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Peacebuilding in Action: CMU professor returns from delegation to Hong Kong
Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Transformation Studies at Canadian Mennonite University recently spent a week in Hong Kong, practicing solidarity and collaborative peacebuilding with the local church given
Dr. Wendy Kroeker, Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Transformation Studies at Canadian Mennonite University (CMU), reflects on a week in Hong Kong, practicing solidarity and collaborative peacebuilding with the local church, in real time. For purposes of safety and sensitivity, some customary details are omitted from this report.
How do church families handle difficult, possibly awkward conversations about important, emotionally charged differences of opinion? How do church families hold onto their relationships, in times of deeply taxing social shift? These are the pressing questions Mennonites in Hong Kong have been inviting the wider Mennonite community to discuss with them.
In response, Mennonite World Conference (MWC) sent a special delegation earlier this month—one of the first such delegations ever—to resource the local church, listen to her concerns, and to share in a time of dedicated solidarity. CMU's Dr. Wendy Kroeker, a member of the MWC Peace Commission, travelled with the delegation.
"It's pretty much a generational split: youth in the church have said, we need to be on the streets and if the church isn't out there with us then we don't know what its relevance is for our lives. But, this is a very new kind of thing in that context. The thinking with older people is 'Mennonites are peaceful, right? So, we shouldn't be out there. Right?' That of course begs the question, what is a Mennonite peace theology?"
Kroeker teaches annually at the Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute in the Philippines, which draws students from all over Asia. She also has upwards of 25 years' experience living, working, and practicing peace in both Northeast and Southeast Asia. She has studied the histories and traumas of both regions, carefully examining what it means to adapt methods learned in the West for culturally appropriate application in Asian contexts.
"Each situation brings forth a different set of questions. In Hong Kong, a lot of the questions were along the lines of 'Who are you? How do you describe what you value, and what makes your culture tick?' Once those were answered, then I could say, okay, these are the kinds of resources that can help you answer the further questions you have about entering into space that feels contested."
Kroeker explains that in Northeast Asia, of which Hong Kong is a part, harmony is a core cultural value that deeply impacts how people discuss their differences. People favour an indirect approach, because for them it's part of being kind and respectful.
"That's why we always talked about 'the situation.' It's similar perhaps to how people in Northern Ireland would talk about 'the troubles,' rather than using other language for what happened. There are differences, obviously, but it's the same kind of idea. In our case, the folks in Hong Kong knew they needed new ways to handle their situation, but we still wanted to be very sensitive with our language. We never wanted to put too strong or negative a label on things--you want a neutral, indirect way to acknowledge 'something is there, but we're going to talk toward it, rather than pressing a finger directly on it.'"
Almost as soon as the delegation was struck, Kroeker says, requests for speaking engagements began pouring in. She asked each group to distill their queries down to a few key questions about their most important issues and submit them to her. For each group that submitted questions, Kroeker custom-built a presentation addressing and resourcing the stated concerns. All-tolled, Kroeker says her preparation amounted to a week-long intensive course, made to measure and from scratch, in just a couple of months.
"Every day we went to two or three groups, from probably eight in the morning to sometimes almost midnight. For each group, I would make a presentation, not of answers, but of tools and frameworks that come within this field of peace theology and peacebuilding, that I hoped and believed they might find useful as they did their own discerning about how to move forward amidst their circumstances."
"The sheer variety of contexts in which I got to hold space with people yearning the way they were—that was very meaningful to me. It spoke to what it means to be human, to live in community, and to bring the questions of one's faith to that work. We spent time on a mountaintop, in churches, on um...active streets; I was in tiny rooms, larger lecture halls; we were everywhere! It really reminded us how much we were a part of something larger."
Kroeker says this awareness of scope was intimidating at times, but that it drove her to dig deep into her own faith, as she offered herself as an ally to the church in Hong Kong.
"I'd been saying to friends, 'the immensity! How do you go into these kinds of spaces?' How do you help folks hold on to their relationships, build the strength and meaning of the church? To sit with people, to honour their quest for unity—I just kept thinking, I have to be fully present, emotionally and intellectually. I have to be able to multitask, to be nimble and open to the Spirit in the moment. For me, it meant that before heading out each day I had to take a moment and seek the energy I would need to do that work."
Kroeker used a refrain from the Psalms to ground herself this way: Be still and know that I am God (Psalm 46:10). This refrain, paired with a little strategic levity, also helped the various discussion groups make their way.
"Some scholars would say that verse was first spoken in a context where there was war, and the word given was to be still—be not at war—and know that I am God. Even, if say one's employment in that context was to be a soldier, the verse says 'take off your work hat, the role you feel you need to have or that maybe defines you here, and be still. Take an alternative moment, a moment of space and fresh perspective, and remember and know that I am God.'"
"I used the verse as a way of reminding us all to breathe when things got intense. It reminded us that there can be times of silence when questions are asked. I joked with them: when a question comes up, even if we don't know how to respond to it yet, lets just do "Hmmm." They thought that was quite amusing, which it is, but they played along with me. And it is useful, in that it's something to do, it's a way to respond, but it doesn't try to put words to something that may not have words. Really it served multiple functions: it slowed us down, it lightened us up a bit, and it helped to ground us in a difficult space that can be hard to handle or respond to. It helped keep us patient."
Technical and personal preparations complete, Kroeker says the weeks of hard work all paid off in the ample times of Q&A, after each presentation.
"When you sit in a very focused and intense space, with questions that just come from such deep searching, you can get trapped in classroom mode, but I had to remind myself that I was just then in the midst of theory-building in the moment. Doing frontline work like that, you realize that all you've learned and all you bring to this situation blooms, it lives, in that moment. Peacebuilding is not some abstract concept. We call it peacebuilding—it's a verb that happens in real time."
"Some of the questions folks raised were...pretty amazing. People were just hungry to be able to talk with someone a little bit outside their very intense space, and to hear that other Christians have struggles too, that others are working through these same questions that the church in Hong Kong is working through—that they're not alone."
Opportunities for frontline peace praxis tend to be double-edged swords. The opportunities, and the empathy it takes to meet them, often come at great cost. Kroeker relates that during the delegation, one of her fellow team members received a message that members of his own congregation back home had been gunned down by a local rebel group.
"He held that to himself for a while. When he did tell us, I suggested it might be good for him to talk about, to share with the Mennonites in Hong Kong and let them know there are others also, struggling and holding pain, and asking how we can hold together and support each other. There's something about the wounded healer there: 'How do I, with the traumas and narratives that I carry, acknowledge that I can also hold space with others in times of struggle and pain?'
This is what it means to be the church. It's so easy to think or feel that what you're experiencing is all there is, but our task then is to realize we all hold pain, and for us to survive or even flourish, we need to hold our own pain gently while remaining available to others. And people were very moved, hearing his story, which he did decide to share. The realness really kicked in there. In a sense, the people of Hong Kong were able to realize that theirs is not the only story of struggle or this kind of disruption, and I think that in itself was healing."
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