11 posts tagged “poverty”
This is the drawing from Hugh MacLeod that we chose as a key 'Christmas image' this year:
This is Brilliant....
I received an e-mail about this a few weeks back, but other than thinking 'seems like a good idea', I did nothing about it. Then I took a second look and found out:
a) That this initiative comes from some guys I know down in Hobart, Tasmania. Third Place Communities are a non-profit group with strong links to the Forge Network. I met some of them when I was in Australia in 2003, and am very inspired by their passion and creativity.
b) That this is a simple, elegant, beautiful and compelling project... the best Purple Cow I have come across for a long time.
The idea is simple - get as many people as possible to donate One Dollar (Aus - approximately 70 Eurocents). Keep going for just over a year, then start giving the money away to the poorest people in the world...
The target is 7 Million Dollars - and to be frank, they deserve to reach it.. Visit the website to get the background on the project, then join in by donating One Dollar through your credit card. If you love the idea, use your Paypal account (or create one) to give a Dollar a day, week or month... And buy yourself a sweatshirt in the process...
Tell your friends...
Sometimes a picture can do more than any number of words to let us know how the world is. Time Magazine recently ran an excellent photo-essay called What the World Eats. Taken from the book Hungry Planet by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio, the essay contrasts the average weekly food cosumption of families in different parts of the world. The three images below, from Chad, Ecuador and the United Kingdom, give some sense of the contrasts involved. The Chad family spend around $1.23 per week on food, the Ecuador family $31.55, and the British family $253.15. See the photo essay here.
Blessed are the meek who scratch in the dirt, for they shall inherit what's left of the Earth... 'Wave of Sorrow' is a song Bono wrote whilst visiting Ethiopia with his wife Ali. It was one of the tracks recorded at the time of The Joshua Tree, but it never made it to the album. Apparently it will now be released on the bonus CD to accompany the re-mastered 'Joshua Tree'. In a very unrehearsed interview, below, Bono explains how the song came together, and why it matters to him...
If you can't quite catch the lyrics on the video, here are the rest of Bono's re-worked Beatitudes:
Blessed are the meek who scratch in the dirt
For they shall inherit what’s left of the earth
Blessed are the kings who have left their thrones
They are blessed in this valley of dry bones
Blessed are you with an empty heart
For you have nothing form which you cannot part
Blessed is the ego if it’s all we’ve got this hour
Blessed is the voice that speaks truth to power
Blessed is the sex worker’s body sold tonight
She works with what she’s got to save her children’s life
Blessed are the deaf who cannot hear her scream
Blessed are the stupid who can dream
Blessed are the tin can cardboard slums
And blessed is the spirit that overcomes
Here is the translation of the Dutch text from the flier for the 'Rock ,n Roll Stops Traffik' event -
October 28th, 17h00 to 23h00
Human trafficking
is one of the worlds fastest growing illegal industries, devastating the lives of men, women and children who are taken by deception or coercion from their homes for exploitation. Every day, people worldwide are bought and sold against their will and forced to work.
Stop The Traffik
is a campaign that gives itself to making an end to these horrible practices.
Rock ‘n’ Roll Stops Traffik
is a fun way to contribute to a better world. Besides great artists, there will also be much information available about how you can make a difference.
Chocolate is addictive (enslaving)
Rock ‘n’ Roll Stops Traffik is part of a larger campaign concerning slavery in the cocoa-industry. Pretty much all the chocolate we eat in Holland is (at least partially) harvested by means of forced labor in countries like Cote d'Ivoire. The solutions to this atrocity are within reach, but the Cocoa-Industry refuses to aptly tackle the problem.
Do it yourself!
Do you want to know how you can get involved? Go to www.stopthetraffik.nl
All profit goes to the fight against trafficking
Slavery doesn’t belong to this generation! You can do something about it!
This is the traler for the film Babel. We used a sequence from the film this morning at Crossroads to illuminate the question 'Who is my Neighbour?'. The surface link is that the film, like the question, explores the connectedness of human beings. How closely connected am I, really, to a child in Africa or Mexico? In the global village, are we really all now neighbours?
If you watch the whole movie you may notice an even stronger link with the question 'Who is my neighbour?'. In the New Testament, Jesus responds to this question by telling a story - of a man on a journey, who falls prey to criminals and is left wounded and helpless, dependant on the mercy (or otherwise) of strangers. Sound familar? Babel tells the story of an American couple on a journey; victims of an accidental crime. Left stranded in Morrocco cut off from help, they must look to the mercy of strangers for their healing and rescue. And more than that, the film traces three other stories - the two Morroccan boys who cause the accident by playing with a high-calibre rifle; the father and daughter of a Japanese family from whom the rifle came, and the children of the American couple left in the charge of their Mexican nanny: victims of a misunderstanding at the US-Mexico border and subsequently lost in the desert. The boys; the Japanese daughter; the Mexican nanny: each must plead their case to strangers - in every case figures of authority. In each case the 'victim' is either saved or lost by the way those strangers respond. Will there be judgement, or compassion? Will they be heard or refused?
Beautifully filmed and hauntingly scored, Babel is a roller-coaster of concerns and emotions. But it may also be the best dramatisation of the story of the Good Samartian since the day Jesus first told it. If you want to be understood, listen.
This is a link to the the excellent 'Micah Challenge' video that takes the temperature on our governments' efforts to fulfill the promises of the Millenium Development goals, and asks, by implication, what the churches are doing to speed our movement toward these goals.
The Millenium Goals were adopted by the UN in 2000 with the aim of reaching them by 2015. With specific targets in each area, they are:
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
The Micah challenge is a Christian project challenging us to consider, as Christ's followers in the world today, where we fit in this picture. A second, equally moving video link is included below, based on the prayer 'Give bread to those who are hungry, and hunger for justice to those who have bread'. Use these links as opportunity for prayer and reflection. Ask God 'who is my neighbour?' and 'what do I need to do to prove it?'
The interview between Bill Hybels and Bono from the summer of 2007 has now been uploaded to Youtube. It's viewable in 8 parts altogether - this is part one. It really is an intriguing and excllent conversation - remarkable not only for the way Bono has brought big changes to Hybel's view of poverty and aids - but also for the way Hybels has been able to impact Bono's view of church. Not a predicatable meeting of minds - Hybels confesses as a lifelong country and western fan that he would have been more excited if it had been Garth Brooks asking for a meeting - but an exciting one all the same. If you haven't seen any of this it is worth taking the time to view. From a Crossroads perspective, we are exploring links with Stop the Traffik - a global coalition on People Traffiking - which should throw up opportunities for us to make a real difference to the lives of people driven into slavery through violence and extreme poverty: not exactly the agenda Bono is talking aobut here, but part of the same ethos of the church taking action to show God's justice and mercy to those who most need both. [ http://www.stopthetraffik.org/ and http://www.stopthetraffik.nl/ ] To explore just how God's mission in the world touches on such issues, you might also want to visit the site of Rick Warren's 'PEACE Plan' - one of the best current examples of a church leader thinking clearly through issues of church planting, leadership and justice.
Apart from the extremely cheesy backing music, this video is a good introduction to the PEACE Plan... Where was Bono when they were recording the soundtrack? More details on the PEACE plan at http://www.thepeaceplan.com/ . A number of US apologeitcs websites, already fuming at the success of Purpose Driven Life, have chosen to slate the PEACE plan, but can we really complain about two of the biggest church leaders in america - Hybels and Warren - waking up to global poverty and committing to the mobilisation of God's people in service? As Warren says on the PEACE video,
"If we could figure out a way to turn an audience into an army; to turn consumers into contributors; to turn spectators into participators, it will change the world. It's time to stop debating and start doing. It's time for the church to be known for love not for legalism, for what we're for not for what we're against. It's time for the church to be the church."
Even if you don't like the style, the marketing, the music or the shirts, you can still see God at work in these developments.
I mentioned in a previous post that I didn't think the Dutch group 'Art For All' had a web site - but I was wrong. www.artforall.nl offers you both a Dutch and an English introduction to this wonderful project. In a short poem called 'The Dream', they write:
Lots of misery
does not have a solution
that covers all the pain,
but if the heart is touched by love,
a love that cuts through
the grey veil
of existence
one sees new hope;
becomes a better person;
is valuable;
is placed in the sunshine.
Therefore we “tramp” the world
with paint and brush.
Visit the site to find out more about one of the most innovative and colourful expressions of mission you will ever see! A beautiful example of a group of people who just by being themselves, but being themselves for the sake of others, are making a difference.
 | |
|
|
I'm almost finished the 500-page epic 'What is the What' - an extraordinary book. Written in novel form by Dave Egger, it is derived from the true story of Valentino Achek Deng. The book is the first fruits of a project called 'witness', which uses oral history to shed light on important global issues. The result is an emotive and powerfully-told journey through the chaos of late 20th Century Sudan. It pulls no punches in describing the horrors of Sudan's civil war, as Valentino is betrayed by one military or governmental grouping after another, but it also achieves something much rarer and more arresting - it finds human beauty, and even triumph, in the midst of such pain. Valentino now lives in the United States, and his struggle to be accepted even there is a final twist in a tragic tale. Central to the narrative is Valentino's christian faith, which he never loses but which raises significant questions for him. "God has a problem with me," he complains as tragedy after tragedy floods into his life. As the book's Washington Post reviewer points out "Coming from almost any other person on the planet, this lament would appear hopelessly self-pitying. But coming from Valentino, a Sudanese refugee, it sounds almost like an understatement." If there is a villain to this drama, though, it is almost certainly the uncontrollable force of globalisation that has brought havoc to Valentino's idyllic rural life. The rivalries and violence that set different Sudanese factions against each other are endemic, and have been around for centuries: but it is the Western-manufactured guns, our planes and tanks, and to some extent the push for oil, that have tipped the scale from local skirmishes to a tragedy of almost unimaginable proportions. From the opening pages you feel that the young Valentino is swept off his feet by a wave that really never puts him down. Even with his arrival in the safe-haven of Atlanta, Georgia, some fifteen years later, the journey is far from over. It is impossible to read this narrative and not be aware of the forces that connect the remotest parts of the earth to cultures thousands of miles away from them.
As an experiment in the power of an indiviual story - referred to in academic circles as oral history - to illumninate and illustrate the moods and movements of history, What is the What is a triumph. As the Washington Post continues:
"At a time when the field of autobiography seems dominated by hyperbolic accounts of what might be called dramas of privilege (substance abuse, eating disorders, unloving parents, etc.), What Is the What is a story of real global catastrophe -- a work of such simple power, straightforward emotion and genuine gravitas that it reminds us how memoirs can transcend the personal to illuminate large, public tragedies as well."
For those of us who take time every now and then to ask the question Who is my Neighbour? this is an inspiring and sobering read. As Bono said recently in his NAACP speech 'in the Global Village we're going to have to start loving a whole lot more people'....
Author's royalties from the book will support the newly-formed Valentino Achak Foundation, whose website has excellent further information and resources on Sudan - http://www.valentinoachakdeng.org/ .
