Over the Hump.. and Making the Turn

I was notified that I have already reached the midway point in my tour.   It has been a long time when I think about my loved ones and not seeing them... and yet it has rushed by with our tasks here.   We are right on schedule with our PBL; three major Problems completed and three more to do [though we haven't finished editing 5 and not started writing 6].   However, as we get "out and about" - people see us and they have requests for us to do all sorts of projects, classes, tasks, preaching...  We might stay the whole year and not come close to finishing them.

Actually, I could not stay a whole year.  First, I am not that dedicated and I miss my wife and kids and my easy life on the edge of the sea.   However, even if I didn't have any family and lived in Iqaluit, I could not live here permanently.   It is hard to implement change and even enthusiasm for change.   Oh, I can understand it, but I couldn't live with it.  There is a sense that if I [or Tony] do everything, people are happy... and if we didn't do anything, nothing would happen... until we decided to do it...and that includes when we return in 9 months. Ugh.

Some of the early attenders at King of Glory.  See Sylvia in the back row.. She came too see the mission fields and a free lunch.   They liked my multi-coloured stole -no need to know the liturgical season!

You know I can't really even start a good fight... Sunday I was invited to preach... and by the time the invitations were over... I was doing it three times in three churches all before noon.   Well the texts assigned for the day each had some interest... but I focused on the Luke 17 passage.  I better type it in full as my IPod audience  may never find it - even if they had a Bible:   [Warning:  You will not suddenly become Christian by reading something from the Bible.. though it does happen infrequently.]

 ⁷"Suppose one of you had a slave ploughing

or looking after the sheep. 

Would he say to the slave 

when he comes in from the field, 

'Come along now and sit down to eat'?  

⁸Would he not rather say, 

'Prepare my supper, get yourself ready

and wait on me while I eat and drink; 

after that you may eat and drink'?  

⁹Would he thank the slave because 

he did what he was told to do?  

¹⁰So you also, when you have done everything 

you were told to do, 

should say, 'We are worthless slaves; 

we have only done our duty.' "

It started when I noticed in the commentary that the slave-owning writers of the English translation thought that "servants" was a much more safe word than the "slave" of the original...  It may have been because I am in a slave-and-indentured-servant country - Guyana, that I wondered why Jesus would use a slave analogy for the parable “as if” it was a normal and acceptable life?  So I started looking and learning and I couldn't find one time that Jesus condemned the institution of slavery...  This had to be impossible!  As a child of the '60's, Jesus was the motivator behind our civil rights passions...Christ the Liberator.   Now it seemed a moral fiction; even the pros were not able to find as much as a "peep" by Jesus denouncing slavery.   

So I started in Matthew [actually, I finished in Matthew as there is only so much time if you start your sermon at 4am on the Sunday].  There sure is a pile of slavery examples but no condemnation: An Unmerciful Slave (18:23-35), Some Wicked Tenants (21:33-41), The Talents (25:14-30).  Actually, it was getting worse.   The last parable has the Master condemning a slave who didn't steal - he just didn't invest - thrown out into the darkness.   A definition of slavery - people as an economic commodity..   And the other two who did make a profit, did they do so out of love and loyalty, or more out of the same fear as the unprofitable slave.   I wondered how many of the congregation would use these stories to teach our children about the meaning of life.   Seems that none of the apostles, nor Fathers, did either... Paul was even more pro-slavery than Deuteronomic law in sending an escaped slave, Onesimus, back to his owner... a Christian owner, so I guess that made it okay.  

I happened to be chatting on line with a distinguished Maryknoll classmate who thought that Jesus' actions issued a challenge against slavery... if that was true, it sure took Christians a long time to accept the challenge... 1800 years... They make my troubles getting stuff started here in Guyana seem absolutely lightning speed.  Anyway, I talked about how I was confused and really didn't like Jesus at that point, but I would sure welcome someone finding out that I was wrong...   So far no one is knocking at my door… or email box.

Besides the heresy, my point was what do we do today... with slavery.  I think it was a previous President of Guyana, Forbes Burnham, who said that slavery hadn't died, it had just changed forms..  Not sure what he meant.. but I used his text to say that slavery does exist now... in the epidemic of spousal abuse in this country.  A woman is no more than a piece of meat or an economic unit that gets disposed of - as if worthless chattel.   And just like the slaves of old the burden and scars are borne on their bodies.   And then there is the still real trafficking in human beings in the Guyana interior, even the reduction of our children to economic units for the family whether through actual working jobs at age ten or seeing their grades as the sole value of their living…  

It is too late to change Jesus and his words - unless a new scroll is discovered, or a theologian who has been studying the problem for decades in a room without windows and only a dim light finds an exegetical manoeuvre to explain it all.  It is our turn.  If it goes on as it is, our great-grandchildren may call us slavers.    And some irreligious preacher may be incredulous that a generation that prided itself on being enlightened was so silent and accepting of its own slavery.  There is a drawing by Blake, “A Negro hung alive by the ribs to a gallows” [c.1792] that is similar in gut revulsion to the recent story here [not on the front pages of the tabloid because it wasn’t unusual]  of a young woman who was found headless and beaten in a canal. [In order to keep my “G” rating I'll only link to Blake: http://www.flickr.com/photos/32357038@N08/4882049473/ . And for my UU readers, there is a poem that usually accompanies the picture written by Robert Southey, “Sonnet 6”: http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/20160/ ]

The reasons for Jesus’ silence are an interesting point of hermeneutic curiosity; what are the reasons for our silence?  

On a similar note, though not as extreme, Mercy Hospital is forced to lay-off staff for the first time in its history.   The fire is continuing to take its toll on everyone; now there is the unknown of how many and for how long.   The idea of a “Mercy Family” is being shaken.   Those who will stay and those who will - in the old bull of HHS’s re-engineering - “have their futures freed up” need your prayers.    The Administration is doing its best and has talked to other possible employers to assist in the transfer of staff… and are trying to push ahead with the rebuilding.  It is hard in a really uncertain economic future both locally and internationally… and hardest of all is to be “just a” nurse or maintenance or dietary staff person. 

There was the death of a young Cuban doctor.  The cause of death was septic shock -- there was no Mass for her at her funeral.  She was a prominent figure here and was one of the docs responsible for getting the HIV programme started  at Mercy.   This sadness does not distract from other sadnesses; it is piled on top.   You all know the saying “the straw that broke the camel’s back”… well, sometimes it feels as if life here is just one piece of straw away from The Last Straw…

And at other times, it is a good place to be…   I will try to take a few happy pills before I write again.  ..or preach again!   Thanks for sharing my journey.

Notes About Nothing Much

• Any advice?   If you have ever read anything in my blog you know it is hot and humid all the time.  When I get home from riding my bike back from Mercy, my underwear is wringing wet.   Now my etiquette question.  When I am going out to dinner later, should I:  A]  just put the wet stuff on after my shower; B] rummage on the closet floor and find the dry ones from yesterday; C] Get a clean pair out and use those - though then I have the same problem the next morning - clean or used.    As a sign of my growing maturity, I had eliminated going "commando".  Thanks in advance for your suggestions.
• I don't want you to get the impression that I am the worst-dressed person here...   Anne made sure that the clothes that I brought were my best non-wrinkly stuff... I think so people I met here would not say what a bad wife she was... and I look like I am right out of GQ compared to the liturgist at King of Glory, Kavita.

• This is getting to be somewhat of a broken record... [Whoops, my young and way cool readers will have no idea what a "broken record" means... Think Fried Ipod!]  I will get around to a serious update on the Problem Based Learning approach that we are implementing here.   It is going great.. Too bad we can't get any one interested in even seeing it.   Well, not exactly true as the Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport and me and my sidekick to see how the method might be applied at a residential Boys, Detention Centre on the Essequibo River.   We are getting nowhere interesting people in what we do know... so the role of a consultant who knows "dick" about residential boys' detention centres was right up our line... and in keeping with all the similar skilled consultants that the hospital paid a bundle for.   And it is a paid Road Trip!  

•  Life is almost always ambiguous.  [Notable exceptions are spouse and grandchildren.]   Do you remember my commenting on the blue-green strands (they look exactly like seaweed… though that is not something I really want to consider) that regularly appear in my tap water and what a benefit they are to me as a reminder not to drink the tap water… Well, they also clog up my shower!   Ugh.

• Today, Saturday, is World Food Day [and World Hand Washing Day] and is the culmination of the Freshmen nurses Nutrition Course and they have a Food Sale… [The cafeteria closes, so there is no competition.]  Now the students – or their mothers – cook up a storm, as well as decorate the classroom with all the vegetables and fruits of Guyana.   It is a major event in the grading of the batch – visiting staff always compare it to their own – usually superior -- freshmen try.   All the food stuff will disappear down to the last mango… Of course, the profits go to a good cause – The Christmas Party for the Class.    I tried using my sainted mother’s guilt-ridden expression of, “What about donating it to all the hungry children in the world?”  and they told me, “Rev. John, we are the hungry children of the world!”  Funny thing: I think we said the same to my mother… Poverty must be a relative thing…. And it also depends on whether it is Lima Beans, too.   Well, they did have a petition for all to sign to end hunger... or something.