A couple weeks ago my husband and I were discussing the financial challenges of churches all over the country given this economic depression. A friend of mine, however, a week before, had pointed out that during troubling times, people flock to the churches for support and inspiration, so the perspective of hardship all depends on whether you’re counting people, money, even faith.
The Hispanic Mission where I serve as a Pastoral Assistant has a Benevolence Fund, and once a month there is a benevolence offering to replenish the fund that periodically gets distributed to families that find themselves encountering great hardship or great need over the year. What is amazing about the giving of a community in which many are struggling is that on the first Sunday of the month, Benevolence Sunday, the offerings are almost always substantially abundant. People seem to understand that if they do not give, the fund cannot replenish itself, and that they are just as likely to be the person in need as their neighbor, so they give with generosity.
My husband and I discussed how during a time of economic downturn the Church is actually blessed with this incredible opportunity–to become just the institution it was always instructed to be, one which sustains the community, and grows people together by sharing resources and sharing faith. Where do most people go when they experience economic hardship? Perhaps they turn to their relatives, to the government, or to second or third jobs, but what if they felt there was a community that would stand behind them not just financially, but spiritually?
What I think is most empowering about this model for the Church is that in my experience, when the church shares its sometimes limited resources with its people who need it most, that gift is returned six or sevenfold. While with such a model, we have to be careful not to encourage people to simply give to themselves, but in a time where our country is in such great need, and its people are struggling to get by, if this concept of benevolence increases the concept of community, of love, mutuality, and vulnerability, I think this giving is certainly doing the work of the gospel. With such a vision, a community in need might be able to use a benevolence fund for mission in the months where hardship has not landed on its members, and as such the greater community might be strengthened. I’d like to know your thoughts, but for me, I feel as though I have reencountered the gospel of possibility, the beauty of the community of the Christian Church.
I had an opportunity to hang out with two strong, beautiful women who are very good friends this evening, and the conversation ranged from politics, to boys, to stem cell research!, and onto spiritual direction. Turns out one of my friends and I have been incredibly blessed by our experiences with spiritual directors (as has my husband), and I wanted to share. I started meeting with a spiritual director in my final year of seminary, when I was thinking through my future goals and direction, because my future husband had had such a profound experience of learning about himself and his relationship with God through talking through his experiences with a spiritual director in seminary as well. The meetings usually consist of a person reflecting on his or her life with a trained spiritual director listening as a guide for where God may be speaking or moving or leading he or she in his or her life.
I met again for the first time since last year around this time with my spiritual director, and the experience was one of great clarity and discernment. We so infrequently stop to think about the direction our lives are headed from God’s perspective, and I mentioned to my friends this evening that spiritual direction is an experience of having a trusted advisor see and advice you based on who you are as a sacred being. I find the experience revelatory, refreshing, and rejuvenating, yielding new perspectives on my life and on my life as a spiritual being.
I promise not to report on my health status at all times (after all, what could make for a more boring blog?), but suffice it to say, this weekend did not bring much more healthiness to our little family. With my husband and I both feeling sick last night, the last thing I wanted to do was go into the Writing Center to work an extra March shift.
This is my third year working at the Princeton University Writing Center, and I worked at the one at my college for three years as well, but last night reminded me that given the right student, it never really gets old.
I’m not one who feels gifted as a teacher, but tutoring writing can be wonderfully collaborative. That’s what I love about it- the ability to talk through ideas together, to think together, and even write together. When I’m lucky, I get the sense that I have truly been helpful to someone else, whether just by calming his or her nerves or allowing she or he to think differently about a topic, perhaps find some much-needed confidence and inspiration. Last night was one of those nights, and despite my coughing fits, it was greatly rejuvenating.
Just thought I’d share… Now, what is rejuvenating to you?
Okay, so our front porch looks nothing like this, but the point is, that we have one. And that is where I got to sit today for about thirty minutes in the almost 60 degree weather to do some reading for class, albeit on a Friday afternoon, followed by some devotions. And that got me to thinking, that one of the few perks of being sick this week, is this command from on high, to slow way down and appreciate the budding tulips my husband has planted, the beautiful weather, and the opportunity to get some studying done on a Friday afternoon even if it is at the mercy of being sick. It is also encouraging to see signs of spring, making me feel like I can’t be sick too much longer, and I suppose I can’t stay away from blogging much longer either. It’s good to be back.
I feel like God’s been whispering at me this week, do you ever feel that way? It’s whispering that’s probably a little feverish–no wonder I actually heard it. Anyway, I had this really convicting conversation with an Anthropologist friend of mine on Monday, the first day of our break week here, in which our thoughts converged over our eagerness to “get into the field,” to travel, to meet real people and do “real research.” We identified how frustrating it can be to sit in a classroom and bat around theoretical ideas seemingly without purpose.
But he also stopped me in my tracks to remind me that he as someone how admittedly cares about the whole world, he tries to remember that it is disingenuous to presume that there is more to be done “out there” than here. When I translate this into ministry (which I tried to in another God-whispering conversation with my husband), it is doubly convicting: the words of that song “use me here” keep echoing.
I can’t keep missing the moments for pastoral care in this place because I’m assuming there’s something more important to be done somewhere else. One rather troubling yet apparent fact that pastors more than anyone must know is that there is brokenness everywhere. everywhere.
So my anthropologist friend essentially reoriented my perspective on ministry and also did something else powerful for me: he helped pull together the bifuracted worlds I sometimes feel like I’m living in. And it reminded me that it’s especially not a bad thing that I inhabit the worlds of anthropology and ministry–the two disciplines can check one another in my quest to be a person that can truly impart grace to another.
Okay, enough big thoughts for this morning. I’ve got to go play some flag football.
The “Note on Alms” is all but a two page passage in Marcel Mauss’s famous sociological essay entitled “The Gift” in which this author endeavors to characterize the relationship between giving, receiving, and the obligation to return the gift in tribal societies. Mauss begins to liken the idea of charity to playing God while giving credence to the basis of justice that was previously evident in religious concepts, much like the gift-giving rituals he observes and comments on:
The Arab sadaka originally meant exclusively justice, as did the Hebrew zedaqa; it has come to mean alms. We can even date from the Mischanaic era, from the victory of the ‘Poor’ in Jerusalem, the time when the doctrine of charity and alms was born, which, with Christianity and Islam, spread around the world. It was at this time that the word zedaqa changed in meaning, because in the Bible it did not mean alms. (Mauss, “The Gift,” 18)
It seems natural that with unequal distribution of wealth and religious mandates to give to the poor, we have come to understand this vision of justice for the world in terms of charity, but it has always seemed to me that the power of the concept of justice is that it does not call people to give up things they have no need for and discard them onto the poor; rather it envisions that each one of us gives up something we truly need to acquire something else we truly need as human beings. It requires redistribution of wealth, an act that is much accomplished in Mauss’s observation of gift-giving societies.
In Mauss’s sytem, a gift does not impoverish another person, because it places an obligation upon that person to give back, and of themselves; furthermore, gift produces relationship in these societies, and enhances solidarity. How does this reflection from Mauss challenge our religious notions of charity and justice when it comes to our own giving? How are we looking to not just change the inequality in the world for the moment, but for eternity…is this not the kingdom of God on earth that we hear so much about?
Just some thoughts…would love to hear yours.
“Reading Contemporary Ethnography” is the title of my favorite class this semester and my favorite part of the week. On Thursday afternoons I always have this sense of making it through, since I have three classes on Thursday, and this is the last one. We’ve read all these crazy, gigantic books (Market Day in Provence, A Season in Mecca, and Travels with Tooy), but there’s only 4 people in the class, one of which is the professor’s husband! and it is such a great mix of conversation and critical thought. Yesterday our professor shared her photos from her field work in Tamil Nadu, India; she is such a breath of fresh air in this rigorous academic environment, not that she isn’t brilliant heself, but she takes every opportunity to encourage each of us to study what we love, and even tells us not to worry too much over little papers and things.
“I didn’t do well in everything in life, but life always finds a way,” she told us yesterday in her thick French accent. And then in her boisterous style, she told us all, “I always say, don’t compare, don’t despair, just keep going with what you love!”
“Wo shi nu.xue.sheng, wo ye shi zhong.guo xue.sheng.”
In pinyin, without all the accents to denote the tones which I sure don’t know how to make on a blog post, this means roughly, “I am a girl student, and I am also a Chinese student.” It’s one of the few things I know how to say after taking up Chinese as part of my graduate studies in Anthropology three weeks ago. Much of this thinking toward China has been going on subconsciously, perhaps, for awhile. My advisor at Davidson shamelessly pushed me to go to China (his own interest was in studying the Catholic Church in China), and my husband has been there several times and loves talking about Chinese culture.
But it is only recently that I’ve not only thought about expanding my linguistic and global knowledge to include China, but I’ve also started to think about how international adoptions (1/4 of which are Chinese baby girls) are connected with a changing development narrative. I have all sorts of questions about international adoption, colonialism, and culture, many of which were fragmented in an emotional way after watching a silly Lisa Ling spot that my Chinese neighbor over at Butler sent my way. The little Chinese phrase I put above marks some of my confused emotion: in Chinese classrooms today there could be about 28 boys to just 11 girls, while children in America are growing up with little Chinese sisters who, of course, can’t speak Chinese.
Perhaps some of you will watch the video and understand the complicated saga of international adoption. There was something eerily meaningful and touching about seeing these families come together, seeing these Chinese baby girls lifted out of the hundreds of cribs in their orphanages to come to America, but then there were also moments when I cringed–like when one of the fathers proudly says the Chinese name of his daughter which will disappear forever for the American one he and his wife have picked out. Couple all this alongside the growing gender disparity in China in a country where boys are favored (and for good reason–in the countryside, boys will stick around and care for their parents in their old age, while girls will move away) and girls are discarded, and you have not only questions for our country in terms of global responsibility, but questions that in just a few generations will powerfully effect the world, like it or not.
In this way, I am overwhelmed by how much I have to learn even to approach zhong.guo, the middle country, China, but I am also compelled to try to study in and about China. No matter where I go, I will encounter Chinese influence, and I want to understand this country and its people better; as our philosophy of anthropology seems to go, it will no doubt, help me understand myself and my fellow Americans better as well.
…asks my Russian-Czech acquaintance/new English tutee.
She, not surprisingly, is well-versed in Russian and Czech, and her English isn’t so bad either. My day, meanwhile, began with stuttering new Chinese phrases and ended with a full-out Chinese 101 quiz, the first of many; this conversation with my new tutee took us to the Czech Republic (I had to try to explain to my new friend why we Americans say theCzech Republic but not theSouth Korea, etc.) and to a part of Russia I had never heard of, and to marriage customs in both places. The ability to communicate across language barriers is not unknown to Princeton, and something I cherish about this place. My new Russian friend tells me she loves Princeton, because the town is not too big, and it has “a spirit of studying.” I am suddenly blessed by her idiosyncratic English. “Can you say that?” she asks me. “Yes, and it’s quite poetic,” I answer. Perhaps she is the one teaching me today.
And on the bus, on the way home, I sat down to read a book about a Morrocan man’s pilgrimage to Mecca. What a blessing to be in a small corner of the world and know at so many moments of one day that the world is not quite so very far away.
(This picture has only a little to do with this post- mostly, it made me laugh…)
So a lot of you know that I am a closet Christian music fan, and if not, well I’m coming out of the closet. I was praying and thinking tonight and heard this song, and though it’s not the most impressive musical piece, I remember playing it in worship the first year of seminary and remember how meaningful the lyrics were to me back then. They were equally confounding and meaningful tonight when I heard the song. The song is such a difficult prayer, the prayer of our lives, and I wanted to share it. The Christian life is so challenging, but this song brought a lot of things into focus for me tonight. May you be blessed by it, too.
Use Me Here
Use me here, where I am
I’m not gonna pray anymore that You’ll change your plans
Despite my fear, I place my life in Your hands
the future can wait, tomorrow might be too late,
So Jesus use me hereI lay my heart’s desires at Your feet, oh Lord
Take all the plans I’ve made and all my dreams
Blinded by triumphs of tomorrow I’ve let sin control today
So many drowning within reach, Father it’s time
You heard me say…I tell myself I want to know Your will, oh Lord
Still I confess I’ve had plans of my own
But from now on I plan to listen to Your will and to obey
No matter what the future holds I’m gonna live for You today
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Written by Darin McWatters and Tim Brinkman
Copyright 1997 Antimony Music/Lustiminosity Music
