Fall / Winter 2006
‘We Cannot Surrender To Despair’
Dear Pat [SPI director Pat Hostetter Martin]:
I was doing some very
sensitive mediation work when
I heard the news of Tom Fox’s
murder. I was eating breakfast
as the news came.
In front of me was seated a huge, steel-faced, frightening character, on whose face suspicion, anger, hostility, and, who knows, maybe fear, were deeply etched. God only knows how many people he might have killed and tortured. (Incidentally, I later learned that he himself had been kidnapped and traumatized.)
As I heard of Tom’s death, I stole a glance at the face of this person in front of me, and all of a sudden, a surge of despair overtook me about the apparent futility of the things that I was trying to do in that place. Sometimes, I view our work as trying to reintroduce humanity into relationships after it has vanished because of deep experiences of hatred, violence and cruelty.
It feels as if we are trying to search in people’s souls for fragments of that lost humanity, no matter how flimsy the strands might be, so that we can draw them out and can weave them together in order to make bonds of compassion to each other, thereby allowing our humanity to flicker in the darkness again.
But Tom’s murder hit me hard with the fear that this quest might be illusory after all. The barbarity of his killing seemed to suggest that those strands might not exist, at least not in the souls of the people who murdered Tom and in whose interest he was working.
To think that it is possible for the human spirit to sink so low where all hopes of compassion can be extinguished like this was terrifying. I felt totally crushed as if a huge grinding mill had fallen on my head. Given where I was and what I was trying to do, I had to struggle hard to keep those thoughts out of my head because I felt that my strength to continue with the work was fast giving up on me.
Upon further reflection, I had to come to the realization that we cannot afford to surrender to feelings of despair like this. We have to be able to see through evil and continue to be led by the faith that, even in the hearts and souls of those who killed Tom, the light is there, but probably buried deep below. We have to continue digging harder until it surfaces.
Hizkias Assefa
Editor’s note:
The letter-writer is a part-time professor at CJP and a
global mediator. See page 8.