My Community

January 27, 2006 latimes.com : California

Steve Lopez:
Points West
War Zone Surrounds an Island of Hope

"Mr. Lopez,

I am a teacher at an all-boys Catholic high school, called Verbum Dei, in Watts. For the past two weeks, we have been operating and holding classes in a locked-down state…. There is a gang war being waged between the Nickerson Gardens Bounty Hunters and the Jordan Downs Grape Street Crips."

Only a few weeks ago, Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa held a celebratory news conference to announce a 10% drop in major crimes in 2005. But not everyone is feeling more secure these days.

When I heard from the Verbum Dei teacher, I was looking into an apparent gang-related killing that put the Atwater Village neighborhood on edge as the new year began. I attended a meeting in which police frankly admitted they've got limited resources, with as few as three patrol cars on the street at times in the entire Northeast Division.

Three patrol cars?

I was as shocked as some of the Atwater residents. And I was surprised to hear an officer tell people that if they see gang activity on their street, they should all go out and water the lawn to make it clear they're watching.

I don't mean to dismiss the value of active vigilance, but residents were looking for stronger ideas than a volunteer lawn-watering brigade. Two gents from L.A. Bridges, the gang intervention outfit, had what sounded like a better suggestion than group irrigation. If you see gang activity, they said, call them. They'll gladly go confront the bangers and try to talk them out of gangs and into jobs.

The trouble in Atwater is disturbing enough. But the situation in Watts is crazy.

Since right around Christmas, the neighborhood around Verbum Dei has been a war zone, with bullets flying night and day.

Southeast Division Lt. Anne Clark counts 19 shootings and five slayings.

What got it started?

"You just don't know what sets it off," Clark said. "Somebody got into it with someone else and then the shootings started. And the killing."

Clark said police have swarmed the problem, making 39 arrests since Christmas. It's been quieter for the last several days, Clark said, and she's hoping the worst of it — of the latest outburst, at least — is done for now.

So do the students and faculty at Verbum Dei High School.

When I got there Wednesday the big iron gates on Central Avenue were locked, giving the school the appearance of a prison. There's no gang problem among students, and there haven't been any shootings in the surrounding area during school hours, but Verbum Dei is taking no chances.

Father John Weling, the school president, and Principal Susan Abelein told me the playing fields out back, which border the Nickerson projects, are temporarily off-limits to students. The soccer team had been forced to practice in the gym, but now it's being shuttled to Loyola Marymount University for practices and games.

Classroom doors are kept locked while the 305 students are in class, and parents have to drop students off and pick them up in the back lot. Extra security has been hired, and police patrols have picked up. The whole time I was on campus, a helicopter circled above, keeping an eye on the unsettled neighborhood.

Perhaps even more disturbing, some students didn't seem to be all that rattled by the recent crime wave.

"When you're living in L.A.," said senior Darren Acker, who's hoping to go to Loyola next year, it's a part of life. "You're never promised a single day. You go out the door protecting yourself."

Jonathan Phillips, a sophomore, lives in Inglewood. But he lived in the Verbum Dei neighborhood until a year ago, and recalls being asked more than once a simple question that can send a chill down a teenager's spine, because it's often followed up with gunfire.

"Where you from?"

Phillips said this was his answer:

"I don't bang. I'm a child of God. I play basketball."

For some kids, the Verbum Dei insignia on a sweater or jacket is more than a badge of honor.

"The uniform helps us a lot," said senior Joshua Miles, referring to the slacks, dress shirt and necktie students are required to wear. If you're cracking the books at a school where more than 90% of the students — half black, half Latino — go on to college, it signals to gang members that you're definitely not interested in their business.

"Verbum Dei was my gang, the most worshipped place in Watts," said counselor DeAnthony Langston, a child of the neighborhood.

He grew up at Nickerson Gardens, graduated from Verbum in 1984 and thinks the school saved his life. Many of his boyhood pals are either dead or in prison, and this latest rash of trouble breaks his heart.

"These are the kids who are really afraid," he said when we looked through a chain-link fence and into the play yard at the 112th Street Elementary School next door, where the youngsters were at recess. "Their relatives are the ones doing the killing. They say, 'Mr. Langston, I don't want to go home. I don't want to get killed.' "

The story never ends. Decade after decade, we talk about crime and gangs and neighborhoods filled with people living in fear. We ask how it can happen in so rich and resourceful a country, even though we know the answers.

Economic and educational apartheid, lack of investment, glorification of all the wrong values.

If you make it, as Langston did, you beat huge odds.

And what was his secret?

"My mom didn't mess around," he said. She expected a lot and she didn't let up, so he went to college, played pro basketball in Japan, learned another culture and language, and came home to give something back.

Now here he is, speaking over the chop of the circling helicopter. He's telling me about the plan to put a gate in the fence so student tutors from Verbum Dei can walk through and tell the primary schoolers to be smart, stay focused and try to make it through to the other side.

The Mission of the Apostles

Dedicated to my sister Roselynn and my BiL Mike...

MAGNIFICAT MEDITATION OF THE DAY

Everyone needs the length of life's journey so that, aided by grace, he can grasp all the truth and beauty that was given to him in the beginning.

The desire that others meet Christ is authentic in the degree that it is accompanied bu a profound respect for their situation. It is not up to us to save the world: God saves; at best we are His instruments. He chooses the time and place in which to communicate Himself to each man; we are called to accept them. "Mission" means to generate something new within a reality which already exists...

Mission consists in recalling people's hearts from inside their situation to something that is happening among them just as it happened among us. Patience is required, the slow participation in man's deepest being. But participation is not only accepting. If we did not have something new to bring to others, we would be absorbed by them and would end up not sharing anything with them. We must be aware of the inestimable value of what we have received: we have met the One who is the answer to our deepest longings. The more this experience is alive in us, the more others will be able to perceive its newness on their own...

Courage consists in being dominated only by love, and one who loves is patient, because everything that he needs is already present in the moment in which he is living. We are sent to everyone - or rather - to each person. Every man has a heart for knowing and loving Christ. He has a name, a vocation: he is a specific and irreplaceable tile within the great mosaic that God is building in history. This awareness fills us with patience and with mercy, and makes our adventure exciting and inexhaustible.

- Monsignor Massimo Camisaca

Onward Christian soldier

MAGNIFICAT MEDITATION OF THE DAY

"Casting Out Devils"

I am writing to you in the precious blood of God's Son. I long to see you so strong and filled to overflowing with that Holy Spirit who came upon the holy disciples that God's gentle word will be able to grow and bear fruit in you and in your neighbors as well. After the fire of the Holy Spirit had descended on them they mounted the pulpit of the blazing cross, where they felt and tasted the hunger of God's Son, his love for mankind. Then their words came forth as does a red-hot knife from a furnace, and with its heat they pierced their listeners to the heart and cast out the devils. Since they had lost themselves, the saw not themselves but only God's glory and honor and our salvation.

So my dearest son, I beg you - it is my will in Christ Jesus - make your home in the pulpit of the cross. There be engulfed, lose yourself completely, with insatiable desire. Draw the red-hot knife and strike the devils, seen and unseen, who want to continually disturb your conscience by nipping people's fruit in the bud. Don't give in to this wicked devil - especially now, when it is time for harvesting and sowing. Tell the devil to deal with me instead of with you! Forward then, courageously.

- St. Catherine of Siena

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Please don't forget that you were made in the image and likeness of God. Fallen, yes. Weak, yes. Made to roam the earth aimlessly without a purpose, no. We all have limitations inherent to our human nature, but our faith gives us a means of transcending our mortal situation to go beyond that which threatens to keep us down. Even death has no hold on us because Jesus himself conquered it in his Resurrection.

We are not and never "only human", so may we not make the mistake of downplaying our role in God's plan of salvation. Everything we do does matter in the building up or tearing down of the Kingdom here on earth. Jesus died once and for all, but he depends on us to bring him to others...to shine his light...to have faith that the Gospel bears in the truth and life.

There is not one man or woman on this planet who does not belong in heaven. The sad thing is that not everyone wants to be there. Some would rather not leave the world because they are so attached to it. Others are not told the whole story and do not really understand the greatness that awaits them as children of God. All we can do is try...reach out...live by example...and most of all, pray.

I believe that one by one, more and more Christians will understand who they really are as warriors commissioned by heaven to fight for souls. It's a serious responsibility that comes with a lot of grace to fulfill it, especially when you find yourself extremely exhausted from the battle.

As I've said in the past - GIVING UP IS NOT AN OPTION.

There is always hope. As long as people pray...as long as they know the goodness of God...as long as they are willing to make sacrifices and persevere for the sake of souls, there is hope. It's going to be okay.

I have chosen to believe in miracles again...big ones, small ones, and everything inbetween.

So, Lord, I'm praying, asking for one because miracles of healing are not limited to the body but are extended to the heart and soul as well.

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Weathered
by Creed
Dedicated to the ones who know this struggle well...

I lie awake on a long, dark night
I can't seem to tame my mind
Slings and arrows are killing me inside
Maybe I can't accept the life that's mine
No I can't accept the life that's mine

Simple living is my desperate cry
Been trading life with indifference yeah it suits me just fine
I try to hold on but I'm calloused to the bone
Maybe that's why I feel alone
Maybe that's why I feel alone

Me...I'm rusted and weathered
Barely holding together
I'm covered with skin that peels and it just won't heal

The sun shines and I can't avoid the light
I think I'm holding on to life too tight
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust
Sometimes I feel like giving up
Sometimes I feel like giving up

Me...I'm rusted and weathered
Barely holding together
I'm covered with skin that peels and it just won't heal

The day reminds me of you
The night hides your truth
The earth is a voice
Speaking to you
Take all this pride
And leave it behind
Because one day it ends
One day we die
Believe what you will
That is your right
But I choose to fight
So I choose to fight
To fight



"May grace, mercy, and peace be with us from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen."

The Courage to be a Saint

...is to unite yourself to the sufferings of Christ, knowing how very weak you are and remembering how very strong He is for you.

A saint's heart loves God, making Him the center of everything he does. Even when his soul is plagued by his past, he invites God into the darkest corners of his life and trusts in God's unending mercy.

No, it isn't easy to be a saint because you have to accept yourself for who you really are...in all your glory as His creation and in all your imperfect humanity.

When a saint believes that she also is loved by God, she can find her smile in His greatest blessings and in her heaviest crosses. She gives to her God her best, offering what little she has so that her life becomes His smile.

There is much in this world to discourage you on this journey, but there is more in heaven to encourage you along the way.

The difference between an ordinary person and a saint is that an ordinary person falls and stays on the ground. A saint falls and each time reaches up for the hand of Christ, as Peter cried out from the raging ocean, "Lord, save me!"

The ultimate failure in a saint's life is to never reach his destination...to never be in the presence of her God...to never experience the joy that awaits for all eternity.

Always strive, always persevere, always love...for love endures all things.

Amen.

"I have told you this, so that in me you may have peace. You will have trouble; but, courage! I have overcome the world." (John 16:33)
love,
Jesus