With our theme of Peacemaking as Vocation, our friend and fellow church community member, Mary Ward-Bucher candidly and humorously shared with us, “My Peacemaking Story (So Far).”
Led by Mary, neighbors have created this garden out of a vacant lot.
The truth is, I never woke up one day and decided to be a peacemaker. I am not St. Francis or St. Clare. I don’t have a peacemaking degree, though some of my good friends do. I don’t have any Quaker-issued t-shirts. When I was a kid, I got the Mercedes symbol confused with the peace sign. And, sometimes, I like getting mad. And yelling at people. Loudly. At any rate, my life has taken a number of unexpected turns and peacemaking has landed in my lap as a way to “bloom where planted.” This calling has a lot to do with making the best out of what I’ve been given, and being faithful to God by giving to others when asked to do so.
The glorious sun pouring into this transformed land in south philly.
I first got really serious about trying to listen to God when I was fifteen years old. My boyfriend (now my husband) was a member of the largest Pentecostal church in our small town, and I began to attend all kinds of meetings with him. Many, many missionaries visited this church. After a while, I began to think that the only way for me to really serve Christ would be to go someplace very far away and do something incredibly difficult and painful.
My prayers at the time went something like this: “God, I really want to do what you want me to do. Show me where to go, except…uh… I don’t want to go to the Middle East or to a big city.” So far, I haven’t been to the Middle East (although now I would love to go). But, worse than the Middle East for me was the city. I am forever a country girl and it was the most foreign and unappealing place I could imagine. My fear of cities was so intense that I began to worry that God, the imagined bestower of difficult and painful tasks, had me pegged as a martyr and probably wanted to send me there. Well, to make a long story short, I’ve ended up spending most of my adult life in Philadelphia, despite my best, prayerful efforts as a kid.
And, I can truly say that with every passing year, I feel blessed with more courage than I ever imagined possible. This is especially revealing in my family life since it appears that we, two parents and two very cute daughters, have been unsuspectingly drafted into peacemaker service. We knew that when we bought our house in “Deep South Philly” seven years ago, that we would probably be involved in some type of neighborly volunteer efforts. What we didn’t realize was that most of these efforts would end up being mostly about people. Through some of our neighbors, we have learned more about racism, addiction, littering, prostitution, neglect, weapons and vermin than I ever cared to know. On the other hand, we have also experienced the power of reconciliation and community in a way that we never could have dreamed.
My husband is a born diplomat, and has a natural calm about him. His childhood hero was Mr. Rogers. As a child, he used to pick the cheapest shoes in the store because he knew that in doing so, his mom would worry less about money. Complete strangers seem to find him instantly safe and trustworthy, and so, he is often dispatched to help defuse tense situations. I don’t have this same gift. I have no poker face, literally or metaphorically. And yet, because there was no one else around to do it, there have been a few times where I’ve found myself on the street, intervening in fights and other stressful situations, with a baby on my hip. Mostly, though, I’ve found that being part of making peace is not usually this abrupt and dramatic. It is a long, slow process of tangibly caring for people and being humbled by their care in return. Because of my children, I have spent many hours on my front steps watching them play and getting to know lots of other kids. They all love to talk. Mostly they want to tell me about school and ask me about bugs and trees and my eye color. Since I am also a semi-employed college professor, their parents will sometimes ask me to help with homework. Somehow just giving the children attention and constructive things to do is a really big deal, and on a practical note, the kids will all clean and sweep our block now without being bribed first. One of my former teachers once said, “Authority is given, not taken.” How true this is.
It is, unfortunately, a part of human nature that we want to dominate and punish in order to control others. As the epistle writer James says, as Christians we “war” continually with ourselves about just this very problem. I personally find this experience to be very difficult. There have been occasions where I have found myself thrust unsuspectingly in the middle of someone else’s problem, and I really wanted to either disappear or make that person or their problem disappear. We have a few neighbors who have struggled for years with addictions and mental illnesses, and we’ve had our own struggles in determining how to set our boundaries with them. It’s not easy. We are not superheroes and it can be hard to know what is lack of compassion on our part, and when we are justified in offering the word “no” and sometimes, anger.
Relationships are difficult and they take time. Making peace is about discovering together the hope, love and possibility found in Jesus, which must be demonstrated in action. God asks us to make long-term commitments, and to make ourselves vulnerable to others. This can be hard to do in our culture of distractions like “up and coming neighborhoods” and self-preservation at all costs. But, commitment is not all unpleasantness and sacrifice. As we watch each other be born, grow, mature, and die, a familiarity and history is established between us. This is really a crucial part of peacemaking: the love of God that makes for the foundation of living well together. The more invested we are in each others’ lives, the more we are inclined to protect each other. The more invested we are in Christ, the more we realize that when peace is won, it is not because someone else loses. And we certainly do not lose, either. Peacemaking comes out of a living journey with God, where God’s overflowing love cannot be contained, where the Holy Spirit speaks hope into our hearts.