Let Your Heart Be Broken - Congregation of the Sisters, Servants of ...

page 6JourneyFall 2008Taking It PersonallyA Justice and Peace Perspectiveby Sr. Christine Koellhoffer, IHMMany years ago, I was part ofa group of dedicated activistsgathered for a planningprocess. At the beginning of the session,each of us was asked to namea particular gift that we brought tothis meeting. A litany of wonderfulattributes followed as people namedtheir gifts: hospitality, generosity, asense of humor, commitment, and soon. I was comfortably settled into thislovely affirmation of the qualities ofthose gathered when suddenly oneperson added, “Brokenness. I bringthe gift of my brokenness.”I sat bolt upright. Until that moment,I don’t think I had ever thoughtof brokenness as something positive,much less a gift. But in the yearssince, I’ve come to see brokennessas exactly that — a gift — a gift thatinvites us to reflect on how we’vecontributed to the wounds of ourworld; a gift that opens us to live withcompassion for another’s reality; agift that challenges us to make justicepersonal.As a writer, I find it incrediblyeasy to dash off a response supportingor opposing a justice issue. Todaythat’s a process made especially easyby the many faith-based organizationsproviding ready-made letters to whicha personal message can be addedonline. Yet I also believe that writingthat letter or signing that petition ormaking that phone call—as criticaland important as that action is—can’tbe the end, the final response. Toeffect change in ourselves as well aschange in the structures and policiesthat wound our world, we need tobring those same issues to our contemplationand reflection. We needto make them deeply personal in theway that Julia Esquivel describes:When it is necessaryto drink so much pain,When a river of anguishdrowns us,When we have wept many tearsand they flow like riversfrom our sad eyes,Only thendoes the deep hidden sighof our neighborbecome our own.“The Sigh” fromThe Certainty of SpringWhen we take the deep, hiddensigh of our neighbor into our heart,we’re taking justice personally. Manyof the people who have become dearfriends in my parish community insoutheast Queens have experiencedfirst-hand discrimination, racism,exclusion from places of power anddecision making.Though, sadly, their experience isnot uncommon in our society, what isexceptional is the way in which thesedear friends have integrated profoundlypainful life experiences intotheir worldview, and how they’ve refused—emphatically refused— to letbrokenness embitter or defeat them.Instead, they’ve turned every negativeexperience on its head!Reflecting on their own sufferingand the deep hidden sigh of theirneighbor has fueled their determinationto ensure that no one, no sisteror brother here at home or anywherein our world, is ever again oppressedor marginalized. This is what impelsthem to work tirelessly for a morejust, inclusive world, for the fulfillmentof Dr. King’s dream of thebeloved community. This is whathappens when a community or an individualtakes justice very personally.In the company of so manyshining lights, we’re invited to keeplearning life’s big lessons: to drawdeeper compassion from our own brokenness,to imagine ourselves in otherpeople’s lives, and to keep on asking:•z How does it feel to be brokenby homelessness, living on thestreets, never getting a goodnight’s sleep because we have toguard both our body from harmand our few possessions fromtheft?•z What is it like to be broken byviolence in our neighborhood,shaken awake at night by gunfireand gangs and kept awake infear for our children’s safety andour utter powerlessness to evercompletely protect them, much aswe long to?•z What does it mean to be brokenby an impossible economicsystem, weighed down byforeclosure or unscrupulousmortgage practices that threatento tear away from our family theonly home we’ve ever known?•z How does it feel to live withinthe boundaries of our brokenimmigration policy, alwaysalert to the threat of raids anddeportation, always sensitive toa climate of unwelcome, alwaysexhausted by the backbreakingwork which is all that’s availableto us because we have nodocuments to prove we “belong”?On the deepest, most profoundlevel, we need to take the brokennessthat is part of our human conditionpersonally. We need to put a humanface on the issues of our time. Otherwise,they remain simply issues—they are “out there,” a statistic to beaddressed and a point from which tomove on. If we keep the issues distantfrom our hearts, nothing significant isdemanded of us; nothing challengesus to be radically transformed. Justicedoesn’t get personal.But it must. Elizabeth O’Connorin The New Community notes thatthe mark of a liberating community,which is what we aspire to belongto, is “a clear, radical, unequivocalcommitment to the poorest, theweakest, and the most abused membersof the human family.” In otherwords, to the broken.This unequivocal commitment tothose who are broken was dramaticallyunderscored in a presentation,“Genocide: Can Love Prevail?”last year at Maryknoll. One of thespeakers was Dativa Nyangezi Ngaboyisana,a Rwandan, a genocidesurvivor, and now a warden at the6,000 inmate prison in the capital,Kigali. In the prison where she worksas a warden, more than half of thewomen and men inmates have beenconvicted of perpetrating crimesagainst humanity during the sameRwandan genocide which Dativasurvived.How could she, a survivor, turnaround and minister to the verypeople who had brutalized both herand so many she had loved and lost?With a stunning largeness of heart,Dativa observed of those who hadparticipated in the genocide, “Becausethese people have committedsuch atrocious crimes, they have to betreated with a lot of love so they canbe transformed.”As we struggle to learn from ourown brokenness and to be movedto compassion by the brokenness ofour world, let us also continue to beinspired by the great cloud of witnesseswho intuitively know that, forthem, there is no way to justice exceptto take it personally.Sr. Chris Koellhoffer serves as thedirector of communications for theDaughters of Wisdom, U.S. Province,in Islip, New York.