On Being a Missionary

"Mission" comes from the Latin "missio" which means "sent". Although we now more commonly use it as a noun: "I have a mission", most Christians nowadays are quick to acknowledge that we don't have a mission, it is God's mission, upon which God sends people to various parts of creation for various tasks. The history of Christian mission is much more than the last 200 years or so, during which time Christianity got almost fatally tied in with the project of empire and "civilizing" the non-Christian world. We still have a long way to go to extricate ourselves from that era, but at least we are well started on becoming a global body in which no culture is privileged.

Personally, I started work as a professional missionary with a lot of misgivings. I believed that all people had access to God and everybody was on their own journey that must end in some kind of holy mountain. My years of work in Nepal taught me more deeply about the reality of evil in our world, its tenaciousness and its ubiquity in every human life. Just being good will not cut it for the people of the world who suffer the most - we are all ensnared in a system that has winners and losers, a system that cannot be conquered from inside, only from outside.

When I tell this story, I usually add the story of my friend Duane. He tells of going from the USA to Nepal as a young missionary with the belief that his mission was to save souls. "I'd just tell them about Jesus, and they would accept him, and they'd be all right," he says. But his years in Nepal taught him that life is a whole. People's needs for life are not divided into spiritual in one place and physical somewhere else. Now he works in integrated development, programs that include drinking water supply, education, health care, and sharing love in community.

Duane and I were both evangelized by Nepal. Far from converging, our theologies remain different in many ways, but we were both forced to deepen and mature in our knowledge of life.

I have struggled with the image of being a missionary for many years. I have spent sleepless nights telling myself that I am more part of the problem than part of the solution. But I still hold on to the faith that a stranger in a new place can speak usefully to people in a different context and provide help on many levels. And I also have learned that the only missionary of any use to the world is one who is himself or herself always being converted and challenged by new situations.

Nepal Again

The whole topic of migration is dear to my heart because I have spent so much of my life moving around this beautiful world. I have worked as a professional "do-gooder" in several different contexts and have faced the question of relations between foreigners and natives from many angles.

After I graduated from college, my one thought was to get back to Asia and make a real contribution while adventuring in new frontiers. I had been introduced to the work of Paolo Friere in Brazil, and was deeply moved and excited about the potential of adult literacy programs to improve people's lives.

After flirting with the Peace Corps for a while, I decided not to accept their offer to be a nutrition educator in Benin, but to keep searching for a job in Asia, and after a year of letter-writing, I was offered a position with a Christian mission in Nepal. The only thing I knew about missionaries was the ugly stereotype common to most Americans, but my year of research had taught me that it is only the church that has people working in the field on direct service instead of sitting in an office supervising.

The training received by modern missionaries can be summed up in one sentence: "don't be like the old-fashioned missionaries!" Don't be insensitive, domineering, imperialistic, racist. The modern missionary is open-minded, respectful, culturally aware and supportive of local aspirations.

OK, fine. But as a new missionary in Nepal, I found some challenges to this ideal. How, exactly, do you demonstrate your sensitivity towards a man who has three wives and ten daughters and is about to marry a fourth woman in hopes that she will bear the long-expected son? Am I respectful enough to warn my hosts when I am menstruating so that men can be careful not to come close enough for my pollution to be transferred to them? Should I ask the servant in my landlord's house whether she is a debt slave and if she is, what will be my open-minded and supportive response?

Interesting times. Foreigners will challenge your culture's comfortable points of view no matter how sensitive they are. Just by being different, their presence demonstrates the possibility of difference. You can see why they are often vilified and legislated against throughout history.

Happy All Saints' Day

Happy November 1! Here in the Philippines, All Saints' Day is as big a holiday as Easter, and even bigger than Christmas Day. All Saints' is a time to go home to the family home town, have feasts, picnics, parties, and catch up on all the news with friends and relatives. And of course, to remember the dead. I don't know about other parts of the Philippines, but here in the mountains, there is no tradition of masks, processions, and certainly no trick or treat, rather, there is a special church service on the First where all the names of people remembered by members of the congregation are read out, our church had about 400 names. Afterwards, candles and pine wood are blessed and then lighted torches, reminiscent of the Light of Christ, are taken to the cemetery and set by each grave. Then the family brings food and has a picnic by the family graves, it's a chance for the living and the dead to get together and share a meal once a year.

It reminded me of Nepal, where the Hindu tradition is that the dead are remembered on the anniversary of their death with a special feast prepared for them. Once, I was with a rather pushy Christian evangelist who demanded of our host whether the spirits actually ate any of the food offered. Undismayed, the old man laughed and said, "They eat the juice of it, and we eat the rest."

I was reflecting today that we of the Western Enlightenment are the odd ones, not believing in spirits. Whether we believe in one Supreme God who runs creation on a scientific basis, or whether we believe in no supernatural at all, the idea that the dead are just gone, and nothing unseen can trouble us puts us in the minority of humans throughout history and around the world today. Most people have been and are perfectly comfortable with the spirits of the dead and other beings going about their business all around us, and sometimes overlapping their business with ours. And why not? Maybe the majority is more in tune with reality than we think!

Whoooohoooooo! Enjoy your autumn!

Kathmandu

So there I was, a typical college student in Southern California. I was studying French and planning to spend my junior year in France in time-honored fashion. One day, I was idly reading over the external studies page in the college handbook and noted the paragraph about the program in Nepal. "Where's that?" I wondered to myself. I pulled out the atlas and found it. The capital city is Kathmandu.

Kathmandu! Where had I heard that name before? It held all the romance of travel and mystic lands. I knew I had to grab the chance to go there.

The study abroad program was carefully structured, with three weeks of language and culture learning first, then immersion in a host family, with language study continuing.

That first night in the home of my Hindu host family, a stone house with packed dirt floors and a mosquito net above my bed required all the sense of adventure I possessed. The whole idea of an American student living all alone with a Nepali family seemed crazy. They appeared welcoming, but also dubious about their first foreign student. My few words of Nepali seemed like thin ropes to throw over such a wide chasm. Luckily, words are not all we have for communication. The mother of the family wanted to show me everything and she took my by the hand and pulled me along. Outside and behind the house, she squatted down on the ground and I squatted beside her. She was talking all the time, and gesturing at the blank walls all around us. Suddenly my stomach contracted as I realized she was urinating on the ground. She was showing me the place for that!

So I began to learn what it means to be a participant observer, and the nitty-gritty of the romance of mystic lands. That was almost thirty years ago, and the children of that family are still close friends. I guess soon I will be grandma to their grandchildren!