God in Disguise: a guest appearance on Fuel Radio


Last week, I had the privilege of being interviewed as a guest on a friend’s podcast, Fuel Radio. It was fun to reflect with Rod Janz on the process of writing my book, God in Disguise, the lessons I carry with me from having been immersed in urban poor communities in India, and the way my spiritual journey has continued to unfold since my book was released last year. In particular, I enjoyed having the chance to intentionally remember the ways that failure and pain have unexpectedly become catalysts for the deepest healing in my life over the past few years. You can listen to the whole half-hour podcast here.

If you’ve read God in Disguise, I’d love to hear from you about how to book resonates (or doesn’t) with your own spiritual journey. Whether you’ve read the book or not, have you ever experienced an unraveling of your faith or your worldview? What happened next? Have there been times that you have found God in unexpected places, or found healing through what felt at the time like a dark and hopeless situation?

Is Hell the center of Christian faith? guest post for Greg Boyd

heaven-or-hell

A couple years ago, one of our sending churches withdrew financial support from Andy and me.

This came after a theological discussion with the pastor and staff about why we were in India. We explained that we wanted our lives in the slum to mirror the way that God chose to be with us when he entered into the human condition and into poverty through the incarnation, and we described the practical ways we had become involved in our neighbors’ lives.

Yet there was confusion over whether or not these things were part of Jesus’ message; whether they were “focused” enough to merit church support. As the conversation progressed, both we and the staff realized that we were operating under different assumptions about what “Good News” means, why Jesus came to earth, and what the mission of the Church is.

The pastor and staff were not careless or hard-hearted–they probably asked the same questions and handled the situation in much the same way as would many evangelical Christians across North America. They were simply acting out of a belief that hell is the central problem for human beings, and that saving people from hell through right belief is the Church’s primary purpose. Against the backdrop of looming eternal torment, any efforts to alleviate suffering in the here and now or to address its systemic causes in society quite logically seem like a waste of time, or even a dangerous distraction from our spiritual rescue mission.

I wrote a guest post about this for pastor Greg Boyd’s blog over at ReKnew Forum. Recognizing how often our faith is “hijacked by religion, politics, and the assumptions of the day,” Greg’s vision for ReKnew is to create a space for “believers and skeptics alike” to “ask tough questions and consider a renewed picture of God,” one that authentically reflects Jesus rather than the historical and cultural baggage we’ve layered on top of him.  Click on over to read my post.

I am writing a book.

Three days ago, we had the first snowfall of the season, and it’s still on the ground. Here in Canada, everything is cold and white right now, and I sleep under thick blankets, type next to a space heater during the day, and try to learn how to dress properly with layers and layers of wool. I still remember those TV infomercials a few years ago about “Snuggies,” the blankets with arms that looked like cultic robes when the ad showed what looked like a family of suburban Druids enjoying a nighttime camp fire in their matching fleece ensemble. Now I am cold enough to wear a snuggie around the house without shame, cold enough not to care whether I look like an infomercial from the last decade or a member of a pagan cult.Advent has just begun: the season of waiting for the first spark of hope in the dead of winter, of looking for signs of life in the midst of death. Even Christmas itself will not the triumphant victory of Easter–it will be the quiet celebration of hope born into the world, even while oppression reigns. Shepherds and wise men visit this child in secret, because baby Jesus will still have to flee Herod’s genocide and grow up under foreign occupation before he leads justice to victory and inaugurates the Kingdom. I feel the tension and the hope of this waiting, this hope that is stubborn but uncertain of when fulfillment and completion will come.

I look at squirrel and bird tracks in the snow on the roof outside my window as I edit the manuscript of my book. The scenes outside are so different from the ones that linger in my mind. I’m writing about my life in India: what it was like to be an outsider accepted into community across boundaries of race, religion, culture, and socioeconomic background. I’m writing about how life with Muslim friends shaped my own faith, and how confronting suffering in the lives of my neighbors who were materially poor has challenged me to make sense of where God is in the midst of all the pain. I’m writing about how Muslims and Christians and rich and poor need one another, about what it means for us to love our enemies, and about the changes that community brings in us as individuals and in our world. I’m primarily writing about my own journey, and the love that I have continued to discover no matter how far I travel in any direction.

The process of writing has been good for me. It forces me to be present to process rather than destination, and this is certainly a process over which I have only limited control and knowledge about how long it will take or what the final result will be.

But it’s difficult, because sometimes spending my days writing feels like living with ghosts—not only of my friends and neighbors in India, but of many of my own dreams, expectations, and self-definitions as well. Aside from that, daring to ask for help, to show my writing to others, or to even say out loud that I am working on a book brings my insecurities out of the shadows, revealing my fears about whether this story really will come together in the end, whether it will get published, what people will think about it (and about me) if it is published.

But I believe that it is a story worth telling, even a story that needs to be told, and so I keep on writing. I am struggling, not to bring characters to life, but to allow the vibrant life of the real people I have known to shine through the pages. I want you to see them, to care about them, to learn from them. I am still learning from them myself.

Advent has begun: the season of waiting, expectation, and hope. Whispered promises of new possibilities to come. I am living towards these possibilities, working towards what, as yet, I have never seen but still believe is possible. I struggle on despite my fears, my fresh memories of loss, and the uncertainties of the future.

I trust that new life can begin even in the dead of winter, that those whispers of hope are trustworthy, and that we are but the midwives of the dreams God wants to birth into this world.

Stay tuned.

A new beginning (and a poem from the ashes)

We’ve been in Canada for a month now. In some ways, it feels that we’ve been here much longer: we have been the eager recipients of hospitality in a loving community that has sheltered us and softened our landing in this new country. Even as new arrivals, we have shared most meals with friends, entered into daily and weekly rhythms of prayer and worship with others, played with children, and felt at home. It’s hard to overstate the importance of this as we begin to get our feet under us again. Just sharing the domestic sphere of cooking, cleaning, and common space with others brings a sense of belonging that is rare to find so quickly when one shows up in a new city without an existing network of relationships, or even a job. It’s ironic to think that we’ve moved into a “joint family” living situation only after leaving India, where we were surrounded by people who found it strange for the two of us to be living “alone”!

This community is centered around hospitality. When we briefly passed through this community several years ago, we were inspired to participate in extending this invitation of hospitality to neighbors who often brought their struggles with mental illness, addiction, prostitution, homelessness, or poverty into the house. Some of them are refugees and migrants. Others have been internally displaced within their own culture and society.

This time, however, we’ve returned to the community as strangers and foreigners in need of hospitality ourselves. This time, we feel most inspired by the hospitality that has been extended to us, from community members and neighbors alike. Community dinners at our house bring the whole diverse and quirky lot of us together, and it can be quite the adventure. The lines are blurred between who is hosting and who is being hosted; who is extending grace and who is receiving it. Several people from the neighborhood are long-time friends of the community who know what it’s like to live on the streets or to fight through an addiction, and they have become important partners in extending hospitality to others—they are some of the best cooks we have, they share their insight and their stories with us, and they offer compassionate, listening ears to newcomers.

***

We have yet to really process what it means to have uprooted ourselves from the slum in India and moved here. It will take time to unpack that experience; even our last day in the slum was stuffed full of the roller coaster of emotions I had felt throughout the time I lived there: waves of sadness, anger, tenderness, frustration, laughter, happiness, and grief. I felt exhausted by everyone’s desire to be with us as much as possible in those last hours. I felt overwhelmed by the intensity of their need. I felt humbled, too, by the gifts we received: one last, home cooked meal with our Indian family; hugs and kisses on the cheek from the little children who have become like nieces and nephews to us; a painting from my “little sister.”

“Just think,” our former landlady had told us earlier that week, “when you first arrived here, no one even wanted to offer you a room, because they didn’t know you. Now there’s not a single person in this neighborhood who isn’t sad you’re leaving.”

Those words express the heart and soul of what our time in India meant. By the time we actually walked out of the community, it felt like we were attending our own funeral. Thirty or forty people escorted us up to the main road in a somber procession and blocked traffic as they crowded around to hug us, say their final goodbyes, and flag down an auto rickshaw for us. Many people were sobbing openly. So were we, by the time we drove away. I feel many things about leaving, but in that moment the only thing I felt was immeasurable loss.

Sometimes these experiences elude the grasp of everyday language. They can’t find full expression in words of any kind, but poetry more closely approximates their meaning. I wrote some poetry a few days before our departure:

On the occasion of my leaving
this battlefield and second home,
strewn with unfulfilled hopes, half-discovered mysteries,
love, laughter, triumph, and sorrow,
a poem:

For the children locked up in dark rooms,
and the ones singing film songs, flying kites, playing marbles in the alleyway;

For the parents screaming at their children,
and for the mothers tenderly nursing infants; the proud fathers with toddlers in their arms;

For the women with broken bangles and bruised eyes,
for the grown-up boys who beat them;

For the men earning survival with their sweat and exhaustion,
and for the ones drowning in a malaise of alcohol and ganja,

For the feuds and fights and angry words,
reverberating off the narrow brick walls of the alleyways, and lodging in wounded hearts;

For the communal prayers also, and the generosity of neighbors:
meals for widows, and foreigners, and orphans;

For all the beauty and pain I have seen,
For the cruelty and the love.
Both have taken my breath away, in turns.

No victims here, and no heroes;
No one evil and no one righteous
(myself included)
All facets of the human heart laid bare
In these dusty alleyways and close quarters

Where there are no secrets
(except the ones we keep from ourselves),
And no illusions
(besides the ones in our own minds).

For all of us:
May we find peace
Instead of everything else we go in search of,
To fill the space where love alone belongs.

India is honest

A friend from Australia, visiting India for the second time, remarked that compared to his own country, India is very honest—honest in the sense that when you’re here, you can have no illusions about the injustice and suffering around you. It’s right in your face: income disparity, discrimination, sexism, poverty, disease. Rich and poor meet on the street, where wealthy men in their big SUVs bully and sometimes run over the poor men on bicycles. The rich and poor interact daily in homes, where the wealthy pay a pittance to impoverished servants who cook, clean, and sometimes even raise the children of the wealthy without ever gaining their respect.  The powerful abuse the weak in every arena of life: men harass and rape women, influential families bribe the cops to get away with land grabbing, murder, and everything in between; police and lawyers alike extort poor families for money with threats of their loved ones being indefinitely imprisoned otherwise. People make no secret of their dislike for dark skin and openly discriminate in marriage, the work place, and the community based on skin color. Restaurants and factories openly use child labor to create everything from furniture to motorcycles to potato curry.All of these power dynamics, and all of the suffering that results from it, are disturbing to watch. People’s arrogance, self-importance, prejudice, and blatant disregard for other human beings is infuriatingly obvious in the most routine daily interactions of Indian life. But my Aussie friend is right that there is something refreshing about at least having it out in the open. In our home countries, the child labor that goes into our home furnishings and wardrobe is hidden away in factories on the other side of the world, far away from the air-conditioned malls and classy stores where we actually buy our stuff. The disparity between the wealthiest and poorest members of our society has never been higher, but the spheres of the rich and poor are separate enough to keep them from ever interacting with each other: rich people don’t take the bus, poor people don’t go to private school, and poverty is contained in certain neighborhoods whereas wealth is contained in certain other neighborhoods—usually neighborhoods with gates or at least with a buffer zone of several miles of carefully landscaped distance between them and the nearest depressed area.

And so our prejudices remain intact, but we’re too tactful to voice them most of the time.

We hide them, even from ourselves.

Our politics are perfect, utterly correct, when it comes to language.

At least, usually this is how it is. But then a white police officer shoots a black teenager and then even if you don’t consider the event itself to be indicative of any larger problem, it’s impossible to observe the aftermath of the shooting and deny that our country has a race problem. The underlying fear and alienation that’s been there all along bubbles up to the surface: an entire [black] community rises up, refusing to consent any longer to a well-armed authority structure that has never had their interests at heart. The [white] police respond by declaring war on the community, betraying the deep-seated fear they have harbored all along of these people they consider sub-human; voicing aloud the belief that they are “f***ing animals” who have never deserved the full protection of the law anyway.

I find it ironic that so many people whose conservative leanings would generally lead them to denounce big government, expansion of government power, and any infraction of citizen’s rights have automatically sided with a police officer acting as judge, jury, and executioner of an unarmed teenager in a stunning corruption of the legal system as we know it. Furthermore, they continue to side with heavy-handed state violence against ordinary citizens exercising  their democratic right to protest.

I find it depressing that so many people whose Christianity should generally lead them to feel compassion and to side with the oppressed have instead sided with the oppressor, not only pontificating judgmentally and heartlessly about the character of the victim and how his execution was likely deserved (due to a $50 theft), but also condemning the community’s reaction to this unjust situation instead of calling out the injustice for what it is.

I think the reason for these strange reversals of loyalty in both cases is that the deepest loyalty actually lies along fault lines of race rather than religion or politics. If a white teenager had been killed, and if the protests were happening in a wealthy white suburb, then things would be different. Suspicion and judgment would fall on the murderer and not the murder victim. Sympathy would lie with the grieving family and their community rather than with the state apparatus. If the guns and the tear gas and the armored vehicles were pointed at “us” and not at “them”, then we would be quicker to recognize this as the blatant, evil, violent abuse of power that it is. The killer would be awaiting criminal trial instead of enjoying paid administrative leave from work.

When we look at how quickly this one man’s death has escalated into police firing tear gas and rubber bullets into a crowd of peaceful protestors from the safety of an armored vehicle, and protestors responding with rocks and now Molotov cocktails and bullets of their own, we realize that this didn’t start with Michael Brown. It didn’t even start with Trayvon Martin, though the blatant miscarriage of justice in that case certainly reinforced the message that the system—police, courts, public opinion—will automatically operate with a racial bias towards protecting and believing whites over blacks. This is part of a legacy of fear, hatred, and separation that is as old as our country, and it is a disease that will continue to plague our society until we decide to face the beast by exploring the dark fears and prejudices in own hearts, even and especially the ones we are not fully aware of. Healing ourselves and our nation will require admitting the ignorance on which so many of our attitudes and ideas are based, because we have been so busy justifying ourselves and defending our establishment to ever truly listen to and engage with the experience of the Other. As a white woman, I don’t believe that most of us white Americans have ever truly acknowledged the race situation in our country. We are too eager to “move on” with history, to sweep the sins of the past under the rug and encourage everyone to simply pretend that there are not still festering wounds and real-life, still-unfolding consequences of everything that has gone on before.

Many people have angrily pointed out the violence of some of the protestors in Ferguson, implying that perhaps Michael Brown had it coming because he was just as violent, or that this behavior demonstrates how  inherently violent the black community is and how their complaints are therefore invalid. It’s true that if demonstrations had remained entirely peaceful, they could have been an even more powerful witness to injustice by throwing the violence of the police into the sharp relief against the defenseless and brave confrontation of unarmed protestors. I am saddened that a few community members have muddied the waters by turning to violence as their expression of grief and anger, because paradoxically it is they—the powerless ones, the ones who have been wronged—who actually hold the power to transform the situation. The right to extend forgiveness and thus break the cycle of evil is theirs and theirs alone.

But don’t think for a moment that the violent actions of a few individuals invalidate the grief and anger of this entire community against injustice. They—and we—should be furious about the slaying of an unarmed black man for no apparent reason. We should remember that it was the systematized, unchallenged violence and disdain of the mostly-white police department over several decades that provoked the current violence in Ferguson.

To quote Paulo Freire, “Violence is initiated by those who oppress, who exploit, who fail to recognize others as persons—not by those who are oppressed, exploited, or unrecognized… It is not the helpless, subject to terror, who initiate terror, but the violent, who with their power create the concrete situation which begets the ‘rejects of life’… It is not the despised who initiate hatred, but those who despise. It is not those whose humanity is denied them who negate men, but those who denied that humanity… For the oppressors, however, it is always the oppressed (whom they obviously never call ‘the oppressed’…) who are disaffected, who are ‘violent’, ‘barbaric’, ‘wicked’, or ‘ferocious’ when they react to the violence of the oppressors.” –Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, p. 41

As a white American, I have been disturbed by the fear, suspicion, and anger that many other white people have been expressing on social media over the past several days. I am saddened by the knowledge that Michael Brown’s death, which should be a wake-up call for us to address the root issues of violence and alienation in our society, has instead become an occasion for rallying around the people who are like us. We are becoming more closed, more angry, less willing to listen, less willing to admit our own conscious and unconscious role in creating this broken, sinful, segregated society. Laws have been passed and progress has been made towards equality, but we still have a long way to go in this country if we are seeking racial reconciliation. Legal reform won’t take us the rest of the way, because the violence and separation that remains is within our own hearts and minds, and within our continuing isolation from one another. We continue in our unwillingness to suspend judgment long enough to enter into the experience and perspective of the people who aren’t like us. We’re too afraid of their anger (and perhaps too afraid of our own guilt or the awkwardness of dealing with strong, wounded emotions) to even hear them out.

I grew up in an upper-middle class white suburb, so I had very few black people in my life growing up. In college I had a few black friends and even attended a mostly black church for awhile, but with this limited experience I still cannot claim to know the first thing about what it’s like to be black in America. I have also lived for several years in cross-cultural situations in which I am the racial and cultural minority, but the color of my skin has always worked in my favor, commanding instant interest and respect. If I have ever been stereotyped, it has usually been as someone more qualified, educated, or wealthy than I actually am. I don’t know what it’s like for my skin color to work against me; to automatically trigger suspicion, fear, or disrespect.

If your background is at all similar to mine, then you share my ignorance.  It’s time for us to be honest about what we don’t know, to ask others to teach us, and to be willing to shut up and listen when they do.

As limited human beings with particular sets of experience, we all start off being ignorant of what lies beyond our own immediate field of vision. Taking on our society’s subtle assumptions, stereotypes, and prejudices as children is entirely natural, unavoidable, and doesn’t make us bad people. Moral decision only comes in when we begin to realize our ignorance. Then we have a choice: either remaining as we are, covering our ears, closing our eyes, or talking over others to claim that we already know; or opening our minds and our hearts to others in the humble admission that we do not know, that there are things about which we are wrong. We have the choice to be willing to learn, and to change.

The more tightly we hold onto the belief that we can already see, the more blind we become.

Unconditionally present

As many of you already know, we’ll be leaving India soon. It’s the place I’ve called home for more than two years now, and it’s a place that has gotten under my skin and become part of me forever; changing me irrevocably, mostly for the better. It’s a place that has expanded my capacity for love, and for pain, and it has opened my eyes in ways that perhaps nothing and nowhere else could have. It’s also worn me thin, exhausted me, and very frequently brought me to the end of myself. All of this means that leaving is a very significant event for me: a significant relief, and a significant loss.

I look forward to the season ahead of me, living in my own culture, speaking my own language, and having the space to process many of the things that have arisen within myself while I have been so engaged with the outside world. Thinking about the season ahead and the many welcome changes it will entail has sometimes made it more difficult to face the ongoing challenges of Indian life. But in spite of my hopeful expectations for the future, I feel deeply saddened by the separation that is on the horizon. We’ve begun having conversations with our friends and neighbors about our impending departure, and there have been a lot of tears—theirs, and mine. Outings together or even simple moments spent drinking chai in my friends’ homes have taken on new significance for me. Friends find excuses to come and visit us more often than usual: coming to borrow our rat trap and staying to talk for an hour; coming to practice reading and staying for the afternoon. We know that this moment is all we have.

So in spite of the expected stresses and unpleasant elements of the next few weeks, I have committed myself to trying to remain unconditionally present in order to be available for the unexpected gifts and joys in the next few weeks. The lanky, half-grown monkeys comically wrestling each other on the roof next to mine. The three-year-old boy from downstairs standing in the doorway and gleefully shouting my name at the top of his lungs with a welcoming smile as I come home after a few days’ absence. The buzz of life filtering into my room from all directions: Hindi love songs blaring from downstairs, the hum of the fan stirring the sticky heat from overhead, the crackle of boiling oil from my neighbor’s kitchen, children’s cries and laughter coming in through the window as they fly kites outside.

A few days ago A. and I were on our bicycle, headed to a small café for our date night, when a cool wind kicked up, blowing away the sticky heat of the day. Dark clouds moved in, lush, green foliage swayed and rustled in suspense above our heads, and soon cold rain was pouring down onto us as A. continued to peddle into the storm. We were caught in a monsoon downpour, and we loved it. We enjoyed the novelty of chill bumps on our skin instead of sweat, and the beauty of glistening drops of water dripping down through palm leaves, fruit trees, and other vibrant, jungle foliage. Rain turns the dusty streets instantly to mud, but India is beautiful in the rain. When we arrived at the café, we parked our bike next to the quickly-flooding street and laughed at our thoroughly soaked clothes before heading to the bathroom to wring them out. Date night had turned into an unexpected adventure.

The present isn’t always easy or fun.  A lot of the time it can be downright distressing, but I am slowly discovering that the present really is all we have. Future planning and reflection on the past are good and necessary parts of life, but we can so easily fall into living life one step ahead of ourselves (or several steps behind), so that “mental time travel” prevents us from ever truly engaging with life now. It is through choosing to be fully alive to the present moment that we unlock the transformative possibilities of joy as well as suffering, allowing both to become gateways into deeper connection with ourselves, with God, and with the people around us.

 

 

Scenes from daily life

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After coming back from celebrating the Hindu festival of Holi at a friend’s house on Monday: LOTS of food, and lots of colored powder being thrown around and smeared on everybody’s faces. We missed most of the giant color fight going on outside our hosts’ house, but on the walk home we saw plenty of people who were stained purple, pink, or green from head to toe. The streets are still splashed with color from the craziness.
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Dal, spices, chili peppers, and fruit sitting on our kitchen counter.
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Filling up our water drum for the day. This photo is actually a few months old– these days it’s gotten too hot to wear a shawl, even in the morning!
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Notice the two men at the very top of the photo, changing out the billboard: no ropes, no harnesses… and this photo wasn’t even taken from ground level.
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Sunset over the slum. The small black dots in the sky are kites.