many children in my Father's house: our task of non-violence as a way of Life

I nearly always feel overwhelmed when i sit down to think of how to share my life with you all by using my words or my stories. The truth is, life is so much more than this. Life, for me these days, has been the quiet moments where i find holiness etching its way into all the mess here, slowly chipping away at the walls i have built around me after all this time...so much good is here, and what a gift. i'll share what i know, for today--

Me and Erin moved from our Karen friends apartment in February. It felt like our time there was coming to a close, for us and for them. Our common life together was a time of so much beauty, as we shared meals and singing, washing dishes and playing violent pseudo power ranger games with the boys, helping with homework and walking to and from our neighbors’ homes and dollar general. Thanks be to God for their hospitality and humility, and for allowing us to see that although they grew up in a Thai refugee camp and got married when they were 14, they are not so different than us. They laugh at the same things, suffer in the same ways, and long for the same love we all long for. So after six months of sharing life and a home with our new friends, and with our friend Heidi’s arrival in Clarkston in January, we found a new place tucked away in the corner of one of Clarkston’s largest and most diverse apartment complexes. We have been living here about 4 months now, and oddly and slowly this place has become our new home. It has become for me a home I never knew I needed so much. We have Nepali, Karen, Sudanese, Chin, African American, and Togolese neighbors. We have kids knocking on our door constantly and many days there’s a serious game of caneball happening right outside our door. We have formed relationships with many people, and continue to make new friends every day. The three of us are some of 5 or 6 white people who are living in a complex with nearly 700 apartments. We fill our days helping out our neighbors in whatever ways we can, filling out applications, sharing meals, and just learning how to live together in this peculiar place. I often garden with 15 kids at one time, chew betelnut with a group of Karen women, get welcomed into new homes for dinner, and take van fulls of neighborhood kids to our community’s Friday night open play gathering.

The longer I am here, the more difficult it becomes to explain my days to my friends and family who are living life elsewhere. The rhythms of this community are unlike any place I have ever known, and I so long to use the right words to share the beauty, the pain, the poverty and the richness of life here with all of you. I am learning life is simply--life, wherever you go. We are living in a unique place, yes, but we are not so special. A friend said to me yesterday, “We could choose to live a thousand other lives, and sometimes we want to, but we don’t have a thousand lives to live-we only have this one and we must be faithful to this one life, or we will miss all that surrounds us. We cannot be looking to the next thing, or we would end up in another place never REALLY being in the place we were before this one and before that one.” This has become my life here---to learn what it means to live life not lusting after the next thing, not constantly wondering what my life would be if I were someplace else, with someone else, doing something else. The truth is- I am here, and there is so much good work being laid before me. I have realized, at some point, if we want to remain faithful to the call before us to live true lives of love, we must commit ourselves to a particular place and to a particular people. In this—a web of connection is formed that is not easily broken, and lives are all bound up together in all the ugliness and beauty that rules our human journeys. If you ever read this blog or share with me in this road of life in any way, I am thankful to you this day for binding your story with mine. Life is so short, and so dear.

 I want to share a story of something that happened recently, a story that has quietly wounded us and required of us honest answers to life’s most serious questions.

It’s 11:30 on Thursday night a few weeks ago. I am sitting in my bed, feeling the cool draft outside penetrating our too thin walls. My roommates are asleep and our box fan is on as it is every night, in order to drown out the unending BET late night shows of our neighbor upstairs. By the lowlight, I am reading a book about the Nickel Mines Amish community in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. What I find hidden within these pages in the muddled late night moments of this Thursday night, is a story that would begin to hold me and speak truth to me in the hours and days that would follow what was about to happen outside our front door. About the time the moon was assuming its fullness in the city sky and our rowdy streets were beginning to quiet, I found myself reading about a man who was preparing to enter this peaceful Amish community and bring with him a violence that would not soon be forgotten. (I would later finish this story and know that not only did he take his own life on this strange morning in October of 2006, but he also took with him the lives of 5 young schoolgirls.)

As I was reading about this man’s preparation and routine on the morning of the shooting, I was instantly startled to hear, in my own room, three distinct, surreal, and very close gunshots from outside my window. I quickly jumped out of my bed, and shut off my lamp. In that moment, I was caught between two equally unfamiliar places: 1) wrapped up in a story of violence and forgiveness that was more familiar than it seemed, and 2) jolted to consciousness by the quieting and disarming horror unfolding just on the other side of one, thin wall. I whispered loudly to my roommate Heidi to wake up. I said, “Did you hear that?….” She said no, that she had heard nothing. I told her I was nearly positive that I had heard three gunshots just outside nearby. Heidi was forced quickly into alertness and we began discussing what we should do.

We have learned in hard ways, by living here, we are all bound up in the stories of this place and of the people who we call our friends and neighbors. We live closely, on top and under and around so many different people. Our building houses 8 different families, and up towards 30 people. These stories define us, our similarities and differences, our humanity and our fear is what makes who we are. One of these stories we have chosen to tie ourselves to is a family who lives a few doors down from us. Since moving to this new apartment complex, we have been suspicious of this particular group, seeing various activities near and around their apartment that would lead us to assume there are things going on there that would suggest we keep our distance. And we have, in some way. This does not mean we do not share our daily moments or stories, we have in fact shared many kind and honest conversations with those that live there. However, we have not had this family into our home like we have many others, and we have not shared in meals or music or time in the garden with them. When I heard the gunshots, my mind went to this family and fear seized me. We wondered if we should even call the police—would our own safety be jeopardized? Would the cops want to come and knock on our door to get more information? Is it right to put ourselves and our neighbors at risk by putting what we know in the light of this dark situation??

In a few short minutes that seemed so long, we decided it was best to call. We ended up giving an anonymous report and finding out that others had already called to report the shooting. We called back about a half hour later to see if more information could be shared, but they had nothing. We three finally went back to our beds around 1, laying down for what would be a very sleepless night. We woke up the next morning to find bullet holes in our neighbors’ window. We wondered now…is everybody okay? Did the police ever come? Is someone hurt and no one knows about it? We did not know the answers to nearly any of our questions. All we knew is, if our neighbors are in danger, we must take up the burden to make sure we have done what we can to dispel fear and bring peace back to this place we call our home. We had a few more interactions with the police and with property management, and found out the family had already been asked to leave and find another place to live. No one seems to be hurt, but people remain fearful and imagine the worst.

The past few weeks I have spent my time studying Martin Luther King’s six principles of non-violence. We have planned to use this framework for our Wednesday night “Peace playground” we will do here at our apartment with some help from the youth group at our church this summer. Before last Thursday night I would say, “yeah, I believe in non-violence as a way of life and I try to make it my life and my work here.” But as these events unfolded on Friday and on into the weekend, I began questioning…do I still fear for my life? Have I, in the deepest and most dark places of who I am, maintained some sense of self-protection and a belief in violence as a means to save my own life and the lives of my friends? The question became for us….if we believe in what we are doing here, and if we are choosing to know life here in all of its goodness and harshness, aren’t we, too required to take up the hard work of remaining faithful to the call of Jesus before us? And for us, for me, these words of Jesus require me to tear out my fear and release my very life to the forces of love, a love that does not use or fear violence.

On Friday morning, we decided it was best for us not to stay the night at our apartment for a few days. But as we were walking to our cars, and putting all we ever needed into our backseats, I felt I was betraying the truth I came here to bear witness to. My other neighbors here did not run away, because they have nowhere to run. But we did run, I think because we still have one hand grabbing this world and all its empty promises.

I went on a long and silent hike on the Saturday following this strange event. In my time alone, with the woods and the water and the green, I heard the voice of Jesus asking me if I was ready to follow Him wherever He may lead, even into the dark places where violence is louder than peace, where it rules our homes and cities and the places we walk each day. This voice was asking if I was willing to stand up and fight with the quiet and unfamiliar voice of nonviolent love and mercy. A love and mercy that still looks these same neighbors in the eyes and sees them for all the are and for all we hope they could be. I saw one of the people of that apartment a few mornings ago and although nothing of the shooting or the move-out was mentioned, I still felt something holy and true in our few moments together. Only through God’s grace for me and for this friend, was I able to stand before my neighbor and still know love for him, and to feel no fear. We are all a part of the Beloved Community, if we will but release our fearful grip on this world, we could fall into the frightening freedom of God’s grace and mercy and find a life we never knew could be ours.

I do not know exactly what happened that Thursday night here in our little place of the world. But I do know that we are now being asked to answer a question that Jesus and his disciples and all those who have lived and died for the sake of love and justice in the world have answered—a question that is answered by normal people like you and me every day around the world-- Are we taking the Gospel of Jesus and eating it in such a way that it is becoming our very self, the center and life of everything we do? Are we willing to not only believe, but also live as if the powers of love are stronger than the forces of violence, that there is always life after death, and that the Gospel we preach leaves no room for fear? I pray, I beg, to our Good Father that this may be true for me and for the life I know here. I hope to be so bold to behold the power of Resurrection, even here. For this is the life I have chosen to know, if I don't choose the way of non-violence as a way of life, then the forces of darkness, death, destruction and fear will continue to hold us and our neighbors as captives. If we do not choose this, then we do not know what it means to proclaim Jesus, and to partake in His Resurrection. 

I pray to the good God of peace that we are able to answer these questions today. That honest life surrounds you and that you are desperate to embody and become the life and body of Jesus of Nazareth, in your own way, in whatever inch of earth you call home. Let us become a body dedicated to peace and a people committed to the Gospel of love.

Father, find us in our death, and resurrect us to your truth and to your freedom this day. 

Peace of Christ,

Holly.

For further reading on how forgiveness can change our world, find the book Amish Grace and be reminded of the generous Gospel of love.

The best way I know: King’s six principles (and one of our own)

Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people. It is a positive force confronting the forces of injustice, and utilizes the righteous indignation and the spiritual, emotional and intellectual capabilities of people as the vital force for change and reconciliation.

The Beloved Community is the framework for the future. The nonviolent concept is an overall effort to achieve a reconciled world by raising the level of relationships among people to a height where justice prevails and persons attain their full human potential.

Attack forces of evil, not persons doing evil. The nonviolent approach helps one analyze the fundamental conditions, policies and practices of the conflict rather than reacting to one’s opponents or their personalities.

Accept suffering without retaliation for the sake of the cause to achieve the goal. Self-chosen suffering is redemptive and helps the movement grow in a spiritual as well as a humanitarian dimension. The moral authority of voluntary suffering for a goal communicates the concern to one’s own friends and community as well as to the opponent.

Avoid internal violence of the spirit as well as external physical violence. The nonviolent attitude permeates all aspects of the campaign. It provides mirror type reflection of the reality of the condition to one’s opponent and the community at large. Specific activities must be designed to help maintain a high level of spirit and morale during a nonviolent campaign.

The universe is on the side of justice. Truth is universal and human society and each human being is oriented to the just sense of order of the universe. The fundamental values in all of the world’s great religions include the concept that the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice. For the nonviolent practitioner, nonviolence introduces a new moral context in which nonviolence is both the means and the end.

There is Life after death.

It seems that a key principle/belief of Martin King has been left out. That is that as a Christian, King believed in the resurrection of the dead. That there is life after death. This belief is not only central to the Christian life, but to the way of nonviolence. Resurrection is the vindicating force that affirms our belief that life will always prevail, that good will always overcome evil and that God, the giver of life, will reign victorious over the powers of death that rule our world.