always in a place to create

My thoughts of late have been centered on place. Place in time, place in the world, place in journey, place in relationship, place in conversation, place in learning, place in language. It's a good practice to step back and take stock of the places I have journeyed through, the places I'm in, the places I hope to find myself in some day.

Nelson, a good friend from high school, visited campus for a few days and as he, Marissa (also from high school) and I converged for some sharing of our places in life, we spontaneously mentioned words that embody our vision, our place in the world, and our hope. We share similar convictions about humanity, and we act on those convictions in differing ways. Nelson's word is synergy, Marissa's sustainability, and mine justice. We joked about making t-shirts and carrying a banner reading We are the Future! but there was deep contentment and seriousness behind those words. They reflect our conviction that we can never accomplish anything worthwhile on our own; our philosophies, actions, and beings are pieces of a whole that is creating something beautiful out of this mess of human existence. Nelson's passion is helping people find their authentic voices and helping those voices mingle and work together; Marissa's is helping us all learn to live so that the earth can continue to sustain us and so that we can continue to sustain each other; mine is helping us create fairer and more just systems so that we may all flourish. One of my favorite quotes from Terry Tempest Williams is "in my deepest moments of despair I am aware of the limits of my own imagination." Those words--synergy, sustainability, justice--reflect our urgent need to fight the despair that has such a grip on this world with communal imagination and praxis.

Those words got me thinking about our place to work to actualize our ideals. It seems that a diverse community is more important than ever because we can only exist in one place. Try as I might to get away from the fact, I will always be white. I will always claim Minnesota as my homeland and I will always come from a Lake Wobegon culture. In this interconnected world, my place carries certain responsibilities that I can't avoid. My place is not to run off to Africa to "help" Africans recreate their identity; my place is to stand up to my own government and demand it treat Africa with justice, so that Africans are allowed to construct decolonized identities (not that such action doesn't require a little running off to Africa...) My place is to listen to my own people, that I might learn from them who I am and that they might learn from me how our sense of entitlement is based on injustice. My place is to learn from the marginalized of our society so that I can speak to power in my culture. The beauty of a diverse community is that when we act in love and mutual respect, we each have a place. We each experience the joy that comes from working with others in different places to discover and bring about common truths.

I linked my title to a friend's blog because her latest entry, and my comments on it, lend meat to the backbone of this post.

To Hell in a Handbasket

I'm probably breaking some blogger code of conduct, but here's something I just posted on a forum about hell:

Racism.
Sense of entitlement because of wealth, race, religion.
the gospel of individualism.
Heterosexism.
Sexism.
Slavery.
War.
Artificial famines.
Survival of the fittest.
Commodified beings.

"And if you say that someone is worthless, you will be in danger of the fires of hell." These are the things that allow us to say someone is worthless. And because we call these things our gospels, we create hell. Here, now. If you're not suffocated by the heat of the struggle, if you're not burned by the fire of pain, you're insulated. If your eye is desensitized to the starving bodies, it is insulating you; gauge it out. If your hand is reaching to grab for more while your neighbor dies, it is insulating you; cut it off. For it's better to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown hell; than for your whole body to be thrown into the isolation of never knowing the beauty and courage that can be found when you shed insulation and dare to claim the dying child as your own child, when you dare to call her mother your sister and when you dare to love the Christ who is in each and every one.

It is indeed the power in our conviction to follow Jesus that saves us from hell. But hell is not a place to be travelled to; hell is where we relegate those we deem worthless. Sin births death, death to others and death to ourselves, and out of sin is created the hells of oppression and injustice. Thanks be to our rebellious savior, who proved that even the injustices and oppression of death can be overcome by the beauty of life and love.

We shall overcome, we shall overcome, we shall overcome one day.

And when we, too, being transformed by the renewing of our minds and the holy fire of the Spirit, seek to make Christ's gospel real--here, now--we beat back hell that was birthed by isolation and insulation, and we build God's kingdom--here, now--and love becomes our truth.