Based on the description of the Day of Judgement from Matthew 25, and using Haydn’s St Anthony Chorale, this is a call to compassion.

I Was All Those People

When you saw me hungry, lonely,

Did you stop and try to help me?

When you saw me homeless, outcast,

Was it from your cruelty?

 

I was all those people, waiting,

For your love to reach your neighbour,

If you helped my children, truly

You have helped your Saviour.

 

On the day that you face judgement,

There is nowhere you can hide

I’m the one that you rejected,

Punished and denied.

I was all those people,

Waiting, hoping for your love.

 

When I was a foreign stranger,

When I was a refugee,

Did you blame me for my suffering,

Shut your heart against me?

I was all those people,

Waiting, hoping for your love.

 

Here is the sheet music:

i-was-all-those-people

And the performance. (This is the slightly longer version, but the shorter one is better for congregational singing).

I’d like to share this wonderful piece of writing from one of the refugee children on Nauru. I’ve also done a brief review of it, but please, read the story first.

Rat Story

Exciting news! Last night we found three new-born baby rats inside of a pillow in our tent! We saw a big rat, that we suspect is the mother, running around our tent later in the night. She was looking for her children because they were displaced after my father found the babies in the pillow. We put them in a paper cup and threw the pillow away immediately. What is amazing is that the pillow was on a metal bed, the mother must have climbed up the bed frame and climbed inside of the pillow to make a nest because that was a warm and soft place to give birth when it was raining outside.

Today was a rainy day too, my father put the three babies out on the floor so they could go to find their mother, but my brother was so keen to keep those hairless little blobs with us in the tent until they were strong enough to go out alone. Unfortunately one died, but he named the other two Peter and Tony.

My brother gives them milk every few hours and has made a small place for them to be safe and warm. They don’t have fur yet and they are too small, maybe three centimetres long. Tonight when I was on my bed lying there staring at the canvas roof, I saw something black and small run so fast across the tent. That was probably the mother again, looking for the children. We are trying to feed the baby rats and keep them somewhere that the mother can find them easily. I just hope they are not going to stay with us, because it will be terrifying to find some new babies rats inside of my pillow. The rats are now so strong, they can climb up our metal beds and tables even when heavily pregnant. There is no way to get rid of them. At least they are free.

Do you know I see at least five rats every day? I know it sounds disgusting but it’s not like I can go to the pet shop to buy a goldfish is it? One of the rules in the detention is that you can’t have a pet which is funny because we ended up having quite a lot of pets, giant mosquitos, centipedes, lizards, cockroaches, rats and crabs.

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Y’s Rat Story is brilliant piece of writing, vivid, humorous and horrific at the same time. Although it’s so brief, you get a real sense of the characters’ personalities – the practical father, the impulsive little brother – even the dedicated mother rat is depicted sympathetically. What stands out for me is the natural compassion of the children. The idea of finding rats nesting in my pillow is enough to make me shudder, but they instinctively want to help them. Place that against the attitude of the Australian public to refugees and the contrast is stark. A country of 23 million thinks that two thousand refugees a year arriving by boat is a flood that warrants building prison camps in overseas countries and denying even the refugees who are found to be genuine the chance to live in Australia. What should have been our natural helping instinct seems to have evaporated entirely. Rat Story reminds us of the need to rediscover it, urgently.