119
con madre now. You’re one of us. You’re part of the neighborhood. Now you know what we live with.”
While Mercedes was sincere in her words that I was con madre, I knew it wasn’t true. I couldn’t be part of the neighborhood because I could leave whenever I wanted to, either for the weekend or permanently. I could return to the safe neighborhoods of my family. I had options, including to move into the neighborhood or not. But my comfortable life didn’t prepare me to live in chronic violence. I lacked the inner wherewithal to live in that neighborhood or any of the neighborhoods with routine violence. I simply didn’t have the inner stamina required to set down roots there. I also knew that none of my family or friends would visit me if I were to live in East Los Angeles or in Compton and I didn’t want to lose those relationships. I could not bring my two worlds together in hopes of building understanding and community. I knew I had to choose one world and it could not be the world of the inner city and I was chagrined by my naivete. I understood that my dream and hope of a future in this community was similar to my female student dreaming of a different life: “What I am talking about ? This is crazy.” Like her, I had to crumple and toss my understanding of myself as a risk taker and urban minister, willing to forsake my comfortable suburban life for the work of God.
A few months after the shooting, I left the alternative schools to enter seminary. Years later, I still ponder and remember the people and their stories, which I bore witness to during those nine months. By remembering the people and their stories, I continue to live in compassionate suffering, and I hope that as I write about this experience, I am similarly bearing witness to their lives. Recently, I picked up my copy of Soelle’s The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance and found in her words an apt description of both my experience and my aspiration.