Violence is something that a lot of people claim to understand; there are many anthropological and sociological studies about its causes. But, the truth of the matter is that violence is a mystery that comes with being human. I can’t say that I actually understand how violence works. What I can say, is that I am in search of a better understanding of violence in order to also understand peacemaking and conflict resolution. In most of the communities where we work, violence is a constant. What is interesting to me is the result of the violence I see: Internal violence usually ends in suicide and external violence usually ends in murder.

One sunny afternoon in 2005, my friend Brady (who is from Knoxville, TN) and I were hanging out with Clemente, Kevin, and other kids from a slum in zone 3, Guatemala City. Most of them teenagers between the ages of 13 and 19 years old, with the exception of five-year-old Rigo and his seven-year-old brother. Rigo and his brother were playing with marbles on the floor. Chepe and I were talking with the kids, cracking some jokes and having a good time laughing at the “gringo” with the funny accent. For some reason, one of the two brothers lost his marbles and wanted the other one to give him his. I assume Rigo was the one who had the marbles, but I do not know that for sure. Out of nowhere the atmosphere filled with violence and the next thing I saw was a fight between the two little kids.

I have seen kids fighting for toys before, but this time it was just vicious. Rigo’s brother was on top, with his fists closed, beating Rigo down. I do not even know if I have the words to describe the scene, but the fight was brutal. The guys we were hanging out with were fueling the fight, cheering and yelling “Come on! Come on! Harder! Harder!” Brady and I could not intervene. We did not know what to do. I was really afraid the little kids were going to hurt themselves for real. I did not know how to react and stop the fight. Somehow, Rigo made it out of the beat-down and saw his mom walking down the street. Dropping his marbles on the floor he ran as fast as he could to embrace his mom’s legs. He was looking for protection. For a moment I thought, thank God she just showed up, now I do not have to stop the fight! Amazingly, when Rigo hugged his mom’s legs, instead of finding care, security, and love he found a kick right into his belly and an angry voice yelling, “Don’t be such a pussy! Go fight your brother like a man! That is how you learn dumb ass!” I could not believe what my eyes were witnessing. It felt like being right in the middle of an intense Flannery O’Connor story.

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I grew up with a sister who was 3 years 4 months and 11 days older than me. When I was a boy there were two things I wanted more than anything else. One was to be an elephant. And the other was to be older than my sister. Maybe the two desires were really the same desire. It seemed in everything that mattered, like getting extra dessert and staying up late at weekends and becoming streetwise at primary school, I was always second. And there’s only so much coming second a man can take – especially a 7-year-old man.

What is it about siblings? We can’t live with them; we can’t live without them. If someone attacks them we’re first to step in, if they’re sick we can’t sleep for worry; but leave us alone in a room with them and in no time we find ourselves turning from wallflowers into fireworks. I once had Christmas dinner with a friend who had his 93-year-old and 91-year-old great aunts and his 89-year-old great uncle join us for the festive occasion. The great uncle said “Pass the roast potatoes, would you” – and proceeded to help himself to a generous portion. “Stop it – put those back” snapped his older sister, “Don’t be so greedy.” The younger sister pleaded, “But surely, it’s Christmas Day!” The older aunt was not to be deterred. Looking imperiously at her 89-year-old
brother, she said ‘He has to learn!”

This is the soil out of which the story of Cain and Abel becomes the story of everybody. A great many politicians and religious leaders talk about safeguarding or promoting or focusing on the family – but you wonder if these people have ever lived in one. The book of Genesis isn’t the slightest bit sentimental when it comes to the realities of growing up with a brother. Here are Cain and Abel; the first recorded sign of trouble and straightaway Abel’s blood is crying out from the ground.

Then a few chapters later we have Abraham and Lot, who were cousins but in one place are called brothers. We have this resonant sentence, “their possessions were so great that they could not live together.” Ouch. Feel the quality of that for a moment. “Their possessions were so great that they
could not live together.” My sister and I became the best of friends only when she went away to university. I didn’t realize we were living out the Abraham and Lot story.

And then there’s Isaac and Ishmael. Anyone here got a half brother? You going to tell me that’s a picnic? You’re the older one and you’re constantly told you should be nice to your little brother even though every time you look at him you think, “It was your mother that ruined my parents’ marriage.
How can I not hate you? Why should I love someone who’s taken away my dad’s attention that used to be all mine?” Or you’re the younger one and you think “I didn’t choose this domestic arrangement so why do I get blamed for it? What do I have to do to be taken seriously in this house and not treated as a toy?”

And we haven’t even spoken yet about Jacob and Esau, and what happens when one parent starts using a child in her maneuverings against the other. Boy does that make it yet more complicated, when you’re piggy in the middle between your parents! And finally there’s Joseph and his brothers, and it’s as if in that story that every element in all the previous stories comes together in a volcano of fratricide and parental favoritism and an over-inflated ego – and yet profound love. Kerboom. If there’s anyone here this morning who doesn’t recognize themselves in one of these stories I’d be mighty surprised. If your life is a chaos of thinly-veiled warfare, and a desperate struggle for recognition, and love you long for but daren’t ask for, and long-festering resentment, and freshly minted fury – welcome to Genesis. You’ll be quite at home.

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A story I’ve told many times, but never written

Starts with me writing the letter K. I write it with blue ink.

It only stands for a nickname,

but it’s a glimpse of the transformation I long for.

A woven pen, with blue ink.

Simple and absolutely priceless.

From a dark corner of an infamous and forgotten prison

‘K’ spends the time of “his time” making crafts for sale.

And he wove it for me. Included my name on the weave.

Yes. My name with green thread.

They say that ink is a writer’s second blood.

And while I see the blue ink drying on the paper,

I can’t help think of the blood that covered the alleys

of his neighborhood, as I walked there so many times,

the same hands that shed so much blood,

have gifted me with one of my most valuable treasures.

A symbol that captures not only my heart for writing

but also a tool to give voice to the untold stories

that remain in the silence of those hard places.

This pen that is a constant reminder of why I do what I do.

Humbly, I hold it in my hands,

challenged by the privilege of seeing beyond.

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. This poem was first published on her blog on November 20 2012.

“Having the baby now…No time to get to the hospital…At the tea shop,” hollered the “Grandma” as she ran up the stairs past Iven to retrieve something from her room, looking understandably extremely anxious. We don’t know these neighbors well but have been trying to connect more, especially with the three younger children in their family of five – quickly becoming six – living in the tiny apartment that shares a wall with ours. The oldest of the kids who lives at home was nine months pregnant with her second baby and we had been greeting them with “Has the baby come yet?” for weeks already.

I took our own little baby Elian across the street to the sidewalk tea shop where the girl was laboring, in a lawn chair, just behind the tea cart. Her mom was hurriedly pacing back and forth on the street and people were yelling to get the girl in a taxi, while others hollered back, “there’s no time!”

I joined the small crowd of women gathered around her, trying not to be in the way, quietly praying and wondering if there was something I could do to help. One of my neighbors and I joked together about how little Elian had come to help encourage the baby that was getting ready to greet the world.

After just a few minutes a motorcycle pulled up with two men on it. Their police radios and first aid bag told me that they were some sort of official “first responders”. We had read a newspaper article recently (actually, on Elian’s due date) about how in Bangkok there is a special division of policemen on motorcycles that are trained and dispatched to deliver babies for women stuck in traffic. The guy they highlighted had just delivered his 42nd baby stuck in traffic.

My neighbor, however, didn’t even have time to start fighting the traffic to the hospital – less than a minute after the official looking guys arrived the girl started shrieking in a manner which told all of us that have given birth before that the baby was coming NOW. Most people started shrieking back and the men I had expected to come take control of the situation passed out two pairs of rubber gloves, said repeatedly, “better for the women to do it” and turned to walk the other way.

The woman who runs the tea cart looked at me and asked in Thai, “Tam Pben Mai? (Can you do it/Do you know how?)” I totally thought she was joking so I half laughed and responded with, “I don’t know how, but I can pray!!” She and one other girl I don’t know put on the gloves and several of us helped pull off the shorts and underwear of the laboring women, from beneath a sarong that was draped over her lap.

The girl’s shrieking made it clear that the baby’s arrival was quite imminent, and though I am sure everyone else there also recognized this, nobody did anything. Finally the younger girl with gloves picked up the sarong and sure enough revealed the head of a baby that had already emerged between his mother’s legs. She timidly put her gloved hand under the baby’s head and looked at me with terror, clearly totally overwhelmed. I thought, “this is ridiculous…someone needs to step in.” I turned to a neighbor and asked her to hold Elian, reached my hand out to motion for the tea shop lady’s gloves (who gleefully pulled them off and worked to get them onto my hands instead) and reached down to help guide the baby all the way out of his mama, and into this world.

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Our obsession with food in this country hits a fever pitch this week as we celebrate Thanksgiving. Yet according to the National Resources Defense Council, Americans throw away $165 billion (yes with a B) worth of food every year. Sam Wells provides a thoughtful reminder that probably won’t make the gastronomic headlines this week.

Food is Politics. The food industry is the largest manufacturing industry in this country. Anyone who disputes the description of agriculture and animal farming as an industry has not been outside lately. The reality is, the old distinction between food on the one hand, which was about the country and the soil, and industry on the other, which was about the city and the factory, has broken down. We all go to the supermarket and shop for groceries. But did you know that the average item of food in a grocery store has travelled 1500 miles? This means that putting food on our dinner plates is a global project.

It has always been so. The outer reaches of Tiberius’ Roman Empire had one central purpose in the imperial economy: and that was to be a breadbasket and source of other agricultural surpluses. If you lived in an Italian villa and your taste was fish paste, olive oil, or wine, then Galilee was your key supply base. Consider the kinds of diseases carried by those drawn to Jesus. You will find that most of them are connected in some way to malnutrition. The politics of food dominates the gospels just as much as it dominates today’s global economy. When Jesus set about transforming human reality, he went to the core of the culture: the production and consumption of food.

Most of Jesus’ talking about food comes in his parables. It is often supposed that Jesus was a simple agrarian figure telling homespun yet subversive stories of small-town folk, a kind of cross between Huckleberry Finn and John Denver. But when your eyes are opened to the politics of food, the parables take on a new dimension. When we read the story of the landowner who built bigger and bigger barns, we start to ask, “Whose land had now come into his possession and why? Was he in the Romans’ pocket or simply exploiting his fellow Jews?” In other words, it is no longer just a parable about greed but also a story about the politics of food. Think again about the parable of the sower. The stony ground and the thistles are not just figures of speech. They are agronomic reasons why peasant farmers remained in grinding poverty. And when the good soil produced a hundredfold, this is not just some kind of Middle Eastern penchant for exaggeration. This is saying at last this struggling peasant famer could pay his taxes, pay his debts, and finally buy his own land and be free of bonded oppression for good. This becomes Jesus’ image of salvation, of the kingdom of God – the ability to have more than enough food in a culture of extortion and exploitation.

How might we embody a Christian politics based on food?

1. Realize that there is nothing more political than what you eat. Let us not get into a fantasy about uncontaminated food. But let us realize that the world’s economy is based on choices about agriculture. The world is what we eat.
2. Ask yourself “Who am I eating with?” Food is both need and pleasure. And when those in need and those you love come together in such a way that they get all tangled up around the meal table, we call it the kingdom of God.
3. If worship is food, could it be that food is worship? Could we imagine how good eating might become a sacrament of reconciliation between human beings and our planet?

The Revd Dr Sam Wells is the vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields in London. He has served as a parish priest for 15 years – 10 of those in urban priority areas. He also spent 7 years in North Carolina where he was Dean of Duke University Chapel.

Taken from Come to the Table: A Collection of Recipes celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Congregation at Duke University Chapel. Congregation at Duke University Chapel, Durham, NC

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.

I came across a dirty onion tossed out in the sun
Abandoned trash that could not be of use to anyone
It lay upon the filthy ground with darkened, withered skin
That did not let me scrutinize the contents held within

With curiousness, I picked it up and then began to peel
The outer layers off to see what insides might reveal
And as I went about my task reducing surface size
The onion fumes brought searing pain and tears welled in my eyes

Hardened, tainted layers were the first that I removed
But inner rings were softer and the quality improved
And when I reached the onion’s center finishing my tour
I found the core was undefiled; was tender, fresh and pure

I came across a youth in jail his body scarred, tattooed
An outcast of society his manner violent, lewd
Curious I then sought to know how was this youth inside
What was the nature of his soul what feelings did he hide

His outer shell was heartless, hard and tough to penetrate
But as I slowly gained his trust I found a different state
He shed the armor he’d built up throughout his sordid past
To guard against the threats he’d faced that left me quite aghast

Abandoned, starved, despised, abused, rejected through the years
The angst released from woes peeled off brought searing pain and tears
The surface layers of this youth were vicious, mean and wild
But in his depths I found the love and meekness of a child

How can we reach that tender heart, what ways can we devise
To break through callousness; remove what causes youths’ demise?
Not jails but God’s transforming grace should be our fervent goal
Peel off the layers, reach the core, set free their yearning soul

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One of the defining experiences of our Street Psalms community is a series of theological conversations that we call “intensives,” in which we consider how big ideas impact the way we live, lead and serve on the margins of our cities. During one of those intensives, called City of Joy, we sometimes explore the ambiguity in which God’s beloved city, Jerusalem, represents in scripture both the heights and depths of the human experience. One of the passages that we sometimes consider is Psalm 48, in which the city itself – its walls, buildings, and towers – become an urban temple and sanctuary for an encounter with God.

In order to lean into this Psalm, I recently paraphrased and personalized this song of scripture to my own city, Denver. This was a good experience for me, and I would invite you to do the same for your own city.

¹The Lord is magnificent and marvelous, deserving of praise like none other!

Scripture points us toward Jerusalem– Mount Zion – as the matchless place where humans encounter God and lift their praise. My home is in another city:Denver,Colorado, at the foot of theRocky Mountains. Even here, our highest praise is reserved for God.

² Speaking of our city, isn’t Denver itself magnificent? Just to mentionDenver conjures images of a gleaming metropolis nestled against spectacular snow-covered peaks. How blessed we are to live here!

Like other great cities “set upon a hill” (well, okay – Denver itself is a flat place, but it borrows glory from the nearby mountains), the Mile High City sparks imagination, inspires music, and draws people from around the world to visit, to seek their fortune, or even to relocate, trading the harsher rhythms of places like Chicago or L.A. for that laid-back Denver groove.

³ God is present in this city. Never forget that it is God who has gifted this place and these people with such an abundance of beauty and resource.

⁴ There have been difficult times forDenver: Flood and fire nearly wiped it from the face of the earth before it could even get started. Cycles of boom and bust have been devastating at times – especially to the poor, taking everything from families and communities at the bottom and margins of society. Xenophobia and racism have found footholds in Denver: we remember with shame the Sand Creek Massacre, the anti-Chinese riots, the KKK’s influence in local government in the 1920’s, and the persistent patterns of segregation and neglect that marginalize communities in so many cities.

⁵ Yet somehow, thanks be to God, we Denverites manage to transcend that legacy, coming together to imagine and build a great city.

⁶ Dr. King observed that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” We have lived that truth inDenver. The purveyors of ignorance and exclusion have their day, from time to time, focusing their wrath on scapegoats drawn so often from vulnerable communities. Fear is their only song.

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