Death in the Barrio

             Job says, “If I ever summoned him [YHWH] and he answered me, I do not believe that he would listen to my voice.  For he crushes me with a tempest, and multiplies my wounds without cause” (Job 9.16-7 NRSV).

            As this is my favorite book of the Christian Bible, I am glad that the devotional I am reading by Barbara Brown Taylor spent so much time on the story.  Taylor does well by all of the voices of the story, even the oft-criticized, “existential” friends.  She looks at their arguments, recognizes their (human) common sense, but then adds, “The sad hole in this logic is the illusion that pain can be controlled” (166).

            I am finding this recognition of Taylor’s to be a “common sense”-type understanding in the community about Homeboy.  Father Greg writes in his book that young people from these gang-inundated barrios tend to plan their funeral as opposed to their wedding.  If you know death is going to come, why try to stop it?  “Dee,” a coworker of mine from one of these barrios tells me that he doesn’t even make plans.  He takes it “day by day.”

            Day by day.  No real plans.  Hopes, sure, and goals; Dee hopes to have his own house, to have a full-time job more stable than one at a non-profit, to see his son more often but his ex-girlfriend less.  But he doesn’t really plan for these things.  Today, he has a job.  Today, he has a home to go to, and a girl.  Today, he may or may not see his son.  And that is the extent of his plans.

            Why is this so?  “I’ve been shot at more times than I can count,” Dee tells me.  “It’s not a big deal to me.  And I’ve had homies die—like 6 of my best friends have been shot and died.  But then I know homies who have been shot and lived.  One was shot 19 times; one was shot in the head.”

            Bullets will fly—Dee can’t stop it.  Homies will die—Dee can’t stop it.  Today Dee’s alive—so he will live it, day by day.

            “After a while there is no reason to talk about it.  When pain [or death] is as ubiquitous as air, why comment on it?” (160).  There have been deaths in this community over my summer here.  Almost every week seems to have someone else’s wake or funeral happening.  And the people I see each day, in dealing with these deaths, speak of it with all the melancholy you might expect but tinged with a “business as usual” feel.

            If Job's story tells us anything, it tells us that God pays attention to what we cry out.  Remember, the book says that Job never sinned against God, even though Job called God's own righteousness into question.  Job thought God's tempest would destroy him—God shows up in a tempest and does not.  If you follow the content of Job's laments, you can see that God's interrogating reply targets that exact content.  God's honoring the lament, answering it directly yet transcendently. 

         Contrary to popular belief, God does NOT tell Job to "put your big boy pants on."  To read this as such is to not be able to read.  God commands Job to "gird up your loins"—a command also found in the Passover story, telling people to prepare for imminent deliverance.

            I ask myself, "If I were the pastor of a church for this community, what would I hope to see in them?"

            I would hope that God would not be silent, even though I know that might come in a horrifying way—as a tempest, a whirlwind, like it was for Job.  I wonder if pain is necessary to break Dee out of the “day by day” malaise; I wonder if he even needs to; I wonder if more pain would only fall on deaf ears, as his pain has been great even at a young age.

            I would hope that people in this community would allow themselves to hope enough in their own futures to make plans, even though I know it will be painful.  Even though I know it is entirely possible any given person might not make it through the year, the week, the day.  I would hope that deliverance would be imminent for them.  For decades now, it has not been.

            In a place with this much grief, I would expect people to cry out much more, to “fill the air with [their] furious poetry” like Job (166).  Perhaps I just do not see it.  But I do sense a distance between many people here and God.  Not necessarily a disbelieving one, but a cognitive one.  One that sounds like Job’s quote above.  Some have explicitly stated to me a belief that God does not take part in this world, and leaves us to our own machinations.

            Perhaps this is the only way to reconcile the pain—and death—that they know intimately with the God they do not.