Episode 12 - Carl Wilkens’ Rwandan Journey of Forgiveness, Accountability, and Humanity

Anni talks with her friend Carl Wilkens, who willingly remained in Rwanda during the genocide of 1994. Together, they explore themes of anger, healing, restoration, and connection.

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Transcript

Hello, welcome to Barely Christian, Fully Christian. This is Anni Ponder. This podcast explores loving Jesus, being repulsed by much of Christianity, and relating to the Holy Spirit as the divine feminine, or as I prefer to call her, Mama God.

Today, I talk with Carl Wilkens, a friend of mine who was working and living in Rwanda in 1994—and instead of evacuating, chose to remain in the country throughout the entirety of the genocide. Carl now works all over the world, hosting conversations about Rwanda’s journey of forgiveness, accountability, and humanity, and his own experience with healing, restoration, and connection.

Well, Carl Wilkins, thank you. Thank you for joining me today on this podcast. I am so delighted to see you again and reconnect and have a conversation where I don't know exactly where it will go, but anytime I talk with you, it's beautiful things. So thanks for being here.

So thank you. I'm grateful for the invitation. I was excited to hear, and I'm looking forward to listening to some of your other episodes.

Oh, good. Well, I'd love to hear your thoughts when you do. So for anyone who doesn't know, Carl Wilkins is, I actually Googled you today because the bio didn't come through. So here's what Google said. It said, Carl Wilkins is an American missionary who spent time with his family in Rwanda prior to the genocide in 1994. And then Carl was one of the only Americans to choose to stay during the genocide and offer assistance and aid. And since that time, it's been your work to travel around the world and share about and this is coming what I remember hearing from you when you were the pastor of my church in, way back in the late nineties. What you would talk about is what thought is at the root of genocide and how we can get that thought out of our mind. So that's what I remember. So there's a very sparse bio and Carl, what would you add so folks know who you are and what you're about?

Well, I think the first thing I'd add is just that I'm a happy husband and dad and grandpa is what I would say. We did serve doing development work with the relief agency, the humanitarian, that's the word I'm looking for. We did, we did development work in Rwanda with the humanitarian arm of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. And it's interesting too that that bio in Google has me down as missionary, because it haven't heard that term in a long time. For the last 20 years actually I've been traveling to schools, like you said, had opportunities around the globe on most of the continents, sharing Rwanda's story. You know, you mentioned what's at the root of genocide and even today as I was with students in the middle of Nebraska I was telling them, you know, genocide stems from thinking that says my world would be better without you in it. And that kind of thinking that kind of exclusive problem solving is what really kind of still kind of punches me in the gut. I mean, I don't want to, I don't want to hurt anybody but boy there's times I'd rather not deal with certain people. And I think I'm going to solve a problem by excluding. And it's just temporary at best and it's genocide at worst. And so, you know, when we were back there at your high school days, I had those stories that I would share with you guys from this horrible genocide against the Tutsi in 1994, but these days I'm able to spend so much more time with students talking about putting the pieces together, you know, rebuilding relationships. What's it take to get, I had like 430 seniors today, just seniors and talking to them about my journey of trying to get rid of anger and the bitterness that I, you know, that grew up in my body and my mind as the result of the genocide.

And some of that stuff didn't start till 21 years, a kid actually said to me, you know, when did, was there kind of some turning point that you started to really recognize your anger or deal with it? And I said, crazy enough, it was 21 years afterwards that I encountered one of the leaders of the killing squad that I had encountered during the genocide. And that encounter was what kind of triggered and let me know, I had no idea how much anger was inside. So that's a little more than the bio, but yeah, we're having great conversations with students and teachers these days, so it's even at a public library today, talking with folks about how Rwanda, the lessons we can learn about rebuilding trust, basically, about, you know, am I gonna choose to live with cynicism and anger and bitterness, or am I gonna, you know, am I gonna shoot for the stars, so to speak? Am I gonna really go for getting free from this anger and living with trust? And that's where I'm headed.

That's where you're headed. And I'm so, so thankful for the work that you and Teresa are doing in this world to kind of shed a giant spotlight on this that I think is part of the puzzle that as humans, we need to put together recognize. If we don't root out this thinking that that has been in my mind since you planted it there in 1996, the world would be better without you in it is the root of genocide. That thought if we don't learn to root that thought within our own selves, then we leave ourselves open to all of the atrocities that that we see across the globe.

I was wondering if before we really get into I have some some questions I'd love to hear you talk about, could you just thumbnail sketch for anybody who's not really familiar with 1994 and Rwanda? Kind of what was the backstory. And I'm particularly on this podcast, really interested in the the sad truth that Rwanda was kind of prizing itself as a as a Christian nation and that this happened in in and amongst and by Christians or folks who claimed Christianity. So can you just write briefly talk about that?

You bet, you bet. I have a picture I often pop up on the screen when I'm talking with students, a small group of Rwandan men and women who are the architects of the genocide. And honestly, they could be mistaken for a group of men and women on their way or coming back from church, you know, the little daily planner in their hand could be a hymnal or a Bible. Like you said, this was a country that was a church going country, like 80% of the people, 80% would be in church most weekends. And so it is a, it's like beyond tragic at times to think about a country where, you know, so many people who are going to church and, and not just this simple message of love your neighbor, you know, Jesus says, anybody can love their neighbor. It's your enemy. That's the radical message, you know, that, that came, that Jesus brought. And so Rwanda, I won't, yeah, I won't get into deep history here, but just kind of think about a country with a majority and a minority group of people.

Now, those of you who are familiar, you know, the Hutu were the majority and the Tutsi were the minority, but I'm just going to kind of use the terms majority and minority. And there was an even tinier minority, the Toi that were there, like 80% want the Hutu majority, 12, 15% the Tutsi and maybe 2% the Toi.

But, but already we're deviating from what really, I think is the heart of the story. Because if you met the people, you realized they weren't all about these labels, these false constructs of, you know, Hutu, Tutsi, Toi. They would fall in love with no matter who, I mean, they were all speaking the same language. They, they would go to church together, you know, they sing in the choir together, drink beer together. They were really living together. This is not a segregated society by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, I would say that, you know, there was more evidence that they loved each other through all the marriages between the groups than evidence of hatred.

So this is going to be a story where it's going to be a manufactured, you know, of course all enemies are manufactured, but this is a story of manipulation by politicians and business people trying to hang on to power. And so they're going to choose to try to create this divide, this us and them between the majority and the minority in an effort to hang on to power. Now there's a lot more roots and history and stuff in it than that, but let's hold on to that for a minute and take it to April 6, 1994.

Teresa and I had already been living there with our kids for four years and we've been, as I mentioned, building schools, operating clinics, just really partnering with people and some super rewarding work.

April 6, 1994, the president is coming back. There's been three years of war in the country. They've made an agreement to form a new government representing everybody, but it's been delayed month after month. He's flying back in from a conference in Tanzania with a bunch of heads of state around the area and his plane is shot out of the sky. He's killed. The extremists will blame it on the minority and they'll launch a coup.

And then the first agenda of this coup, you know, they're taking over the military, the police taking over the government, finances, communication. The first agenda is eliminate anybody who's not with us. And so that's when the beginning, within an hour of the plane being shot down, people will start being killed and the numbers will move from the hundreds to the thousands to the tens of thousands. So by the time this horrible event is brought to an end by a relatively small group of Rwandan Tutsi refugees who got military training and wanted to come home peacefully, weren't allowed, finally came back with guns, they are the small group of men and women who will end this genocide after three months of incredible, brutal bloodshed and murder.

More than a million people will be killed in those three months. And so then the task is going to be, how do we rebuild a country out of something as horrific as, you know, there were 7 million people. So one out of seven are killed. It's like everybody who remains is either related to somebody who was killed or related to somebody who did the killing or watched it themselves. So how do you begin to put together the pieces?

And the quickest version I can give you of Teresa and our part is when the killing started, all the governments are withdrawing their people. As you mentioned, you read it there on Google, the American government is basically ordering all citizens out of the country.

And I said to Teresa, they can't order us. And it wasn't like we wanted to stay, you know, in the middle of chaos and killing, but they wouldn't let us bring any Rwandans out. And we had a young lady who lived and worked in our home and she was like family.

So it's like, they were they were telling us we have to leave part of our family behind. And there's just no way, she was part of the minority. We were like 99% sure she would be killed. And there was a young man also in our house at night as a watchman.

He also was in the same situation with the Tutsi ID card. And so those two people are going to be kind of the main initial reason why Teresa and I will together and I make that pretty clear, together, we'll make that decision, that I'll stay trying to help these Rwandans are super kind and generous and especially to foreigners.

And I thought maybe I can use that privilege they give to foreigners to help these two people stay alive. And so Teresa will take the kids to safety and I'll stay thinking, can't last more than two weeks. The world won't stand by and do nothing for more than two weeks as thousands, tens, and eventually hundreds of thousands of people are killed, but we were mistaken. The world would, and the world didn't do anything.

There were actually 2,500 UN soldiers there that could have stopped it. Anni, we could go on for a long time on the stories of the genocide. It's a tragic, tragic story. And if any of the listeners would like to go deeper, one way, we made a short 40-minute film that I send to schools before I go that's called I'm Not Leaving. And you could just search in YouTube, I'm Not Leaving Wilkins or I'm Not Leaving Rwanda and you would get this 40-minute film. Or if you wanted to go a lot deeper, PBS and Frontline did a documentary called Ghosts of Rwanda.

So for those of your listeners who'd like to dig deeper into the 1994 story, they could check out that. And that also I think is still on YouTube. Ghost plural, Ghosts of Rwanda. And that's the two hour hard, hard to watch, but powerful documentary.

It is hard, I would just say to anybody who's listening, who's a sensitive person, this is hard to face and listen to and dive into. I also read your book, I'm Not Leaving. I think it sat on my night shelf for a while and challenged me to get into the story. And I am glad that I did, although I will just say, yeah, it's a hard thing to learn about. And it's very, very hard for me to wrap my mind around how anyone claiming to walk in the footsteps of Jesus could either participate in what happened there, or as you said, saying the rest of the world turn a total blind eye. I don't think we'll have any clarity or closure to that question, but I am really...

No, but it's definitely one, yeah, to wrestle with. I mean, the planners of the genocide saw two major obstacles to them completing their genocide. One was these 2,500 UN soldiers and another was all the foreigners. They're like, if we can get rid of the UN and we can get rid of the foreigners, we have a chance of being successful in this genocide. But the fact that 80% of the people went to church on the weekend didn't seem to be a worry for them. In fact, they used the infrastructure of the church, all the different denominations, primarily Christian.

They used the infrastructure of all of these denominations and churches to complete their extermination campaign. So it's not just a story of people standing by. But it's actually a story of people who claim the name of Christ actively swinging machetes, betraying hiding places, committing unimaginable acts of horror.

And so it's, you know, if we only had a minute or two minutes to talk about it, I would say I've wrestled with organized religion for years now, and I don't want to throw it under the bus. But I've really come down to any religion I think should be about connecting us with love and connecting us with our neighbor. And we wander from anything like that. And of course, that sounds really familiar, huh? That, you know, Jesus is saying, love God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself. But this idea, for some people, the word God is just a trigger.

So I'm often like, I'll talk about God, but let's let's talk about love, you know? And if we can connect with love and with, we can connect with our neighbors, then we've got a chance, you know? And for me, my framework of love is God. So I want to be really clear with people. I, the best framework I can come up with for understanding and delving into and growing and exploring love for me is God. But for other people, God is like, you know, going to burn you forever in hell or something crazy like that. And, and for those who have, where even, even people who think, you know, God is in control, well, wait a minute, if God's in control, did a horrible job of controlling during the genocide, you know? So I understand why a lot of people reject this idea of God that has been put out there by, by many people. I'm not, I'm not trying to convince anybody that what they should believe, but I do love the conversations about love. And I'm curious about their framework of love. And we can, we can learn from each other. And then we make our own choices, which is, which is, I think what love is about, letting people make the own choices.

Wow, I could not agree more. That that ties into a portion of my story where a few years back, I actually this was part of my puzzle was how could a loving God allow this to happen and how could people who claim to be in the image of God who who claim to love God, do these things.

And so for a while, I couldn't even speak the name of Jesus. So we just had an agreement that I would just call on love. And that was as much as I could do. Over time, I came back to Oh, there is another name that I know. And, and what's fascinating is when I came back to my faith as a Christian, and I do claim Christianity, but only barely in one respect, which is why the name of this podcast starts with barely Christian. When I came back, I noticed that Jesus did not say to me, now do you believe these certain things are true? Do you have these tenants that you can sign your name to, but simply would you like to be next to Me? Would you like to come back and be known and be loved and receive love from Me and then give it out and also have enough for yourself too? And so, but I really appreciate when we can talk about God and/or love, it's all the same to me.

Very much, I think we've said for years God is love, but I think it puts a different angle to the conversation to say that love is God, you know, and I think it's, I found it really fascinating to look at different things we've said or beliefs we've held in stuff with this new framework, and it's not new, but with this different framework, you know, and even at times to flip around like 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter, and instead of saying love is this, love is this, to say God is this, God is that, that's a really fun exercise, a powerful exercise, you know, love wants nothing, and you're like, well, wait a minute, so God wants nothing?

Wait a minute, I thought God wanted my heart, you get into all kinds of conversations when you do that exercise, I think very valuable conversations, and the love, really, we can't hardly talk much about love without talking about relationships, because that's how love is manifested, that's how love is experienced, that's how love is, you know, it grows, it's all about relationships, and I think for me lately, I've been really enjoying and digging into the idea of love is a relationship, God is a relationship, and that idea of God and the Spirit and the Son being a relationship, I mean, I'm even right now, just as I'm wrapping my mind around a practical application of that, you know, often I'm more often referring to God as Them than He or, or anything, but you know, They, they are the ones who are the source for me of love.

And, and I made in Their image. And so are you and everyone else I deal with. And even people who committed with genocide are made in that image, but we have this wildly risky setup called free choice.

I love that so much. I've been working around the pronouns that I use for God also. Yeah. Oh yeah. It's a big part of my, my personal journey and my work here and what I'm doing. And it just occurred to me that we have this, you know, the very first conversation that the, the Trinity ever has in our presence is in Genesis and God says, let Us make them in our image and so it is a plural and it is a relationship and it's yeah that's really lighting my fire too.

Yeah we we actually I think you know we've been in love with the life of Jesus but we kind of just separated it all and and we separate the Father and the Son and and you know and we and then the Holy Spirit we're like I I don't know I guess there's a spirit but we kind of like we're looking over our shoulder we don't know how or what and and when I start just really thinking you know They really are three and one They really are relationship love alone is not love it's a relation and I'm part of that relationship whether I know it or not I believe I'm part of that relationship created in that image. And when I start to learn that I am like you said earlier loved I'm known and I'm loved and I'm already part of a relationship and when I become aware of that then it's like whoa.

Absolutely it changes everything because there's nothing there's nothing to prove if you're already known and completely loved and accepted as you are then there's nothing to earn. A friend of mine has this saying above her kitchen door I love it it says if you can earn it, it's not love.

Nice nice because that's awesome.

Isn't that the way that we are designed to experience love with God it's it's never earned it's always given and it's always present um so yeah.

I love it I love it.

I love it too. Um I want to go back and this is painful and hard to ask about um but I think it's necessary in my own so piece of my story here what I'm learning now I'm in my mid 40s, I'm less idealistic than I used to be, learned a lesson or two and I am still learning um so something really big for me is that when I see problems that do to me what the Rwandan genocide does to my heart, it creates all kinds of fear and panic. How could that possibly happen? I'm learning to look within and say, is there something in me that needs to be rooted out so that I don't think I'm so separate from those who performed the killings and can come close to the idea that what I abhor in their actions, is there any of that that's rooted in me? And I guess this is kind of a Christian principle too. You know, Jesus saying a plank in your own eye, you're trying to fetch the speck. So this concept of if something in someone else brings up abhorrence or major aversion, I am beginning to look inward and say, is there some of that that dwells in me that I'd like to work on, that I'd like to outgrow?

And so that's a really hard question to ask, you know, had I been living among the Rwandan people, had I been in the Hutu tribe, would I have been incited to pick up a machete? And the hard answer is, I'm no better than those folks. And so then, what can I learn? And how can I root out whatever in them allowed for that to happen that might also live in me? Can you talk about? I know you've done a lot of work around that.

Yeah, those are. That's good stuff, Anni. And as you said, it's hard stuff. I've had Rwandan friends who survived and went through years of anger. But then eventually came to a place of kind of stepping out of the anger and even the deep grief and the deep loss and trying to really understand the story, the backstory of those who did so much harm.

And the natural reaction is, like you started at the beginning, the natural reaction is to put as much distance between ourselves and them as possible. We would never do that, you know, we could never imagine and all of those never things come up.

And I think of one friend in particular who said, you know, in his teenage years, he was and he was about nine at the nine at the time of the genocide and his teenager years, he was so angry. But he got to a point towards the end, I think it was of his teenage years.

And I've never been able and I haven't, you know, I haven't pushed we our conversations, it comes as it comes, and we wait and bits more can come and stuff. But what the turning point might have been for him to when he actually came to the point of saying, if I was born in their family, if I was raised as they were raised, I might have done the same thing. Now, it's one thing to hear a philosophical person say that, you know, and in theory, that, but to actually hear somebody who lost so many members of their family, who did experience such deep trauma and grief and anger, to get to the point of saying that could have been me.

That's, that's incredibly challenging to me. I mean, it's inspiring, but I'm almost afraid to say it's inspiring. Because if I say it's inspiring, then I got to do something. And that's what you're really asking. I really appreciate that inward focus question you're asking, because when we're triggered, whether we're triggered in an angry way, or even in an empathetic way, we've got to be willing to examine the trigger.

You know, what is the trigger? And why is that trigger? And that's what I think, you know, you're saying it's like, you've got a splinter and you rub your hand and you're like, Oh, I didn't realize I had a splinter in there and you rub it against it.

And then you're like, Oh, there it is. And so for me, I, I initially, in terms of, you know, my journey and my ability to relate, and is that fair to kind of, am I hijacking your question is, is it fair to ask myself, what is my ability to relate with people who have done things that I am, I am really, you know, I'm nauseated by, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm so enraged by, and can I, can I in any way relate and connect with them?

And that scary part, do I see any reflection in myself? And I think about two different stories for me of people who I met years later after the genocide who were active participants in killing during that time, one guy I stumbled on in prison 21 years later, and I didn't just stumble on him. I stumbled on an enormous, what would I say, deposit of anger within myself? So big, I didn't know that, you know, I had that much anger there. And, and, you know, I think it's really, you know, I'm not going to get to the place of being able to identify or even honestly, look, self-examination, without first wrestling and processing that anger.

And I don't think, you know, we need to rush anybody, people shouldn't, you know, who've gone through great trauma and stuff, we don't want to rush them or anything to do that to get to a point, because initially, people would say, why should I relate to someone like that? Why should I try even to connect? or something like that. And if those are the questions they're asking, I wouldn't be encouraging them to do it. But if you get to a place in your life where you do recognize, I've got anger and I've got things that are not processed.

I've got trauma and wounds and stuff. And you start wanting to really work and process that. That's kind of, I would hope it didn't take me 21 years to get to that point. I don't know why it took me so long to discover that anger inside of me. But I think that would be a major, was a major obstacle to identifying and relating with people who had done genocide. And in a short version as I can think of here, in that story, the leader of the killing squad, he and his gang who were responsible for more than 2000 deaths. And I had had several encounters with him during the genocide and I stumbled on him, like I said, 21 years later. I was just...I was so angry. I just felt like vomiting. I wanted to get out of the room.

And there was no way that I would ever want to identify with him. You know, theoretically I could say, I want to see him as a human. But to really identify with him, it took quite a journey. For the next year after meeting him, I just tried to simply see him as more than a killer.

More than, you know, this mass murderer. Which is the only way I had identified him in my mind for 20 some years. Tried to see him as a father. Tried to imagine him as a son. I mean, the most basic human things I tried to connect with him.

I think that as long as I can define somebody by one horrible thing, I can continue to hang on to and justify my anger. So if I want to really get free of my anger and my bitterness, at least in my experience, I'm not writing a book on this or any research or anything else. My experience is that I find myself trapped in one thing thinking. I found that being the case with people who committed the genocide. I could only see them as brutal murderers. And I just, I wasn't really, at one point, I suppose, at least consciously, I wasn't even looking to see them as anything else but that.

But when I had this encounter with Gregoai, 21 years later, and I started to see all that rage that I had inside myself that I didn't even know. And it was coming to focus on him. I think a lot of my anger wasn't just from encounters with him during the genocide. It was a whole concept of genocide that this day kind of busted out of me. And I mean, I didn't shout and scream or anything, but it became very aware. And like I said, I felt like throwing up. And so I spent that year journaling and actually really saying, God, man, I didn't even know I had all this anger inside of me, you know, how can I, how can you help me identify it and process it? And that's been a journey of years. That was 2015. Huh? So that was that was nine years ago that I that I first really became connected with with aware of this anger.

A year later I went back to Rwanda. I go in the summers with teachers with students to help kind of learn about what happened and about the healing journey of the of the country of the individuals and that the year 2016 when I went back, I found this man on purpose this time in prison.

And I said, Gregoai, well, last year I was so angry. I didn't even want to shake your hand. I don't want to be angry. And he said, I could tell. I mean, I suppose it wouldn't take a, you know, a real insightful person to be able to see my anger.

He said, I could tell, you know, I recognized you when I walked in the room. He said, I was happy to see you were still alive. I thought about you often over the years. And man, those three things just like knocked the wind out of me.

You know, I mean, I didn't recognize him, which was no big deal, but he recognized me and he thought about me often. I thought about him often as one thing, this mass murderer. But he must have been thinking about me as something else if he was happy to see, I was still alive because when I figured it was him, I wasn't happy to see he was still alive. I mean, I didn't think about that specifically, but I know with my anger, it wasn't like, oh, good, this guy's still alive, you know.

And so so I at the end of that visit, you know, also during that visit, he said, we tried to stop you from coming to the orphanage, but you kept coming and kept coming. See, there was a story during the genocide when a gang of 50 people surrounded the orphanage and they were planning on killing everybody.

And it's a longer story than we'll get into here. In fact, it's touched on both in the PBS documentary Ghosts of Rwanda and also the other one I mentioned, I'm not leaving. But this guy, it was his gang who was going to kill everybody there.

And so when he says we tried to discourage you from coming, I was working with Rwandans to bring food and water and some medicines to groups of orphans around the city. He says, we were working to discourage you from coming, but you kept coming.

We decided to kill you. And, you know, you just kind of sit there in silence. What do you say? I don't know how you respond. I mean, I hadn't had that experience, didn't know how to respond. But but then he said, I'm sorry, I'm sort of chuckling.

But he said, but it wasn't God's will. And the reason I'm chuckling is I can't I can't put together a mass murderer saying I didn't kill you because it wasn't God's because it wasn't God's will. And when he hadn't given any indication of a conversion of some come to Jesus in prison, he was just this kind of very serious, almost masked, you couldn't, like a poker face. It's really hard to read them. And I don't remember much else from that conversation, except that we stood up to shake hands and we didn't. It's very Rwandan, we hugged.

And I mean, that's a very Rwandan thing, but nothing I intended or expected to do with this mass murder. And when I stepped back from that hug and he stepped back and we're both drying our eyes and with his prison uniform, me with my shirt sleeve, I'm thinking to myself, oh my goodness, this is messed up.

I've just disrespected all the 2,000 people that he killed. I'm just feeling like I spit on their grave or I somehow, I can't tell my friends whose people, family he killed, I can't tell them I hugged the guy. And I had this terrible, I mean, it was a terrible conflict in my head because, On one hand, I'm thinking your hug just disrespected everybody. But on the other hand, the hug was was like it felt healing.

It wasn't creepy. It wasn't awkward. It wasn't like, gosh, should I let go now or hug harder? I mean, it was just a good hug. And and and I was probably about nine months later that I realized, you know what, I'm journaling again and I'm writing to God. And I'm like, look, God, if he would have killed me and my kids would have found a way to get free of anger. I mean, I'm still not sure I'm ready for my kids to hug him. But it's not up to me how they heal.

It's not up to me when they if that had happened, their journey would be their journey. What would be so important to me would be if they could get free from anger and bitterness. He would no longer have power over our family. He would no longer be wreaking havoc. He would no longer be harming us. He would have harmed us by killing me. But he would have not continued to harm us in in in residual anger. Anger has like a shelf life, I believe.

I believe that anger is appropriate at the beginning in injustice and so many things. But hopefully that anger will lead me into a journey of repair, a journey of exploration and understanding, and that that anger will not just simply reside and often undetected in my body.

And so kind of a long story, but I'll wrap it here. I go back last summer, seven years later, and now I really do feel like I am getting freer from my anger against this man. And and I'm with a group of teachers and students this last July. And I'm sitting across from Gregoire one, the prison, actually in the administration office of the prison. And he's he's due to get out of prison in about three years. You know, some people can't believe that he's not in for life.

He really cooperated with the trials afterwards, the community trials, the international trials. He really cooperated. He says he's been going out and trying, I mean, when the government lets him find, apologize, speak at large gatherings about what he did and owning all the horrible things that he did.

And so I come back, I'm there with these teachers and I said, Gregoire, well, thanks for meeting with us today. We are not here to judge you. We just really want to try to understand, these are teachers who teach about Holocaust and human rights. These are students who study it. So thank you for meeting with us. And he says, well, thank you for coming. And then he says to the teachers and students, he points at me and he says, this man has visited me twice before and I've really appreciated it. He says, in fact, the last time he visited me, I asked forgiveness and he forgave me.

And I'm like, what? I don't remember that. I mean, it was a really emotional experience. And I'm like, Did I miss something with the translator? What only probably days or weeks later did I realize, okay, the hug, whether he said it or not, the hug must be what he took as forgiveness. But I'm not gonna contradict the guy or I'm just letting him talk right now. But then when he finalizes saying that, he forgave me when I saw him last time, but I wanna ask him again, he said, I've been looking for people and everyone I can find to ask for forgiveness. And I wanna ask him again.

And I was super shocked because I didn't think that I could, that I could, I mean, I didn't come that day with that, that that would happen, that he would apologize. Cause kids had asked me, did he apologize, you know, when he saw you the second time?

Like, I don't think so. I don't remember anything like an apology. And so he looks at me and he says to me, will you forgive me? You know, he's like three feet away, sitting in his chair. And I am, man, my heart is racing.

I feel like, you know, somebody just threw me the touchdown pass and I'm fumbling that ball and I can't grab ahold of it. And for years I've told people, forgiveness is so many different things to different people, but I like to just start at the basic level.

Forgiveness is getting free of anger and bitterness. You know, it's not reconciliation. It's not pardon, it's getting free. It's not about if they're sorry or if they deserve it. It's about me getting free of anger and bitterness.

That's where I want to start these conversations. So I just very honestly said to Gregoire, well, you know, I want to forgive you, but I'm not sure that I'm free from the anger and bitterness. I've become friends with people whose families you killed.

I mean, I just blurted that out. Later I'm like, I probably wouldn't have said that if I'd have been planning ahead, but I didn't know what was coming in. And I'm like, I don't know if I'm, I want to forgive, but I don't know if I'm free from anger and bitterness.

Guy slides out of his chair onto both knees in front of me. And he points at me and he says to the teachers, and part of me was like, this is really should be in private or something, you know? And yet the genocide happened in public.

And this guy points at me and he says to, he's very aware of them being in the room. And he just says, everything this man says about me is true. I did it. And that's why I'm asking for forgiveness. And he actually said, and if I died tonight, I would be at peace.

Now, forgiveness is not necessarily, you know, my interest in having the perpetrator have peace, you know? That could be farther down the line, but I don't wanna get sidetracked on that. It's just when he said, if I died tonight, something clicked in my head. Cause I've said for a long time to people, if you wanna know how you're free from anger and bitterness, you no longer want harm for the person who you were angry at. That's a good indication that you're free or getting free from it, you know, because it's a process. It's not a one in many cases, maybe sometimes it's one thing and I forgive you and I'm not angry anymore, you know, but some of the divorce or all the wounds of life and different things we go through, it's a journey as far as I know.

And so when he said, if I died tonight, it clicked in my mind, I don't want this guy to die tonight. I stood up, I extended my hand to him on his knees and I said, Gregoire, well, I do not want you to die tonight.

In fact, I don't want harm for you. I forgive you. Now I'm not forgiving him for all the people he killed. I'm not forgiving him for everything. Who am I? I can't forgive him for all of those things, but it's me and my anger.

And it's the language he best understood for me because there's still to me so much in this word, forgive. But for me, I was well on my journey. It was my intention to be free from anger and bitterness.

And I realized when he said, if I died tonight, I didn't want him to die. I didn't want harm for him. And so it actually, Anni it actually, back to your original question, you know, our ability to identify with people who have done such horrible things and stuff like that, it changed so much for me and that other, it changed bit by bit.

I mean, the fact that he told me, you know, the second visit, I thought of you often, I'm happy to see you're alive, you know. That started to challenge my one thing thinking about this guy, he's a mass murderer.

I didn't expect a mass murderer to be thinking about me or to be happy that I was still alive. So that part of the journey was started to crank there. We then hugged and the hug was really healing, but I'm like, wait a minute.

I actually uncovered in my journal that I thought subconsciously is what I've, you know, figured out finally by journaling subconsciously, I thought that honoring the people who were killed meant I had to stay angry at the person who did it.

And when I brought that on to a conscious level, I'm like, that's messed up. I don't know what what what I got to stop here. I'm just talking non stop, Anni. But what do you think about when when when I when you hear that idea, to honor the people who were killed, you have to stay angry at the person who killed them. Does that resonate in any way? Or what do you think?

To the deepest part of my core, I feel like something is rooted there, that we have believed that in order to honor those who have been harmed in whatever situation, you know, even if it's somebody against something atrocious committed against me in order to honor that part of myself that anger, I cannot let go of my anger because it is allowing me to still hold that person accountable.

And I think I was listening to a podcast where it was talking about restorative justice circles.

Yeah. Yeah.

That I know you know something about and the woman on the podcast pointed out this beautiful thing she said, this is the one piece that conservatives and liberals alike can agree that restorative justice circles are useful. And it's because for conservatives, they're really happy that restorative justice includes this element of accountability. And for the liberal-minded folk, it includes an element of humanity that's really beautiful. And so it's this convergence that a lot of us can go, yes, I do. I do see that that's good. And I think I haven't actually been a part of a traditional restorative justice circle. Just read about them.

And I think there is a balance where it is allowed to deeply feel the hurt and the loss and that grief while also honoring the humanity in the other person and that it is not dishonoring to those harmed to see the humanity, the humanity and the other person.

And it reminds me, you were talking about you had this one story about Gregoire, why am I saying that right?

Yeah, that's right.

So you had this one story about Gregoire, why? And I noticed on your website, you had a link to the danger of a single story that it's a TED talk.

Yes. By I'm going to probably not pronounce her name. I haven't heard it said properly, but Chimamanda Ngozi. Is that right? Yeah, that's good.

Better. It's good as I could do.

That's my my first attempt.

And so I was I was thinking about, as you were talking, seeing Gregoire as only a murderer and probably, you know, you're you. More than most of us have more information in your mind about the way the murders were carried out, right? Terribly, horribly violent and like there aren't words, there just aren't words. And so to imagine him as someone with basic needs, someone who is a father or a son. You're right. I feel that all the way at my core.

There's something in my core that goes, don't see him as a human. No, because that is disrespectful to all the people who died and their families. You're right. That's there. That's rooted.

And you mentioned that if you let go of your anger, you let go of the accountability, which again, is kind of a subconscious belief that when we bring it up and really examine it, we're like, well, wait a minute. If I'm not angry, does that in any way diminish their accountability? No, I mean, I realized when I met up with another guy who had been involved in the genocide a couple in 2019, and the lady whose family, whose husband and children he had killed, has totally reinvented this guy in her mind.

He, she believes he's changed and he says she made me human again and it's an incredible story. But anything, every time she said something positive when I first met them and heard the story, I was discounting it because I felt if you say something positive about somebody who's done something horrible, you are diminishing the horribleness of what they did or the actual, you know, level of wrong and pain and harm and accountability.

And I realized later, again, am I generally, no, by acknowledging, as you just said, human, or I would say something good or kind that a person has done, it is not, they are two separate things. The crime is still as horrific and heinous a crime as it always was.

And their accountability is very much needed and demanded. And the only one that can change that accountability, I think, is the community and within conversation and that with the victims. In other words, if you are to say you are forgiven and pardoned, that is for, that then is the one gift that a victim can decide whether or not they want to extend to somebody.

But just identifying something valuable or human in them does not diminish the level of the crime or the level of accountability. And that was a really good discovery for me because that kind of lets me go. Because, you know, if anger is the only thing that's driving us. And then they get justice, we're still often left with anger, because justice rarely removes anger, you know? But if I, my anger moves to a deeper level of understanding, and eventually through this whole journey, moves to a love for people, a love for myself, an unconditional love for everyone, then if I find justice, I am left with my motivating force, but that's not anger, that's love.

And so I really, it's that, I think that transition from an initial justified anger to an eventual unconditional love, which I'm not there yet with Gregoire, okay? I don't want harm for him, but I'm not yet ready to, I mean, you know, one of the teachers who was with me said to him, Was there ever a moment during the genocide that gave you pause that you stopped and thought about what you're doing?

You know this horrible stuff and he's quiet for a moment and then he says I Remember standing in the home of one family. We had just killed all of them and I asked myself why the children, why did you order your men?

You see, I don't know if this guy ever swung a machete. You know. He may have done all of his killing as the top leader of this and maybe did he actually said that before the genocide he didn't even like to kill a chicken for dinner.

He'd have somebody else kill it and I'm like You know, you can't tell me you didn't like to kill a chicken and yet and yet they had so dehumanized the Tutsi people, calling them snakes and cockroaches, that I mean probably some of my Rwandan friends are saying oh, yeah, we were we were less than a chicken in that guy's eyes and that might be the case. But but my point is that as he was standing there and saying I can't believe you know I ordered my men to kill all even the children and then you know. Told him to take the properties of the family to my house where I'm where I assumed they would be divided among the men. And he says I got home and I saw those things there again and I asked myself, Why what am I doing?

And then he said something that really kind of shook me. Well, okay. He said I asked myself what am I doing? But I didn't change. And what shook me wasn't that he didn't change. What shook me was that I started thinking about times that I've thought about a better way a more human way a more compassionate, you know, you could stop but you could take the time to go and visit or you could you know. You could do this you could you could pick up that Dog dirt in the parking lot. So nobody else steps on it. It wasn't your dog. I mean, I mean what? ever the thing is you see something you could do better and you don't do it. And in that moment too that was part of a moving closer to try to understand and recognize the humanity and somebody who's done something.

But we've still not answered your question about us believing we could do what they did. Where I've spent all of my time so far right now it's a pretty safer place but trying to deal with my anger and then and then trying to see his humanity. And when he says you know I didn't change, I kind of connected with that that I've done at times seen things where I'm like I should do this or this would be a better way to do it and I haven't for various reasons.

So it's a small step but I think it's still part of this rehumanizing and beginning to see the other and and even see myself. Hey, I'm more comfortable saying see myself in them than saying see them in me, you know. But that's part of the journey.

I think eventually we may get there. You know when he said he had two grandkids I've got two grandkids my first impulse was to reach for my phone in my pocket, you know to show him my grandkids. And then I'm like, no, I'm not gonna show this guy my grandkids I mean, you know, we're in prison and he's a mass murderer.

And so I'm still back and forth between he's a mass murderer I'm not gonna show my grandkids and and wait a minute. What do you say? He didn't change and I identify with it's a small way I know and some people may be like that's ridiculous to even compare something you didn't do, you know pick up dog dirt or whatever you didn't do you know, I actually did pick up the dog dirt, by the way, but but um, but my my my point is sometimes we really get lost in you know, the gravity of their crime and their harm and anything we compare it to in our life is not comparable and I'm not trying to say it is comparable I'm just the roots and the seeds. I'm interested in understanding those roots and the seeds. And This guy. Oh, yeah, there's one other thing if anybody would have asked me, you know during the genocide or any of the 29 years after the genocide before I saw him last before I saw him last In July how old is this guy? I would have said ah four or five years older than me. Maybe I was 36 at the time of the genocide guys by 40 41 42.

I found out in July He was 26, 10 years younger than me and it's strange Anni how how that had a softening impact on me as I thought more of a 26 year old, caught up in this than a 40 year old someone older than me. No, somebody younger than me somebody older and how we might have compassion or not or a little more likely. It's still a messy journey I can't put a nice bow on this story and say, you know that I'm at the place of being able to identify with somebody who committed those things. I can say it in my head, cerebrally, I can say we're capable of all kinds of horrible things, but to really honestly look a friend, look you in the eye and say, Anni, I think I might be capable of doing that. I'm not ready to say that about myself. And that may be my own issue, my own pride, my own ego, but it's a journey. And I, I'm not gonna say I want to get to the place where I can say, yeah, I could do those horrible things, but I definitely want to get to the place where I wouldn't say I would never do that.

I don't want to get to the place where I'd say never. And I don't want to get to the place where the barrier between me and them is so great that it could never be. I could never see past and I could never relate and I could never connect.

So I don't know, I haven't, haven't had a conversation like this, this deep Anni to really honestly say, I mean, I need to sit down and journal about it, to honestly say, because I mean, I've said it. Look, I've said this thousands of times, there's no such thing as a good guy, bad guy. I definitely believe that. I think that's a construct we make in our own mind. I think that's a myth. And I, and I've also said, you know, we're all capable of incredible harm and incredible good.

But when, when, when you want to bring that conversation, or when I take your question and want to bring that conversation down to the level of somebody I know who committed genocide, and what is my ability to identify with or relate to, I can just tell you the bit of story that I already told you, and I'm on a journey. And I really do want to be able to communicate and relate. Because I want to at the base of all of this, I want to believe people can change. And, you know, I've grown up in a Christian circle that says, you know, a Christian community that says, oh, yeah, people can change. God will change your heart. And, and I don't want to dis on that phrase, God will change your heart because in ways I believe it, but I'm more, I'm more interested than just simply someone saying, God will change our heart.

How, how will God change my heart? And what are the steps I can take? What is it? And that's, you know, now all of a sudden, I'm thinking about your quote about earning and you can't earn. I don't, I think that I think there's a place for the earning and love. And I'm not talking about how can I get love? I'm talking about how can I get rid of anger and bitterness? And while some people might have a great story of God just taking it out of my heart, I don't have that story.

But my story has been a story of looking for the good, intentionally, neuroplasticity, forming new pathways in my brain of being able to counter the negativity bias and identify the anger in my life. Identify the prejudice or the biases in my life and I'm still you know working on that for sure forever until I die and um and and but I'm yeah well I'm just a little bit of a mess right now in all different directions.

I love it so much because um and this is something I've known about you the whole time and when I first got to know you of course you and your family were just coming out from this and I think, uh just learning to breathe again um but but still being willing to talk about it but you have never offered pat answers that could fit on a bumper sticker to address the hard questions that need to be thought about and and I love that about you. And so what you just said I just wanted to underline and circle and highlight um a few minutes back you said I think anger is good and useful if it's something about having a shelf life that you said anger is meant to have a shelf life.

And that's been some of my work on my own self, acknowledging the pain, the wrongs, the hurts, and then feeling the anger about them because nobody gets better by going from this bad thing happened to me to, oh, I forgive them.

It's fine. I mean, it doesn't work for me, learning to sit with and hold the grief and the pain and honor it with my attention and then continue to let the anger move rather than stay stagnant. And I think it does eventually transform. And I don't have stories like the ones that you and Teresa have. I have never lived through a genocide and I didn't know people who were murdered in the horrible ways that your friends and beloved people were. And so I can't say, oh yeah, I know what that feels like. And it works really well if you follow these steps that I've taken. But in my own experience, I have grown when I have let the anger move. And it's almost like if you don't have anger and something horrible has happened, the question is almost like, well, you're masking it or hiding it because it's there.

It's a natural response and it should be there. We should feel angry, at injustice at the things that are truly wrong. There may be not black and white, maybe it's not grayscale, maybe it's all in color, but there are some things that are just absolutely truly wrong and for sure genocide is in that category.

I do think that anger, being a necessary component, can be medicinal and healing if I am allowing myself to truly feel it and let it move through me. And so a lot of what I talk about is in my own body, letting the anger move through my body, feeling where I feel the rage, where is it housed.

And I used to be of the persuasion that in order to be a true follower of Christ, I would have to eventually be able to say I don't have anger anymore. I don't feel anger at the world. And I don't say that anymore because I don't think that's accurate.

I have anger about these things. I hear these stories. I've experienced things in my own life that make me mad, make me angry. And I think it's not a bad thing, but it can turn into poison. That's what I wanted to say.

I think it's medicine. Medicine that if it stays in the belly without passing through, turns into poison. And that's where we get stuck. And that's where we get resentful and bitter. And that's also where, like Gregoire, we see that we could do better and we don't.

So maybe my question, maybe it's not for us mortals to know, you know, could I pick up a machete if my government told me to? And, you know, with a baby strapped to my back, hack down a mother with a baby strapped to her back.

Maybe I can't answer whether or not I would ever, I don't know, but I certainly know what it is to, like you say, know that I could do better or do right and choose not to.

And, you know, that could be another conversation we have sometime too, Anni, is the expectations we place on ourselves and what those expectations look like when we know we're loved and what those expectations look like when we're still trying to figure out if we're lovable, you know, if we love ourselves, you know.

And a guy said to me recently, I don't think God has expectations. I think God has anticipations, but not expectations. And I'm like, that's a pretty good one. I'm gonna think on that one for a while.

But I do, I definitely, yeah, it is. I think it's human and I think it's healthy and... to stop and say, you know, how can we do this better? How can I, you know, what's really my motive here? And let's do a little bit of, you know, contemplative self-examination. And I think there's a lot of good that can come from it. And then having a circle of trusted friends that you can do that with too. I think those things are really valuable. And we ask those questions and we realize the answer is not always the important part.

You know, it's that what kind of conversation this generates, what kind of examination comes as asking that question. And like you said, it may not be ours now or ever to answer it, but I think there's a lot of good that can come from exploring it.

And essentially what you mentioned earlier is that this work is best done in community.

Yeah, I like that a lot. That's what I have certainly found. I can really beat myself up bad when I'm just talking to myself.

Right. But your beloved circle would say, Hey, community. Yep.

Hey, look at this. Think about that. And be nice to yourself.

And we love you. And so let us just be a mirror for a second back to you. And yeah, and remind you what's good about you. You know, Carl, I have about 100 more questions. So I think what we're going to have to do is have a session 2.0 because I love it. We didn't even get to where was God in the midst of the genocide, which is the next thing that I would love to hear you talk about that. And and also to follow up with what has Rwanda done? Yeah, these subsequent years and hearing the stories of restorative justice. And, and what can we learn? And how can we prevent this? So let's do this again, shall we?

Yeah. For sure you know. Rwanda took on the impossible. And nobody has done it in modern history to try to prosecute the ordinary people, the rank and file. And so to sit down with you and talk about the community courts they set up and the and the hundreds of thousands of people's lives who went through those courts and what they did to to that was crucial to getting to acceptance and getting to healing and re, opportunities to reinvent yourself. It's really, love to sit down and have a conversation like that. It's it's still challenging me, but it's also exciting me. And, and I think it's got a lot, a lot for all of us to, to learn and, and, and benefit, man, our relationships with those closest to us and our community and workmates. And, you know, where are we in America right now in terms of trust? And so talking about how Rwanda that that, you know, the loss of life was unimaginable. And you never get that back. And it's easy for some people say to and I'll never get trust back.

But it's like, no, there's people in Rwanda that are finding a pathway back to trust and forgiveness and trust. I had a music teacher at high school yesterday say forgiveness and trust are on a different timeline.

And I'm like, that's a good one, buddy. I love it. You know, he's telling his kids, we're not just singing lyrics. We're talking about life. And he's all about social emotional intelligence. That'd be another podcast.

I think the last question I'm gonna give you this question that and then I want to ask you after you've maybe had a time to think about it. I'm curious how all of this has molded you personally, all of the stories that you hold.

What has this done to you as a person? Whereas if you had had some, you know, job here in the States doing whatever. What has this done to you? And and can you possibly forgive God for asking you to do this?

Yeah, no, just unpacking that. That sounds like a good conversation. I would welcome that. It's still not figured out, but I'd like to look into it for sure.

All right, well, until next time, and would you like to tell folks how they can get a hold of the world outside my shoes in case they'd like to book you?

Well, yeah, I'm happy to. I spend most of the time with schools, mostly public schools, and fair number of Catholic schools because of their social justice program. But any group, happy to share stories about Rwanda, not just the terrible, horrible days of the 1994 genocide, but also about this healing journey that they're on in the country.

And so World Outside My Shoes, it's a name that's hard to remember. And I, anyway, I won't go into that conversation, but worldoutsidemyshoes.org, or if you even look up, I think we had the domain, carlwilkens.com, and it'll lead you to World Outside My Shoes.

So it shouldn't be too hard when she starts searching about Rwanda and genocide, and you should be able to come up with our website. And then you'll see different tabs on there where we can get in touch and maybe connect with a luncheon with the business or a visit at a faith group, or I'm going to a Rotary group tomorrow, all kinds of fun opportunities to talk with people and explore these incredible stories.

That's good. Thank you for sharing your stories and your wisdom.

Thanks for the opportunity, Anni. It's nice, it's nice to talk with you and I look forward to future conversations.

Okay, until next time then.

All right, take care. Thanks.

Thanks so much for joining me today. If you’d like to get ahold of me for any reason, you can find me at barelychristianfullychristian.com. I’d love to hear your thoughts about this particular topic or anything else that’s on your mind and heart.

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