Imagine - a photograph for Refugee Week

To mark Refugee Week (15-21 June) the Jesuit Refugee Service, together with St Beuno’s Spirituality Centre, is running a photography project. I came across this because I follow St Beuno’s on Facebook as a way to connect with Ignatian spirituality. The project is open to all, and emphasises engagement with the brief more than professional-standard photography skills. The brief, reflecting the theme of this year’s Refugee Week, is titled “Imagine”, and asks participants to take a photo that in some way imagines a different, better world.

It’s a broad brief. It intrigued me, because I have been allowing my imagination to regain its freedom and roam widely in recent months. I’m not a skilled photographer, but I enjoy taking pictures that capture a moment or a feeling or simply something I find beautiful; and so I decided to give it a go. From the vantage point of my sofa, where I was sat at the time (it must have been a low energy day!), I wondered what object or view I could work with. My eye was soon caught by the young fig tree visible out of the side window of my living room.

I planted the tree around three years ago. It has grown vigorously, and is around seven foot tall now. It loves the sheltered corner that it is in, between the house wall and a high retaining wall, where the afternoon sun in full force is caught and held. Its roots are shaded by a layer of gravel, so despite the warmth it doesn’t get dehydrated. But it has yet to flower or produce fruit.

I looked at the fig tree, and some of its biblical resonances came to mind: the fig tree as a sign of a place of safety and plenty; the fig tree whose fruit is often a symbol or evidence of God’s blessing; the fig tree as a place of hospitality to one’s neighbour. My fig tree invited me to imagine those biblical fig trees, and its fruitlessness invited me to imagine the future in which it will, I hope, bear fruit. It invited me to imagine a future in which our country might be a place of greater shelter and hospitality for those seeking refuge here. It reminded me that God knows the seasons of our lives, and our shared lives, and that after wintery death comes springtime resurrection.

Here are a couple of the bible verses that seemed particularly relevant as I lay under my fig tree, looked up through leaves to the sun, and imagined, with my iPad in hand to take the picture.

‘“In that day”, declares the Lord of hosts, “every one of you will invite his neighbour to sit under his vine and under his fig tree.”’

Zechariah 3:10

‘“Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtle dove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”’

Song of Songs 2:10b-13