In April 2016, I was sitting in a hotel lobby in Rome. I had been working with Pax Christi International for several months at that point, organizing the Nonviolence and Just Peace conference . We were expecting 85 theologians and peace practitioners from around the world. My previous weeks had been a whirlwind of visa applications, logistics, negotiations on every small details ... And now it was Sunday afternoon, less than 24 hours before our meeting was to begin. Folks were arriving from the United States, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America. One of our participants, Jean Jacques from the Democratic Republic of the Congo -- who had already endured significant obstacles to get a visa to enter Europe -- sent me an email to tell me that his flight had been delayed so he had missed his connection and would miss the entire conference unless he was able to buy a new ticket on a different flight to Rome. So I'm toggling back and forth between Google Translate and email to communicate...
No time for the blues