World on Fire

I write today from the Way Out Porch in Montreat Conference Center. I’m here spur-of-the-moment chaperoning youth from my home church (First Pres Richmond) along with Andy who is serving as the youth’s official “back home leader” and, if I may say so, is doing a phenomenal job connecting with them and leading respectful discussions about things that really matter. It’s a huge blessing for me to be able to spend a week in Montreat before leaving the country for a year – this is a very special place to me where I have attended many conferences and spent a summer working, and I find it a comforting and inspiring place to go in the pivotal moments of my life. (And if moving to Peru for a year to live a simple life of love and solidarity with the poor isn’t a pivotal moment in my life, I don’t know what is!)

Aside from just being glad to be at Montreat, I am also grateful to say that this is potentially the best Montreat conference I have ever attended, and if you know me, you know I’m in the double digits as these conferences go. The theme is “World on Fire,” a double metaphor for the world being on fire with pain, injustice, and hatred but also for us to be refined by the purifying, holy fire of God in order to fight these fires with the fires of love and justice. The preacher, who leads us in worship every night, is an older man from Tucson, Arizona, named John Fife. He is a retired pastor who currently works with the faith-based social justice initiative called No More Deaths, which offers humanitarian aid and works to assure that one day there will be no more deaths along the Mexico/US border. It is a program of subversive love, and John Fife is a man of subversive love preaching Christ’s message of subversive love to high schoolers (and adult leaders, for that matter) who all too often fall into the sin of blindly following the rules. Christ is truly present in this conference, and I commend the PCUSA and planning team – you should be very proud of what you have created!

The themes of the week so far have included global warming, countering violence with peace, economic injustice, righteous anger, global awareness, and the Great Cloud of Witnesses of the past, present, and future that help us work toward justice peace, and love in all of these great “fires” that plague our world. I feel moved and challenged every day, particularly in our nightly worships, to change my life to one of radical simplicity for the sake of our earth and radical justice for the sake of our people. I actually just bought a book called Radical Simplicity that I hope to read throughout my year in Peru to help me carry out the YAV commitment to simple living and the Christian call to care for our world and its people.

On a slight side-note, there is a YAV program in Tucson, AZ that participates in the same types of border ministry as John Fife and No More Deaths. While I’m not sure whether any Tucson YAVs are placed directly with No More Deaths, it’s exciting to hear about this subject and know that my fellow YAVs are at work in this type of ministry.

I look forward to the last two days of this conference and the way that it will inspire and challenge the youth and their adult leaders like Andy and me.

On the subject of my actual YAV experience and Peru, I have received two articles of interest in the last day or so concerning the situation in La Oroya, a town in Peru where 97% of children below the age of six have lead-poisoning. It is considered to be the most polluted place on earth. The cause of this great pollution is a smelting plant run by the American company Doe Run. The citizens of La Oroya are in a terrible catch 22, for while the pollution caused by this plant is literally killing them, it also employs a majority of the working citizens in the town and in that way provides these articles, one from the PCUSA website and the other from the New York Times, address this situation better than I ever could, so I strongly encourage you to read them.

However, what struck me the most in these articles was their mention of Ira Rennert, the owner of Doe Run. While innocent people suffer, starve, and die because of his polluting factory and the shamefully low wages its workers are paid, Rennert is a billionaire that has multiple houses around the world. Such a disconnect sickens me – that someone could cause so much suffering yet enjoy so much wealth and privilege without second thought. However, I am humbled and sobered by the realization that every time I consume food, wear clothes, or buy products marketed unjustly, I am participating in this same situation of oppression. Any time I spend my money on “that which is not bread” and indulge my own selfish desires without thinking of others, I commit the same sin as Ira Rennert. We all do. Such rampant injustice and selfishness is unbelievably discouraging. How could there be hope? However, as a Christian, or rather, as a member of any world religious tradition, I am called to hope – to have faith that the Kingdom of God on earth is possible and to spend my life working toward it.

May we all work, as unselfishly as we are able, toward this Kingdom on earth. Amen.