A few posts back I said I wanted to spend this advent blogging about things that fill me up with wonder. Those of you who have read here for a while may remember my review of David James Duncan’s book, God Laughs and Plays. I quoted him on wonder:

Wonder is my second favorite condition to be in, after love–and I sometimes wonder whether there’s even a difference: maybe love is just wonder aimed at a beloved. Wonder is like grace, in that it’s not a condition we grasp: wonder grasps us. We do have the freedom to elude wonder’s grasp. We have the freedom to do all sorts of stupid things. By deploying cynicism, rationalism, fear, arrogance, judgmentalism, we can evade wonder nonstop, all our lives. I’m not too fond of that gnarly word, sin, but the deliberate evasion of wonder does bring it to mind. It may not be biblically sinful to evade wonder. But it is artistically and spiritually sinful. (pg 8)

What I didn’t quote was what Duncan said about wonder’s underside:

“Wonder is anything taken for granted–the old neighborhood, old job, old buddy, old spouse–suddenly filling with mystery. Wonder is anything closed, suddenly opening: anything at all opening–which includes Pandora’s box, and brings me to the dark side of wonder. Grateful as I am for this condition, wonder, like everything on earth, has a dark side. Heartbreak, grief, and suffering rip openings in us through which the dark kind of wonder pours. I have so far found it impossible to be spontaneously grateful for these openings. (pg 9)

I’m filled with dark wonder today. I’m going to write about it, both as part of my spiritual practice this advent season, and as a means of wishing and praying and hoping the brighter side of wonder toward the situation here in question.

My husband, N, has been getting email updates for the last year from an organization in Honduras called Association for a More Just Society (AJS). This is a faith-based nonprofit dedicated to promoting justice for the poorest and most vulnerable people in Honduras. They focus primarily on labor rights, land rights, crime victims’ rights, and creating access to legal and psychological services. From what we can gather from their website and email updates, this is no flimsy deal. These people literally put their lives on the line for those they serve. Their boots are covered in mud from all the trenches they spend their days tromping: organizing, investigating and reporting injustices, and offering legal and psychological services.

Last night N told me about their work, and I was filled with the bright kind of wonder. Their inspiration is Jesus, and they’ve taken into their bones his revolutionary way. Theirs is not an aspirin-Jesus, or a prop-up-the-status quo Jesus, but one who seems to have awakened them to the notion that they can do something about the sources of our world’s darkest things. They can do something. The words ring in my ears and move toward my heart. They can do something. It’s true for me, like them. It’s true for you. We can do something.

I feel like life is an amazing narcotic for most of us, or like layer upon layer of blubber. We live most of the time with a thick and sometimes sanity-keeping layer of blubber between us and deep awareness of the suffering in our world (we all suffer, this is true. But surely there are degrees, as in “I can’t leave my front door without getting shot” suffering, compared with “my child will not eat her vegetables” varieties.). We live with blubber between us and the awareness that these lives we’ve been given, these thoughts and feelings and the money and tools we’ve gathered along the way? They can address and alleviate the things that should instill dark wonder: AIDS, poverty, corrupt leaders and governments (!), global warming. I feel heavy even listing these things, heavy trying to think of more. The blubber is trying hard to close the opening I’m making in it here–the air hole that’s my connection with the kind of Life I want to live.

I want to be awake. I WANT TO BE AWAKE!! I scream it through all the insulation: I want to LIVE! I want to be awake to the things my hands and voice and written words can do for all the parts of me that are ill–the parts that are poor and fired for no good reason. The parts whose parents have died from AIDS. The parts that are being abused, and have only slum dwellings as options in which to live. I want to be awake. I’m one who likes to see the many layers of any issue, and so am well aware that one person can’t and should not do every good thing possible. I’m not advocating a kind crazed giving that takes nothing of self or family into account. I’m just saying I want to be awake. And in my wakefulness, I want to do what my little heart tells me is mine for the doing.

Last night N told me about a progression of updates he got from AJS this week. The first was a request for prayer. One of AJS’s lawyers, a man who represented clients abused by two of Honduras’s major corporations–one of the corporations a security service, no less–had recieved a death threat for the work he’s doing. Yesterday N got a note saying the lawyer had actually been killed. Just outside the courthouse, masked gunmen took him down. He leaves behind a wife and young son.

A hole is ripped through all my insulation. Dark wonder still pours through. This man was awake. Maybe he still is, in some other form. But not in the way his wife and son need most. Not in the way his clients need, and his colleagues, who, awake though they are, surely must be quaking in their boots right now. And grieving. Yes, grieving. Fear and grief are some of the best blubber producers, I think (though sometimes they’re the opposite…), and may be reason, in the case of AJS, for enormous setbacks.

I don’t know what to say about all this. I don’t know what to say about the powers in our world that pulse against everything I understand Life to be. I don’t understand them. Are numbness to their reality and self-centered living the best responses we have to their presence?

I’m planning on donating money to AJS, and invite you to do the same. But even more than that, I extend an invitation, as one who needs the invitation too, to not wait until tomorrow or next week or ten years from now to find a way through all the blubber. Maybe read Duncan one more time, thinking both sides of wonder as you do, rather than only just the bright:

Wonder is my second favorite condition to be in, after love–and I sometimes wonder whether there’s even a difference: maybe love is just wonder aimed at a beloved. Wonder is like grace, in that it’s not a condition we grasp: wonder grasps us. We do have the freedom to elude wonder’s grasp. We have the freedom to do all sorts of stupid things. By deploying cynicism, rationalism, fear, arrogance, judgmentalism, we can evade wonder nonstop, all our lives. I’m not too fond of that gnarly word, sin, but the deliberate evasion of wonder does bring it to mind. It may not be biblically sinful to evade wonder. But it is artistically and spiritually sinful. (pg 8)

UPDATE:  Here is a note that N recieved from AJS today:

The enemies of justice continue to oppose the poor and those who would help them in Honduras . This morning Carlos Hernández, president of the board of AJS (and also director of Genesis) received a text message in English on his cell phone sent from the internet that read, in part: ” You are the next.” We do not know whether this is just a sick joke or whether it was sent by someone who is truly a threat. But circumstances do not allow us to take this lightly. Carlos at this very moment is denouncing the threat before the national Human Rights Commission and other organizations.

More than ever we at AJS need your prayers right now. We also need your help:

1. Send an email to Honduran officials urging them to address Dionisio’s murder and to guarantee the safety of the rest of AJS’s staff and board.

2. Donate to one or both of two funds we have set up in memory of Dionisio–one to fund the education of his 7-year-old son Mauricio and one to help AJS continue Dionisio’s work of promoting labor rights.

To do either or both, please visit www.ajshonduras.org/dionisio

Thank you, and may God bless you,

Abram Huyser Honig
AJS Communications Coordinator

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 5th, 2006 at 1:12 pm and is filed under Current Affairs, Bridge-building, Religion/Spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.