Letters from Jill Wason

Jill Rebecca Wason, a YAV, wrote these letters between Sep ‘03 and Jun ‘04.September 23, 2003

Hello Friends!

I am now in the middle of my fourth week in India. It’s hard to believe how quickly those four weeks have passed by. They’ve been very busy…..

Francey (the other young adult volunteer in India) and I arrived in India on the morning of August 29. Our flights had absolutely no problems. In the weeks since then, we have learned to eat without utensils; been stuffed with food; attended a wedding reception, a housewarming/blessing, and a feast in celebration of a local festival called Onam; listened to child laborers sing about their stolen childhood; taken three 12h+ overnight train rides; bought Indian clothes; studied some Malayalam; tried to use the bathroom in a squat toilet with no toilet paper; visited the mining community of an abandoned mine; attended a variety show performed by very talented mentally handicapped children; and started to tolerate Indian food. Phew! As you can imagine, we’ve had a wonderful but tiring experience so far. Thus, there has also been much sleeping, at least for me.

A little over a week ago, we settled down for our work for the year. I am living in a town called Aluva; Francey is about two hours away from me. My work is divided between two sites. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I work at a local school. The school was originally for girls, but boys have recently started attending as well. On Tuesdays, I work with children in grades 5, 6, and 7; on Wednesdays, kindergarten through 4th grade. I would not describe my work there as “teaching.” Rather, I am there to provide some relief from the monotony of Indian education while helping the children to practice their English. So I play games with them, teach them songs, and tell them stories. It is quite fun, though the children can be quite rambunctious.



During the rest of the week, I work at a local college. I will be helping to keep their website updated. I will also be creating (but probably not programming) an alumni database. Surprisingly, alumni giving is quite rare in India, but the college desperately needs funding. I will thus be helping them with the early stages of their development program.

I reside in a retirement home. Many of the residents are still active, but several are quite frail and elderly. I often visit with them in the mornings and evenings. Most of them speak very good English. I have also started to befriend the various servants, but language is much more of a barrier with them.

Overall, I’m really enjoying my time here so far. Small things bring me much delight: eating a bowl of cereal, having a nice cool shower after a hot day, shopping for the first time by myself, figuring out how to talk on the phone with my family. Small things can also seem quite tragic, though, such as discovering ants in my food. (Fortunately, they later evacuated the cereal.)

Love and Peace,
Jill

~~~~~~

December 2, 2003

Dear Friends,

Greetings from India! I hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. For most of you, I imagine, the weather is already quite cold, and I hear that some places have already had snow. Here in Aluva, Kerala, the climate has also cooled a bit. Sometimes in the early mornings, the temperature actually drops down to 79 degrees. The absence of fall or winter has been rather confusing.

I wish I could say that adjusting to a lack of seasons has been my biggest challenge, but I would be deceiving you if I did. I think almost every aspect of my life here has been challenging, even sleeping. Everything is so new and different. I have been on an emotional roller coaster the last few weeks as days filled with the joys of making new friends, sharing music, grasping new concepts about the culture, overcoming hurdles, and doing meaningful work have been followed by days filled with complete helplessness, loneliness, anger, and moments where I want to “wring India’s neck.”

Some aspects of my life are absolutely delightful. Twice, now, Francey, the other young adult volunteer, and I played tourist during two retreats with our supervisor, Rev. Thomas John, and his wife, Betty. I swam in the Indian Ocean, shook “hands” with an elephant’s trunk, and visited tribal communities in Kerala’s eastern mountains.

My everyday life also regularly brings new sights. Sometimes I watch swarms of dragonflies fly over the heads of children who are assembled to say their morning prayers. Sometimes I walk by herds of goats lounging in the middle of intersections. Sometimes I witness small lizards gobble down large dragonflies.

I am also thoroughly enjoying the simplicity of my daily life compared to the hectic routine, or lack thereof, that I had during college. Each morning, I rise much later than I’d like and race down to the mess hall to stuff breakfast down my throat or into a food container. (Some things don’t change, I suppose.) On Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays, I walk down the street to Union Christian College, an ecumenical institution that has close ties with the Presbyterian Church (USA). On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I usually take the school bus to a local school where I help children practice their English. On Tuesday and Friday afternoons, I spend an hour with teenage girls who live in a nearby Dalit (untouchable) community. I am attempting to help them improve their spoken English. My Saturdays change every week. On Sundays, I attend church in the morning. Lately, I have been staying after the service for a couple of hours to practice with the choir for the Christmas Carol service.

Most of my late afternoons and early evenings are fairly flexible. I often visit friends or the residents of the retirement community, Chacko Homes, where I stay. I try to regularly read. My late evenings are more scheduled. I usually have my supper at about 8:15. Then I spend a few minutes practicing the local language, Malayalam, with my Malayalam teacher, a resident of Chacko Homes who teaches Malayalam at a local Jesuit seminary. After that, I visit with a group of three or four men and sing at least two songs for them.

I find most of these activities to be incredibly rewarding. At the college, I have found ways to utilize several of the skills that I learned while I was a student. I just recently finished redesigning their website. You can visit it at http://www.icbs.com/uccollege. I love the hours that I spend with the girls in the afternoon. We are growing quite attached to each other, and they are gradually improving their English. I love singing for the residents at Chacko Homes and listening to their stories. They are an amusing lot, each one slightly battier than the next. I love the friendships that I am developing with people of all ages. The incredible hospitality of people here amazes me.

I usually enjoy, as well, my work at the school. I get to interact with children in nine different grade levels. My youngest students are four, and my oldest are twelve. I have great fun developing engaging activities, and they have great fun participating in them. Sometimes, though, they have too much fun, way too much fun, and this has been a problem. I have yet to figure out how to control a room of 30 six-year olds who barely understand what I am saying and who are accustomed to rigid, repetitive lessons and scary teachers who sometimes hit them with a stick. A few weeks ago, some of the boys in one of my classes decided that they would like to spend their time with me playing “tag;” I was “it.”

American schoolchildren have no idea how lucky they are. They are actually asked to think for themselves! Here, there is only one correct way to color a picture; there is only one correct way to sing the National Anthem. Many of the lessons here consist of simply repeating what the teacher says. I once overheard the following in a classroom:
“What is this?”
“WHAT IS THIS?”
“This is an elephant.”
“THIS IS AN ELEPHANT.”
“What is this?”
“WHAT IS THIS?”
“This is a lion.”
“THIS IS A LION”

The classes at the school have not been the only source of frustration. My sense of independence has been drastically reduced. No longer can I go out whenever I want; I have to be home by sunset at 6:30. No longer do I have my own phone and Internet access, not even for my work on the college’s website. No longer can I buy, store, or prepare my own food. No longer can I spontaneously skip a meal or eat out with a friend, for Chacko Homes charges its residents for meals unless they give several hours advance warning. Sometimes, these situations drive me to tears. However, I am learning that with some ingenuity, some negotiation, and some reliance on others for help, I can deal with them.

Adapting to different cultural customs and norms has also been challenging, but slightly less aggravating. Here in Kerala, nobody feels bad about pushing someone out of the way to get by. This is also the case when driving. Nobody seems to mind when people pick their noses, belch, cough up mucous, or spit. There also seems to be no problem with my interrupting a lecturing professor to ask him to make a report on an event for the website. (I did not do the actual interrupting.) On the other hand, people stand when anyone more respectable or older enters the room. And one must always address someone more respectable with a title such as Sir, Miss, or Madam. I still haven’t figured out when I should stand or which titles to use when.

Indians use very different body language as well. When signaling “yes,” people tilt their head from side to side. I’m not yet sure how to signal “no.” Their signal for “come” looks very much like our signal for “go.” When people ask a question, they usually do not raise the pitch of their voices. I often have no idea if they are asking a question or making a statement.

Probably the most difficult aspects of my life here have centered upon the fact that I am a woman. Growing up, I certainly identified as a girl or woman, but my gender was not especially important. Here, one’s gender means a lot. Whenever I go out, I get honks, waves, and shouts from men walking on the street and driving by in vehicles. I cannot go out after 6:30 because people don’t consider it safe for women. I get questions like, “You’re walking home from church alone? Do you know your way back?” or comments like, “I can’t believe that Francey took the train by herself!”

Women are seen by men and often see themselves as weak and somehow “less” than men. They shouldn’t go anywhere alone. They should cover their hair in church. Their husbands’ needs are always more important than their own. College women must to be in their hostels (dormitories) by 4:30 in the afternoon. Although women constitute 80 percent of the student body at U.C. College, I believe that the only women who currently hold offices in the College Union serve as Lady Representatives. My classes at the school cannot picture a mother being anything other than a housewife or a teacher.

Unless they can afford servants, women usually spend several hours a day cooking meals for their families. Canned or frozen foods are not readily available; the meals are complicated, and the food must be prepared fresh for every meal. I sometimes grow so infuriated by women’s circumstances that I want to scream.

I am also frequently dismayed by the sheer poverty that I see everywhere. The differences between the rich and poor are vast. Some of my friends live in houses whose floors are covered in marble while others lack adequate access to clean drinking water and use brushwood to cook their food. There are many people here who earn around $3.00 a day or less doing work that would earn them at least $6.00 an hour, or $48.00 a day, in the U.S. One may argue that the cost of living is much lower, but I have found that it isn’t that much lower. For example, a notebook here, probably worth less than a dollar in the U.S., costs 10 rupees (or 22 cents). In other words, people’s incomes are less than one-sixteenth of those in the U.S., but the cost of a notebook is more than one-fifth of what it would cost in the U.S.

Americans, I think, tend to blame the poor for their poverty. They assume that poor people are simply lazy and immoral. That simply is not true! Poor people here work incredibly hard when given the opportunity to work. I have seen women as short as I am carrying crushing loads of dirt on their heads under the beating sun. The women who cook my meals at the retirement community work seven days a week from six o’clock in the morning until nine o’clock at night with a break of only a few hours in the middle of the day. Unfortunately, there is very little incentive to improve working conditions of the poor because unemployment is so high. 4.2 million people in Kerala would be happy to simply have a job.

Many of the wealthy Christians here seem rather apathetic to the conditions of their neighbors. I want to shriek, “Why don’t you do something!” but even those who do care usually feel helpless to change anything. Much of the Indian governmental system is quite corrupt. Moreover, several international institutions in the last few decades have steadily encroached upon India’s ability to set its own economic policy, and these institutions have not always been sensitive to the needs of India’s people.

In 1991, India found itself in the midst of an economic crisis. It was attempting to pay off its enormous international debt by printing more money, thus causing rapid inflation. The International Monetary Fund announced that it would help India stabilize its economy, but only if India agreed to certain conditions, which included privatizing government industries and cutting back on social welfare programs. Meanwhile, the World Trade Organization decided that India could not do anything to protect its private industries against vicious competition from foreign companies. The results of these various policies have been disastrous. For instance, India once had a thriving soda-pop industry, but Coca-Cola and Pepsi bought out most of these companies. These American companies opened more soda-producing factories, but those were mostly mechanized. They thus successfully depleted the water table but did not generate more jobs. In fact, they may have reduced the number of jobs, for I believe that they also mechanized the factories already in operation. As a final blow, high concentrations of pesticides were recently discovered in their products. Meanwhile, many of the programs intended to protect India’s environment and poor and unemployed have been dismantled; their funding is instead being used to pay off debt.

We as Americans can easily shake our heads at such situations and sigh, “Gee, that’s a shame,” but by doing so we commit the same transgressions as the wealthy Christians in India. We cannot remain apathetic, for our government and corporations are behind the reigns of most of the institutions like the IMF and WTO.

In the midst of all my frustration, sorrow, and anger at conditions here, I usually realize how much all of these experiences are enriching my understanding of the world. For instance, I used to take for granted my freedoms and opportunities as a woman in the U.S.; now I want to hug and kiss every woman who fought for gender equality in America. I used to take for granted my easy access to technology to solve most of my problems; now I must rely on other people much more to get through the day. And I have discovered that every time I turn to someone for help, I have an opportunity to build a relationship. Do we, perhaps, surround ourselves with technology at the cost of having fewer relationships? I used to take for granted all of my privileges as a fairly wealthy American. Now I have whole new perspective on what it means to live in luxury. It is a luxury to drink juice. It is a luxury to take a hot shower and to sleep on a soft bed. It is a luxury to own a washing machine, to own five telephones, to own a VCR. It is a luxury to be able to drive everywhere in a car and to be able to throw out food if it gets infested with ants.

I am realizing that Christians cannot truly live in communion when such immense inequalities in material wealth exist. Many of the Christians here have considerable wealth. And those who have live in fear of those who have not. They lock themselves behind gates and concrete fences. They dread walking outside at night. They do not trust anybody. When we cannot trust other people, we shrink away from them with dread rather reaching out to them with love. We stay focused on our own lives and become apathetic to the plight of those suffering around us. When we cannot trust other people we treat them as less than fully human. And it seems that when we treat others as less than fully human, they are more likely to act less than fully human.

And that, my friends, is my life–my activities, sorrows, joys, and thoughts– in a very large nutshell. I thank you for taking the time to read through this reflection.

Happy Holidays!

Peace and Love,
Jill

~~~~~

March 4, 2003

Dear Friends,

Hello again from India! I apologize that it has been so long since I last wrote. The last few months have consisted of one adventure after another.

In mid-December, I went to Thiruvananthapuram, the state capital of Kerala, where I visited with fishing communities. At the very end of the year, Francey and I got to enjoy some of the possible tourist activities in Kerala, such as taking a boat ride around the nearby Cochin harbor and swimming in the Arabian Sea as the sun set on the last day of the year. A couple of weeks later, fifteen American students arrived from Austin College, which is in Sherman Texas, for ten days. I had a lot of fun playing the “expert” on India. Their visit was immediately followed by Francey’s and my departure to Sri Lanka to renew our visas. While there, we had a wonderful time visiting Buddhist temples, snorkeling over a coral sanctuary, watching an endless parade of dancers and elephants in elaborate costumes, and simply sleeping. I have written more extensively about my trips to Thiruvananthapuram and Sri Lanka and my New Year’s adventures in my online journal at http:/homepage.mac.com/jrwason/journal.html.

Most recently, my parents came to visit for eight days after taking a tour of North India. We first took a tour together of Kerala. We visited some historic sites- an old palace full of intricate paintings of Hindu stories, an old Jewish Synagogue, and the first European Church in India- and a spice plantation. We also took boat rides both through some canals near the coast and through a wildlife sanctuary in the mountains, where we saw elephants, wild boar, and water buffalo. Afterwards, we returned to Aluva, where I attempted to introduce my parents to several hundred people over the course of two and a half days. I had great fun showing them my life here, and I also really enjoyed just being with my parents again.

In the times when I have not been traveling, I have gradually been developing some close relationships with people here. As my parents can attest, I am now fairly well integrated into the surrounding community. Surprisingly, many of my friendships have been forged with music. Music has always been an important part of my life, but I did not anticipate it being so significant to my life here.

It all started when a Mr. K.P. Thomas moved into Chacko Homes, the retirement community where I currently reside, in November. I had already been regularly singing in the evenings for some of the residents, and I sometimes sang at events held at Chacko Homes. Mr. Thomas, a fairly experienced musician, decided that I would be useful for our church choir for their Christmas Carol Service. He suggested that I sing alto as the choir had no altos. I said that I would try but explained that I have very little experience singing alto; I usually sing soprano. There thus ensued several weeks of intense choir practices after church and sometimes on Saturday evenings as well. We prepared eleven pieces of music, some English, some Malayalam. At first, I really struggled to hold the alto part on my own, especially because the Malayalam songs used harmonization that made little sense to me, but I eventually could sing the music fairly well. More importantly than learning how to sing alto, I acquired some close friends during all of our rehearsals and I began to feel like I was a part of the church community. I had worried before that I would never really connect with the church because the services are held in Malayalam.

Mr. K.P. Thomas meanwhile learned that I could play the keyboard. He asked me to play some hymns on Christmas Day for a gathering of Chacko Homes residents. I have always really struggled to play hymns, but the fact that I can even read western musical notation puts me miles ahead of most people here. So I agreed to also give that a try. After a great deal of practice, I could play the songs fairly decently. Mr. Thomas was sufficiently satisfied and asked me play the keyboard at the rehearsals for a community choir that he was organizing for Passion Week. I agreed to also do this. And thus I have become more and more involved with the community, especially the Christian community, in a meaningful way.

Mr. K.P. Thomas has obviously been a very important figure in my life here. Through his encouragement, I have become more connected to people here and I have become increasingly confident in my musical abilities. Mr. Thomas unfortunately recently learned that he is seriously ill, and his condition is, for the most part, untreatable. This is very saddening for me.

Despite my having developed some good friendships here, there are still times when I feel incredibly lonely. I have adapted to being an “Indian” in many ways, such as in dress and mannerisms, but there are still some huge cultural differences. For example, many of my conversations with my peers in the U.S. center on the topic of romantic relationships- past relationships, current relationships, potential relationships, the absence of relationships. In India, especially in Kerala, romantic relationships outside of marriage hardly exist. Marriages are almost always arranged by parents. Some young adults date, but not very seriously. “Love marriages” do take place sometimes. If the parents allow a love marriage, though, one usually marries the first person he or she loves after only a few months of being in the relationship. The pattern in the U.S. of having a few fairly serious romantic relationships before settling on someone to marry simply does not exist here. I do not see the approach to marriage in India as better or worse than how we approach marriage in the U.S. (I like that I have the freedom to choose my own mate, but it does take a lot of time, energy, and heartbreak to find one.) However, marriage in India is profoundly different from marriage in the U.S. So sometimes it’s really hard to relate.

I therefore have mixed feelings about the fact that I am now more than halfway through my time here. I will leave India at the end of July. I expect that my departure from my new friends and community will be quite painful, but I will also be excited about seeing my family and friends in the U.S. In the meantime, I will try to make the most of the time that I have left here.

Peace and Love,
Jill

~~~~~~~

June 12, 2004

Dear Friends,

First, let me begin by apologizing for being so delinquent in communicating with you. The last few months have been very busy and/or tough. In March, I was doing quite a bit of work that I wanted to complete before I set off for a three and a half week tour of India in April. Then I was traveling. I was not feeling well for most of May, which was frustrating because my time here is coming to an end. I am feeling much better now, thankfully. So I have been trying to catch up with myself. There have been many experiences upon which to reflect.

Francey’s and my tour around India was adventurous, to say the least. We visited nine cities. I saw the Taj Mahal, with its pure marble walls and inlaid stonework, and the Himalaya Mountains, with snow capped peaks in the distance. I took a boat ride at sunrise to watch Hindus bathe in the Ganges, one of their most sacred rivers. I wandered through intricately designed temples that were carved out of mountainsides. I walked down the broad tree-lined avenues of New Delhi, India”s capital. I saw numerous forts, palaces, tombs, mosques, and temples. I will cherish my memories of all these experiences. But I returned to Kerala with a slightly bitter aftertaste.

The trip was still stressful despite our precautions. Men bothered us wherever we went. Men at the train stations would swarm around us offering to carry our luggage or take us to our hotel. Shopkeepers would try to seduce us to come into their stores with lines such as, “Hey baby, want jeans?” If men were not bothering us, women and children were. In some places, it was impossible to stay stationary without beggars approaching us– grubby children, cripples, old women, young women with babies– it was heartbreaking.

Even if we were left alone, life around us was still often overwhelming: men shoving each other in line, urinating in the streets or off the sides of trains; families lounging around on the floors while waiting for their trains; trash lying everywhere; acres and acres of dilapidated shacks trying to pass as homes. I kept thinking, “These people are like animals!”

I was not pleased with myself that I kept concluding that people were behaving like dogs. “Be careful,” we had been warned, “to be culturally sensitive. Many behaviors that you may see as uncivilized are just different.” Perhaps, I reasoned, Indians just generally don’t view doglike behavior to be as uncivilized as Westerners do. After all, Westerners may view squatting to use the toilet or making a lot of noise when angry as mildly doglike, and those are simply benign differences. Maybe these other behaviors that are bothering me are also simply due to cultural differences. Do Indians just have a completely different set of standards for judging appropriate behavior?

I concluded that, yes, Indians do have a different rubric for assessing acceptable behavior. Some behavior that we view as uncivilized, such as belching, is often fine in India. Some behavior that Indians usually view as uncivilized, such as wearing shoes into a place of worship, is often fine in the U.S. Some behavior, however, such as urinating on the side of a busy street, is, or should be, universally considered uncivilized. There is, I think, a basic universal standard of civilized behavior that expects people to treat themselves, each other, and their surroundings with dignity and respect. Why, then, would so many people act so uncivilized?

I saw while traveling that it’s really hard to be a good citizen in India. There’s hardly any infrastructure to support civilized behavior. When you have no toilet in your home, your only options are to pay possibly nonexistent money to use the filthy public toilets or to go in public. When you’re a hungry child whose parents have no money, you have no choice but to pick through the trash or beg. When city officials decide to bulldoze the home that you built with your own hands to make way for upscale housing, what else can you do besides move to the shantytowns that they’ve offered as “compensation?” It takes time, money, and energy to treat yourself with any sort of respect. And, as Francey and I discovered, it sometimes takes so much effort to take care of yourself that you don’t have much left over to treat anyone or anything else with much respect.

Many people in India simply don’t have the means to act civilized. We cannot blame them for their behavior. Then again, many people in India do have the means, and then a lot. Their neighborhoods rival some of the nicest areas in the U.S. But if they have money, food, technology, etc. to spare, why do they not share it so that their fellow human beings can also live with some dignity?

For those of us who are Christians, the Gospels inform us that people who sin by allowing others to live like dogs are worse than people who sin because they no choice. Jesus taught, “Occasions for stumbling are bound to come but woe to anyone by whom they come! It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble” (Luke 17:1-2). Jesus condemned the Pharisees for living in their little islands of wealth and self-righteousness while allowing others around them to suffer. He thought little of such people. The Pharisees were doomed.

The general population in India made it known a few weeks ago that they also did not think much of their own Pharisees. For six years, India was governed by a radical right-wing party whose policies favored the rich and middleclass at the great expense of the poor. “India is shining!” they exclaimed in their recent election campaign. “Look at all of the IT jobs we’ve brought into our country!” The rest of the country sniffed and elected one of the most left-wing governments in the nation’s history into power. Most people were more concerned about debt-ridden farmers committing suicide than a sprinkling of new jobs becoming available to people who were already wealthy enough to pay for the pricey educations necessary for them. I celebrated the election results because my friends that are living in poverty were so happy. They saw hope of claiming some of their dignity.

At the same time that I was reading about the stunning election results, I was also reading about the torture that Americans had been inflicting upon Iraqi prisoners. I was horrified. The U.S., which has the ability to treat practically the whole world with respect, was doing the exact opposite. Moreover, the administration seemed to be supporting such activity without much shame. This seems especially scandalous for a president who espouses Christian values. How dare we torture prisoners, especially after condemning Saddam Hussein’s regime for doing so! I was so angry.

Many of us in the U.S. are incredibly blessed. We can eat as much as we want. We drive cars. We own refrigerators and washing machines. We can attain high levels of education. I believe, though, that so much privilege brings much accountability. I believe that Jesus taught that God expects more from us. Because we can behave like good citizens, meaning treating those around us with respect, we should. We have a responsibility to others. This doesn’t necessarily mean just giving away our money or food or clothes to charities. In fact, sometimes doing that can create even more trouble. Rather, it means living in a way that’s responsible and setting policies that consider the wellbeing of everyone.

For instance, small taxi drivers in India are maybe unable to afford vehicles that cause less pollution; we, however, can afford such vehicles. Instead, Americans create the most pollution in the world. This is already creating more severe weather patterns. Poor people suffer the most from climate change. Their flimsy houses are the first to be swept away in floods. Their crops are the first to die in droughts because they have less ability to irrigate them.

My poor neighbors may be unable to buy goods made of durable materials; we can buy such goods. Instead, we use many items that are meant to be tossed away after one use, such as plastic bags. We can afford to live far from the enormous trash heaps that such waste creates; poor people cannot.

A poor country like India may not have the means to enforce adequate labor or environmental regulations; the U.S., for the most part, does. As the most powerful country in the world, the U.S. could influence policies so that poor countries could also provide such protections. Instead, it encourages countries to relax standards so that multinational companies can have a greater profit margin.

Poor countries may be unable establish reasonable prison facilities. They may be unable to properly train their prison guards. We are more than able to do so. Yet, obviously, we are not always doing so.

Most Americans really are decent people. American Christians do their best to be good followers of Christ. But our churches tend to focus simply on personal morality- if you’re a good Christian, they teach, you’ll drink in moderation or not at all, you’ll wear modest clothing, you’ll avoid R-Rated movies, you’ll donate your money to charity. These are all fine virtues to encourage, but I wonder if such an emphasis misses the point. I think that it is also important to consider how we act as a society as a whole. As a society, we often behave in a way that is very detrimental to those who are unable to share in our bounty. In a sense, our country is the rest of the world’s Pharisees.

And the rest of the world, I think, sees us as such. This is scary to me. After all, Jesus often preached, “Woe to the Pharisees!” Does that mean that if we toss away our plastic water bottles that we’re going straight to hell? There’s really no way of knowing, but most of us believe in a more forgiving God than that. Our woe may actually be more imminent. The rest of the world is rapidly losing patience with us. In January, 100,000 people attended the annual World Social Forum in Mumbai to protest against and to suggest alternatives to the behaviors of rich countries. This was a mostly peaceful way of expressing dissent. As September 11 showed, other people are not so polite. Yes, terrorists are fanatical, irrational people. But fanaticism is not created in a vacuum; it requires a large number of hopeless, desperate, and angry people to thrive. Our military’s recent dealings in Iraq demonstrate well that we can be very good at making people hopeless, desperate, and angry.

Nobody actually likes to live like a dog. People can only tolerate having to live like animals for so long before they snap. Maybe they’ll elect a different political party into power. Maybe they’ll organize a protest. Maybe they’ll believe lies about ethnic differences and blame the “other” for their problems. Maybe they’ll turn their despair inwards and take their own lives. Or maybe they’ll direct it outwards and try to take ours.

I suspect that when Jesus called on the world to repent or face doom, to change our ways or face the consequences, he was not just talking about the next life; he was talking about this one.

If you’ve reached this far, thank you for sticking with me. I know that most people reading this really do care a lot about the state of the world’s affairs. This is meant mostly to share what I have been thinking as I try to process this very different world.

Love and Peace,
Jill