girlscandoanything

Is there any hope?

I am utterly depressed by the series of messages that we have been giving at Crash. www.rhinocrash.org The world is such a flippin' mess and hearing about how much of a mess it is seems to bring me down. Consumerism, injustice, and now world poverty have been addressed. And every Sunday evening I find myself shaking my head in agreement with everything Maxie says and then, in the next moment, wondering what the hell to do with those assertions. It is so difficult to watch the statistics flash on the screen and to hear the ways in which the consumption of my country is destroying the lives of others all over the world. Is there really any way to fix this?

After I spoke about fair trade two weeks ago, I stayed after church to answer questions, etc. There was one guy who stayed after who basically never listened to a word I had to say and just kept on stating that the world is much better than it used to be. He was basically arguing against a point I had made earlier in conversation about how important it is to read and study and dialogue and become informed. I stated that people used to desire classic literature and philosophy and to read and contemplate and dialogue and that today's powerful are such because of financial gain and not because of education and understanding. Great thought still exists and great writers are still writing, but we have become a society that has little interest in gleaning insight because knowledge is no longer power--money is power. This is why there were 47 business majors in my graduating class and only two philosophy majors (okay that may not be the only reason why, but it certainly is a factor). Arguing with this ignorant guy about the possibility of changing the world made me wonder if there is any hope for the human race or the earth that we are consuming. If people are too stupid to understand that changing one's mind is key to changing one's society, and that changing one's mind is dependent upon educating one's mind, then what is the point of arguing or making any assertions in the first place?

Yet, tonight I found the hope that I have been desperately seeking as the weeks of our series have passed. A sweet young man in a tshirt full of holes spoke about the lack of healthy water in Africa and the ways that he had worked to bring clean water to an impoverished nation. The shirt he wore was given to him in trade for bottled water as he studied in Africa. He is hope. As people walked into the service tonight I handed each of them a bottle of water that was labeled with water statistics. As Maxie talked about the 1.1 million people who have less than 6 quarts of water a day (3 1/2 gallons less than the minimum threshold requirement) I saw a woman begin to stare at her little bottle of water with an expression of awe. She is hope. Several people stopped after the service to drop spare change and dollar bills into a large empty water cooler jug on the mission table so that we can dig a well for a community of 750 in Africa. Everyone who has helped to fill that jug to the halfway point is hope.

There is hope for this world. And hope, I have found, is contagious. The men and women who demonstrated hope this evening will carry their insight and their passion out beyond the walls of the church. And while the ignorant and uncaring consumers will still exist, their influence upon the whole of society lessens everytime a person sees and grasps the hope that was evident at Crash tonight.

While Drew and I were the only two in our graduating class with a philosophy degree, we are not the only two in our graduating class to have heard and understood the views that we held regarding the world as a result of studying philosophy. In the short testimony of a smiling blonde boy in a tattered shirt I have come to understand that hope is much more subversive than I had anticipated. Insight gleaned by the few can become the ethic of the masses with much less struggle than one might believe. Insight and passion travel with amazing speed. The world is still a mess, but it may be much less a mess tonight than it was this morning simply because of one small demonstration of hope.

posted by CT @ 10:13 PM