You’re God is okay, I guess, but he’s sure not part of anything I’ve been into. I sure hope he can’t see what I’m going to have to do tonight. I do have to. I don’t like it very much but I’m afraid to hate it too much.
~ From a conversation between a child prostitute and a priest in New York City
What good is all this Christian talk about the evil of prostitution? Do these Christians really think that prostitutes don’t know the evil involved in the trade? Come on. These men, women, and children bear the scars of that evil on their bodies. And everybody’s had a “bad date.” Because in the city where I live, prostitutes tend to “disappear.” A few years ago they found about thirty of them, dead, buried on a pig farm outside the city. And then there was the girl who was found cut up in Blood Alley — that didn’t even make the news. And there was the girl who was cut from her groin to her throat and then dumped naked outside a community centre. Yeah, these people know more about living with evil than all these outraged Christians might imagine.
The thing is, as far as they know, it’s the only option they’ve got. Prostitution is what so many people “have to do” in order to survive. Don’t bother telling them it’s evil. Journey with them in a way that provides them with genuine alternatives. When that’s what we do then it’ll be okay for prostitutes to start hating what they do, instead of being afraid to hate it because there is no real alternative. Of course, there are always alternatives on paper and in theory, but a lot of those alternatives don’t work in reality. They are just part of the fictional accounts that society accepts in order to live comfortably.
And God, I don’t know how you do it. Is the kid right? Are you going to see what is done to survive? Maybe you’re not looking, maybe you don’t see what happens night after night? Because I don’t know how you can go on looking without doing something. Why it’s enough to kill a person, being aware of what goes on night after night.
But I guess it did. Kill you, I mean.
And I think it’s killing me, too.
And that’s okay.
Because I’d rather learn to lay down my life for the people that I love, than learn how to live comfortably in a city so full of apathy and violence.
Not that I’m saying I have some sort of heroic martyr complex or any of that bullshit. I guess I just decided to love the wrong people and now I’m hooked. Even though everybody tells me they’re broken and ruined and wasted, I can only see beauty, and glory, and the body of Christ.
Lord, have mercy.
Justice, Benevolence and Enabling Oppression
Naim Ateek, a Palestinian priest and liberation theologian, has had the opportunity to observe firsthand the ways in which oppressive power often lurks behind a mask of charity. In Justice and Only Justice, he writes:
It is part of the deception of power that repressive governments are deluded into believing that through benevolence they can lay the right foundation for harmonious relations with the people they rule. Such governments cannot see that what people really need is not benevolence but a sense of justice… It is far easier for repressive governments and military regimes to resort to philanthropy than to justice. Sympathy and philanthropy in such cases are part of the exhibition of hypocrisy.
I would like to suggest that what Ateek says is true not only of repressive governments and military regimes, it is also true of the average middle-class North American. Instead of seeking justice for the poor and the marginalised — instead of realising that justice is owed to the poor and the marginalised — middle (and upper) class people prefer to offer them donations and charity. Of course, when charity is understood in this way it is comparable to the story told by Leo Tolstoy in his book Resurrection. A rich man seduces a young woman and, after having had his way with her, he thrusts a bundle of money into her hands. Sadly, all too often our charity is like money that a rapist throws on a victim.
Thus, one is, once again, reminded of the words of Dom Helder Camara, who once said:
When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor have not been eating, they call me a communist.
Yes, there is a lot of room for benevolence within our society, as long as that benevolence is divorced from justice.
This already provocative train of thought leads me to thoughts that are likely even more provocative. Let me explain.
Working with street-involved and homeless youth (and adults), one regularly hears discussions around the topic of “enabling.” “Enabling” is understood as charity that, despite good intentions, actually harms the person to whom the charity is extended. Thus, enabling would be understood as giving money to a drug addict who is jonzing. The intentions are good but the addict is just going to go and get high with the money. Therefore, many people would argue that it is better not to give money to the addict at all.
Of course, what has been entirely missing from this discussion is the realisation that charitable organisations, by accepting money from corporations like the Royal Bank of Canada, Shell, Nike, etc., are actually enabling the ongoing oppression and abuse of the poor! By licking the boots of executives from Canadian banks, we ensure that kids stay on the streets, and that families stay in poverty, while also providing the powers with the assurance that they're actually running good and moral institutions. By accepting benevolence divorced from justice, charitable organisations support the larger structures that ensure that the poor stay poor, that the debtors stay in debt, and that the marginalised stay on the margins. By gratefully accepting the money offered by oppressive institutions we ensure that we will never see the systemic changes that we long for. Essentially, we reinforce the lies told be the structures of power — lies that justify the wealth and comfort of a few, and the poverty and suffering of many.
Therefore, if enabling is to be a topic of discussion amongst Christian charitable agencies we must ask how we are enabling oppression — not only in our relationships with the poor and the helpless, but also in our relationships with the rich and the powerful.
June Books
Well, this last month was a pretty good one for reading. Seeing as I have a few looming papers due in July, I suspect that I won’t get much book reading done over the next few weeks. Regardless, here are my woefully inadequate June book “reviews” (if you can even call them that).
1. Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter by Hans Urs von Balthasar. I always find von Balthasar to be a little mind-blowing and this book that focuses on Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday is certainly a seminal work on the Easter-event. I find von Balthasar’s reflections on Holy Saturday and Christ’s identification with those in hell to be especially intriguing (von Balthasar has been especially influenced by von Speyr in this regard). Although this book is regularly mentioned as a hugely influential book within theological reflections on Easter, I have a nagging suspicion that the implications of this book for daily Christian living have largely been neglected (I am currently working on a piece called “Becoming the Father through a Spirit-Empowered Cruciformity: Prolegomena to a Narrative Spirituality of Mission” where I begin to explore some of the quite radical implications of von Balthasar’s reflections).
2. Jesus and Empire: The Kingdom of God and the New World Disorder by Richard A. Horsley. It is exciting reading Horsley. He has a good understanding of the culture of Jesus’ day and the culture of our day, and so when he discuses the implications Jesus’ ministry might have for us, the results are quite revolutionary and explosive. Because I believe that Christianity exists as a counter-culture to all our human cultures and a counter-polis to all our human states, I think Horsley is a voice that deserves a wide audience. However, the gross reductionism within Horsley’s work always disappoints me. He completely disregards a large amount of the New Testament and chooses to focus almost solely upon Mark and Q. Furthermore, Horsley is so concerned to make Jesus a part of an egalitarian grass-roots socio-political revolutionary movement that he throws out large parts of Jesus’ message, ministry and identity. And it’s really quite too bad. If Horsley had a fuller view of Scripture and of Jesus, his position would actually be strengthened, not weakened.
3. Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church by James K. A. Smith. This is an excellent, exciting, and very readable little book that engages with the major theses of France’s “unholy trinity” — Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault. Smith argues that, properly understood, the arguments of these postmodern philosophers are actually quite beneficial to contemporary Christianity. Thus, he argues that Derrida’s thesis that “there is nothing outside the text” helps the Church to recover the centrality of Scripture, and the role the faith community plays in hermeneutics. From Lyotard’s thesis that postmodernity is “incredulity toward metanarratives,” Smith argues that the Church recovers both the narrative character and the confessional character of Christian faith; and from Foucault’s thesis that “power is knowledge” the Church realises the cultural power of formation and discipline and therefore also realises the necessity of enacting counter-formation and counter-discipline. Smith also concludes this book with an excellent critique of the Emergent movement in light of the Radical Orthodoxy movement. Of the books I read this month, this one was probably the most exciting.
4. In Good Company: The Church as Polis by Stanley Hauerwas. This is a collection of addresses and articles written by Hauerwas in the early 1990s. It is divided into three parts: reflections on being in Protestant (including, surprise, Anabaptist) company, reflections on being in Catholic company, and reflections on ecclesial ethics. I always enjoy reading Hauerwas, and there were a few things he said in these essays that really caught my eye but, for the most part, he has already said everything in this book better elsewhere. Of course, there is not necessarily anything wrong with a Christian theologian repeating himself (as Hauerwas is quick to point out). If we are to be a community of discipline, and a community formed by the Christian story, and the Christian liturgy, then repetition must be seen as valuable, and even essential.
5. finding naasicaa: letters of hope in an age of anxiety by Charles R. Ringma. I had the privilege of taking a few courses with Charles before he retired from teaching at my school, and so I was delighted to see that he had written another book (this one). Charles is something of a Protestant Jesuit — a Protestant contemplative in action. He is a scholar (having taught in Australia, the Phillipines, and Canada), he is an activist (having founded intentional Christian communities in various ghettos in Queensland, Manilla, and Vancouver), and he is an incredibly prayerful man as well. This book is a gentle, pastoral, dialectical reflection on the various threads of Christian life, and thought, given the context we find ourselves in today. It is written as a series of letters from Charles to his 19 year old granddaughter, Naasicaa.
6. The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience by Ronald J. Sider. In this book, Sider, a long-time Christian social activist, well-known for his book Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, tries to do for the Evangelical conscience, what Mark Noll did for the Evangelical mind. Unfortunately, Sider’s book doesn’t come close to the quality of Noll’s writing, nor does it come close to the writings of other Christians who have sought to call the Church back to journeying intimately with the poor and the marginalised. The only people who might find this book helpful are those who are deeply immersed in North American Conservative Evangelicalism. As far as I’m concerned Jim Wallis’ book The Call to Conversion is far more successful in addressing the things Sider wants to address.
7. We Say No: Chronicles 1963-1991 by Eduardo Galeano. Galeano is a journalist from Uruguay who writes stories that are so true that the are dangerously subversive to Latin American political powers and the Western nations and corporations that fund and undergird those powers. Born in 1940, he lived in exile (i.e. fled for his life) from 1973-1984 before returning to Uruguay. This collection of essays has everything from encounters with Pele, el Che, General Peron, and the last emperor of China, to reflections on history from the side of the poor and the indigenous people of Latin America, to stories about diamond mining camps in Venezuala, ghettos in Rio de Janeiro, smuggling in Bolivia, and much more. Galeano does for journalism what Gutierrez (and others) did (and do) for theology.
8. Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. This is a collection of letters, essays, and speeches given by Vonnegut throughout the 1970s. I enjoy Vonnegut’s voice a great deal, and in a way, in both his writings on technology and religion, I feel he anticipated certain postmodern philosophers and their approach to ethics. Thus, for example, Vonnegut is for more concerned with civility than he is with love. There is always a strange blend of humour and sorrow, resistance and resignation, in Vonnegut and I think that’s a large part of the reason why I keep going back to him.
9. The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon. Well, after arguing with some literary friends, I decided to try Pynchon one more time. This book was incomparably better than Gravity’s Rainbow, but that’s not saying much. It was much more coherent, and much less sexual. Of course, it was still very “postmodern”: full of paranoia, lacking resolution, and highlighting the supposed arbitrariness of all things. Speaking of books full of paranoia, I really think Umberto Eco does it better than Pynchon — although I might feel that way since Eco is less radical in his approach to postmodern literature, so that’s probably just my own biases coming through. All in all, this book was mostly ho-hum. Books that don’t say much throughout, and that don’t come to any sort of resolution, don’t really interest me all that much, regardless of how well they are written.
10. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. This is a great, poignant, and heart-breaking without being sentimental, story. Plath writes a largely autobiographical piece about a young woman who spirals down into mental illness and depression. There are suicide attempts, institutionalisation, and shock-therapy present in the novel — because those things were present in Plath’s own life. As a insider to those things, Plath helps the reader to share the helplessness, confusion, and lostness of her protagonist. Sadly, this is Plath’s only major novel — she ended up taking her own life one month after this novel was published. She was 31 years old and only gained significant fame (mostly for her poems) posthumously.
11. The Bluest Eyes by Toni Morrison. Morrison’s first novel, this book is about a poor black girl with a longing for love (expressed in her ongoing wish to have blue eyes) that leads her to tragedy. Like Morrison’s other books, there is a brutal honesty here, but there is also mystery, magic, and even wonder and strength found in the most unlikely of places.
Prayer-Shaped Reflections
Because I have been carrying a rosary for some time now, and because of the liturgy I have developed to use around the rosary, I find myself praying the Lord's Prayer and praying through the Beatitudes at least once a day. A few thoughts came to my mind today while I was praying.
First of all, I was struck by how a people who pray the Lord's prayer should be incapable of singing any national anthem. This thought struck me while I was meditating upon the phrase, “deliver us from the evil one.” I prefer this translation because it is more concrete. It suggests that evil is not just an abstract force “out there somewhere,” but is something embodied — not that this means that certain people are pure evil, but this suggests that evil always has a concrete expression in actions or structures.
As I was praying I was trying to think about how the Lord's Prayer would sound if prayed by a liberation theologian today. This is an interesting exercise, by the way. Try praying the Lord's prayer in the language of a third-world liberation theologian, then try praying it as someone longing for liberation within your own country. Can't think of much to pray? Then maybe there's a problem.
Anyway, as I was praying in this manner, I was struck by the fact that for so many people in the world “the evil one” refers to Canada, the United States, Germany, Britain, and much of the Western world. Maybe people today are praying that God would free them from our nations. “Odd,” I thought. “How can I — as a person committed to the kingdom of God and as a person who has brothers and sisters defined by their citizenship in that kingdom and not by their citizenship in contemporary nation-states which have been created arbitrarily through violence — pray that God would deliver us (yes, that really means us and not just me) from evil, while simultaneously singing a song that commits me to aligning myself with, and supporting, evil?” Well, simply put, I can't. It really does come down to aligning ourselves with one or the other.
The national anthem is part of a liturgy that is an anti-liturgy to the Christian liturgy. We sing songs of worship to God so that we can be formed into the sort of people who are capable of developing habits that resist structures evil. Over against this form of Christian worship, the nation-state attempts to gather a people who will sing songs that support structures of evil. (Jord, if you happen to read this, I really hope you decided to continue to refuse to fly the flag at the Christian camp where you work. Gathering at a barren flagpole is a highly symbolic act of Christian commitment to the Lordship of Jesus. Gathering at a flagpole that flies the flag of any nation is an act that reveals capitulation to lords who attempt to be what only Jesus is.)
The second thought that I had while praying today is that the Beatitudes are beginning to make sense in a new way. I mean, if you really stop to think about it, praying the Beatitudes feels really strange (try it sometime, you'll see what I mean). When I pray the Beatitudes I first pray that I would be characterised by the trait described in the first half of the verse (i.e. that I would be poor in spirit, that I would mourn, etc.) and then I pray that I would receive the blessing promised in the second half of the verse (i.e. that I would have the kingdom of heaven, that I would be comforted, etc.). Of course, it should be noted that the Beatitudes should be prayed not only for oneself. One should pray that the Beatitudes become the identity markers of the people of God so that the world can be made new. Thus, my becoming shaped by the Beatitudes must fit into this larger narrative.
Anyway, praying some parts of the Beatitudes felt exceedingly odd. Lord, let me inherit the earth?! Lord, let me be persecuted for the sake of righteousness?! Yikes. Asking for the earth sounds horribly triumphalistic and vain; asking to be persecuted for the sake of righteousness sounds masochistic and, well, insane. However, I've been forcing myself not to leave anything out and it's been interesting how this has begun to impact my life. To begin with I'm realising a thing or two about the blessings God promises his people. There really is a power, a joy, a strength found in following Jesus. Yet I'm also beginning to realise how much ongoing suffering should be a part of the experience of God's people. Suddenly I'm finding myself able to persevere more easily, I'm finding myself not afraid to move into places of hurt, of stress, and of sorrow — going there just makes sense. Somehow through praying the Beatitudes I'm discovering a new-found strength in my daily life. Furthermore, I'm realising how much the two of these things go together. Those with the kingdom of heaven are those who suffer; those who inherit the earth are those who's experiences are like the prophets before us. The embrace of suffering prevents our embrace of God's blessings to turn into triumphalism or hubris, and the embrace of God's blessings prevents our embrace of suffering from turning into masochism or insanity.
What is also intriguing about all this is that it's not as though I've realised this and now I'm going to implement it. This reflection comes after prayer had already begun to change my life in these ways. This seems to add further weight to the thesis proposed by liberation theology that argues that theology is reflection upon ecclesial (and, therefore, prayer-ful) praxis.
Communities of Discipline
I do not want to be “accepted” or “understood.” I want to be part of a community with the habits and practices that will make me do what I would otherwise not choose to do and then to learn to like what I have been forced to do.
~ Stanley Hauerwas, “Whose Church? Which Future? Whither the Anabaptist Vision?”
Not only should the Church be a community that practices the sort of discipline that Hauerwas describes, but this is the sort of discipline that should be present in family relationships, in friendships, and in any relationship involving any real commitment. Not that this is a movement away from loving others or anything like that. Nor is this any sort of act of condescension. Rather, this is simply recognising that it takes a community of discipline to create people who are made in the image of Christ. And sometimes the church functions as that community of discipline. And sometimes family members function that way. Really, if we have any sort of sense of true commitment in our relationships, there should be an element of this in every relationship that we are in.
Of course, it is ultimately the Spirit of God that creates new life and transforms us and so we should not use this quote from Hauerwas to support some sort of dictatorial or hyper-pragmatic regime. All that this quote is saying is that some sort of communal discipline is necessary for the formation of Christian virtues.
Virtuous Cowards and Vulnerable Lovers
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear.
~ 1 John 4.18a
Previously when reading this verse I had always only thought about the implications it held for my relationship with God. And that is an appropriate line of thought to apply to this verse, especially in light of the comments about punishment at the end of the verse. However, when one solely thinks about this verse in terms of “me and God” then we are missing out on another significant aspect of what the author is saying. After all, in this section of 1 John 4, the author is intimately linking together the love of God and the love of neighbour. So, a further implication of this verse is as follows:
Just as those of us who are in Christ should not fear God because of the love God has for us, so also we should not fear our neighbours because of the love we have, in Christ, for them.
Now that sounds all fine and sweet, but here’s where things start to get uncomfortable for a lot of us all-too-comfortable Western Christians. Yes, that’s right, I’m going to apply this verse to the Christian call to journey with the poor and those who still, two thousand years after the death and resurrection of Jesus, needlessly suffer the most under structures of exile. Sure, a lot of Christians say they care about the poor. They see they love the needy. They are oh so concerned. But when the rubber meets the road, Christians are usually not found in the vicinity of the poor or the needy. Not for long anyway. At best they swoop in around Christmas time, give out some sandwiches, and then bugger off to their much safer environments. Even those who began with a more radical commitment to the poor usually disappear to the suburbs once they marry and raise a family. It’s one thing to put myself in danger, it’s another thing altogether to endanger my wife and children. Therefore, we have churches full of loving people who are too afraid to journey too intimately with the marginalised. Bring the street person a lunch? Okay. Invite the street person into my home? No way, that’s crazy. Consequently, the language of “practicality” and “responsibility” is used to mask our fearfulness. All too often the language of responsibility is used to transform cowardice into a virtue.
And it’s exactly at this point that 1 John 4.18 hits us between the eyes. This verse shows us that we cannot be identified as lovers held back by fear (or “practicality”). Instead it suggests that our fear reveals that we do not even deserve to be called lovers. At best, we are only sentimental. And that’s why our acts of compassion are so often scorned by those on the margins. Sure, they’ll take the sandwich you offer, but they’re not fooled into thinking you’re some sort of saint. And that’s why we’re generally only helping people to survive, instead of genuinely offering the sort of transformation that is possible in Christ. We are have become virtuous cowards instead of vulnerable lovers.
But here’s the catch, even in the hard times, even in places that are “dangerous,” the danger is more imagined than real. After all, what danger is there that can intimidate those who are in Christ? What harm can to done that is lasting? For even when we are being put to death, even if we are to be treated as sheep to be slaughtered, even then we are filled with the conviction that nothing can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. We are to be a people from whom nothing can be taken because we have already given it all to God and to others. We are also a people from whom nothing can be truly lost because all that matters is sealed for us in Christ. So maybe we encounter pain in these places. Maybe we too will be broken. But that’s okay. Then we too will be able to say that we bear on our own bodies the brand-marks of Jesus. And, like Jesus, our sufferings shall be salvific.
Hard Words From Hauerwas
Mainstream Protestantism in America is dying. Actually I prefer to put the matter in more positive terms: God is killing Protestantism and perhaps Christianity in America and we deserve it.
~ Stanley Hauerwas, from a sermon preached on August 8, 1993.
Hauerwas definitely has a way of saying things that catch our attention. My question for you, dear readers, is this: Why is it more positive to think that God is killing Christianity than it is to think that Christianity is dying? Isn't the notion of God killing the American church more negative, tragic, and hopeless than the notion that the American church is simply dying? Despite his polemical nature, Hauerwas has chosen his words carefully here. Obviously he doesn't find this notion more negative, tragic, or hopeless. So why is that?
Naturally, I have my own opinions about all of this, but I am curious to hear what others may think about this quotation.
Don't Feed the Animals
Around a month ago a new homeless fellow showed up on Main Street. He’s obviously got some sort of mental illness, and he’s deteriorating fast. I remember the first day I saw him, he had either just gone off his meds, or he was as high as a kite, or both, but I’ve never seen a happier more satisfied fellow. But he wasn’t so happy the next day — he was disheveled and screaming at traffic. A few days after that I saw him again. There was a large sore on his forehead. The last time I saw him he had a few sores and no shoes.
The last time I saw him, he was on Main Street asking for change. A man walked by with a little boy and the boy moved as if he was going to talk to the homeless guy. The father pulled him away. As the father and son walked by me, I heard the father give his son this explanation:
…it’s like the animals in the park. You don’t feed the animals. You don’t talk to the animals. They choose to sit there, and so we leave them alone and let them stay there.
The End.
Driven by Calling not Driven to Succeed
Success may be the fruit of our commitment, but can never be the basis for our commitment. Instead, commitments are made because we believe that we are called to give ourselves to certain persons, causes, and situations.
~ Charles Ringma, finding naasicaa: letters of hope in an age of anxiety
It is this experience of being “called” that distances the Christian approach to vocation from the secular approach. While secular professionalism is driven by a fundamental pragmatism — that makes success the basis of commitment — Christians are only motivated by success secondarily, it at all. The basic question of Christian living is not: “how can I succeed?” but rather: “how can I be faithful to God's call?” There are two key points in this that I want to draw out in a little more detail.
First of all, the vocation that one fulfills, as a Christian, is not simply a vocation that one chooses for oneself. It is not as if we can simply choose any job that we want to choose. The language of calling reminds us that God calls us to certain specific vocations — and the implication of this is that God does not call us to certain other vocations. Certainly I can be a Christian and work any job under the sun, but working certain jobs contradicts my Christian identity and causes me to live in some sort of fractured schizophrenic realm. For example, I can be a Christian, and I can be a pimp, but the two things are radically opposed to each other. Or, to choose another example, I can be a Christian and work for the Royal Bank of Canada but, once again, the two things are in radical opposition. This is so because, despite our particular and individual vocational callings, there is a general call that God places upon all Christians. We are all called to be Spirit-filled members of the body of Christ (the Church, the Christian faith-community) and, as a part of that body, we are all to be agents of God's new creation amidst the groanings of the world. Because we are agents of God's new creation, we cannot be agents of anything or anybody that stands in opposition to new life. That is why I cannot be a pimp, or work for the Royal Bank of Canada; I cannot be a crack dealer or work for the GAP; I cannot be a member of the Hells Angels or be a soldier for the State. All of these jobs and institutions are death-dealing, not life-giving, and agents of God's new creation should have nothing to do with them.
Secondly, the language of calling reminds us that our approach to life should be governed by faithfulness, not by pragmatism. Unfortunately, Christians have largely adopted a secular approach to life, and so all the activities in which we engage (even charity!) are governed by secular notions of success. This notion of success is foreign to Christian thinking because it has little patience for such things as suffering love, solidarity, and the embrace of weakness. Tragically, Christians have confused this success with faithfulness — and when this occurs we don't even need to hear God's call because we already know what to do.
However, if we do listen to God's call, we discover a very different starting place, because God calls us to truly odd, unexpected, and painful things. Embracing suffering, including sufferings that seem to never end, makes no sense from a pragmatic perspective. Yet, from the perspective of God's call, it is the only thing we can do. And so we do embrace suffering, not in order to succeed, but in order to be faithful.
Of course, in all of this we are motivated by a hope that transcends all other notions of success — the hope that God will bring new life out of death, joy out of sorrow, wholeness out of brokenness, something out of nothingness, and light out of darkness. Consequently, faithfulness is defined by a hope that ventures into the depths of utter hopelessness. Faithfulness chooses to remain in the dark and wait for God's light to come because it believes that we don't know what light is, or what light does, until God brings it. It admits that we are blind and unable to recognise light until we have been granted vision. Faithfulness recognises that, in our pragmatic attempts to bring light, we only end up burning our loved ones and ourselves. Of course, this is not to suggest that faithfulness requires us to do nothing. What it does suggest is that faithfulness requires us to do things that made make sense to nobody else. Like Abraham called away from his homeland, like the Hebrews called into the wilderness, and like Jesus called to take up a cross, our callings will also seem like complete folly to those who are only motivated by success and operate with a pragmatism that knows little of a crucified God, and little of resurrection life.
Story-Telling and Story-Carrying
We all carry many stories within us. Some we tell often. Others are barely mentioned. And sometimes the most important stories are never told because there doesn’t seem to be an appropriate setting in which to tell them.
~ Charles Ringma, finding naasicaa: letters of hope in an age of anxiety
Having spent some years journeying with those on the margins of society, I often feel the weight of the stories that I carry. I thought that they would become lighter over time — these stories of broken lives, of beautiful children, of wonder and loss in dark places — but they have become heavier.
I think that these stories used to be lighter because I was quick to give them away. To be honest, a large part of the reason why I came to work on the streets in 1999 was because I was seeking adventure. So I was entertained by the violence and drugs, the sex and the rawness of it all. I came as a voyeur and boy did I ever encounter a whole range of gratifying emotions. As an adventurer, who wanted to be known as an adventurer, I quickly shared the stories I encountered with others — look, at the people I journey with, look at how radical I am! You’ll never believe what happened today, somebody died!
It is no wonder that my story-telling did little to bring others into relationships with those on the margins. I was journeying with the homeless as a consumer. I devoured their lives and then spat them back out so that my friends could also consume the entertaining and oh so shocking anecdotes that I spouted out at parties.
This story-telling, although speaking of the most important things, is fundamentally wrong for it springs from the wrong motives, it is spoken in the wrong context, and it is spoken to the wrong audience. It is something like throwing pearls before swine. Alas, I spent far too long treating God’s precious yet broken ones as objects of self-gratification, entertainment, and consumption.
Thank God that he has worked a continual process of conversion within me: a conversion to the crucified people of to today, a conversion to cruciformity, and a conversion to the Crucified One. Appropriately, as I have been undergoing this ongoing process of conversion I began to tell stories from the margins less and less. I realised that these stories are sacred, these stories are “the most important stories” and I began to wonder how I could share them with those who are not on the margins already. Wouldn’t I just be entertaining others with the sufferings of those that I loved? Wouldn’t I just be participating in the ongoing pornography of violence, of grief, of sex, and of loss that we feed on day after day? And so I began to pull back. It was with more and more hesitation that I shared my stories, especially stories about the most grievous things. My stories began to pile up within me. And they continue to do so. They are never too far from my mind. Once again I recall a conversation in a park, I remember a deal in an alleyway, I remember a dry spot beside a dumpster, and each of these things and places have people attached to them. But can I name them, or explain what happened? No, I cannot. So I put them away within me and I carry on.
You see, the reason why I have so much trouble sharing these stories is because, as Ringma suggests, the appropriate setting is almost always lacking. Because I have lost the desire to exploit these little ones in order to make myself look good. And I have lost the desire to exploit these little ones in order to amuse, shock, or gratify those who will not journey with people on the margins.
In a way I have lost faith in the power of these stories. Part of the reason I continued to share these stories with people, even after I began to realise their sacred nature, was because I thought these stories would lead others to the margins of society. I thought that maybe people didn’t act because they were ignorant. And so if others only knew the horror, the hell, and the totally fucked-up nature of some of these things, then maybe they would come and journey with these little ones. But I was wrong. Most people don’t journey on the margins of society, not because they lack knowledge; they don’t journey on the margins of society because they lack compassion. Plain and simple, it comes down to that. My stories are strong, it just turns out that apathy, self-indulgence, and distraction are stronger.
And so it goes. The most important stories are never told because there is no place provided for them. I will not share my stories from the margins, but you need to know that the ones that you love will also never share their most important stories with you. You will never know that your daughter was raped because you never created a place where she could tell you. You will never know that your son is gay because you never created a setting where he could tell you. And so on.
Everyday the people closest to us are hoping to find a setting that is safe, they are hoping to find an appropriate setting in which to tell us these things, but we never give it to them. So they carry them for as long as they can, and some of them learn to survive with that weight on their shoulders and others of them don’t. I am mostly weighed down with the stories of others, I cannot imagine what that weight would feel like if those stories were my own. Regardless, I will not lighten this load until I find the appropriate setting. And I keep thinking that I’ll find it among Christians, but they keep proving me wrong.