A charity run by two our clergy which encourages social and spiritual growth through outdoor pursuits has just returned from a weekend in the Dales with people seeking asylum.
Fr Simon Crook, vicar of Golcar and Longwood and his wife Revd Sam Crook, curate at Halifax Minster founded and run the charity Across Country and below are excerpts from their report of a few days with people seeking peace in nature.
“For many of the people who come on our weekends, humanity has been taken away: by persecution in home countries, by people traffickers, by being reduced to being an asylum seeker and nothing else, by your port reference number, by being asked your story time after time after time.
It is dreadful to be de-humanised, to be made less than a person, but for a weekend, it was as if humanity was restored.
We travelled and walked together by day and by night. Together, as fellow humans, we cooked, ate and cleaned. We abseiled and created and rested and played. Things which made us feel human and alive. And there was space: space to join in, to share cooking, to give opinions, to help and to be helped.
There was space to be loud or quiet, to sing or dance or neither. There was space to say no, space to be human and valued.”