writing the journey
I’ve come to know many Haitians who are delightfully unique in their outlook on life as they are in their accents and vocabulary, which gives me no end of headaches as I try to figure out yet another idiom or unique word play I need to understand so that I can grasp their meaning.
Why does the world exist the way it does that a people confined to a third of an island in the Caribbean are seen as less-thans? How do they grapple with the faith that comes from white people to their land, given to them to give them hope, and yet used as a tool by those same white people to call them despicable names and degrade them?
The oppressing side in its acts of oppression is doing wrong by nature. There is no “just” oppression. Whether it is cruel or superficially “kind,” oppression is wrong and cannot be redeemed either by language or a reduction in cruelty.
Well, I will continue my journey. It’s been a wonderful adventure that not only has helped open up a language and a culture and a people I never knew before, but also has changed me in how I see the world and understand those who live in.
in those decades of following Jesus, I’ve listened to uncountable sermons and Bible studies, often led by people with great earnestness, who have said “oh, if you only knew the Greek/Hebrew/Aramaic you’d see stuff in the scriptures that are hidden to you because you only know English.”
If you see Haiti and you have the urge to “help,” I would suggest that Haitians don’t really need you to come help them. Haitians, like all humans, have great intelligence, drive, creativity, and their own sense of self-worth. If you want to help, find and support Haitians who are doing that work. It doesn’t give you a place to be centered and it won’t provide photo opportunities of you “helping” Haitians.
But it will help Haitians by letting them do for themselves.
How do I make my faith work anymore (and maybe it never did) when such a very Christian nation seems incapable of seeing the violence we are initiating, celebrating, and dismissing, often while claiming the name of Jesus?
You want to terrify politicians? Take away their signs of power which are “respect” and obedience and decorum and complacency. Trip them up, make a point to oppose them at every turn, continuously point out their failures, and continuously refuse to accord them the power to silence you.
Rather than seek to deny the humanity of gay people and trans people, what about using your religion to help you decide to know more about them so that you can love them better?
It was 365 days ago I first started using #Duolingo to begin my journey learning Haitian Creole (#kreyol #ayisyen).
Why?
That Good Samaritan did a good thing to someone in distress, and if the story stops there, then we have learned a good lesson, right?
But what the story doesn’t tell us in the background, and doesn’t tell us “the rest of the story.”
This kreyòl version is blunt: “Lè Josèf leve nan dòmi an, li fè sa anj Senyè a te di l la. Li marye ak Mari. Malgre sa, li te tann jouktan pitit la fèt anvan l te antre nan zafè sèks ak mari. Li rele pitit ki te fèt la Jezi.”—“When Joseph woke up from his sleep, he did what the angel of the Lord told him. He got married to Mary. Despite this, he waited until the child was born before entering into sex with Mary. He called the child that was born Jesus.”
It’s hard to overestimate the effects of that quake upon Haiti and Haitians. Twelve years later and so much has not yet been repaired. It was an earthquake that traumatized people—some who today cannot even handle being in a parking garage when a large truck drives by because the floors begin to vibrate and shake.
There is a glass bubble around white people in America and elsewhere, a bubble that lets us see through to the lives of others, but that protects us from questioning the wisdom laid down in our schoolrooms and homes and churches about what events “really mean.”
What better way to find connecting with people than to learn their language well enough to listen to them, understand, and reply in their own language with the full context of their culture?
Let me bring in a little history for you today. Let’s talk about Haïti . . . Haïti was once … More
If you want to build your faith up so that you honor Jesus and you draw people to Jesus in your lives, might I suggest you do it the way that Jesus did?
Perhaps white people’s thoughts and prayers and good intentions aren’t enough when their Black friends are asking for love and dignity.
As America evolved as an independent nation freeing itself from certain connections with Britain such as political and economic control, so did the church, centering itself in the power and people of America who ran the nation, and inescapably represented their cultural values through religious language and theology.
White people, do not go into Black spaces to help change the conversation or add your very important opinion. It is just not the time and place for that.
“Making good trouble” means stirring things up so that we do not become complacent about our situation and resigned to injustice
The vision of Jesus for empire Christianity in our Sunday Schools and sermons and theologies is really an irrelevant Jesus who does not match the Jesus of the texts.
For the vast, vast majority of people, “deconstruction” is a good thing. Deconstruction can result in something far different and, in my opinion, far better than, white Evangelical Christianity.
The history of the church is our confidence in rightly understanding until we realize how terribly wrong we’ve misunderstood everything.
Betty White, a white woman in an industry that empowered only white men, stood up for what’s right. It cost her the job that she loved. But she did it, not “anyway,” but “because.” She did it because of her own moral integrity.
The book’s subtitle hints at what’s to come: we are all granted some level of privilege in life that others do have; those who have the most privilege are called to use that privilege
We have to face the fact that Christians often pick up odious behavior traits and exhibit them while singing songs of love and praise to Jesus of Nazareth.
