Megan McKenna: Current Trends: Whose Child Is This?

SPIRITUALITY TODAY
Spring 1989, Vol.41 No. 1, pp. 62-69.
Megan McKenna:
Current Trends:
Whose Child Is This?

Megan McKenna holds the Ph.D. in Liberation Theology and Scripture from the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California. A notable storyteller, Megan is also on the Board of Directors of Pax Christi, U.S.A.

WE begin with the children. The children are at risk. They always have been. Traditionally we remember the child born in a shepherd's cave in poverty and isolation. That child grew up to outright rejection, rage, and hate that culminated in destruction and execution that was legal and acceptable in his time. Immediately after his appearance in this world came a massacre of the holy innocents, those caught in the net of politics and economics and the fear of the poor that might grow up to change the order of things. Rachel wept for her children, 'for they were no more.' Rachel still weeps.
The statistics are staggering. We start at home. About 20 percent of U. S. children live below the poverty line, more than in seven other industrial countries. And it has grown consistently since 1979. That is one fifth of our children. Poverty is also racial in character: the 31.9% poverty rate for Black people is the same as it was in 1979. For Hispanic people it has grown from 21.8%o to 29% in the same period. White Americans, among whom incomes are almost twice that of Black people, have accumulated ten times as much wealth. For Native Americans it's worse: they have the highest infant mortality rate, the shortest life span, and the greatest suicide and alcoholism rate and a tuberculosis rate seven times the national average. Children are worse off than adults. Of all children under the age of six, 22% were living in poverty in 1985. For Black children under six the poverty rate was 45.6%, and for Hispanic children under six it was 40%. For White children the figure was 17%. (Statistics from Economic Justice and the Christian Conscience.) The numbers are hard to conceive: 11 million children in America, about one in every four are living in poverty.
Worse is just getting born in the first place. Alan Guttmacher Institute, a private foundation in New York, released its figures for last year in regards to abortion: nearly 3 out of every 100 American women ages 15-44 had an abortion last year. These figures are constant for the last decade. "The surveys show that a majority of women had abortions because they felt a baby would interfere with their work or education, or that they could not afford to have a child. Roman Catholic women have an abortion rate equal to the American average of 3 per 100. Abortion rates for Protestant and Jewish women are 30 percent below the national average." (Quoted in Sojourners, December 1988) Children grow up. The stats on runaways in the U. S. are equally devastating. More a cause for horror are their own comments that homelessness, hunger, and violence on the streets are not as bad as what they left at home -- abuse, drugs, alcoholism, and violence. The average street kid is between 12 and 16. Among these street youth is found the highest rates of AIDS, more than any other U. S. population except intravenous drug users. Covenant House, a private Manhattan social welfare agency, reported in November that at least 7% of New York's homeless youth are infected with the AIDS virus. Again it is black and Hispanic AIDS cases that are spreading disproportionately for their populations. That's at home.
Abroad, more than a quarter of a million young children die each week as a result of two conditions: infection and prolonged undernutrition. For every one that dies, more are left in ill health with physical or mental handicaps. Additional millions of older children (ages 10-14) perform the equivalent of slave labor and scavenge the streets in order to survive. An easy statistic to remember; an almost impossible reality to comprehend: a child dies of starvation or violence every twelve seconds.
"If we are to reach real peace in this world and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with children, and if they will grow up in their natural innocence we won't have to struggle; we won't have to pass fruitless idle resolutions, but we shall go from love to love and peace to peace, until at last all the corners of the world are covered with that peace and love for which consciously or unconsciously the whole world is hungering." (Mohandas Gandhi, 11 /19/31.) A man by the name of Kent Hoffman said: "The way we hold our children is the way we hold our future." We are in trouble, sadly. He is a psychotherapist. He also said: "The way we were treated as small children is the way we will treat ourselves and others the rest of our lives; with tenderness and support, with neglect and cruelty, or with something in between." Or worse.
The basis for justice is the infinitely precious worth of every individual and the respect and tender regard due to them. It is the foundation of the Incarnation, obvious in the life of the Christ child, any child, every child. This child born to us is the Sun of Justice, the Son of Man, the little child who leads us. "'Unless we receive the Kingdom like a chile, we will not even enter it (Mark 10:15) And 'whatever we do to the least of these little ones, our brothers and sisters; God takes as done to him (Matt. 25:40). These little ones are the simple believers, the silent, the poor. To be Christian, to be just, we must, with Jesus, live in solidarity with these -- and push our privilege in regard to their very existence and possibilities for a future.
Our children are poor. They lack the basic necessities of life, sometimes even the possibility of a life. They are helpless, with no voice but their cries. They are the oppressed, the murdered, the starved, the humiliated, and the hungry. Elsa Tamez in her small but devastatingly insightful book, Bible of the Oppressed, writes:
To sum up: the poor in the Bible are the helpless, the indigent, the hungry, the oppressed, the needy, the humiliated. And it is not nature that has put them in this situation; they have been unjustly impoverished and despoiled by the powerful. In the Old Testament there are a number of Hebrew words that are often translated by 'poor':

'ani in its most fully developed use describes a situation of inferiority in relation to another. Concretely the 'ani is one who is dependent. When used in combination with dal it describes an economic relationship. The contrary of the 'ani is the oppressor or the user of violence. God is protector of the ßnim because they are people who have been impoverished through injustice;

dal is used in two senses; it may refer either to physical weakness or to a lowly, insignificant position in society;

'ebion often refers to those who are very poor and in a wretched state. Originally it meant someone who asks for alms, a beggar;

rash is the poor or needy person;

misken means 'dependent; a social inferior.(1)
Our children qualify in all categories.
Our story of freedom, election, and liberation begins with the telling of the story of God, 'who hears the cry of the oppressed, of the poor, of the orphan and the illegal alien in our land.' Our God takes sides with the masses of people, with the poor, and with the children. The good news comes to them first, because they need it so desperately to live, to hope, to survive against the odds and in spite of those who oppress them, use them, ignore them, and blame them for the ills and inequalities of the systems and the racism and greed of societies. Their rights are the rights of God himself. As Mother Teresa bluntly says: "When you turn your back on the poor, you turn it on Jesus Christ." Poverty, the death and destruction of children, is an affront to the God who creates, who births and suffers and dies so that we might all be his children and live in his freedom with one another.
Jos Comblin's recent book, Cry of the Oppressed, Cry of Jesus: Meditations on Scripture and Contemporary Struggle,(2) Orbis, N. Y., 1988. He sees and hears the entire Bible, the proclamation of the Good News, as a cry of people, of a child, of all those who are desperate, dependent on God, and seeking liberation and life. In our day, the Church has taken up this cry of the poor and made it our own. We follow and imitate Jesus who cried out for justice in his life, who wept over an entire city, culture, and race/nation, and who addressed God with the last cry of his life, screaming and announcing liberation, resurrection and life in spite of death and hate. As sons and daughters of this God, as brothers and sisters to the poor we are called upon to cry: to be the voice of those who are inarticulate; to sing and make music that moves the hearts and hands of others to mercy and justice; to let others' cries find a place in the silent prayers of our hearts and to write, preach, teach and remind one another of the cries that reveal the presence of God among us still in those who wait for justice and struggle for human dignity and the chance to worship and serve God and make holy the earth.
These cries begin our story: "You shall not wrong any widow or orphan. If ever you wrong them and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry. My wrath will flare up, and I will kill you with the sword; then your own wives will be widows, and your children orphans" (Ex. 22:21-23). A harsh warning addressed to his people who seem to be able to tolerate injustice and the distressing sight and sound of so many around them. The tradition is long: "He/she who shuts their ear to the cry of the poor, will him/herself also call and not be heard" (Proverbs 21:13). The poor and the just are heard when they cry out (Ps. 34:18). If we expect an answer, if we want to be heard we must fall into or find ourselves in one of these categories: the poor, by choice and solidarity and prayer; and/or the just, those who struggle on behalf of those who are weaker, smaller, more dependent, and powerless than we are. It is the cry of the individual who prays, the people who struggle for survival with dignity, and the chosen of God who reveal his priorities and the presence among them as one of them.
Jesus cried out in the power of the Spirit for justice, for a year of favor every year for the poor and good news of the end of oppression and injustice and the coming of a kingdom of truth and care for those most in need. He died crying out with a loud voice, and then gave up his spirit to God (see Ps. 22:1, Mt. 27:46, Mk. 15:33-34, 37; Luke 23:46 and Ps. 31:6). This cry from the cross is both handing over of life, a cry of conviction and trust and the beginning of resurrection and the Church's call to preach, to teach, to sing and to announce the reality that God is on the side of the poor and hears all who align themselves with him in their helplessness and devotion. Jesus' cries give dignity and power to all who cry in desperation and despair at the world's injustice. The Epistle to the Hebrews tells us: "In the days when he was in the flesh, he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to God, who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered" (Heb. 5:7-8). Jesus' cries were those of victory, of hope, and the promise of freedom and resurrection.
The woman Miriam, whose name means 'sea of bitterness and sorrow; announced his birth in songs and cries of gladness and joy. Her magnificat is a cry of promise, a warning and a song of joy for all those who have awaited his coming to earth. Perhaps one of the strongest and most powerful ways to respond to the cries of the poor, and of the children, is to sing, to make music and to join with children in announcing alternatives and bringing hope in the midst of discordance. James Marchionda, O.P., has recently released two new albums /cassettes and sheet music for children and about children that echo magnificats and the cries of the poor, and of Jesus. Let the Children Come to Me(3) with twelve liturgical songs for worship and prayer and Children of God, a mass sung by and on behalf of children. They are sung by the children of Blessed Sacrament School in Madison, Wisconsin. and the group Sonday. They are enchanting, surprisingly strong and evocative, and a call to justice that is simple, childlike, and clear. My favorites on the album Let the Children Come to Me (and the favorites of both children and adults I've played them to) are the title song, "Let the Children Come to Me,"(3) written for Chris, a Down's syndrome child in Jim's former parish, and "Blessed are the Poor;" a simple child-strong rendition of the beatitudes, the after-effects of Marchionda's visits to El Salvador. There are songs for reconciliation and baptism, for eucharist and prayer services, for the word, and for confirmation for both younger and older children. The Mass of the Children of God reclaims an ancient tradition of singing and harmony for children. The repetitions, the theology and the music gather together the voices of children, the dreams and hopes of young and old, and remind us of the need to praise, to cry out with joy, and to sing the cries and hopes of the world in every generation.
There are a number of other excellent tapes/records that cry out for justice and for the rights and life of the poor and the children. Magpie: If it ain't Love, (4) by Philo Records, has a very powerful song, "Requiem," that tells the story and the dream of Oscar Romero and the four American women murdered in El Salvador. That one song is worth the album, but there are others of note: "Borderlines;" "Sacco's Letter to His Son" and "The World Turned Upside Down," the story of a peasant reform in England in the late middle ages that could have happened today. Another consistently strong collection is Tim Manion's There is a River.(5) It mixes old traditional spirituals and folk melodies with newer calls to hope. One song in particular stands out for its scriptural and contemporary blendings, "Rachel's Lament." Other songs concentrate on the announcement of joy and the kingdom to come rather than denouncing injustice, such as "There is a River" and "We Choose Life."
It is difficult to mix art and justice, music and prophetic cries for peace and conversion. These artists and theologians have excelled at both, delighting the ear and reminding us of the truth and the stark realities of grinding poverty and the threat to our children and our futures.
We end with the words of Jesus:
They came to Capernaum and, once inside the house, he began to ask them, "What were you arguing about on the way?" But they remained silent. They had been discussing among themselves on the way who was the greatest. Then he sat down, called the Twelve, and said to them, "If anyone here wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all." Taking a child he placed it in their midst, and putting his arms around, it he said to them, "Whoever receives on child such as this in my name, receives me; whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me." (Mark 9:33-37)
Every time we catch sight of a child, in our neighborhood, on the evening news, in a photograph, we need to ask ourselves the question that this article begins with: "Whose child is this?"
On my desk I keep a black and white photograph by Scott Wright, who travels with the refugees as they try to go home to their destroyed and burned villages in El Salvador on my desk. It is of a young girl, about seven or eight at most, with matted hair, wide eyes and hands hiding her mouth. She stares straight out at the camera, caught in fear, in a moment that transformed her brutally from child to adult. The picture was taken moments after she saw her family gunned down, her mother and brothers and sisters attacked by right wing military squads. She has so little left, so much to face alone, so much to remember and keep in her small heart. She is poor and utterly alone. She is my song, my cry for justice that is never stilled. She is my gift, my remembrance, my truth-teller, my hope. What child is this? She is my child, the child of God who has come once again to redeem us and save us. With Jean Donovan, one of the women killed in Salvador in 1980, she cries and silently accosts me. "My heart is not so hard as to abandon the children, to leave them alone; not my heart, not my heart." That was Jean's reason for going back to Salvador in spite of her fear. It is her song and cry to us: are our hearts so hard; are we becoming deaf and blind? Elsa Tamez, José Comblin, Jim Marchionda, Magpie, and Tim Manion all call to us in the voice of the children. Whose child is this? It is our child, our soul.

NOTES

Elsa Tamez, Bible of the Oppressed (New York: Orbis, 1982).
José Comblin, Cry of the Oppressed, Cry of Jesus: Meditations on Scripture and Contemporary Struggle (New York: Orbis, 1988).
James V. Marchionda, O.P., Mass of the Children of God, World Library Publications, 3815 N. Willow Rd., P. O. Box 2701, Schiller Park, Il., 60176. Album, cassette, and sheet music.
If it Ain't Love, Magpie Philo Records, Rounder Records, One Camp St., Cambridge, MA, 02140. Cassette, record, and lyrics.
There is a River, Tim Manion, NALR, 10802 N. 23rd Ave., Phoenix, Ariz., 85029.Album, cassette, and music.

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