FFT

Excerpts from an article I was reading... this kind of helps to delineate a few of the reasons why I seem rather non-plussed about my globe-trotting....

Colonialism isn't dead.
Colonialism is alive and well every time you travel from the First World to the Third and come home bearing photographs of sharks and storms and slums, or scorpions fried for snacks, sunflowers bigger than your head, stalled buses whose aisles are slick with spit, and then you tell your friends and co-workers, "Oh man, it was so great, you gotta go."
We call it ecotourism and adventure travel. That sounds sensitive. We think "ugly Americans" are the fat ones on cruises and on package tours - anyone but us. We think we're different because we don't have a stars-and-stripes patch on our backpacks.
We think our motives are purer, that in the correct frame of mind, a trip to exotica means independence and not exploitation, as we come and see and - well, not quite conquer but globalize with every dollar spent. It's easy to say: "My aim is true, my morals are on track," but Christopher Columbus and a million missionaries said so, too. Easy to think it's not corrupting or condescending or anachronistic but cool to collect snapshots of the other, trading smiles with strangers to brag about at dinner parties later: souvenirs....
... Okay, so we - having shelled out to the airlines and big oil and then fouled the air - arrive abroad. Here we are now, entertain us. We're spurred by the same selfish yearnings as every pioneer and pirate and imperial passenger from eras past... Lawrence Osborne laments that there's "nowhere left to go," because "tourism has made the planet into a uniform spectacle," with everyone "wandering through an imitation of an imitation... The entire world is a tourist installation."...
... every destination resembles a theme park at which "you are asked to play a part in the racial memory of others": Consumer. Invader. Crusader. Seducer. Self-hating Westerner. Buffoon...
... But I now wonder whether it is right to guide anyone anywhere that he or she could not find on his or her own. Travel writing is advertising; it's turning foreigners and their landscapes into commodities...
... tourism, as James Hamilton-Patterson writes.. "is an industry determined to embrace you... It wants you to spend as much as you can on fatuous souvenirs; it wants you to do Machu Picchu or the Taj Mahal; it wants you to have the rainforest experience or the Mysterious East experience or the Rose Red City Half as Old as Time experience, and it doesn't terribly mind if you also have the fleeced-by-muggers-on-Copacabana-Beach experience."
First Worlders penetrating the Third World aren't the wild rebels they imagine themselves to be, he snorts. They're deluded children, lulled by the convenience of their own electronic toys and their longing to make the folks back home envy them for where they've been...
... In an ever-flatter world where simply seeing is no longer enough, where adventure travel gets spun into Survivor and The Amazing Race, neo-swashbucklers feels compelled to traverse entire nations and waterways on foot or in unorthodox boats, suffering and sometimes only barely surviving... But even this - even what appears to be anti-travel writing, with its horror stories about power outages and Taliban gunmen and canned meat and house-sized icebergs and whole populations afflicted with what Tayler calls "broken souls" - is travel writing nonetheless. Because in its perverse way, it still makes you want to go.
Go on, sneers Hamilton-Patterson, who has lived all over the world: Ski down Kilimanjaro before the last snowdrift melts on a planet whose "accelerating demise is helped along by the mounting effluent of our journeys."
... Am I saving some tribe from extinction by not looking for it, much less telling you about it? Or am I starving some shopkeeper by not buying his sandals? Both. Neither...

- Anneli Rufus

Looking at the Man in the Mirror

So, with all the brou-ha-ha about Michael Jackson's passing (whether real or staged), along with everybody else on the planet, I headed to Youtube to watch some of the classic music he'd created over his lifetime. Yes, he was an incredibly talented singer, dancer and entertainer, and the contributions that he made to the music industry are absolutely stunning (ie. like Thriller, utter, utter brilliant classic).
However, I also reviewed some Jackson 5 videos, from when he was a small child, and I couldn't help thinking about the man. We all know the stories of how those poor boys, like many other child entertainers, were worked to the bone, and possibly even abused, to practice their routines and shows day and night for the masses. Looking at little Michael, dancing around to 'ABC' (yet another classic), it saddened me to think about his life. His whole life, fed bit by bit to the masses, since he was old enough to hold a microphone. No wonder he got weird. No wonder he was so enamored of children (whether criminally so, or not, is a point of debate). No wonder he lived in Neverland with a chimp. Searching elusively for the childhood, the innocence, the peace of just being normal; something he never actually ever got a chance to do.
Now that being said, a very wise friend also reminded me that another 170,000 people also died yesterday as well, and none of those, especially those killed for rising up against the regime in Iran, will be eulogized and remembered like the King of Pop...

Go watch Food Inc. already...

I've been rather delinquent on this end, but it's been rather busy, being growing season and all.
Yesterday, I went to go see Food Inc., the movie with a friend, and for me, rather familiar faces and voices populated the screen, and, to be honest, I didn't learn anything more that I didn't already know. That being said, it's a highly recommended movie and I think everyone should watch it for education's sake. What I couldn't believe this past weekend that a Sandra Bullock rom-com was the #1 grossing movie. Gross, indeed.
However, my friend learned quite a bit from watching, so that was gratifying. Not that they were any slouch in the nutrition and eating department at all, but it was hopeful to me that they learned quite a bit.
It sometimes makes me wonder about preaching to the choir. I find that most people I talk to about food and food issues already 'get' me; in fact, many of them are my teachers as well. Most other friends don't actually really care about food, or where it comes from, or what it's made of. They find that as long as my beliefs and understanding about food works for me, then that's great. Awesome.
Which inevitably makes me think about mission. It works both ways, you see. Just as many of my friends in the Community don't understand why I care so much about food and agriculture, and see it mainly as irrelevant to the Way and faith, it works in reverse as well. Sometimes, I feel evangelism is more about preaching to the choir; we love Jesus, and everyone else is happy for us that we do, but it doesn't fit into their paradigm, so as long as it doesn't really affect them, they don't need Him either.
Just as I wonder and worry about my non-food friends not caring about how they are nourishing their bodies, and what the future holds for them as they choose to continue to be completely ignorant of what they are feeding themselves, I likewise worry about my food friends who do not know Jesus, and I worry about their future as they choose to be ignorant of what they are feeding their souls...
What I deeply ponder is to how to be the gap-stander, how to build bridges that make sense and how to see God glorified in His creation that He loves so much...

God is doing a mighty thing....

Admittedly, God is always doing mighty things, but that's 'cause He's always amazing!
One thing that always moves my heart is Urbana. The idea of it makes my heart leap. Now, to be sure, of most of the people I know who've been, I know scant few who actually work cross-culturally, which is disappointing. However, it is the potentiality of God's people being unleashed for His purposes which is exciting!
Here's a clip, for the Liberator has come!

Running for office

I don't understand politics very well, but there are various things that both the provincial and federal opposition parties seem to be making much hay about currently. Pointlessly. Particularly since some of the hay-making is health-related, I am particularly annoyed at how much useless rhetoric is being slung around, none of which has anything to do with reality, or the issue at hand.
I am curious, however: I understood that one of the main reasons why Stéphane Dion was perceived as a weak leader was his waffling at being unable to vote against the government, and thus bring the minority government down. He apparently let several non-confidence motions pass through the House without much debate, and this contributed to his downfall.
Um, now I have a question: Didn't Michael Ignatieff just do the exact same thing?
I don't understand how come the media isn't howling at the hypocrisy. Can someone explain that to me (especially you journalists out there)???

Clichés bug me

I'm not quite sure how to approach this. A friend of mine recently told me something about themselves that, for all intents and purposes, is chronically sinful. Now comes the delicate dance of deciding how to do the 'hate the sin and love the sinner' cliché. Certainly, I'm not happy about the whole situation, my friend is perfectly aware what my traditional stance has to be on the issue, as well as what the Community at large tends to think as well. On the other hand, to condemn and be an awful person about it is also not such a great idea.
So, I brought it up as a prayer point in a small group I attend, none of whom know my friend at all, mainly along the lines of how to walk that line. Well. The response and discussion about how to walk that line didn't quite work out the way I was hoping. There was no walking of any line; I am supposed to pick a side and sit there. That to not strongly point out the 'ungodliness' of the situation was ducking the issue. That to not condemn meant I was supporting and condoning the action. Hm.
Well, I had today to mull about it, and wrote about the issue (because, of course, you never really think about how to say things eruditely at the time; usually, you have good comebacks wayyy after the fact) in an email to the ones who particularly are involved. My response to the idea that my friend's sin is a specifically bad one is as such (I've edited out anything that might identify my friend, which takes a way a bit from the flow of the email, but you can probably get the drift):
We all live ungodly lifestyles. I'm impatient, stubborn, materialistic, selfish, self-centred and ungracious; those are (some of) mine. To particularly stigmatize and condemn one sin over another, I feel is not fair. I perpetually live a lifestyle that almost completely ignores the reality of a spiritually lost, economically unjust, justice-deprived world - THAT, I feel, in many senses, is a VERY ungodly lifestyle.
We should call it what it is: Prayer for a friend and how to love him well, love him despite his shortcomings, possibly love him into a new reality and a renewed relationship with the One who loves him more than any human ever could.

Oh, to just pass over...

Ach, it bothers me when my patients' situations really grab me by the heart and I weep with them in their despair. Very unprofessional, and frankly, very self-indulgent - it's not exactly very helpful to you when your health care provider is as upset about your situation as you are.
However, my encounter with one of my families hit very hard with this recession has struck me today, more than the others that have come over the past few months; they have already lost their home, had to sell many of their appliances, have had creditors hounding them with phone calls at work and at home, and are considering personal bankruptcy. They are fearful that they will not be able to provide for their children and have them subsequently taken away from them. They've had to use a food bank for the first time in their lives, and dad cannot even bring himself to say the word "food bank". For various other reasons, they really are alone and afraid.
It's a world I, and the vast majority of my friends, barely ever touch. We don't understand want; sure, we may be short of cash, so we have to go to Tim's, rather than Starbucks, but we are not in danger of falling behind in the rent or the mortgage payments or in being unable to afford a landline, let alone a cell phone plan and internet access.
But this, this is a completely different beast. Despair and fear are not words I hear in my social circles, but they are being whispered under the doors of many other houses. I almost wish I had a paintbrush, and could paint the protective blood over their doorways, to keep hunger and poverty and despair from their homes...