Turning Our Thanks into Giving

Last week, I spoke with a long-time supporter who has been faithfully giving to Kingdom causes for many years. As she told me about a major outreach effort in her area, I sensed a real joy in her.

The conversation reminded me of something I’ve been thinking about lately as I work on a book I’m writing, designed to help readers integrate their cross-cultural encounters into their ongoing lives --

Gratitude.

After a Vision Trip to Africa earlier this year, I met for a reflective lunch with one of the travelers. "It's strange," she confided. "Before our trip, I thought I'd feel guilty for all that I have when I got home.  But I didn't feel guilty.  Instead, I felt grateful!"

Often, when someone says that their primary response after returning from an encounter with the extreme poor is gratitude for what they have, I cringe inside.  My mind immediately thinks of the old saw, "There, but by for grace of God, go I."  In other words, I have shoes. I have health-care.  I have air conditioning. I'm so very grateful I don't have to live like those poor suckers we just visited! 

I'm not satisfied by a response to poverty which is focused on thankfulness that I don’t share their plight.  I don't mean to suggest that guilt is any better reaction (even though guilt might at least cause us to actually do something).  But gratitude for my possessions is a terrible place to stop, as we see in Jesus' parable of the fat-and-happy farmer who built bigger barns because of his sheer pleasure in possessing such an abundant harvest.

"You fool" is how Jesus refers to that guy. I don't think Jesus was a fan.

But I could tell by my lunch partner’s countenance that there was something different about her comment. There was some active energy to it, and as I probed further, I discovered what it was: She had been moved by what she had seen, and was grateful that she could do something about it. She was thankful for what she has been entrusted with, because it would allow her to make a difference for others in ways that she otherwise would not have been able.  Yes, she has accumulated material means, and increasingly she has been drawn toward using those to lift the marginalized, those who didn’t win the Accident of Birth Lottery like you and I did.

Suddenly her opening comment made perfect sense to me: she was grateful for the accumulated resources that were at her disposal to allow her to make a significant impact for the Kingdom of God and for those in need. 

Gratitude, I discovered, though not an adequate response to the needs of the poor, can be a terrific place to start. And I've never been more thankful to hear an initial reaction of joyful gratitude.

Then last week, this same joy of grateful action flooded over the phone line as I spoke to a dear octogenarian giver. Her delight spilled over as she told me of a local outreach effort she has been able to launch, simply by providing the initial funding. Hundreds of people will be coming together in a few days to work together on this effort, and as she related the details to me, I could sense her humble wonder and elation.

A year earlier, she'd simply been sitting at her kitchen table with a friend, and they began discussing this outreach idea. She blurted out to the friend, 'I would sell [an asset] to help make that happen!' Now, what she has catalyzed—through a resource as benign as money—has turned into a city-wide undertaking! She was humbled, and she was grateful—grateful to have the resources to make a difference, and grateful to have had the courage to respond with generosity.  I rejoiced with her in her joy.  After all, we all want to make our lives count.

It’s really rather amazing that turning our thanks into giving can turn our giving into joy.

As we approach Thanksgiving and contemplate ‘What I’m thankful for…’ let's not answer that question with "...for what I’ve been given" but rather "...for what I've been entrusted with." That’s the Kingdom mindset, one which allows us to respond to the Spirit's promptings, the opportunity to truly make a difference in the lives of others, to make our own lives count.

And when we do this, gratitude isn't the end of the story. It’s the beginning of the adventure.

With gratitude for you,

Cory

All News is God News

The news reports following Hurricane Matthew have saddened and disturbed me. As they say, "all news is local news," I guess.  The reports on national news always seem to start with how close the hurricane is to the USA and what preparations Americans are making to get ready.  News from the devastation in Haiti, or even Cuba or the Bahamas now, is almost a footnote, practically an afterthought. The death toll in those places, already over 100 souls and bound to grow precipitously, apparently isn't as newsworthy as the boarding up of windows in Miami or a potential loss of electricity in South Carolina.

Of course, those things matter too, but who isn't my neighbor?

How different this is from God's view of the news (if anything is actually 'news' to God).  We do not seem capable as a society of assigning the same value to every person. American jobs are deemed more important than Bangladeshi jobs in this--and every--election cycle.  And now our news programs show that perhaps even American property is more newsworthy than Haitian lives. 

Where is the Reign of God in all this? Where are the so-called "people of God?" We seem to actually be far more myopic "people of America" with a few Bible verses thrown in to validate our self-righteousness.

I tip my hat to Bill & Melinda Gates, whose foundation's focus is predicated on the simple yet paradigm-altering notion that every human life has equal value. Imagine how that guiding principle would actually lead to radically different priorities than almost any of us live... what we read, how we donate, our political views, how we pray.

This is such basic Jesus stuff! Yet we ignore it completely by thinking, "Well, I know people in Florida. I don't know anyone in Haiti. And for the record, I don't even like Cuba."

A World Vision donor recently made a transformational gift to significantly expand our humanitarian work inside Syria.  He'd been presented with several options, prayed about them and called my colleague with his decision.  "I think I'm supposed to love my enemies" was all he said by way of explanation.  Let's let that soak in for a moment...

Not all news is good news, but it is all God news. I think I'm supposed to try to see the news, especially the people involved, the way God does.

Cory

October 2016

Ignoring the Good Samaritan

Today marks my 35th spiritual birthday, so I was especially eager to attend church. It was one of those services when the Anglican lectionary was prophetic. A preacher could scour the entire Bible for the most appropriate passage for current events and would do no better than one scheduled decades and decades ago for today in the round-robin lectionary cycle.

After the past week of police killings and the killing of police, the Gospel reading for today was the Good Samaritan parable (Luke 10:25-37). As my pastor John Taylor pointed out today, for 500 years the Jews and the Samaritans had been feuding, even at times inflicting fatal blows on each other.  Deeply entrenched distrust and spite plagued both sides. 

This long-smoldering enmity is the backdrop for a despised Samaritan to become the hero in the story Jesus told his Jewish audience. Being a Jew himself, Jesus could present such a story deftly, knowing just where Jewish ribs separate to neatly slip in the knife of conviction. 

Understanding that the story wasn't meant only for first-century Jews, Fr. John gave several real-life contemporary examples of equally selfless kindnesses in the face of the hatred that might 'humanly' be expected.  Then he spoke about the little kindnesses and “benefit of the doubt” interpretations we need to extend to each other in our attitudes and actions if we ever hope to have a Good Samaritan-like response in a crisis.

The parable of the Good Samaritan is perhaps Jesus' most famous story. Reaching beyond enmity and distrust with compassion is a challenge that has constantly stayed with us for 2000 years. And almost everyone seems to know the story, regardless of their faith journey.  To be a labeled a Good Samaritan is a wide-used compliment in many secular as well as spiritual contexts. 

It's JESUS 101. Anyone who knows anything at all about what Jesus stands for and what Jesus taught his followers knows the Good Samaritan story.

That's why such discouragement washed over me a few minutes later.  Midway through the sermon, my mind shot back in time just 48 hours to a meeting I had on Friday with three energetic World Vision volunteers.  They were commenting about several emails they've recently received and conversations they've had - as recently as that morning - where the common message was: "Hey, what's going on with World Vision? I thought they were a Christian organization. What in the world are they doing ministering to Muslim refugees?!"  

And the thing is, literally every person issuing this "complaint" would call themselves a Christian.  Meaning, a follower of Jesus.  In that context, this doesn’t seem to be a question that even deserves the dignity of an answer.

Is it possible to ignore Jesus' most basis, most well-known and well-loved teaching, and still claim to be his follower?  Is it possible to be shocked when an organization that claims to be animated by the teachings of Jesus actually does things Jesus tells his followers to do?

Jesus never created a so-called "Christian subculture.”  But there was a culture Jesus talked about until he was blue in the face.  It was the topic he discussed until he was practically a broken record.  He called it "the kingdom of God" or "the kingdom of Heaven." We too-mindlessly pray for it to come every time we say the Lord's Prayer: "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven."  

Our assignment is to show forth the signs of that culture, of the kingdom coming on earth, just like the Good Samaritan did. "Let me give you a picture of the Kingdom of God," Jesus says over and over, and then he proceeds to tell a story, a parable, an illustration of what it will look like when we live that Way. (As in, “This is the way; walk in it.”)

I agree with Fr. John: if we're going to get through this season of mistrust and enmity and election accusations, we're going to have to embrace and exercise Jesus' teaching in the small things… our interactions, our attitudes, our distrusts. 

When Jesus called us to be salt and light, I don't think he meant we should pour that salt into the world's wounds or use our light to scorch others or add to the world's heat.  For those of us still smitten by the Good Samaritan, Jesus has one singular instruction: "Go and do likewise."

Cory

July 2016

Once Upon A Path

An allegory: 

Once upon a time, there was a World Vision Area Development Program (ADP).  

And in that ADP there was a lovely latrine, which World Vision had taught the community to construct at a school.  This latrine was even called a "VIP Latrine" (meaning ventilated improved pit latrine).  The latrine had several private enclosures, for boys and also for girls, both younger and older, even one for menstruating girls.  This last enclosure even had a hand-washing facility.  Many girls now stayed in school for years longer because they had a private place to clean themselves during menstruation.  They felt understood  and respected for the first time in their lives.  

Many other new ideas and lifesaving measures were introduced into the ADP, as well. The community was so proud of the changes that they officially changed their name to Progress. 

Some years later, World Vision completed its work in Progress ADP.  It was a sad day when the World Vision staff left, but there was a big celebration with speeches from the regional governor, a cabinet minister, the local chief, and numerous community members who gave testimony to the impact of the improvements which had come to their area as a result of World Vision's efforts.  Several young women who had actually gone on to complete university specifically mentioned the VIP latrine at their school, and credited that latrine with keeping them in school against all odds at a decisive point in their lives.  It was a wonderful and fulfilling celebration for everyone.  

Yet, as the World Vision vehicles drove away, you would have thought the community had just seen Elijah taken up by the Lord's chariot.  The people of Progress felt very alone. So they tried very hard to remember and practice what they had learned from World Vision. 

Soon after that seeming "day of ascension", back at the school, those now-aging VIP latrines were creating such an odor that no one wanted to use them anymore.  Besides, now the latrine doors were off their hinges and no one could fit them back again, because the bricks had settled akimbo over time and set the doorjams ajar.

But there was hope on the horizon! The regional government had just announced that water and sewer lines were being constructed along the main road, and communities could tie into the lines with proper connections.  A new toileting facility could be constructed with actual flush toilets and sinks with running water!  This could be just what the school needed; it could be the answer to their prayers!

But the community members of Progress remembered their dear friends, their teachers really, from World Vision.  World Vision had taught them speficially how to construct VIP latrines, with concrete platforms and a hole in the center for squatting over.  They had built hand-washing stations which could be filled by the bucketful, and even ingenious tip-taps for each home which could tip over a small bottle of water from a peddle and string contraption which didn't require touching anything with soiled hands.  

"That’s the way World Vision taught us to do it!," some zealously shouted during the community meeting where they would vote on putting in sewers and water pipes.  "Why spend the money for these new gizmos we don't understand?" yelled one man. A woman joined in, "World Vision taught us how to use the latrine, and the tip-taps work well enough. We should stay with what was clearly taught to us by World Vision. We trust them, and they  never told us that flush toilets and metal sinks were good for us."  Their hearts were stirred as they recalled the big celebration, where the praises of the VIP latrine had thrilled everyone. 

And with that, the community voted to not bring in water lines and sewer pipes. Over time, usage of the VIP latrine continued to dwindle, disease went up, school attendance for teenage girls went down, and slowly the community reverted to its former unhealthy, unhappy state.

Though in their minds they were still being faithful to what they'd been taught, Progress had stopped progressing. 

I hope this story has never happened, and never will!  The purpose of World Vision's work is to put communities on a path of development, not a destination.  The "software" principles -- such as banding together for synergy, of everyone having a voice, of embracing new possibilities – are far more important than the  "hardware" particulars of development such as water pumps, latrines, granaries, etc. The specifics come and go, but the principles are designed to help the community continue to move forward over time as they face new challenges and opportunities.  Anything less than this must ultimately be considered failure.

And yet, and yet….. Why is it in the Christian church, we are like the people of “Progress”, focusing on the specifics, and missing the universal principles of Jesus?  Over the decades and centuries, we’ve stumbled over women's rights and ordination, slavery, equal rights and power for every group under the sun...because we haven't been under the Son's tutelage, we haven't continued on in the direction he showed us.  His actions, perhaps even more powerfully than his words, spoke of breaking down walls. Yet we often focus only on the specific walls Jesus broke down, not on the guiding principle of being wall-breakers. So we celebrate the walls he brought down, and instead of bringing down the walls that exist in our generation, we often become those most zealous for keeping them up.

Did Jesus become “the author and perfector of our faith” by giving us the final word, or by showing us the way forward, that we might continue along that path, after his ascension?

We are supposed to be the people of the Way, yet oh how often we are merely the people of the Destination.

Workers, Not Master Builders

Twenty-five years ago today, on May 17, 1991, two World Vision leaders were gunned down on the streets of Lima, Peru as they stepped from their vehicle to enter the national office that morning. Though the crime was never prosecuted, all evidence pointed to the then-notorious guerrilla group, Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path.

It was a dark day.  Canadian Norm Tattersall, acting Director of WV Peru, died on the spot. Colombian National Director Jose Chuquin, who received 22 bullets, died of his wounds on May 28.

Not long before that, Norm taught an adult Sunday School class that Janet and I attended for a year, at a church across the street from our kids' high school. As I recall, his wife later moved back home to Canada.  I don't know what became of Jose's wife and family of five younger children. But without question, both families were shaken to the core, if not broken.

Two months later, World Vision lost three more staff, Peruvian nationals whose bodies and vehicle were never found, and for a few months we closed the office there in order to not put the staff at further risk.

In World Vision's Seattle-area office, there is a small Visitor's Center that contains a memorial to those staff members who have lost their lives in service to the poor and God's Kingdom. Their names appear translucently as images over running water, scrolling slowly down with the silently spilling substance, a reminder of the transcendent yet transitory nature of our existence. Norm and Jose Chuquin are remembered there, along with the others. For me, it's a sobering and silencing experience to pause with prayer and thanksgiving as I read dozens of names from disparate cultures yet who share this common distinction. And my breath always stops a bit when those two names appear.

It's a sobering reminder of the price some of our colleagues pay... not only World Vision workers pay this price of course, as we've seen lately in Syria with deaths from MSF (Doctors Without Borders) staff and from other groups.

In addition to their lasting individual contributions to World Vision's work and ethos, Norm and Jose teamed up a year before they were killed to propose more intentional work be done in economic development. This was only months after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the crumbling of communism, and a time when market capitalism threatened to leave the global poor behind.  World Vision leaders in Latin America approved their recommendation and hired a leading expert in the new innovation called "microfinance." This eventually helped lead to the creation of VisionFund, World Vision's wholly-owned microfinance subsidiary, which today creates or sustains well over 1,300,000 jobs annually and makes small loans to over one million borrowers each year.

Reflecting on this part of Jose and Norm's legacies, I'm reminded of the wonderful poem attributed to Bishop Oscar Romero, a tireless advocate for the poor and a vocal critic of violence, social injustice and state-sponsored repression. Bishop Romero was himself gunned down, as he celebrated Mass in San Salvador.  The poem-prayer reminds us: "We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders..."

We are only the workers.  But the Master Builder takes our humble efforts and can accomplish amazing things over time which we may never see.  In fact, the older I get, the more my faith clings to this.

  

In honor of Norm, Jose and the many others over the years and even centuries, as well as those to come, I close with the full poem:

It helps now and then to step back and take a long view; the Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.

Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.

No prayer fully expresses our faith.

No confession brings perfection.

No pastoral visit brings wholeness.

No program accomplishes the church’s mission.

No set of goals and objectives includes everything,

This is what we are about.

We plant the seeds that one day will grow.

We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.

We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.

This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the

Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.

We are prophets of a future not our own.

Amen.

Fading Memories

Some photos, a few faces, are still etched in my mind.  After 30-plus years for some, I'd like to say they are there "forever", permanently burned on the pixilated screen of my memory. But I know better now.

In some darkened file folder, I still have the photos of my first and only visit to India in 1984, where we had an audience with Mother Teresa, and of my first-of-many trips to Ethiopia, in 1986, shortly after the devastating drought and famine there wiped out an estimated one-million souls.  As I flip through those photos now, I am ashamed at how little I remember about the vast majority... the names, the stories, why I chose to keep a certain memorable photo with an “unforgettable” story behind it that I can no longer remember.  

Memories fade.

I've damaged some of those photos by writing on the backs of them—names, stories, details—and others by adhering stickers with similar information. But those notes help me remember and honor the experience.

Last evening, my neighbor Brad told me that his father had served as a paratrooper in World War II.  As half Native American, bearing a Germanic name, he came under plenty of abuse.  Since his father’s death, Brad now possesses quite a unique collection of war memorabilia: the lapel pins, cuff buttons, or coins his father removed from each person that he or a soldier in his unit had killed during the war.

His father’s comrades-in-arms would get very angry, afraid that he might get into harms' way simply in order to "collect a souvenir." But for Brad's father, that wasn't the driving purpose at all.  How could he explain? His Native American heritage compelled him to always carry with him a memento of each life. He felt responsible to keep something of that person “alive” as a way to honor the sacredness of each unique human being, wartime enemies included.

What a beautiful extension of the spirit we ought to carry when we encounter other cultures. I usually travel for my work, so it’s true that I need to be able to faithfully share those experiences with others afterwards.  But another large part of my motivation has to do with stewardship—that same responsibility Brad’s father felt, to treasure those people and encounters that God puts in my path.

My methods have changed considerably--from illegible journal entries hand-scribbled onto a notepad, to blazing thumbs speeding across my smartphone keypad, edited on the plane home. Someday soon this method too will be arcane. I've gone from having a few precious rolls of film to unlimited photos on a memory card... far more than I could ever remember the stories behind. Culling and curating those few best photos for others to see and absorb is sadly becoming a lost art. 

Sometimes, I'm tempted to forget that photos are stories, too. Exceptional photos need no words to have their affect, but you can be sure those are the rare exceptions. And in the quest for the perfect picture worth those thousand words we can easily lose any personal connection with the human dialog and connections happening right in front of us.

I suppose I learned to be a chronicler from my father.  When I was five-years-old and our family of 6 was crammed into a two-bedroom cracker-box house, my dad frustrated my mother by purchasing a console reel-to-reel tape recorder. This clumsy device, with its giant spools of fragile exposed magnetic tape which were regularly getting mis-spooled, broken or eaten by the machine, became a nearly-buried treasure in the attic. 

Back then for a few years, my dad would gather us around the recorder on some cold, dark North Dakota winter's night to interview me and my three younger brothers. When we quickly ran out of anything to talk about, he'd start singing a song or would ask us to sing one.  Then afterwards he would rewind the tape and we would "listen to how it sounds" and laugh at hearing our own voices. Tape was expensive, and often he would record over parts of past recordings with new material, losing the old forever and leaving mostly snippets for posterity. 

My young father was only 25 years old then, but amazingly prescient: he died as a young man of 40 years in his sleep, from an undetected brain aneurysm. For the four decades since then, those few recordings have been some of my clearest and dearest glimpses into my dad. He was funny, he was an organizer, and he was a closet crooner in the Frank Sinatra era.  We all learned to sing the old songs thanks to my dad, and my brothers and I still sing a few of them when we get together.

Last year, my wife Janet gave me one of the most meaningful gifts I've ever received, albeit with considerable effort on my part. Janet's amazing gift was the chance to record something "with" my deceased father, using one of those old reel-to-reel fragments, now digitized. I was able to compose three harmony parts around the largest fragment, thanks to what I've been learning about Barbershop harmony, to create an a Capella ‘quartet’—with a bonus.  On the new recording, there are five voices: I'm singing three parts as a 60-year-old, while harmonizing behind my 26-year-old father and my 6-year-old self.  

What an honor!  For a couple of months, I’d focused all my attention on how to approach the project and do it justice, working on it in my spare time, mostly late at night. So it wasn't until I was on my way to make the recording that the incredible holiness of the experience washed over me.  

Had my dad not captured those memories in the first place, as they were happening, none of it would have been possible. He had the foresight to see the preciousness of the memories we were making back then, and to capture them as best he could. Fifty-five years later, his chronicling provided me the chance to relive some of those experiences and to receive one of the greatest gifts I'll ever get.  And now my children and grandchildren, my siblings and my dad's siblings, all have both the old and new recordings.  I believe that I was able to honor my father’s memory in his way... and that it will help mark my own life.

When people in disparate cultures give us the gift of their time, attention and interactions, we owe them something back. Our experiences are not intended for voluntourism or prophylactic voyeurism. They are not for our entertainment or for the “Temp” file on our brain’s hard-drive. They are for our transformation.

Can we believe that? …that God and the universe want to tell us something, that our experiences are not accidental? Rather, they are gifts to be received, treasured, remembered and contemplated.

For me, honoring and stewarding those gifts is what note-taking and journaling, chronicling and recording are all about. I’m so grateful to my dad for modeling that commitment. And, much as Brad’s father willingly made great efforts to honor the sacredness of each life, we all have the opportunity to honor the sacredness of each encounter and person along our own journey.