Salvation: An Abstraction, or The Power of the Re:

Friday, April 17, 2009
At Starbucks (Setauket, NY)
Morning


This black mustang blows through the shopping center stop sign and makes a quick right turn into the adjacent parking lot. In profile it passes me as I 'm watching it out the large glass window in my corner seat, here, at Starbucks. An older woman is exiting the Starbucks and walking back towards her car across the parking lot right in the line of the mustang, and the mustang comes to a screeching dramatic stop. I can see the driver clearly now. She is seven feet from me, an attractive girl noticeably, and I immediately recognize the look on her face of disgust and contempt for this older woman. The older woman passes and the girl in the black mustang immediately drives past her and pulls haphazardly into a parking spot. It's a story of everyday impatience.

I chuckle to myself internally. But my laugh is not of mock or judgment for the attractive girl. Instead, I'm judging myself. I laugh because I realize that this silly absurd interaction between the attractive girl and the older woman – unless the attractive girl was on some mysterious mission to save another with a healing cup of Starbucks coffee – is something that I could very easily relate to. I think that I could place myself in that black mustang. Maybe it's not this mustang scenario specifically, maybe it is not an incident that involves impatience as a factor, it could be something else entirely; yet, I'm confident that there is some comparable scenario, different, that is equally as degrading and destructive in my own life. I'm confident that there was a time that all that existed on my face was ill will and contempt, or just a useless frustration misdirected.

I think that somehow, in some abstract way, in Africa, in Zimbabwe specifically, I'm less prone to a scenario such as this. I think it's probably less likely for Andrew also, and certainly Dad, and also for Patrick. I think that it's harder to align myself with insignificance there. At first this may be for practical purposes. As an American in Zimbabwe you realize that when all the people surrounding you do not have cars, or the normative structures that we take for granted like institutions, enforcement, and control are non-existent, or if time is something less invented and important, you tend to let the wind breeze of frustration brush past you easier, instead of attempting to ineffectively challenge it. And later maybe it is not necessarily such a practical reason but an inevitable one, such as when you watch someone die in the morning time it just becomes so much harder to get angry at an impracticality or an insignificance in the evening. I think that Zimbabwe is interesting because it suppresses these certain present trivialities of (American, my) existence. A friend has told me that the same thing happens to them when in Uganda, or Burkina Faso, or India, et al.

I wonder if these lessons, mainly: patience, perspective, understanding, selflessness, and grace, which we learn in the third world can be applied to the first? I tend to think so. I tend to think the answer remains yes when viewed through different lenses and perspectives. I think that the Christian can come to this conclusion because she asks God "why?" She asks God "why are you causing all of this suffering? Why is this person dying from AIDS in Africa and why is this person on my corner in America sleeping over an air vent to stave off freezing, why did I read about this person on 33rd street dying from starvation?" God invariably retorts, "you." God answers, "you are the reason, because you are able to help facilitate the appropriate things in motion to alleviate the sufferings of the AIDS disease, you are able to provide the air vent person with a shelter for the night, you are able to feed the starving person because you live on 32nd street. You. You are my hands and feet in this world, today, tomorrow, and yesterday." I think the atheist may ask the same question of why (granted not directed at God) and come away with a similar answer for varying reasons such as seeking a social justice, concluding that for the betterment of mankind war is more destructive then peace, defending the theory that I'm my brother's keeper, and realizing that alleviating these destructive things in life is beneficial, for me, for everyone, etc. Incidentally, the other side of the coin is that the Christian and the atheist can come to differing conclusions themselves. The Christian can have a certain mindset where he writes off this world to some sin or some evil and in turn is neglectful assuming some expectant view of another world, the atheist, in turn, can conclude that this world is just a hodgepodge accident and all that matters is natural selection and dominion of the species. Both views, from my humble perspective are without merit, desolate viewpoints, and weightless.

Like I said, I tend to answer yes. And the reason is because of a Jewish word and predominantly Jewish idea of shalom. We know this word today in our modern vernacular to mean "peace" or "blessedness." It means this of course, but I think it also means so much more, because it also refers to the fabric of our life. The Jewish thought is that God made the world describing it like a garment, and the way that a garment is made is by interweaving fabrics, over and under one another, creating a wholeness. This wholeness is shalom.  It's now easy to make the transition. If this world is all interwoven strings of fabric, then you, me, the president, the people in Indonesia, the tribes of Brazil, the mentally deficient guy at the stop sign, are all apart of this fabric. Any break in this fabric is disappointing the wholeness of the shalom. The way to break the fabric is physical, internal and social deterioration. There is this beautiful 11-year-old Zimbabwean girl named Princess. She suffers everyday with HIV, improper treatment, and truthfully she is daily seeing diminishing results. Her suffering is destroying the physical fabric of her life, and the social fabric of ours. Her suffering is pealing away the strands of the garment of the world as she is slowly decaying. I have a friend who lives on the corner of Cloverfield in Santa Monica and who eats on the occasional basis – she is a piece of the fabric gone socially awry. And I think the conclusion from this is that we are all part of the one fabric, and we are to act as tiny little crotchetiers – replenishing, replacing, redoing, and remaking this garment. I think that one of the greatest ideas of this life is this idea of shalom. It's all things healing, and all things life, and all things salvation; or at least it's a means to those ends.

But, Zimbabwe is far away. And I often question, how do I touch the hands of someone so far away and help to re-knit this garment? That's a discussion, not a one off answer/question. Before answering the how to that question it is probably more important to answer the if. However that is all for another time, and since there is no succinct material concrete answer to that question I think it is, for me, more pertinent to deal with it in the abstract. I was talking with this friend the other day and we were talking about how to best do good for a place like Zimbabwe when one lives so far away and is naturally caught up in one's life. He concluded that maybe it is not about giving some material monetary thing; maybe instead it is just about loving. I thought this profound. It reads hippie-esque, but it just seems to make a lot of sense in my brain now. One of the things that Andrew and I couldn't get over was this idea that these Zimbabwean people, specifically the Africans who are suffering from tuberculosis or AIDS laying in their huts all day long, in some way benefited from our arrival and visitations with them. This was how we chose to manifest our love to them, and we did it genuinely, but we were forced to question the appropriateness throughout. It just didn't make any sense to us that we were doing anything, because often from our perspective all we were doing was sitting with them. However, time after time we would hear to the great extent of how much the suffering person in question and the family appreciated our visit. It baffled us then, and it still kind of does to this day. And if something as simple as sitting with someone can do such good then I have to believe that I can do another version of good even if I am not present in Zimbabwe. Each manifestation of love is different for each individual person and certainly different for people when they are not in Zimbabwe or India or anywhere where it may be needed. For me I've concluded that it has to do with forms of thoughtfulness, and prayerfulness, and time I think. And while this is heavily abstract, I think the abstraction can actually be taken further. I can't always be in Zimbabwe. I can't always physically be in the hut with the AIDS patient; and if sending some monetary gift is not plausible, or even possible, I have to find another way to love them. For me, the way to do that is to figure that I can't be in Zimbabwe every day but I can be on my corner. I think I often overlook the suffering on my corner thinking that it only occurs in Africa. The homeless person without food or shelter or clothes is my Zimbabwe, because the homeless person decrepit and hopeless is peeling away the same fabric, but in this case I can be more immediate and hands on. The homeless have become a very important thing in my life and I tend to emphasize along those lines, but I also must realize that today it may not be a homeless person but my friend who needs my patience, or a neighbor who practices an obscure religion to me and needs my understanding, or a family member who is different from me and needs my respect. So, the fabric has all sorts of ways to be mended and remade, and they are not always monetary things, there are seemingly simple ways like the practice of patience. And so far this is a two fold abstraction: that love can sometimes be just as effective as money, and that if I touch the hand of the one closest to me I can help touch the hand of the one furthest from me in Zimbabwe. It's this beautifully abstract cycle that is not definite but faith based and hopeful and good. And I have this weird feeling that it would ultimately be empirical.

I guess I have to question that if it is not for shalom then what is the point? I think a lot of interesting things happen when shalom becomes the focus. I think that shalom is the reward but also the gateway to various other beautiful things about life. It levels the playing field for me. It helps me realize that I am no more important than anyone else. It is this understanding that I am just as easily infected with AIDS at birth as Princess, or just as easily born into a horrendous situation that leaves me mentally deficient and unable to properly operate in society like someone on my corner. It makes me think that I was/am a second away, an instance, a short straw, a turn around the corner, a blink from being the suffering, the cold, the lonely, the starving, the dying. I'm not just my brother's keeper, I'm my brother. I think this helps decrease my self-importance, which in turn helps me become more others centered and enables me to start moving out from the center of the circle to the margins where everyone else is seemingly residing. It's the realization that I'm in fact owed nothing, and this is contrary to my natural belief. This being something that defies my skin and what I tell myself that I am made out of. And I think that this belief begets stories of grace. I think this is why the Bishop in Les Miserables can ransom Jean Val Jean's life so effortlessly, because he understands that he could be Val Jean so easily, and that he himself has been saved, and he can now easily offer this grace to Val Jean. He's compelled to offer this grace, but it's not a guilt thing, or something that he feels he has to do, it's instead something that he loves to do. Like grace, I think that shalom precipitates life changing humility. Andrew and I spent one day doing visits in rural homes and our leader advised us to take a break at lunchtime. Another family had prepared lunch for just Andrew and I as we were the guests in town, and our leader planned to meet up with us after lunch to continue the visitations. After a filling lunch, we again met with our leader and the conversation somehow drifted to what he ate for lunch? He said that he had tea. We said, okay, but what else did you have? And he said that tea was all that he had. I believe that this man practices shalom, and his humility was inspiring. Of course, Andrew and I made sure that on our next visit he would not just have tea for a significant portion of time, and we realized that he did not expect anything from us just because he told us the truth of his situation. He was so humble throughout. And the interesting question that shalom helps highlight is who is saving who? Granted, we got him some food for a while, but I think that the humility we experienced, the sacrifice, the lack of need or want was more affecting for us then any amount of food we could have brought him. I guess I am learning that shalom just seems to lead to this relational way of being that just seems so much better then some ancillary isolationist way.

Zimbabwe has for so long been pounded on and pounded on.  It has this dictator who is so destructive to his own people, and has been for almost thirty years. They run "democratic" elections, he loses the vote, but yet he still remains in power hurting his people. There are just innumerable amounts of starving, workless, often hopeless people. There are societal structures that just seem insurmountable when I try to think how to refurbish them. And when I am there, and when I think of this place – a place and people incidentally that I have fallen deeply in love with – all I want to do is fix it. I want to say passionately do this! I want to say okay here is how we fix this, we do this and that and then this. I continually want to bring salvation to Zimbabwe and it's people. But my imperialistic response is often unsuccessful and fruitless. So I've learned to start thinking of other ways to reach Zimbabwe's salvation. My conclusion today is this abstract life of shalom. And I'm not sure if shalom necessarily engenders belief and hope but I find myself believing in change. I believe in Zimbabwe's change (and I think I have started to see some improvements already during the month I was there, possibly thanks to a new "unity" government.) I believe in change on the social level, I think it is possible, and I believe in change on the personal level, in my own life, in the lives of others, and I think socially and personally they inform one another like an interdependent relationship. There is something fascinating about change and how powerful it can be. It's often a beautiful concept, when things are remade, or they are refurbished, or they are regained, or they are recreated, or they are represented. It's a powerful thing when something is done with a new attitude, one that is not destructive but developmental and formative and rebuilding.

In case anyone is still reading, thanks so much for your support. It was an awesome trip, probably the best five weeks of my life. I was really encouraged to learn of how many people kept up with this blog. I'm kind of only learning that now but that is really cool, I don't necessarily know why so many people were reading it but I appreciate it nonetheless. Thanks for putting up with my digressions and my weird philosophies or whatever. I write journals everyday, so I was going to be writing all of this to myself anyway, and it was cool to try the blog thing out a bit and hear people's feedback. Zimbabwe is a fascinating place, and life is an interesting thing. If anyone ever wants to talk about Zimbabwe or wants to know anything or a way to help support you can email me or call me anytime, stephenbozzo@gmail.com, (631) 371-9412. I was really encouraged by you, and I hope you were encouraged with the stories you heard, not for my sake, but for the sake of these other people, these people in Zimbabwe, the guy who only has tea for lunch and is quite beautifully content, or the boy who just has never met the love of a father or mother, or the mother whose has lost all of her children. In a way we can help these people, not for us, but for them, maybe if not with money or a toy or a shirt, but just with a thought, a kindness that results from being others centered, them centered…maybe when you are on your next Starbucks run ☺

Thanks,
Stephen