‘Es complicado’

Each year, when my students and I travel to Cuernavaca, Mexico to visit with local activists, community builders, human rights workers, and anti-poverty advocates, we meet with a lifelong justice and peace practitioner named Juan Francisco.  After discussing his lifelong work for equality and justice, our students have the chance to ask him questions.  Juan Francisco’s deep experience in neighbourhood renewal, anti-violence campaigns, community art projects, gender justice initiatives, and advocating for mothers of the ‘disappeared’ in Mexico means that our students always have lots of questions on a variety of topics.  

No matter the question, Juan Francisco’s answers always begin the same: “es complicado.”  It’s complicated.  

And by the end of our time in Cuernavaca, after 10 days engaging deep questions of globalization, injustice, and discipleship, Juan Francisco’s answer becomes a sort of mantra for our students’: ‘es complicado.’  

Juan Francisco’s phrase resonates because the world is complicated.  How can we possibly untangle histories of conflict, injustice, and oppression?  How do we confront the genocidal power? How do we acknowledge our own complicity and indifference in a suffering world?  How do we resist performative action so that we can live and pray in solidarity with victims in ways that are real and genuine?  What does it mean to work toward a more fair and humane world, when there are so many different roadmaps to get there?  How do we know where to put our time, energy, and resources with so many things calling for our attention?  Es complicado.

The work of justice begins with a willingness to say ‘This is not right’

Faced with the deeply complicated challenges of our time, it can be easy for us to simply not do anything at all.  As my students so often ask: Where would I even start? What difference could I possibly make?  

Lately, my advice for students asking questions like these comes from the farmer and poet Wendell Berry: “Some things you just raise hell about and hope somebody smarter than you can fix it.” 

Put otherwise: we don’t need to know all the answers.  If you feel compelled to address the suffering around you, to confront the world’s violence, to push against the despoiling of creation . . . then start by saying so!  There are some who may call you naïve for thinking the world can change, and others may chastise you for not having all the answers before you start.  So be it.  The work of justice begins with a willingness to say ‘This is not right’ when we see a world of injustice, unnecessary suffering, or inequity.  

Being willing to say ‘no’ to the brokenness of an upside-down, unjust world can be a first tentative step to joining God’s movement toward a right-side up world.  It may prompt us to start looking for answers ourselves, or it may simply hearten ‘somebody smarter than us’ who is working to fix things.  At the very least, it is an acknowledgement that responding to the prophet Micah’s invitation to ‘do justice and love mercy’ also requires ‘walking humbly’ so that we can join a Spirit-led movement that is far bigger than us.

Beloved Triune God of Love,

Whose heart breaks over a heart-broken creation,

Move us to join your beloved community of heart-menders and creation-healers.

Let us enter the mess of a complicated world,

In the hope that our small acts of love and justice 

Will witness to Your coming kingdom of wholeness.

Amen. 

Photo provided by the author.