In the meantime, I'll share a bit from my journal in El Salvador.
I find it hard to grasp that in my lifetime - during my childhood and adolescence - these people faced such violence and daily terror for reasons I'll probably never quite understand. Not to mention with the aid, training and assistance of my own government.
And yet, their humanity is so present. In a way, I suppose, it's more incarnational. Whereas Americans for the most part take life for granted, here they know it is something worth living and maybe even dying for, like Ita Ford said in her letter to her Goddaughter a few months before her death.
We are so apt to squander the gifts God has so graciously blessed us with - to hoard it for ourselves, or take from others. Our entire socio-economic system fosters the idea of God's creation as commodity rather than gift for all. Sisters and brothers of the one creator become nations, tribes, corporations, gangs, factions, armies ...
I don't know that I'll ever understand the why, but this initial rejection of our one-ness seems to be the cause of so much human suffering. And to add to the mystery, it is in the presence of the people who suffer most that you feel the simple truth of God's love. God is so present here, as the people are present to and in God. It's as if they've passed through the suffering right to the heart of God.
I'm rambling, and as I say it's all mystery. All I know is I find myself more called to work and pray for peace in this troubled world of ours.
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