“Waiting in the Light: Peacemaking in the Shadowy Landscapes”
Dialoguing the Reflections of Tom Fox
Anna Roeschley
April 2006
One month ago, we received news that the body of Tom Fox was found dead in Baghdad, after spending nearly four months waiting and wondering about his condition and the lives of his fellow Christian Peacemaker Team members. The loss of this acknowledged peacemaker resulted in a period of grief, mourning, and discouragement, especially for those who had fervently hoped and prayed for the safe release of Tom and his teammates from captivity. In the days following his death, as I processed this loss and prepared to join others in doing so, I was drawn to the written reflections he left. In particular, I became intrigued by the concept of “waiting in the light,” which was the title of his online blog. As I began to ponder this concept of waiting -- in the light -- it took on poignant meaning during this time following death, and particularly to us as peacemakers as we reflect, mourn this loss, honor the lives of others who suffer for the sake of peace, and seek sustenance to continue in our efforts for peace. What does it mean to wait, in the light? What does it mean to be peacemakers who wait even in light of the darkness that we knowingly encounter? It is this question that I seek to explore with you, as fellow peacemakers, that we may take on a fresh and nontraditional understanding of the concept ‘waiting,’ that we might actively engage in waiting, and that in doing so we may discover the potential that waiting holds in a world of both light and darkness.
We begin by reframing our understanding of what it means to wait. Waiting in the light strikes me differently than walking in the light. We live in culture where progress and success are measured by activity, by performance, by movement, by doing. This leads us to live very driven lives and that are often over-committed and under-contemplated. The practice of waiting in the light speaks to this misconception of progress. I am not speaking of a kind of waiting here that invites us to check out, to withdraw and take a vacation from our work as peacemakers. Waiting in the light is not about inactivity or about passivity. But neither is it synonymous to walking in the light, which is how we might traditionally frame our journey as peacemakers. And granted there are times for this walking – for rapid and intense activity, for obvious and outward encounter – times when travel to other countries, give food and aid, when we rally support and march in the streets and write letters to effect legislation. However, I think because of the way that our culture and even our church is prone to perceive progress – with measurable, quantitative outcomes – the regard for waiting is often overlooked and misunderstood.
I propose that we take on a new framework for waiting, in which we understand our peacemaking to be an ongoing rhythm. Within this rhythm, which ebbs and flows, there are periods of walking and periods of waiting, and periods in between, and each contains progress, movement, growth, accomplishment. There are times when waiting does require drawing inward, pausing, reflecting. But waiting can also be full of anticipation, brimming with activity, living with growth. In his book, The Path of Waiting, Henri Nouwen says, “Waiting is never a movement from nothing to something. It is always a movement from something to something more” (13). Take the example of Tom Fox, who demonstrated this kind of waiting: Many people questioned why CPT continued to stay in Iraq, and the CPT’ers no doubt questioned it themselves at times. They chose to stay, however, in solidarity with Iraqis who suffer. For these peacemakers, the very act of waiting, of choosing not to move but to remain despite dire circumstances, was seeking peace. Fox speaks on this:
"After eight months with CPT, I am no clearer than I when I began. In fact I have to struggle harder and harder each day against my desire to move away or become numb. Simply staying with the pain of others doesn't seem to create any healing or transformation. Yet there seems to be no other first step into the realm of compassion than to not step away."
Fox’s reflections emphasize that this place of waiting, of remaining, is not a place of inactivity. It is not stagnant. This “not stepping away” into the “realm of compassion” might not be always be evident – at times we might sense it more than we see it. And even then, waiting might not look like what we expect. Like a flower which has not yet bloomed, we are planted seeds, we move and grow, we sink our roots into the soil, we are weathered. We turn our faces toward the light…but in all of this we wait-- to blossom in full.
It is here that I introduce another facet of waiting – the recognition of darkness. When we constantly seek to walk in the light, I fear we have a tendency to try to move away from the darkness, to get out of it as quickly as we can. But darkness is not to be avoided. Like this flower, which began as a seed underground, we experience darkness. This darkness is not something that goes away as we poke through the soil and enter the light – we remain in it, just as part of the flower remains dark in the ground. I relate this to what Fox speaks of as “shadowy landscapes” in describing Iraq, a place of much darkness, but not without places of light. "It was of a land of shadows and darkness,” he said, “But within that land candles were burning; not many but enough to shed some light on the landscape.” I believe that waiting is about acknowledging that in darkness there is light, and that with light also comes darkness. Even the brightest daylight causes shadows to be cast. Darkness and light coexist, and as peacemakers we are called to this place of intersection. It is this place, in waiting, that we recognize that while we are working for God’s peaceable realm to be manifest in full, we have not yet arrived. If we only ever try to walk in the light we disregard the reality of darkness. So it is here in this space of intersection – of waiting in the light -- that we confront darkness. We are working, we are moving, but we are waiting. It in this space that we grieve those who suffer and die, while also being able to seek hope and find sustenance. Here we wait as we rejoice with the news of endangered peacemakers who are now safe, all the while knowing that many still suffer and die. This place of waiting in light and in darkness is a raw and honest place. It can be full of fear and loneliness. It is often a place of groundlessness. It can be painful. Fox states:
"The ability to feel the pain of another human being is central to any kind of peacemaking work. But this compassion is fraught with peril.A person can experience a feeling of being overwhelmed. Or a feeling of rage and desire for revenge. Or a desire to move away from the pain. Or a sense of numbness that can deaden the ability to feel anything at all.
He asks, “How do I stay with the pain and suffering and not be overwhelmed? How do I resist the welling up of rage towards the perpetrators of violence? How do I keep from disconnecting from or becoming numb to the pain?
I believe that it is waiting, not walking, in the light that enables us to remain, even in these dark, fearful, painful places, waiting that challenges us not to run from the places in and around us that make us so uncomfortable but instead challenges us to embrace the juxtaposition of light and darkness. Furthermore, I believe that it is within these very places – these dark and light, middle-of-nowhere places of waiting that contain deep and promising potential. To this final point I now turn.
There is a certain vulnerability that comes when we fully allow ourselves to actually Be in the places of waiting, the shadowy landscapes that Fox describes. It is a raw place to be -- vulnerability makes us tender, it breaks us and opens us up. It forces us to stop seeking our own strength. The vulnerability of waiting enables transformation to come, preparing us for rebirth, new growth, and discovery. It is the flower in the form of a seed – all its hope and life bound up in a little speck, exposed to the elements and drifting. It is the place of a mother’s womb. It is pre-Easter place to be, these days we spend following death, before we reaching full resurrection.
Fox references Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron, who speaks of this vulnerable, transformative place in her book The Places that Scare You. She says, “Anxiety, heartbreak, and tenderness mark the in-between state. It’s the kind of place we usually want to avoid. The challenge is to stay in the middle…to let it soften us rather than make us more rigid and afraid. Becoming intimate with the queasy feeling of being in the middle of nowhere only makes our hearts more tender. When we are brave enough to stay in the middle, compassion arises spontaneously” (120).
I challenge us as peacemakers to seek this kind of compassion, to enter into these middle places, of light and darkness, of waiting and transformation. These are the places -- of brokenness and tenderness -- that hold great potential. Fox reflects on this middle of nowhere place as being “the only authentic place to be.” He says, “Not staking out any ground for myself creates the possibility of standing with anyone.”
With whom are you called to stand, as a peacemaker in your own shadowy landscape? In what ways are you being called to enter into your own middle of nowhere, and wait amidst light and darkness? I would like to share a reflection by Fox as a closing illustration. I invite you to consider these questions and step into his story.
"Our apartment is across the street from a park," Fox writes in late June 2005. "Many evenings around the time we are gathering for supper a mother and her three children walk by our living room window. The western sun illuminates her face and the faces of her young children. I don't know her but in a way I feel I do. She looks tired. So many, many people here in Iraq are so very tired. She looks a bit fearful. Will today be the day when the insurgents set off a car bomb near the park? Will today be the day when the young men of the Iraqi National Guard, riding like cowboys in the back of their pickup trucks, get trigger happy and start shooting with her and her children in the line of fire? Yet day after day I see her taking her children to the park. Underneath the fatigue and the fear I can sense the hope and the courage in her heart. It reflects on her children as does the setting sun reflect on the nearby Tigris River. She gives me courage to face the overwhelming difficulties of life in this broken land. She is living in the present moment fully aware of the dangers and uncertainties and yet she has not given up hope, she has not given in to despair, she has not let herself be driven into hiding by men with guns and bombs. She is my teacher. She teaches me how to live fully conscious of the horrors of today and still be able to envision a future of promise, peace and plenty."
May we join the Iraqi mother who stands in the park and wait in the light. May we join the peacemaker who is held hostage and wait in the light. May this be an active waiting, a waiting that courageously encounters the shadows and places of fear that opens us up for transformation and rebirth. A waiting that chooses to stands in compassion and solidarity with those who suffer, despite our tendency to rush out of these places of darkness. As Fox said, “removing ourselves from the shadows and darkness will never create the capacity for those living in the shadows to grow in the light."
As peacemakers may we live fully aware in this present moment, in the place where darkness and light coexist, where we mourn and hope and rejoice and suffer. This is a place of intersection, a place of transformation. This is a place of shadowy landscapes – land not in full light or in full darkness, but in shadows. I ask you, fellow peacemakers, will you join me in this radical place of waiting in the light?
Works Cited
Chodron, Pema. The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times. Boston: Shambhala, 2001,
Iraq Diaries. 11 April 2006.
part 1 <http://electroniciraq.net/news/2299.shtml>
part 2 <http://electroniciraq.net/news/2301.shtml>
Nouwen, Henri J. M. The Path of Waiting. New York: Crossroad, 1995.
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