#PorteOuverte

Thursday’s attack in Nice, France (le 14 juillet) follows a painful procession of recent attacks that have occurred throughout our world, many within the past month of Ramadan. France, still collectively recovering from Le Bataclan (and Hebdo before it) finds herself in a heartbreakingly familiar and now seemingly permanent state of alertness and grief. Elsewhere flags around the world appear to remain at a perpetual half-mast this summer. People all over are growing accustomed to that head-buzzing daze that forms when reading news of yet another senseless atrocity.

Against such a backdrop of humanity at its worst we often find glimpses of humanity at its best. Reminiscent of the heroic responders in the Boston Marathon bombings, stories are now surfacing of those along Le Promenade des Anglais running toward rather than away from the wreckage, fighting to stay the attacker, desperately picking up children, and assisting the injured. As was the case with le Bataclan, citizens of Nice are opening their doors to those in need of shelter and assistance. Those stranded in the wake of the incident, searching for missing loved ones, and standing in need have found sanctuary and support in the homes and temples of the good people of France under the social-media banner: #PorteOuverteNice (reviving the tag used after the events in November 2015 in Paris).

Porte Ouverte (open door) is a good model for all of us to strive after in an increasingly closed-door world. In an age where more and more people are finding it hard to invite people into their homes, Porte Ouverte should be embraced, not just in immediate response for those in crisis, but by all people everywhere who are (in Schweitzer’s words) searching for some place to invest their humanity. Porte Ouverte represents a simple willingness to open up their homes and churches to those in need. We ought to open our doors if only to keep alive in us that which makes us supremely good. It should be a foregone conclusion that those who love God will walk as Christ walked and open our doors to those in need — the practice itself irrefragably tied to the central teaching of love for neighbor. Porte Ouverte can be practiced by all of us in all kinds of ways: from inviting in those persons in need of support, to helping foster children who simply need a respite of safety and protection, to adoptees, or (not least) to international refugees — whose time under the media spotlight may have passed, but whose pressing needs continue to proliferate.

#PorteOuverteNice serves as a vivid reminder that grief is best expressed in shared community, in families of faith, and in the shared spaces of human kindness. It seems to be for this reason that grief only turns into tears when in the arms of others. When many in our world wants to close our doors, “build a wall,” or leave refugees “where they belong,” our better selves (this time in Nice) are showing us that any meaningful way forward as a global society involves running toward, not away from the world’s suffering, entering into its grief as well as its joys, and finding solace in the embrace of the other. May God’s churches and his people everywhere be widely known as a people of open doors.