It's Not the Right Time for a Crisis

It's not the right time to be bringing up another humanitarian crisis. I can't be seen as the constant bearer of bad news. People won't want to open my emails or take my calls.

And frankly, I'm tired and overwhelmed myself. Maybe the rest of the world can deal with this new famine in East Africa; my little corner would like to please sit this one out.

But then I found myself editing a colleague's email alert which she's faithfully sending to her constituents, that she could end on a hopeful note such as … 

As you’ll read in the LINK, “Famine is a silent killer, but it’s not unstoppable.” The reason one-million people died in the Ethiopia famine of 1984-85 was our lack of ability to provide help in time. The world has proven since then that we can save lives—save children’s lives—by raising the alarm far and wide, and by our compassionate response.

Deborah is letting her donors know—she is raising the alarm far and wide. So far, I have not. By my actions—or in this case, inaction—I am deciding that the lives of those on the edges of life don't matter as much as not annoying my readers or distracting or discouraging those faithfully involved in other poverty issues.

And truthfully, I don't want to expend the emotional energy to take on another crisis. I don't feel I have it to give. But here's the deal: I don't get to decide when a crisis happens. I only get to choose if I am still called to be a voice for those in need who are without a voice.

"How can famine even happen in this day and age?!"  That was the frustrated exclamation of Deborah's father when she told him about the situation. Aren't we past starving children? Didn't we solve this after the Ethiopia Famine of 1984-85? We did our 'bit' back then. Didn't we rid the world of that spectre?

The conscience and awareness of the world was changed through that catastrophe. We learned that drought does not have to lead to food shortages, and food shortages don't have to lead to famine. Actually, nowadays it’s fairly rare. But, when it does happen, we also learned we could do something about it.

As Rich Stearns wrote: “Hunger, even lots of it, isn’t enough to earn a famine declaration. People need to be dying on a daily basis, at a rate of more than two in 10,000. That’s like 1,600 people dying every day in New York City— of starvation. Famine only sets off an alarm when a serious situation has already turned tragic.” (With over 20 million people now at risk in four countries, that is an apt analogy.)

That alarm has already been set off by the UN’s official declaration of famine in two of the countries.  We simply haven't heard about it or, like me, we've conveniently tuned out the early reports. I suppose I was hoping the situation would resolve itself without my attention. Who enjoys photos of emaciated children?

Deborah, who also lives in California, expressed her own frustration: "We've just come out of six years of drought in California, but my kids never missed a meal! The grocery store was always fully stocked."

Why the heartbreaking disparity of consequences? Why are the causes (drought) so similar and yet the effects so tragically different? We Americans might live paycheck-to paycheck, but their vulnerability might be meal-to-meal.  We benefit from at least 150 years of infrastructure investment (albeit sporadic) to reduce our vulnerability from wide fluctuations in annual rainfall. Thus, we are well insulated from feeling its impacts. 

But in most places where starvation is still possible, such systems are not even available--though this is changing through low-cost catchment systems such as "water pans" and low-cost micro-drip irrigation. This is the "development imperative"—to invest in sustainable solutions that reduce vulnerability long-term and avoid such dire consequences in the future. 

It works! World Vision labored in an area of northern Ethiopia called the Antsokia valley. I visited a famine camp there in early 1986, where people had been dying every day just months previously, and the huge valley had been stripped of anything that could be eaten or burned for firewood. Now the rains had returned and new projects were creating water catchments off the mountainsides, creating irrigation systems, planting fruit trees, demonstrating new farming methods. Antsokia became the learning lab that birthed World Vision's Area Development Program (ADP) model, now used around the world.

A major drought tore across northern Ethiopia culminating in 2002 while I was visiting another part of the country. I asked one of our leaders if Antsokia too was suffering. "No," came his answer. "Antsokia has more than enough food--in fact they are exporting it to other areas." Antsokia had gone from being a basket-case to being the bread-basket of northern Ethiopia. 

We must always ‘build back better,’ to not be satisfied solely with temporary relief measures. This time, World Vision decided that rather than only truck-in drinking water to drought areas in Ethiopia for those at risk, we would quickly shift our well-drilling operations to these areas wherever feasible—doubling the number of people we were able to reach last year with long-lasting water solutions to over 1 million people in that nation alone.

The Chinese are correct: every “crisis” is both a danger and an opportunity—an opportunity to creatively find solutions to the crisis which will not only mitigate its most tragic effects, but also reduce the vulnerability to such a crisis in the future. 

There will always be droughts.  But there need not always be famines. In the world’s last famine, 2011, only 25% as many people perished as in 1984 (obviously, 250,000 deaths is still tragic). By faith, I believe the world is moving, albeit haltingly, toward a time "when no child will live but a few days" as the Biblical promise puts it, foretelling God's kingdom come fully to earth.

And meantime, especially for those of faith, danger is always opportunity. There is always hope. We who agree with World Vision founder Bob Pierce's prayer, "Let my heart be broken with the things that break the heart of God," must actually allow our hearts to be broken—not once, but when called upon by the events of our time, by the ever-stretching question, "Who is my neighbor?" 

We don't get to pick the timing of disasters and tragedies, our own or others'. We only get to choose how to respond. Janet and I just went online and made a meaningful donation for the famine response. This was not a guilt-tax or a burden, but a small act of solidarity with the suffering. And—in my optimistic moments—an act of faith in the One who holds the future and is making all things new. 

Cory

April 2017

Into Your Courts I Come

Good Friday is for me the most meaningful “holy day” of the year. Solemnity, quietude, even an appreciation for beauty are all mixed together. It’s easy to be afraid of the day, thinking it’s intended to be morbid or self-mortifying. And I suppose some prefer it that way. Certainly, I make it a point to slowly walk the Stations of the Cross somewhere meaningful. “For us and for our sake he was crucified, died and was buried,” according to the Apostle’s Creed recited weekly in the Anglican tradition. Good Friday is intended to be the great Memorial Day for time immemorial. 


But I don’t dwell a great deal on blood and nails and thorns.  In Jesus’ “It is finished,” I sense an invitation to rest, and to appreciate the beauty of a world worth redeeming... in nature, music, art that speaks to the soul. So it’s a day for resting and quietly pondering, not for mortifying myself. I try to be exactly where my soul wants to be, where it finds rest and reflection. May you find that rest this Good Friday.

Into Your Courts I Come

It's Good Friday.

I appreciate dreary weather on Good Friday: it fits the solemnity of the day. But this year it's a Chamber of Commerce day for So Cal, and I'm in warm sun at St. Michael's Abbey in Silverado, 5 miles from my home. I attended a short midday service chanted by the monks and then walked around the church to enjoy the day and the beauty of the abbey setting.

Above a statue of St. Michael slaying a demon, above the bursting calla lilies, I heard odd guttural bird sounds, almost like the grinding of teeth. I looked up to see an entire complex of swallow's nests, the mythical swallows you can only read about now at my beloved San Juan Capistrano Mission nearby. I'd never seen this, so close-up and intimate, so I watched the show 'til my neck hurt. Then I grabbed a chair nearby and now I am sitting in the sun, in calm 70-degree perfect weather, just enjoying the show. At times, my jaw drops open spontaneously.

Right now, it's quiet. The dark faces of momma birds peer from each hole in these trademark mud igloos built on top of one another, plastered under the eaves of the church. Busy white beaks glance this way and that against the dark peephole opening, while papa swallows zoom back and forth with more supplies of mud or food.

A few minutes ago, a church attendant opened the nearby sanctuary windows, and most of these bird-apartment dwellers flew off, returning a few moments later in a tornado of swirling, chirping activity.

Amazing. And beautiful.

There's something else that strikes me, something I have in common with these feathered friends: we both want to hang around the Lord's house today. This is Good Friday, and it’s a good day to be here.

Now a lone human voice is added to the sound of birds and fountain, and Latin chants with a holy reverberation come wafting out those open windows to mingle with the chirp-and-grind from above. And I suddenly remember a song we used to sing at church, taken from Psalm 84, one of the "songs of ascent" that pilgrims would recite as they climbed toward the temple in Jerusalem, "City of Peace". The psalm starts with “How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord Almighty” and is filled with love-lines worth reading about the Lord’s house. The song was inspired by verses 3-4:

Even the swallow has found a nest

   A place to lay her young near your altar

And we are longing to find that rest

   So into your courts we come

Into your courts we come.

Guess I'm not unique. The psalmist found the same connection between swallows, rest, and a holy place. And maybe it's no coincidence that swallows seem to hang out (literally) at churches, missions, temples. And why churches are also called sanctuaries.

And I am longing to find that same rest. So into your courts I come. Into your courts I come.

One other group tends to be found worldwide around churches and other “holy sites”: the begging poor. Seems they understand the connection between faith and compassion.  Sometimes, while visiting a religious site somewhere like Ethiopia, India or even the former Soviet Union, I feel I’m “running the gauntlet” through those in need and I cringe inside. Yet another part of me is grateful: Grateful to realize that “everyone knows” that commitment to God and compassion for the poor are supposed to go hand-in-hand.  And grateful to be found in the same place; all of us together, beggars in need of bread.

Cory

3/22/08

Funny epilogue: I dawdled so long that the big afternoon service started. The parking lot had become so overfull that one participant apparently double-parked and hemmed me in. That service lasted nearly three more hours. So, I ‘accidently’ got my wish... five solid hours of rest at the Abbey. :)

Involuntary Sacrifices

Don’t you hate it when you run across something you’ve written and realize you still need to learn the lesson all over again?  That was exactly my experience yesterday. For Holy Week leading to Easter, I intended to send a past meditation each day—perhaps as penance for my dearth of new entries. What thwarted my best intentions was also the bridle I was chafing against...

Last week, I learned I have a detached retina, which is considered a “medical emergency” because of the potential of losing one’s sight in the impacted eye. Frankly, I used to think that a detached retina meant your eyeball fell out of the socket; but Janet always reminds me I was a Business major in college. I know now the retina is like a movie screen stuck to the back wall of the eye, and it sometimes pulls away due to age (Wait, WHAT?!!). I’ll spare you the pain and details (which involved needles and clamps and bright-hot lasers and cryotherapy) but I now have several spot-welds designed to tack the retina back on the wall, and a gas bubble in my eye to press out any fluid behind it so it can reattach itself. The gas bubble means that I feel like I’m constantly looking through swim goggles and one is half-filled with water, which is surprisingly disorienting and mentally exhausting. In addition, I’m supposed to sleep sitting up for 12 days, which does not induce a sense of well-being… not quite as bad as a flight in coach class lasting 12 nights, but that’s the idea.

After nearly a week of increased exhaustion and a less-than-peaceful attitude, I was convicted yesterday that none of this was a surprise to God, and I could trust that even my limited abilities could be used by God during this time. So I recommitted to reviewing some past meditations that might be pertinent for sending out during Holy Week, and the first one I read (below) hit me between the eyes (figuratively speaking), about the attitude of sacrifice and empathic solidarity appropriate to the Lenten season, especially as we move toward Good Friday.  Sometimes our sacrifices are involuntary, but accepted and embraced, they can be an offering just the same…

Involuntary Sacrifices

I've finally figured out something to give up for Lent -- the use of my right wrist... and the right to complain about it.

Three weeks ago, I fell off a paddleboard into 18 inches of water on a rocky coastline near me, jamming my wrist and hand.  Initial x-rays were negative, but last week my thumb was still aching, so new x-rays were ordered and my doctor’s office called saying there was in fact a fracture and I needed a cast…around my palm and all the way up my forearm, for a broken wrist!

The next morning, I was still discovering new frustrations in trying to go about my normal routine with this unhuman prosthetic device from which my captive fingers protrude. It was a struggle to not be frustrated. It was even more a struggle to concentrate on my Lenten devotion time, and when I finished I melodramatically thought of the tragic passage from Jeremiah, "The summer is ended, the harvest is past, and we are not saved."  My quiet time was over, it was time to get ready for work, and nothing had altered my faltered state.

That's when the revelation hit me: this minor (and temporary) infirmity could be embraced, not fought, and with Lent upon us, this handicap might be a form of sacrifice, albeit involuntary. Though I’d been struck by how very many references there were in last Sunday's liturgy and Lenten hymns about fasting and sacrifice being the normal Christian response during this season—like it used to be for me—I hadn't yet had the bandwidth to voluntarily sacrifice something this Lenten season.  I'd felt convicted on Sunday, both by my own lack of commitment, and in realizing how little fasting and sacrifice are talked about, much less practiced, in “modern” Christendom.

The least I can do—and I do admit it's the least—is to not chafe under the bridle when an involuntary "fast" is visited upon me.  Keeping my eyes open to seeing these hindrances and obstacles as my “appointed” sacrifices, and responding appropriately, is a spiritual discipline I need to learn. Peacefully enduring these "light and momentary troubles" will no doubt take energy and discipline, and require me to bring not only my body but also my mind and spirit under submission to the Holy Spirit.

The payoff could be exactly what I've craved this morning and throughout this Lenten season: not only remembering in some intellectual or theoretical way, but also to experientially participate in the sufferings of Christ in some small measure.  Isn't the purpose of Lent to find meaningful methods for contemplating Christ’s sacrifice?  I could do better at proactively choosing how to do this, but sometimes God puts a tool right in my palm—if I’m willing to grasp it.

Cory

March 2011

Postscript: In the week since I first wrote this, I’ve had a transformed attitude and at times almost joy (almost) about my formerly unwelcome appendage.