“His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me.” I sang that line at the memorial service for a friend and colleague of mine who was murdered a few weeks ago. I am a long-time singer and musician and was able to share my talents with the community at a time of great mourning. But as I was singing that traditional Protestant hymn, one that my friend had specifically requested for his funeral, I wondered, was God’s eye really on the sparrow?
My friend, the sparrow in my thoughts, John McKendy, was a Quaker and a fellow professor at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick. I got to know John when I asked to team teach with him about four years ago. I teach in religious studies and my academic background in theology was wedded with a commitment to social justice and activism. I had become convinced that the best way forward in our complex and tremendously inequitable world was through dialogue and communal action. In the university context, team teaching and learning from the pedagogy and skills of my academic colleagues as they tried to instill critical thought and the love of learning in students seemed like a good way to put this idea into action. John had been team-teaching for quite a few years and had a reputation for collaborative inquiry and student-centered teaching. He had incorporated service learning into his courses. He was a sociologist with interests in social inequality and his research utilized personal interviews to uncover the messy realities that marginalized people deal with. For the last fifteen years he had been working with prisoners at the maximum security prison in our province through the Quaker’s Alternative to Violence (AVP) project. He had a real commitment to non-violence yet was convinced of the need to critique the systemic inequalities created and maintained by our current societal order.
We spent hours working together writing up proposals for new courses and designing the process of learning in those courses. We read a lot and John introduced me to the academic world of sociology and critical theory. Our other teaching partner, Joan McFarland from economics, joined our discussions and added her skills and interests in feminist economic analysis and Marxist theory to the mix. We developed the habit of “checking-in” at the beginning of each meeting. I remember that it was John who shared his fear of writing and allowed me to express my own fears of being judged as not being smart enough. It was John who periodically admitted that he was going through a rough patch that he didn’t want to share details about, but he wanted us to know that he was struggling. This vulnerability enabled close bonds to form between us as academics and by sharing our weaknesses we were able to help each other to achieve our goals as teachers and as people. Together we were stronger. It was John who introduced me to Parker Palmer’s book The Courage to Teach which helped to confirm for me that my life’s work was in academia and that I should pursue my desire for a PhD. In debriefing after class sessions, it was John who was able to help me see more clearly the people behind the students, the social forces that impacted their lives and led them to act, speak and write in certain ways. It was his practice of personally getting to know the social reality of his students that helped me to develop a deeper appreciation of them as whole people. I am so grateful that I had the chance to learn these things from him. I learned from him because I was able to watch him in action, ask questions and discover that he was someone who practiced what he preached.
So my question came out of this knowledge of John. He was someone who I believe followed Christ’s call to radical discipleship. John was a man of faith and his Quaker convictions led him to the places where people were suffering from injustice. He went to the outcasts and listened to them. He developed relationships with men whom society locks away because he believed that there is that of God in everyone. He did that in the face of his own feelings of inadequacy. His faith helped him to overcome his fears. He did his best to follow Christ. So where was God when John was in harm’s way?
John was killed by his son-in-law, someone he knew. He was murdered in his own home in front of his daughter who had just recently separated from her husband. It must have been an absolutely awful way to die. My heart breaks when I think about his suffering and I ask again, where was God? Was his eye on the sparrow?
My academic background includes the study of theology and I know that this is the hardest question, this question of theodicy – how come bad things happen to good people? How can a loving God who asks us to follow Christ and promises to be with us all the way, allow such suffering among those who do so? I know that the world is full of unjust and senseless suffering – there is too much. John knew that too. Recently he had begun volunteering in the African nation of Burundi with the Quakers. He journeyed to that war torn country to help build an AIDS clinic and do AVP work with citizens traumatized by violence. John knew that suffering was real and present and he knew that he had to do something to help. But where was his help?
I think of Christ on the cross calling out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” when I think of John’s last hours on this earth. I hope that he felt God’s presence in some way. I believe that God suffered with him. I hope that John felt the presence of all of us who valued him so very much. I hope he didn’t feel all alone. That’s the only comfort my faith gives me because I don’t believe in a God that swoops in and saves the select. The world is filled with the potential and creativity of God’s love but I believe God’s love is powerless to directly intervene in human suffering. I also believe that John is held in the arms of God now, after the suffering is over. Death is a doorway into another way of life. Christ’s resurrection showed us that death is not the final word. I miss John already but I am assured that he is present in some way and free from suffering now.
So why did someone compose “His Eye is On the Sparrow” if it’s not true? The last line of each verse is, “His eye is on the sparrow and I know he watches me.” How could I sing it, if really God is just there to witness our pain? Because I think that hymn expresses our deepest wants arising out of our deepest fears – we are terrified that in our hour of suffering we will be alone and we want someone to be there with us. We want someone to rescue us. God is with us but God cannot preserve our earthly selves. God does not protect the sparrow, at least not outside of the protection that compassionate human communities can offer, no matter how much we want that. God enables the sparrow to fly – the refrain of the hymn goes “I sing because I’m happy; I sing because I’m free.” But God cannot prevent it from the pain of falling. Only we humans can work to try to create a society that puts the values of non-violence, equality and justice into practice so that the killing can stop.
Mistakes were made by the RCMP in handling this case of domestic violence that robbed a family and a university of a good man. Advocates in the domestic violence community in New Brunswick have been calling for a death review committee for years, so that we can learn from the tragedies of domestic homicides in order to better prevent them. Now that call is renewed. In the aftermath of this tragedy, those who mourn John’s death can join in this work in order to make our homes and our communities safer. Then all of our eyes will be on the sparrow.
Cathy Holtmann
19 November 2008