my friend sarah called this afternoon and asked if i knew any stories about evil and suffering. she's writing a speech for a worldview class about evil and suffering.
evil. and suffering.
those words. flashes of the alleyway in nairobi. the street children. white words on a black background. the late nights in mama tom's house, struggling to put words to evil and suffering. the stories of invisible children. congo. women raped.abused.neglected. burundi. children.bellies swollen.sickness.headburned.
and with all those images that flashed in front of my mind's eyes, i'm sure i only touched the surface...i know there's so much more of the suffering that hasn't yet been seen by my eyes.
but sarah needs a concise version. evil and suffering. the story i'll relate, isn't even my own, but is an excerpt of one that has moved me to relive every emotion of those six months all over again. has moved me to reexamine all over again what my life here should look like. what i should live for. what we must live for.
this from the blog of sean carasso. www.fallingwhistles.com
"Many of us have heard the stories of child-soldiers. Invisible children and stories such as A Long Way Gone have been groundbreaking in granting us glimpses into their tortured lives.
I had heard.known.cared. I had even reacted and raged. But when these boys told me of the whistle blowers [of Eastern Congo], the horror grew feet within me.
Captured by Nkunda's rebel army, the boys not big enough to hold a gun are given merely a whistle and put on the front lines of battle.
Their sole duty is to make enough noise to scare the enemy and then to receive-with their bodies-the first round of bullets.
Lines of boys fall as nothing more than a temporary barricade.
The whistle blowers."
when i talk about blowing the whistle, this story is what i'm referring to. the story sean and marcus tell of the boys in the jungles of the congo, where whistles fall from tiny,palm-sized hands.
throughout history, the world has been changed by those who speak up. by those who cry out, raising their voices in the deafening sound of oppression and affliction. by the whistleblowers.
as sean wrote at the end of that story, "Around the world, the sound of the whistle means STOP. PAY ATTENTION. Speak up and say the same."
sometimes my optimism turns into realism turns into pessimism as i remember. and now as i look around and see tanks roll into gaza. see georgia shelled. see the LRA attack and abduct again and again in Congo. see Nkunda's men advance on Goma. along the way: rape.pillage.burn.kill.kidnap.destroy.
and sometimes, my throat closes tight and my stomach rolls as i think about it all and it seems to engulf me. you know that feeling you get after a breakup, or when you find you've been cheated on, or someone you know sits sobbing in your arms... that stomach in your throat, i don't know what to say feeling. the heartbeat quickens and the chest heaves with the labor of each breath. yeah, that feeling.
but lately, my hope lies in the hope i see in our generation. in you. my hope... in God being made visible in young people committed to freedom, love, beauty, justice, truth, PEACE. and now, i even see young Christians stepping up with the desire to live out the gospel of our Christ. to become the hands and feet of Christ in a broken world, believing that another world is possible... that we still haven't found what we're looking for, and we're beginning to realize
that our liberation is bound up together.
sometime i'll write more about this, but there's this thing called walkwithuganda that gives me hope. because i have two friends--keri and luca-- who saw the invisible children GO documentary and they decided to GO. they saw that child abduction and exploitation is wrong, and horrible, and evil. wrong. and they said no more in their heads and dreamed an idea to live it in their lives. they lassoed in reed and compton and are going to spend this summer walking from sewanee to washington, d.c. to make invisible children visible. walk as the kids in uganda have walked for years. those children walking from their homes to a place of safety to avoid abduction and my friends walking from our home to a place of power to "blow whistles" for them. they realize that our liberation is bound together. that our freedom is linked to the freedom of those oppressed across an ocean.
and that. can move me to tears. i see whistles being blown on the front lines of a battle here. we're beginning to know. to search. to research. to care. we are ignorant no longer. and we will not settle for oppression, injustice, pain, suffering, and evil. we want to make "never again" true and evident in our lives. and we aren't letting the media's negativity have the last word. we are beginning to believe again. that God has the last word. that in and through us, he's moving, working, changing, breaking, and beginning.
to make all things new.
to put us back together again.
buy a whistle. blow the whistle. STOP. PAY ATTENTION.
never again.
may you have the grace and peace to believe that this evil doesn't have the last word. that all things will be made new. that another world is possible.
today, do something that inspires you to be a part. blow a whistle. stand on a cliff in the rain and scream as loud as you can like in garden state. dance. live. laugh. love.
for love and freedom,
will
"Today we can hear the whisper of God where we least expect it: in a baby refugee and in a homeless rabbi, in crack addicts and displaced children, in a groaning creation. In the words that Indian activist author Arundhati Roy proclaimed in the World Social Forum in Brazil, 'Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.'"
-Shane Claiborne in The Irresistible Revolution
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