Dear all,
Well, we’re just back from three weeks in East Africa, mostly in Northern Uganda with a few days at the end in Tanzania. It’s always a wrenching process to come home—somehow we get a chance to love so deeply there. This month’s column tries to capture some of that experience.
On a different topic, if you’re in the Philadelphia area, consider coming to the talk that I’ll be doing on Monday evening, January 7 on Money, Debt and Liberation. It’s another big stretch for me. More information at https://pendlehill.org/events/money-debt-and-liberation/
I wish you well with all the joys and challenges of the holiday season.
Love,
Pamela
Listen and love
Over lunch at a workshop for families in Tanzania, we were talking about how to break the pattern of harsh treatment of children which has been so much a part of the culture there. One man asked a question about a specific issue with a specific child. Though I have a lot of experience working with families, of course I didn’t have an answer for him. It depended so much on their relationship, his intentions, and his ability to do things he had never experienced as a child himself. So I responded that a child who feels loved will forgive many mistakes, and that the solution lies within that parent. He just needs enough loving attention to help peel away all the layers of hurt that cover it up.
Somehow that interchange seemed to capture the heart of what I was about on this trip. Though we could offer new possibilities and invite people to imagine a new thing, there are so many answers we didn’t have, so many problems we couldn’t solve. But we could always love. Listen and love and back people to get the support they need to come up with the solutions that are in their hearts and within their reach.
Of course many are not within reach. Unmet material needs are enormous. While we can always think about ways to share our income, and invite others with excess to do the same, the change in political and economic systems that is required to really make a difference will only come from changed hearts and empowered communities—both in Africa and the West. And so we listen and we love, strengthening a network of connections and our common capacity to help each other peel away the layers of hurts that obscure our loving powerful selves and the solutions that lie within.
It was a blessing to have this time that offered such undistracted opportunities to love. My hope is that I can remember, amidst all the busyness of my days back home, that this is the heart of our work and our lives.
Reflections on wealth and need
Power
Great power lines are going up along the north-south road
to capture power from the rushing Nile.
Above lies poverty and need.
The lines run south—to markets far away.
Refugees
Our goal—a camp of refugees from South Sudan
and trauma healing work with families.
I picture children ragged in bare feet
crowded into dusty dismal camps,
the story of the north after the war.
They are, instead, well-pressed and clean
suffering indignity and yet intent
to use this time—thrust on them painfully—
to build resilience and capacity
for their return.
An urge to pity the unfortunate
has no place here.
Color
The ladies come to graduation in full flower.
Bright fabrics in traditional design
are everywhere. Last year there were a few.
Reaching for memory of those lean years after the war
color does not come to mind. I breathe
and take in all the beauty of the peace.
Buzz
The motorcycles swarm like bees,
the taxi service of this town.
Young men trade land for buzzing bikes
and hopes to get ahead in modern times,
so fast and cool.
And yet repairs, high price of fuel,
so many with the same big hopes
foretell adversity
cast somber shadows on their dreams.
Repair
The car he drives, though not his own
provides his livelihood.
He keeps it running, cleans it all the time
deals with broken doors as best he can.
Yet back-seat pockets flap, affront
with undone seams. A needle is required.
My tiny hotel sewing kit, once called to mind,
is put to work at once. He makes a neat repair,
and now the car reflects more perfectly his care.
Suburbs
Roads through the hills around the city
are so deeply rutted I tense up,
hold my breath, despair of getting through.
Then, bone-wrenched, we arrive:
gated compounds, well appointed houses
of the middle class.
Country
This house is full of luxury
soft furniture, flush toilets
running water (cold).
Yet many from our country would complain.
The power’s unreliable, to say the least.
The wood-fired kitchen is outside,
no fridge or packaged food in sight.
Clothes washed by hand are hung to dry.
Around the house grow millet, sorghum,
chickens, goats and vegetables.
The family’s head grows dizzy
with requests from those with less.
The question’s always there:
What constitutes enough?
Excess
This gathering for play is a rare thing.
A balloon is blown up for each child, and
laughter fills the room.
Balloons are everywhere. They play and play.
Then more are blown—
and now they fight to have the most.
Needing to protect their hoard, they cannot play.
The tone has shifted. Something has been lost.
Shirts
These men have sweated blood
studied for years to get their jobs.
They take such care with how they dress.
I long to help them with repairs—
such simple things—an extra button, matching thread.
The collar of one well-pressed shirt is deeply frayed.
I have the skill to turn that collar, hide the wear,
would take real pleasure in the task.
I may know him well enough one day
to make the offer—but not yet.
Weight
The water system many places
runs on yellow plastic jerry cans.
They cluster round the bore holes
move on bikes and people’s heads
so common I barely notice any more.
Our last day I face lifting one.
Struggling under unexpected weight,
I see all those water carriers
in a new light.
Life, not wild
An extra day in Tanzania—what to do?
Mt. Kilimanjaro, the Serengeti,
exotic wildlife close at hand.
We choose for homo sapiens instead.
Our hosts live modestly—they’ve squeezed us in.
We help prepare the family meal
eat together, sing, draw children in
trade stories with this Masai man,
who left his tribe for school
and now fights fiercely to protect their land.
We walk through a community
where people still remember socialism
working as a group to meet their common needs.
It’s hard to say goodbye.
We’ve caught a glimpse of life (not wild)
that fills our hearts.
Resources
Money and Soul
A transcript of a keynote address I delivered at a Quaker conference in New Mexico, June 2017
https://westernfriend.org/media/money-and-soul-unabridged
Toward a Right Relationship with Finance
Check out this new book that I co-authored on Debt, Interest, Growth and Security.
The growth economy is failing to provide equitable well-being for humanity and a life-sustaining future for Earth. However our institutional endowments and individual retirement are dependent on that same growth economy. This book:
• offers background on our current economic system--how it is based on unearned income on the one hand and debt on the other, with a built-in momentum toward economy inequality and ecological overshoot;
• frames the conversation within the context of our deepest values and beliefs;
• suggests plausible and historically grounded alternatives to the current system, particularly with regard to financing retirement; and
• invites everyone to imagine new forms of durable economic and social security, and to help create the relationships and institutions that will make them a reality.
With many people now counting as never before on the performance of Wall Street for retirement security, how can this system be challenged with integrity and effectiveness? Can we break with our dependence on financial speculation and build up new structures of security in a transformed, life-centered economy?
To order the book, or read it on line, go to http://www.quakerinstitute.org/?page_id=5 and scroll down.
More resources
www.findingsteadyground.org
Resource from my friend Daniel Hunter, Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow; An Organizing Guide. http://www.danielhunter.org/books/building-movement-end-new-jim-crow-organizing-guide
Posts on other web/blog sites:
In http://www.classism.org/gifts-american-dream/, Pamela Haines locates her family's homey DIY celebrations on a class spectrum of different connections to upward mobility.
http://www.transitionus.org/blog/unlikely-suspects-–-deep-outreach-diverse-initiating-groups-–-pace-building-trust
http://www.classism.org/demolition-derby
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: https://www.trainingforchange.org/publications/muscle-building-peace-and-justice-nonviolent-workout-routine-21st-century (or just google the title)
