Several years ago I was part of a church that a troubled young man was attending. He was quiet, a loner, and wore the typical uniform of disaffected youth of the time, meaning a lot of black t shirts and ripped jeans. I tried to build a relationship with him. I talked to him and on the rare occasions he talked, I listened. His walls were always up and there were long periods of time where I did not see him due to his struggles and the consequences of those struggles.
One day I got an email from someone who knew the young man. In passing the young man had said some things that worried this person and they asked me as the pastor to do something. The comments had been reported to the police, but the person was still concerned. And so I had one of the hardest conversations of my life with someone who I knew had a darkness in him. I was terrified. I did not want to make myself, or worse yet, someone else a target. I did not want to accuse someone of something horrible that wasn’t true. And I was worried that this conversation might not be enough. How could I live with myself if something bad happened later?
It would have been much easier to convince myself that there was not really a problem here. To lie in my heart and say that there was nothing I could do since it was in the police’s hands anyway. To stay silent would have been far simpler, but something in me forced me to be brave in that moment. I asked him if he had plans to hurt people, if he ever dreamed of doing something like that. I reminded him that he was loved and asked him about the best parts of himself. We walked away at the end of the conversation and my heart was still troubled. Based on the interaction I did not think he was a real danger, just someone who was very lost. I knew however that I had not plumbed the depths of his psyche and so worry for him still sometimes crosses my mind all these years later.
We see stories in the paper about those people who out of darkness do horrible things. Those who lash out and do great damage to all of us in their cruelty. We cannot turn back the hands of time, but we can keep our eyes open. We can admit when someone seems scary or off or changed. We can have brave conversations asking hard questions and remind people that they are loved. We can report things to the appropriate authorities.
Part of what it means to be community is to bravely confront those truths we wish we could not see, in ourselves and in others. Our work is one of reconciliation and a quest for some semblance of wholeness not just for those of us who are part of Sellwood, but for the whole world. While these may be lofty goals they begin with small steps, doing what we can, where we are, with what we’ve got. And sometimes that means having a really hard conversation.
Much love and light to all as we try to live like this,
-Eilidh
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