Why one human life is priced higher than the other?

Not everyone celebrate Christmas around the world and not everyone is safe. Russia is still trying to invade Ukraine and Israel is on the revenge path to remove Gaza and its citizen from the world map, it is a genocide on new scale.?

Maybe this is the time to reflect why we value one human life over the other and if truly the life of a person who is richer and protected by superpower values more than a Palestinian baby who has not time to be fully born yet and is dead. Hundred thousands of them...

The story about Maria, Jozef and their baby Jesus is more than appropriate right now...

Jozef, Maria and baby Jesus

Bibi, the thirty something Humanitarian lawyer, adjusted the straps of her backpack and pushed up the zip on her winter parka. She didn't like the harsh, bitterly cold Hungarian winter, preferring the mild Decembers of Istanbul, where she worked with Syrian refugees and lived with her Muslim husband. The phone in her pocket rang and she answered quickly: “I'm on my way Father. Just like every year, I wouldn't miss midnight mass with you.”

Her elderly father chuckled into the phone: “Father Jonas is expecting you to sing ‘Ave Maria’ in the church choir, so you'd better hurry. Don't miss the first practice. Christmas Eve in a week's time, my dear. You're late getting here this year.”

She sighed, smiling into the phone: “I know, Father. Have I ever missed one midnight mass?” She closed her eyes for a minute, imagining herself as a five year old, bundled up in the pink coat that her Mum had made for her, before she passed away. She was carried in the strong arms of her father, through the snow storm to their church. She could see the little window lit up in the distance, and heard the Christmas carols through the dark of the night, welcoming them in.

She opened her eyes then, to see the little church in front of her, surrounded by spreading city buildings now. The church was dark, but she decided to knock on the heavy door as she passed on the way to her father’s flat. Just then,? she noticed two figures huddling next to a cold stone pillar outside. One was cradling a wrapped bundle.

She knelt next to the begging couple, recognising them as Syrian refugees. She was used to picking them up from street corners all around the world, in her work these days. The hungry face of a man her age, with dark desperate eyes looked up at her as she scrabbled for a few euro coins in her pocket: “Why don’t you go inside? Father Jonas will surely help you out.”

The pale, sad face of the young woman next to him shook her head. She spoke in broken English: “We're on our way to Germany. I told him that we're Christians and need shelter for our baby, but he chased us away.”

Bibi sighed: “Probably because of the lockdown. You know that the epidemic's bad here in Europe now.”

“Maria, show her our baby Jesus,” the man said quietly. The woman, who was dressed in a long worn dress and an oversized men's coat, stretched out her arms to reveal a baby hidden in an old wool jumper: “He was just born a few weeks ago while we were on the run. I'd been raped you see, but my husband Jozef said to name him Jesus. The Christians would help us then.”

Bibi put down her backpack, opening it to take out a small carton of flavoured milk and a bottle of juice, saved from the aeroplane: “Wait for me here. I'll go to talk to the priest. He's like a father to me.”

She found a very old and fragile father Jonas, in front of the nativity scene that he was setting up in the corner. She watched him lovingly arrange little chipped figurines of baby Jesus and the Virgin Mary that she remembered from her childhood. When he saw her, he enveloped her in his bony arms: “My child! Welcome home. I can't wait to hear your sweet voice sing Ave Maria,” he greeted her in her native Hungarian. She pulled away, talking quickly about the refugee couple shivering next to his church door.

“Bibi, they spread the virus! They're not Christians like us. They should never have come here.” He spread out his arms in sudden anger: “God sees it all and he understands. We have to protect ourselves from them.”

Bibi sighed, looking at the figurine of baby Jesus in the arms of Mary with Jozef hovering lovingly over them. She rushed out to see the real couple outside, as father Jonas shouted at her: “Where are you going Bibi? Choir practice starts in half an hour!”

Bibi helped Maria to stand up, then led them to her father’s flat. When she knocked on his door, he peered out, frightened: “Don’t let them in, Bibi. Take them away! They'll rob me and bring the virus to my house.”

“Give me the keys to your van, Father,” she said sternly. He obediently unhooked the keys from the hook next to the door, handing them to her as she kissed him quickly on the cheek: “They called me from the humanitarian headquarters. I have to take medical supplies back to Turkey. I'll be back in two weeks.”

“Wait, Bibi! Aunty baked you lots of Christmas goodies,” he said feebly. He knew what his strong headed daughter could be like. He disappeared into his kitchen, coming back quickly with bags filled with homemade food: “She just dropped these an hour ago. I thought that we could go to see her tonight.”

“I will do it after Christmas, Father. Sorry, there's an emergency at work.”

“It's always the same with you and your humanitarian work! But what about Christmas mass?”

“I'm sorry, Father. I truly am.” Before he could reply, she grabbed the bags and rushed out of the flat. The refugees obediently followed her down the dark staircase and back into the icy wind outside. She ushered the couple into her father’s old van. On the way out of Budapest, she called into her work depot where the guard checked her details with a bored face: “I thought that your colleague was coming in a week's time? Because there was no car available?” She followed him toward a garage filled with boxes of medication and protective Covid-19 equipment.

“The doctors working with the refugees in Istanbul need it urgently and I managed to find a vehicle,” she said, picking up boxes that he helped her to load in the back of the van. The refugee couple and their baby were hiding at the rear, behind a curtain on a bed that her father used when he was camping on the Hungarian ‘pusta’.

Once the van was loaded, she signed out with her ID, sighing with relief. While she was driving, she opened a little window in the wall that separated her from the back, calling out in English: “Are you comfortable? You need to be quiet when we cross the border. I have a humanitarian ID, so no one will bother us. No one will expect you to return, but we have to be careful.”

It took a few days of driving to reach Istanbul. She stopped in remote areas of Romania and Bulgaria, allowing them all to stretch their legs and take toilet breaks. She took little naps while the couple watched out, keeping herself going with take away coffee and coca cola.

When they finally arrived, she went quickly to the Humanitarian headquarters, where she was told to quarantine for two weeks, as did the family that she'd saved. They received the medical attention that they required.

She forgot all about Christmas as she attended to the legal concerns of desperate couples divided by plastic sheets, sheltering in the time of Covid-19. Her father rang, and she answered quickly so as not to wake Maria, who was sleeping on a makeshift bed next to her, holding baby Jesus in her arms: “Listen! Here's your Ave Maria. I'm at midnight mass. Your place in the choir is empty.” Her father could only just be heard over the singing voices.

Maria stirred next to her, speaking in English through a medical mask: “I know that song from my Syrian church. I used to be in the kids' choir there.” Bibi smiled under her face mask, nodding at Maria: “Let's sing ‘Ave Maria’ together for my father then.”

So they did so, singing into the mobile phone and joining in with the voices of that Hungarian church, far away. After she'd wished her father a Merry Christmas, she sat there on her makeshift bed, watching the sleeping Maria with the baby Jesus in her arms. Jozef’s strong body protectively hovered over them, even in his sleep.

“You missed Christmas, Bibi!” her father sobbed into the phone.

She whispered back: “I didn’t, Father. I'm with Jozef, Mary and baby Jesus right now.”

After quarantining for two weeks, she led the refugee family to the blue Mosque next to her flat, where she lived with her husband. She knew that she'd find him praying there. They removed their shoes and washed their hands before entering the big empty space with few worshippers. Jozef talked to her husband after she introduced them, then she led Maria and Jesus toward the back where a few refugee women sat, resting a safe distance apart from each other.

“My husband is Muslim too,” Maria said: “He changed to Christianity because of me. He thought that it would be easier to enter Europe.”

Bibi watched her husband and Jozef whisper to each other as she smiled at Maria: “Ahmed will help. My husband understands very well what it is to lose faith.”

When Jozef knelt next to Ahmed, he whispered quietly into his ear: “I've seen the worst of Islam in Syria and I've seen the worst of Christianity in Europe. I don't know what to believe in.”

Ahmed turned to wave to his wife Bibi at the back: “There's still something left to believe in, Jozef.”

Jozef turned to him: “What is it?”

“Humanity,” Ahmed said simply.

Back in their small flat, Bibi emptied their bedroom so that the refugee family could settle there. She and her husband made a? makeshift bed in their small living room, as they often had when accommodating homeless refugees over the years.

“I promised you that I'd spend Christmas with you,” Ahmed said quietly, lying next to Bibi: “And now you missed it yourself. I'm sorry.” Bibi looked up at Ahmed and squeezed his hand: “But I didn't miss Christmas, Ahmed! We'll spend time together in the blue Mosque now with the real Jozef, Mary and their baby Jesus. Won't we?”

Ahmed smiled at her, closing his eyes in peace next to her: “Yes, we will.”

Ahmed opened his eyes at the first sound of morning prayer when the dawn was just starting to break. He took his prayer mat out quietly, careful not to wake up his wife next to him. Afterward, he opened his computer to translate Jozef’s message that he'd asked him to send to the humanitarian headquarters, as a thank you for their help. When he'd translated it, Ahmed looked at it and smiled to himself. This humble message from the displaced Jozef, who'd lost his faith but kept going to keep his family alive, stirred something in him. Something bigger than any religion could. He hoped that the people working in the Istanbul Humanitarian headquarters, themselves of different religions and cultures and beliefs, would understand what Jozef wanted to say. One can only hope …

For some, this time is the festive season. For others, it's holiday time. For the rest, it's work as usual. Whoever you are, wherever you live, I send you my best wishes. I hope that your senses stay sharp all year round, to hear the music of creation and the quiet wisdom in it. May your response be always the same, 'I give thanks'.

The artificial noise on our planet is hard to lose. Only if you disappear in nature, where the natural order and harmony of things still rule, can you leave behind the voices that become more strident and extreme with every passing year. Consumerism cries: "I want. I want to!" Individualism cries: "Me! Me! My choice, my feelings!" Put away your iPhone or iPad, distancing yourself from that constant: "I, I, I".

Our society has become a cacophony of competing claims. The world gives every sign of falling apart. Even religion this season has become a megaphone of hate. Many raise their own voices to scream over the constant I, I, I with We, We, We! Things are labelled around us constantly as good or evil, true or false. We're absolutely certain of our labels, but the moral relativism that we use is the scourge of our age or of our own individual beliefs.

Order provides antidotes to chaos and gives discipline to life. Keeping order in place is an ideal way to achieve work-life balance. Shared traditions and the history of people all around the world, keep them tied to the same source of wisdom, but often exclude strangers who are portrayed as intruders to your country, your region or your house.

As all world religions have taught us, pleasing everyone is impossible, so you just learn to please your own small or big group of worshippers, excluding everyone else and labelling them as enemies.

We like to see ourselves as living in a new, modern and advanced age. But still we segregate ourselves daily on a basis of colour, tradition, religion, sex, money and power. There's still more to divide us, than unite us. The role of women in societies is still discussed around the world. Even in the most advanced countries, this is hotly debated, often labelled as feminist nonsense. Just as gay groups are still a sensitive topic of conversation for many.

And yet our role as humans on this planet is truly simple. Every woman and man has a duty to care for others, thus creating the bonds that hold society together. "I" has to give way to "we". Out of the great crisis - climate change, coronavirus - is the chance that this might come. Ideally, open minded humans from all religions or non-religions, from every culture or place in the world could drive this change, with the world's faiths uniting, imams and gurus, priests and rabbis and non-practising religious people and atheists. If we were just able to lift our blinkers and see beyond our own patch, to realise that there's a whole world out there and that world is US and it belongs to all of us. Whether it thrives, depends on our unity.

We all depend on our shared morality, agreed norms of behaviour, mutual trust, altruism and a sense of "all-of-us-together." THE LIBERTY CRAVED BY 'ME' CAN BE SUSTAINED ONLY BY 'US'.

As humans, we make so much noise. We like to listen to our own voices. If much of the noise that humans make could be cancelled out, just like it is when you're lost in nature, we might hear what nature's saying to us....... This festive season, I invite every one of you to stop and listen to the silence......

THANK YOU

Jozef, Maria and baby Jesus