Sanctuary! Sanctuary!

Nearly two years ago I wrote here about my involvement with a volunteer circle of about twenty people who were working together to enable two refugee families from Afghanistan to settle in our neck of the woods.

Well, that volunteer circle is about to dissolve its bank account. Our refugees have been granted asylum and have secured places to live, jobs and start-up businesses, driving licenses and vehicles, medical insurance, food stamps, and more. One of our young men will be a tuition-free student at a top-notch local college beginning in September; another has found work in the sheriff’s department; their elder sister just arrived from Dubai and Mexico to reunify their family for the first time in three years; another of our Afghans has been working construction for a year while launching a spice business.

All of this required extensive, intensive involvement from many people, within our circle and beyond it, and over $85,000 in raised funds. And now our work is completed.

Indeed, my neighborhood here in New York’s Mid-Hudson Valley has several new businesses launched by immigrants: restaurants, auto service stations, salons, and so on. There really ought to be a replica of the Statue of Liberty standing alongside Kelder’s Farm’s 13-foot garden gnome (the world’s largest, named Gnome Chomsky) — as if the woman with the torch had given birth and floated her baby up the Hudson.

So take that, you MAGA haters, you Confederate Americans! Of your many, many transgressions against American values, your ugly dehumanization of immigrants, coupled with your political party’s refusal to allow the U.S. immigration system to be rehabilitated, is among the most shameful. How dare you dig your pits of murderous animosity between “real Americans” and the rest of us, when there is hardly a single “real American” in your crowd who’s family doesn’t hail from somewhere else!

Before the Afghan Circle roped me in, I had never been a community volunteer for any length of time, instead doing my political work by thinking and writing BIG THOUGHTS. That’s all very well, but the nitty-gritty work of giving sanctuary to two families has been more transformative to my outlook on life than any political insight I’ve ever had. Rather than just living where I live, I’ve now become embedded through my contact with my circle neighbors and numerous helpful people. And rather than wishing I had more — more money, guitars, land, living space, whatever — I’ve become more aware of how exceptional and extraordinary my retirement freedom and security really are.

For me, that sense of gratitude has been catalyst of happiness — for which I thank the Afghan Circle, and the people we helped to settle.