Iraq
Kathy Kelly
Sunday, September 9 2007

It's a privilege to be with you this morning and to feel welcomed by Fr. Jim, knowing that he represents your durable and warm hospitality, extended to so many people and to me.

I recently read John Dominic Crossan's book, _God and Empire_ . Crossan points out that whereas John the Baptist established a monopoly, --John THE Baptist, one John, one baptism, -- Jesus founded franchises. These were no cookie cutter franchises, one the same as the other. Communities were diverse and not always in agreement. But they had in common a call to be challenged by the mirror held up to them, calling for communities that would defy Empire and find new ways to accept and love one another, breaking some of the taboos and familial expectations that might have excluded others in the past. Everybody in, nobody out!

This morning's scripture brings a very harsh challenge, asking people to subordinate their commitment to their own kin, -- their family members,-- to the demands of following Jesus, the demands of discipleship.

Growing up as I did in very secure environs, I can recall with a smile a time when it seemed that I was a bit odd, perhaps on the margins. I was an exceptionally pious child, and when I was about eight years old, during an Advent season, I had already given up chocolate donuts, comic books, television, soda pop, --I was running out of things to give up, and I couldn't find a hairshirt. I decided that one thing I could do was to kneel on my knuckles on the bathroom tile floor. Fortunately, I was a little child. Anyway, I remember my mother, a young mom at the time, walking into the bathroom unexpectedly. She gasped when she saw me and said, "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, how could you be so odd and be mine?" So I remember having an early sense of heading to the margins and being slightly odd.

But our adult responsibilities as followers of Jesus call us to margins, inevitably, living as we do in a society that refuses to welcome other people as brothers and sisters. We live in a time when U.S. citizens sent thousands of bricks to U.S. representatives and Senators, signaling their demand that the U.S. build a wall to shut people out, along our southern border. We live in a time when, following the war of choice the U.S. waged when it invaded Iraq, 750,000 Iraqis have fled violence in their country, pouring into Jordan, and another one million have fled into Syria. Yet the United States has welcomed less than 700 Iraqis seeking resettlement. UN reports issued earlier this year informed us that 122,000 Iraqi children never reached their fifth birthday last year. And this morning's news tells us that this week the UN will delay issuing an updated report because the U.S. government doesn't want appalling statistics about suffering in Iraq to interfere with the U.S. military report expected to express surging confidence that the U.S. war in Iraq should continue.

I have a story that might help encourage us to occupy the margins in our society.

In 2004, I was a prisoner at a federal prison camp in Pekin, IL. On May 1st of that year, a group of women prisoners came to me while I was studying in the prison library. "Kathy, you have to come and see what the TV is showing," they said. "It's so awful." I hurried to the TV room. CNN was showing the first pictures that emerged from Abu Ghraib, images now indelibly embedded in peoples' memories all over the world: the hooded man; the pyramid; the man on a leash; the man and the dog.

The women I knew in prison could readily identify with shame and fear felt by prisoners in Abu Ghraib. They understood all too well what it meant to feel humiliated, isolated and out of control. But the tears they shed that morning were fueled by their fundamental patriotism. "What's happening to our country?" they asked.

In response, several women told the warden that they wanted to gather together on the oval track, each day, at sunrise and at sunset, for a special time of prayer. The warden agreed to this, and so began an extraordinary prayer circle.

Here are some of the prayers I recall: "I want to pray for my kids. I ask God to please look after them. And I just want to hold up the children in Iraq, because I know they're suffering a lot."

"I want to pray for my children and also for the children of the guards working in this prison."

"Lord, I pray for all of the children of all of us here, and I pray for all of the U.S. military people in Iraq who are separated from their children.

"It's so hard for parents and children to be far apart. I just want to pray for every family separated by this war and especially for the kids whose parents won't ever come home."

"I pray for parents who've lost their kids."

Over the days and weeks, the prayer circle steadily grew. By the time I left the prison, close to one hundred women were regularly gathering to pray for peace, for freedom, and for an end to war. The women in prison did what they could in response to feeling overwhelmed by the war in Iraq. They prayed for a kinder and saner world and in the very act of uttering prayers they helped build a more sane perspective on the horrific harms and risks incurred by ongoing war in Iraq.

When I left the Pekin prison, Sherrie, a prisoner trusted and esteemed by prisoners and guards alike, drove me to the bus station. As we passed the high security prison for men, where the median sentence length is 27 years, she placed her hand on mine. "I know you care a lot about those people over there in Iraq. At least our boys aren't over there," said Sherrie, an African American woman. "Our boys are all in there." I don't know if Sherrie's words can be backed up demographically. But over the past few years I've puzzled over her words and I think I finally understand what she meant. I think she meant that even the darkness of spending decades in a prison is preferable to the risk of killing or being killed in a foreign war to protect criminal interests of an empire.

I was in Iraq during the Shock and Awe bombing. I had reached a low point, after a week of steady bombing, and I couldn't bring myself to leave my room. I could no longer imagine seeing anyone much less going again to a hospital as wounded and broken Iraqis were hurried into the emergency room. But my friend April Hurley, a medical doctor, couldn't imagine staying away from the hospitals. She had skills. She was needed. But I was the one who could get permission to enter a hospital. April asked me to please go with her. I tried to find a bench where I wouldn't be in the way, and I found myself sitting next to a woman who was clad in black, shuddering and sobbing. "How I tell him?" she asked, "What I say?" She didn't know how she could tell Ali, who was undergoing surgery to remove his arms after being hit by a U.S. missile, that he had not only lost both arms. She must tell him that she was now his only surviving relative.

On the day that marked the fifth year since the U.S. began its war of choice against Iraq, the BBC Middle East news interviewed Ali. They reported that now, at age 16, living in London, he has learned how to feed himself with his feet and he's become an accomplished artist, painting with his toes. When the interviewer asked Ali what would you like to do when you become older, he replied, "I don't know" speaking in perfect English, and he continued, "maybe do something for peace".

How fortunate we are to be guided by his simple words. How fortunate to have the gospel message urging us to see ourselves in a new light, reflected in the mirror of a society that longs to treat others as brothers and sisters, to liberate ourselves from bondage to the forces of militarism, racism, and impoverishment, to imagine ourselves metaphorically standing shoulder to shoulder with Ali in our desire to do something for peace, and to imagine being hand in hand with the women praying on the oval track, praying for children and the chance to put an end to war.