On unglamorous redemption
Yesterday afternoon, I found myself standing in front of a heap of rubble – the burnt out remains of a once thriving garment factory in Camden, New Jersey. Recently classified as “the most dangerous city” in America – based on crime data in 6 categories (murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and auto theft) – Camden is one of the many left-behind cities of America; literally burning up amidst poverty, high rates of unemployment, low graduation rates, crime, gangs, abandoned properties and extremely high levels of ground and water-source pollution. This neighborhood shares much of the same sociological pedigree as Kensington. This was once a thriving site of construction and manufacturing, with neighborhoods built up around factories so workers could walk to work. The collapse of that system of life is evident throughout these streets. Slowly manufacturing moved out of this neighborhood, becoming globalised as wages became ever cheaper with production outsourced to third-world countries. Left in the wake of this exodus of production was the waste of years of noxious chemicals and pollutants, which have seeped into the groundwater and stripped the land so that little grows here. Those with the social mobility to move out of Camden did so, leaving behind the poorest with none of the social support systems to raise them up. Standing in a neighborhood with nothing left to attract corporate America, a community filled with all the waste of the American dream and none of the means for its actualization, I picked up a piece of brick from the now desolate factory and placed it in my pocket – a reminder, a memorial.
“Exegesis”, from the Greek “to lead out”: a critical examination and interpretation of, usually, a text, including investigation into the history and origins of the text, and study of the historical and cultural backgrounds for the author, the text, and the original audience.
As we “exegete our neighborhoods” and our worlds, it is easy to become disillusioned and throw our hands into the air crying out “there is no hope”. But acquiescing to the desolation in our world denies the possibility of its redemption. If we sit back, overwhelmed by the social issues and their antecedents which we see all around us, we are saying redemption has no power, no hope. It is void. We cannot afford to deny redemption in our worlds since doing so denies its power in our lives. If we cannot hope for redemption in our streets we cannot hope for its work in our selves.
I don’t think many of us who have experienced this redemption would deny its work; rather, I think the answer lies in something Chris Haw said as he stood by the riverside talking of this place he calls home. In response to someone’s question of “What can be done?” he replied, “There are a thousand things that can be done, but none of them are sexy.” There is little in the process of redemption that is glamorous or sexy or even attractive. But then again, neither was the act of redemption itself particularly glamorous, sexy or attractive. We hope for hope which looks like hope – bright-eyed and optimistic, happy-go-lucky and idealistic. Often the hope we get is the one which raises tired eyes and heads from the routine and repetition, and the messiness of human relationships and forces itself to look to the hills, from whence our help comes from. This hope is often unglamorous. It is tied in with shopping for groceries, and sweeping up trash only to have it reappear a few hours later. The redemptive process is undoubtedly restorative and powerful and can change our worlds even as it transforms our lives. It is the essence of our re-imagining. But it is process. Day in and day out. And it is rarely sexy.
“Christians get allured by the extraordinary: in mission, ministry, and witness the pull seems to be away from the ordinary towards the new, the exciting and the innovative. But maybe the real challenge of our times is to learn to affirm the ordinary things very deeply, doing our church and our theology and our praying whilst deeply engaged with these basic building blocks of life. This is a call for us to deal with the mundane things in our lives, but it is not a calling to dullness -it’s about discovering new possibilities of being creative, with the ordinary things of life.” (John Davies)
On stories
These are not the answers. I’ve only been here a month. Inserted myself into someone else’s story. HIS and all those who came before me. All those who walked these streets. Slept in my room. Wrestled. Cried out. Toiled. Built relationships. Broke relationship. All those who sought to change and were changed and all those who somehow managed to bring change to others. I’ve inserted myself into a story that dates back 13 years. And further. Back to the days when this area was vibrant with factories, business’, jobs and families. A little further on to the “white exodus”: the years when factories closed, businesses relocated, jobs were cut off, and families drifted on and apart. I don’t understand this part of the story. I don’t even understand or grasp the part of the story that begins 13 years ago. I certainly don’t understand in its fullness the part I find myself immersed in now. So these are not the answers. Not after a month. As if a lifetime could give them.
No, these are the questions. My thoughts. My struggles, my dreams. My wrestlings and crying out. My toiling, my seeking and my changing. I tend to write romantically. I live practically. Immersed. The writing is the listening to Josh Garrels through my earphones. The living is the hearing fights and children and police sirens and drug dealers breaking through. Hear them both; they’re both important. I must live as though I am here. Present. I must dream as though I’m not. Future. I must understand as one who was. Past. And I must hope that Christ breaks in. On me. On this neighborhood. On our lives. Present-continuous.
This is the story. About liturgy in the morning with visitors and community and strangers. All of us with one thing in common: Jesus Christ. About evening prayer in the basement. Surrounded by clothes and food and tools and toys and stationary and ice-cream and prayers which span 13 years and beyond – deaths and lives and addictions and marches and subversion and holy mischief and small acts of great love. It is about living intentionally in a community house with 4 other people. About frustrations and different interpretations of cleanliness and moods and personalities and strengths and weaknesses and how to share the bathroom in the morning and the washing machine in the afternoon and graciously accepting tofu. It is about intentionally living in geographic community in a neighborhood that is loud and many times angry. Where children and people in need and pilgrims knock on our door – seemingly unceasingly. It is about learning to live and most especially to live well amidst drugs and addictions and anger and hurt and seeming confusion. It is about boundaries. It is about realizing that we are not the only ones who bring good here and recognizing it in the lives of our neighbors and friends – not our social “projects”. It is about struggling with how best to relate to the drug dealers who sit on our step turning thousands of dollars of despair a night. It is about how to maintain a marriage amidst competing demands and other covenant commitments.
It is about making sure to place Jesus back into the center of the gospel of social justice every time I am tempted by my own pride and naivety to relegate Him to the back seat.
It is about going about our daily lives aware, intentional, full of grace and mercy and love. It is about not just going about.
“I read in a book that a man called Christ went about doing good.
It is very disconcerting to me that I am so easily satisfied with just going about.”
Toyohiko Kagawa
on poverties..
“…the material, economistic perspective on poverty is only one way of framing the subject… there are many forms of poverty, economic poverty being only one of these. And the question arises as to how much other poverty we create when our goal is narrowly defined as the alleviation of economic poverty. When all values are subsumed to the economic, as they increasingly are, particularly within a conventional development paradigm, how much do we lose with respect to social values, to artistic values, to cultural and language diversity, to bio-diversity? We must surely recognize by now that the world we are creating with our fixation on the economic is becoming immeasurably poorer with respect to everything which lives outside of the economic”
(Kaplan, A. (1998). Crossroads: A Development Reading. Extract from the Community Development Resource Association’s Annual Report 1997/1998. Cape Town: CDRA. pp. 11-12).
I am a trustee at a place of safety which myself and a group of friends started 3 years ago. The House takes in abandoned, abused, neglected, orphaned and vulnerable children. Currently we have two children in the House who have been living on the street for several months. The courts decided that it was in their best interests to be in a place of safety.
I live in Stellenbosch. There is a park opposite where I go to church and a group of people frequent it. They are dirty, some have dreadlocks, they wear old torn clothes (not enough). Sometimes, they come and beg outside the church – invariably they reek of alcohol. They often sit on cartons in the middle of the field until late at night, talking. Sometimes they have a little fire going in a tin. As far as I am aware they sleep out there. Except when it’s raining; then they bring their blankets and plastic bags and lie under the eaves of the building. There is a little girl who lives with them – about 7 years old. I have been grappling with whether to approach social services with an eye to getting her removed and placed in a warm, safe home. But I have hesitated because of exactly that which Kaplan writes. I have always, unconsciously, preferenced economic wellbeing. But removing this young girl would take away her family, would divorce her from a sense of community which clearly exists around that fireplace, would isolate her, would perhaps even annihilate the good values which maybe that group is inculcating in her. Who am I to say? See, this girl is clothed, and runs around happy, and looks well-fed – she is not emaciated and does not look sick. The group talk to her and laugh with her and look out for her. But she does not live with a roof over her head. And my developmental paradigm says this is wrong.
My developmental paradigm says she must be sheltered and in an economically stable environment – not merely a loving one where material goods take the back seat, although community is valued. In my paradigm, the ‘best interests of the child’ are often economically defined (although not solely for sure). I would risk losing all those other values, in fact introducing various other poverties into her life for the sake of alleviating this one poverty (and a relative one, at that).
Of course, I infer that the environment she is in is safe and loving and community-based and provides her with warmth and sustenance. For the sake of illustrating my point. She may in fact be hungry always, be sick, be cold, be abused – physically, sexually, emotionally. The affect of alcohol on that group and on her may be huge. And this is the dilemma. But my point is that in the past I would have run in with guns blazing. I would have recognized a situation of injustice – ill-defined though it is – and done everything in my power to right it. My point is that now right is not so clear. And I think that increasingly an awareness of the trade-off between economic poverty and other poverties will play a part in how I approach individuals and situations.
on catching rides on dark nights
and other stuff.
I generally don’t stop for hitchhikers. Brett and I picked up a guy on our way back from J-Bay to Knysna one night on our honeymoon. His name was Ray and flip he had a hectic story… just the week before, while driving home from Grahamstown festival he was hijacked by some guys asking for directions, tried to escape and ran his car off the road and lost control, had a gun put to his head, and ended up literally running for his life! Turns out he used to go to a church in Knysna and knew the pastor who brett knew also. We prayed with him and he offered us a place to stay anytime we are next in the area.
So as a rule I don’t often stop for hitchhikers, but I have recently started stopping when I see a girl walking along the road at night alone. This happens a lot in Stellenbosch and while none of them have taken me up on offer for a lift yet, I will keep asking.
Last night at 11pm I was driving along Tokai Main Road on my way home to Stell. I saw four young girls (all under sixteen) running along the side of the road. They were dressed pretty scantily. I pulled over and asked them where they were going and when they said “just down the road”, I told them to cross the road and get in the car and I would drive them. Which they did. We drove a way down, took a right, and into a dark hardly lit neighborhood, passing a lonely park, and then down to some house. I dropped them off and waited, surprised that they didn’t ring the bell. One girl came back to say they were fine and I could leave since their parents were coming in 15 minutes. I said I would wait. I ended up following them as they walked to the next party, where I handed them over to the mother in charge there. I also told them they were incredibly stupid.
The point is this: I think more people need to take more responsibility for the wellbeing and safety of other people. Those four girls were in an incredibly stupid and dangerous situation and I cannot imagine if I had driven past them and read in the papers this morning that they had gone missing or something had happened to them. So i took the time out of my night, went out of my way, and made sure they were safe – way beyond what it was even reasonably my “responsibility” to do.
I generally don’t give lifts to men ever. Except for one night after theatresports in kalk bay where I offered the car guard a lift back to retreat. He works everynight in Kalk Bay, taking hours to walk to work and back in the early hours of the morning. He earns, on a good night, 50rand. Giving him a lift was a tiny thing I was able to do for him.
I know a lot of people will think this is stupid. Maybe it is. I have a couple of rules about offering people lifts – little things that I think minimise the risk of things going bad. 1. I generally don’t give men a lift at any time of the day or night. 2. I generally don’t give more than 1 person a lift at a time so that there isn’t someone sitting behind me where I can’t see them and where I have no control and am outnumbered. 3. I generally don’t give lifts on lonely roads, at night, or to areas I don’t know. 4. I always let Brett know when I am thinking of giving someone a lift or if someone is in my car. I tell him what kind of person it is, where I am, where we are going and how long it will take approximately. I think calling him is a good idea so that the person hears that I am telling someone who knows where I am.
It’s a really little thing to be able to do for someone. Whether it’s someone desperately trying to get to work on time when the trains are on strike so that they don’t lose their job. Or four stupid little girls who are completely naive and oblivious to how unwise they are being. Or some guy who works longer hours than you do earning what you probably earn in an hour. Or a mother walking with her kids in the rain back from school. Cos yes, there are bad folk out there but there are a lot more good folk who are genuinely just in need of a lift or someone to be watching their back. So take the precautions, definitely. Don’t be unwise. If you are christian, be extra sensitive to the Spirit. Tell someone what you are doing. Pray. But let’s start looking out for people more….
