Saturday, 10 February 2007

• Relief Amidst Suffering

  Thursday night - in two parts

  The final night of Veritas Forum and the speakers were Gary Haugen (president of International Justice Mission) and John Gershman (director of the Office of Int'l Programs at NYU Wagner School of Public Service).  More practitioners than academians, we wanted them to answer the following questions.
  1.  In a world of immense suffering, what can we do?
  2.  How do we sustain ourselves when the work gets frustrating?

  Even after all the prayers and fasts and lowering of expectations and letting-gos, I was still anxious.  Dynamic speakers though they were, who knew what could happen when you put a Christian and an atheist together?  And on a cold, winter night in New York, would people actually come out to a Catholic Center to listen to speakers?  After a day of running around, I was pretty unsettled, even after they began talking.
  Was it good?
  Well, people came in and in and the pews ended up pretty full.  (Where did all those Asians come from?!)  I searched and found two other xanga posts about the night, both by people I don't know - here (although she confuses Haugen for Gershman and vice versa) and here.  And I thought it was good for both speakers to look beyond their differences, continually stressing our personal and corporate duty to care for someone outside of ourselves.  (The moderator, a co-chair of the Law Students for Human Rights, and I had several conversations in the past week.  We both desire for faith communities and liberal activists to realize that we need each other.)

  Four quick summary points for the talk:
  ~Courage - if you've read Gary Haugen's book, this is the central issue, the primary virtue needed to do this work.
  "Anything in life that is worth doing will be hard to do."
  ~Committment - not to a goal of beating the bad guys and not to a theoretical ideology.  Committment to and for transforming the lives of those who suffer.  Also known as love.
  "See the image of God in the person suffering."
  ~Humility - goes hand-in-hand with sacrifice.  Recognize that other people may have a better way of doing things, and that working against suffering shouldn't be about me at all.
  "Do not give yourself credit for a good intention to eliminate the suffering, unless you know how to evaluate your actions."
  ~Humor - the requirement of staying relaxed; the recognition that an all-powerful God would use the all-incompetent me to do His all-good work.
  "The first thing that departs with spiritual health is laughter."

  ----------

  While at the "after-party", I got a call from one of the field office directors for IJM.  He works in a place we'll call The Matrix, and he wanted to talk to me about my summer internship there.
  By talk, I mean that he wanted to shock the realism of this work into me.  To make sure that I'm not just another greenhorn kid who will run away crying after being dropped in the middle of a warzone.  Unfortunately, that's who I am.
  He told me about the crowds and the stench.  The trash heaps and the withering heat.  The naked children on the street corners.  The absence of a rule of law or courts based on rationality.  The oppressing poverty.  The spirit of darkness that weighs, literally weighs, on the city.  And as we talked, he made sure that I couldn't rationalize/spiritualize my way out of this reality, made sure that I was left speechless and sighing.
  He's been there nine months.  I asked him how he's endured it.  He told me two things.  One was to be humble, to have an adventurous spirit but to learn from the wisdom of those around me.  The second was to laugh at the little things, like a truck that says "Emergency Milk Delivery" on the side.

  There it was.  Courage, committment, humility, and humor.  I told him about the night's forum, and he was impressed.  Yep, those are the keys.

  LegumeLiz and intervarsity_nyc have made comments to me about how I "choose to confront the uncomfortable."  Perhaps, though I've never considered myself to have taken any substantial risks.  This night, though, I was scared.  Confronted by a situation where my will might not be strong enough, where my desire to do good might be outweighed by my desire for creature comforts.  Where I might be too weak.

  Rather rattled, I flipped open Isaiah 58 and skimmed it, then decided to go to bed.  The next morning, I woke up and went to do my devotion.  Strangely enough, Isaiah 58 popped up again.  Reading it out loud helped to settle me...a little.
  I want to be prepared, I want to be ready, yet I know that arriving in The Matrix is going to kill me.  Either that or make me stronger.

  Thanks again for praying!

  Currently Reading Good News About Injustice: A Witness of Courage in a Hurting World By Gary A. Haugen see related

  • 4:45 PM
  • 87 Views
  • 16 eProps
  • 8 Comments