Comments by Dennis Smith, new president of the World Association for Christian Communication:
I am honored to serve you for these next few years. I want especially to recognize the leadership of Musimbi Kanyoro and Piet Halma who tomorrow will be completing their terms as officers of WACC. We are not alone on this journey, and Musimbi and Piet are among the cloud of witnesses who will continue to accompany us with their witness and vision.
WACC has been important to me for a long time. When I began in WACC back in about 1979, I was staffing a communication training and religious film distribution service in Guatemala's central highlands. The WACC news bulletin Action, edited by Ann Shakespeare, was my one contact with the larger world of Christian communication. Over the years, WACC has served as my professional association, my window onto the rich world of Latin American communication theory and practice, a laboratory for social research through the Global Media Monitoring Project, and the school where I learned about communication rights, public policy and theologies of communication. People like Carlos Valle, Horace Etemesi, and María Elena Hermosilla have been valued mentors.
As the World Association for Christian Communication, we work to assure the full participation and leadership of women in our media, in our churches and institutions, in our world. We provide a unique space where, as people of faith, we can call on all people of good will to build community, to assure the full participation of the silenced, of those who have been made invisible, to challenge systems of impunity and violence by speaking prophetically to power, to stand with processes of liberation and wholeness in human history, to celebrate and defend human culture in all its diversity.
We are bearers of a proud tradition in defense of communication rights. We will continue to be present in the struggle to have the right to communicate recognized as a basic human right. We are here because we are storytellers. And in my brief comments this afternoon I want to speak to the theme of our Congress by telling a story from Guatemala: I was the translator.
The speaker was a Mayan pastor with deep roots in the spirituality of his people. The audience was a delegation representing several theological seminaries from North and Central America. The delegation wanted to know what was happening in Guatemala. In December, 1996, we had signed Peace Accords that ended 36 years of civil war. That war left almost 250,000 people dead or disappeared; more than a million displaced people.
In the larger context, the delegation wanted to know what the pastor could say about Mayan cultural resistance. The Mayas had somehow survived 500 years of adversity and still maintained languages, cultures, a vibrant spirituality, a unique way of being in this world. The Mayan pastor talked about rediscovering roots; he explored how hard and necessary that is after a time of massive brutality. How does one restore one’s humanity? How does one recover one’s connectedness with all things?
Being immersed in so much violence for so long, he said, breaks something inside us. Trust is shattered. Suspicion becomes a way of life. We become confused, numb, exhausted. And deep within us lingers a continuing spark of violence.
How do we restore balance? How do we re-build self-respect? What is the glue that helps us piece together our integrity? A starting point, he said, is to recall the stories told to us by our grandmothers.
But many, he said, have forgotten. They have been seduced by power, by consumerism. Inside, they are hollow, hurting, adrift.
Only a remnant have remained true to their vocation, to the awful, awe-filled calling to serve those in need in the name of God, whose name in Mayan languages is Heart of Heaven, Heart of Earth.
One professor wanted to talk about the problem of evil. Is there not a time when one must take up arms against the oppressor? He was like many of us. In the 80’s, much of his identity had become tied up in Central America’s struggles. In good faith, he, like many of us, had chosen to baptize the revolutions and sidestep their ambiguities. Now, he wanted to hear that the other side was evil.
The pastor did not answer.
Another posed a similar question.
Still no answer. I noted to myself that the pastor did not trot out his credentials of suffering. I knew he had lost close relatives. I knew he had witnessed monstrous acts.
The pastor and I talked later. I asked him why he had chosen not to tell his own story. Such memories, he told me, should not be violated. To do so can trivialize the victims, can cheapen their ongoing presence as they accompany us on life’s journey.
We talked about living in a time of great violence. We agreed that in these circumstances, there are no good guys. Within each of us exists the capacity to do monstrous acts. That is who we are as human beings. To celebrate violence only lessens us, no matter what the justification. But victimhood also lessens us. To perpetrate violence breaks something inside us. Always. There are no exceptions. So here we are, lessened: victims, witnesses, perpetrators. After so much brutality, our very humanity hangs by a thread. God’s restoring grace is our only hope.
So how do we deal with continued violence and injustice? Do we just step aside and let it roll unchecked? No. The struggle to build the world imagined by God must continue. But we must know that the struggle will consume us. In our brokenness we will become even more broken. In Guatemala, I have come to suspect that all of us, sooner or later, end up as damaged goods. That is certainly what we have seen in the films we have viewed and in the stories we have shared in this Congress.
Holy Spirit, spirit of wholeness – we are broken. We are capable of breaking others. That’s why Guatemalan poet Julia Esquivel states categorically:
“Because you can’t kill death with death
Sow life
And kill death with life.”
This is the story we share: the breath of the Spirit is in our midst; her presence will not be denied. Her's is the story of the slow, sure, tender triumph of life and justice and hope in all of Creation.
Go forth, my sisters and brothers, and be bearers of peace. For we are not alone.
10 October 2008
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