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A High Wind of Grace in Jamaica
an article by Alexander Patico
I was fortunate to be one of the thousand people who gathered in
Kingston, Jamaica in May for the International Ecumenical Peace
Convocation, an event marking the end of what the World Council of
Churches had christened the Decade to Overcome Violence.
Orthodox participants in the Jamaica convocation (Alex Patico is seventh from the right)
click on photo to enlarge
We
were a diverse group, from the still-campaigning aged to the fresh,
energetic young, from those who work “in the trenches” – from war
protests to helping rape victims – to those who write and teach in
academic settings. Some were survivors of violence and some were healers
and some were both. There were torture victims determined to reduce the
size of that fraternity of sufferers, and the lesbian person who lived
in shame and self-doubt until finding fellow-sufferers and discovering
her own voice. There were the parish leaders trying to shepherd their
flocks through “the valley of the shadow of death” – from war to street
crime – on a daily basis.
Clearly we who took part in the Decade to Overcome Violence did
not succeed in our eponymous mission, but then none of us had imagined
coming anywhere near such a utopian vision. Far from being overcome,
violence persists in an infinity of locations with ever more deadly
effectiveness, with robot warriors increasingly shedding human blood.
Our convocation wasn’t a celebration.
And, yet whenever we sing “We Shall Overcome,” it’s not in
expectation of a miracle. Rather, we are just stating our certainty
that, in the words of Martin Luther King, “The arc of the moral universe
is long, but it bends toward justice.” We may not hope to see either
peace or justice achieved in our own lifetimes, but we must do our best
to bend that arc a fraction of a degree in the time God gives us.
Why was I there? When asked, I said that I represented the
Orthodox Peace Fellowship, a group with members worldwide, though with
the majority in North America – a group from a diversity of Orthodox
jurisdictions – a fellowship most of whose scattered members have yet to
meet each other face to face.
In another sense, of course, I was there as an individual. As a
Christian, I cannot pretend that overcoming violence is “someone else’s
job.” If I claim Christ, I claim his cross and his call to reverence and
to protecting life. This I had in common with nearly all the
extraordinary delegates assembled for seven days on the campus of the
University of the West Indies. People who, in practice as well as
theory, are “their brothers’ keepers.” People who in their daily lives
are “known by how they love one another.” People who, as Jesus says in
the beatitude of peacemaking, are to be known as “children of God.”
The setting was new to me, but at the same time familiar. It
felt like the UN conferences on sustainable development I had attended
in Rio and Johannesburg. It also seemed a bit like a summer camp, though
without the archery and the flag-lowering ceremony at dusk. Masses of
people who, as the days went by, gradually shifted from name tags into
people, and then, in many cases, friends.
We talked after plenaries, comparing impressions of the
speakers. During Bible studies, we teased out the meanings of phrases
written long ago. Over meals, we shared information about the projects
awaiting our return back home. Over drinks we talked about what we hoped
for our families, our communities, for the world. We walked and we
talked, back and forth on the sweltering college campus that was our
temporary home. Important areas of discussion included:
(This article is continued in the discussionboard - see righthand column of this page)
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DISCUSSION
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RELIGION AND CULTURE OF PEACE
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(The following is continued from the main article listed above.)
Important areas of discussion included:
Conscientious
objection: In various ways and to different degrees, many governments
seek to stifle the “still, small voice” of conscience. Until Kingston I
didn’t know there are some 900 South Koreans jailed each year for
attempting to be recognized as CO’s, or that both men and women are
conscripted in Eritrea, with harsh treatment awaiting those who refuse
to wage war. The UN Commission on Human Rights declared over fifteen
years ago that “persons performing military service should not be
excluded from the right to have conscientious objections to military
service.” Developing this issue a few years later, that body
acknowledged that “persons [already] performing military service may
develop conscientious objections.” Even so, in most countries
conscientious objectors in uniform often end up in military prisons.
“Selective” conscientious objection – objection to engagement in a
particular war and not necessarily to war in general – is something that
is still not recognized in law in the US and many other countries,
Diversity
and tolerance: I have never heard respect for “the other” expressed
quite so well as one conferee did: “We are all different! God made us
all in his image – God must be truly magnificent!” Indeed, Rabbi Arthur
Waskow once shared with me the Talmudic wisdom that the coin Jesus
pointed to, when he said “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,” was
identical to other similar coins, whereas the products of God’s mint –
human beings – are each unique. Each is made in the image of our divine
monarch. God embodies the mystery of diversity in unity, while an
earthly rulers’ reign is an assembly line of faceless conformity.
Disability, agism, sexism and discrimination: A speaker with a
major disability asked the thought-provoking question: “Who exactly are
the workers who were hired for the same wages at the eleventh hour –
those who so annoyed the ones who were hired first?” They were probably
not, she suggested, the strong and able-bodied, nor of the favored
ethnicity.
Gays and lesbians: I was unaware of how heated the “debate”
about sexual orientation is in places like Moldova, where an Orthodox
priest reportedly was among those who attacked a bus carrying activists
for gay causes and tried to set it afire.. . ...more.
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