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The Cost of Exposure

This week in Calcutta has been hard for me.

Yesterday our friend Kristin took Phileena and me into the red-light district where she has been trying to help women find freedom. After stopping several times to introduce us to dozens of her friends, one of the women invited us to her home for a cup of tea. Following her, we walked down a tiny side alley and into one of the brothels. The building appeared to be falling in on itself, foreboding and dank, the old building seemed to be over a hundred years old. At the top of a dark and uneven staircase were a number of little rooms where the women of this neighborhood “work.” We entered one of the small rooms, barely more than 7 or 8 square feet, and met the young woman’s daughter.

The little girl is 8 years old. She has big pretty light brown eyes and the prettiest smile I’ve seen in a long, long time. She also has cerebral palsy and is unable to move her arms, legs, and neck as well as being unable to speak. But she understands everything she hears and sees.

We were told that once when a man was having sex on her mother, the child was actually in that same little room (as well as where she “works,” the room is her family’s home) and was somehow able to communicate the trauma of witnessing the abuse. Now her young mother hides this little girl in the corner behind a curtain while servicing several customers a day.

It was probably only 30 minutes that we stayed, but nearly the entire time Kristin, Phileena and I were captivated by the eyes of that little girl. They spoke of love and affection and as much as we could get her to smile, they radiated what seemed to be a real joy.

Today, Sarah and Beth who also live here in the city and also fight for the freedom of women in the commercial sex industry, took me back to that same red-light district to introduce me to more of their friends.

Again, after stopping to talk with countless girls on “the line,” including an alley full of Nepali girls forcibly trafficked to Calcutta, we ended up in another brother and in another tiny little room.

In this room were two beds set against each other in an L-shape. I sat at the foot of the bed closest to the door and noticed that underneath the adjoining bed (the other bed was pretty high off the ground, maybe 4 feet or so) was a mattress lying on the floor. Sarah and Beth told me that our host used to prostitute but had met a man who helped her leave the sex trade. In the discovery of her freedom, she enslaved another—she actually became the “owner” of a 14 year old girl. This child would bring clients into this little hovel of a room, with the man climb under the elevated bed and then pull a sheet down to conceal them while having sex-sometimes even during Sarah and Beth’s visits. I could hardly take my eyes off that dark little prison that once served as a place of torment and enslavement. Not only had that 14 year old girl, as a sex-slave, lost her freedom, but her identity and sexuality was commodified, her childhood plundered, and in an already horrific reality, experienced continued humiliation by having to engage in sex in a room sometimes full of people.

In the past two days I feel like I’ve seen more prisons than I can imagine. The prison of a body that can’t move and a mouth that can’t communicate. The prison of a life enslaved to sexual servitude underneath someone else’s bed.

I’ve been wondering what the cost of this exposure must be.

I’ve actually been thinking about that question a lot this week. So many times I’ve taken friends along with me during my travels. Introducing them to some of the most vulnerable of the world’s poorest people. Taking them to some of the most repressive places on earth. Exposing them to some of the most inhuman and graphic human suffering on earth.

It’s 2008 and in an entitled and globalized world it’s as easy as it’s ever been to visit many of these places. It’s our luxury to cash in some frequent flier miles, hit-up some friends and family for “missionary support” so we can travel, or just simply charge a plane ticket to our credit card. As North Americans we can do whatever we want, go wherever we want and see whatever we want to see.

But at what cost? At whose expense? I’m afraid that our freedoms and the luxury of our opportunities are often at the expense and enslavement of those who suffer the most.

What I can’t understand is how an over-educated, under-motivated university graduate can meet victims of human-trafficking, and in the abundance of opportunity offered to us as North Americans, then chose to work part-time at Starbucks while trying to figure out what they want to “do” with their lives.

Really?

Do we not understand that there is a tremendous cost to our exposure? Can we not wrap our minds around the truth that to see the suffering we’ve seen, that in submitting ourselves to community, and in forming friendships and relationships with the oppressed, our lives are forever changed? Our freedoms are forever limited? That there are things that we must never allow ourselves to do and people we can never allow ourselves to become?

The challenge is to allow the limiting of our freedoms not to become a prison, rather a gift of grace.

Could we find the courage to be honest with ourselves, that to whom much is given much is required.

It is not “cheap” to open ourselves to the intensity of this kind of exposure. There is a cost involved. A cost that we often don’t want to talk about and don’t want to consider.

I guess if we don’t want to consider the costs of exposure, then we shouldn’t travel.

A Suffering Christ in a City of Joy

I’m in Chennai with a few friends, visiting my old neighbors and the children here cared for by Word Made Flesh.

Tonight after finishing our dinner at Saravanna Bhavan, we ordered chai and coffee while discussing our thoughts on the book, The City of Joy.

It’s the story of a collision of two men’s lives in a Calcutta slum. One man, an Indian from a rural village ends up in the city trying to find a better life for his family. Tragically, he ends up spiraling further and further into the clutches of poverty, eventually finding home in a slum. The other man, a Polish Catholic priest, voluntarily chooses poverty and in a gesture of solidarity and moves into the same slum as the Bengali farmer.

While studying in Jerusalem back in 1992, a Ugandan Bible translator gave me his copy of The City of Joy. Perhaps more than anything I had read up to that point in my life, this book changed me.  The thick paperback story of courage and hope hidden in the folds of oppression and suffering disturbed me.

Suddenly, the reality of poverty took on an embodied and humanized face. Flipping through these pages illuminated the complexities of poverty not as the experience of an individual, rather that of a community. The commitment and solidarity of the priest with the slum community challenged my own willingness to sacrifice and submit to the suffering of the world. The sad and real cycle of poverty, hopeless and fatalistic, seemed a daunting challenge, yet an invitation to hope for an end to it all.

I was overwhelmed. I was devastated. I was filled with compassion. I was inspired.

One of my favorite parts of the book happens to be an exchange with a man in the slum who goes to visit the priest.

One morning two bearers set down a bearded man whose shaggy hair was covered with ashes. He was attached to a chair. He had no legs and no fingers on his hands. He was a leper*, yet his young face radiated a joy that was astonishing in one so disinherited.

“Big Brother, my name is Anouar,” he announced. “You must look after me. As you can see, I’m very sick.”

His gaze alighted next on the picture of the Shroud of Christ.

“Who is that?” he asked, surprised.

“It’s Jesus.”

The leper looked incredulous.

“Jesus? No, it’s can’t be. He doesn’t look like he usually does. Why does your Jesus have his eyes closed and look so sad?”

Stephen Kovalski knew that Indian iconography reproduced images of Christ in abundance, but those of a Christ with blue eyes, triumphant and brightly colored, like the gods of the Hindu pantheon.

“He has suffered,” said the priest.  “His eyes are closed, so that he can see us better,” he went on. “And so that we, for our part, can look at him more readily. Perhaps if his eyes were open, we wouldn’t dare to, because our eyes are not pure, nor are our hearts, and we carry a large share of the responsibility for his suffering. For if he is suffering it’s because of me, you, all of us; because of our sins, because of the evil that we do. Still he loves us so much that he forgives us. He wants us to look at him. That’s why he closes his eyes and those closed eyes invite me, too, to close my eyes to pray, to look at God inside me…and inside you too. And to love him. And to do as he does and forgive everyone and love everyone, especially those who suffer like him, they invite me to love you who are suffering like him.”

A little girl in rages who had remained hidden behind the leper’s chair came forward and planted a kiss on the picture, caressing it with her small hand.

“Ki Koshto! How he must suffer!” she murmured, after touching her forehead with three fingers.

The leper seemed to be deeply moved. His dark eyes were shining.

“He is in pain,” Stephen Kovalski went on, “but he doesn’t want us to weep for him, but rather for those who are suffering today, because he suffers in them, in the bodies and hearts of the lonely, the abandoned, the despised, as well as in the minds of the insane, the neurotic, and the deranged. You see, that’s why I love that picture. Because it reminds me of all that.”

The leper nodded his head thoughtfully. Then, raising his stump in the direction of the icon, he said, “Stephan Daddah, your Jesus is much more beautiful than the one in all our pictures.”

[Dominique Lapierre, The City of Joy (New York: Warner Books, Inc., 1985) pages 156-157]

The suffering Christ. God’s identification with those who are poor. The social consequences of injustice of sin. All of these are invitations to a contemplative posture that allows God to break our hearts as a sign and symbol of hope.

Tonight, here in Chennai, it rained. Hard. My rainbow sandals got wet. The back of my shorts got spattered and stained with mud from the city’s streets. I was frustrated.

That is, until the suffering Christ reminded me that in this city thousands and thousands of people don’t have shelter to protect themselves from the rain. Tonight, the countless men and women, girls and boys who sleep on the streets have no place to go.

Tonight, Christ suffers with them. For them. Through our prayers and our obedience, may we seek to be the answer to someone’s prayer. Tonight, could we find the courage to restore hope to those who have every reason to give up. Tonight, is it possible to follow the oppressed and those who are poor, to God’s heart.

For it is there that we together are saved.

*In this instance I quote directly from the text, however, I have made it a principled practice to avoid using the term “leper” as it typically is loaded with derogatory insinuations as well as has been co-opted to describe much more than a person’s physical condition. I also am aware of the WHO’s (World Health Organization) efforts to eradicate this term from colloquial usage and use more accurate language such as “persons with leprosy” or “persons with Hanson’s Disease.”

J.B.S. - Happy Moving Day Anniversary Dear Friend

Three years ago today, I found myself surprisingly set on a journey of re-defining friendship.

It was June 8, 2005 that Jara B. Sturdivant packed up her belongings, threw them in the back of a big ole truck and started driving from Memphis all the way to Omaha.

For the past three years Jara has faithfully loved our community through tremendous sacrifices but always with great joy. She’s had two different job titles (not counting “emcee,” which she’s been on many occasions for our community’s events), both of which she dominated (and still dominates). She’s seen at least 14 people come and go from our Omaha community, loving each of them through their transitions. She has brought tremendous insight and profoundly discerning wisdom into how many of our community’s decisions have been made. She’s been a source of strength, humble yet confident leadership, and thoughtful support for our shared vocations.

Jara’s also been a great friend. One of the best. Sharing her friends. Helping us discover new music. Reminding us to take care of ourselves. Running errands. Celebrating achievements and accomplishments and even the mundane and ordinary. Questions. Confrontations. Times of prayer. Running jokes. Laughing at each other’s quirks. Book discussions. Lost, the Office and 30 Rock. Contests.

Last year Phileena were on sabbatical. We started doing pilgrimage, the Camino de Santiago, by walking nearly 600 miles from southern France all the way through the Basque-country of northern Spain.

Then we got a fellowship from the Center for Reconciliation at Duke’s Divinity School. The center rented us a little place to stay, the Rose Cottage, in Durham. I remember the feelings as Phileena pulled into the driveway of the Rose for the first time. We were a little anxious and somewhat afraid. A new town. No friends. An empty home that we hoped would embrace us.

As we walked through the door of the Rose for the very first time we found a big box waiting for us on the kitchen table. And a note. It was from Jara.

Inside the box was a large and extremely beautiful bamboo bowl. The note read,

When you all arrive in your new home, you will have two things—a letter from me and a gift. It’s a simple gift. A bamboo bowl. As I’ve thought about how to send you off and how to keep in touch I was brought back to Nouwen’s Clowing In Rome. I’m excited because through this time away our friendship—not our work relationship—but our go run errands-do body attack—friendship will be deepened. It isn’t until we are empty—like this bowl—that we can fully embrace solitude and welcome each other more intimately in our lives. My hope and prayer is that you can fill this bowl with love, memories, letters—and that it brings us closer and close to God and each other. Keep on walking Pilgrims, Love JBS”

Along with the letter were four photocopied pages of Henri Nouwen’s book, Clowing In Rome with paragraphs bracketed and highlighted with specific statements underlined,

Solitude, then, is not private time in contrast to time together, nor it is a time to restore our tired minds. Solitude is very different from a “time-out” from our busy lives. Solitude is the very ground from which community grows. Whenever we pray alone, study, read, write, or simply spend quiet time away from the places where we interact with each other directly, we are potentially opened for a deeper intimacy with each other. It is a fallacy to think that we grow closer to each other only when we talk, ply, or work together. Much growth certainly occurs in such human interactions, but these interactions derive their fruit from solitude, because in solitude our intimacy with each other is deepened. In solidtude we discovery each other in a way that physical presence makes difficult if not impossible. In solitude we know a bond with each other that does not depend on words, gestures, or actions but is rather a bond much deeper than our own efforts could ever create.

If we base our life together on physical proximity, on our ability to spend time together, speak with each other, eat together, and worship together, life quickly starts fluctuating according to moods, personal attractiveness, and mutual compatibility, and thus becomes very demanding and tiring. Solitude, on the other hand, puts us in touch with a unity that precedes all unifying activities. In solitude we become aware that we were together before we came together and that life is not a creation of our will but rather an obedient response to the reality of our being united. Whenever we enter into solitude, we witness to a love that transcends our interpersonal communications and proclaims that we love each other because we have been loved first (1 John 4:19). Solitude keeps us in touch with the sustaining love from which we draw strength. It sets us free from the compulsions of fear and anger and allows us to be in the midst of an anxious and violent world as a sign of hope and a source of courage. In short, solitude creates that free community, that natural family that makes bystanders say, “See how they love each other.”

…it is also true that our emptiness provides a very large and sacred space where we can welcome all the people of the world. There is a powerful connection between our emptiness and our ability to welcome. When we give up what sets us apart from others—not just property but also opinions, prejudices, judgments, and mental preoccupations—then we have room within to welcome friends as well as enemies. When we pray for others, we invite them to enter with us into our solitude and there we lift them up to the God we encounter. In true solitude there is unlimited space for others because we are empty. In this poverty nobody stands over and against us, because our enemy is only our enemy as long as we have something to defend. But when we have nothing to hold onto or protect, when we have nothing we consider exclusively ours, then nobody will threaten us. Rather, in the center of our solitude we meet all men and women as brothers and sisters. In true solitude, we stand so naked and so vulnerable before God, and we become so deeply aware of our total dependency on God’s love, that not only our friends but also those who kill, lie, torture, rape, and wage wars become part of our very flesh and blood. Yes, in true solitude we are so totally empty and poor that we find our solidarity with brothers and sisters everywhere. Our hearts, full of God and empty of fear and anger, become a welcoming home for God and for our whole human family on earth. So bringing our brothers and sisters into our solitude and prayer by praying for them is a choice of self-emptying, inviting us to give up all that divides us from others to become those we pray for so that God may touch them in us.

That thoughtful and creative gift, the letter, the quotes from Nouwen, and the big bamboo bowl is a treasure we still cherish today.

During those first few awkward weeks at Duke when we were still trying to find friends, let alone our way around town, the bowl was a “safe” place for us. When we missed our community and home, when we felt lonely and displaced, we’d sit at our table and pull the notes and letters out of it and read them.

During our four months in North Carolina, the bowl was the centerpiece of our little home, the Rose Cottage. It sat on our dining room table and we slowly, yet steadily, began filling it with letters from friends (many from Jara, often 2-3 a week), ticket stubs from games and concerts, wine corks, hotel key cards (I collect them from the rooms we stay in), pictures of old and new friends, bar coasters, beer bottle labels (for some reason I peel those off and collect them too), take-out menus, matchbooks and other little memories from our sabbatical.

We still have the bowl out and it’s the first thing you see when you walk into our townhouse here in Omaha. And it’s still filled with the memories of our time away. On top of all them, is the original letter from Jara.

Three years later, Jara, her love for us, and the integrity of how she lives continues to be an inspiration—but more than that, a “safe” place. The gift of that bowl, something empty that was filled by friends and community, is a lot like Jara’s friendship. She does a beautiful job of creating space, open and empty space, to fill with memories and celebrations, conversation and sweet connections.

Today I thank God for her. For how she has embodied something I think we all long and hope for, a good and faithful friend. Today I celebrate Jara.

Happy moving-day anniversary dear friend.

El Idioma Inglés - Herramienta Oppresiva del Imperialismo

By Chris Heuertz con Walter Forcatto

El idioma inlgés, la más reciente y actual linga franca del mundo moderno, ha sido una de las herramientas de oppresion más despiadadas de la hisotria moderna. Este idiomal ha sido utilizado para lograr la marginalización de los pobres y la división de sociedades. Aunque sea el idioma natal de menos del 15% de la población de la Tierra, el inglés es indiscutiblemente la clave para controlar el poder político, movimentos culturales y el mercado global.

Tanto como los vínculos opresivos creadas por una enorme desiguldad económica, las formas de desigualdad socio-culturales creadas por opresores de habla inglés también dividen violentamente al mundo.

Durante un viaje en Egypto en 1996 tuve la oportunidad de conocer a un comerciante. Me saludo en árabe pero dandose cuenta que yo no pude entender lo que habia dicho se dirijió a mi en inglés. Con una sonrisa sarcástica dijo, -Si una persona habla dos idiomas es considerado bilingue, si habla solo un idioma es Americano.-

Generalmente, personas de habla inglés esperan poder viajar sin mayor dificultad usando este idioma. Ellos que utilizan idiomas menos conocidos como por ejemplo Tamil, Rumano, Nepali, Koreano, Portugues, Swahili, Krio y por el estilo necesariamente deben aprender el ingles si desean ver y conocer el mundo. Ironicamente, viajando por Brasil un ciudadano de Kenya cuyo idioma natal es Swahili probablemente tendrá que usar el idioma ingles para poder simplemente comunicar.

Por el hecho de que dominan este idioma tan influyente, las personas de habla inglés automáticamente interiorizan que los ámbitos de la sociedad que pertenecen principalmente a la formación del mercado global y la industria de comunicaciones estan abiertas y dispuestas a su manipulación.

Una de las caras mas oscuras del imperialismo es el idioma inglés. Aprender otro idioma para ellos que son monolinuges no solo sería una ventaja y logro personal sino para el mundo entero también. Aprenda otro idioma y pare de perpetuar la corriente de marginalización cultural en el mundo imponida por el lenguaje. Y si no fuese poco, si usted no puede leer este artículo entonces le debe caer como un balde de agua fria.