last night and this morning, I have been meditating on the day between friday and sunday.  saturday has held a lot of meaning for me over the last couple of years, and particularly as I have entered into the fight against trafficking.  last night in the quiet before I fell asleep, I heard “saturday is the day the darkness thinks it has won” and as I thought about that, I realized that I have been there - places where darkness thinks it has won. fields ave, where thousands of girls are sexually exploited every day, is a place where you can feel a sick sort of glee in the celebration of darkness’ believed victory.  it’s flaunted in the brazen way men walk down the street dragging women by their wrists, in the music and the lights and the feeling of being at a strange sort of carnival.  signs of life are not simply threatened, they are mocked.  the glimmers of hope that hold on don’t cast enough light for shadows to be made visible.

…it looks like darkness has taken over.  it feels like darkness has taken over.  

this morning, praying with Bron and a new friend, Becc, (both of whom are fellow abolitionists) Bron prayed that saturday is when trafficking happens.  that the day between is when selling people into slavery exists, because darkness thinks it wins.  

we know that sunday comes, and that informs the way we observe saturday. the people who loved Jesus when he died didn’t know what would happen on sunday.  but in the midst of such intense pain, deep inside of the grieving they felt, I believe that they might have heard a whisper of hope.  because somehow the hope of life cannot be silenced, even in the places where darkness is convinced that it has won.  even when we want to shush that voice, to give in to the weight of what is threatening us and stop trying to stay alive, there is a spark that inexplicably holds on to us, speaking the truth of a love we know exists even though we cannot quite remember it…

I have heard that whisper in places of intense darkness.  I have seen the light of that hope flicker in the eyes of women who have been living inside of that darkness.  I have felt a deeper sense of saturday than ever before.  

sunday came, and is coming, and darkness does not have the last word, even in the lives of those who have been enslaved.

I can’t remember the last time I sat in bed and read a book from when I woke up until late in the night, except for books for school.  I picked up a book called Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts, in the Bangkok airport because I didn’t have any novels to read while on vacation, and I’m trying to read books on things other than trafficking, sexual exploitation, and trauma.  the first paragraph convinced me to buy it:

“It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured.  I realised, somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them.  It doesn’t sound like much, I know.  But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it’s all you’ve got, that freedom is a universe of possibility.  And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.”

this is one of those fiction books that’s supposedly based on someone’s life, but can’t be published as an autobiography because that life is too crazy to be believed as truth - man escapes from prison in Australia and flees to Bombay, where he moves into a slum and starts a health clinic, works for a mafia don, gets thrown in an Indian prison, gets bailed out by the mafia don, etc…but the craziness is surrounded by philosophies about life and love and loss, and those are the parts that are most fascinating to me. It’s a 933 page book, and I’m about two thirds of the way through.

I also finished Greg Mortenson’s latest book, Stones into Schools.  He’s a great writer, and it’s an easy read about the impact of educating girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan.  I love his ideas about the power that is unleashed when a woman is given the opportunity to go to school, and how that promotes peace.  Although it seems like such a simple thing to my privileged American mind, living in a developing country and working with women who could not afford to go to school makes me realize the incredible gift it is that I have had access to so much education.  I’ve been looking for Half the Sky, the new book by Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn, which suggests that the best way to change the world, to end poverty and exploitation and extremism, is to educate women.  I haven’t been able to find it yet, but I look forward to reading it when I do.