Photo by Bruce Berman of Border Blog

“We don’t play at the cantinas anymore because it is too dangerous. We do two funerals a day instead,” said musician Jose del Villar at the San Rafael cemetery after serenading a grieving widow, a black accordion strapped to his chest.

But residents have little hope. The only thing that the military presence has provoked here in Ciudad Juarez is more death.

- Reuters

There is a breathless moment in the early mornings in Ciudad Juarez when the the pink flush of dawn begins to glow on the horizon, bathing the streets in front of our house and the jagged desert mountains to the west in a calm serenity. The broken buildings look warm and uniquely Mexico. The moment is staggering and you have to be there precisely when it happens. Its like surfers describing that green flash of light the instant the sun sets on the ocean’s horizon: you have to be looking for it, you have to go out and meet it. The moment is a connection with purity and goodness, a clarifying burst of beauty in its undiluted form; it is hope taking the stage, like God’s face being unveiled before us for a millisecond. And for that millisecond, the atmosphere shifts, the air smells different and that flare from another world reminds me that I can go on.

These brushes with the deeper truth are always there, it is just more difficult to experience them within the rush and rumble of my day. I love catching these moments, quiet and alone in the patio, where I am infused with energy and the mountains of my day don’t seem quite so big. I have learned the hard way about being intentional in searching for these glimpses, the galvanizing connections, the intimate glances with God, especially living in a war zone. As I mentioned in Mornings in Juarez, the storm of death, violence and war can be an overwhelming cesspool of filth and residue that clings to my soul if I do not approach it from a centered perspective, God’s perspective. Otherwise I get trapped in the enormity of the statistics and the hopelessness, and spend the rest of my day buried under a pile of garbage, burdened and weary.

“Lost in the rain in Juarez…” Over 14,000 people have died in the last 3 years since Vicente Calderon stepped in as President of Mexico. 14,000 people. That’s over twice as many coalition soldiers that have died in the nearly 10 years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. The problems of Mexico and Ciudad Juarez are insurmountable if we go at them alone. We must approach them together, as family. Unfortunately, staring intentionally into the face of misery cannot be done casually, and sometimes it will spit right back in your face. It requires commitment, endurance and community. The deprivations of the earth are far too great for any one man to conquer.

Like most new and unfamiliar challenges, I had no bearing, no paradigm for what I was getting into by moving to Juarez. I remember my good friend Mike explaining that this was going to be the hardest thing that Misty and I had ever done in our lives. “Yeah, I know.” I told Mike. I had no idea what the (censored) I was talking about. I had no idea that just a few weeks after we moved to Juarez the tide of violence would surge up the sun-baked desert sand and pool in my new city. Nor did I anticipate that my entire being would meld to this city, in the midst of this wildfire, and that an outcast border town, with its trash and blood, would win my heart. The desert has changed how I live, how I respond to the needs around me. Ciudad Juarez is no longer a mysterious dusty smudge on a map or a blurb from a news story, it’s my city.