Cynthia

My phone rang. My heart jumped. It was 6 am, and I was on my way to work. Nobody ever called me at this time. When I answered the call, I heard my wife’s voice and realized that something was wrong. She said that her mother had just heard on the news that there had been a shooting in the neighborhood where I worked. In fact, the non-profit organization, Newgate Mission, where I served as executive director and pastor had been named in the news report. Minutes away, my mind started racing. Who was it? What happened?

When I turned the corner, I saw the lights, the yellow crime scene tape, and the crowds. And then I saw that all that was happening centered on the main side door of our building. The victim had been shot on the bench right outside our door. I had never in my life experienced this type of disbelief or encountered emotions of this magnitude. Yet when I parked my truck, stepped out onto the pavement, and began approaching the crowd, I realized that what I was feeling had to be suppressed. My job was to shepherd our community through this tragedy.

My first step was to identify the body, a moment I can never forget. Next, I had to speak on behalf of our neighborhood to the broader community through the media as a people that would not cower in the face of evil acts and respond with the healing power of peace and forgiveness. And then I had to clean up the remains. Yes, even after the police “cleaned up” and the coroner left with the body, parts of Cynthia’s earthly being remained. So I did what I had to do. Finally, I had to figure out some way to provide comfort and consolation.

Cynthia Weaver was a woman of the streets. She struggled with mental illness, drug addiction, brush-ins with the law, physical and sexual abuse, homelessness, and all else that comes with this transitory, indigent existence. Cynthia, or “Baby Angel” as she was often called on the streets, was not an angel by any stretch of the definition. She stole. She sold herself. She used. She fell out from her family after abusing their care for years. However, she had the most precious smile and sweet spirit when out from under the influence of the negative forces in her life and within the safety of a community that truly cared for her. While spending time with our Newgate community, we could always count on Cynthia for a laugh, a smile, a hug, and a genuine inquiry into our individual and collective well-being. Cynthia, though, had been murdered, and on the doorsteps of the place that should have been her safe place.  Killed because she would not return a sexual favor to her killer for the drugs he provided her as they both attempted to numb their pain and escape their often horrific reality one of the only ways they knew how to.

Thrust into this situation, emotions tumultuous, mind and heart a wreck, how could I respond in a way that would lead our community away from the destructive responses of fear and hatred? Would I be able to hold it together personally and provide this scared, angry, and deeply violated community the strength necessary? And if so, how?

Two days later I walked with our community through a memorial service and a community-wide prayer walk in response to the tragic loss of our friend, Cynthia Weaver. Not only did our community need to grieve, but we had to respond to the broader community with a resounding message. Our “side of town” had already been vilified enough. We were not a community prone to violence. We were not a community that was inevitably faced with the destructive effects of drug abuse and sexual assault. We were not a community of miscreants and criminals. We were a community of broken people, hurting and wandering and groping. We were a faithful community that would respond with hope, peace, and love. We would not be overcome by hate, but instead overcome hate with love.

Because of this experience, I know more today what it means to be an advocate and defense for the poor. It means I suffer with, I stand up and stand in for, I lead the charge, and I clean up the remains. But even more than that, it means that I allow the strength, beauty, and dignity of indigent persons and communities be the strength I need, give my life meaning and purpose, and allow me to be a part of something dignified and beautiful, especially in the midst of unspeakable tragedy.

To this day I think fondly of Cynthia.  My heart breaks for her.  But it also breaks for her killer, his family, and the community that was shattered by violence that fateful day.  I think of the truth that broken people hurt broken people.  And I pray for healing.  I hope for hope.  I strive to reflect the light of life and love in all that I do.  And I invite others to do the same.  We are all broken.  Some of us hide it well, all of us attempt to escape.  Broken people hurt broken people.  Yet…

There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole;
There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul.

Day 37

Sex and Money and Poverty and Abuse and Sleep…

This journey in orange is not only for those wearing or who have worn the orange uniform of incarceration.  I also wear this uniform of the imprisoned for the billions of the poor and marginalized people locked up and locked out by chains of our own making.  It’s not just about prison cells.  But also sweat shops.  Brothels.  Flop houses.  Tractor trailers.  Cabarets.  Chat rooms.  I wear this uniform because of my own choices, my own hypocrisy and complicity, my own brokenness and despair.  I am the problem.  Not the women and children of poverty who sell their bodies to survive.  Me.  You.  We. All of us who have been asleep, comfortable in our own isolated and insulated beds, while billions of people across our world have been sold, trafficked, and commodified.  Human beings.  Commodities.  In fact, I have heard it suggested that human beings may be one of the top 5 traded commodities in the world economy.  Human beings.  These are chains of our own making.  But we don’t see the shackling because we are blinded by our accepted ignorance.  We must speak truth.  Open our eyes.  The buying and selling of human beings is right in front of us.

Recently, here locally a prostitution ring was discovered by authorities.  A house in a central location in our city served as a brothel, servicing Johns 24 hours a day from Friday through Sunday.  On the first floor, you could buy the use of the bodies of 12-14 year old girls.  The second floor was where you would find satisfaction with 15-17 year old girls.  Another situation found 3 of our local girls between the ages of 10 and 14 trapped in a string of alleged gang initiation-related child sexual assaults.  Daughters.  Sisters.  Neighbors.  Friends of your children.  Their classmates.  And these girls were enticed with the promise of new shoes and a new purse, or a place to be wanted, no matter how misguided this may seem to us.  This happens.  In our own backyards.  And when we actually care enough to bust many of these sex transactions, women most often get thrown in jail while the Johns get slapped on the wrists.

We have bought the poor with dollars and the needy for a pair of shoes…

Yesterday in our staff meeting at the faith-based nonprofit where I work, two staff members shared some of the harsh realities that our community is facing.  Independently, in a way they both centered their request for prayer and action on abuse.  Sex abuse.  Physical abuse.  Drug abuse.  But it all came back to how we as a society make human beings, especially women and children, commodities.  Goods to be used for our own pleasure or comfort.   How we turn a blind’s eye to the devastating realities happening all around us.  It was a cry from the depths for all of us to wake up, wipe the sleep from our eyes, and put our love into action.  Urban boys dealing with the traumas of physical and sexual and mental and emotional abuse runs rampant.  Families and communities are too ashamed to speak up or seek help.  Women and children and immigrants are being bought and sold like candy in a store.  Designer drugs are sometimes the only way to numb the pain.  The stresses of high-stakes testing in our schools leads kids to harmful attempts at escape.  And the vultures are waiting.  While we turn over in our cozy beds and fluff our pillows…

Poverty.  Sex.  Abuse.  Money.  Money.  Money.  It all goes together.  We must wake from our slumber.  For the sake of our sons and daughters.

Below are some great resources, some food to chew on slowly and intentionally, surrounding these issues of sex and poverty and abuse.  Knowledge is power.  Now, let’s act.  Act courageously and compassionately.  Make ourselves proximate to the broken and abused.

Jesus Said Love, a nonprofit organization loving and serving dancers along the I-35 corridor.  Support them here.

55 Facts About Human Trafficking

Half the Sky, with Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn

Sex+Money: A National Search for Human Worth is a documentary about domestic minor sex trafficking and the modern-day abolitionist movement fighting to stop it. Since September 2009, the crew has traveled to over 30 states and conducted more than 75 interviews with federal agents, victims, politicians, activists, psychologists, porn-stars, among others.

More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing, by Amartya Sen

160 Million and Counting, by Ross Douthat

Watch What This Make-Believe Girl Means To 1,000 Sexual Predators

Just When A Problem Like Child Slavery Seems So Big We Don’t Know What To Do, A 9-Year-Old Shows Us

Police: 3 children sexually assaulted in connection with gang initiation, Waco Trib

 

 

Noemi

Noemi eased into my office with her husband one day.  Eager to finally get a conversation with a lawyer, they were ready to hear some good news about how they could move on with their lives.  Noemi is an undocumented immigrant.  She lives in the shadows.  Has her whole life.  From the time her parents brought her to the U.S. from Mexico as a young child, Noemi has lived on the margins.  Yet, she had grown up in U.S. communities, attended and graduated from U.S. schools, participated in U.S. neighborhood life and worshipped in U.S. churches.  And now she was married to a U.S. citizen and had U.S. citizen children.  Over 20 years of life in the U.S., and now she had heard that there were some changes in the immigration laws.  Surely now was her chance to remove the clouds and walk in the light of the only home she had ever known.  But it wasn’t.

Noemi is barred from immigrating to the U.S. lawfully for at least 10 years.  As a young child, Noemi’s parents brought her to the U.S. illegally, entering without inspection.  Escaping from miserable conditions and vast barriers to opportunity, they found a new life in the U.S.  A productive, full, and beneficial to all kind of life.  But they still had family back in Mexico.  Family that got sick and needed their help.  So Noemi’s parents went back and forth from Mexico, “illegally”, a couple of times so they could care for their family.  Noemi, a child, of course went with them.  Now, she not only is barred from immigrating to the U.S. lawfully for at least 10 years, but she must leave the country for those 10 years.  And wait.  Apart from her family and the only country she has ever known.  If an immigrant has previous immigration violations, such as entering without inspection, and they leave the country and return again without inspection, they trigger what in immigration law is known as this “permanent bar”.  The only way over this bar is to wait outside the U.S. for 10 years and then apply for a waiver of this bar.  And hope.

So Noemi.  Wife of a U.S. citizen.  Mother to young U.S. citizen children.  Graduate of a U.S. high school.  Loving member of a U.S. community.  Never in criminal trouble.  U.S. taxpayer.  Employable U.S. employee.  Lover of her home country, the United States.  She does not belong.  We don’t want her. All because her family, not even herself, made decisions that every single one of us would have made if it meant feeding our children or caring for our dying parents.  Now, anyway, Noemi’s family could be ripped apart.  Tearing these elemental threads of family that we pay such lip service to in our society.  We care deeply about family, just not those families.  Our focus on the family is vital, just not families that we don’t want.  Love for family.  Love for country.  Love for our neighbor.  Hypocrisy.  You can see it in our laws.  In our systems.  In our blighted cities and stunted social consciousness.  Noemi felt it in the tears that flowed down her cheeks as she heard me bring a message to her from our so-called melting pot, American Dream, give me your tired, your poor nation that she doesn’t belong and her family doesn’t matter.

May we have the courage to confess our hypocrisy.  And turn away.  Seek forgiveness from Noemi.  And together find Life.