Sunday afternoon, Peter and I decided to go for a walk at Forest Hill Park here in Cleveland. Actually it’s straddles the border between Cleveland Heights and East Cleveland, both suburbs of Cleveland. We’d never been to this park, so we looked it up on the map, figured out where to go and of course we got lost. We ended up driving up the west side of the park instead of the east side like we’d planned. We decided to go around the park when we discovered there’s no place to pull in to park on that side of the park except the street.
It was really clear when we were no longer in Cleveland Heights. The park was noticeably less well kept up. East Cleveland is poor, so poor they have very few city services. So much devastation. I’m not sure what the history is, but I’m willing to bet racism and corruption were involved. As we came up to the first cross street that would take us east, I saw some apartment buildings that were 10 or 15 stories high, maybe two apartments wide. They were empty and very, very dilapidated. there were two or three in a row. They effectively blocked easy access to the park from the housing below them. As we turned east, Peter kept turning into the streets looking for a way through.
It was a very surreal experience for me. It was such a perfect illustration of our pastor’s sermon earlier that day. He used Habakkuk:
O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, / and you will
not listen?
Or cry to you “Violence!” / and you will not save?
3 Why do you make me see wrongdoing / and look at trouble?
Destruction and violence are before me; / strife and contention arise.
4 So the law becomes slack / and justice never prevails.
The wicked surround the righteous— therefore judgment comes forth
perverted.
His point was that we live in tension between such violence as Russia is perpetrating against Ukraine and Christian hope. The prophet Habakkuk cries out violence, violence where are you God? And God doesn’t seem to answer. Christian hope is to acknowledge the violence and still believe we can make the world better. Maybe not perfect, but better. There is always more we can do.
The violence of Russia invading Ukraine is easy to see, and the huge injustice is easy to recognize. It’s playing across our TVs and our phones and our computers every day. As we drove through East Cleveland on that beautiful, sunny, peaceful day, my mind was crying out violence! Where are you God? Yet, we cannot see the policy violence, economic violence, or the racial discrimination perpetrated in East Cleveland, only the results of these violences. A neighborhood that looked like it had been bombed; dilapidated homes and broken windows and scattered houses that looked well kept. Because the violence isn’t easy to see as it’s being perpetrated, it’s hard to see what to do about it.
As someone who grew up in a society filled with TV shows, movies, and books all portraying poverty as dangerous and equating ill kept housing with bad character, it felt dangerous to be there. I was fearful and profoundly uncomfortable and sad, not to mention embarrassed about being fearful and uncomfortable. I work to rid myself of these associations, and boy does it take time. I realized even in the moment that I was safe. It all felt like a punch in the gut.
It is easy to pay attention to the big, splashy violence of war – especially war overseas, especially when the invaded people are white. And we absolutely should not look away from what is happening in Ukraine. It’s horrible, it’s criminal, it’s brutal, it’s inhumane. Yet, consider also looking at those areas where you live that are experiencing the kind of violence that goes under the radar: the hidden violence of police constantly stopping non-white people, the hidden violence of economic policies that favor white males, the hidden violence of people moving to the suburbs – away from “those” people, the hidden violence of redlining, the hidden violence of corruption, the hidden violence of police not believing women when they tell them they’ve been raped.
We’re all in for Ukraine. Are we all in for our neighborhood? Our streets? Our city? Our state? America?
B
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