Jamaica Abare

It has been a long time since I looked forward to bedtime because I wanted to read. Usually I begin to read because I know it is good for me and then I end up enjoying it. The Help, by first time novelist Kathryn Stockett proved to be one of those books. It wasn't the beautiful word pictures or the fascinating thoughts on human nature which usually appeal to me, but rather the realism of the voices that carry the narrative of the challenge of the social structure of house "help" in Mississippi in 1962.

It was also quite fun to find that several of my friends were also reading the book- a phenomenon that rarely happens for whatever reason due to my usual reading choices.

Discovered, like most things I now treasure, in high school Steinbeck never ceases to disappoint the desire to be drawn into the personalities of a world wholly unlike one's own. Although the strange charmed painting of brothel life in a small town in Sweet Thursdayheld my intrigue, it was the overarching truths of narrative that continue to compel my admiration of Steinbeck.

At one point he diverges from the main story to weave a sidebar narrative about a little town in which the competition fostered in a simple croquette-like game turns the town into two groups of warring factions that cannot imagine intermarrying or using the same drinking fountain. Throughout the description of each increased expression of animosity I found myself thinking that while the story seemed outrageous, there was something right about what he was suggesting. The chapter ends with the thought that things don't have to have happened to be true.

Spurred on by the thought of a classic author I'd read in high school, and reassured by a recent NPR endorsement, I began Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury this summer. Unfortunately, the narrative of a 12 year old boy's summer memories of sneakers, movies, and melodramatic imagination failed to draw me into another world. The most magical thought conjured up remained in the title- the thought that the summer could be bottled up in the nectar of pressed dandelions, preserved for the most painful moments winter's discontent.

You just can't read The Hole in our Gospel, written by the current World Vision President and respond with the affirmation: yes this was a good reminder of the grinding inequality of our world, I am so glad that we sponsor a world vision child and give to missions organizations.

Here are a few sound bites that have continued echoing in my mind after completing the book last year:

For I was hungry, while you had all you needed. I was thirsty, but you drank bottled water. I was a stranger, and you wanted me deported. I needed clothes, but you needed more clothes. I was sick, and you pointed out the behaviors that led to my sickness. I was in prison, and you said I was getting what I deserved.
(RESV-Richard E. Stearns Version)

"Sometimes I would like to ask God why He allows poverty, suffering, and injustice when He could do something about it"
"Well, why don't you ask Him?"
"Because I'm afraid He would ask me the same question"

Pray, but when you pray, move your feet.- African proverb

Any response seems trivial and completely underwhelming, but this will not keep me paralyzed.
I will not buy any clothes for six months and will sponsor another World Vision child. I remain educated beyond my obedience, but this will not keep me from attempting obedience however meager.

Yesterday morning my husband and I's debate began by my asking him what he had done the previous evening (I was hanging out with my girlfriends). He told me that he had watched the film "Glory"- the 1998 civil war film highlighting the bravery of the African Americans who fought in the 54th Massachusetts volunteer infantry. His comment "the self sacrifice they displayed is the most powerful force in the world" sparked my agreement that self-sacrifice is indeed the most powerful force on the planet, but my dissent in the context of war being the best way to display it. Of course he wasn't arguing that war was the best way to embody this truth, but for the sake of the discussion that so often ensues in our bed late into the night or early in the morning, our practically nonexistent point of disagreement was highlighted to heighten the spiritedness of our conversation.

Most of my points were inspired by my recent completion of Shane Claiborne's Jesus for President. Although the first half was similar in focus to Rob Bell's "Jesus Wants to Save the Christians," my favorite section was near the end where Claiborne highlights communities who are resisting evil and violence with creative imagination. One of the most memorable stories he told was of a Christian community in Belize that was constantly plagued by armed bandits who were stealing money from families homes. Rather than contact the authorities or arm themselves they decided to change their currency to a form that would not be recognized anywhere else than in their community (I guess they didn't need to rely on their country's monetary system much). There was one particular man, however that repeatedly robbed a family of their possessions and was eventually thrown in jail. The community decided to get together and build this man (a person who had no house of his own) a house within their community. When he was released from prison they were there to greet him and present him with this gift and invite him and his family to live among them.

I don't have the creative imagination needed to envision this sort of nonviolent, loving response to aggression, but when I hear stories like this I am inspired to hope that this is possible, and believe that Christ's vision for the world extends beyond my limited practicalities. Perhaps as a community of believers we can together believe in the power of Christ enough to imagine that building the kingdom of God is possible.

When thinking about other faiths I used to think that the biggest threat to the public's belief in Jesus was the existence of other faiths. Now I think a belief that we are alone in this world, and that all we have is the initiative of humankind is the bigger competitor to my, and our world's belief. If I am honest, I probably find myself questioning whether there is anything divine on a monthly basis (I suppose that I am in good company as John the Baptist also found himself questioning whether Jesus was the real deal). I don't remember the last time I was tempted to acknowledge the prophet Muhammad as God's final messenger or contemplate the unity and divinity of all things. Perhaps this is mostly a function of the people I am in relationship with.
So while I would have previously found Mitch Albom's bookHave a little faith- a true story than chronicles a journalist's experience of the faith of a Rabbi and Pastor- somewhat of a threat, it now encouraged my faith. One of the things that the author cannot seem to get his mind around is how the pastor, a former drug dealer, can have turned his life around enough to earn the respect of God and the congregation that looks up to him. I too struggle to wrap my brain around this paradoxical phenomenon of redemption but am so glad that the faith I embrace holds it as evidence of its truth and power.

"In the days ahead, you will either be a mystic (one who has experienced God for real) or nothing at all."
--Karl Rahner
As usual reading a Brennan Manning book-The Furious Longing of God- allures my spirit towards desiring to experience God. I think previously in my life an intellectual fascination with the historical Jesus, or even a deep appreciation for the wisdom found in the ancient prophets or the life of Christ was enough to bind my hear to the Christian faith. Now in my thirties I find myself wearied with "correct" theological explanations and critical of the implied evangelical assumptions of my childhood that wisdom and truth can only be found in Christian scriptures. I can, of course, unhesitatingly present the solid intellectual foundation for God's existence and Jesus being divine, but true things, even when incredibly significant and meaningful, are not enough to bind the soul or enamor the heart. I must continue to experience the love of God, not as in the vagueness of a warm reassuring emotion, but in the personal, soul-transforming embrace of Christ. If Christianity is to be truth that matters, I must experience its God.

Although I had read The Jesus I Never Knew in high school, I recently felt compelled to rediscover the man I claim to base my life upon. As I had anticipated I found quite a lot that I admired, but even more that made me feel uneasy about this man. Below are a few of these things:

Jesus was surprisingly effected by people, he wept when people were sad, and told people that they were the spawn of Satan when they were acting selfishly. He was moved by compassion, and overwhelmed by people to the point of needing to escape from the masses on a regular basis. I often act (if not at times actually think) that I would be more spiritual if I held back the tears and anger and objectively, wisely approached each situation with the slight grace of detachment. Jesus' personality challenges the conception of detached grace with a picture of complete emotional involvement.

He came across to his culture as a complete revolutionary scorning fame, family, and property. He said things like "who are my mother, sisters, and brothers" and frequently told people "not to tell" when he healed their diseases. In a Christian culture that affirms stability and traditional family values, I wonder how Jesus would appear to us today. Would he be that crazy activist that is threatening our tradition?

Jesus repeatedly resisted the temptation to be the kind of Messiah who people wanted and would recognize. In the wilderness he was given the opportunity to turn stones into bread and care for those in need, and the opportunity to gloriously pronounce his divinity through angelic visitation. He said no. He decided to go the hard route of being mistaken, misunderstood, and rejected. I often wish for a messiah that no one could deny. I wouldn't feel quite so crazy. I must really not grasp what is so profound about the freedom of choice that risks in the face of doubt.

This one is really nuts, but strangely alluring when you think about it. Our hope rests on a man

"whose message was rejected and whose love was spurned, who was condemned as a criminal and given the sentence of capital punishment."

When you think about it, it is a little weird to think that the symbol of the cross- complete social rejection and physical suffering whose redemption was not unanimously recognized- encapsulates our faith. What do I do with this man who turns my ideas of success upside down?

He is extraordinary, and I love him......and he makes me uncomfortable.

After coming across a reading list that our president had constructed for himself and our staff in time magazine six months ago, I thought it would be very cutting edge of me to begin reading along with the leaders of our nation. I began with, and have just finished Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. The two claims of the book are that

"Seemingly small features of social situations can have massive effects on people's behavior; nudges are everywhere, even if we do not see them. Choice architecture, both good and bad, is pervasive and unavoidable, and it greatly affects our decisions. the second claim is that libertarian paternalism is not an oxymoron."

The book addresses many aspects of our social lives, from our eating habits, to our energy use, to organ donation and shows how little adjustments to context, presentation, and default options can positively or negatively effect the choices we make. Simple things like making us aware of how our energy use compares to our more efficient neighbors can substantially reduce our consumption, to more serious decisions of changing the default of organ donation to automatic consent (that requires opting out of instead of into) enable us to save thousands of lives.

The method is not a paternalistic mandate that requires legislation but is a creative way of actually increasing our capacity to chose in ways we really desire to (libertarianism). Of course the libertarian part of me easily conjures up images of politicians trying to manipulate my choices, but after a few examples, I am encouraged that the current administration might be taking a more holistic psychological view of effecting change in our society. Leaving people to chose for themselves might seem "American", but we often don't chose how we actually desire to. I don't know if changing the default option on a person's retirement account to having to opt out rather than opt in where the employer matches one's contributions, is any more controlling than having the default position be no to require no savings and so no employer contribution.

I suppose for some it might come down to wanting to have the freedom to be able to consume as much as they want, save the least that they can, and not contribute toward the common good. It sure seems like too many of us already have taken advantage of this freedom and need all the help we can to choose differently.

One of the books I've read lately which I'm sure has the greatest amount of implications for an assessment of our culture is Niel Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death. Although originally copyrighted in 1985, its assessment reads like a prophecy of today's culture's peril. His main contention is that television's way of knowing is directly opposed to that of typography (the methodology used inn reading books). Mediums of information are not neutral but inform what counts as knowledge. While reading books forces analysis with content complete with facts that can be discussed, television's mental analysis consists of the imagery of entertainment. The presentation of a Tsunami which killed millions of people cutting to a smiling news anchor who says and now this, cutting away to a Burger King commercial effects our attitude towards the world turning our critical thinking skills off. What is dangerous is not that we are entertained by television, but that we see television as a source of serious engagement with the world around us. As an example he cites research that shows that a newscaster's credibility is directly linked by the public to their appearance and entertainment capabilities.

He warns that while a culture can survive false opinion and misinformation, but it may not be able to survive if we think that we can understand the world in twenty-two second segments and if our value of the news is determined by the number of laughs it evokes. He constantly compares the doomsday pictures of Orwell and Huxley, siding with Huxley who did not fear government control, but that people wouldn't need controlling because they were wrapped up in laughing rather than thinking.

I went to South Africa, wanting God to reaffirm his existence and I sort of expected to be overwhelmed with the astounding visual beauty of the landscape on our Safari. Instead the landscape was sparse and mostly brown with small shrublike bushes.

It was the brutality of the bush that did it. They don't call in survival of the fittest for nothing (see the battle of kruger video). When male giraffe get too old they are turned out to fend for themselves and usually become prey, when an animal gets sick or has any defect it is left behind the herd, for the most part animals are eaten alive, when leopards infringe on another's territory mothers will eat their daughters to preserve power.

It could be said that we humans react similarly and do less than protect our old and young, but when we do this we know it is wrong. As Nelson Mandela said "A Society should be judged by how it treats its weakest members." There must be something within us that is different from the animals for if all we are after is evolutionary advantage then we ought to be aborting and euthanizing a lot more of our population.

Could it be true that we are made in God's image and so our progression as a human race prefers compassion over survival.

I have always been a big fan of cause marketing and think that this approach is one way that American's consumeristic tendencies can be put to good use. I am one of the suckers who will find a reason to buy anything product red- with full knowledge that my money would help a lot more people if I chose to send half of the cost of my gap shirt to Africa instead of buying a shirt I don't need.

But this was taking it way too far. My assessment, I will admit, may be slightly characterized by the fact that I heard the announcement after 20 hours of flying in route back from Johannesburg. I am trying to settle my head back to the small spot of respite provided by a window seat, and she gets on the PA system with that potentially endearing, but in this case severely aggravating Atlanta drawl, and informs us that we can buy chips for two dollars to support animals who need saving from places like the humane society. Then the flight attendants go through the aisles and announce in every three feet of space "do you want to buy some chips to save the animals".

I didn't want any chips especially if I had to buy them to save the animals. What the heck have potato chips to do with saving the animals. This is another case where the cause is not connected to the product and so the marketing just sounds silly or in my sleep deprived case annoying!

In Victor Fankl's popular and compelling work-Man's Search for Meaning he describes how mankind's ultimate search is not for pleasure but meaning. We want a reason to be happy; pleasure, he says, must be a byproduct because it is destroyed once it is sought.

Through his many personal experiences in various concentration camps Frankl attests to the truth of Nietzsche's quote: "He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How" It was always the prisoners who had a why who survived or who had the courage to walk upright into gas chambers. The prisoners who chose to indulge in cigarettes instead of trading them for food, however, were always close to self-inflicted death.

The meaning Frankl describes is not one universal truth for mankind, but rather, can be found in work, a relationship, or the attitude one takes toward unavoidable suffering. The final meaning of life if comprehended at all before death, will be depend upon the individual's appraisal of the meaning in each individual situation.

I will admit that not having to seek out the meaning of life as a whole and only being concerned with giving meaning to each day to day situation might be a relief, but I don't know if I am capable of knowing how to attribute meaning to individual circumstances without at least a shadowy glimpse of the meaning of life as a whole in the present. I appreciate and agree with Frankl's assessment of attitude being the deciding factor of one's outlook on life, but I feel incapable to having an attitude that testifies to a meaning I am not sure exists.

I am a sorry existentialist I suppose, unable to create meaning without any basis in reality.

1. Walking to the gym the other day I saw the younger Japanese man owner of the sushi restaurant around the corner bow to the older Japanese owner of a convenience store across the alley. It was very early in the morning, and I felt I had stumbled upon some private sacred ritual that conveyed such a deep respect for the humanity recognized in the other.

2. Although I know that the line in the old hymn says that "his eye is on the sparrow", but I have pigeons with mangled feet in my neighborhood, and I don't think that God would mind if I sang "his eye is on the pigeon" as the meaning of this is far more radical and relevant. I can't imagine giving a second glance to a pigeon in Los Angeles.

3. Brad and I did our Church alternative last week by walking through skid row and praying. I noticed several instances of the words "holy ground" written on buildings and trash cans along the way. Could skid row be holy because the people in this neighborhood are closer to holiness by the obvious nature of their dependence?

4. How responsible am I for the human rights abuses that must occur in the garment district that is my neighborhood? The other day I saw a flyer posted on the building next to ours that stated that if you were being forced to work against your will you could take one of the the phone numbers written on little sheets of paper below. A few were torn off.

I was challenged recently by DOOR'sdevelopment director to read a book-Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony that the Dweller's in Miami read during their year in community. Since it was written by an author I have long heard of but never had the opportunity to read I began. While being frustrated by Stanley Hauerwas' constant denunciation of both Richard Niebuhr (I really enjoyed Niebuhr's Christ and Culture) and the translation emphasis of theological concepts to philosophically accessible language, I did appreciate his emphasis on the unique role of the Church in our society.

He makes the point that rather than trying to logically undermine demanding Scriptural passages like the Beatitudes we ought to ask ourselves what kind of community would we need to be in order to live out the call to be perfect like our heavenly father is perfect. Clearly we cannot do this on our own, but the call to live out the Biblical description of reality must be done at the level of the Church. This clearly means that the church must be different than a socially designed helping agency intended only to make our society better. We are not called as the body of Christ to help people but to follow Jesus and in following Jesus we learn what help means. The Church, Hauerwas says, is crucial for our epistemology, as we are not called to convince people to do what they already know they ought. Our task is to live faithful to Christ by being a subversive colony of believers in a hostile world. This lifestyle will require suffering, but "no ethic is worthy that does not require potentially the suffering of those we love".

The radical nature of Christ's call I am certain of, but I am also as certain that I have no idea what this level of intentional community looks like.