Good Friday contemplation

I just got home from the Good Friday service, where we read from the Gospel of John, the story from going into the garden to pray up until Jesus was laid in the tomb.  Some things in the readings and the sermon fit in with what I have been thinking about today.  Sometimes I think and think and think too much, and in this case I think that it is important to open my heart and share what I can.  In this post I will discuss my first thought, and I will plan to continue with another example and contemplation from this story.

The priest discussed in her homily the difference between being a bystander and being a witness.  We all know that in the crucifixion stories, like many of the most tragic stories in our collective and personal histories, too many people stood by and said nothing.  John's gospel mentions three women (all Marys) who stayed near Jesus until the very end; who could not change his fate nor take away his physical pain, but who could and did stay with him.  Their silent presence changed from the indifference of the crowds, who by not objecting allowed the death sentence to be lain upon him, into silence that supported and strengthened Jesus in his last hour.  This scene always makes me think of Nazi Germany, where again the silence of the majority allowed great injustice... but again, a different kind of silence -- that of secret shielding -- allowed some hope to the persecuted.

The sermon shared this quotation from Elie Wiesel: "Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."

This is hard for me to write, because I don't have the answers, the conclusions, figured out yet.  But tonight, I will not be silent about what this means in my life right now.  I will have faith that discussion, as well as prayer, has some unseen power.


I have entered into international adoption not because I believe that this is the solution, because I believe that I am fixing something, but because I am willing to enter into the problem.  That people are so poor, in food or money or human rights or health, that they are sending their children -- their hearts, their futures -- away from them, to uncertainty and to possibly be raised and spend the rest of their lives halfway around the world, is a problem so deep it is hard to even contemplate.  Literally, physically, hard to think about because it is so painful.  Adoption is not the solution, certainly not adoption by strangers in another country; adoption is a band-aid for the children who would be lost while we find a solution.  And to me, by agreeing to take on a child who would have been lost, I am agreeing to search and work for a solution to her deeper problem.

I don't yet know exactly what my role will be in this.  I am in the Lent of this part of my life; waiting and learning and praying.  And more waiting.  I imagine that my role will become more clear when I am in Uganda, or that perhaps I will gain some answers to learn where to look when I get home.  Or perhaps, little children being needy (and I'm getting even more little children!), this waiting part will last a while yet.

But perhaps, by bearing witness to the little I have seen so far, I can be a Mary instead of a bystander in the crowd, wishing I were somewhere else.  

So, when I examine the problem in Uganda of children being lost (to international adoption, disease, the streets, or death), I see the deeper problem as being support for women.  I believe that women need education, training, and physical resources, because it is women who hold the families together and train the children. 

*Some villages do not have access to clean water, or it is very distant.  When children drink tainted water, their mothers spend too much of their time and energy nursing sick children, and community members who could assist are themselves sick or dead.  When clean water is too far distant, the mothers (and the children who are old enough to provide material help) spend a large proportion of their day hauling water, having that much less energy to help themselves and their children with all their other genuine needs.

*Food is a similar problem, although slightly more complex.  If you spend all your time trying to grow, process, or earn the food to feed your family, you are unable to attend to any other needs.  (Food is still all the way at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy.)  The complexity comes in because it is possible to spend all your time procuring food, and it is still not enough or not the right kind actually keep your family alive or healthy.  Sometimes the parents leave their children while they look for a job to earn food, and never come back -- and their elderly parents have too many small children and still not enough food.  Enough food is a huge, huge problem in Uganda.

*Education and training for girls and women would also save lives and save families.  If this research is true, almost as many girls complete primary school (about half) and enter secondary school as boys, which is positive -- but the more education a girl has, the more likely as a woman she is to be able to support her family.  It seems to me that training is equally as important: training in nutrition (e.g., recognizing that a bloated belly is a sign of malnutrition, not health, and what foods are necessary to help the child), training in sex ed (so women at least have some choice in family size, and how to protect themselves), training in how to save and use money (so they can make the best of the little they have).

*Women having ownership in a physical way to take care of their families -- nutritionally, financially -- could solve several of those problems and save many families.  Programs that provide women with goats or gardening tools and skills address this in one way; programs which offer a market for crafts or micro-loans address it in another.

*Many children are lost to simple, treatable diseases; some children could have been saved if their mother had known where to go for medical care or how to prevent disease.  Children are placed for adoption because their medical conditions are simple and treatable here (with health insurance!) and a death sentence at home.  Mothers die in unsafe childbirth, leaving other children unsupported. 

*Many parents are lost to AIDS, war, and untreatable diseases.  When the father is lost, the mother has a much more difficult time taking care of her family by herself.  When the mother or both parents are lost, usually other relatives step in to help, but there are limits to how many relatives an elderly grandparent can support.

*If women had a little more power in society it could save their families.  There are children who are lost because a widowed mother must remarry, because she does not have the power to take care of herself or her children without the support of a man, but it turns out that her new husband will not take care of her children.  There are women who are abused and cannot escape, victims of rape who are shunned because of their victimization.


Sadly, I am not doing anything physical to help these women and these families right now.

But I bear witness to children dying because of lack of access to safe water.

I bear witness to families broken apart because there is not enough for everyone to eat.

I bear witness to families who could have been saved if the parents had been able to qualify for a job.

I bear witness to children lost because their mothers did not have basic skills and knowledge, like when or how to go to a doctor, or how to use the resources they do have access to.

I bear witness to families who could have gained so much from a garden or a goat, but who had no chance to have one.

I bear witness to children who die of treatable diseases and children forever relinquished because of treatable diseases.

I bear witness to children who would not have been abused or abandoned if their mothers had had the power to protect them.

I bear witness to children left without parents because of AIDS, disease, and childbirth mortality.


I have been thinking about these things daily for months, from long before we decided to adopt.  Every day, something reminds me of these women, these families, and they weigh on my heart.  Tonight, I am not keeping my silent thoughts to myself.