In 2004, during a major escalation of long-running conflicts in Sudan, I travelled to Darfur to help manage the combined aid response of 46 Catholic and Protestant agencies working together from across the globe. The notorious Janjaweed militia had been attacking communities in Darfur resulting in shocking death tolls and the displacement of millions of people from their land, homes and communities.
On a visit home during the early stages of our response I spoke to my mentor about the helplessness I felt in the face of such human destruction and loss, and the temptation to despair. Mindful of the Benedictine commitment to holy space as a source of healing, we used a prayer meditation to help me be still and attend to the spiritual landscape that surrounds us – to stand in that space where that in me which came from God could quietly reach back to Him. In that moment of prayer, I flipped from knowing myself as an individual struggling with despair to knowing myself as a particle of community, a global community channeling compassion and hope into the darkest of places.
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Returning to Darfur, I travelled with the grace and goodwill of so many people attached like streamers to my wrists and to the wrists of all those – local and international – working against the darkness threatening to overwhelm the region. Moving as a particle I was able to act as an individual while standing as witness to the compassion of a whole community.
The deeper challenge for me was to see the sacred in each person when that included the Janjaweed - to honour Benedict’s rule on offering a welcome to the strangers I believed them to be.
Facing in myself the damage that fear and despair do to the vessel of my spirit, I prayed with an open heart for the militiamen that, in their anger and despair, they might each experience the grace and goodwill of so many people as a healing for their own spirit.
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Given our faith and knowing how even the smallest prayer falls like rain in the spiritual landscape, I believe that the grace and goodwill of communities from around the world helped to irrigate that dark and difficult place. It was not a magic wand, nor did it justify terrible actions by broken vessels, but it was a deep and abiding expression of Benedictine communion – the shared response of many people springing from that holy space where we each reach back to God in faith, in hope and in love.
Photo Credit: Andrew Moca on Upsplash
Geoff O'Donoghue
2024
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