After months of preparation, we came together with over 70 teens and youth leaders to participate in the 2016 Atlantic Bridge Heritage Hunt in Antwerp.  Antwerp is a city rich with spiritual history.  Saints and statues line the streets between cathedrals and sanctuaries.  Our goal was to bring this history to life.

We created three different routes. I took charge of route one. After some unexpected road blocks we found our way to our first stop, the De Brabantse Olijfberg. This is the oldest Protestant church in Belgium. Protestants are in the minority in this country, juxtaposing the great majority in the neighboring Netherlands.  There we met Hans Neels who shared some of the struggle between these two groups in the past.  From there we made our way to the oldest Catholic Church in the city, De Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal. We told stories of the painter, Peter Paul Rubens. Although he is known as a great Flemish painter, he was actually German.  We talked about coming to this city as a stranger, and the effects of immigration today. 

We had more stops along the way, but my favorite was the statue of Lode Zeilins. This statue outside of the Sint Andries Kerk is of 44 year old Lode who was killed by a bomb during World War II. Inscribed on the bottom is the phrase “Mother, why do we live?” I talked about De Grijze Kat taking in children effected by the war in the 1940’s, children who may have lost mothers like Lode. The shadows cast by war are still visible here, over half a century later.  How lucky I feel to have never witnessed war on American soil. It is easy to make policies about refugees when you have never seen war. It’s easy to walk away when you do not know their stories. It is important to know their stories. It is important to know that people are still living in the violence that we only see the residue of decades later, and how history repeats itself. And how we are called to love. We are always called to love.