Simple Moodlings \'sim-pѳl 'mϋd-ѳl-ings\ n: 1. modest meanderings of the mind about living simply and with less ecological impact; 2. "long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering" (Brenda Ueland) of the written kind; 3. spiritual odds and ends inspired by life, scripture, and the thoughts of others
Sometimes, I'm a bit slow on the uptake. After months of hearing about the Rohingya refugee crisis, I finally made a donation to help them this afternoon.
It can be hard to know how to donate, but it's only procrastination that kept me from it until now. I always have complete confidence in giving to Caritas Canada (also known as Development and Peace) because it offers clear ways to assist partner organizations in areas affected by injustice and disasters. This summer my 23-year-old daughter had the experience of meeting with partners working in Bolivia, and she came back more committed to D&P than ever. The stories she tells are enough to convince anybody about the importance of Caritas' work!
D&P's partner organizations are staffed by people who are best able to serve the needy because they come from the same place, speak the same languages, and understand the difficulties that brought about the crises as well as potential solutions. The workers in Caritas Bangladesh are on the ground where the refugees are, already doing what can be done, and a donation to Caritas Canada helps their work in providing shelter, hygiene kits and sanitation facilities, and protection for children. Donations made before November 28th will be matched by the Canadian government.
For the last 50 years, a Canadian Catholic organization has been doing what needs to be done when it comes to standing up for justice and peace in the developing world. I'm old enough to remember quite a few of the yearly Share Lent campaigns and different projects that the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace has offered in those 50 years, but it's only as our oldest child has become a staff member with CCODP that I've paid closer attention to the work of the organization. Development and Peace, as it's less officially known, has taught many Canadians that people in the developing world aren't looking for charities to parachute in with North American solutions to their local problems -- rather, they are looking for partners to help them develop their own solutions more fully. I have no difficulty with supporting projects found at devp.org because I know that the communities most affected by the projects are on board 100%.
50 years of social justice work around the world is worth celebrating, and there have been events and activities planned throughout this anniversary year, including a series of videos recalling D&P's many projects in the past. The video below is one of seven three-minute shorts to give you an idea of what's been going on since the Canadian Catholic Bishops founded Development and Peace (now also known as Caritas Canada) in 1967. It's definitely worth watching this amazing solidarity timeline. I've posted the first of seven below just to get you started... Enjoy!
What's below is taken directly from the Open Bethlehem website. I had the opportunity to view the movie and meet Leila Sansour, the young woman whose voice you hear in the clip, and the executive producer, Wael Kabbani, also the producer of two other critically acclaimed films on peace. It was a powerful experience. There has to be a way for Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace, to share their space, and this movie is a wonderful opportunity to reflect on how we can all contribute to peace in our world. If you have a chance to attend an Open Bethlehem presentation, please do!
A few weeks ago, my three daughters and I went to see Georges Bizet's opera, Carmen. Though it was set in pre-civil war 1930s Spain and lacked the rich costumes of the usual late 1800s portrayal, the singers were strong, the orchestra wonderful, and the music was magical -- if you know Carmen, you know what I mean. It's a little piece of human culture that has enriched our planet for the past 140 years.
Where would the human race be without art, music, architecture, drama, and the languages that give voice to who we are as God's children? I recently saw a clever bit of graffiti that said, "Earth without art is just "Eh."
Unfortunately, human history has seen many eras when cultures clashed and history was re-written by the winners. As a result, we lost whole civilizations and communities which had important things to say about our place in God's creation -- so much so that Pope Francis and his encyclical writing team saw fit to include a section on Cultural Ecology in Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home. This week we are looking at that section, which can be found by clicking here and scrolling down to paragraphs 143-146.
When our ecological heritage is under threat, so is our cultural heritage. As is noted in paragraph 143, "Culture is more than what we have inherited from the past; it is also, and above all, a living, dynamic and participatory present reality, which cannot be excluded as we rethink the relationship of human beings and the environment."
And what is that endangers our cultural heritage? You probably know my bias -- I would point to the way our media/marketers plant artificial desires in the hearts of so many people -- to keep up with the Joneses, to be like everyone else rather than acknowledging that we are all unique and beautiful children of God who don't have to look and dress like the flavour-of-the-month celebrities in any given country. That's only one example... Pope Francis and friends say in paragraph 144 that "There is a need to respect the rights of peoples and cultures, and to appreciate that the development of a social group presupposes an historical process which takes place within a cultural context and demands the constant and active involvement of local people from within their proper culture."
Too often in human history, cultures that saw themselves as "more advanced" or that were wealthier or more scientifically educated (read: superior) imposed themselves upon unsuspecting original populations with disastrous results! I'm thinking of French explorers who brought smallpox and alcohol to the First Nations Peoples of Canada without appreciating the gifts they offered -- a deep understanding of the land and creation. Or of well-meaning scientists who tried to control "pest populations" by introducing a predator species that was more invasive and devastating than the original pest. Paragraph 145 states, "The imposition of a dominant lifestyle linked to a single form of production can be just as harmful as the altering of ecosystems."
But paragraph 146 contains the critically important lines of this entire section -- "...it is essential to show special care for indigenous communities and their cultural traditions. They are not merely one minority among others, but should be the principal dialogue partners, especially when large projects affecting their land are proposed..."
Of course, this is not how our world operates. Mining operations, pipelines, agricultural projects, hydroelectric dams, water bottling plants -- to name just a few -- have been established without appropriate consultation or studies with/of the people and other species who live on and take their livelihood from the lands where such projects have been planted. In our past, some cultures have completely disappeared due to the ignorance of other "invasive cultures," and there are, unfortunately, too many examples of similar things going on at present.
Pope Francis and Laudato Si call us to change that. How? Well, we need to stop acting like superior invaders who impose upon creation, upon cultures, and become co-operators with who and what is already present instead.
If you follow my moodlings at all, you'll know that I particularly like the example given by Development and Peace, a Canadian organization, part of Caritas International, which has learned to listen to people "on the ground" when it comes to offering development assistance. I've heard of too many organizations that parachute people into communities in the developing world to build orphanages or start programs without a real understanding of what is needed. Wouldn't it be better to enter into dialogue and to empower those communities to find their own solutions? To respect their wisdom and protect their way of life with a grassroots cultural ecological model?
Here's Development and Peace's Lent 2016 campaign video, which talks about their approach:
In the week ahead, I would invite us all to consider the culture in which we live, and the ways we celebrate it. We might also give some thought to how we can support struggling cultures in our world without imposing our expectations and solutions upon them.
They don't need invaders, but I'm sure they can use more friends. Maybe it's time to research organizations in your neck of the woods that support grassroots cultural ecology?
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A prayer for our earth
All-powerful God, you are present in the whole universe
and in the smallest of your creatures.
You embrace with your tenderness all that exists.
Pour out upon us the power of your love,
that we may protect life and beauty.
Fill us with peace, that we may live
as brothers and sisters, harming no one.
O God of the poor,
help us to rescue the abandoned and forgotten of this earth,
so precious in your eyes.
Bring healing to our lives,
that we may protect the world and not prey on it,
that we may sow beauty, not pollution and destruction.
This Sunday evening there will be a wonderful prayer vigil in the lead up toward the December climate talks in Paris. There are several Christian communities involved in its organization, and the centre piece will be a special Taizé Prayer for Ecological Justice. I know of quite a few people planning to attend, and I hope that if you're able, you will, too. The building is accessible for people with disabilities, and the music promises to be wonderful. Bring a friend and come to pray and take action in Creating a Climate of Change for the sake of our planet...
or other charitable organizations that help small-scale farmers
If you crunch the numbers, women like the one above (and men) feed 3 billion people world wide, mostly in the global South. (Women do most of the planting, weeding and selling of the crops in the South's rural areas, but their efforts toward producing so much food is often overlooked.) Most of the food on our planet exists in its present form because of thousands of years of innovations and plant breeding that occurred on small family-run farms. Small landholders selected seeds from their best, most successful plants year after year to replant the following year, and over time, their practices created and bred plant varieties that worked in many different climates, and were affordable and nutritionally superior to the originals.
Unfortunately one of the biggest threats to small farmers is the fact that large corporations are doing their best to privatize and patent seeds. Companies like Monsanto, Dupont, Syngenta, Dow, Bayer and BASF are genetically modifying seeds so that they produce bumper crops the first year (with the help of company-made agrochemicals), but cannot be replanted the next year because their genes are modified so that their offspring don't produce. Growers are then forced to buy more of the corporations' genetically modified single-year seeds and chemicals. In these cases, biodiversity is vanishing, and in some countries, fair trade agreements have made seed saving an illegal act. And the blanket distribution of one type of genetically modified seed for one type of climate can't be successful in every microclimate across every country!
Farmers in countries like Haiti, Brazil, Columbia and Zambia have realized these dangers and have been fighting for their seed saving rights through nationwide farmers strikes, setting up their own ecological seed production cooperatives, and refusing to allow corporations entry into their work. But the pressure continues, and, unlike most human beings, corporations are more interested in their fiscal bottom lines than the world's common good. The companies named above lack any sort of conscience and have more than enough money to fight dirty.
But we can help our farming brothers and sisters in their struggles against heartless agri-business here and around the world by buying local and organic products when possible. When it comes to items we import, fair trade and organic products are generally produced by people who subscribe to non GM, organic seed choices and farming practices. If enough consumers demand non-genetically modified choices at our grocery stores, and ask our legislators to enact laws to label GMO foods so that we can avoid the products sold in Canada containing genetically modified corn, canola, soy and sugar beet, it won't be long before agribusiness is forced to rethink its ways. By eating locally and sustainably, we can have a global impact before it's too late.
Click on this image to go to the Share Lent page...
This weekend, a group of youth including our three daughters attended a Share Lent (Development and Peace/Caritas Internationalis) ThinkFast at which they played and prayed and haven't eaten since 9:30 yesterday morning. We've actually fasted as a family, and will break our fast in two hours or so at morning mass at our parish. We've experienced something about hunger even as we learned a lot about its causes, food production, and Development and Peace/Caritas Internationalis' partners in the developing world, and we raised some funds to for projects led by the people in their own countries rather than by well-meaning but often misinformed aid workers. The more I learn, the more I understand that it is better to help people work for themselves than it is for outsiders to come in and bring our idea of what aid looks like. The people in the developing world know what they need better than any outsider could!
Today, I'm posting the prayer with which we began and will end our ThinkFast.
Lent is the time of year when the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace invites us to live in solidarity with our sisters and brothers in the global south -- or the developing world, if you prefer. As someone who does her best to practice Voluntary Simplicity, I see this as an objective that is right in line with simple living. Life in the developed world has become so materially consumptive that we could learn a lot from the simplicity with which people in the developing world live.
That's not to say that life in the global south is an ideal we want to emulate in all respects. There is so much hardship, disease, and difficulty in some places that I'm sure I wouldn't know how to cope. But in many of those places, there is also a stronger sense of community than we experience in most North American cities. We tend to think of our wealthy lifestyles as having much to offer the poor, but I suspect the poor have more things of value to teach us than we have to teach them when it comes to looking after each other.
So this weekend, our family is taking part in a Development and Peace ThinkFast, a 25 hour period of fasting (no food) that is packed with activities and education about life in the developing world. We will fast in support of D&P's partnerships with programs that promote human dignity in countries in the global south, we will raise funds for those programs, and we will learn about the needs of different communities in different places across the globe.
I really love D&P's emphasis on Human Dignity this year. I had never thought about it before, but for as long as I remember, I don't recall seeing a forlorn or impoverished-looking person in their advertising, posters, and brochures. Unlike some agencies that try to guilt people into giving by presenting pitiful pictures of the needy, D&P prefers to promote their cause with the joyful faces of people whose human dignity has been served by partnerships between people in the developed world and people in the global south who are working to lift themselves, their families and their communities out of poverty. Look at the gorgeous girls above, and you'll see what I mean. They are an example of what happens when a development organization provides assistance by working with a community rather than parachuting in to do 'for,' and flying out again without being sure that their assistance has made a lasting difference.
Even if Lent has no meaning in your life, perhaps now is a good time to give some thought to supporting an organization that works for positive change from the grassroots, or to learn about a community in the developing world and what you can do to strengthen it. Even contributing to an agency that helps local homeless people would be an excellent choice, simply because an important part of Voluntary Simplicity is showing solidarity with those who have less than we do, and offering our friendship in whatever way we can. Most of us in North America have more than enough to share during Lent... and the rest of the year, too.
What's your favourite way to support human dignity in the global south -- or nearby?
For more information about Development and Peace and its initiatives, click here.
P.S. Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Try here.
