Pope: "Development must not ignore moral and religious issues"

The pope doesn't mention the MDGs, but the song is the same. his "three challenges" focus on
1) environmental sustainability
2) human rights and the growing gap between rich and poor countries
3) universal primary education

A message like this from the Vatican is a good conversation-starter for shared global reconciliation ministry with our Roman sisters and brothers.


VATICAN CITY, MAY 1, 2007 (VIS) - Made public today was a Message from
the Holy Father addressed to Mary Ann Glendon, president of the
Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, and to participants in the
academy's 13th plenary assembly which was held in the Vatican from
April 27 to May 1 on the theme: "Charity and Justice in the Relations
among Peoples and Nations."

In his message, published in English and Italian, the Pope makes it
clear that, according to "the principle of the universal destination
of all the goods of creation, ... everything that the earth produces
and all that man transforms and manufactures, all his knowledge and
technology, is meant to serve the material and spiritual development
and fulfillment of the human family and all its members."

The Holy Father goes on to identify "three specific challenges
facing our world, challenges which I believe can only be met through a
firm commitment to that greater justice which is inspired by charity.

"The first," he adds, "concerns the environment and sustainable
development. The international community recognizes that the world's
resources are limited and that it is the duty of all peoples to
implement policies to protect the environment in order to prevent the
destruction of that natural capital whose fruits are necessary for the
well-being of humanity. ... Also needed is a capacity to assess and
forecast, to monitor the dynamics of environmental change and
sustainable growth, and to draw up and apply solutions at an
international level."

"Indeed, if development were limited to the technical-economic
aspect, obscuring the moral-religious dimension, it would not be an
integral human development, but a one-sided distortion which would end
up by unleashing man's destructive capacities."

The second challenge "involves our conception of the human person
and consequently our relationships with one other. If human beings are
not seen as persons, male and female, created in God's image and
endowed with an inviolable dignity, it will be very difficult to
achieve full justice in the world. Despite the recognition of the
rights of the person in international declarations and legal
instruments, much progress needs to be made in bringing this
recognition to bear upon such global problems as the growing gap
between rich and poor countries."

The third challenge "relates to the values of the spirit." Benedict
XVI explains that, "unlike material goods, those spiritual goods which
are properly human expand and multiply when communicated. Unlike
divisible goods, spiritual goods such as knowledge and education are
indivisible."

Having emphasized the urgent need for "a just equality of
opportunity, especially in the field of education and the transmission
of knowledge," the Pope laments the fact that "education, especially
at the primary level, remains dramatically insufficient in many parts
of the world.

"To meet these challenges," he concludes, "only love for neighbor
can inspire within us justice at the service of life and the promotion
of human dignity. Only love within the family, founded on a man and a
woman, who are created in the image of God, can assure that
inter-generational solidarity which transmits love and justice to
future generations. Only charity can encourage us to place the human
person once more at the center of life in society and at the center of
a globalized world governed by justice."

77 Million Give Or Take

The latest from the ONE Campaign:

Every morning 77 million children don't go to school, and not because they don't want to. 77 million children go without school because neither their families nor their governments have the resources to provide them with a basic education. Without education, these children are trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty, hunger, and AIDS.

Confronting this global challenge requires leadership and courage to take the bold action necessary to confront this crisis. Yesterday four of those leaders, Representatives Nita Lowey (D-NY) and Spencer Bachus (R-AL), Senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Gordon Smith (R-OR) have stepped up and introduced the Education for All Act to give tens of millions of children the education that will lift them out of poverty.

Now, as the bill is introduced, we must convince other Members of Congress to demonstrate the same courage and sign-on to this important piece of legislation.

Education is a tool to transform the world, one student at a time. Education raises incomes, reduces infant mortality, slows the spread of HIV-AIDS, and saves lives. This is an investment that pays rich dividends.

The Education for All Act tackles the issues impeding access to education, from improving facilities and training teachers to eliminating school fees. This bill empowers developing countries to create and implement plans to put every child in school.

Go to www.one.org and write your senators and representatives and urge them to co-sponsor the Education for All Act.

And while you're at it, click here to vote to have the ONE Education Question included in tomorrow's Republican Presidential Debate.

Mother's Day Giving Cards to benefit the AIDS Orphans Partnership

This from the Rev. Kevin Bean at St. Bart's Episcopal Church in New York City:

Mother's Day Giving cards, with proceeds benefiting The Carpenter's Kids (Tanzanian) AIDS Orphans Partnership, are available through St. Bart's Episcopal Church in NYC.St. Bartholomew's has joined other New York parishes in agreeing to provide $50 per child per year for school fees, breakfasts, shoes, uniforms and books - and to do this for 100 children per year over the next five years in the parish of Mvumi Makulu. We are asking you to send a check made out to St. Bartholomew's (with the memo line saying "AIDS Orphan Partnership"). When they have collected $5000 we will send this through our diocese to the Diocese of Central Tanganyika for our 2007 commitment. All administrative costs are covered separately; therefore every dollar you give will go directly to support the orphans' school and nutritional needs. For more information contact Kevin Bean at bean@stbarts.org or at 212-378-0215.

If you're not in NYC, you can order them through St. Bart's Central at central@stbarts.org or by calling 212-378-0222 and they will be shipped to you.

Connecting the Communion in the Mountains of Rwanda

Through a mutual friend, I was put in contact with the wife of the bishop of one of the Province of Rwanda's 10 dioceses and was warmly invited to come up for a day to visit. Today was the day, so I went to the bus park and crammed myself into a matatu (a mini-bus that probably should hold 12-14 people but in this case carried 20) for a bumpy and curvy trip into some of the most beautiful mountain country and agricultural regions I have ever seen. We are just entering the rainy season here, and this part of Rwanda is lush and green and beautiful.

When I arrived at my destination (a little unnerved by the policeman with the automatic weapon sitting in the seat in front of me the last part of the journey), the bishop's wife was waiting for me. After a quick stop by the office where she works (an organization that provides two meals a day for children orphaned by the genocide and HIV/AIDS), she took me by the Cathedral and (attached to it) a diocesan training centre. The centre is used by the whole community for vocational training and also training of leaders for reconciliation work. We then walked back to their house, many people stopping to greet us along the way (everyone here speaks Kinyarwanda, quite a few people speak French and almost no one speaks English. I've spent the whole week wishing I had retained more of my college French and speaking Berlitz-level Kinyarwanda -- I do know that "muraho" means "hello" and "murakoze" means "thank you" -- it's amazing how far those words and a smile will take you!) and also stopping by a class where orphans were being taught craftwork for sale in the market.

The Bishop joined us when we got to the house and we had a wonderful conversation and lunch. I was full of questions and they were both very patient with me -- and also eager to talk about their church. I'm very hesitant to talk about the genocide because I have only been here a week and even though it feels like I have seen so much, I am such an outsider and know I'm only seeing a few pieces of the puzzle. But one thing is for certain and that's this is a land and a people who have been through hell. The genocide hangs over and undergirds everything about Rwanda. The bishop and his wife were forced to flee during the genocide, and afterwards he spent time in refugee camps in several countries figuring out who among his clergy and others were alive and who was dead. Then as soon as they could, they came right back home and started rebuilding the church.

Both the diocese and the mother's union are a huge part of the social structure there. The primary school is run by the diocese, as is a secondary school many kilometers away from the diocesan center. There is a great deal of intentional ministry around HIV/AIDS, family planning, education, and health care. Most of all, the church plays a huge role in post-genocidal reconciliation -- helping those who were imprisoned for helping commit the genocide re-integrate into society after going through the local gacaca courts, bringing together survivors with the parents and spouses of the genocidaire. I have seen this ministry in other places in Rwanda. There is an organization called REACH/Rwanda (the diocese of SW Florida has been a big supporter of them) that is based out of the Kigali Diocese that trains religious leaders of all faiths in reconciliation and trauma healing. In a nation where there are THREE psychiatrists in the entire country (yes, that's right THREE), the church is providing ministry that is life-saving and life-giving.

We talked about the importance of women's leadership in the church -- and how the ordination of women had enriched both our churches.

And then over lunch, conversation turned to the current situation in the communion. And my experience talking with this bishop was the same experience I have had talking with other bishops and clergy and laity in Ghana and Sudan and South Africa. We disagreed - but we listened to each other. I heard him speak of how America loves to make big splashes and announce it is changing the world. How there is an arrogance about our country that assumes that others should fall in and follow behind us. How he thought the Lambeth resolution in 1998 was a wonderful thing because in his mind it affirmed homosexuals (his term) as children of God -- which absolutely is something we should do ... and which was a huge leap from where much of his society was, casting them out and calling them horrible sinners. How he interpreted General Convention 2003 as us taking us off that point of Lambeth -- a place he was happy to go, but was culturally a big stretch -- and forcing "our issues" on them.

And I tried my best to listen -- and to really hear him. This is a good man and a good bishop. He has risked his life for his people and continues to give his life for his people. He is not hateful - not toward gay and lesbian people, not toward Americans, not even toward the people who slaughtered his clergy and people. Even though part of me kept wanting to raise my hand and say "what a minute .. you don't understand" by grace, I was somehow able to restrain myself (those who know me will recognize a minor miracle!). He deserved a listen. And more than that, I realized I needed to really listen to what he was saying.

When it came my turn to respond, I knew I needed to be as straightforward with him as he had been with me (and he had warned me he would be blunt!). I told him how I voted at GenCon 2003 and that I thought the sin we (and I) needed to repent of was not what we did but not recognizing the deep effect it would have on the Communion. I said I agreed that we come off as arrogant and at times really are arrogant, that we have a cultural self-assurance and conviction and that it is too easy for us to confuse self-righteousness with God's righteousness. I said we are a culture that emphasizes individual rights and that our actions come out of that framework -- our concern for the rights of GLBT people, and our primary understanding of autonomy in the communion vs. their primary understanding of community in communion. I said that most Episcopalians I know really want to be part of the Anglican Communion. That we feel torn between wanting to honor these relationships and following what we really believe God and Christ would have us do with the GLBT people who are full parts of our church.

We disagreed. But we agreed that eventually, what was of God would stand and what was not of God would not. We agreed that we need each other and that there is so much we can do together. And when conversation turned to kicking the American church out of the communion and I said, "but let's say for the sake of argument that I am wrong and in need of conversion ... how can that happen if you push me away?" he laughed a great, booming laugh and said "Yes! That is good! I must draw you closer!"

And then conversation turned to more important things -- the great work he was doing. The training of lay catechists for their 300+ congregations. Education. Care for widows and orphans. Spreading the Gospel. The work EGR is trying to do bringing the church together around God's mission of global reconciliation in the MDGs.

As he left for a meeting, I asked him for his blessing -- and he laid his hands on my head and asked God's blessings on me, on my travel, on my work and on our relationship.

This is not the first time I have had a conversation like this, and I doubt it will be the last. I believe this is the true face of the Anglican Communion. Honest and even passionate disagreement? Yes. But disagreement while gathered (literally, in this case) breaking bread around the table. Disagreement while celebrating each other's missions and dreaming how we can labor together. Disagreement while greeting with a hug and parting with a blessing. No ultimatums. No threats. No walking out or dueling press machines.

Tomorrow I leave for home ... and I've actually spent a refreshingly little amount of time talking about issues of schism in the Anglican Communion during my week in South Africa and my week here in Rwanda. But I have spent a lot of time with Anglicans of many stripes. And the one thread that has run through all those encounters was a commitment to common mission. Through proclaiming the Gospel in word and deed.

That is the real face of the Anglican Communion -- "alive and well" as Archbishop Ndungane says.

At least it was this afternoon in the beautiful mountains of Rwanda.

Random Rwandan Ruminations

There are about a dozen things I could write in depth about, but all of them need more reflection and less reactivity. I'm trying to gather pieces of a complex puzzle in less than a week, which is an impossible task. All I can really do is get a small sense of things and go from there.

I'm trying to hear as many stories and perspectives as possible. I've met with a lot of the Millennium Village people here and feel like I've got a good handle on what's going on with that. Yesterday, I spent a few hours with an Episcopal laywoman who is working for the Anglican church in one of the outlying dioceses and heard about Rwanda from her perspective. Today I went to church, coffee and lunch with Kimberly Buxton, who is working with Partners in Health in Rwinkwavu (I was hoping to go out to the site with her tomorrow, but those plans aren't going to work). Tonight, I'm having dinner with someone from REACH, a faith-based organization that is doing reconciliation work here (the Diocese of SW Florida has been involved in working with them).

Everyone has a different perspective ... which is really valuable. Some of them jive together. Some don't. I'll need awhile to put it all together.

So in the meantime, two random slices of life/other thoughts.

*Just to let you know the little I am learning about Kigali. It's a city of about a million people, but it's really a lot of sprawl -- there is definitely no downtown or skyline. It's very hilly. Most of the roads are unpaved, though major arteries are paved. There are plenty of stoplights but none of them work because the electricity is too expensive (they say they turned them on when Bill Clinton came).

The primary way people travel is walking, because that's the cheapest way to go -- and when you have close to 70% unemployment you really gun for cheap. The other popular mode of transport is thousands of little motorbikes that you climb on the back of and hold on. Traffic here is like NYC ... the lanes are more suggestions than anything else. And the motorbikes are always zipping in and out of everything.

The combination of all this -- lots of pedestrians (who just wander into traffic with great regularity), zipping motorbikes, permeable lanes and no stoplights makes traffic an interesting experience. But like in most places like this, people seem to have an intuitive sense and so nobody gets hurt.

*There seems to be a real catch-22 with developing industry here. Labor is incredibly cheap (which has its pros and cons, obviously). But raw materials are incredibly expensive. Why? Because there is little infrastructure here to produce and refine raw materials, so they have to be imported. A major source of revenue for the Rwandan government is tariffs on imports -- which drives the prices of materials WAY up.

The argument for this is that the tarrifs protect domestic industry that would have a hard time competing against cheaper foreign goods. Problem is, there is no domestic industry to protect and the high cost of goods with which infrastructure could be built to actually BUILD domestic industry prohibits domestic industry from developing.

This is a great example of how a comprehensive approach of aid, debt relief and trade is important. You need aid ... but the ultimate goal is to have a society that doesn't need aid. Aid industries should be in the business of putting themselves out of business and aid should be used in ways that promote local development. That's why microfinance -- when done properly (and I'm still learning what that means) is such an intruiging option. But in this system, protectionist trade policy is actually preventing economic development -- and all the aid and debt relief in the world isn't going to enable Rwanda to stand on its own two feet economically if those don't get eliminated or at least phased out.

More later.

Crucifixion and Resurrection

Crucifixion and Resurrection

Crucifixion and resurrection are at the heart of our faith. They're also metaphors that are used often enough that it's easy for them to lose their power. None of us were at Calvary that Friday and none of us have every seen a crucifixion -- but if we had we would understand that it's not a metaphor for difficulty but it is blinding pain and the desolation of death. And none of us were there Sunday morning to find the stone rolled away and the tomb emtpy -- but if we were we would understand that it's not a metaphor for triumph but it is awesome and impossible, wonderful beyond words and yet terrifying.

I think if I were really at the crucifixion and having to write about it, I wouldn't be able to. Ditto for the resurrection. And that tells me a little about yesterday.

It would be easy to talk about Thursday in terms of crucifixion and resurrection. And it would be a useful metaphor -- if not all too easy to use. And there are definitely ways it would be accurate. But still it seems inadequate. We'll see.

First, crucifixion. I didn't witness crucifixion yesterday, but I heard tell. And I saw the aftermath. In the morning, I spent 2 1/2 hours at the National Genocide Museum in Kigali and in the afternoon, I visited the genocide memorial in Bugesera District (where 65% of the population was slaughtered -- the hardest hit district in Rwanda).

And I can't write about it. Maybe in a week, maybe in a month, maybe sometime in the future I'll be able to. But for now I can't. I just can't. Suffice it to say that the genocide hangs over and undergirds everything that happens here. If the genocide is crucifixion and the rebuilding of Rwanda is resurrection, there is no neat dividing line of Holy Saturday. Crucifixion, the blinding pain, the desolation of death continues even as resurrection begins.

And so ... resurrection.

I can write about this part ... which tells me something, too. It's not as in-your-face. In many ways it's more of a hint, a peripheral glance rather than in your face.

Resurrection in Rwanda isn't happening all at once. And in many places it's not happening at all. The unemployment rate is near 70%. Economic growth has been trumpeted and it has been good but so far the benefits have only been felt by the top economic strata (though there is lots of hope it is trickling down because lots of important infrastructure is being built).

But slowly, it is happening in one of the least-likely places. It is happening in Mayange in Bugesera, where the Millennium Village is.

If you've read this blog before, you've heard me talk about the Millennium Village in Mayange. It's an integration of development principles starting with a target group of 1,005 households aimed at meeting all the MDG goals and targets at once. What makes Mayange different from other MVs (and many other programs) is the degree of buy-in of the government (and the comparatively low corruption index of the government), methods of intervention that encourage sustainable development rather than dependency, and a plan to scale the project up beyong the village to the entire country.

Mayange isn't an oasis. It has a long way to go. There is still incredible poverty. There is still malnutrition. Domestic violence is epidemic. There is lots of undiagnosed and untreated mental illness. But there is positive momentum. Something is happening here, and it's incredibly exciting.

I tagged along with Josh and a group from a medical conference for a tour yesterday, and I'm heading back this afternoon. The first stop was the health centre.

The first thing you notice about the health centre is that it's bursting with people. The waiting room is full. There are lines outside the lab, the pharmacy, and many other places. It's not a large complex and they are maxing out the space and need to grow.

This is a good thing. No -- this is a great thing. The centre serves about 500 people a day, and that's great news because it means people are accessing the health care. It also means they are accessing health care earlier on in illness when prevention and early-stage treatment are possible.

One example: The under-five mortality rate is 15 percent in this district. When they got here, they would have 3-4 funerals (mostly of children under five) a week. They haven't had a young child funeral in four months.

Another example: When they first opened the centre, about 80 percent of the patients had malaria. Now that's down to 10 percent -- thanks to an integrated system not just of distributing bednets, but of education, monitoring of use and tying bednet use to availability of other things -- like agricultural interventions (ERD's Nets for Life program is using similar strategies).

The key has been not just fighting disease but working hard to change the health care system. By removing barriers like co-pays and the need to travel long distances and pay fees to have pictures taken for IDs (they now have a mobile webcam and printer that goes to where the people are and takes the pictures for free), they now have the vast majority of the people enrolled in a system where people pay what they can but nobody is denied treatment.

Expensive? Not as much as you might think. The per capita cost for health care in this MV is $25 with fixed costs (staff salaries, electricity, infrastructure) and $8 without fixed costs. That's below MV hoped-for standards and certainly sustainable.

People are getting in, getting treatment and getting better. You can make an argument that health care is more accessible to the entire population in Mayange than in St. Louis!

We then went to one of the fields and heard about the agricultural innovations, like progressive terracing, which uses trench-digging to maximize the ability of rainwater to get to the lower levels of soil and not just run off taking all the nutrients with it. They've planted nitrogen-fixing trees every three meters to help replenish the soil over time.

But the big new thing is a massive fertilizer loan program (I'm headed back for the big celebration of its launch this afternoon).

Other programs (and most, if not all, of the other Millennium Villages) give away the fertilizer, which creates a culture of dependency. The loan program will enable growers to sign up for a loan of fertilizer and maize. At the harvest, they will pay it back in maize or in cash. 70-75 percent of the people have signed up (they were hoping for 30%). And they've tied it to use of progressive terracing and membership in the health care system.

If there is an icon for what is going on in Mayange, it is the children.

That there are children at all is life and light. The genocide was 13 years ago (though massacres began years before that), and our visit was greeted by children much younger than that. Children who are the rising generation of post-genocide Rwanda

There are children at the health center. They are sick, but they're getting treatment.

There are children on the street. They are poor, but they are not hopeless.

Most of all, they are children with dignity. Walking up the street toward Josh's house yesterday morning I was approached by a child asking for money. The children in Mayange don't do this. They don't beg. They smile. They follow us everywhere. They clamor to have their picture taken so they can see themselves. They try to practice their English on you. But they don't bed.

They have dignity. And dignity, more than anything, is the foundation for development not just of an economy but of the identity of a people.

And maybe that's the real resurrection. Rwanda is a nation the West looks on with guilt and pity. It has a horrible past that flows into the present and will flow into the future.

But it is a place of great beauty. And at least in Mayange, it is a place of dignity and pride.

And as much as the shadow of the past is still cast into the present, in those children you can catch a glimpse of the future. A future worth looking forward to.

God grant us...

The only downside to skipping out on Saturday with the Pilgrimage to Peace group was that we missed hearing from the Rev. Michael Lapsley (ENS' Matthew Davies did an excellent story on his presentation here). Michael is an Anglican priest and director of the Institute for Healing of Memories in Cape Town. A native New Zealander, he became a tireless and prophetic advocate for the end of Apartheid upon moving to South Africa in 1973 -- continuing even after the government expelled him from the country a few years later. In April, 1990, he came back from a trip abroad and opened a magazine that had come in the mail. The magazine contained a bomb. The explosion took both of his hands, an eye and shattered his eardrums.

This morning, the P2P crowd got a chance to meet with him in a small group and +Marc Andrus invited me to tag along. Powerful doesn't even begin to describe the experience, but I'll try to convey his talk in as many of his words as possible.

He framed his talk with the serenity prayer. You know it:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference.

And through telling his story he talked about doing just that ... and how that process helped change the course of a nation, the world, and his life.

Michael Lapsley never thought he'd end up in South Africa. He never particularly wanted to. He had joined a religious order and when it was time for him to be sent out he asked to go to Japan ... but they sent him here. He talked about what he expected to find:

“I assumed that when I got to South Africa that I would find three groups. The oppressed, the oppressors and the third group – the human race – that I would belong to.”

“The day I arrived in South Africa, I stopped being a human being and became a white man. Because every single part of my life was determined by the color of my skin. I lived in my white suburb because by law that was the only place I could live.”

There were lots of examples. Bathrooms labeled "whites only" and "non-whites." Restaurants where whites ate inside and blacks had food passed to them out the window. And then there was the greatest icon for him, the elevators he saw when he went to the university -- one labeled "whites only" and the other "freight and non-whites." If you weren't white you weren't even considered human.

In South Africa, being white decided everything. And as much as he hated what his color meant, his color was one of the things he could not change.

"My color meant that I was part of the oppressor group regardless of whether I wanted to be or chose to be. I could choose to fight against it, but I would fight it from the side of the beneficiary.
He did have a choice -- between two options. A pretty simple one, as he saw it:

Beat 'em or join 'em.

And with that choice began what he called a long "journey of accompaniment" with the people of black South Africa.

"Apartheid had turned me into an oppressor, but I wanted to be a human being. So fighting it was not first to do something for other people but to free myself in solidarity with others."

He noted that parallels have been drawn between the U.S. civil rights movement and the battle against Apartheid. That doesn't do the anti-Apartheid struggle justice. In America, the civil rights movement was about asserting rights under the constitution. In South Africa, the constitution was part of the problem. This was about people who were non-entities, for whom the constitution did not apply. This was not a civil rights struggle but a struggle for national liberation.

As I've heard about the struggle against Apartheid the past few days, I keep coming back to Bishop Peter Lee of Christ the King Diocese telling me how South Africa is 85 percent Christian ... and that is how so much of the reconciliation was able to happen, because of that basic commonality.

But if that is true in the aftermath of Apartheid, in the truth and reconciliation process, it means it was also true during Apartheid.

In 1976, children -- young teenagers, 13, 14 and 15 years old began protesting in Soweto. Protesting bad schools. Protesting having to learn lessons in Afrikaans. And in the streets of Soweto, these children began to be shot. All in all more than a thousand of them were shot.

And for Michael, in addition to the horror, with that came a revelation. That “those who shot children went to church on Sunday, read the Bible every day and shot kids.” Apartheid and the brutalism it supported was being carried out by people under the banner of Christ -- even though it was in direct opposition to the Gospel of Christ.

The church has a long history of association with oppression. That we are here talking about the Millennium Development Goals as a Christian body has to include an acknowledgment that these goals are necessary in large part because of the actions of largely Christian western societies. Marching as the oppressor under the banner of Christ is nothing new. But it is a life of great dissonance.

Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, and he said to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. Yet oppression prevents us from living that great commandment, that "love commandment" because it prevents the relationship of neighbor.

This realization led Michael to join the African National Congress, an organization not looking to substitute oppression of whites for oppression of blacks, but looking for a South Africa without oppression. The vision of the ANC was simple – South Africa belongs to all South Africa

"Freedom has to be for everybody or it is for nobody."

"Apartheid was a choice for death carried out in the name of the gospel of life. It was an issue of faith to say no to Apartheid. At stake in South Africa was the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ because either the Gospel was true or Apartheid was true."

As far as the ANC's uses of violence, Michael had this to say:

“The only automatic weapon I’ve ever used is the one I’m using now – my tongue. Eventually they were so stupid that they took away my hands, which I didn’t need to shoot, and they left my weapon working reasonably well.”

Struggles over fundamental issues of justice and human rights are not unique, but what made a difference was how South Africa's struggle became a global struggle.

"Most western governments supported apartheid even though they said different. But they were brought kicking and screaming by their populations. By people of conscience around the world. People realized there was something in South Africa that concerned the humanness of all of us."

And something else was happening:

"In South Africa, the struggle was getting younger and younger. Desmond Tutu called it 'A generation of young people that had iron in their souls that could face the bullets and go on'"

And the struggle began to work. Through pressure brought on by people of conscience rising to demand their leaders listen and act. Michael began to be more in demand as a speaker to rally the world for the cause. And it was in coming back from one such trip (to Canada, I believe) that he went to his desk and opened the magazine that would change his life forever.

The blast maimed him permanently. He stood before us with hooks where his hands used to be and only one functioning eye. But he holds to the memory with more than just pain.

"It’s important that I remember the moment not to remember the pain but to remember the strong sense that God was with me… That the great promise of scripture had been kept … Lo I am with you always even to the end of the age."

It also gave him a choice. If he chose to give in to despair they would have won. If he chose to continue to embrace life and the mission God had called him to, the Gospel would remain victorious.

But it was not easy.

"I could not have made a lifegiving response by myself without the community of prayer and support."

And that was another lesson. We don't make lifegiving choices from death-producing situations by ourselves. We need each other. We have each other.

"The peoples of the world walked beside me on my journey of healing. God was calling me to walk beside others on their jouyrney of healing."

And so as Michael healed and Apartheid fell, he began to ask the Quo Vadimus question. "Where are we going?"

For South Africa, the answer was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission -- a work of grace and genius credited for helping a country transition out of Apartheid without the bloodbath that had been almost universally predicted.

But what people don't often recognize is that the TRC only heard the most extreme cases - murder and rape. Sure, 22,000 people gave testimony before the TRC. But South Africa is a nation of 43 million people. Those who got to participate in the process were only an icon for those who did not.

And that's where the Institute for the Healing of Memories began. It's a place where people can come in groups to "take the first step on the road to healing." It's a place to start. And the work he is doing there is being replicated around the globe, for as Michael says:

"Each country in the world is different, each country has different histories. But pain is pain is pain."

As I write about this, I think of last November when I sat in the Waverly, Iowa dining room of Kathryn Koob. Kate Koob was one of 52 Americans held for 444 days in Iran from 1979-81. And yet today she teaches reconciliation at Wartburg College.

In two days I will get on a plane for Kigali and spend a week in a land where a dozen years ago one group of people, as part of a cycle of oppression going back more than a century, rose up and slaughtered nearly a million of their fellow countrymen and women. And yet through a process similar to the TRC, they are rebuilding their nation.

The human capacity to embrace reconciliation is beyond amazing. And we need it.

The system of global wealth and poverty is an Apartheid system. There is nothing else to call it. Those of us in the (largely white) rich nations separate ourselves from the (largely non-white) poor two-thirds world. And like the destitute townships and shantytowns I drove through yesterday that grew up around the whites-only towns to house the people whose sweat served white South Africa, our wealth has been enjoyed on the backs of the poor.

And as if the image weren't clear enough, now we're actually, physically building a wall on our southern border to keep the "other" out.

When people looked at South Africa in the 1970s, they looked at it several ways:

Some saw it as an acceptable state of affairs -- perhaps somewhat evil, but necessary to maintain "the way things ought to be".

Some saw it as an intolerable state of affairs. A fight that must be joined.

Was Apartheid sustainable indefinitely. Some on either side would have said yes. But those with eyes to see and those who knew history knew differently. And almost all of them said the same thing:

There's no way this ends well.

And yet look what happened. Not without pain and death -- Michael would be the first to say that -- but the truth is I sit in a Johannesburg in 2007 that 20 years ago nobody would dare to dream. Sitting in a room with people of many colors listening to a man with no hands talk about loving the neighbor that did it to him.

So we have our Apartheid. An Apartheid that says for billions of people that where you are born decides how you live and even whether you live.

And many see it as an acceptable state of affairs -- perhaps somewhat evil, but necessary to maintain "the way things ought to be".

And some see it as an intolerable state of affairs. A fight that must be joined.

But is it sustainable? Some will bury their heads and say yes. But those with eyes to see. Those who know about economic and environmental sustainability and yes, those who know history will say differently.

And many of them are looking at the handwriting on the wall and saying the same thing they said of South Africa in the 1970s:

No way this ends well.

But that is not us. We are not people who shrink back in despair. Despair is not a Gospel value.

I was born in Santa Clara, California. I am an American. My children are Americans. As a straight, white, educated, homeowning American I am part of a class priviliged beyond any on earth.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.

But here's the thing. As intractable as the systems that keep billions of people in poverty, that kill a child every three seconds, that keep water toxic for more than a billion people... as intractable as these systems seem, are they really more intractable than the system that went from blacks taking elevators as freight to being elevated to the highest office in the land?

I have a choice. I choose to believe those systems are changeable. I believe that is wisdom -- to not resign myself to intractability, to recognize that this is something we can change. That where we are going is on a road to freedom for all. A road that South Africa has made just a little bit smoother before us.

God grant us the courage.