'When I read about the way abandoned orphan girls in China are tied to their bed rails and left to starve and die in state-run orphanages, I am very nearly moved to tears. But a year later when a conversation with a friend reminds me of the article, I realize that I have not shed a tear, uttered a prayer or even given it thought since the day I put down that newspaper article. I can move from torture on the evening news to touchdowns on Monday Night Football with almost the same mental and emotional ease as my channel changer.
Of course, much of this is perfectly natural and probably healthy. I do not aspire to be someone with a psychotic fixation on evil and human suffering. It is a poorly lived life that cannot experience joy, peace, laughter, beauty and mirth depsite all the oppression and injustice that mars the goodness of God's creation. If the evening news or the morning paper keeps me from taking my wife to a movie, from laughing at my three-year-old daughter's stories or from enjoying the exhiliration of a bike ride on a crisp fall day, then something is surely out of balance.'
Good news about Injustice, Gary A. Haugen, IVP books, 1999. p. 38
He goes on to say that there is a way of developping a deep compassion for the world, which also translates into action. It is through hope. Hope that full and abundant life is not out of reach. Hope which avoids us getting immobilised by despair.
I found this really helpful. Quite often I end up feeling guilty that I live a life where I have not just a roof but a nice roof above my warm bed at a night, enjoy food and friendship and family and so many good things. And yet I have also heard and seen with my own eyes, people who don't have these things. How to hold these two things together? How do you carry these stories in your heart and not become hopeless? How to avoid being compassion-less and callous but not veer towards what Haugen calls a 'psychotic fixation on evil and human suffering'?
I don't have the answer! But I like his point that it is a 'poorly lived life' which can't experience the full range of human emotions. Living richly then is part of the answer. Living life in all its fulness. The Joy and the Pain.
Sunday, 17 May 2009
Unreported World
Frozen rivers, quiet streets,
Frozen bodies, quiet deaths,
North Koreans fleeing across the border into China, with only a bag of chili powder to throw into soldiers' faces and a knife to end their lives if they get caught. If they do make it out alive, they are forced to live undercover as non-citizens in China, otherwise they will be sent back and be enprisonned in hard labour camps. Many women are traffiked into prostitution or sold as wives to Chinese men.
I have just watched an episode of 'Unreported World', a Channel 4 programme which I discovered recently. The title gives you a good impression of what it's about...Going for the stories which are beyond the usual reach of the media and reminding us there is always a lot more going on in our world than we hear about. In this case, a lot more oppression, suffering and pain.
If you are in the UK, you can catch up on past episodes here
Frozen bodies, quiet deaths,
North Koreans fleeing across the border into China, with only a bag of chili powder to throw into soldiers' faces and a knife to end their lives if they get caught. If they do make it out alive, they are forced to live undercover as non-citizens in China, otherwise they will be sent back and be enprisonned in hard labour camps. Many women are traffiked into prostitution or sold as wives to Chinese men.
I have just watched an episode of 'Unreported World', a Channel 4 programme which I discovered recently. The title gives you a good impression of what it's about...Going for the stories which are beyond the usual reach of the media and reminding us there is always a lot more going on in our world than we hear about. In this case, a lot more oppression, suffering and pain.
If you are in the UK, you can catch up on past episodes here
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
Grammar
It has just been pointed out to me that there is a grammatical mistake in my blog name...there is only one Wonderland and so it should read alice AU pays des merveilles...
I have recently discovered that there is an inner pedant in me which perhaps it's best not to indulge too often. I think it's because I like words and because I like the way language works. When copy editing, it's satisfying to be able to put in commas where sentences are being crippled by their lack. But sometimes I think I should return to some free-style poetry
and let the pedant
take a holiday
I have recently discovered that there is an inner pedant in me which perhaps it's best not to indulge too often. I think it's because I like words and because I like the way language works. When copy editing, it's satisfying to be able to put in commas where sentences are being crippled by their lack. But sometimes I think I should return to some free-style poetry
and let the pedant
take a holiday
Tuesday, 2 September 2008
Words from Chekhov...
In all the houses and streets there is peace and quiet. Out of fifty thousand townsfolk there's not one ready to scream or protest aloud. We see people shopping for food in the market, eating by day, sleeping by night, talking their nonsense, marrying their wives, growing old, complacently dragging off their dead to the cemetery. But we have no eyes or ears for those who suffer. Life's real tragedies are enacted off stage. All is peace and quiet, the only protest comes from mute statistics: so many people driven mad, so many gallons of vodka drunk, so many children starved to death.
Oh yes, the need for such a system is obvious. Quite obviously, too, the happy man only feels happy because the unhappy man bears his burden in silence. And without that silence happiness would be impossible. It's collective hypnosis, this is. At the door of every contented, happy man there should be someone standing with a little hammer, someone to keep dinning into his head that unhappy people do exist- and that, happy though he may be, life will round on him sooner or later. Disaster will strike in the shape of sickness, poverty or bereavement. And no one will see him or hear him - just as he now has neither eyes nor ears for others. but there is no one with a hammer, and so the happy man lives happily away, while life's petty tribulations stir him gently, as the breeze stirs an aspen. And everything in the garden is lovely.
[...]
'Never give up, my dear Alyokhin,' he pleaded. 'Never let them drug you. While you're still young, strong and in good heart, never tire of doing good. There's no such thing- there need be no such thing- as happiness. And if life has any meaning and purpose, that meaning and purpose certainly aren't in our happiness, but in something higher and more rational. Do good.'
Anton Chekhov: 'Gooseberries'
Oh yes, the need for such a system is obvious. Quite obviously, too, the happy man only feels happy because the unhappy man bears his burden in silence. And without that silence happiness would be impossible. It's collective hypnosis, this is. At the door of every contented, happy man there should be someone standing with a little hammer, someone to keep dinning into his head that unhappy people do exist- and that, happy though he may be, life will round on him sooner or later. Disaster will strike in the shape of sickness, poverty or bereavement. And no one will see him or hear him - just as he now has neither eyes nor ears for others. but there is no one with a hammer, and so the happy man lives happily away, while life's petty tribulations stir him gently, as the breeze stirs an aspen. And everything in the garden is lovely.
[...]
'Never give up, my dear Alyokhin,' he pleaded. 'Never let them drug you. While you're still young, strong and in good heart, never tire of doing good. There's no such thing- there need be no such thing- as happiness. And if life has any meaning and purpose, that meaning and purpose certainly aren't in our happiness, but in something higher and more rational. Do good.'
Anton Chekhov: 'Gooseberries'
Secret Millionaire
I've been watching this great programme on Channel 4 the last few weeks called 'Secret Millionaire'- the premise is that each week a millionaire goes to do voluntary work in some deprived area of Britain but is undercover. At the end of the 10 days the millionaire gives away money to the projects they have worked with. In a way, it's a gimmick, the amount of people they reach is small and the millionaires seem to get a lot of thanks for the 10,000s of pounds they give, even though it's a drop in the ocean of their fortunes. But I think it's got a really deep message. It highlights the incredible work so many voluntary organisations do and the secret suffering of many people living next door to us. Our neighbours. It gives the millionaires to be treated as 'normal', not seen for their money but for who they are. In each case, they have been transformed by the experience and not only give their money away but go away with plans to use their businesses for the good of society. Wallets and hearts with changed priorities.
Wednesday, 25 June 2008
mini-earthquake
Shymkent in an earthquake region and last night we had a very mini-earthquake. Since generally they only have little tremors it wasn't scary, just quite interesting to be shaking without willing it yourself to do so. But Central Asia in general does risk having a more serious earthquake- in 1966 300,000 people were left homeless in Tashkent (2 hours drive south of here) due to an earthquake 7.5 on the Richter scale.
Saturday, 21 June 2008
Inspiring people
One thing I loved about living here in Kazakhstan was the opportunity to go and visit organisations which were doing something positive about social and economic problems in their country. Spending a year studying and thinking about poverty has, at times, left me somewhat hopeless. If a country has no natural resources, nothing to trade and no investment, what hope for development? Now those questions still remain and when I look at a country like Tajikistan, where growth rates are declining and this winter saw people dying of cold and hunger, I wonder how the suffering of these people will be eased...(take a quick look at this link- a short slideshow about Tajikistan's winter crisis 2007/08: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/08/asia_pac_tajikistan0s_winter_struggle/html/7.stm)
But this week I have been in another town in Southern Kazakhstan, visiting some friends and the work they do here. They introduced me to some really inspiring people who are passionate about relieving the suffering of others. I found myself sitting around a table with local people who give me hope: one man works with the homeless bringing practical help and more, another hangs out with young drug addicts showing them the care they often lack, a lady tries to brighten the lives of disabled children with parties and trips, another wants to make sure people receive the social security benefits that they are due. The discussion was lively from the start, the passion clear. 'Sometimes I go to a house of a disabled person and they tell me they want to end it all,' one lady said, 'so I go to the shop and buy some cake and we sit and cry together for a bit and then we drink tea and eat the cake. Sometimes it's enough to just know someone cares.' Another man with dirt stained hands told us, 'I was one of those drug addicts and people wouldn't talk to me but these people did and now my whole life has changed'. Later a man from the Disabled Association of the city told me 'I invited able-bodied people to a camp with my disabled children so they could see that we are not like their stereotypes and by the end of the camp they certainly saw us differently rather than seeing us as different.'
In the West, there is a lot of cynicism. In academia, the critical eye is highly prized. After a year of Western academic study of the complexity of development it all seemed very complicated. Colonialism, neo-colonialism, World Bank hegemony, NGO co-option by the State, everything riddled with data problems...Now it's not that these things don't matter or that I suddenly think that academia is useless. But sitting with these inspiring people who don't receive massive grants from the UN, who often live on very little themselves, who were speaking with such passion about those in difficult situations and taking action, they have something very simple in common:
Love for their neighbour.
But this week I have been in another town in Southern Kazakhstan, visiting some friends and the work they do here. They introduced me to some really inspiring people who are passionate about relieving the suffering of others. I found myself sitting around a table with local people who give me hope: one man works with the homeless bringing practical help and more, another hangs out with young drug addicts showing them the care they often lack, a lady tries to brighten the lives of disabled children with parties and trips, another wants to make sure people receive the social security benefits that they are due. The discussion was lively from the start, the passion clear. 'Sometimes I go to a house of a disabled person and they tell me they want to end it all,' one lady said, 'so I go to the shop and buy some cake and we sit and cry together for a bit and then we drink tea and eat the cake. Sometimes it's enough to just know someone cares.' Another man with dirt stained hands told us, 'I was one of those drug addicts and people wouldn't talk to me but these people did and now my whole life has changed'. Later a man from the Disabled Association of the city told me 'I invited able-bodied people to a camp with my disabled children so they could see that we are not like their stereotypes and by the end of the camp they certainly saw us differently rather than seeing us as different.'
In the West, there is a lot of cynicism. In academia, the critical eye is highly prized. After a year of Western academic study of the complexity of development it all seemed very complicated. Colonialism, neo-colonialism, World Bank hegemony, NGO co-option by the State, everything riddled with data problems...Now it's not that these things don't matter or that I suddenly think that academia is useless. But sitting with these inspiring people who don't receive massive grants from the UN, who often live on very little themselves, who were speaking with such passion about those in difficult situations and taking action, they have something very simple in common:
Love for their neighbour.
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