Due to weather conditions, all in-person daytime and evening programs have been canceled across the church’s locations for Wednesday, except for the Recovery programs and Food Pantry at Overland Park. Decisions for Thursday daytime programs will correspond with local school district decisions and will be posted on the church’s website.
Scheduled programming has resumed for Thursday, February 13 at all Resurrection locations.
Today was hard. We didn’t physically labor. We didn’t do anything mentally taxing. Yet we all found ourselves either asleep or in a stupor this afternoon on the bus ride back to Krakow due to the emotions we experienced.
Even as we began our day taking the almost 2 hour drive to Auschwitz, the vibe on the bus was more somber than normal. I think we were all spending some time in our heads having an idea of what was to come, but also really having no idea what it would actually be like to be in a place where such evil & suffering existed. You may think these are strong words, but we all felt strong feelings. Each of us experienced it in different ways and at different times. Whether it began with the walk into the camp listening to the names of the victims as we walked through the entrance tunnel, or the emotions built as we walked through the day, we each felt the heaviness of the violence, the hatred, and the pain that took place here.
In some aspects, we wondered how this could possibly happen. In other aspects, we realize it’s a slippery slope and one step down that path leads to another and another and another until you have no idea how you got there.
We heard stories of the atrocities that took place from people in power but we also heard stories of incredible bravery of those that sacrificed themselves for another life, those that voluntarily got themselves into the camp so that they could report out what was happening, those that snuck medicines in to help whomever they could, and those very few that managed to escape.
We saw photographs of people as they were being sorted between the “working camp” and the gas chambers. We saw personal items that belonged to people that had hopes and dreams, families that had carried their belongings to where they thought they would remain until the war was over, and parents who thought once they were out of the train that brought them to the camp, things would get better.
We believe when we view others not as individual people, but as a demographic different than our own, we start to move toward an us vs them mentality. We can then allow fear of that demographic to overrule facts. We talked about more recent history in Rwanda with the Hutu, Tutsis and discussed what is currently happening in our world in Israel/Gaza and processed how that might relate to us in the US. We considered how we might address things when we see injustices in light of what we read in Proverbs 31:8-9. We all have a role to play. Will we let silence win? Will we let fear win? Or will we let love win?
It all goes back to love.
Kindness, curiosity, courage, and love.