By Monica A. Romano, Episcopal Diocese of Alabama

What a peculiar, contradictory time of year we’re living in. Light and life in our part of the world increase daily as the season of spring approaches. While darkness and death draw us toward Good Friday as we move deeper into the season of Lent.

And it is in this thin place between light and darkness, life and death, the visible and the invisible, we are called to dwell for the next 40 days. And we live into this call in a myriad of different ways and in various stages of awareness and openness and brokenness and fear. Scared we will be asked to die with Jesus…yet hopeful that we will.

Two weeks ago I was introduced to the story of three college age men who have discovered the power of living amidst the paradox, the darkness and the light. In the spring of 2003, Jason Russell, Bobby Bailey, and Laren Poole left the comforts of their California lives to explore and capture on film their adventures in Africa. The three quickly found themselves stranded in Northern Uganda where they discovered a darkness deeper than they could have imagined. Under the rule of rebel leader Joseph Kony, children were being kidnapped in the night and forced to fight in the rebel regime known as the Lord’s Resistance Army. Children as young as five years old were being outfitted with machine guns and brainwashed to kill.

The horrors were unspeakable, yet the story could not not be told. Jason, Bobby, and Laren found their voice in the medium of film, and made a movie that began a movement. Originally intended for a small audience of family and friends, their account of the terror in Uganda entitled Invisible Children spread from their living rooms to Capital Hill, bringing into the light the children made invisible by war.

All who saw the film hungered to know, “What can I do to stop the violence? What can I do to bring life to the dying?” And the non-profit Invisible Children, Inc. was born. A non-profit organization whose mission is to change culture, policy and lives through collisions of power and poverty. In a filmed interview shortly before his first journey to Africa, Bobby looked into the camera and offered, “Hopefully we won’t die (in Africa). But hopefully we will.”

Amidst the paradox, the darkness and the light, there is a promise for us, God’s children. The promise of wholeness with our God. A promise to be claimed by a resurrection people.

And so the questions remain…What are the dark places, the deaths you are called to face? Where do those deaths touch that which is infinite light and life? What is your story, your story that cannot not be told?