Posts Tagged ‘marginalisation’

“Socks or the Cinema?”

October 8, 2022

Pentecost 18 – 2022
Luke 17:11-19
Marian Free

In the name of God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Amen.

When we downsized, I gave away most of my library knowing that should I need to refer to any of my books, they would almost certainly be easily accessible in digital form. Failing that I would find them at the College Library. There are some books though, that I find impossible to give away. These are usually books with deep wisdom or insight, books that have enriched my life and to which I return again and again. I am particularly careful with such books and if I lose them I will search everywhere until I can replace them. One such book was recommended to me when I was still in theological college. Poor in Spirit – Modern Parables of the Reign of God by Charles Lepetit . It is probably irreplaceable.

Poor in Spirit contains fifty stories which recall encounters that have changed the lives of their writers. Some are set in a western urban setting, but most tell of experiences in third world countries, of people who according to Lepetit : “are hungry, marginalised, handicapped. They make a living by working too hard. They all have one thing in common: that of the heart.” The stories tell of generosity to a stranger, being blessed by a beggar and of receiving a gift from another, of praising God with an empty stomach and nothing to feed the children. Above all the stories tell of joy and gratitude and of the grace and hope that can coexist with the most dire poverty and in the most desperate of situations.

One story, “Socks or the Cinema?” comes from North Africa and was shared by Lisa. She begins: “They found him one morning lying by his bike under a leaden August sky. Death must have come suddenly. It was him alright in his usual blue work trousers, shirt, grey woollen cap and orthopaedic shoes. He had been struck by leprosy and cruelly. Most of each foot and all ten fingers were gone. It was torture for him to walk. His face was disfigured, but an extraordinary smile transfigured it. Yet those same eyes had stared at leprosy face to face. At the most terrible moment of the disease our friend had tried to drown himself. ‘But even the sea didn’t want me, and I was washed up on the beach.’

“Our friend would wear stumps of his hands raw, filling his customer’s bags with charcoal. He said: ‘Hunger is a terrible thing. Once I had no work, and nothing to eat. At last I said to myself: ‘I will just have to start begging.’ I had never learned how. I sat by someone’s door and tried to think what to call out, but all that came out was a cry because I began to weep aloud. I left in a hurry and walked all night. Then I saw a freshly baked loaf of bread that someone had forgotten on top of a little wall. I understood that God was watching over me.”

“One day he announced that he had a guest, someone with the same disease who cuts grass for sheep and sells it at the market. ‘Yesterday he returned with three beautiful coins. He had found them on the pavement.’ ‘What shall we do with them he asked?’ We thought about it. Then I said to him, ‘It is true that you need new socks. But this money here, we haven’t earned it. God has given it to us. Why don’t we go to the cinema? One needs a change of scene sometimes.’
“’So we went to the cinema, and we had a very nice evening.’”

My heart is always warmed by the extravagance and simple joy of the visit to the cinema – of the ability, from a position of desperation, to be able to show gratitude for an unexpected gift and to use that gift to bring joy and to be lifted out of one’s situation even for a few hours.

Luke’s account of the ten lepers provides few details, but those that are included are tantalising. Jesus is between Galilee and Samaria – in a sort of no man’s land. The ten leprous men also exist in an in-between place. They are separated from home, family, and community and from any means of earning an income. Their presence causes fear, even revulsion and if, like the man in our story they have leprosy proper, not another skin disease, their bodies may be slowly rotting, and their lives may be lives of constant pain.

One imagines that the situation may be even worse for the Samaritan – why else would he find himself among a group of Jews here on the edge of nowhere? Unlike the Jews he would not be welcome in the Temple in Jerusalem. Is it because he is the most marginalised of the ten that he returns? Is it because his people have no Temple that he must worship God where he finds him – in Jesus? We will never know. What we do know is that nine did what Jesus said, and went to the Temple and one, the outsider, came back gave thanks.

Much as we don’t like to admit it, typically, we are the insiders. For most of us everyday life is not a constant struggle and while the system is far from perfect, we at least know that there is some sort of safety net if the ground is pulled from under us.

I imagine that few of us know the sort of poverty experienced by those who comb through the refuse dumps outside of Manilla, those who are forced to beg on the streets of India, or those who are so desperate to feed their families that they will sell their daughters (or indenture themselves) into slavery. Many of us take for granted that we are housed, clothed and fed. In this country we are rarely confronted by the horrific conditions in which a majority of this earth’s population lives.
I suspect that if we had even the smallest idea of how the other half lives that nearly every moment of everyday, we would, like the leper, want to praise God with a loud voice and to prostrate ourselves at the feet of Jesus.

For what are you grateful and how often have you thanked God today?

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Sit down, Shut up, Listen up

July 9, 2022

Pentecost 5 – 2022
Luke 10:25-27
NAIDOC Week
Marian Free

In the name of God who shows no distinction but values all people. Amen.

At the beginning of the year Professor Josh Mylne, the Chair of the planning committee for the International Congress on Plant Molecular Biology (IPMB) tweeted a poster for the upcoming Conference. The poster featured head shots of all the headline speakers and the chairs for the various sessions – over 90 people in total. Professor Mylne, who had been working on the Conference since 2018 was proud of the line-up, especially the diversity that it displayed. As he told the ABC programme Science Friction: “We had one of the best gender balances I’d seen, career-stage diversity with younger and older scientists, so much different science — more than ever before — chairs from all around the world, including for the first time Africa and India.”

The poster had been shown to hundreds of people before it was tweeted, all of whom responded positively. It was not surprising then that Professor Mylne was taken aback when one of the responses to the tweet was: “International, and no Africans.” Professor Mylne had just cycled home and, instead of stopping to think, he quickly replied: “Look harder”, directing the tweeter to the one African face among the 94.” Of course, potential attendees did look harder, and discovered that not only was there only one person from an African nation. While Asia was well-represented and there was a good gender balance, African and South America speakers were notable by their absence. A closer look also revealed that the website for a conference that was to be held in Australia failed to include an acknowledgement of country.

Instead of dampening the fire, Mylne’s response ignited a blazing fire with the eventual result that one of the sponsors withdrew their support and the Conference itself was postponed.

By taking the tweet personally and by responding hastily, Mylne made the sort of mistake that many of us make. Instead of recognising the hurt (and sense of exclusion) behind the critical tweet, Mylne responded defensively which turned the hurt into outrage. His response was interpreted as “disrespectful” and “tokenistic”. The situation was only made worse when an email was sent to one of the critics suggesting that it was up to people of colour to fix the problem.

It would be good to report that a occurence such as this is unusual, that seeing a situation only from one’s own perspective was a rare occurrence in today’s Australia, but sadly the failure to listen carefully is illustrative of a common reaction towards those who are different from ourselves – migrants, refugees and most egregiously our indigenous community. Our best efforts – when they do not include diverse voices – can be experienced as paternalistic and condescending. Our responses to criticism often demonstrate a failure to hear and an unwillingness to adequately address the concerns of those who outside our field of vision. When our failures are drawn to our attention, we too often become defensive instead of being open, and graciously listening and responding to the grievances of those whom we have (deliberately or inadvertently) excluded, patronised, or offended.

Not being heard or having one’s concerns ignored or carelessly dismissed are experiences that our first Nations people know only too well. There have been amply opportunities (particularly in the past 50 years) for white Australians, policy makers and members of industry to respond to the injustices wrought upon indigenous Australians for generations, and yet our responses have been inadequate at best and detrimental at worst.

To mention just a few – despite the apology, children of indigenous families are still being removed in greater numbers than children of other Australians, despite the Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody people of indigenous background are still over represented in our prisons, despite laws protecting sacred sites it was still possible to blow up the Juukan caves in Western Australia, despite commitments by the former Federal Government and the Uluru Statement from the Heart, first Nations people are still waiting to be recognised in our constitution and given a voice in government.

Since colonisation, we have not only forced indigenous people from their land, taken away their culture and their language, removed their children from their care, but we have also failed to listen to their wisdom, to appreciate their history and to value their knowledge of this land.

We cannot say that we have not been told – and told – what the problems are and how they can be solved. I was shocked, for example, when I heard Rachel Perkins deliver the Boyer Lecture of 2019 and hear her raising issues that had been raised by Professor Marcia Langton AO when she gave the Boyer Lecture in 2012. Nothing, it seemed had changed in the seven years between those lectures. It was a sad indictment on our failure to truly hear what was said or, if we had heard, our failure to respond in ways that demonstrated that we had heard and understood.

There will be no discernible change in this nation until we truly listen to the members of the indigenous community, to their rage, their indignation, their sense of injustice, their grief and their grievances, their sense of loss and dispossession and until we recognise their willingness to work with us and understand that they know better than we do, what the solutions for their own people might be.

Of all the meanings of today’s parable of the good Samaritan, the one that speaks to us today is that the outsider, the despised and the oppressed have much to teach us about generosity, inclusion and forgiveness, and about seeing and responding to the needs of those who are different from themselves no matter how badly the other has treated them.

The theme for NAIDOC week this year is Get up! Stand up! Show up!

Perhaps for white Australians it should be: “Sit down! Shut up! Listen up!”

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