The past few days I have been haunted by a conversation I had about the war in Syria. The conversation began around the "did they or didn't they" argument about chemical weapons that may have been used there on Tuesday. But during the course of the conversation, I became aware of the extent to which rape is being used as a weapon of war by both sides of the conflict. In fact, many of the refugees that have reached Turkey and Jordan have reported that it is the risk of sexualized violence against women and girls that compelled them to flee their homes even more than the fear of guns and bombs and lack of food.
It's nothing new of course. Sexualized violence against women has been a feature of warfare since Biblical times (see Judges 21). And it's been heart-wrenchingly common in our modern era as well...from the Korean "Comfort Women" of WWII to Bosnia to Rwanda. Syria isn't even the only place this is happening right now, today, as the conflict in South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo continues.
What does this have to do with Henri Nouwen? In our reading for today, he references the idea that in some times and places and cultures, suffering has been justified by claims that it is the "will of God." If God is omnipotent, then instances of suffering must exist because God either wanted it that way or God didn't care enough to change the circumstances.
Nouwen dismisses this argument, reminds us that we were created for joy, and calls us to look for the presence of God amidst suffering.
Denis Mukwege is a Congolese gynocologist who has been forced, by necessity, to become an expert in treating victims of sexualized violence. He has worked to help women recover from the physical and psychological injuries they've experienced, and then has helped set-up networks to ensure that these women who have lost everything are not exposed to further abuses by their poverty. His work has earned him an assassination attempt and threats on the lives of his wife and daughters. He fled the Congo after the attempt, but returned to the country this past January. Women, many of whom were his patients, raised the money from their meager wages (less than a dollar a day for most) to send him a plane ticket to come back. He now lives in a hospital with security provided by rotating groups of twenty female volunteers who are unarmed, but never leave him unprotected.
God is present amongst great suffering. I pray for many things for the people of Syria, and one is that they have a Denis Mukwege.
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