This post is the second part of my two-part post entitled “Broken World Joy.” Last week, I wrote about the brokenness of the world as I experience it – as inextricable from my being part and parcel of a world that has something wrong with it. I specifically talked about how the way that my husband and I invest our money takes us into complicated moral territory, and how our first task is perhaps not simply to fix, but to be brought to a place of appreciation for the depth and pervasiveness of the world's brokenness; we participate in it by being part of the world, and we often precipitate it – unknowingly and/or unintentionally – by our choices and actions.
I hope no one took away from my post that I don't think we should be setting ourselves to the task of seeking justice where there is oppression, building where there is ruin, restoring what has been violated, and being imaginative peacemakers in every dimension of our lives.
Because I definitely believe that we should be doing all those things. My reflection was on my own tendency to pretend that I am pure, and wash my hands of the grief of the world, rather than own and embrace the world as my world, and the grief and pain and suffering as my own, both as victim and oppressor.
So, having said all that... Today, I'm sharing about a few specific ways that I own and embrace the goodness of the world. I hope you'll share your thoughts in the comment section.
I'm currently reading Robert Farrar Capon's lovely, engaging, and sometimes hilarious book, The Supper of the Lamb. I won't go into too much depth (and I couldn't even if I wanted to, seeing as I'm only about halfway through it), but I bring it up because in it, Capon so lovingly expounds upon the joy of the world. And the joy of the world has been on my mind these past couple of weeks.
Or rather, the concept of “the joy of the world” has been on my mind. That is, I haven't necessarily been feeling all that joyful, but I've been contemplating it as more of an abstraction. This is the easier path, naturally, and my default: I have an easier time being a critic, a cynic, or just distracted by the trivial. When I hear about joyful people – and especially joyful Christians – I assume naivete at best, faking it at worst.
So that's pretty sad, huh? I think the reason I have so much trouble with joy is because I have trouble getting past the problem of pain. I became aware of this when I started to notice my habits in prayer. I pray regularly, especially before meals, because I want my daughter to see me praying and understand prayer to be an integral part of our lives. Like eating three meals and a snack every day, I want her to think of prayer as both a taken-for-granted daily activity and critically important to our well-being. Of course, we don't just pray for our own edification: our faith tradition puts a lot of emphasis of prayer as going hand-in-hand with action, one informing the other, each making the other possible. We pray for so many reasons, among them to ask for God's mercies amongst the unholy terribleness so prevalent in the world and all the suffering endured as a result.
Lately, however, my prayers have been geared more toward gratitude rather than petition. At first, I thought this a good practice; orienting myself to the things already given, I was cultivating a habit of gratefulness and appreciation for God's goodness. Except, not really. What I was really doing was withdrawing, hermit-crab-like, into a shell of being content with what is, because I doubted that God was actually listening or caring, at least not when it came to the intimate concerns of my inconsequential little life. Don't ask for what you're not going to get, I thought to myself. Praying for things is just setting yourself up for disappointment.
Now, I really don't have the experience or theological training to delve into questions of why God wants us to ask for things and what it means when we ask and things don't happen, and all the various purposes of prayer. For now, I'm going with the assumption that Jesus told us to ask for things, and thus not asking is a bad way of following Jesus. In fact, it's not following at all.
It seems crazy to me that there can be such a thing as a child soldier and that God would want me to pray for a good night's rest. How can that exist in the same universe? And why would God be inclined to look kindly on my simple request, when there are still kids with automatic weapons and stories that make me want to gouge my eyes out? Why?
I don't know. I'm not pretending to answer – or even really address – that question. All I'm saying is, my choice to withdraw my participation from the joy of the world because of the brokenness of the world is not really doing much to help anyone or anything. God can handle the criticism I aim at the heavens, but probably can't use my cynicism and despair to do much about the earth. I think the prayers for the good night's rest, the relief from the toothache, the easy labor for the pregnant friend, the safe journey for the traveling family member, and for the resolution of warfare and the end of famine and comfort for the poor – these are all requests that put us in mind of God's mercies and provision as much as the prayers of thanks do. They also put me out on a limb: an illogically hopeful limb where I choose to ask for things with no guarantee, trusting the invisible and almighty creator being to hear my thoughts and think kindly on them. And then, whatever happens, to ask, and ask again.
It's much easier for me to slip into a lazy deism where I don't need to ask anything of God because God just set it all in motion and is observing it all work out. But that's a joyless (and, come to think of it, heretical) place for me to live, and while the risks of believing in divine compassion are greater, so are the rewards – which brings me back to Capon. With joyful abandon, he writes about a world made by God “out of joy: [God] didn't need it; He just thought it was a good thing.” We are likewise responsible to delight in that same world, and Capon spends most of the book on a campaign to convince the reader to be more of a materialist. God made all this stuff and loves it; so should we, and we should accept no substitute (as an amateur chef, his versions of substitutes are diet foods and margarine). Meals, friends, the stuff of the world – all are “occasion[s] of joy.”
While Capon uses food and wine to expound on the delight we should be taking in the world, I found my thoughts turning again and again to my daughter. She is two and a half, and not a major contributor to the household. She requires vast amounts of our time and energy to keep alive and well. She is wholly dependent on us. We don't, technically speaking, need her. But we rarely think of her in these terms, because that's not the point of a child. In spite of the one-way street of effort involved in raising her, we can't imagine our lives without her. We delight in her. She is our joy.
So we are with God. I'm obviously not the first to be struck by the metaphor of God as Parent and World as Child, but I'm still taken aback at the thought that God truly delights in me and loves me. It's the simplest and earliest Sunday School lesson: God so loved the world. But as Capon says, simple does not correspond with easy. (His example: pie crust. Tell me about it, Robert.) It is challenging to imagine a divine being so lovingly concerned with my fears and bruises, but how else could it be if I am so delighted by and bound up in the concerns of the smaller world of my small daughter? And if I can take joy in her, and God can take joy in me, then I think I can start to open my eyes to every “occasion of joy” around me.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Monday, March 3, 2014
Broken World Joy, Part 1: Can't Buy Me Love
As the title suggests, this post is part 1 of a two-part blog post that I am collectively referring to as "Broken World Joy." This first part deals more with brokenness, and the second will deal with the theme joy (so that I can talk about parenting and eating, the activities that fill my days). Both have to do with the world, and what it means to live in it and be a part of it. I hope you'll share your thoughts in the comment section.
Ah, spring! When a young couple's attention turns to what to do with that big ol' tax return. Thanks to our darling daughter, we get a large sum of money from the government every year, and we have the pleasure of thinking about what we'll do with it. I always lobby for a trip to Europe; my husband, whom I lovingly refer to as Savings Nerd, suggested that we use most of it to open a Roth IRA.
Which is of course what we did. It's hard being the free spirit of the home, but what are you gonna do? Maybe we'll go to Europe next year. In the meantime, I'm glad to be married to someone who gets excited about budgeting and investing our household income.
The question of what kind of investments to make, however, are always a joint decision. We contribute a small portion each month to my husband's retirement account, and now we have the IRA, and soon we may set up a 529 plan to save for our daughter. All of this leaves us feeling like good, responsible, upright citizens and parents.
But.
The thing about all these investments is that we don't have much control over -- or even much knowledge about -- what we're investing in, and therefore profiting from (well, hopefully we're profiting; that technically remains to be seen). Our investment organization offers a "social choice" option that gives us some assurances that our money is going toward companies that meet certain standards of responsibility established by the firm; in their own words, the companies included in social choice are selected with consideration for "Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) considerations." About half of our current investments are tagged "social choice."
Still, even our attempt to be ethical investors is fraught with moral complications. The point of investing through a firm dedicated to handling other people's money is that you, the investor, don't have to pick and choose among all the available stocks and bonds. It's a full-time job, which is why we pay other people to do it; investing on our own, exclusively, would be akin to setting up a farm to grow all our own food. Sure, it's possible, but not if we want to keep working the jobs we currently have. Using professionals increases the likelihood that we will see a good return on our investments, as well; even if we were to try to take on the stock market (setting aside, for the moment, the fact that we don't have the time), we lack the education and experience to make it a worthwhile, profitable endeavor.
The obvious benefit is that (thanks to the expertise of the investment organization) we'll have a chunk of money accruing interest over the next several decades, allowing us the chance to retire in our old age and help our kid(s) get a start in life with a little money of their own. This is what makes us feel like responsible people (and maybe a little righteous, too). The liability that we grapple with is that we cannot opt out of any particular corporation, and this kind of calls into question the morality of our whole household savings scheme.
Our money goes where our investment organization puts it. To put it in concrete terms: while we might choose not to eat at McDonald's for ethical reasons, our money is invested in the McDonald's Corporation. We can only easily see the top 25 companies that are getting our money, at any given time, so we don't even have a full picture of what we're invested in. Suddenly, all the products and companies that we tend to prefer or to avoid -- well, it stops making sense a little bit, doesn't it? Why choose to buy clothes from the company that repairs and recycles your clothing, or the company that doesn't test their shampoo in rabbits' eye, if you're going to retire on the profits of the company that manufactures junk that begins its life in a sweatshop and ends it in a landfill? And what if we, the pacifists, are invested in a corporation manufacturing bombs or planes that drop bombs?
It makes us wonder whether we're crafting a public image of the Conscientious Consumer: buying secondhand, eating locally, and in general making small, daily attempts to live careful, resource-conscious, peaceful lives. Meanwhile, our private lives are being built on companies that erode communities and the very planet. It makes us question our household's integrity.
I'd like to use this paragraph to wrap up with some pithy, wise statement about how we resolve our cognitive dissonance and move forward in building a home of compassion and peace. Unfortunately, it's still an open question for me (and for my husband), and we hope to be in conversation with others in our church, community, and families of origin, so as to gain insight into how to be responsible for those under our roof -- and how to take responsibility for those on the other side of our walls. We seek to live in a way that is hospitable toward our neighbors, those next-door and those on the other side of the world. But seeking implies that some research and investigation might be necessary, before the seekers can follow through with actions consistent with their findings.
Where this leaves me is the broken part of Broken World Joy. While it would be nice to skip straight to the joy, I think that Christ's call to live compassionately requires us to sit with brokenness a while and let it permeate our hearts. Not to the point of despair, but perhaps to the point of sorrow. My friend Dave pointed out to me that when Jesus stood in front of Lazarus' tomb, Jesus' first response was to weep. Even though he was moments from calling Lazarus back to life, he first cried over the death of his friend, and perhaps more generally over the brokenness of a world that contains so much suffering and death. And only then, Dave said, did he work for resurrection.
So, I'm looking for resurrection*, but I'm also sitting with the brokenness. For now, our investment portfolio reminds me that to be in the world is to be engaged with brokenness. A long time ago, during a World AIDS Day chapel during my sophomore year of college, a speaker declared that the body of Christ is HIV positive. I was taken aback by this statement, and eight years later it is still a vivid reminder to me that my life in Christ is not about escaping the suffering of the world. It's about entering into it and walking through it patiently, honestly, and compassionately -- and acknowledging that sometimes we're part of the problem, another oppressor, and looking for ways to enact justice in our own lives before calling for it on a larger scale.
I'd love to get your perspective on this stuff -- Do you have personal experience with radically breaking free from systemic injustices, and would you count retirement savings among them? What does it mean for you to walk compassionately through your own experiences of brokenness, as well as others'?
*Thanks for this phrase, Dave. I'm going to say it myself every day.
Ah, spring! When a young couple's attention turns to what to do with that big ol' tax return. Thanks to our darling daughter, we get a large sum of money from the government every year, and we have the pleasure of thinking about what we'll do with it. I always lobby for a trip to Europe; my husband, whom I lovingly refer to as Savings Nerd, suggested that we use most of it to open a Roth IRA.
Which is of course what we did. It's hard being the free spirit of the home, but what are you gonna do? Maybe we'll go to Europe next year. In the meantime, I'm glad to be married to someone who gets excited about budgeting and investing our household income.
The question of what kind of investments to make, however, are always a joint decision. We contribute a small portion each month to my husband's retirement account, and now we have the IRA, and soon we may set up a 529 plan to save for our daughter. All of this leaves us feeling like good, responsible, upright citizens and parents.
But.
The thing about all these investments is that we don't have much control over -- or even much knowledge about -- what we're investing in, and therefore profiting from (well, hopefully we're profiting; that technically remains to be seen). Our investment organization offers a "social choice" option that gives us some assurances that our money is going toward companies that meet certain standards of responsibility established by the firm; in their own words, the companies included in social choice are selected with consideration for "Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) considerations." About half of our current investments are tagged "social choice."
Still, even our attempt to be ethical investors is fraught with moral complications. The point of investing through a firm dedicated to handling other people's money is that you, the investor, don't have to pick and choose among all the available stocks and bonds. It's a full-time job, which is why we pay other people to do it; investing on our own, exclusively, would be akin to setting up a farm to grow all our own food. Sure, it's possible, but not if we want to keep working the jobs we currently have. Using professionals increases the likelihood that we will see a good return on our investments, as well; even if we were to try to take on the stock market (setting aside, for the moment, the fact that we don't have the time), we lack the education and experience to make it a worthwhile, profitable endeavor.
The obvious benefit is that (thanks to the expertise of the investment organization) we'll have a chunk of money accruing interest over the next several decades, allowing us the chance to retire in our old age and help our kid(s) get a start in life with a little money of their own. This is what makes us feel like responsible people (and maybe a little righteous, too). The liability that we grapple with is that we cannot opt out of any particular corporation, and this kind of calls into question the morality of our whole household savings scheme.
Our money goes where our investment organization puts it. To put it in concrete terms: while we might choose not to eat at McDonald's for ethical reasons, our money is invested in the McDonald's Corporation. We can only easily see the top 25 companies that are getting our money, at any given time, so we don't even have a full picture of what we're invested in. Suddenly, all the products and companies that we tend to prefer or to avoid -- well, it stops making sense a little bit, doesn't it? Why choose to buy clothes from the company that repairs and recycles your clothing, or the company that doesn't test their shampoo in rabbits' eye, if you're going to retire on the profits of the company that manufactures junk that begins its life in a sweatshop and ends it in a landfill? And what if we, the pacifists, are invested in a corporation manufacturing bombs or planes that drop bombs?
It makes us wonder whether we're crafting a public image of the Conscientious Consumer: buying secondhand, eating locally, and in general making small, daily attempts to live careful, resource-conscious, peaceful lives. Meanwhile, our private lives are being built on companies that erode communities and the very planet. It makes us question our household's integrity.
I'd like to use this paragraph to wrap up with some pithy, wise statement about how we resolve our cognitive dissonance and move forward in building a home of compassion and peace. Unfortunately, it's still an open question for me (and for my husband), and we hope to be in conversation with others in our church, community, and families of origin, so as to gain insight into how to be responsible for those under our roof -- and how to take responsibility for those on the other side of our walls. We seek to live in a way that is hospitable toward our neighbors, those next-door and those on the other side of the world. But seeking implies that some research and investigation might be necessary, before the seekers can follow through with actions consistent with their findings.
Where this leaves me is the broken part of Broken World Joy. While it would be nice to skip straight to the joy, I think that Christ's call to live compassionately requires us to sit with brokenness a while and let it permeate our hearts. Not to the point of despair, but perhaps to the point of sorrow. My friend Dave pointed out to me that when Jesus stood in front of Lazarus' tomb, Jesus' first response was to weep. Even though he was moments from calling Lazarus back to life, he first cried over the death of his friend, and perhaps more generally over the brokenness of a world that contains so much suffering and death. And only then, Dave said, did he work for resurrection.
So, I'm looking for resurrection*, but I'm also sitting with the brokenness. For now, our investment portfolio reminds me that to be in the world is to be engaged with brokenness. A long time ago, during a World AIDS Day chapel during my sophomore year of college, a speaker declared that the body of Christ is HIV positive. I was taken aback by this statement, and eight years later it is still a vivid reminder to me that my life in Christ is not about escaping the suffering of the world. It's about entering into it and walking through it patiently, honestly, and compassionately -- and acknowledging that sometimes we're part of the problem, another oppressor, and looking for ways to enact justice in our own lives before calling for it on a larger scale.
I'd love to get your perspective on this stuff -- Do you have personal experience with radically breaking free from systemic injustices, and would you count retirement savings among them? What does it mean for you to walk compassionately through your own experiences of brokenness, as well as others'?
*Thanks for this phrase, Dave. I'm going to say it myself every day.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)