Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Mercy

CNN has about wrecked me.

I have cried more over the news in the last 6 months than I have in the last several years combined. Images of planes shot down, of towns torn up over unarmed young men being shot dead, of evil in the form of knife-wielding executioners, of mamas desperate enough to send their babies alone over hundreds of miles to a country where they might, they just might, survive. And then those babies being jeered at and harassed and condemned as criminals and threats because they don't have a piece of paper declaring them "legal," the kids' harassers often being people who identify as Christians, as those whose aim is to model their life around the example of one called the "Prince of Peace?"

This all could kill me.

During one of my early years of teaching high school, when I was overwhelmed by the unmet needs around me, frustrated with the overarching attitude of apathy, and ground down by the lack of pretty much everything, I came upon the book of Micah. At the end of the prophet's rant against the Israelites, he asks this question: What does God want from us? To a people who have been very religious, sacrificing animals in order to "please God," the prophet says this: He wants you to act justly. He wants you love mercy. And he wants you to walk through life with a spirit of humility. All else is religious garbage.

So I watch the news and then ask: What does justice look like? Where can I show mercy? What issues do I need to address with humility?

Sometimes I need to speak up; Often, I need to shut up.

*************

One day my kindergarten teacher passed around foreign currency, naming the countries in which she'd traveled and acquired those coins. She placed coins in my five year old hands, and God placed wanderlust into my heart. He opened up my eyes to see that the world was big: so much bigger than Waterloo, Iowa or the good old U. S. of A.

So I traveled, and in traveling I saw God: In the field of sunflowers that stretched for miles as I discovered the French countryside on the back of a motorcycle. In the blue glaciers of Alaska, and in those military kids who had lived in 3 or 4 places before landing at Elmendorf Air Force Base, those kids who showed love freely and quickly. In the curiosity of kids in Sibenik, Croatia, whose classroom became a place of healing after the horrors of war. I saw God in the vastness of the ocean and in the confines of a rotting dump where Filipino kids live and scavenge, scrounging for their next meal.

And I met God: In the midst of a mess of tears and brokenness, on the hallway floor of my St. Paul apartment. I was a 25 year old almost-divorcee at the end of herself, and God was there.

And God showed me mercy.

To whom much is given, much is required.

So when I see those Honduran and Salvadoran kids, their eyes big and fear-filled, their bodies small and scared, and I watch grown men with signs in hand protesting the immigrant children's arrival, their faces twisted in anger and hatred yelling "Illegals get out!," my heart wrenches. I imagine my girls, 8 and 9 years old, I imagine them on that bus. I imagine that the tables are turned, that they had to flee, and that this was their welcome. And my mama heart has to shut it down, because I just. can't. go there. THERE.

And so I speak up. I sign petitions, I email lawmakers, I join advocacy groups. I google "foster parents/unaccompanied minors," but I close the computer screen in frustration with the bureaucratic bullshit that one must battle in order to do some small good, something that might help just one child.

So I do what little I can, and then I do what I must: I pray.

I pray for those kids, that they would feel secure. That someone would reach out and love them. That God would answer the prayers of their mamas back in Honduras and El Salvador and Mexico, that those kids would be safe, that they would have a hope and a future. That mamas in the United States would shut off their TVs, silence the voices of the talking heads who have made their livings by fomenting fear, and listen to the truth of their childhoods: Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight.

Jesus doesn't care about a line marked on a map, he cares about whether we followed his lead: loving the least of these, looking through eyes of compassion, living to love and serve those on our path, those characters who make their way into our story.

**********

And then there's Ferguson. It exploded last night, figuratively and literally, and immediately, Facebook was inundated with posts responding to the grand jury's decision. I read them with a heavy heart, because of the despair that so many were feeling and because of the callousness that caused some not to feel at all. I remembered seeing a tweet a few months back that said this: The next time a national tragedy happens, rather than spout off on social media, everyone who calls themselves a Christian should sit in silence and pray for 7 days.


As a middle-class white woman, I think this is good advice for white people right now. Let's all just shut up. Because I can't speak to the experiences of black people. I don't know what racial profiling feels like. I don't know the humiliation of being suspect. all. the. time. I don't know the fears of black mamas, worrying that their kids, the sons they birthed and raised and loved beyond love might be mistaken as a threat, that the slightest twitch or move might justify a bullet. I don't know that kind of pain, and I have no business minimizing it.

Instead, I sit and cry and pray.

And I realize this: We are still paying for the sins of our fathers. Families that were torn apart and sold as chattel to the highest bidder, that weren't allowed to marry because that would mean that they were human beings with rights, that watched as the women--mothers, daughters, grandmothers--were dragged off and raped--those families? Their residual brokenness has been passed on from generation to generation to generation. Some have been able to rise above that brokenness, but many have not.

And we are responsible. White people are responsible. I am responsible.

"No justice, no peace," they chant, but there will be no justice, because no punishment would suffice, and really, who do you punish? The perpetrators are long dead, leaving their legacy behind.

No reparations would be enough. No amount of money could buy back decades of slavery, no monetary value can be placed on the lives of those who were enslaved.

So, Ferguson? I'm going to shut up, because I just. don't. know.  I don't, and I can admit that.

All I can say, in humility, is "I'm sorry." Again and again and again, "I'm sorry."

And I pray for peace.


















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