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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This past month 22 students graduated with a masters degree in Global Urban Leadership and one with a doctorate through CTM’s partnership with Bakke Graduate University.

This celebration was the fruit of much labor and much love. Each student read nearly 15,000 pages, written more than 300 pages and completed at least 10 projects in which they translated principles into practice. These students underwent a demanding process of learning how to do theology from below –  learning how to read Scripture with and for the communities they serve. This was no ivory tower experience. This was theology done in the context in which the leader’s serve. All of their classes were held in informal settlements like Kibera and Mathare.

As graduates they join a very exclusive club. Less than 1% of the world’s population holds a masters degree and a fraction of 1% holds a doctorate. A very rare and seductive kind of power was conferred upon them along with their degrees and they will be called to steward it on behalf of those they serve. They will be tempted, as all people with power are tempted, to use their gift for their own ends, thereby excluding others.

Stewarding power and using one’s voice on behalf of the voiceless is not without its risks. That is why Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann, said that if we want to teach and preach a subversive Gospel, “The key is not to be detected too soon.” Why? Because theology from below is often experienced as a threat by those from above. This should not surprise us. Even Jesus’ first sermon ended badly. The crowd became enraged and filled with vengeance when Jesus began to teach about the expansive movement of grace throughout history that made room for the excluded (See Luke 4:16-30).

About four years ago, a wheelchair entered our home and all our lives changed dramatically.  It was rather ironic, really, because for my husband and I and three of our children, the wheelchair was simply another adaptive tool added to an already full toolbox used to meet the needs of our unique family.  For my oldest daughter, Anna, it represented a restraint.  She hates wheelchairs, having spent nearly two months confined to one while wearing a body cast during surgery recovery.  Like her younger sister, Anna has a disability, but she is an ambulator, not a chair user, and her prosthetic leg helps her achieve complete independence and nearly all the athletic goals she sets.  She hates the stares, the pity and all that comes with wheelchairs.  I hate the back-breaking lifting of it into and out of our van, up over bumps and the inevitable step or staircase that always seems to be in the way.

But for our youngest, Alyona, that little pink wheelchair represented liberation.  Having just recently been adopted out of an orphanage in southern Ukraine, it was Aly’s first wheelchair.  She was a scooter and crawler at the orphanage, as she did at our home at first. Within days she found a  Rubbermaid container that she could sit in and slide easily about our hardwood floors.  In her box, she glided around the first floor of our house as the rest of us went about getting adjusted to this new little, loud, brilliant and physically dependent child.  After going through all the mandatory testing, purging of parasites and tuberculosis, adjusting to new sleeping patterns, culture shock, beginning attachment and learning to speak English, it was time to address her physical disabilities.  And, so to the list of health care providers, we added a rehab doctor.

From that point on, things changed and it was all because of the wheelchair.  Our first run in with a rehab doctor and her team did not go well, and yielded a year long struggle proving to her and her staff that I was right and they were wrong:  Aly didn’t need a $35,000 power wheelchair that weighed over 350 lbs and posed a risk to all the other children she was around.  She was able to do much more than they anticipated, and without ever giving her a chance to try a manual chair, they submitted paperwork to our insurance stating her “medical need” for the expensive and high tech chair.  I argued that they didn’t know it was necessary because she hadn’t been given a chance to try the simpler road. Yet, rather than admitting they might be wrong and that they should at least let the child try a manual chair, they accused me of denial.  Insults ensued, and climaxed with accusations as to my callousness as a mother who wouldn’t get the absolute best wheelchair (one that would have cost our family $65,000 in co pays, ramps and the custom built van large enough to cart it and our seven member family around) for her poor daughter, who was most certainly, in their words, destined for a life of ongoing therapy and intervention. 

Didn’t care?  If only those accusing me had understood the depth of the pain that I felt over Aly’s losses, how I would gladly amputate my own legs and give them to her, if only that would solve anything.  If only they could see what she could do – a four-year-old so brilliant she was teaching herself to read English within a year of first speaking the language – rather than simply see her weakness.  But they didn’t and for the first time as a parent, I was looking like I not only didn’t know how to parent, but that I was actually medically negligent.

Being subversive by nature, my reaction was to purchase her a little hot pink manual chair off of Ebay for $150.  She was wheeling around our house from the first night my husband pieced the chair together, obviously not needing the behemoth that they had told our insurance was “medically necessary”.   We requested the addition of a new rehab doctor onto her team, and  I gladly let Aly wheel into her next rehab appointment. She acquiesced with not only some spins, but also by popping wheelies. I must admit, I enjoyed watching her “team” of specialists eat crow while I suddenly went from medically-neglectful-mom to mom-of-the year, who had championed against the odds in defense of her daughter’s abilities. 

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Sani Pass border crossing between South Africa and Lesotho (Photo Duncan Wilson)

there is a place
beyond the border
where love grows
and where peace
is not the frozen silence . . .

to get to that place you have to
go or be pushed out
beyond the borders,
to where it is lonely, fearful,
threatening, unknown.

only after you have wandered
for a long time in the dark
do you begin to bump into others
also branded, exiled,
border crossers,
and find you walk on
common ground.

it is not an easy place to be,
this place beyond the borders.
but it is a good place to be.

Kathy Galloway

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I want to invite you to subscribe to Geography of Grace. Whether you have just discovered us or you are a long-time reader, you are warmly invited to enter into the stories, articles, reflections, and poetry written by and for those who serve in high-risk communities. It doubles as an online library for students enrolled in our masters program in partnership with Bakke Graduate University.

Geography of Grace is the visible work of a rather invisible group of people. For the past five years this group has quietly been discerning its call and identity. The group transcends organizational boundaries, but it is nurtured within Center for Transforming Mission and is the DNA of our work. This community of friends has discerned that we share a common call – the call to develop grassroots leaders who teach and preach Good News from below. Our task is to see God at work in the world and to celebrate what we see God doing. We are committed to a life of Action, Reflection and Discernment with and for those who have been labeled the least.

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