CPTnet
15 September 2005
COLOMBIA REFLECTION: What do you get used to?
by Irene Erin Kindy
Last week while reading the regional newspaper here, I realized how easily I
skimmed over a headline about a massacre of seven people. The story didn't
even make it into the national newspaper. This past weekend another member
of the community CPT accompanies here in Colombia was assassinated. I
figured out that during the twenty-one months that I've been on this project
there have been six community members killed, one about every three
and-a-half months. Those are only the ones that happened during the months
I've been here, and it doesn't include disappearances or other bodies found
floating in the river.
Last February our team participated in a retreat on the themes of trauma and
stress. So, I know that not fully feeling the weight of the deaths is a
coping mechanism we have. But, I wonder, what happens when that short-term
coping mechanism has to be used again and again? What happens to the heart?
You know, it is NOT natural that I should read the headlines of a massacre
and skim over it because massacres are common. It is NOT natural that when
I read of an assassination I should have to add its number to that of so
many others that barely make the newspaper in this city.
It seems to me we need to remember that part of our role is to reiterate
that the violence we are surrounded by is not the way things should be.
Here's a reading to counteract this acceptance of violence:
"We are called to proclaim the truth? And we believe: It is not the truth
that this world and her people are destined to die and be lost.
"This is the truth: I have come that they may have life in abundance. It is
not the truth that we must accept inhumanity, discrimination, hunger,
poverty, death and destruction.
"This is the truth: the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor hear the
good news. It is not the truth that violence and hate have the last word and
that war and destruction will be with us forever.
"This is the truth: there will be no more death nor pain nor tears. It is
not the truth that we are simply victims to the powers of evil that seek to
govern the world.
"This is the truth: the God you seek will soon enter in his sanctuary and
the Lord is like a consuming fire. It is not the truth that our dreams of
liberation and of human dignity are not for this earth and this history.
"This is the truth: it is now time to wake from dreaming. The night is far
gone and the day is near."
--Alan Boesak, South Africa, World Council of Churches, 1983
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Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) seeks to enlist the whole church in
organized, nonviolent alternatives to war and places teams of trained,
peacemakers in regions of lethal conflict. Originally a violence-reduction
initiative of the historic peace churches (Mennonite, Church of the Brethren
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