For a class in Eastern Orthodox interpretations of scripture, I wrote some poems for contemplation each week of Lent, attempting an Eastern lens. They are also written in a syllabic pattern used by St. Ephrem the Syrian. 
1st Sunday in Lent

You called us while we

       stood under the tree
reaching for the fruit
       under the fig’s shade
You say come and see -
       the prophets spoke true.

You are the one true vine!

Graft us to the branch
       let us bear good fruit
Give us eyes to see,
       You, the gardener.

2nd Sunday in lent

Healer, Redeemer,
       you heal all who come
We are lifted up
       through your forgiveness
Moses raised the bronze
       serpent to Israel

To you, all creation looks.

You stretch out your hands
       in your compassion
As you are raised up
       creation bows down.

3rd Sunday in Lent

One from Jesse’s line,

       You have submitted
to be High Priest;
       brought low to raise up;

Your promise, a bow

       over creation.

Your mercy makes your cross light.

The shoot of Jesse
       takes root and redeems.
You have cleansed the earth,
       making fertile ground.

4th Sunday in Lent

The Lord’s healing hand

       is above all others
Through Him, creation
       hears and speaks His name
Chosen by the Lord,
       Abraham went out.

The Lord calls out and draws in.

We praise the Lord for
      His deliverance!
The land has borne fruit;
       Your promise fulfilled.

5th Sunday in Lent

The way has been made,

       the ram was given;

You hung on the tree 
       in your compassion.

The curtain pulled back,
       to heaven itself.

Your grace reaches to the depths.

Your deliverance
       is our assurance.
Ransom for many,
       you clothe us in light.

on Non-Denominationalism, Grace, and Sacrament

The church that I grew up in was the same that I was dedicated in as a baby and worshipped at for the following twenty-three years. There are many aspects of this experience that I am still unpacking, which can be difficult to do so in earnest when it has been the primary informant for many of my early theological ideas. The church is affiliated with the Associated Gospel Church (AGC) denomination, and has close relationships with other Baptist churches around the city. Additionally, the local university’s seminary is Baptist as well, increasing my insulation to different theological streams. There was a strange tension between having the idea that we were very theologically informed, and yet having no formal catechesis process, which resulted in a kind of culture that the way things were done, and the way things were thought about, were simply what Christianity itself  were. I only later understood why those who tended to call themselves “non-denominational” were primarily from Baptist, Evangelical upbringings.

Coming out of this context, I was struck with the depth and significance given of the Eucharist that was in other traditions. It is on this background that I will address the practice of taking the Eucharist at this church. How this was approached at church largely informed how I think of grace and how God relates to us both despite, and due to, the fact that Communion seemed to be a marginal practice. What follows is my evaluation of what the practices meant, or rather, how they manifested themselves to me. Without delving too far into my pre-teen psyche, I will say that my experience with preparing to take Communion was fraught with anxiety. It was generally frowned upon for children to take part in Communion, although some families did allow their children to do so. My parents were particularly insistent on not taking Communion before you could fully understand what was going on. This was part of an emphasis on internal preparation, and ‘readiness’ to come to the table. Turning thirteen allowed me to understand what was really going on through Christ’s death on the cross, however I had been barred from partaking for so long, I did not know how to proceed now that I was allowed to truly remember. It was remembrance that was emphasized, rather than any present grace or future eschaton with the recitation of Luke 22:19 as the closest manifestation of a liturgy. We took of the ‘bread and wine,’ manifested as crackers and grape juice (in individual cups), as what was important was what they represented, rather than the elements themselves. Lacking an overt explanation of why things were done as such implied that there was no objective importance to what was done – it was not tied into our larger experience as the church body or historical narrative, rather our personal reflection on what Christ did for us. Further, by focusing on remembrance there was overwhelming emphasis on Christ’s death. We remember, and are thankful for his sacrifice. 

There was a strange degree of solemnity for a purely symbolic observance. I am inclined to believe that the fact that it was symbolic made it that much less accessible. This emphasis on Christ’s sacrifice was reinforced through the most important and most serious Communion service on Good Friday. Throughout the year, Communion services were held once a month – although not explicitly stated, I was impressed with the importance of the service, with it only being once a month. It should not be taken for granted, or become routine by having it more frequently. The focus on Christ’s sacrifice, and thus his death for our sins reinforced that we needed to acknowledge what this meant for us, personally. The preamble before the monthly service was generally the same, in talking about the importance of remembering Christ’s sacrifice, and we ought to be sure to pay credence to the event of the crucifixion, and remember the price paid for our forgiveness. This seemed to undercut the grace given, as we were sure to feel the appropriate amount of regret as payment for this gift of grace. The operating paradigm was very much that of personal salvation. Salvation primarily means that we are to be thankful to God for forgiving our sins, because Jesus Christ sacrificed so much. We are able to come to the table because we have asked for forgiveness. There was a shift partway through my attendance of this church, from being served in our seats through passing trays of crackers and the juice (although they were still referred to as the bread and wine) to having the elements stationed at the front of the sanctuary. This move was made to represent our active choice to reach out to God and His gift of salvation, as we had to move up to the front, rather than passively receiving the elements in our seats.

The presentation of Communion as something that someone must individually prepared for, and individually partake in showed an incomplete picture of God’s grace. Communion was both incidental to our faith, while at the same time having almost unspeakable importance, in putting it off until one could intellectually grasp what they were entering into. This importance though was not explicitly named, and I would suggest the gravity with which it was presented (in terms of truly understanding Jesus’ sacrifice) tells only part of the story, and is frankly a shadow of what the sacrament of the Eucharist is supposed to be. I am largely in the reaction phase having stepped out of this context, yet I do not want to paint this experience in a wholly negative brush. There are certainly elements of this practice that are important, however the practices enacted that they are trying to avoid (ritualism, transubstantiation, etc.) are not such that they must be so obviously side-stepped as to make Communion hardly a sacrament.

The main elements that were distinctive of this Communion service, or spoke directly to how this congregation conceptualized God were that it was explicitly a symbolic gesture, it was an act of remembrance, particularly remembering Christ’s sacrifice, it was highly individualized and internalized. By not framing a Communion service as sacramental, that is, not a means in which God interacts with us in the physical world, it creates a dualistic framework between spiritual reality and corporeal reality, individual, inner salvation and the ongoing redemption of creation through Christ. This individualized approach not only creates the false dichotomy, but then relegates our salvation to the ‘spiritual side.’ This lends itself to become a personalized experience, and general conception of salvation. Communion is about your response to God, rather than God’s active work in the world – or, simply both. Our encounter of God’s grace does not precipitate at the table itself, but rather in what occurs prior to the table. There is no conceptual overlap through the consumption of the elements and the reception of grace. We are closer to God because we have once again come before him, and have acknowledged his sacrifice, not due to any grace or effectual change that is a result of participating in the Eucharist. There was dialogue of grace, and our reception of God’s grace through Christ’s death and resurrection, but Communion was not a culmination of this. Emphasizing personal preparation to come to the table through reflection, repentance, and prayer makes the elements an accessory – the work has been done. Although approaching the table was explained to be a response to God’s grace, there was still room left for coming improperly (unconfessed sin, or ‘inadequate’ repentance). This is not to dismiss the gravity of abusing the Eucharist, however this is generally warned against due to the real substance that is present in the elements.

Having Communion as a symbolic, internal exercise reduces the scope of what the Eucharist is meant to capture. Focusing on Christ’s death and resurrection very much historically dates the touch point of God’s grace. The Eucharist is indeed grounded in real events in human history. However, when primarily manifested as an exercise of reflection, this becomes limited to an event in the historical past, rather than an event that has far-reaching (all-reaching, rather) effects. Even more than ‘ripple effects,’ there is no ongoing work that is equally grounded in human historical narrative. The message of hope that is presented in this model of Communion is that we have hope because we have been redeemed, but this is limited to our present and past condition. It proclaims that Christ has died for our sins, yet the scope of that message is stunted.

A foundational principle in rhetoric of the sacraments, why they are what they are, and their importance to the Church is that God implemented them due to our creaturely nature and the difficulty that comes with this. He gave us something physical to orient ourselves, as we could not otherwise grasp spiritual principles. This may at first seem to be a simplification of the human condition, or denying the idea that we are both physical and spiritual; having physical reminders is helpful, but without them we cannot begin to encounter God? However, in a real way, we do indeed need physical reminders, as is evidenced by what becomes of our sacraments when this reality is ignored. Even more, we do not simply need physical reminders of spiritual things, but an incarnational model of how God manifests himself in the world.

Regarding the solemnity that surrounded a Communion service at this church (due to the focus on personal sins, and Jesus’ death), there are important theological impulses behind this, and though the practice should not be limited to this focus, it does well to highlights the difficulty of our sinful nature and how it is a real barrier to us before God. It does not fully align with the symbolic nature of that particular service of Communion, yet it is an aspect of salvation that should not be glossed over; our brokenness is complete before God. That said, this is grossly limited in terms of the story it tells and stops short of the nuances of how this gap is bridged. Focus on mental preparation places an undue burden on the receivers of God’s grace. In this context the elements are not an intermediary to God’s grace, but an expression of having already been cleansed. In an ideal context this may not be as problematic as it is often manifested: we remember, we are thankful for God’s grace and come to the table. What makes this difficult to achieve in many similar contexts is that Communion is primarily framed as remembrance, and thus an exercise in re-living the death of Christ and the gravity of sin that brought it about. In this light, we do indeed respond to God’s grace, but this is secondary. The largest misappropriation of the elements in this context is that it inadvertently paints a picture in which God receives us at his table only once we have mentally and emotionally realized the beauty of his grace.

Indeed, God’s grace is sufficient, and grace itself is not transmitted through the ingestion of the elements. Where this story stops short is that we cannot actually be ready to come to the table in a fundamental sense. That is, we do not make ourselves ready. The message and function of the Eucharist is God’s coming to meet us, rather than us preparing to meet God. 

Eating in season.

It's that time of year that the air shifts ever so slightly, and there is a coolness that is now present. This past summer, when it was hotter and muggier than many of us would like, I had the privilege of working in a local garden that provided food for local food banks as well as offered the opportunity for people in the neighbourhood to take home fresh vegetables with them.

As I learned about suckering tomatoes, how to harvest red cabbage, and that although carrot tops might look like parsley they are really not and don't need to be harvested, my idea of food and what we eat broadened. I was struck with how I never stopped to think what a broccoli plant looked like. Some would call this privilege, but in reality I am missing out on something big. At the risk of overstatement, I think I've missed a huge part of human experience - I have not grown up with a concept of food as something that the land yields. It is something I can seek out, at any time, with relative convenience. We do not see food as a gift, but rather a commodity.

Being disconnected from creation is more than simply not being able to enjoy the fresh air, or eating healthier food, but to be separated from certain rhythms of life that are so important for how we see things, what we expect, and how we interact with each other - everything.

I don't know how to make do with the food that is available November through March in Southern Ontario. But - is that too simplistic? We don't live in a world where I need to can everything I need to eat over the winter, and global economies rely on exports and all that. So should I continue eating bananas all through the winter? Is it an important practice to abstain just to be in tune with the rhythm of what I am being offered - to really, truly know that I am not owed easy transportation, simple and affordable food whenever and wherever I am?

"What's the last meal you've eaten?"
"McDonald's." - Wendell Berry

This is balm to my soul. Last semester I was really struggling with living within the tension of striving for ideals and always failing, and how to "live well," how to understand our imperfection and not be burdened with guilty about it, but an awareness that in a sense we do need to try and live better... but as a response to God's grace and love, not out of a feeling of obligation and oppression.

love song to a city.

Keep my mind open Toronto -
open to the beautiful people and cultures
that crush me on the sidewalk

Keep my heart soft Toronto -
when I step over those asking for change - and real change -
in spite of my being, my upbringing, the classes I am on the way toward

Keep my face gentle Toronto -
when men I don't know say things to me
as I do groceries - go to school - go to work - live my life in long pants and a coat

I'm fighting you -
it's true what they say, you're the world -
beautiful, broken, and hard to love.

Made in Bangladesh

This is a blog post I've had in various draft forms for a while now, but I think it might be ripe, considering the recent events in Bangladesh. This past Wednesday, a garment factory in Bangladesh collapsed, and the death toll has recently passed 300.

What might be most remarkable about this is, it's not news. We're used to seeing Made in China (Vietnam, Singapore, wherever) on most of what we buy; and we know what this label implies about the conditions that the products were made in. The reality of where our products come from is pretty easy to put out of our minds, and the casual acceptance of this is commonplace. At least, if it's not acceptance, it's the acknowledgement that we wish things could be different, but what can you do when almost everything we consume is made on the other side of the world - fair trade coffee and used clothing can only go so far. Knowing that what we buy was likely made at the high price of the oppression of an anonymous person almost requires that there is a certain degree of acceptance (I'm considering throwing around the Orwellian buzzword of 'doublethink,' but maybe that is too sensationalist) because it is so difficult to step out of this framework.

Although images of oppression, long hours, and unsafe conditions evoke visceral reactions to what clearly seems to be injustice, there is a growing field of thought that sweatshops are actually beneficial. This position may seem counter-intuitive, but you can read some of the positions in defence of sweatshops here, here, here and here.

Basically, a defence of sweatshops appeals to points along these lines:

• People who work in sweatshops are pursuing the best option they have; working in a sweatshop is better than starving to death, rummaging for food or things to sell in a garbage dump, or prostitution. And even though it may seem like it is just the best of a handful of terrible choices, sweatshops actually offer wages that are more than the national average income.
• Unsafe conditions and long hours in a factory are not unlike any other country's that has gone under industrialization. What developing countries are undergoing is no different than what we saw in Industrial Britain, and we need to allow this process to go its natural course. In fact, this process is getting faster due to the technology and capital we have available, and places like Hong Kong and Singapore are largely past this phase, in only 30 years.
• Not only are sweatshops a natural part of industrialization, but they are merely a symptom of poverty, not a root cause. It would be misguided to ban them, and would ultimately hurt a country's economy.
• Simply offering higher wages is not necessarily a solution either; this often leads to bribes being used get a job, and if work became expensive in a given country, a company would likely just move their business where they could get the most profit. Further, compensation in other ways (shorter hours, more bathroom breaks) do not affect a worker's overall productivity, so there is no incentive for employers to implement these.

The main thing that these articles came down to was that sweatshops are simply the best option that people have, or else they would not be working there. They cite quotes from people who wish they could be working in a factory, or of factory employees wishing that more people would buy their products.

Of course working in a sweatshop is better than garnering wages from a garbage dump. It is misleading to say that people are "choosing" to work in sweatshops, if the only reasonable options they have are working in a sweatshop, living off a garbage heap, or dying. Characterizing people as having "chosen" to work in a sweatshop misrepresents their situation, as if they could reasonably do  otherwise, and are there out of their own volition. Simply because a sweatshop is the best out of three terrible options does not mean it is something we should endorse, or not seek to improve.

All that said - it is easy to be outraged at situations like the events in Bangladesh, or deaths and difficult lives that are never reported on. But, this does not mean that banning sweatshops is the best route either. In some cases, sweatshops make up a significant portion of a country's manufacturing sector. To ban them would be shortsighted, and very damaging to an economy, as well as its residents. If sweatshops are the best option that people have, taking this away can be detrimental to their livelihoods if they have nowhere else to turn. An example of the negative effects that can occur with outright banning is during the 1990's, a German-run garment production company in Bangladesh laid off around 50 000 children; follow-up from Oxfam found that most of these kids turned to prostitution, crime, or just ended up starving. We need to fully understand issues in another country before acting, as well as treat the root causes of poverty rather than symptoms.

This discussion essentially comes down to two main questions: can sweatshops bring a country out of poverty? Are there any other options? I don't know the answers to these questions, and I think attempting to address them would be out of my breadth, right now at least.

Events like those in Bangladesh often spur a wave of guilt - and, this is not wholly misplaced. But, guilt and outrage are easy, especially when we see death tolls in the hundreds. What is hard is really changing our buying habits, finding ways to invest in our local communities, and becoming informed on what our role is as North Americans in addressing global poverty in a meaningful way - most important is to continue this pursuit past the feelings of the shock of tragedy and into our everyday lives.

Food for thought and related reading:

"The Complexity of Complicity"

"Slavery must be recognized in all its guises." - The Guardian

"Creating a Sweatfree World" - International Labor Rights Forum

talking about stuff.

Last week I finished up a month of trying to not buy anything that I didn't need (I don't know if it was cheating to buy dinner with friends, but... I may have done that - that's filling a certain need though I think) as a way to evaluate what I really need and to help me value what I already have. It was kind of freeing to know that certain things were off-limits. In the same vein of "things we don't need" (sort of) I want to take a look at this issue from a different perspective.

You may have heard the term "SWEDOW" - stuff we don't want. It's used to refer to donations that are unnecessary and even harmful to those to whom they are given, usually under the pretense of aid. A classic example of this is World Vision's donation of Superbowl t-shirts, branded with the losing team.

Every article I read on this topic had this photo, so I thought I'd throw it in too.

Donations of 100 000 free t-shirts can inefficient at best, and harmful at worst. The main reasons for discouraging SWEDOW are:

• the financial cost to ship the products over. Donating something you already have may seem handy, because you have it, you don't need it and other people [seem to] need it, so it seems to follow that you should fill that gap. However, this isn't as simple as dropping off some clothes at your Goodwill downtown. Shipping, packaging, customs -it adds up. But it's not even as if all that is somehow worth it. Typically donations of this kind are items that are readily available in a given country anyway, so all the money spent on bringing over the donations is wasted.
• Even more, this is money that could be invested into local suppliers. What if you had a coffee shop, but then someone decided to fly in and start giving out free coffee right in front of your shop because they wanted to help. Bringing in a bunch of free stuff can be pretty damaging to a local economy.
• It's really just sloppy, and disrespectful to people's real needs. If everyone had enough shirts for a year, there would still be big issues. It feels good to treat a symptom for a while, but ultimately you're doing more harm by not addressing the illness. By not even taking the time to understand the issues at play in a developing country we are acting in ignorance and blatantly disrespecting the people we claim to care about.

Probably one of the most dangerous things about SWEDOW is that it makes you feel like you're helping, when really you are not at all. Your conscience may be temporarily salved so you don't feel a need to enact any real change. This concept is articulated by philosopher Slavoj Zizek in his compelling (and in this link, animated!) lecture, First as Tragedy, then as Farce.

Don't get me wrong - there are certainly times when it is important to intervene and provide free "stuff" that people need. I'm not saying let people go naked and hungry while we wade through red tape and sort out policy and systemic issues. But of course, the costs (I don't mean just financial) and benefits must be weighed, and the time and place for this type of intervention must be carefully discerned.

P.S. In the interest of keeping this a balanced discussion, I'll link to World Vision's defense of its donations.