Letter from Odesa

It’s fatiguing living close to the front line. Peter Robertson reports on how aid is supporting those suffering in Ukraine.

Peter Robertson

Peter Robertson is Christian Aid's senior humanitarian journalist.

An aid worker and a local resident consult a list as they stand outside in a battle-affected town.

Aid worker Anna, helping residents near the front line.

In the biting chill of a winter’s day in Odesa, you can find one of the bravest women working on Ukraine’s frontline. Every week Anna puts on her body armour and, with her colleagues, fills up a large van with humanitarian supplies.  

They work for local charity Heritage Ukraine with funding from Christian Aid and Scottish charity partner Blythswood. Weaving between bomb craters along muddy tracks, they head for liberated villages within shelling range.   

Every trip is dangerous, but she has no hesitation in helping the villagers who are staying in their homes. Some because they want to, others because they can’t move due to poverty, old age or infirmity.  

There are near misses, such as on January 25th when a Russian drone spotted the villagers crowding into an open space waiting for their delivery. Russian artillery opened fire on their three vehicles, but the team and the villagers escaped unharmed.  

When we think about humanitarian aid, we picture it being a long way from the frontline. It’s about warehouses, soup kitchens and emergency shelters for displaced people.  

But Christian Aid and Blythswood don’t stop there. Thanks to the money raised by the DEC we are working with local community groups to ensure our winter response is close to where it’s most needed - in villages near Russian-occupied territory close to Mykolaiv and Kherson.  

Like funding Anna’s team to help those Ukrainians who can’t move to survive the harsh winter by supplying and fitting wood-burning stoves, solar lights and small generators that can also pump water from village wells.  

They co-ordinate with the local and military authorities to alert villages when they’re coming and sometimes have only 15-minutes to unload before retreating to safety. Over January and February, they have delivered vital supplies to 85 settlements. 

The scale of the trauma suffered by the villagers is shocking – many have experienced atrocious conditions with no power, heat, or water along with violence and abuse at the hands of Russian troops when they were under occupation. Their homes have been damaged if not destroyed - making them more vulnerable to sub-zero temperatures.  

There is a collective fatigue and constant stress as the villagers grapple with the separation of families, power shortages, an economy in steep decline and the threat of bombardment. Come spring, they will face another challenge as farming communities when planting their fields: many have been mined.  

Despite all the dangers, Heritage Ukraine says when they offer places to evacuate their children to Europe, they refuse:

“We are not refugees, we are citizens of Ukraine.”  

Many have found strength in their faith but the help given by Anna and her Heritage Ukraine colleagues, while putting their own lives at risk, also shows an unbreakable human spirit and continuing generosity towards others. It’s this hope that is an example to us all in the face of adversity. 

Snippet

America

Change

Politics

Trauma

7 November 2024

3 min read

How America reckons with its fractured reality

The first thing is always to listen. To sit. To feel.

Jared Stacy

Jared Stacy holds a Theological Ethics PhD from the University of Aberdeen. His research focuses conspiracy theory, politics, and evangelicalism.

Two people sit at the table, one dictates as the other types. Behind a banner reads: write a postcard to the next president.i

Artist Sheryl Oring types messages to the president.

instagram/usf_npml

Yesterday, the day after the election, I preached a funeral. I heard the name of our President-elect only once. But I did speak on Jesus and Lazarus. About pain and loss.

I named our enemy, death, that robber, cheat, and swindler. And I spoke about grief—we all grieve in so many different ways. And then about tears. I shared about the man from Nazareth, whose public grief before the tomb of his friend drew hushed whispers from onlookers.

It was, you may remember, a tomb he was about to open. He knew, Jesus did, what he was about to do. And did it so that those who were there would become witnesses to precisely what God is about: defeating death. “Come out, Lazarus!” says Jesus, and he does.

The Christian faith, I told the grieving, would have us believe that even in our grief, there is a hope that hems it in. That Jesus enters our darkness and comes to rob death of its finality. I love too that Jesus says next— “Unbind him!” —turning onlookers into witnesses and participants.

This was how I spent my day. I’m not sure I could have spend it any better. Not because it was an escape from the election, but it forced some perspective on me. Because T.S. Eliot is right: “we cannot bear much reality.”

Here, political autopsies are everywhere. Some talk of the Democrat’s conceit, of denying President Biden’s liability as a candidate, bypassing the primaries, refusing to meet economic concerns. There’s talk of Trump’s genius and what looks to be the end of his legal troubles. There’s talk of the downfall of America, of ascendant and aspiring authoritarianisms. Perhaps. Especially if we take Trump at his word.

But as the funeral ends, I’m weighed down by the messages I’m starting to read. Not about the results alone. Not questions about political strategy and futures. No, these are pained voices from a Christian community in America betraying itself.

My phone messages are filled with stories of pain and loss. Friends and strangers alike, enduring the same loss, the same betrayal. The communities that taught us the faith now distort it. And none of this is new.

Howard Thurman, who mentored Martin Luther King Jr., said it back in 1946: “the tragic truth is that the church permits various hate groups in our common life to establish squatter’s rights in the minds of believers because there has been no adequate teaching on the meaning of the faith in terms of human dignity.” This loss has been with us for generations. But these fissures and fractures are ours to bear today. And they are not unconnected from the social and political chaos of America.

Martin Luther once said, “living, dying, and being damned makes one a theologian.” This has taught me to welcome, rather than despise, accusations that question the validity of my faith. It’s also made me suspicious of the misplaced messianic hope from which such questions emerge. It’s a false hope not easily displaced.

Before I returned to the States from living in Scotland these last few years, a good friend told me honestly: “perhaps America will have to ride it out, all of it, until it’s done.” The thought seemed a far-off scenario then. But I think he’s right.

When Israel built the golden calf in the wilderness, Moses made them grind it up into powder, mixing it in their drinks. The Christian community in America, whether we realize it our not, will soon be drinking our idolatry down to the dregs with consequences beyond Christian community itself.

And people ask, “what should we do?” And I think that time is near for that question. But the first thing is always to listen. To sit. To feel. And to remember that it’s not for nothing that Jesus, who pronounced so many woes over Jerusalem, also wept over it.

This article’s image is of Sheryl Oring, an artist who invites the public to write to the next president. She has typed and sent thousands of messages to the White House every election since 2004 as part of her performance series I Wish to Say. Read more about her and the letters: Artist Invites the Public to Write Letters to the Next US President