| | yesterday i read about Tsvangirai's wife dying, and i cried.
i actually cried. the same depth of empathy i've felt in these past few weeks for mike (whose father passed away) and for jenny (whose close friend is dying of cancer).
maybe i was crying for Zimbabwe, which would make more sense. i called myself a sucker for sensationalist journalism the other day when bbc showed drawings from children in Darfur and i got choked up. being sad about the state of a dysfunctional state makes sense. grieving the fact that five million people are starving (while their president spends $250,000 on his birthday party) makes sense.
but, no. i cried for Tsvangirai himself. a man who has endured torture and beatings, treason charges and imprisonment... lost his wife. and somehow i feel like the pain of being beat with a metal rod and pushed out of a window is nothing compared to the pain he feels now, seeking to repair a nation without the support of his other half.
in college i studied international development in conjunction with studying the life of jesus. and those four years of my life were pivotal in shaping my view of the world... development and redemption are synonomous in my mind and a couple of weeks ago i was sharing with Kokeb my views on the subject. the topic was global inequality and strife and the question, per usual, was why didn't God just fix it himself? and as i spoke about how god had given africa natural beauty, riches, and wealth; about humans in our brokenness and selfishness fucking it up; about His partnership with humans so that we might make redemption sustainable... Kokeb interrupted me.
that makes sense, she said. but if that's the case then why doesn't he just work through world leaders? it would still be us fixing the problem ourselves, it would still be sustainable. it seems like so much of the shit going on in this world is the result not just of our individual selfishness and sin, but because of the power that selfish and sinful leaders have on hundreds of millions of people.
and i corrected the tone of my speech. i proceeded a bit more gently because i remembered who i was speaking with. Kokeb wasn't speaking out of an intellectual interest or a theoretical supposition. the child of an Eritrean mother and an Ethiopian father, Kokeb wants development/redemption from the depths of her soul. "does God care about the poor?" or "does God care about Africa?" or "where is God in the midst of war?" are not distant questions simply thrown out as an attempt to thwart the existence of God. they arise from the heart of a girl who loves her home country but would never live there again because the realities of poverty and poor government are enough to stifle her desire for homeland and identity.
and today... 10,000 miles from Harare i am grieving the death of a prime minister's wife. i didn't have an answer to Kokeb's question, but my eye has been carefully scanning headlines since then searching for signs of hope in the form of power. and the death of Susan Tsvangirai came as a blow to me as i find myself praying words like "that was unnecessary, God."
(not that good leaders are enough to eradicate poverty, but i do know that a stable government is what enables my boyfriend to make grassroots change... what allows a privileged white boy from Santa Barbara to displace himself and allow his paradigm of the world to be shifted as he devotes himself to the education of 25 Ghanaian children.)
and as i wrestle with this tension, i am squirming in the awkwardness of trying to radically love the poor through the barriers of distance, education, privilege and well... who i am as a Vietnamese-American woman sitting in her well-furnished apartment, working for a company that consults to non-profits, and devoting my time to UCLA college students. my impact on the places my heart aches for most seems... discursive.
...but not immaterial. your passions are for purpose and your impact exists, He whispers. and despite awkwardness, i struggle to content myself with the part He has given me, for now.
shedding tears over headlines and
mumbling prayers to a God who
surely, longs for the development/redemption of this world
more than i do.
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| | Posted 3/7/2009 1:00 PM - 9 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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