Last Saturday the weather warmed up to a glorious spring day. I picked some purple tulips from our backyard. Walking west a little more than a mile, my husband and I reached 24th Street and Sawyer Avenue, admiring the mosaic with glass tiles glinting in the sunlight on the side of Amor de Dios (Love of God) United Methodist Church.
In the alley behind the church, the memorial to Adam Toledo lines the wooden fence where he was standing, hands held up empty, before a Chicago police officer shot him, and he fell to the ground and died.
The 13-year-old’s silhouette is painted on the fence with angel wings added behind each of his raised arms. People had placed a cross, a basketball, several Mexican flags, and dozens of carnations there. I added our tulips and paused to pray for guidance into further action for justice and peace.
An article published by the Circuit, a collaboration collecting and analyzing data on Cook County’s courts, noted that in the weeks since the shooting and videos of it became widely known, neighbors in Little Village made disparaging comments about Toledo and his mother because he was out late and may have been affiliated with a gang. (That is not established.) Brayham Martinez, a construction worker, said that his neighbors writing about Toledo suggested “that him having a gun was all that was needed for him to be executed.”
Another quote that stood out to me most was from a local sociologist. “We’re too quick to distance ourselves from the most vulnerable people in our community,” said Patrisia Macías-Rojas. Young people who become involved in gangs are vulnerable, too.
I’ve seen my share of the effects of gun violence, though I’m not affected in the same way. I’m a middle-class white woman and it is not my family members who are being gunned down. But I don’t think it’s healthy for people of my social status to distance ourselves too much, either. At least one answer to the question, “And who is my neighbor?” is our literal neighbors, the people who live within a mile or two of our homes.
There are shootings at least once every month or two in the blocks around where I live. A few weeks ago, someone pulled a gun at the corner barber shop and shot into the alley across the street from our house. I put on a mask and went out to make sure someone had called an ambulance if one was needed, and to see if my trauma chaplain experience could be of service—for example, helping someone who was hyperventilating to breathe more deeply. A young woman sitting in her car who witnessed the shooting told me she was OK. I went back inside feeling shaken and did what I needed to take care of myself.
I don’t pretend to have all the answers. Yet I try to keep solidarity and compassion at the core in how I respond. Can we bind up the wounded and look for the vulnerable, and be a neighbor to them?
Gathered and Scattered book update
The Secular City by Harvey Cox, originally published in 1965, was an influential book in the early years of the Community of Christ—the congregation I am researching and writing about—and for many other Christians as well. In the 1960s, many saw secularization and urbanization as dehumanizing. Some then and now see the city as a place where God is not and where Christians must bring salvation to lonely and wicked people.
One of Cox’s observations that resonated with me most was about the way relationships in a city differ from those in towns, generally speaking. Instead of a visit to the mechanic or the bank being a social visit, interactions are focused on the matter at hand, whether a car transmission or a check deposit. They can be friendly, even caring, but do not involve the layers of connection that are likelier in a small town, which can feel warm or stifling. A certain amount of privacy is required, Cox argues, “to live responsibly with increasing numbers of neighbors” in the city.
The responsibility to one’s neighbor is still there, it simply looks different. Cox recalls the Samaritan in Jesus’ parable and says “his main responsibility is to do competently what needs to be done to assure his neighbor’s health and well-being.”
Reading and listening
“Resurrection, Incarnation, and Books: Remnants of Lent in the Easter Season?” by Elizabeth Felicetti, a post from her newsletter, Desert Owl Among the Ruins. Living with mortality is rough, but it can make joy all the sweeter.
Food and Faith Podcast (@foodandfaithpod)
I loved the episode where Derrick Weston talks to Ginny Messina (@theveganrd) about her book “Protest Kitchen: Fight Injustice, Save the Planet, and Fuel Your Resistance One Meal at a Time.”
As always, Celeste - thanks for making me think and sit