“This is a weapon free zone.” That was the sign on entry door of the assisted living apartments we visited recently. It echoed the instructions on the doors of restaurants, supermarkets and malls: “No handguns or other weapons permitted” or “All weapons prohibited on these premises.” Our friends and family in Wisconsin don’t even blink at those cautionary notes, but it sent chills through a visitor to this state which isn’t liberal about many things anymore but is adamantly liberal about putting guns in the hands of seemingly all comers.
On our first Sunday in town, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett made the rounds of several churches calling for community help in curbing violence. He particularly visited churches in the inner city areas, the scenes of the worst violence. He calls his annual interfaith drive-by “Ceasefire Sunday.” Can we in Hawaii even get our heads around such a concept?
Barrett told the congregation at New Covenant Baptist Church that “We have to love our young men and we have to create hope in their lives.” He said, “We have to have a police department where people respect the police and the police respect the community.”
Milwaukee seems to have a church on every fifth street corner — who knew there are so many Lutherans! It’s probably not unique in grassroots America that there is such a proliferation of Catholic and Protestant churches, synagogues and, nowadays, mosques per square mile. They don’t have a billboard ban so the theme of the next sermon, profound or cute, is promoted on the sign outside. Peace seemed to be a favorite theme, according to my passing perusal. But they don’t seem to have a successful formula for practicing what they preach.
This city has seen 56 homicides since Jan. 1, triple the toll of last year, and literally hundreds of assault cases. The hometown news in recent weeks showed the count escalating with one particularly egregious episode at a memorial vigil for a murder victim, where five mourners including the mother of the deceased were injured in a hail of gunfire.
This is a not a southern city where racial divide is ingrained or a culture where it’s police versus anyone young, dark-skinned and hanging out with friends of the same profile. It’s not Detroit made desperate with the dearth of available employment and government dysfunction. It’s not a place where education is denied to the lowest or slowest; the voucher system puts poorer children into Catholic and other private schools at taxpayer expense.
The gemutlichkeit spirit
Early in my life as a Hawaii resident, I would expound on the concept of gemutlichkeit, the German word that used to define Milwaukee, translating to hospitality and open friendliness, the point being that the aloha spirit lives elsewhere under different guises. Now on a visit to this land of my roots, deep in the American heartland, settled by waves of poor immigrants — from the Germans, Poles, Scandinavians, Irish of past generations to the Hmong people of Cambodia — who just wanted a chance and a safe place to work hard and thrive, I am sad and sorry. Their descendants have migrated again, evacuating the city center which is now home to black and Hispanic residents whose dream is no less than theirs was. The drug culture and violence it breeds has cast a pall. People are trapped. Hope is as sparse as peace while gangs thrive.
I was pondering the situation at Pentecost Sunday Mass in a small village church a couple weeks after Ceasefire Sunday. There in a reading for the vigil of Pentecost was the story of the tower of Babel. Ancient though it is, the tale strikes a chord in 2015.
When you watch politics or conflicts unfold on the news or try to engage in a dialogue with your boss or your medical insurance provider or the kids’ teacher or even within the family — all speaking the same language but at the same time not understanding each other — the Babel story comes to mind.
The Hebrew sages tried to explain how humankind drifted apart, from all speaking the same language of the Creator into the clamor of different tongues. The story goes that God decided to “confuse the language” after an early band of humans got above themselves and planned to build a city with a tower that would reach heaven. And theirs was a modest version compared to the high, high high-rises that drive people to take God’s name in vain. But this isn’t a diatribe about the godawful future vision of our Honolulu skyline.
This is a mourning wail from a visitor who loves this place now wracked with deadly violence, where people infected with distrust, despair, anger, hatred, fear and addiction don’t seem willing or able to communicate with or understand what others are saying, even when the speakers are trying to offer help or redemption. Don’t get me wrong, the newspaper is also full of stories about summer job programs for youths and efforts by community, ethnic, faith and government groups to intervene in the drug culture and uplift young people. The variety of cultures is celebrated each weekend throughout the summer with one after another ethnic festival at the shore of Lake Michigan. People flock to share each other’s food, music, arts and fun, but each weekend celebrates a separateness, too.
The serene Pentecost celebration in the small congregation of St. John the Baptist in Wilton, Wis., was far from the streets of Milwaukee in more than geography. Faces in the almost totally haole congregation were a reflection of the generations of Europeans who settled in the rich farmland more than a century earlier. They knew each other. I’m sure some noted there was a stranger sitting in the third pew; I suspect some pious busybodies also count who is absent on any given Sunday.
Babel in Wilton, Wisconsin
I wondered if anyone but me was reflecting on the irony of the story of the dysfunction described in the Babel story. Their pastor for the past year is a priest from India. Father Peter Anphonisamy Chinnatan speaks precise English; he may even be eloquent at times. But the rhythm of his speech throws people, creating a Babel-like situation. Perhaps the benefit of living amid the speech cadences of Hawaii people was what helped me do a fair job of following his train of thought unaided.
The Indian pastor is trying to bridge the language barrier by distributing a printed copy of his homily. I found that a sadly separating thing, as everyone sits with chin on chest reading along. No eye contact, no sympathetic faces to see in your audience, no spontaneity. I’m one of those who prefers to listen to the scriptural selections at Mass. Reading along turns it from being a potential spiritual experience to being the editor or critic of a performance, in my opinion.
“As fragile human beings, we know the experience of living in fear and being anxious and worried about many things, some of which exist only in our imagination,” Father Peter said, remembering the apostles cowering inside, before the Pentecost experience gave them courage and eloquence which was described by the Scripture writer as the exact reversal of Babel.
“The story of Babel was not about language, it was about communication,” said Father Gene Trainer later at a family reunion where communication was in no way hindered. “People can make themselves understood despite language.”
Father Peter recalled that Jesus told the disciples what possessing the Holy Spirit will mean, conversion from self-centered lives to loving concern and willingness to forgive others. He examined Jesus’ words, “what sins you shall forgive … what sins you shall retain,” interpreted by the Catholic Church as the authority of priests in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
“It was once thought that the command of Jesus to forgive or retain sins was addressed only to priests,” said Father Peter. “Now it is clear that this charge is addressed to all followers of Jesus. We must accept the wonderful and awesome responsibility of offering or withholding forgiveness.
“The sin of omission looms large and should make us all examine our consciences in regard to the many times that we may have persisted in nursing old injuries,” said the Indian priest. “It is of course very difficult to achieve such an ideal of forgiveness.”
Had he stood in any pulpit of the violence-ridden city 300 miles away, he might have heard a chorus of amens.
If only someone would succeed in translating that very seed of peace into a program that would work — among warring gangs, among people separated by whatever barriers of race, language, belief, geography.
If only people would approach communication armed with sincere speech, and not with weapons.
