etcetera: September 2005 Archives

A comment to my entry "It's not going to stop ..." asked if I assumed that the absence of war is peace. I had meant to reply at length, but my intention got lost in the shuffle of too many projects happening at once.

My short answer to the question is, quite simply, no. The long answer will take more time to formulate.

In the meantime, consider this excerpt from Desmond Tutu an introduction to my extended thoughts on the matter:

Stability and peace in our land will not come from the barrel of a gun, because peace without justice is an impossibility.

Many are beginning to think the only way forward is the way of armed struggle. But I am certain that if we were to say today the government is serious about dismantling apartheid most people would be glad. None of our people is really bloodthirsty. They just want their place under the sun, a place where they are acknowledged for what they are--human beings made in the image of God.

I am opposed to both the violence of those who maintain an unjust system and the violence of those who seek to overthrow it. The important point to make is that many people think violence is something that is going to be introduced from the outside by the so-called terrorists, the people of the liberation movements. The situation in South Africa is already a violent one. It is the institutional violence, the structural violence of apartheid, that has caused the answering violence of the liberation movements.

I am a lover of peace and I try to work for justice because only thus do I believe we can ever hope to establish durable peace. It is self-defeating to justify a truce based on unstable foundations of oppression. Such a truce can only be inherently unstable, requiring that it be maintained by institutional violence.

Desmond Tutu

retired Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa

from The Words of Desmond Tutu

Violence as a way of achieving justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Nobel address, Oslo, December 11, 1964

Today is my second official day of work after having quit my office manager job at our church.

I started working at St. John's in March of 2003, about 4 months after Rob and I ran out of money and energy and moved to Michigan, supposedly for a 6-month sabbatical. The job opened up at a particularly fortuitous time, which is a vague way of saying we were flat broke, subsisting on 10/$1 Ramen and free cable TV. Encouraged by our families (who, at the same time they were affirming our desire to take risks in living faithfully, were no doubt having visions of our teeth falling out as we scraped together enough change to buy a second hand blender for our Ramen), we decided that the office manager job would be a good bridge to a more stable income through our non-profit organization, *culture is not optional.

As no pharmaceutical company has yet patented a form of organizational birth control, we discovered ourselves proud founders of a new organization (World Fare) later that year. We were glad to be changing little corners of the world in such practical ways, but our schedule, especially after Rob returned to school full time, started eating away like a jackhammer at one of our most deeply held values: Sabbath. Our path of discipleship also became less clear as we had fewer discretionary hours for study and work-related travel.

And so, with no sure promise of extra income through *cino or World Fare to replace my church wage, I quit. This is a sad decision on one hand--I enjoyed the opportunity to get to know folks in our faith community, I liked being able to challenge the congregation through various church publications to serve in new ways and I appreciated working with our pastor, who balances his sincere goodness with a righteous anger over injustice.

However, I will also enjoy having my mornings to study and attend morning prayer once a week at a local retreat center. I will enjoy worshipping as a congregant, rather than a staff person (no more "Kirstin, would you mind making copies of this for me real quick?"). And I look forward to seeing how the newest adventure in counterintuition will turn out.