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Lost in computer translation

OK. This has nothing to do with reconciliation or any of the stuff I usually talk about here.

The other day I was grocery shopping in a little chinese store in our neighborhood and was thrilled to come across lima beans for the first time since coming to France.

They were frozen and labeled "white haricots" but they were indeed lima beans.

But when Jenny opened the bag to cook them and looked at the directions we were in for a treat. On the left, the directions were in Chinese. On the right, someone had obiously run the chinese through some automatic English translator program.

Here's (exactly, punctuation included) what they got as a result:

Directions

* The series material of this product all takes from nuisanceles base, is through artificial selection and high-temperature quick freezing.

Opsonic methods of haricot

* Serue by steam. cook or stir-fry after defrost.

Priceless

To the church in and outside of Zimbabwe

I've been watching closely the situation in Zimbabwe for nearly two years now.

My curiosity was heightened in September 2006 when I was in Burundi and began to realize that Africans didn't see the country's leader, Robert Mugabe, in the same way he was generally portrayed in the West.

I began meeting last year with some officials from the country here in Paris in order to gain some perspective, to hear the side of the story that I wouldn't get from the West.

I also have made a point of talking with people from different backgrounds and social levels in Zimbabwe, though my access to the very poor is of course extremely difficult here in Paris.

But I have talked to those who speak for them, including some advocates whom I watched call my other Zimbabwean friends to task for what they saw as injustice coming from the Mugabe government.

I've learned why there our nuances and shades of gray to the situation that we have a hard time understanding in the West. And I've come to see how history and the positions of the West have helped shape today's crisis in the country.

So I can't help but feel sadness when I see the situation get further and further out of hand. I've been hoping and praying for the best of people to prevail. But once again it has been confirmed for me that "the best" usually doesn't just happen.

BRINGING OUT THE BEST

People don't typically act unselfishly and lovingly toward their neighbors. They don't put the interests of others before their own. These attitudes, this justice, happens typically when some people make sacrifices  -- often at great price -- in order to bring about change.

So I read with great interest an open letter from South African activist and liberation theologist Allan Boesak to the church in Zimbabwe. The letter is long, but worth a read if you have the time.

It calls on the church there to stand up for the poor and the oppressed and against repression and injustice at the hands of the Mugabe government. He points out Mugabe and his government have allowed the Cause of standing up against the injustice of a white racist power structure to blind them to the point that they no longer stand for the people. A point well made in an interview with author Heidi Holland.

The letter spoke strongly to me about the need for the church in the US and in the UK, for example, to be equally as courageous as Boesak is encouraging the Zimbabwean church to be.

Boesak describes well what I think has happened in Zimbabwe. Mugabe and his party, Zanu-PF, focus on the injustice and unfairness of the power of the Anglo-Saxons that they still see as their oppressors.

And that injustice at the hands of the UK and the US serves as justification for whatever measures Mugabe takes in order to resist it.

In my talks with some of the government officials I know here, I hear a refrain: They resent being controlled by outside forces and believe Zimbabwe should be able to handle its own problems.

There is, of course, some truth and logic in their feelings. No people wants to feel as if it is subservient to another, as if it were a boy who must obey the Man’s wishes. That I understand.

But the problem, as Boesak points out, is when this focus on the outside oppressor turns us into the inside oppressor.

Sharon Lamb, in the Problem with Blame, says “If victims do not repent today, they will become the oppressors of tomorrow.”

THE MESSAGE

This to me needs to be the message of the church not only in Zimbabwe but everywhere. It's a call to repentance AND to forgiveness.

Even as we seek justice and call oppressors to task we must do so with repentant hearts that recognize our own propensity to put ourselves above others.

This did not happen for Mugabe and Zanu-PF, and we see the results. The liberator becomes the oppressor. We become so focused on ridding ourselves of the tyrant that we will use any tyrannical means necessary to do so.

POT TO THE KETTLE ...

But I believe the West has little room to criticize if it does not do so with a strongly repentant heart of its own, recognizing in effect that it has, in part, created the monster that it now wishes to subdue.

Without repentant hearts and voices from the West, cries for Mugabé’s removal seem to play into the belief that the West simply wants to regain control of Zimbabwe for its own means.

Indeed, I don’t think any of us can firmly say that Western interests are not more about protecting businesses and those who still hold most of the wealth in Zimbabwe (according to some sources, most is still is in the hands of whites) than about fighting for the poor and powerless.

So, I applaud Boesak’s letter, but I believe that Britain now needs its own Boesak to write to the churches there. Same for the U.S., and for the white churches of Zimbabwe. Boesak rightly challenges the church in Zimbabwe to be ready to stand in the face of injustice. I couldn’t help but feel that the same call applies to those of us in the West.

I'm convinced that many decent people, like my friends here in Paris, who support Mugabe's basic principles, would be much more ready to acknowledge and repent from the negative aspects of his regime if they saw repentance coming from those they perceive as their enemies.

Who, if not the church, can lead the way in bringing out this "best" of us?.

I was particularly struck by his mention of the Dutch Reformed Mission church's  “Confession of Belhar,” originally formulated 25 years ago during anti-apartheid activity.

It has become the bedrock of our theological existence and reflection, a witness from us to the people of God in the world. Today, that confession speaks as clearly to us as then, and has become a source of life and inspiration to millions across the earth – everywhere where God’s people are subjected to injustice, suffering and brokenness. In Article Four the confession says;

We believe that God has revealed God self as the One who wishes to bring about justice and true peace on earth; that in a world full of enmity and injustice God is in a special way the God of the destitute, the poor and the wronged and that God calls the church to follow in this; that God brings justice to the oppressed and gives bread to the hungry; that God frees the prisoners and restores sight to the blind; that God supports the downtrodden, protects the strangers, helps orphans and widows and blocks the path of the ungodly; that for God pure and undefiled religion is to visit the orphans and the widows in their suffering; that God wishes to teach the people of God to do what is good and to seek the right;

That the church must therefore stand by people in any form of suffering and need, which implies, among other things, that the church must witness against and strive against any form of injustice, so that justice may roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

And then the confession says: that the church, belonging to God, should stand where God stands, namely against injustice and with the wronged; that in following Christ the Church must witness against all the powerful and privileged who selfishly seek their own interests and thus control and harm others.

Those words are a call for the church everywhere, not just in Zimbabwe. Problem is, we have a much easier time seeing injustice at the hands of Mugabe than we do when it comes from our own people.

 

Encouraging news from Burundi

Encouraging signs from Burundi, according to a New York Times report.

This is a nice report, with some good background info.

Good video

So much going on, but it took my daughter to get me back on the blog.

Challenging video from Radiohead.

Check it out.

On Obama and hope

Weather has been great here in Paris for about two weeks straight. Almost never does that happen!

Anyway, I was riding a bike through the city with my wife, Jen, the other day and a quote came to my head. It sounded good and I made a mental note of it, promising myself to explore its validity later.

Here it is:

"You can be whatever you want to be, as long as what you want to be is what you are."

I don't know if that is cynical or encouraging. Depends on how you read it, I guess.

It was inspired by me thinking about Barack Obama, my youth, the current elections, my future, etc. ...

Let me explain a little better with some background ...

Something most people don't know about me.

When I was a kid, I believed I could become the first black president of the United States.

I really did.

I thought I had something that would be necessary: the ability to talk to and gain the confidence of white people so that they could come to see what needed to change in order to make the country a fair place for everyone.

I thought I could be the kind of bridge person that understood the perspectives of white and black America (sorry, in my Ohio thinking of the 1970s and 1980s, those were the only two Americas that existed) and could help create understanding and progress in solving our racial division.

I really thought I could be that person.

But with age and experience, ideas like that gave way to cynical frustration, with both society and myself. I came to doubt not only that America could change, but, more importantly, that I could ever really make a difference. "Who am I to think I could change America?"

Deeper yet, "who am I to think I can change ANYTHING?"

I still battle these doubts every week.

When I'm winning the battle, I tend to write here a lot. When I'm losing, the inspiration to pick up the pen (OK, the keyboard) just isn't there.

TOUCHING SOMETHING DEEP

That's why I sat in wonder as I listened to Barack Obama's speech back in March after the Rev. Wright controversy first exploded. I heard him skillfully and frankly help people see the walls that keep Americans from understanding one another. The history. The feelings.

I heard him honor and respect everyone, not pointing fingers and throwing guilt around, which tends to erect further walls. But at the same time he didn't shy away from the fact that there was still much from America's past that had to be dealt with it the country was going to move on to some sort of healed future.

I had goosebumps as I listened. Not because of beautiful rhetoric and style. This was not a speech that touched emotions because of its style. This touched me deeply because of its content.

It was exactly the type of thing I had dreamed about doing back when I was a kid. This is what I had imagined for myself.

  Here's what I wrote as a response to New York Times columnist Nicolas Kristof's glowing review of the speech:

As a black man who has lived so often in the white world, so much about Obama’s experience mirrors my own. Trying to keep one’s voice and credibility among a people you understand and love while also trying to be a bridge toward the dominant society requires the skill of a deminer.

And the consequences of each mistake are about as grave. Most of us who try to play the bridge role crumble under the weight of hundreds of years of guilt, anger, misinformation, abuse, etc. We give up after both sides of the divide turn on us and erode our foundations.

Perhaps people are not basically good. Perhaps there is no way to escape this cycle of hatred and revenge … perhaps it is just better to work to improve the lot of our group on our own rather than trying to change the system that separates us.

In recent weeks, the optimism that Obama had begun to awaken in me during his historic run had begun to retreat back into its assigned place in the cave of fatalism.

“Ca y est.”

“Here we go,” I thought to myself as I saw the reports on Obama’s preacher come out. I had known about this church for some time, so it was no surprise to me. But like most of us bridge people, we try to keep separated things that one side or the other can’t grasp.

We know what will happen when these oil-and-water moments occur. We hope we can keep building the bridge before the oil and water rise.

So I sighed as I listened to the news reports. How does one explain “God damn America?”

Even if you understand it, how do you help someone outside the black American experience get it?

I thought Obama did it about as well as one could. I came away encouraged that he is a person of enough depth and talent to know how to talk about these issues to those who want to listen and learn.

Today I’m sticking my head out of the cave a bit. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll be ready to go back to building those bridges.

Since then, of course, Rev. Wright and the TV news folks have sent me back into the cave a bit. I've struggled again with those voices telling me that the things that divide people (whether they be black and white Americans or Hutu and Tutsi in Burundi) are simply too strong, too entrenched, fundamentally insurmountable).

But I believe, as peoples, that we are not meant to be divided. We are not meant to be selfish and oppressive, unforgiving and resentful. That's not who we really are. I refuse to believe it. I believe we are something more. And so, we can be something else. Something more.

If we want to be, we can be people who repent. ... people who forgive ... people who put their hands together for justice and equality ... we CAN be those people, because, fundamentally, that's who we really are.

That's my hope. I'm clinging to it. Without that, I've got nothing.

No, I don't believe I can be president anymore. But that's because that's not who I am. But I can still be a bridge. A peacemaker.

Back again

In case you haven't noticed, I'm not a very consistent blogger.

Like most of the batting lineup of my beloved Cleveland Indians, I went O-for-April!

I have come to understand that I have a rhythm about me. There are times when I take in, and times when I put out.

I have even amazed myself as I've watched the news go by without a peep from me in recent weeks.

Obama and Rev. Wright. The contested elections in Zimbabwe. Subjects that are right up my ally, subjects that one would think would have me itching to write.

But I've been silent.

I could blame busy lives, and kids schooling demands, my other work and deadlines, etc.

But the bottom line is that I simply haven't had anything to say. I've been in a period of watching and reading and listening and observing and talking with people.

Everytime I sat down to write I thought, "How does what I have to say on this matter offer anything worthwhile?"

And I couldn't find an answer. So I wasn't inspired to write.

But I think the silence is coming to an end. I think the tide is ready to go back out to sea. So, thanks for your patience if you're one of the folks who still bothers to check this site out!

Unexpected focus : gender reconciliation

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Today we started the seminar with reports from each small group about the ideas they had been given through society, family, experience, etc., concerning the relative value of their group when compared with others.

I had expected the discussion to be a bit tense, with the backdrop of Hutu and Tutsi conflicts dating back decades. But what ended up dominating today's discussion was something different entirely.

Here are many of the people who attended the Reconciled seminar.

Women are a distinct minority in the seminar; there are only four here among the 50 or 60 who have shown up so far. But on this day, they had a lot to say.

One of the questions the small groups considered was the messages they had received concerning their gender in relation to the other. Across the board it was confirmed that the value of women was considerably inferior to that of men.

They shared many examples. And this is where things got interesting.

Because they were asked not only to cite the messages they had received, but then they were asked to cite God's opinion on the matter to see whether the two jibed.

We had already talked about Jesus's repeated affirmation in Scripture that we were were to love our neighbor as ourselves, meaning that we had to put our neighbor on the same level of worthiness as ourselves. But then they mentioned other Scripture, in particular Galatians 3:28-29.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.

And then, as if to make sure that it was understood that loving our neighbors as ourselves included wives, they cited Ephesians 5:27-29.

In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

So is it possible to love God as Jesus said while not considering our neighbors (women and men, Hutu and Tutsi) as equal to ourselves?

NO? BUT ...

It was agreed that the answer to that question was no, but many began then to talk about other passages.

It was one woman in particular who asked about the idea of women submitting to men. Didn't that suggest that men were of greater value? She wasn't arguing for women' rights, she was simply trying to wrestle with different ideas she had received.

Another woman asked about a wife who is beaten by her husband. Did she have to stay in that marriage in forgiveness even if the husband continued to beat her?

AVOIDING THE CULTURE TRAP

Of course I came into this with my Western mindset, and I wanted to be careful not to impose my cultural thinking on their situation. The Bridge beleives that the key to our work is encouraging local people to develop models for peace and development that fit their culture.

We wanted to stick to the broad ideals and let them work out the applications for their own culture.

But we did ask one question: "Is it possible for a man to beat his wife day after day and still consider her equal in value to himself? Is it possible that he can do that and still follow the principle to love her as he loves his own body?"

"If not, then it seems we have a choice to make: Do we follow what our culture says or do we believe what Scripture has said? I don't have the answer for you. It's up to you guys to figure out how to follow Truth in Burundi. I have to do it in Paris and the United States."

It was a great example of the challenges that we face in the business of reconciliation. We need to repent from false ideas that affirm inequality if we are to have any hope of the forgiveness and repentance needed to see groups reconciled.

And those of us from the West, though perhaps more subtle and sophisticated in the way we talk about it (or not talk about it) still do not see women as completely equal. We still have received notions about women from past generations that go against the general truth of equality.

Burundians are not alone in their need to repent from these past notions. And we have little to say to them if we are not willing to look into our own hearts and turn from notions and actions that work to keep women in a second-class status.

ENCOURAGING SIGNS

I was encouraged to see that there was not major opposition coming from the young men that made up the majority of those in attendance. Most of the young men affirmed the value of their sisters, and nodded in agreement that when it was suggested that much needed to change.

One young brother and sister from the Congo later invited me to address their Congolese student group on campus on the women's rights subject. My schedule won't allow it, but I was encouraged to see the desire of young people to move to another place.

That bodes well for the possibility for reconciliation in this country and in this region. There is a generation in Burundi and Rwanda and Congo and elsewhere in this war-gutted region who have seen what the status quo has brought them.

It has destroyed their past an it threatens their future. They don't see holding onto the flaws of tradition as a quaint luxury. They know that it is vital that they root out the flaws in their tradition and redeem them with traditions based in equality, love and respect.

Today, I saw hopeful signs that men and women, Hutu and Tutsi, Europeans and Africans ... can come together to make some progress.

Reconcilié, le Seminaire

Wednesday, March 5

"God's sun travels over the entire world, but it sleeps in Rwanda."

So goes a Rwandan proverb shared by a brother during a group exercise during the debut of the version française of the Reconciled Seminar this afternoon.

On this first of three days with about 60 students enrolled in the seminar at Hope of Africa University in Bujumbura, we were able to cover the basics of reconciliation and finished with a group exercise in which participants listed ideas about their own value and the value of their people that they had received from various sources.

Here is the illustration about the wall of mistrust, pain, etc. that separates people on the two sides of conflict, making it virtually impossible to settle an issue by going directly to our adversary.

We were simply trying to get an idea of the types of ideas we had all received from our infancy about ourselves and others.

It was interesting to hear the list of things that they all had heard. It got tense at times when some people started to mention "the arrogance of the Tutsis" or "the jealousy of the Hutus," but this group of people understood that the point was not to say whether or not they agreed with the ideas, but that this is what had been given to them.

Students break up into small groups to discuss the ideas they've been given by society about their value

We also began to touch on the idea of the relative value given to men and women at this point. Tomorrow, we'll go into depth about the results of all of this conditioning. The basic idea is that we need to realize what we've received so that we can compare it to "truth" and reject it if necessary.

Much of what we were hearing in this discussion is going to have to go, if our standard of truth is Jesus's teaching on equality.

COLONIAL VESTIGES

We saw clearly that not all of what we receive from society, even our own group, casts us as superior to others.

One idea that came up in all three groups was the inferiority that they all had learned when confronted with white people.

Though intellectually they knew and wanted to believe in their equality to Europeans, everything about their history, and their present for that matter, confirmed the belief that they were inferior.

Collegue Steve Thrall had an interesting role as the only white person participating in the week's activities.

Not only that, but even among their own culture and families, sentences about blacks as opposed to whites are laced with self criticism and even self hatred.

It was interesting to share with them that I had had pretty much the same exprience as a black American. Often, the worst things I ever heard said about black people came from black lips.

And, I have learned over the years, that many of those ideas remain in my mind and have taken the form of shame in my own life.

So, imagine the difficulty of trying to deal with forgiveness and needing to feel equal to someone who has wronged me or my people when I already feel inferior to that person. See the challenge?

We'll see where this goes tomorrow.

Reconciliation for Iraq?

Interesting interview with young journalist Alex Kingsbury on the Daily Show. He's spent a considerable amount of time in Iraq and has come away with some interesting conclusions about what is needed there.

You can bet my ears perked up on this one. If you don't want to listen to the whole thing, skip ahead to about the 5:30 mark.

Bravo, Florida

Little by little, some states are starting to get it.

Florida joined the tiny ranks of states that have officially apologized for slavery in the United States.

Maybe someday soon we will understand that the past does matter and take this step as a nation.

By the way, I was interested to hear French President Nicolas Sarkozy extolling the past when talking about French relations with the British yesterday.

This is the same person who said the past didn't matter when he refused to apologize for French atrocities committed during its war with Algeria. To make this dichotomy even more striking is the fact that Sarko was talking about World War I (1914-1918) when he said that France would never forget and that it had no right to forget that Brits had made sacrifices for them.

In contrast, he wanted to talk about the future rather than apologize for the past of the much more recent Algerian War (1954-1962).

Again, this underlines our human need to keep our value. No one can exist long without a sense of self worth, and apologizing is a blow to our sense of value as a people or as individuals. But we must understand that it also gives back a sense of value to the victims of our acts, and this is a necessary step in the process of reconciliation.