News of the death of Samuel Huntington, political scientist at Harvard whose book "The Clash of Civilizations" caused so much debate around the time of 9/11, has come at the same time as Yahoo! News published a sad little story about a debt slave from Egypt who was brought to Los Angeles to work 20 hour days as a maid for a rich Egyptian family. Eventually the situation was reported by a neighbor, and the child was taken into foster care and the employers were tried and convicted of child abuse and slavery. After serving their two year jail sentences, they went back to Egypt and were seen by a reporter entering their high priced condo accompanied by a small child carrying their bags.
It is tempting to say, "well, it's too bad, but after all, they have their cultural customs..." but this is not a good way to commemorate the American workers who were shot in cold blood on American streets for daring to demand such uneconomical and unAmerican things as an 8-hour work day and a six day work week. That's not so long ago, it's within living memory. In the 1930's a rich Los Angeles family would not have had to go all the way to Africa for a debt slave. There were plenty of Anglo American girls available, and people then thought that would be giving them a chance, too. At least they could work in a big house with running water.
Human Rights are not natural to any one human culture, they have to be fought for. Again and again.
The question really is, what is the best way to help other people fight for their rights? The world is littered with ill-fated programs of well-meaning people who failed to help the miserable people they wished to serve. That's not to say "let's just leave them alone" that's to say, "let's be careful and understand what's going on before plunging in." There are useful things that can be done, but the first impulse is not necessarily the best.
So clarity of purpose is really very important in this area. Speaking out for human rights is not imposing "our culture" on others, but of course, we have to know how to separate our culture from universal human rights. Otherwise, we risk being like those old-fashioned missionaries who mistook clothing styles and musical instruments for civilization. Not an easy task!
Showing posts with label world citizen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label world citizen. Show all posts
Monday, December 29, 2008
Friday, December 5, 2008
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.
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.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
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.
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.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Migration
There was a fascinating article in the Guardian Weekly of September 12 (if they get it up on the web later, I'll add a link), called "The Voyage of Humanity" by Robin McKie, it looked at how DNA mapping can show the routes of the human diaspora from our beginnings in East Africa. Sixty thousand years ago, the first group of sea voyagers crossed the Red Sea in tiny boats and began the human odyssey to explore the Earth. DNA sampling can show the routes taken by different groups in prehistoric times as they moved throughout Africa and Eurasia and on to the rest of the planet.
Moving on into times of which we have historical records, we can also see the importance of travel and migration in human history: the story of Adam and Eve driven out of the Garden must be an early memory of migration. Consider Noah, Abraham, Moses, Ruth, Isaiah: moving from one country to another must have been a regular and common experience for people of the ancient world. Throughout the Bible, "home" is more of a symbol than a lived experience for the Israelites.
In European history, we have a vague idea that until the so-called "Age of Discovery" people just sat around and cultivated their own gardens, but this is not borne out by other stories we know of the Middle Ages. Troubadours, peddlers, missionaries, Crusaders, pilgrims, and other travelers seem to have kept moving all the time. Also, the frequent famines, wars and plagues of the time would have sent refugees seeking for a safe place to live on a regular basis.
In the Pacific, people were making rafts, longboats and sailboats from prehistoric times, and moving around for war, trade, and greener pastures, as archaeological, linguistic and genealogical evidence shows. Indeed, Filipinos were such skilled sailors that within 150 years of first contact, there was hardly a Spanish ship in European waters without some Filipino crew members. Perhaps we need to modify our ideas about the modern nature of the "Global Village" and globalization.
The phenomenon of the "nation-state" with its attendant requirements of citizenship, passports, and impermeable borders is a modern one, its beginnings lie in the late Middle Ages and were originally developed by the feudal rulers who needed more convenient channels of taxation. Apart from that, nobody thought there would be any particular reason to prevent people from moving from one place to another. It is not a privilege, or even a human right, it's just a normal part of human nature to pack up and move on at times.
The phenomenon of the "undocumented" is an even more recent one, and has developed as a result of the increasing gap between rich countries and poor ones. Only in the past 60 years has this gap grown to the point where people in rich countries have begun to see themselves as threatened by "waves" of poor immigrants. To the extent that a problem exists, the solution can hardly be to "secure" the borders. Rather, much more reflection needs to go in to the question of affluence and whether and how we can or cannot "protect" what is "ours". Immigration is not a problem, the problem is fear and greed.
Moving on into times of which we have historical records, we can also see the importance of travel and migration in human history: the story of Adam and Eve driven out of the Garden must be an early memory of migration. Consider Noah, Abraham, Moses, Ruth, Isaiah: moving from one country to another must have been a regular and common experience for people of the ancient world. Throughout the Bible, "home" is more of a symbol than a lived experience for the Israelites.
In European history, we have a vague idea that until the so-called "Age of Discovery" people just sat around and cultivated their own gardens, but this is not borne out by other stories we know of the Middle Ages. Troubadours, peddlers, missionaries, Crusaders, pilgrims, and other travelers seem to have kept moving all the time. Also, the frequent famines, wars and plagues of the time would have sent refugees seeking for a safe place to live on a regular basis.
In the Pacific, people were making rafts, longboats and sailboats from prehistoric times, and moving around for war, trade, and greener pastures, as archaeological, linguistic and genealogical evidence shows. Indeed, Filipinos were such skilled sailors that within 150 years of first contact, there was hardly a Spanish ship in European waters without some Filipino crew members. Perhaps we need to modify our ideas about the modern nature of the "Global Village" and globalization.
The phenomenon of the "nation-state" with its attendant requirements of citizenship, passports, and impermeable borders is a modern one, its beginnings lie in the late Middle Ages and were originally developed by the feudal rulers who needed more convenient channels of taxation. Apart from that, nobody thought there would be any particular reason to prevent people from moving from one place to another. It is not a privilege, or even a human right, it's just a normal part of human nature to pack up and move on at times.
The phenomenon of the "undocumented" is an even more recent one, and has developed as a result of the increasing gap between rich countries and poor ones. Only in the past 60 years has this gap grown to the point where people in rich countries have begun to see themselves as threatened by "waves" of poor immigrants. To the extent that a problem exists, the solution can hardly be to "secure" the borders. Rather, much more reflection needs to go in to the question of affluence and whether and how we can or cannot "protect" what is "ours". Immigration is not a problem, the problem is fear and greed.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Becoming a World Citizen
So how do you get started in the global life? In my case, it all started with Guyana... No one in my family had ever heard of Guyana, or had any idea where in the world it might lie, but one day Dad came home from work and told us all he had applied for a job there. What exactly motivated him to quit a Federal Government job in San Francisco and accept a post with the World Health Organization in tropical South America, I am not quite sure. Adventure? Compassion for the poor? Boredom with the routine? A little of all three, I guess.
But for me, moving to Guyana at age 13 was the opening of a door on to the wide world.
My parents were determined that we would not live in an "expatriate ghetto" in Georgetown, the capital city. I and my two younger brothers were enrolled in local, English-medium schools, to sink or swim, each on our own. The change from a California suburban public school to St. Rose's Ursuline Convent School for Girls could hardly have been more total. The girls in my class were the daughters of business and professional families in the capital, and they had never imagined that their close-knit group might be augmented by so exotic a creature as an American. Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Muslim, with ancestors from Europe, Africa and India, they knew all about diversity, but they didn't know much about Americans, except what they saw in the few movies they were allowed to watch.
They welcomed me. They reached out and gave me the help I needed to find my way around and adjust to my new environment. It never occurred to them to exclude a newcomer or foreigner, in fact, I think they were proud that their class had got me. They taught me to eat "puri" Indian fried bread with hot chili sauce for snack time. They guided me around the school's neat paths, lined with bougainvillea, to the chapel, the library, the science lab and the playground. They invited me to join the Girl Guides.
They taught me the single most important lesson about crossing cultures: It is possible. People do it all the time. And you can expect to receive a welcome on the other side. Moreover, it is possible to learn to see the world through the lens of another culture. It may be a difficult, painful, even scary journey, but it is a part of being human to be able to move outside of one's own walls, and knock at other gates.
But for me, moving to Guyana at age 13 was the opening of a door on to the wide world.
My parents were determined that we would not live in an "expatriate ghetto" in Georgetown, the capital city. I and my two younger brothers were enrolled in local, English-medium schools, to sink or swim, each on our own. The change from a California suburban public school to St. Rose's Ursuline Convent School for Girls could hardly have been more total. The girls in my class were the daughters of business and professional families in the capital, and they had never imagined that their close-knit group might be augmented by so exotic a creature as an American. Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Muslim, with ancestors from Europe, Africa and India, they knew all about diversity, but they didn't know much about Americans, except what they saw in the few movies they were allowed to watch.
They welcomed me. They reached out and gave me the help I needed to find my way around and adjust to my new environment. It never occurred to them to exclude a newcomer or foreigner, in fact, I think they were proud that their class had got me. They taught me to eat "puri" Indian fried bread with hot chili sauce for snack time. They guided me around the school's neat paths, lined with bougainvillea, to the chapel, the library, the science lab and the playground. They invited me to join the Girl Guides.
They taught me the single most important lesson about crossing cultures: It is possible. People do it all the time. And you can expect to receive a welcome on the other side. Moreover, it is possible to learn to see the world through the lens of another culture. It may be a difficult, painful, even scary journey, but it is a part of being human to be able to move outside of one's own walls, and knock at other gates.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Curiosity
I guess I should begin by commenting a bit on the title and tag line. It's a quote from a poem that has been one of my favorites since high school. Beginning by suggesting that curiosity is unlikely to have killed the cat, it goes on to say that actually it is lack of curiosity that will kill us. The title is "Curiosity", maybe it can be found somewhere on the web, or you can look in your high school or college English Lit. textbook. It's a poem that's deeply meaningful to me, and, I think, to anybody who leaves behind the familiar to see what's over the next hill.
Curiosity has always been one of my main motivations for quitting an old (well-known) job and getting a new one in a new, preferably exotic location. Following the example of my parents, who brought us up to be world citizens in a wide variety of previously unvisited locales, I have spent a lot of my working life moving around.
Like the time I went to live in Manhattan. I had actually visited there once before, about eight years earlier, but only for a day or two. Then, in 1995, after seven years of life in the hills in rural Nepal, in a house on a hill top with no plumbing or electricity, I was offered a job in New York, New York. Talk about culture shock! The noise in New York is horrendous. That's the first thing I remember. Then there was missing my quiet hill top with the beautiful view of the river below. My apartment in Manhattan on the 12th floor had windows that were designed only to open from the bottom, and no more than about 5 or 6 inches. You couldn't put your head out the window to breathe even what air Manhattan has to offer. My job was in a windowless cubicle on the 16th floor of another building. Sitting on a crosstown bus, or in the featureless lunch room of the office, I would think about what I had left behind and find tears running down my face. New York, of course, doesn't care about that, but I do have to say that in the whole 15 months I lived there, nobody was ever rude to me. They didn't have enough interest in me to be rude, I guess.
I spent a lot of time not really knowing what was going on, and feeling like all the expertise I had gained in Nepal was lost and useless, but looking back, I do have to say that I learned a lot there, and have found that period of my life to be a source of strength. Wish it could be otherwise, but it's really true that struggle makes us stronger!
It is my hope that this blog will become a community where people share their own stories about crossing cultures, so please weigh in with your comments!
Curiosity has always been one of my main motivations for quitting an old (well-known) job and getting a new one in a new, preferably exotic location. Following the example of my parents, who brought us up to be world citizens in a wide variety of previously unvisited locales, I have spent a lot of my working life moving around.
Like the time I went to live in Manhattan. I had actually visited there once before, about eight years earlier, but only for a day or two. Then, in 1995, after seven years of life in the hills in rural Nepal, in a house on a hill top with no plumbing or electricity, I was offered a job in New York, New York. Talk about culture shock! The noise in New York is horrendous. That's the first thing I remember. Then there was missing my quiet hill top with the beautiful view of the river below. My apartment in Manhattan on the 12th floor had windows that were designed only to open from the bottom, and no more than about 5 or 6 inches. You couldn't put your head out the window to breathe even what air Manhattan has to offer. My job was in a windowless cubicle on the 16th floor of another building. Sitting on a crosstown bus, or in the featureless lunch room of the office, I would think about what I had left behind and find tears running down my face. New York, of course, doesn't care about that, but I do have to say that in the whole 15 months I lived there, nobody was ever rude to me. They didn't have enough interest in me to be rude, I guess.
I spent a lot of time not really knowing what was going on, and feeling like all the expertise I had gained in Nepal was lost and useless, but looking back, I do have to say that I learned a lot there, and have found that period of my life to be a source of strength. Wish it could be otherwise, but it's really true that struggle makes us stronger!
It is my hope that this blog will become a community where people share their own stories about crossing cultures, so please weigh in with your comments!
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