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27.9.09

Bonus Sunday Post!

"It looks like giving a voice to those who don't have a voice. It looks like standing engaged in justice and working to proclaim the truth. It's...what gets me out of bed in the morning."

YOUR HOPE from blaine hogan on Vimeo.

Mars Hill Graduate School responds to the question, "What if you truly loved your neighbor as yourself?"



And now that you've watched that, watch this:

Human Trafficking Film, from Hope for Justice from Simon Dempsey on Vimeo.



Think about it: If we radically love our neighbors, and if we start in our churches, we can change the world.

23.9.09

From the pen of Angelina Grimke:

One of the classes I am taking this semester is Women's Rhetoric in the 19th Century, discussing how women worked to incite other women to work for social justice causes (such as abolition and temperance) and eventually for themselves in the suffrage movement. It almost goes without saying that a lot of the material we read in that class could be applied to the current fight against underground human trafficking and slavery. Indeed, in a long open letter (40 pages) that Angelina Grimke wrote to "Christian Women of the South," there were numerous passages that I underlined and starred as they applied so perfectly to the thoughts of the anti-slavery movement happening right now. So, I will let Angelina do my speaking for me for the rest of this post, and my reason is that you should note how so much of this Truth speaks to a problem still extant in our world today: mainly that we humans have trouble learning the rule of "love thy neighbor." A fight like this requires renewal of belief in that one law - that my fellow human being is worthy of being shown love merely because they are human - everyday.

"[Y]et man is never vested with this dominion over his fellow man; he was never told that any of the human species were put under his feet; it was only all things, and man, who was created in the image of his Maker, never can properly be termed a thing, though the laws of the Slave States do call him a 'chattel personal': Man then, I assert never was put under the feet of man, by that first charter of human rights which was given by God, to the Fathers of the Antediluvian and Postdiluvian worlds, therefore this doctrine of equality is based upon the Bible.

[...]

Try yourselves by another of the Divine precepts, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' Can we love a man as we love ourselves; if we do, and continue to do unto him, what we would not wish any one to do to us? Look too, at Christ's example, what does he say of himself, 'I came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.' Can you for a moment imagine the meek, and lowly, and compassionate Saviour, a Slaveholder? Do you not shudder at this thought as much as at that of his being a warrior? But why, if slavery is not sinful?

[...]

And you are now loudly called upon by the cries of the widow and the orphan, to arise and gird yourselves for this great moral conflict, with the whole armor of righteousness upon the right hand and on the left.

[...]

This monster of iniquity has been unveiled to the world, her frightful features unmasked, and soon, very soon will she be regarded with no more complacency by the American republic than is the idol of Juggernaut, rolling its bloody wheels over the crushed bodies of its prostrate victims.

[...]

Until the pictures of the slaves' sufferings were drawn and held up to public gaze, no Northerner had any idea of the cruelty of the system, it had never entered their minds that such abominations could exist in Christian, Republican America; they never suspected that many of the gentlemen and ladies who came from the South to spend the summer months in travelling among them, were petty tyrants at home.

[...]

What can I say more, my friends, to induce you to set your hands and heads and hearts, to this great work of justice and mercy[?]"


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We received our flight details this last week, so I will be scheduling flights home/to/from Newark within the next few weeks. Our donation deadlines have also changed, which gives me another month to raise more money (Praise God for that!). I now have $1500 due on November 1st, $500 on December 1st, and $500 when we leave. The Donate button in the sidebar is still open and active! And you can watch my donation progress in the little temperature thing, also in the sidebar.

I also have to turn in my Visa application soon, so pray that all of that goes smoothly and I don't get rejected for some unbeknownst to me skeleton in my closet from years back. :|

Thanks for reading!

17.9.09

let my heart be broken by your heartache.

My roommate and I have been making our way through the HBO miniseries from 2001: Band of Brothers. It's an account of E Company of the 101st Airborne, one of the companies in WWII that worked the hardest and saw the most combat. There were there during D-Day, during Bastogne, and made it all the way into Germany and fought the Nazis on their own German territory.

This last episode we watched - the ninth of ten - is titled "Why We Fight," and does its best to answer that question. The men have been fighting the "krauts" - the derogatory name for the Germans - for nearly two years now, and many of them are disillusioned with the hero image that had made many of them join the army in the first place. They have become desensitized to the killing, desensitized to the taking of lives, and are having trouble seeing the people around them as human beings anymore. Shell shock has set in for a few of them, which they handle in either outbursts of anger, drink, or sex, when they can get it. The basic point is: They don't know why they're there any more.

Then they discover why. Out on patrol in Germany, deep in enemy territory, they discover one of the smaller concentration camps. The men cannot believe what they are seeing, and cannot fathom that men would do this to one another. Despite having been involved heavily in the combat, despite having taken many lives themselves, the impact of seeing innocent lives ripped apart and destroyed, simply because of the religion they profess, nearly disables the soldiers. They cannot believe this was happening a few hundreds yards walk from a nice little German town.

And that's the crux: The Germans in the town didn't know. Many of them had no idea that this travesty was being conducted right under their noses, and were as horrified as many of the soldiers when they saw the camp - the soldiers recruited them to help bury the Jewish dead - and the reaction is visibly disturbed.

Now let's fast forward to 2009: Similar travesties are happening, not in isolated pockets, but spread throughout our own backyards and towns. People are being forced into slavery, into working, possibly until they die, by men who see them as less than human, by owners who see dollars when they see another human being. It is the same view that causes tragedies around the world: that one's fellow human being is somehow less than human, somehow matters less because they are not related to you, not a brother or sister or mother or father, at least not in relation to anyone who matters. They are less, somehow, by the separation of time and space from where you sit.

That is the view that gets us into trouble.

We have become far too comfortable with the idea of tragedy. We sit on our comfortable couches, watch an artist's depiction of it, and then turn off the DVD player and walk away, comfortable in our homes, separated from that event by time and space.

We are not separate; we are all a part of the same human race.

That is why I am going to India. That is why I choose to put my hand out to help those in crisis because we can never forget what consequences ignorance and inaction have. That is why I fight.

_______________


That said, I can only help in this fight if I have people helping me. That's the other beauty of "Band of Brothers" - they are soldiers who have become a family through their shared experiences. One way you can share in this experience with me is by supporting my trip, both monetarily and prayerfully. As always, the donate button on the left will lead you to a way to donate online, or, if you feel more like doing some snail mail, you can email me at: dianna_anderson@baylor.edu for my address. Those who donate will get a nice print of one of my photos from the trip after I get back.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for all of your generous help.

10.9.09

"But reasons fail at children without mothers"


In one of my classes this semester, we have been discussing the idea of the division between body and soul, and how that happened because religion was privatized. Reason and religion have somehow become divided. It's a big heady topic, and every Wednesday I come home after class with a dazed look on my face, wondering at my life and how we can possibly work to solve all the problems that the world has.

Then clarity comes. I realize that we simply can't, at least not on our own.

My going to India may result in the change in one person's life, other than my own, and that alone is good.

My friend Anne traveling to Holland to work with a missions organization may only change one person, but that person's life is well worth it.

My brother's friends living in a seedy neighborhood in the midst of Waco, giving prostitutes rides to the grocery store and other places around town, may only change one life, but that life is worthwhile.

Back in 2003, I signed up to go to Belize with my church youth group for my first ever missions trip. It was also my first time out of the country. The youth group did multiple things while there, but one of them was an evening "show" of sorts that was a presentation of the gospel with music, theater, and, yes, puppets. We traveled around to various churches in the area, presenting this show in the evenings. As I was the "theater" person, this was a major part of my work down there, and I was proud of how the show came together. But consistently, night after night, when we opened up the floor for people to come forward, no one did.

Having been raised in a somewhat fundamentalist evangelical church, I thought that I was somehow a failure because our evangelism was supposed to be about "winning souls for Christ," and all that. I didn't realize that by simply living my life in love, I was affecting the children who came around to our campsite everyday and played with us. By allowing them to call me "Biscuit" - my nickname for the trip, named after a type of cookie they have down there branded the "Diana Biscuit" - and by simply listening to them and giving them a treat every so often, I was showing them love.

On one of the last nights that we were presenting our evening show, I felt bad because our tree for the show had been confiscated during a bus ride through a quarantine zone, and we had had to scrounge for a rather pathetic looking branch when we got to the church. I was concentrating a lot on the show being "perfect," that it didn't really matter to me anymore what sort of "souls" were we winning. Despite my own attitude toward the whole thing, that evening an old man came forward. He was probably in his late 60s, though it was a little hard to tell. He came to a life changing encounter with Christ that night, in his much later years of life.

Remarkable.

Even when all reason fails, when we look at the mother homeless in the streets of LA, when we look at the children orphaned by the AIDS epidemic in Africa, when we look hard into the eyes of a child prostitute rescued from the trade in India, even when we want to look around and lose all hope as to why the world is the way it is: We remember. It is by one life that this world is changed - one life changed mine, and my life can change just one. And if I can help just that one, if all of us commit to helping just that one, the world will change.

My AP US History classroom had a small poster on the bulletin board by the door that simply read: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." (Margaret Mead)

Indeed. It is the only thing that will.

For more information about my India trip, scroll down and read some of the other posts on this blog. I should be receiving my flight information soon, and I will be reporting stories about my immunizations (have to update that tetanus shot!) and other preparations for the trip in the coming posts.

(photo from Clint Whitley, fellow Belize participant).

2.9.09

"You and your social justice."

First, a story: A few days ago, I was sitting in the crowded Teaching Assistant office when one of the professors from the department came through asking what teas we would prefer for the departmental teas that happen each Friday. After telling her "Earl Grey," and thinking for a moment, I politely requested, "And if you could, could you look for some fair trade?" She duly noted it on her paper, and time will tell whether or not fair trade tea will make headway into the English Department teas.

My desk mate looked at me with a smile on her face, and said in that sweet Southern accent of hers: "Oh Dianna. You and your social justice." Now, knowing her, these were actually words of praise - I understood it to mean that it was kind of cool (albeit weird, but cool) that I had spoken up. She correctly identified, by her comment, however, that I am one of the few in the department who would bother to care about such a thing. The implicit question there being, "Why are you bringing this 'social justice' thing into the small parts like our departmental tea?"

As I have stated time and again here on this blog and otherwise, it is those little things that make a difference. Making a commitment to support fair trade in even the little things that you drink - like coffee and tea - can make a large difference in someone's life. That is one farmer who is paid a fair wage for the tea leaves he's producing, one more reassurance that the product in your hands wasn't made by hands much smaller than your own, one more step in the fight to end the modern day slave trade.

Jesus tells us outright in Luke 16:10-13: "Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own?" Essentially, the message here is to be careful how we spend. Though the English department tea is not something I have control over spending for, I can at the very least request that non-fair trade practices are not implicitly supported by asking for a more explicit support of fair trade.

In American culture particularly (though it is very similar in most of the Western world), we have a cavalier attitude toward consumerism: as long as I can get this or that cheaply without much effort on my part, I will do so. It is time that this practice is stopped. By being those people in the office who are examples to others by requesting fair trade coffee or tea for the office pot, by showing large corporations that we refuse to shop there if they are connected with the slave trade, by simply talking to others about the product chain and where the shoes on our feet and the clothes on our back come from, we can begin a change.

We can demand transparency - we just need to make people aware of why transparency in the marketplace is needed in the first place.

Get informed. Get involved.