Smell of death, taste of life

by Susan Mark Landis

Since October, I have read constant reports from our Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) in Baghdad, of the difficulty and death Iraqis suffer under United Nations sanctions. Recently, these meditations have spoken of team members walking amidst bombed out buildings, holding children injured by errant missiles, barely sleeping because their beds shake at night from shelling. The recent delegation had miraculously passed through the front lines on their trip from Amman into Baghdad, bringing fresh spirit for the labor of putting a human face and arms on God's love for Iraqis. These visual images have stuck in my mind. But this weekend the reality of CPT's witness and the risks our CPT heroes take, sprung alive. The acrid smell of death haunted me while I represented you (Mennonite Church USA) at the Christian Peacemaker Teams steering committee meeting March 27-29 in Chicago.

My first whiff smacked me when Mark Frey greeted me. Mark is a CPT staff member, but he also serves MC USA on the Peace and Justice Support Network and helps with Iraq agenda. We communicate frequently. Mark had just returned from five weeks in Colombia where he served people who live with gruesome deaths peering over their shoulders. In his spare time during our meeting, he searched the Web for books on trauma to share with other team members.

During our meetings, I gazed around the table at the steering committee members and CPT staff -- these people had recently taken the message of Christ's nonviolence to Iraq, Chiapas, Cuba, the Philippines, Colombia, Israel/Palestine and Afghanistan. I was privileged and humbled to sit among heroes of our faith, who easily laughed and affirmed others in an outrageously loving way.

During a reporting time, I led the group in prayer for our Iraqi CPT team. As we meditated in silence, unbeckoned images flooded my senses, and tears cascaded down my cheeks as words I didn't compose spilled from my lips. I trembled to feel God's spirit move among us.

Kryss Chupp, CPT staffer, then remarked that the Iraq team asks two things of us back here at home. One, pray. Two, work against this war, and "bump it up a notch," take the action a step beyond our own comfort zone. As part of our support for the Iraq CPT team, our steering committee took time away from our agenda and held our first vigil together. We gathered in front of the water pumping station at Michigan and Chicago avenues because our Iraq team was holding vigil at the Al-Wahtba water treatment plant in Baghdad. Bombing such sites, which were targeted in the 1991 Gulf War, is a war crime.

We reached the station by walking along the "Magnificent Mile" for shopping. We knew some of our team members had left Baghdad and their travel safety occupied our thoughts. I peered into store windows with different eyes than ever before, realizing how trite my shopping is, how irrelevant some of my life is when faced with death.

Sometime during that short trek, I became an evangelist. I held one end of a banner saying, "The Iraqi people aren't our enemies," and I wanted a chance to explain this good news to each shopper who passed by. I realized we had a message that changes lives, that Jesus offers a third way to deal with violence, a way that is neither idleness nor revenge. I wanted desperately to share that life-giving hope with these shoppers. Hundreds took our fliers, and I continue to pray that some will read them and wonder why we stood there. Or maybe some people will see the TV broadcasts, radio interviews or newspaper photos. Our simple hour on that corner made it possible for some people to catch a glimpse of Jesus they might not otherwise have had and such witnesses made more sense to me than before. We sang "Peace, Salaam, Shalom" hundreds of times, and purposely looked at people's eyes as they passed, wishing them God's peace, praying them a knowledge of Christ's nonviolent ways, offering them the Spirit's renewal.

The entire weekend I pondered -- during prayer times, as I fell asleep, as I listened to others talk of their work. How could I answer the Iraq CPT team's request that I take a step of faith and do one more risky thing than I have done, in imitation of their own willingness to face death in order to share Christ's love? I'm tired, I'm human, this war is too big for me, I can't handle doing anything else! But I desperately wanted to give my support and my personal YES! to that request. I know that I grow when I accept and work through challenges. I trembled, but felt called to take another step, through the grace of God.

Because isn't that what salvation is all about? Allowing God to do through us what we can't do alone -- to save us from ourselves, from doing only what is humanly possible, from limiting ourselves from taking the steps of faith that allow God's miracles into life.

Only gradually in the week since the meetings have I heard God's call for my next step. It's not as earth shattering or terrifying as I expected. But as I've examined my encounters this past week, I'm aware that I don't communicate my theology well with people outside peace and Mennonite circles. Repeatedly, I've had opportunities to discuss peace with others and been frustrated with obstacles I don't understand. I need to learn how to converse lovingly with people who are angry that Mennonites aren't enlisting in the Marines; people who are terrified that if President Saddam Hussein isn't stopped, their personal safely will be compromised; people who see the only answer to terrorism as violence or idleness. I want to recognize when people earnestly want answers, or when they desire only that someone hear their concerns. I need to learn phrases to state my positions non-judgementally, lovingly, and simply, for unexpected meetings. And most deeply, I want to learn to listen for God's voice in my ear during these opportunities.

And God is incredible. Just when this understanding that this is my step began to dawn, Gary Flory of Kansas Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution, called to tell me about his workshop that helps people communicate peace in difficult settings. He handed me the exact beginning tools I needed, and thus confirmed the Spirit's leading.

When I walked into the humble offices of CPT, I smelled death, but only briefly. As I listened and laughed and wept and prayed with these folks and learned of the depth of their commitment to Christ, I spent the weekend savoring the sweet, sweet tang of life, the taste that comes from saying "YES!" to the next step on the journey with Christ to peace.