manner of speaking. One hears about one’s inadequacies. One hears words of frustration. One hears words of gossip and impatience. One hears curses and quips. One hears interruptions, or someone else talking over them. One hears so many negative inputs, often all day long. One starts to hear it even from oneself, in one’s own self-talk that goes on in one’s own head.
But it is a deep longing of each of our hearts, isn’t it? To find a place where Love is Spoken. Where the words that find their way to your ear, and to your brain, and down deep into your spirit are words of Love. Where you can hear Love speak to you.
The wounds of this world have displaced more people today than at any point in human history. A greater percentage of the human family has fled their homes due to fear of danger than ever before recorded. Violence, war, and persecution drive people from the communities in which they were born, that raised them, that they belonged to. We are displacing one another faster than we are finding solutions for those who are displaced. Even for those refugees who are selected for resettlement
[1]
or who are granted asylum,
[2]
that safety is still too often a far cry from “Love is Spoken Here.”
Refugees, too, are people who long for a place where Love is Spoken. But our discourse in this country around refugees and asylum-seekers has, at least in my lifetime as far as I am aware, never been less loving or more xenophobic than right now. To be an immigrant, of any variety, is now to be subjected to an almost constant barrage of headlines, talking heads, tweets, threats, new policies, and even comments in the grocery store or at the bus stop that disparage your background, dehumanize your personhood, mischaracterize your motivations, threaten your rights, and create conditions where, decidedly, love is not spoken here.
At a Memorial Drive Ministries Onsite Partners meeting not too long ago, we took a few moments to reflect on and discuss a poem together. There were teachers, administrators, nonprofit staff, pastors, board members, and facilities staff in the room; both foreign-born and native-born, most all of whom are directly involved in services to resettled refugee families in the greater Clarkston area. In reflecting on the poem, almost everyone in the room articulated the importance of calling others by their names – and what it means for immigrants and refugees to come to a place where they are seen, known, and loved. In my head, I heard the summer camp pastor’s voice echoing, “Love is Spoken Here.”
When I was young, I thought that Episcopal priest was teaching me about how to be a camp counselor and casting a vision for the camp and conference center. But as I’ve gotten older, I realize he was sharing about how to be a person. And he was casting a vision for all of society. Where can you, today, resolve that Love Is Spoken Here, especially for your foreign-born friends and neighbors?
David Roth
Executive Director
[1]
A life-saving system that has, at the time of writing April 25, 2025, been indefinitely suspended by the current administration.
https://cwsglobal.org/blog/daily-state-of-play-trumps-indefinite-refugee-ban-and-funding-halt/
[2]
Amnesty International has recently determined that the right to asylum does not exist at the US southern border.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/02/the-right-to-seek-asylum-does-not-exist-at-u-s-mexico-border/
