T.S. Tuesday: Why I Need Wake Up Calls from Attractive Latin Men

“Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm but the harm does not interest them.” T.S. Eliot

I didn’t ask to be here. In this world full of suffering and pain and a million gut-wrenching moments. I didn’t ask to be here, but I’m here just the same.

In the middle of it.

This weekend I watched the film, También la Lluvia (Even the Rain in English). It’s a fascinating movie about the making of a movie about the conquest of Latin America (meta, right?). The basic premise is this: “A Spanish film crew helmed by an idealistic director and his cynical producer come to Bolivia to make a revisionist epic about the conquest of Latin America - on the cheap.”

I learned about the film from Tim Hoiland’s excellent and thoughtful review. Starring Gael García Bernal of Motorcycle Diaries fame, and exploring the effects of Spanish imperialism from the time when Columbus sailed the ocean blue until now, I just had to watch it. 

Here's the trailer:[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbpdeI0ugGc]

I was not disappointed, but I was disturbed.

I’ve spent a reasonable amount of time in Latin America and the entirety of my professional life advocating on behalf of the rural poor, so I wasn’t surprised by the injustice the film portrayed. But I was disturbed by how pervasive and overwhelming and awful it can be.

From the forced slavery and abuses the conquistadores imposed on the indigenous population in the 15^th century to the unjust trade laws backed by multinational corporations today, there’s enough injustice to go around—and to get depressed.

Towards the end of the film, riots break out among the indigenous population as they protest the privatization of water that will mean a 300% price increase for families to access one of life’s most precious resources.

In a poignant scene, one crewmember asks another, “What are we going to do about this?”

“Nothing,” says his comrade. “It’s not my problem.”

“But you’re in the middle of it," the first retorts, eyes wide, head shaking in disbelief.

Even as crowds gather, streets are blocked off, and violence builds the man chooses to say, “It’s not my problem.”

Most days, I am that man. I close my eyes. I shut off the news. I turn up my ipod. I do whatever it takes to convince myself that the world is not rioting and bleeding and exploding all around me.

Most days I forget the truth: I am in the middle of it, whether I like it or not.

Movies like jolt me awake.

T.S. Eliot wrote, “Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm but the harm does not interest them.”

Am I so busy trying to feel important that the harm and suffering of others does not interest me?

I was going to write that I am praying for the courage to ask, really ask and seek an answer, to that question. But a prayer feels like a cop out.

The world is turned upside down and all I can do is muster a prayer to notice? To be interested? To be bothered with the commotion around me?

Maybe it is a cop out, but it’s a pretty darn good first step and perhaps the only answer to all the pain and suffering and injustice that overwhelms and disturbs and depresses me: LOVE. Praying that He will transform my heart and open my eyes and shape me more and more into someone who looks more like Jesus and less like someone who only takes an interest in herself.

So I’m sorry for my flimsy response. I’m sorry I have no answers or bite-sized takeaways for you to combat injustice. I can only say that I’m praying. I’m trying to notice and I’m trying to act.

And I hope you try to notice too. We are in the middle of it, after all.

A Better Answer

This is a follow up to yesterday's blog post, Solidaridad, which I suggest reading first. 

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"I know there is poor and hideous suffering, and I've seen the hungry and the guns that go to war. I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks for early light dappled through leaves and the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives. Why would the world need more anger, more outrage? How does it save the world to reject unabashed joy when it is joy that saves us? Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn't rescue the suffering. The converse does. The brave who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agents who bring fullest Light to all the world." from Ann Voskamp’s masterpiece, One Thousand Gifts

This, this is the better answer to my haunting question: What does it mean to live in solidarity with poor?


“Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn’t rescue the suffering.” 


How I wish someone had whispered this truth to me when I first opened my crowded closet; when I first swiped my ATM card for apricot face scrub and a new roll of floss at Target; when I first felt the summer sun warm up my parent’s patriotic front yard.

"It is joy that saves us..."

How I wish our study abroad discussions around solidarity had ventured beyond fair trade shopping and SUV bashing and into the fine art of learning to love our neighbors—poor or 1% or anywhere in between.


"Why would the world need more anger, more outrage?"

I mean, how are we supposed to love the poor if we don’t love ourselves? What kind of improved quality of life are we lobbying for if we can’t even recognize the God-like qualities in our suburban Christian friends?


I learned this lesson the hard way. Floundering and seething in an anger that quickly wore out its welcome.  In an anger that helped neither the poor nor the poor saps around me.

My first real step toward living in solidarity with the poor (on which I still have an immensely long way to go) was when I started to live in solidarity with myself. When I started to live in solidarity with my immediate neighbors. When I started to think that I was worth loving and that, maybe, the people in front of me—my Whole Foods Shopping, Invisible Children v-neck wearing peeps and my less well-versed in the rhetoric and fashion requirements of social justice friends and family alike—were worth loving too.

Solidarity began when I asked myself, like Ann Voskamp, Where can I bring life? Where can I choose hope?

How can I become the brave soul who focuses “on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small?” Where can I “discover joy even in the here and now?”

The surprising answer to the solidarity question is this: joy.

And in that joy comes a valuing of all human life and all of Creation, a heart that hopes, eyes that see the gifts, and lips that praise the Gifter.  This is the foundation of solidarity. This is the seed that blooms the hope to sustain a multitude of change agents bringing fullest Light to all the world.

Who wants to live the better answer?

***

P.S. I am still stubbornly passionate (although no longer belligerent) about reducing my injustice footprint and learning to live and act in ways that serve, support, and empower the poor.  I would love to talk shop with anyone interested in living more justly, sustainably, and joyfully.

But how, you ask?

You can read more of my thoughts in my post on fighting both first world apathy and third world poverty or dive into 7 Practical Tips (and delicious writing) from Jen Hatmaker, author of  "7 : An Experimental Mutiny AgainstExcess."  Or check out Julie Clawson’s fabulous book, EverydayJustice. Or find out more about my favorite poverty alleviation non profit that I just so happen to work for: Plant With Purpose. 

¿Solidaridad?

[This post could just have easily been titled “On How to Alienate Friends and Family after an Intense and Prolonged Cross-Cultural Poverty Experience.” Enjoy. ] 

***

The first time I opened my closet, I almost threw up. 

 The first time I purchased items at Target, I only made it to the parking lot before reversing and returning my bounty, sheepishly avoiding the salesclerk who had rung me up no more than three minutes prior. 

My parent's adorable house.

The first time my mom attempted to hang an American Flag in front of her white picket fence, I screamed about the injustices those white, spotless stars concealed, I alluded to the blood of Guatemalans, Sandinistas, and why-we’re-at-it Iraqis stacked red on top of white on top of red until both of our eyes spilled raw, blue tears. 

Reverse culture shock is not a new phenomenon for our hot, flat, crowded world, but when I returned from a semester abroad that I only-somewhat-tongue-in-cheek refer to as the Poverty Tour of Central America, it was new for me. 

Between the feather thin pages of my travel Bible, I recently rediscovered a note I’d written to myself during my first days stateside. 

Not harsh at all...

“If I really lived in solidarity with the poor, I wouldn’t be able to stand my lifestyle.” 

It’s a word we deliberated over constantly in my four months abroad: Solidarity.

How do we live and act in solidarity with the poor?

When I returned, this was the question festering on my heart. 

It was a classic case, really. Strictly by the book. I was disgusted at the vast quantity of clothes that had been hanging idle and useless, unused in my closet for the last four months. Sneakers I’d had since 8th grade, my prom dress from high school, a smattering of brightly colored tank tops, workout clothes, old t-shirts, a collection of shorts ranging from cutoffs to the infamous “short shorts.” It didn’t help that shorts weren’t even socially acceptable in Costa Rica. In the 90° California summer heat, I still could not bring myself to wear shorts. I vowed I wouldn’t buy clothes for at least a year.

I cringed at my friends’ discarded Starbucks cups, their iPods, laptops, and multiple pairs of Sevens jeans.

My first day back at school, we went to the mall. And, yes, I should have seen it coming. As I sat on the velvet covered bench in the GAP fitting room watching my friend model jean skirt after jean skirt, she transformed from my bouncy, enthusiastic, well-meaning friend into a materialistic, selfish princess that I could barely even stand to look at. I’d rant about the church’s hypocrisy and judgment, then judge my friends and family with evident disgust, harsher than any Bible-thumper I’d ever seen. I was a new kind of judgmental Christian, tolerant of anyone and anything except for white, middle class American Christians.

My immediate answer to the solidarity question was this: to reduce my injustice footprint and judge everyone else who didn’t. 

I had come back with so many goals: stay informed, meet Spanish speakers, use public transportation, avoid buying clothes, shop organic, buy local, befriend people of a lower socio-economic standing. But I didn’t exactly return to the ghetto, and I found it pretty difficult to find poor people in my hometown in Northern California; although I can’t say that I looked very hard. I never took the bus or found a Spanish speaking church. I was forced to buy new clothes because I couldn’t squeeze my newly acquired love handles into any of my old pants. Damn rice and beans.

I was angry, but that was all that was different. I bought clothes, angrily. I went to church, angrily. I drove my car, angrily. I used my iPod and laptop, angrily.

I thought solidarity with the poor meant that I wasn’t allowed to be happy. That I wasn’t allowed to feel blessed or thankful. That I wasn’t allowed to acknowledge the gifts so freely given to me. I thought my happiness negated their pain. I thought guilt was the only appropriate and all-consuming response to poverty.

But it wasn’t just malls and Mochachinos and materialism that I was rejecting; I was rejecting joy. I was rejecting relationship. I was rejecting God and growth and a whole world of opportunity and connection and possibility.

And I judged everyone who wasn’t angry with me.

Today, nearly six years later, I’m pained by how I acted. It’s not the anger that I grieve. I am grateful for a heart that is discontent with the status quo and rages against injustice. What I am sorry for are the times I raged against my parents, my friends, and my classmates in my attempts at “solidarity with the poor.”

I am sorry for the times the anger turned hurtful, attacking, accusing, malicious.

I am sorry to the people I judged. I am sorry to the friends I alienated. I am sorry to the parents I lashed out at. (And mom, I am sorry for ever bringing up Cuba.)

There is a better answer to this question of solidarity that for me turned so bitter. Check back tomorrow to find out what I discovered about living and acting in solidarity with the poor. (How’s that for suspense?)