Rooting reconciliation in the region

Last Monday began normally for the boys as we dropped them off at school. But it was a very usual day for Paul and I as he dropped me off at the airport to travel to Arusha, Tanzania. I headed off for a meeting of the Partners and stakeholders of the Great Lakes Initiative – it’s that big gathering of Christian leaders on reconciliation, which I have attended the past two Januaries. Duke University has been the major initiator of the GLI, but has found partnership in different ways with our organization MCC, with World Vision international, and with African Leadership and Reconciliation Ministries (ALARM). So there were reps from each of those groups at the meeting, along with four Christian theologians from the region (two University rectors from Eastern Congo, a Catholic priest from South Sudan and our friend and founder of the theological school and church we attend here in Burundi, Emmanuel Ndikumana.) Because of my participation in the GLI since 2009, going to this meeting was work, but it was also an opportunity to work with good friends I’ve made along the journey.

Our task for this week was to better analyze what the GLI has been doing and what it should be doing for the future. And in addition, we were trying to plan a road map for rooting the GLI better in the region (in terms of coordination), rather than have coordination happen in North America at Duke University.

We started our process by charting a history of the GLI, which is not simple when it involves seemingly unconnected things happening in different parts of the world by different actors. But thanks to an awesome innovation called “Sticky Wall,” we were able to work as a team of 12, pool our knowledge, and come up with a decent timeline of events and impacts.

The GLI was birthed out of a time of ecumenical theological reflection in 2004, when 50 scholars from all around the world and from different faith traditions wrote a document called “Reconciliation as the mission of God.” Those convictions have guided our yearly gatherings, but have often puzzled people who have come looking for more practical training on conflict transformation or for political petitions to sign to guide their advocacy work. So we also needed to better define the “DNA” of the GLI – which is demonstrated pictorially here. What people have found is that in this region, Christian leaders have made peace-building their business and their project, if they even think of it at all. This approach often, ironically, leads to kingdom-building, organizational conflict, narrow political thinking, discouragement and despair. The GLI tries to create a space for Christians to consider that reconciliation doesn’t start with us – it has been and will be the central mission of God vis-à-vis his whole creation. And we are called

personally to be God’s ambassadors of reconciliation, called to be converted, coming to terms with the barriers in our own hearts and seeking to create a new community with those very different from us – something we practice every time we meet as an ecumenical, inter-ethnic, multi-lingual group from the region. In particular, we have tried to target and invite key Christian leaders who seem to be tired of the old model (where the church is another power base which divides people) and could make a difference if they came and were encouraged.

It takes a long time to say what I just said! So we also worked to define in a mission statement what the GLI is about – we needed to do this because not everyone, even in our own organizations, understands or is fully supportive.

Our mission is to mobilize restless Christian leaders, create a space for their transformation, and empower them to participate in God’s mission of reconciliation in their own communities, churches and contexts.

On our second day, we started working on defining the current organization of the GLI, which is very ad hoc and hard to picture, because of the nature of different partners coming in and contributing at different levels. And then we tried to imagine a better organizational structure. We need a resilient, small organization, with simpler leadership coming from the region, and we feel like we were able to approach a good model of that. And finally on the third day, we worked on the specific milestones we will need to reach in the next three years to achieve that vision.

One of the exciting outcomes of the specific planning is that all 3 NGO partners expressed the need to plan from the country level, from the bottom up, rather than from the regional level. Each country in the region has different issues. We have seen how the GLI makes so much sense in the context of Burundi and the calling of the church in this country to speak into the political / spiritual issues that will be part of public life in the near future (elections, truth and reconciliation commission, general trauma healing). We are already making progress in developing a Burundi GLI country group as a community of leaders. We talked about some sub-regional gatherings as well, in Congo, Rwanda and Burundi, to try and work through the specific tensions here. And there is a possibility of doing some cross-border work in Northern Uganda and South Sudan, another area of conflict.

So, personally, I enjoy being part of this work because it is one key place where my professional role connects well with my training in theology. According to normal missionary gender roles, it is not often that I have the opportunity to participate in a conference or meeting like this. I love being a mother and a wife, but I also miss the kind of engagement around ministry that I enjoyed in seminary, for example. In the GLI, it is a real privilege to spend time with African theologians and scholars who could be my teachers, but who engage me as an equal, though I am a woman and a westerner.

Another gift of the week was the facilitator of our meeting, a man named Bill Lowrey. Along with leading us through fun and different processes for doing our work, he also gave us some personal, spiritual input. His specialty is in helping peace-builders develop personal resilience, so that they can be effective for the long haul and not burn out too quickly. I really appreciated what he had to say, but I also clearly felt that I am wearing very, very thin right now.

I knew that going into the week and I was also anticipating a time of rest and reflection, being away from the kids for a few days. On the good side, I was able to take two good long walks/jogs in the lovely countryside around the retreat center where we stayed. I never got to see Mt. Kilimanjaro throw off its blanket of clouds, but the environment was very fresh and the community around there was not apparently impressed enough with foreigners to follow me around. On the unfortunate side, our group ended up working until 10 pm every night on details of the next gathering in Uganda. So much for alone time!

I traveled home on the same flights with Emmanuel Ndikumana and he was good enough to give me some very long, detailed explanations of things that are currently happening in the church in Burundi. Some things were encouraging, such as the legacy of the late bishop Elie Buconyori of the Free Methodist church. Others were enlightening in a discouraging way, and strengthened my conviction that we need to have a place like the GLI where Christian leaders are challenged with the truth that the center of the gospel is sacrifice and reconciliation, not power.

Following this week away, I felt very worn out. And right away on Friday, we had to frantically start putting the pieces into place for our Partners’ retreat, which starts – today, actually! I was busy unloading other tasks, which I had unwisely taken onto my plate earlier (like postponing preaching at our church).

Paul gave me the report that the kids were good during the week and he really didn’t have a problem with them. I won't mention here all the issues he was dealing with during the week, involving immigration, others'  health issues, volunteers, etc. They had a school holiday on Wednesday and he took them to the beach for lunch and to our local zoo. They were certainly very affectionate to me, and loved being able to snuggle for our family movie night on Friday. On Saturday we had a nice group of people over for yoga, but I found I was too exhausted to participate, so I played with David instead. After everyone had left, Paul took a long look at me and gave me permission to go back to bed for the rest of the day. I didn’t refuse and found that I actually could sleep for the whole day, something I haven’t done in years I think. We had a quiet Sunday with church, pizza lunch at Ubuntu and our small group.

One funny moment was pointed out to me on Saturday, when our house was full of newcomers to Burundi.

Me: “Oren, put down the machete!”

Beth: “That’s not something you hear every day at home!”

It underlined for me in a moment some of the vast distance we will need to cross when we return to the USA. Here, a machete is just a standard piece of gardening equipment. It had just been used for pruning a large bush in our yard. I was chiefly concerned that Oren had picked it up and was deep into his imaginary role as a Minotaur fighting the Telmarines and was starting to wave it about. In America, it is a deadly instrument and no family would even own one! Oren was in tears about giving it up, but I think even he saw the logic that his own cousins would NEVER be allowed to touch one. We better safely hide the machete away before they come visit in June! ;-)