Salt and Light: The Flavor Shines On

I’ve physically returned and settled in from my first international trip on behalf of Lutheran World Relief, but it’s far from over. The reflections linger. I expect the impact will be with me for life: especially the witness of local heroes, like Adrianna who is a teacher in one of the “last mile” communities where LWR works. Her father was killed several months prior on the same stretch of road on which our delegation had driven. Yet she bounded with elation about LWR’s partnership with her community, “you are a blessing from God.”

Funny how the math works, isn’t it. I’m the one who feels blessed by our gracious hosts, their testimonies of struggle, their perseverance in the face of adversity. Yes, LWR aims to deliver hope on behalf of our faithful constituents many of whom are U.S. Lutherans, but double yes, we are the greater recipients.

So, my official visit to Colombia is complete. But the work goes on there and here; for example, Mary Duvall and all U.S. leaders in that brave movement called Sal y Luz (“Salt and Light”) continue to speak and act for justice. They were mentioned with profound appreciation by many Colombians for their prayers and their advocacy efforts for the sake of the displaced, threatened or oppressed.

What’s next for me? My 23 hour travel begins on Saturday morning focusing me toward the Philippines and Indonesia.

I hope you’ll blog along with me.

Dignity for Women at Work

Women with dignity have a certain self-respecting way of walking and talking—backs formerly bent stand straight. Demeaning servitude becomes meaningful labor. Violent nightmares are transformed daringly into dreams. Dignity-bestowing entrepreneurial realities were born from seemingly impossible dreams when some partners of Lutheran World Relief got involved.

This week my eyes beheld that dignity. It transcended language, culture or national borders. Because of the safe space provided by LWR partners, these women were able to discover and develop business acumen and leadership capacity in a processes that called forth their full humanity and made their eyes sparkle.

Frutico is a mouthwatering lollipop product. Of course I’d be irresponsible if I didn’t personally verify its deliciousness with my own taste-test. The various flavors represent the tongue-tingling and exotic fruits of Colombia. Frutico is already turning a profit and searching for creative ways to produce even more refreshingly cool treats in this hot region.

Another venture funded by LWR was the construction of a bakery and the purchase of equipment for this house of bread in Matuya. The biblical place of Jesus’ birth, Bethlehem, literally means “house of bread.” Hope is born in the lives of the women who are cooking up a bustling little business. By the way, the bread is also good, I tasted it too. What’s better than these baked delicacies is the way the baking business augments dignity.

On the day of the Lord, this past Sunday, on the holy ground of a convent’s retreat center called Casa de Convivencias Sainville, we sat in chairs forming a circle. Above us gazed compassionately the suffering One from the crucifix on the wall. He, who not only suffers with us (Isaiah 63:9), but also overcomes victoriously for us. His suffering breeds character and imbues us all with dignity. These women are faith-filled over-comers. They’ve survived the bloodcurdling consequences of living in the crossfire between paramilitary and guerilla forces. They’ve survived narrow gender roles that diminished their dignity: “All they expected us to do was bear children, raise little animals, and stay in our place in this macho environment.”

Duvis is a woman who radiates dignity especially as she provides entrepreneurial leadership for her community and moral leadership for her family. A mother of three children, she is committed to radical parenting. “Peace starts in homes,” she asserted, referring to the Colombian conflict. “We must teach children to solve conflicts at home if we want to change the big picture.” Indeed, Duvis is a change agent. Her work outside of the home is as vice-president of a local agricultural organization started with 26 women in a vegetable growing project. They also have a cattle raising venture. As such, Duvis not only told me the names of the children, Freddy (14), Joel (10) and Yerard (8), but she shared the names of her cows, “Chocolate” and “Little Horn.” Swinging her arm to demonstrate the stick techniques she employs to herd those big bovine creatures, I’d say she’s got her cows and her children and her community heading in the right direction.

Yet, the woman of dignity to whom I dedicate this writing is Zoraida Castillo Varela, LWR’s Colombia Program Manager. Today is Thanksgiving Day, and I am thankful for Zoraida’s inimitable hospitality during my visit. Her advocacy on behalf of women previously denied basic human rights is indefatigable. Children love her because of the hope she inspires. Campesinos trust her because she invests in their vocation as farmers. All of this sets Zoraida apart as a paramount model of human dignity. Dignity lives as dignity gives.

When it Hits, You Feel No Pain

Eberhard Hitzler from Lutheran World Federation, writing in this blog, comments on his own experience of seeing the socio-economic gap in Colombia. It stuns. It’s so mentally irreconcilable that it leaves any conscientious visitor to this country with the feeling of being “in a different universe and not in the same country.”

I can say one thing about Cartagena, this poorest section of the nation near the Caribbean—the majority of whose residents are African-descended—the dancing and music doesn’t seem to stop. From the ancient beats of Palenque drummers who embrace life’s transitions with apt licks on various drums, to the ever-ubiquitous salsa, with its thrilling horns and thumping beats. There’s a disco right beside my hotel room. From it, Spanish cheers and syncopated bass lines literally rattled my window till 4 AM. They may have the nation’s highest misery index, but thank God for the gift of rhythm to help sufferers to work and dance as they climb to a better livelihood. Thirty-plus years ago, Bob Marley’s anthem about the rawness of West Kingston intoned: “One good thing about music, when it hits, you feel no pain.”

Tomorrow I’ll write about some of the symphonic solutions Lutheran World Relief partners are composing and conducting to ease the pain. These, too, have been like sweet music to my ears for the past two days.

A Long Road to Water

Back in Bogota from Bucaramanga, I couldn’t find sleep last night, my mind whirling on overdrive from the past two days’ journey, but, I did dream, in a way. I dreamt of how much better their future will be than their past, free from violence, we pray, and now able to grow food because of a new water supply. Due to a Lutheran World Relief project working with local leaders a single water line now irrigates the crops and the hopes of these brave residents of Nuevo York. “Water means life for everything that moves,” Emerson stood up proudly to tell us at the celebration marking our arrival.

But what a road it was to get there! For us, perhaps, but especially for them. First a little about our travel. It doesn’t take too long going up this off-road, mud-and-stone path of about 10 miles to figure out how their mountainous remoteness isolates them. Knowing the condition of roads in some previous international travel, especially Jamaica, Zambia and Hong Kong, I somehow presumed myself to be shock-proofed. I presumed wrongly. When you hear LWR folk talk about working at “the last mile,” that includes the literal meaning of that phrase; in this case, a community of 22 families tucked away in the breathtakingly beautiful Andean range. But the grandeur and greenery was not the only thing that took my breath away. Our expert driver, though in control, was slipping and sliding a few feet from a six hundred foot drop. There are no guardrails. He thankfully didn’t need them either.

But as treacherous as our trek was, these Colombians, largely from indigenous groups, had a much rougher road to get here. Husbands and sons murdered. Wives and daughters raped. Grandparents who’d farmed for generations being forced into exile. Good crops fumigated by U.S.-funded spraying aimed at illicit crops. Story after story, heartwrenchingly reported to us, because somehow they believed that U.S. Lutherans care about making a difference. “We don’t want war, that’s why we’re here” tearfully reported one humble peasant farmer, “but we’re going to need help, a hand up in a time of war, and you’ve been with us a long time.”

Our "being with them" is made tangible in the water that now runs to their community. Water means peace. Water can be a dream come true. “Dreams are as dangerous as they are necessary,” a leader commented. Water means hope even in danger. Water means life even in death. We, who have been splashed in the name of our threefold God, know how water places us also into a new community extending past the place where the road ends, joining us to God’s people in all places for all time.

I’ve got so much more to say, but it’s time to pack up again. Yes, we’re back in Bogota from Bucaramanga, but not for long. Today we’re off to visit Afro-Colombians near the Caribbean.

Headlines and Landmines

You know you are working contextually when the morning paper’s urgent headlines are the same topics filling your day’s meetings. The leaders with whom we met are connecting not just with the media, but with immediate needs, with the most pressing cries of their people who are living and dying in the pressurized setting of “armed actors,” guerilla fighters and faltering military negotiations.

“There’s a war going on here,” we heard. Yet, many governmental officials brush over this complex, narcotics-driven conflict as incidental or as a thing of the past. Of course the past is never really past. It’s especially far from over for Luis who reported to us of his grandfather’s murder and how his family faces regular death threats because they dare to farm the land they’ve owned for decades. Where the rule of law is disrespected, lawlessness rules, and those who are “the least of these” suffer the greatest and never make the headlines.

The war is not over for Afro-Colombians and indigenous people. Working with our partners, LWR provides a voice for these who are the most voiceless. The war is not over for the families of the three people, on average, killed here everyday from landmines. I learned a new acronym: UXO, unexploded ordinance. Ask the thousands who have been maimed for life, if the war is over for them. Colombia leads the world in these grisly statistics. Rural people and children lead the way among those killed in this way. Thankfully, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Colombia (IELCO) also leads the way. They are the only church-body in this nation providing preventive education on landmines and HIV-AIDS advocacy.

In our meeting yesterday with Bishop Sigilfredo Buitrago, he movingly credited LWR with teaching him most of what he knows about advocacy. I resonated with his pastor’s heart and his Gospel-focus. From the Greek of Romans 1:16, we get the “dynamite” of the Gospel, our unabashed witness to the “powerless power” of the God who suffers alongside the suffering. And at the heart of the Gospel we discover the impulsion to explode into action, if you will, with a compassion that empowers the weak in the name of that Child who gives hope to children. “For all the boots of tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire. For a child has been born for us” (Isaiah 9:5-6). We’ve all known and loved the last part of that quote, “For a child…”, verse 6, but when you add the warring context of the preceding verse five, your reflection is deepened, your faith gains context.

How will the headlines inform your prayers this upcoming Advent season? Ponder, in your heart, the most vulnerable, for example, children being killed by landmines, and their grieving mothers, and that Child, killed to redeem the world, and Mary, his mother.

So, as Tim McCully told me as we drove from point to point today—he’s photographically captured here perusing El Tiempo (www.eltiempo.com)–part of the humble genius of LWR is the way we work behind the scenes, often never making the headlines, but changing the headlines to give hope and peace.

On to points north…

Green November and Unmarked Graves

After touring a bit last night, and confirmed this morning from my eighth floor hotel window, Bogota seems to bustle like any major North American city, with the usual amenities and extremities that mark modern life. And everything looks so green and vibrant. Yet, as my colleague Michael Watt warns, this modernity and health is planted onto a poverty and political conflict festering just beneath the surface. Today I link up to learn from grassroots LWR partners, peacemakers who will help me to understand some of the complexities and opportunities in our mission here. Tomorrow we actually launch out to see some of those projects. But to my ears so far, what gets in the way of human flourishing, what obstructs poor people working toward their own viability, I mean the sort of slaughter and reckless disregard for life, I've already heard about, just makes no sense. My question is Job's, (28:12): "But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding?" Then verse 23, "God understands the way to it, and he knows its place." I wake this morning asking the Spirit to enlighten and lead this day on the path to understand more.

I'll keep you posted.

John

...interrupted by a blessed event

As I was preparing and packing for my first overseas travel for Lutheran World Relief, I was interrupted by a blessed event, a quick domestic trip to Detroit. What a joy it was to help welcome into this world Malachi Emmanuel, the firstborn child of my firstborn child, Mary Elisabeth and her husband, Trent Henley.

Born: 9 November 2007 at 7:37 PM. Six pounds, 11 ounces.
Parents: Trent and Mary Henley

We praise God for health and new life.

John

Join me in Colombia

Dear Friends,

My tenure as president of Lutheran World Relief began a mere four months ago, and as my trusted colleagues continue to remind me, my initiation at LWR is far from complete. Over these past four months I have been blessed by innumerable illuminating experiences - visits with wise and inspiring quilting groups, worship services among congregations of great witness, and thoughtful conversation with many generous donors.

In a few short days my initiation will continue, as I travel to Colombia to meet eye to eye and hand to hand the partners with whom we work each day. I'll hope you'll join me by reading my travel blog and responding.

In Christ's Service,

John Nunes