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.

Rigo’s face reflected uncertainty, rejection, sadness, anger, fear and pain. Tears starting rolling over his cheeks and he had no option but to get back into the fight and take the beat-down. I do not remember how the fight stopped. I just know and regret that I was not able to take the shame of that little kid. I did not want to take his shame and invest myself in his life. I did not have the theological, or life categories to understand violence and what serving people looks like in the midst of rejection and shame. It is impossible to say that I understand what that means now. However, the implications of such experiences make me struggle with the Crucified Christ as the shame-taker and peacemaker.

It is important to recognize that once fear and shame visit the human heart, they acquire their own momentum and developmental logic and need little attention and almost no additional investment to grow and spread.[1] The journey towards an incarnational and missional view of life needs to take shame and curses as a vital part of it. It is in allowing myself to be in that place of shame that the mechanism of violence is revealed and I am given the opportunity to be forgiven by God and others and to forgive.[2] That place is where I could have been incarnated in Rigo’s reality of violence, fear and rejection. It was in that place and moment when violence against Rigo could have been stopped. I did not do anything. I did not know how to be with him and for him. I cannot say that I know today how to face the violence that consumes impoverished communities in the global south. What I can say is that I will try my best to accompany those who have suffered violence.

[1] Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Polity Press, 2007), 9.

[2] James Alison, Broken hearts & New Creations: Intimations of a Great Reversal (London: Continuum Books, 2010), 43.

Joel Aguilar is the Training Director for the Center for Transforming Mission in Guatemala. Joel and his wife Annette live and serve in Guatemala City where they try to understand what life is from a mentality of love and abundance, rather than fear and scarcity. Joel has a Master Degree in Urban Leadership from Bakke Graduate University in Seattle, Washington. Find more of his thoughts at his blog theurbanwonderer where this post was first published on March 18 2013.

Ceremonial Bronze Doors, St. James Cathedral, Seattle

Do you ever wonder
what God was thinking
God
that casual calculated maker
of us
when He made
a blind man see
Flooded his world
with vision
A new horizon
of seeing the unseen
free to know and see
how wrong he was
about how the world
looked
back at him
Once blind
now seeing
how hard it is
to see
Remembering how blind
was so safe
and so
free.

Colin McArthur lives in Seattle and thrives when he is asking questions about the true nature of God.  He can be found on Twitter @colinjmcarthur, where you can find his sarcastic quips about weather and other conversation topics usually reserved for the elderly.

 

In the photo he carries her
As blood drips from her severed leg
Shattered by shrapnel
Extraordinary courage
Reads the caption and the Boston mayor
Says we are fearless
In the face of evil but in both
Of their eyes I see fear
I think this new day my son of the moments and
Years you have been your own only
Hero carrying your shattered self
In both of your eyes the fierce fearful
Resolve to carry on
From calamity
Both of your selves
Born into blood
Into the many selves you would need
Not only to carry but
Console and cajole and conjure and cling
The fear now
Held by another
One
With the fierce extraordinary courage to
Be

Scott Dewey is proud adoptive Dad of Crăciun Lingurar Dewey. Eighteen years ago today, Crăciun was born into a Roma (Gypsy) village in Romania. As a plaque in the Dewey home says, “God danced the day you were born.”

it’s been a few weeks since i’ve posted a formation friday. this is a crazy month for us at the refuge & my kids home for spring break & getting moving on the book & all kinds of other typical chaos.  it’s been a really good lent at the refuge focused on “hunger.” one of the things so many of us hunger for is freedom and peace.  we want to feel less crazy brain & more peace. less burdened & more free.  less insecure & more loved.  less burdened & more light. one of the parts about lent that i really like is the introspection and examining what’s going on inside our hearts a little more intentionally. for all kinds of reasons, this passage has been rattling around in my head for the past few weeks (somewhere along the line, my kids had to memorize it when they were at christian school and i can still sing the jingle):  be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ, God forgave you (ephesians 4:32).

forgiveness is such a tricky thing for so many of us.

letting go of deep hurts is much more than saying a verse or praying a certain prayer. releasing resentment is an ongoing process in our spiritual journey that is easier said than done. i think that’s why we need God’s help with it so much. left on my own, i can always come up with a really strong case  why i am right, how i have been harmed, how deeply it hurts, and why i don’t want to let it go. some of my resentments are protections. they keep me safe & protected, my heart a little hardened; they guard me from vulnerability.

unforgiveness also robs us of so much life. i like what anne lamott says, “not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and waiting for the rat to die.”  we are the ones who suffer. oh, the hours i have spent harboring unforgiveness against myself & others that some never even knew existed.  they didn’t lose one wink of sleep about it and i was tortured. i think that’s why Jesus called us to forgiveness so clearly–it’s not so God will be satisfied somehow, it’s so we won’t live in so much torment.

it’s also quite true that forgiving does not mean forgetting. that is a false teaching that gets any of us right back into unsafe situations. to me, forgiveness means means letting go. releasing ties with the negative power it has over us. seeing our story through new eyes. acknowledging not only our humanness, but others, too. and respecting brokenness & evil & reality.  offering mercy.

i know there are a lot of really complicated situations out there. stories of abuse that simply writing a few lines in our journal will not immediately shift, but i thought that for this formation friday, and in the spirit of the last few days of lent, i’d share a little exercise that centers on forgiveness. we’re all at different places on this, so don’t feel any pressure.  i noticed this week that i have been carrying some resentments that i had let go of but picked back up. i was reminded, yet again, how forgiveness is an ongoing part of our human existence and is a pathway to peace (the beatitudes & 12 steps are so good with helping us keep current).  there’s usually always some work to be done in this area, no matter how big or small.

the primary areas that forgiveness seems to fall into are:  forgiving others, forgiving ourselves, and forgiving God.

for some of us, forgiving others means letting people off the hook. they’ll never actually know how deeply they hurt us and will never ask for our forgiveness. but we can’t keep living like we’re living and it’s time to let go. even without the justice we desire.

sometimes the hardest one to forgive is ourselves–all of the “if only i’s…” all of the ways we are so freaking mean to ourselves, so withholding of compassion and kindness. all the “how could i be so stupid’s?” all the noise that clutters our heads & hearts & steals so much life.

and depending on our situations, sometimes forgiving God is necessary. one of the best things that ever happened to me was letting go of blaming God for everything but i have still had to reckon with how truly pissed off i am at the way things work sometimes. for others of us, we must address that God did not protect us properly and how bad that hurts.

they look different for each of us and part of this exercise is to consider what rises to the surface during this season.

a good first step is to consider:

who or what is giving us the most trouble right now?   

what can we not seem to let go of? 

what seems to keep rearing its head in a way that’s destructive?

then, here are some questions to journal, pray, reflect on and use in any way that works for you:

God, i know somehow i need to forgive…for…(the more specific, the better)

i am a little (or a lot) afraid to let it go because…

but i’m tired of the negative ways it affects me, like…

i long to feel…

i think kindness or compassion toward ______ (a person, a circumstance, ourselves, God) might look like..

God, help me let go of the power this hurt has over me. i really want to.  today, as best i can, i choose to…

as with any spiritual reflection exercise, sometimes the time is right and sometimes it’s just not. my hope for this formation friday is not for it to feel forced but rather an invitation when the time is right.  the lighter we can travel, the better. maybe it’s time to let it go…for the first time or the 101st time…

Jesus calls us friend, knowing we will betray him. If there is an order to salvation, this is it.

“God is love” is a theological statement that is true to the core, but “God is friend,” this is the deeper mystery made real in Jesus. Friendship is salvation. All else is theological pretense and drivel. The Friend that dines with us, and washes our feet, also lays down his life for us. “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends…I have called you friends” (John 15:13-15).

“You, heart closed up in a chest, open, for the Friend is entering.” Rumi

Hear afresh these words at the meal of Friendship,

On the night that Jesus was betrayed [by his friends from below, and arrested by his other friends from above], he took bread, blessed it, broke it, gave it to his disciples, and said, ‘Take and eat; this is my body, broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way, after supper, he took the cup, blessed it, and gave it for all to drink, and said, ‘This cup is the blood of the new covenant, shed for you and for all people for the forgiveness of sin. Do this in remembrance of me.’

Dear friends of Jesus, we are forgiven—now—completely! May the great befriending of God break our heart’s wide open.

Christ is Risen. He is risen indeed!

“Start the drumbeat, everything we have said about the Friend is true. The beauty of that peacefulness makes the whole world restless…it is time to dance.” Rumi.

“If your heart stops, do you want us to try and bring you back?”

The disturbing nature of the question sent Poss into momentary flashbacks of all the near death experiences he’d endured. After arriving back to the consciousness of the moment, he responded with a resounding, “Yes, I want to be brought back!”

Poss made it through the surgery and is alive and well today. Seemingly resurrected, he’s been sober since August 23rd of 2011 and now housed in his own apartment after roaming the Mile High streets for years.

Poss tasted the dust and now lives with the aftertaste of resurrection.

Christ hanging there outstretched cross.
Christ hanging here in shame and loss.

Christ unproductive just needs a job.
Christ no english only a nod.

Christ ever thirsting for next drink.
Christ turning tricks. Seductive wink.

Christ dandelion unsightly lawn.
Christ of the dark long before dawn.

Christ gang graffitti brick wall of church.
Christ annoying screams. Makes ears hurt.

Christ illegal. Christ detained.
Christ defeated soaked in rain.

Christ reservations unfit for farming.
Christ mouthing nothing profound nor alarming.

Christ causing distance smells so bad.
Christ twitching awake bad dreams had.

Christ will work for food and anything helps.
Christ needy intimacy. Lacking love felt.

Christ between thieves executed sinner.
Christ mentally ill always beginner.

Christ locked up then deported.
Christ knocked up had her aborted.

Christ chain smoking sucking a drag.
Christ in a name. Queer. Fag.

Overlooked. Irrelevant. Christ remains.
Walking from tombs of loss and shame.

Ryan Taylor is a Hoosier by birth but now lives in Denver and works with Mile High Ministries. He’s learning how to be incarnational with himself and others. Find more of his thoughts at his blog tall monastic guy  where this post was first published on March 8 2013.

The front yard acts as dinner room and homework lounge after 2pm.  The first and second grade classrooms become dorms after 7pm.  Precious Moments is the most space-efficient school I have visited in Guatemala. There is always something going on; people in the neighborhood know the school and the family running it well because of their enthusiasm, energy and faith. And their marching band.  That was where I met Danilo, playing the drums in addition to running around, coloring, doing his homework and goofing around with the other kids after school. A teenager acting like a young boy. Maybe he was trying to make up for time lost to a hard life.

Martha has a sweet heart and spirit. On a normal day she is a wife, a mom, a cook,  a counselor, a friend, a salesperson, a devoted Christian AND the school director at Precious Moments (that also includes an after-school program and foster home.)   She is also part of the CTM network in Guatemala City.   She has hosted interns, vision trips and local leaders in her ministry, and melted our hearts every time with her incredible life and devotion to the Lord, and the kids in this community in zone 13.

Danilo went to live at Precious Moments after his mom couldn’t provide for him anymore and because of the danger of the zone where they lived.  Martha took him in as her own child and raised him for almost 10 years. His mom stayed in the picture, but Martha and her family became a new concept of “family” for him.

So I went pale when I first read the short message that Danilo had been shot and killed.  I couldn’t believe it.  No way… Not him… Retaliation for something that his cousin did… Refusing to join a gang… The versions of the shooting were confusing and often incomplete, but he had died in front of the school, in the middle of the day in front of friends and family. As hard as it is, this type of death has become a new “normal” for young men that live in hard places.

After a few weeks of mourning and trying to make sense of this tragic loss, our staff suggested the Moment of Blessing Liturgy as part of our commitment to suffer alongside our friends and to join them in the midst of their pain.  I showed up for the reading and a bunch of young kids jumped around me chanting “Miss Liz! Miss Liz!”.  “Uh oh…”  – I thought to myself. “Who is going to stay with the kids while we have the liturgy?”  I was trying to come up with ideas when Martha showed up.  She instructed the kids to make a circle with chairs and seconds later we had 15 kids sitting around and paying attention. These children were going to be our Moment of Blessing participants! Five adults joined shortly after.

I wasn’t sure how to proceed.  The Moment of Blessing talks about death, about tragedy, about justice… words that are hard for adults to process, and even more for kids.  But they paid attention.  They followed the reading with their little fingers.  Their eyes opened wide when I read Danilo’s name on the page.  They started coloring and making hearts and little stars around his name on their copies of the blessing.  Talk about a precious moment.   That was the Moment of Blessing for them – a way of learning and praying in the midst of death.  A little heart by his name, a smiley sheep next to Psalm 23. They remembered a life lived with love and the Scripture reminded them not to fear in the face of the valley of death. The drawing of their brother, their friend, their teacher, connected with words and prayers of hope for a difference in their street, in their neighborhood and their lives.

The adults asked me if they could keep their copies.  They wanted to read it again at home in private as a prayer guide.  I felt blessed by the experience and humbled by the privilege of leading this moment. This was my second time leading a Moment of Blessing, and my heart broke.  I wished that I didn’t have to go through it again, especially for a loved one, but I remembered that it is a prayer that I have come to love and understand. It is the same prayer that I pray with my brothers and sisters around the world who are also praying the same words in the midst of awful situations. I continue to pray the words that we prayed that day at Precious Moments.  Return no one evil for evil.  Strengthen the faint-hearted.  Support the weak.  Love one another as God loves you… and pray that we each might act in some way to prevent the further loss of life due to homicide.

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 March 5 2013.

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.

So this is everybody’s story. Not everybody’s story ends in bloodshed. But we’ve all thought of it. Most of us find it a whole lot harder to live the gospel in the privacy of our birth family than anywhere else on earth. Sure, save the whale in the southern seas. Sure, save desperate children in the slums of Calcutta. Anything to avoid having to go home and face living the gospel with your pigheaded sister or big-headed brother. The Cain and Abel story is telling us, live the forgiveness and reconciliation of the gospel at home or don’t live it at all. Could be the toughest part of the good news to deal with. But deal with it we have to. You know the phrase “Charity begins at home”? It usually sounds like selfishness. In this story it turns out to be an incredible challenge.

Now let’s read the story again, this time as a story about you. You and God, on the first Sunday of Lent. I have an academic friend who goes to conferences all round the country. Every year at his field’s annual meeting he shares a room with the same colleague from graduate student days. As
soon as they are reunited, usually in the hotel room, they ask each other the same question. “Are you living well?” Somehow that question covers everything that matters. That’s a question to ask one another on the first Sunday in Lent each year. “Are you living well?”

Let’s look at what Cain and Abel can tell us about beginning Lent. Remember, what immediately precedes this story in Genesis is that of Adam and Eve. And in the Adam and Eve story God calls to Adam, and says, “Where are you?” “Where are you?” And here in the next chapter God calls to Cain, and says, “Where is your brother?”

“Where are you?” “Where is your brother?” These aren’t just two questions for the beginning of Lent. They’re probably the two most important questions you’ll ever be asked. And the order’s important. Remember the words of Philippians chapter 2: “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” Your first duty is to save your own soul. You have no greater responsibility in life than this: when God comes to you “walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze” and says “Where are you?”, do you make an eager answer, or are you skulking in the bushes hoping not to be seen? Brothers and sisters, can you answer that question right this moment: “Where are you?”? Are you answering eagerly, or are you shrinking into the shadows?

And only when you’ve faced up to that first question are you ready for the second question, “Where is your brother?” Imagine you’re standing before the Lord Jesus at his judgement seat in heaven, and he’s looking at you with eyes of compassion and mercy and love like you’ve never seen or known before. And imagine he’s saying to you the words God said to Cain: “Where is your brother?” And suddenly you realize you’ve got this whole salvation thing wrong. You thought it was about keeping your nose clean and hoping God overlooks your foolishness and pride. But Jesus is saying, “What about the others? Did you leave them behind? Where are they? Are they in Syria? Are they in a deportation centre for rejected asylum applicants? Are they on the London streets? Where is your brother?” Do you have an answer? Is your life drenched in ifs and buts and excuses and explanations? Are you standing there at the judgement seat asking for an extension as if salvation were some kind of end-of-term exam and if you had a couple more days you’d be ready? Where is your brother? What’s your answer? There’s only one answer Jesus wants. “Right here beside me.”

You can live a hundred years, you can be decorated by royalty, you can win a string of Olympic gold medals, you can be awarded an Oscar, you can find a cure to the ten most dangerous diseases on the planet. But in the end, all that matters is your answer to these two questions. “Where are you?”
“Where is your brother?”

If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t find it easy to pray long prayers or hasn’t the technological wizardry to keep intercession lists on your iPhone; if your household can’t cope with you meditating at 6 in the morning, or your Lenten fast last never lasts past the first weekend, I suggest you just do this. Every single day for the next six weeks, at the same time each day, you sit still and let God ask you these two questions. “Where are you?” “Where is your brother?” Two questions that bring you face to face with yourself, and face to face with God.

Readings: Genesis 4.1-16; Romans 10.8b-13; Luke 4.1-13

The Revd Dr Sam Wells is the vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields in London where he preached this sermon on February 17, 2013. He 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.