United

While we were at the genocide memorial,
a survivor brings a photo and gets emotional.

Coming from a perspective outside of the US it seems such an ‘us versus them’ mentality right now. Very strong feelings of I am right and they are wrong. I often hear stories that continue to divide, putting down the other side and expressing ‘can you believe what level some of our US citizens have gone to?’ We are continuing to divide.

Now we are at a conference in Rwanda where over a million people were killed in their 1994 genocide in 100 days – the pain of every person in the country is incomprehensible. Yet the story coming out of Rwanda is unity, confession and forgiveness. A presenter was asked if she was a Genocide victim. Her answer was humbling and a great learning point for me and maybe it will speak to you. She said everyone, perpetrators and survivors are victims. There is no point in labeling people as perpetrators or survivors at this point. We are all living in pain and thus together as victims. We all have a role to play at this point – ask for forgiveness or forgive, but as we go forward we will go forward together.

I do not live in the US at this time, but I feel like this is an important learning point for us. We may not feel like we have any control of the direction the US is moving right now, but we do have control over our words and actions promoting division or unity. Are we talking in a divisive way? As we travel around with our children, they have been in some difficult situations where they are standing in line at passport control at 1am in the morning or broken down at the side of the road with 50 children crowding in, we have to bring up can we change this situation? If there isn’t a way to change it, are we making the best of the situation?

The president of the partner church in Rwanda also shared some great information with us as he was asked, “How do you avoid putting blame on the other side?” His response was, “Genocide memorialization cannot be used to make us slaves of the past. How can you instead learn from it and change the future? From the point of view of the human being it is not possible for perpetrators and survivors to live together, but by the grace of God it is made possible. We have choices: divided living, revenge, but we have chosen unity. It is not easy. We are suffering for a good purpose. Revenge or violence would be for a bad purpose.” The questions continued, “Has the suffering of ALL (even the refugees whose family died of cholera, the soldiers, the survivors, etc.) the people of Rwanda been addressed?” His response, “The government and all the people are committed to bringing the people together. The history of Rwanda is not the history of just survivors, but perpetrators too.” Could we possibly work and learn to move forward together in this way?

-- La Maestra