CPTnet
28 December 2005
AMMAN: Sharing risks, hopes and commitment
By Peggy Gish
[Note: Gish posted this piece on 15 December 2005.]
As those of us from Christian Peacemaker Teams hope and wait for the
safe release of our four colleagues, Jim Loney, Tom Fox, Norman Kember
and Harmeet Sooden, who have been missing in Iraq since November 26, we
think of the willingness each one demonstrated to risk his life in the
struggle for justice and world peace.
Jim in particular has been present at some of the most dangerous times the
Iraq team has experienced. I first met him when he arrived in Baghdad in
late December 2002 on a Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) delegation. He
was with us as we worked to prevent the war and as we reported to people
back home about the suffering the Iraqi people endured through the first
Gulf War, the regime of Saddam Hussein, and the twelve years of economic
sanctions.
Jim received only slight injuries in a January 2003 auto accident when one
of our vehicles turned over due to a blow-out of a faulty tire, resulting
in the death of another delegate, George Weber. With gentleness and
compassion, Jim accompanied George's body back to Canada to the Weber
family.
When he came back to Iraq to work with CPT in Iraq in January and
February of 2004, our team was out daily in Tahrir Square in central
Baghdad, holding poster pictures of Iraqis detained under the U.S.
system and calling for their just treatment. On one of those February
days, Jim was with four of us when two men who claimed to be human
rights workers came to our apartment. After we let them in and served
them tea, they pulled out a knife and gun, tied up the hands of the
three men, and then robbed us.
This current crisis is a time in which the risks of such work become
terrifyingly real to all of us. It is a time to support each other in
our pain and uncertainty. But it is not a time to stop our work. It is a
time to draw more deeply from our resources of our faith, to recommit
ourselves to following the way of Jesus, the Prince of Peace--the way of
nonviolent suffering love. This means being willing to lay down our
lives in service of our brothers and sisters around the world, including
those who threaten us harm. Perhaps it is only when we really face and
struggle with the realities of death, that we can authentically make such
a commitment.
My hope is that this crisis will help sharpen our sensitivity to the
plight of Iraqi families who have been suffering oppression and hardships
under the occupation, and who have experienced daily killings,
kidnappings, or imprisonment. I pray that it will shake up the things
that hold us back, and compel us to act more boldly on behalf of peoples
living in poverty and oppression around the world.
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