Once again, I closed the newspaper and tried to think of better news, instead of reading about another murder.   Once again, I passed in front of the yellow tape a policeman had put up at the scene of a crime. Once again I wanted to cry out to God on behalf of the families involved. One more death. One more kid. One more driver. One more child. One more woman. One more is too much and is one more than necessary. When a human life is lost, the feelings of powerlessness and the inability to feel comfort are natural, and lately the feeling of powerlessness has begun to feel normal. But in the last few weeks, I have also been trying to reflect on new ways to listen to the Spirit that guides us in the midst of such trying times.

“Listen! Your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground.” – Genesis 4:10

Recently I have been reading a book called Power & Poverty by Dewe Hughes. He mentions this passage from Genesis 4:10, analyzing reactions to injustice and the incorrect use of power by certain groups. Though in and of itself it is such a powerful message in the context of the struggle for power, I realized that the very literal words have a much deeper meaning than I ever previously noticed.  Something special about this verse is that it is God himself who is talking; he recognizes what is going on. This should be enough to allow us to breathe more easily. God knows. God does not ignore what these hands are doing. But more than that, God speaks of the blood as a symbol of life and he speaks of your brother. What a great implication this has on my identity. The blood that has been shed is part of my blood! He also speaks of a cry – a voice that calls out for justice, a voice that speaks out of the ground, the lowest place on earth, the point from which the shed blood cannot be gathered again.

Every one of these words can be deeply analyzed, but I have found myself thinking over and over again of the phrase as a whole: ‘Your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground.’ I can almost hear it as if it were spoken to me! I ask myself, ‘Can you not hear it? Have you not realized? What are your going to do with that voice, that cry?’

In the middle of the city of Kingston, Jamaica there is a statue in memory of the children who have died in tragic circumstances. The title of the sculpture is ‘Gone too soon’. It is surrounded by the names of hundreds of children whose lives have been taken and the date of their murders. When we visited, we were told that at the unveiling of the statue, one of the hopes expressed was never having to write another name on it. This has not been the case. But despite the circumstances, the first step is being taken: the cry of the bloodshed has been heard. As symbolic as it can be, as little as one monument represents, it is doing something.  There are people who are writing down one more name, one more date. And they seek justice.

Some of us have the privilege of walking in the ‘lowest places’ and being witnesses of the tragedy, violence, and pain that exists in these communities because of injustice, death and scarcity. We also have the privilege of listening to the cry rising up from these low places – a cry that unites us. We are witnesses of a divine voice that recognizes and hears our cry, and He does not remain silent.

Liz Herrera loves to learn, read, have a good cup of coffee and find creative ways to combine her passions: communications, urban ministries, social action and mixed media.  Liz is a journalist and has served alongside the team of CTM Guatemala since 2006 and worked for over 12 years among marginalized populations with churches and non-profit organizations.

Many of us are active in responses to the world’s needs, wounds, and injustices. We resonate with Frederick Buechner’s often-quoted phrase, “God calls us to where our great joy meets the world’s great need.” If we’ve stayed around awhile, we have found this to be true. To be sustainable, our presence in hard places cannot be spurred merely by dogged heroism in the pursuit of righteous causes. Or worse, an asceticism that imagines if there is deprivation somewhere, we have no business enjoying anything anywhere. We have found joy in our difficult places of need, and the joy sustains us.

We are not simply given to the world to be used up, consumed. We know people (and maybe even been people) who have “burnt out” in our settings and it’s not a pretty sight—no gift to anyone at all. Surely this is not the way of the meal of blessing. In the way of the Eucharist we are given in a way that nourishes all.

As important as Buechner’s observation is, there is a much deeper truth to our calling. Our most important formation is not around need. Rather, it is around abundance. It is around delight. It is around peace. It is around freedom. It is around beauty. It is around freedom. It is around fullness. It is around yes.

The Hebrew Scriptures refer to all this as shalom. Sometimes translated as peace, shalom carries a far richer meaning than simply the absence of conflict. In fact, its essence is not rooted by the absence of anything. Shalom does not come into being by correcting any deficit. It is more than simply a remedy. Shalom exists prior to lack, pain, injustice, or no. It is the Yes of creation. It flows from the I AM before anything was not.

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Recently Street Psalms Press announced  the arrival of our first book, Geography of Grace – Doing Theology From Below by Kris Rocke and Joel Van Dyke.

This project has been several years in the making. It has gone through five major edits, countless rewrites and a change in publishers. We are eager and a bit nervous to see it finally hit the streets. We have no illusions that this will be a New York Times best seller, but as a community, we hope it is a useful tool for those who are hungry to see God at work in hard places.

Authors and leaders like Bob Ekblad, Richard Rohr, Shane Claiborne, Phyllis Trible, Ray Bakke and others have given the book a warm reception. To see what these and other leaders are saying about Geography of Grace go click on the book highlight to the right of this page or go  here.

Fair warning:

We did not set out to write a controversial book, but this book is not without some controversy. We wrote it to honor those who work in the context of poverty and violence, which often pushes leaders to the edge of their faith, and ours as well, if we are honest. As a result, we have taken the “road less traveled,” in our book. Such a road is fraught with danger and all manner of ways to get lost, but as Robert Frost noted, taking the road less travelled “has made all the difference.” We hope it will make a difference with our readers and the communities we serve.

Several who have reviewed the book have recognized and appreciated the risky nature of our journey. One such review comes from Stephan de Beer in Pretoria, South Africa, who writes,

Grace is shared abundantly in the poetic beauty of this book: a grace located in the deepest trenches of human suffering and global urban fractures; a disarming grace, meeting you on every page, robed in profanity, steeped in the incarnation, erupting in surprising, awe-inspiring transformations.

This book offers all of us who sense an invitation to be on the urban margins, some superb handles for the journey – it is not your typical travel guide, but one written for the connoisseur of urban and human marginality, and, if we read carefully enough, a guide book for opening us up to the poetry and profanity of God’s beautiful grace, a grace more than able to make us over, and also the cities in which we live.

 Stephan de Beer, CEO, Tshwane Leadership Foundation, Pretoria, South Africa

To purchase Geography of Grace: Doing Theology From Below in either paperback or e-book format, go here. (Amazon will have the print version of the book available within the next month or so, but for now the paperback edition is available directly from Street Psalms Press in an equally safe and secure process that actually provides more income for our work.)  

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Many of us in the Street Psalms Community have been drawn not only to certain texts that shape our call in the world, but also to certain authors that affirm and challenge this call. Judges 19 is one of these texts and Phyllis Trible is one such writer. Her book Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives has been formative to many of us. We recently had the opportunity to have a conversation with Dr. Trible as part of our monthly conference call. Judges 19 was the launching pad for our discussion, but like any solid theologian Dr. Trible pulled from other biblical texts to engage in conversation. In Judges 19 the dominant voice in the text does not seem to provide any good news and the religious elite in the story, a Levite, the keeper of the law, is a murderer. The violent abuse, murder and disregard for the unnamed woman in the story is almost unimaginable. But to many of those we love and serve it is not only imagined but experienced every day.

Dr. Trible is a seasoned theologian who comes to the text from a literary methodology and a feminist perspective. Her journey with theology was discouraged by some. Many told her to dismiss all of scripture as patriarchal and misogynistic, but in her resiliency she would not let go of the Hebrew and Christian texts. She owned them as her story. But she would not let the text get away with doing violence to her as a woman. This struggle led her to the hard texts, or what she terms texts of terror. As a woman, Trible is familiar with the violence and suffering in the Bible—and aware that it is a male voice that tells much of the story of the Bible. Like Jacob she wrestled (and continues to wrestle) with the text, willing to be maimed for the sake of the blessing. She argues that the Jacob story was her model for interacting with the scripture and that the blessing was the point of contact with God. She cautioned us that the blessing might look nothing like a blessing but more like a limp. She comforted us with the fact that we all wrestle with a narrative—hers just happens to be the scriptures.

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Power & Passion: Six Characters in Search of Resurrection  
by Samuel Wells

When Andrea and I made the move from Tacoma, WA to Durham, NC for her to pursue graduate studies we did not imagine we would end up calling Duke Chapel our church home. Duke Chapel is a grand gothic cathedral that physically is the central focal point of Duke University. It is beautiful and hard to miss. But we thought we were looking for a church that represented the full spectrum of the wider community of Durham not the formal high setting that is Duke Chapel. However, we decided we would start there and in the end we never left. One of the reasons for this is the Dean of the Chapel, Sam Wells. Wells’ preaching and leadership anchor Duke Chapel and contribute to it being a vital part of Duke University. Being located on the campus of a ‘prestigious’ school like Duke with a well respected Divinity School  means that the opportunity to hear great thinkers and speakers is never in short supply. Just in the past few months, N.T Wright and Walter Brueggemann have spoken.  Wells himself is considered one of the leading theologians in the world when it comes to issues of ethics but it is his thoughtful communication, intentionality and ability to make connections between scripture and daily life that continually call me back to be challenged and encouraged.  

I’m not sure Sam Wells ever thought he would be leading an institution with the powerful platform that Duke Chapel and Duke University provide. Much of his early pastoral call was spent serving in economically and socially challenged neighborhoods in his homeland of England. (Personally this is of course another reason that I was drawn to Duke Chapel. Having a British accent in a beautiful gothic church is good for this dual citizen and reminds me where part of me is from!) I am grateful and encouraged to see that even with this very visible platform and position Sam’s heart still beats strongly for the marginalized in the world. Yet most of those who attend Duke Chapel would not be thought of as marginalized or the least, last and lost in any material sort of way. Most of us who fill the pews each week are privileged if not powerful by most of the world’s standards. But in a wonderful way, Sam always invites us to enter a world where we are all broken and our shared calling is to walk with each other and carry each other’s burdens. Sam Wells is a brilliant thinker, but brilliance means nothing if it does not move us to practically engage with the other – those who are most different and even those who most threaten us in some way.

As I have sat in the pews and in other public gatherings listening to Sam I have realized that ultimately all his thoughts and words come down to the fact that he believes the resurrection is true. And he has spent a lot of time thinking about the ramification of this. If the resurrection is true, the ever present question is how will this change the way we live our lives in the world today? Wells is able to continually bring this question to life and to reality in a way that is convicting and challenging while also being lovingly invitational. He weaves stories from scripture together paying careful attention to place and context and then makes the connection to our modern day. Wells is able to make living and profound connections in a way that shows deep insight into the human condition.

In 2007 Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams invited Wells to write a book for the Archbishop of Canterbury’s official Lent book series. The result of that invitation was titled Power & Passion: Six Characters in Search of Resurrection. Wells’ intended title was “Power & Passion: The Resurrection of Politics” but the publisher didn’t want the word ‘politics’ in the title which ironically only serves to highlight the weight and complexities of these four focal words: Politics, Power, Passion, and Resurrection. In the six chapters of this book (one for each week of Lent) Wells takes on power, passion, politics, the past and the present seen through the resurrection and through the words and actions of six characters present during Holy Week. It is through the lens of the lives of Pontius Pilate, Barabbas, Joseph of Arimathea, Mrs. Pilate, Peter and Mary Magdalene that the reader is invited to a life of repentance, empowerment, and encourage­ment.

In this book Wells explores the different kinds of power that exist in the world. As he highlights each of the six character’s words and actions during the week leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion, Wells contrasts the politics of resurrection (and subsequent abundance) with that of the power that ultimately denies the resurrection producing a politic of scarcity.

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Editor’s note: In light of the recently revised Huckleberry Finn we thought this article was timely.

“All right, then, I’ll go to hell.” 

These are the courageous words of Huck Finn in Marks Twain’s classic Huckleberry Finn.  Huck is a 13 year old white boy growing up in pre-Civil War American South, helping a runaway slave, “nigger Jim” escape to freedom.  Huck’s declaration is the moral center of the story and a beautiful illustration of Good News.  

The 1850 Fugitive Slave Law made it illegal to aid or abet a runaway slave and required that every U.S. citizen assist in the capture of runaways.  Huck believes (as he was taught) that by helping Jim he will not only suffer the wrath of the law, but also the wrath of God himself.  Huck is convinced that he will be sent to hell for helping Jim escape slavery.

Suffering under the weight of this moral dilemma Huck decides to write a letter to Jim’s “owner” Miss Watson, and turn in Jim.  By returning Jim to slavery Huck would free his conscience and his soul from eternal damnation.  After writing the letter Huck begins to reflect on his relationship with Jim, their journey together down the Mississippi river, and the deep friendship they had formed along the way.  Yes, Huck had become friends with Jim.  This realization does something to Huck – something for which his upbringing, culture, theology and even his God had not prepared him for – that “nigger Jim” is not just a runaway slave.  Nigger Jim is a human being.  Unthinkable! 

Huck is completely undone by this realization.  He tears up the letter, convinced that by doing so he is condemning himself to hell.  As a result, Huck’s adventure takes a huge turn.  Huck is undergoing grace – the kind that empowers one to risk it all for the sake of those we love.  The kind of grace that frees us to forsake our culture, our religion and even our God when they keep us from doing good. 

“All right, then, I’ll go to hell,” Huck declares.

 Salvation has come and it has come to both Huck and Jim.  They are of one piece.  Their stories are bound together and inseparable.   These fugitives become radically united symbols of freedom in their rebellion to the powers that hold them hostage.

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Happy New Year!

I’d like to share a slightly irreverent and indelicate quote from Leo Bebb who is the main character in Frederick Buechner’s delightful series of novels called the Book of Bebb.

Leo Bebb is a “plump and implausible man” with a distinctive fluttering eye. He is the ex-con pastor of a very odd church called the Church of Holy Love Inc. Bebb is something between charlatan and a spiritual genius. Bebb runs what appears to be an entirely fraudulent degree-granting mill that offers mail-order ordinations to all who want one. And yet Bebb’s enthusiasm for God and Bible is completely infectious and real. In spite of himself (or perhaps because), people connected to Bebb undergo grace at profound levels. Beuchner surrounds Bebb with a colorful cast of misfits, whose quirky lives leave the reader feeling strangely comforted. One of those misfits is Brownie.

Brownie is Bebb’s main disciple and right-hand man. Brownie is as odd as Bebb, only in a different direction. They are like Mutt and Jeff…Ying and Yang. There is great love between them, but great tension too. Apparently, Bebb once raised Brownie from the dead in Knoxville, Tennessee after being struck by lightening many years ago. Bebb has a bigger than life spirit of adventure. He does not mince words and does not care for subtleties. Brownie is undersized and is cut from a different cloth, which irritates Bebb to no end. Whereas Bebb’s dives into life head-first and has a knack for making the smooth places of Scripture rough, Brownie holds back and has a knack of “making the rough places of Scripture smooth.” Brownie’s timid spirit frustrates Bebb’s come-what-may approach to life.

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Christ the Redeemer/Cristo Redentor - Brazil

In the preface to his book “Exclusion and Embrace, A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation,” theologian Miraslov Volf shares an encounter where he was asked by Jurgen Moltmann, “Can you embrace a Chetnik?”

The Chetniks were Serbian fighters who in the early 90’s had been devastating Volf’s homeland of Croatia, destroying cities, throwing people into concentration camps, raping women, and burning down churches.  Immediately prior to Moltmann’s question, Volf had been lecturing about the need to embrace ones enemies as God has embraced us in Christ. So, how serious was he willing to take this line of reasoning when it got really personal? Moltmann figured it all sounded good in theory but could Volf bring it home to the point where he would be able to embrace a Chetnik — the ultimate OTHER?

Volf replied, “No I cannot—but as a follower of Christ I think I should be able to.”

In the past weeks and months, there have been several ministries and individuals in the missional communities of grassroots leaders we serve in Central America who have found themselves up against their own Central American “Chetnik” groups. These groups of people have been sowing destruction and preying on the neighborhoods our friends love and in the very places where they are laying down their lives.

What does it mean to follow Jesus when he tells us we are to “love our enemies?” It is one thing to consider this as an objective “concept” or “principle,” but quite another when your life and that of your children are being threatened by “Chetniks” in Croatia or San Salvador. This is the reality that several of our friends in Central America have encountered in the past few months.  Volf shares his personal internal battle on the subject with gut wrenching honesty when he writes, “I felt that my very faith was at odds with itself, divided between the God who delivers the needy and the God who abandons the Crucified, between the demand to bring about justice for the victims and the call to embrace the perpetrator.”

A call to embrace the perpetrator? Can that really be a call? How in the world am I supposed to embrace someone who is threatening to take my life and hurt and kill the people I love most in this world?

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When I first saw the title of Chimamanda Adichie’s talk, “The Danger of a Single Story,” I confess to assuming this was a cleverly provocative title for a well-worn observation—namely, that stories have power, and even a single story has the power to subvert the status quo in ways that might be ultimately beneficial. I was wrong, and my first mistake was assuming there is anything well-worn about Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie. If you doubt that, follow the advice of my friend who said “you MUST watch this,” and strap yourself in for the considerable force of her analysis.

If you still doubt Adichie, go find a copy of her recent collection of short stories, The Thing Around Your Neck. I was glad to discover one in a Nairobi airport bookstore before boarding a flight recently, and glad a friend had tipped me off to her with this video some time ago. According to Adichie, “single stories” are among the most fundamentally oppressive weapons we humans wield against each other. That is, allowing a single storyline or single reality to define other people. Whether in the form of a conscious, active attempt to maintain our distance and power, or a passively unconscious failure of imagination and empathy, settling for single stories reinforces the “otherness” of others in dehumanizing ways that ultimately result in violence.

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 The following excerpt is taken from The Least of These: Lessons Learned from Kids on the Street by Ron Ruthruff, a Center for Transforming Mission trainer and Street Psalms Community member. The Least of These will be published on October 4 and can be ordered here or here.

When I first started working with kids on the street, I walked through Blood Alley every day. Apparently lots of craziness happened there, and the kids gave it a name to serve as a warning. Blood Alley was located directly behind our drop-in center. Each day, whether I wanted to or not, I visited the alley to empty the garbage and clean the back stairs. On the wall adjacent to the back steps was graffiti in big red letters—Don’t you know your all ready DEAD! (I guess spelling was not the point.)

I always thought this was a tragic declaration. The graffiti served as a prophetic voice that reminded kids of the inevitable outcome of street life. It communicated to all who read it that it was simply too late. It was too late for the kids who shot dope, too late for those who prostituted, too late for all of the kids on the street. The big, bold words hopelessly stated that they were all too far-gone.

That alley and the graffiti remind me of the story of the demon-possessed man in Mark’s Gospel. When I read the story of the demoniac, I think of a young man pushed to the margins of his community. I hear the echo of the red letters — Don’t you know your all ready DEAD!

Mark’s Gospel emphasizes the community’s inability to bind the demon-possessed man. The crowd was not able to subdue the man or control him. The tormented man cut himself in an attempt to control his circumstances, and to release himself from the demonic force within his body. This man had been pushed to the edge of his community, to the margins of a cemetery to be cared for by the dead. Did the crowd believe the man was too far-gone, or “already dead”? If the man was condemned to a cemetery he was out of sight. He was no longer a visual reminder of the community’s inability to fix a hopelessly uncontrollable member of their town. As long as he remained among them, he stood as a physical reminder of the brokenness in their world—brokenness they were powerless to fix.
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