A Message, I suppose

I gave vocal ministry in my Meeting today, and in the giving also received it more clearly than I ever have.  So jotting a few notes here:

The seed that I was poking at when the Message settled on my came from Said's "Orientalism" and his observation that British colonial rulers of Egypt felt entirely comfortable speaking for "The Oriental" because they felt he (of course he!) was a classifiable and knowable sort.  Their knowledge served to give them authority (and their authority, knowledge) ... this kind of scientific knowledge was primarily a form of coercion.  (No, I can't fully articulate this, but I may come back to it as I read further in "Orientalism, and there are similar ideas in Foucault's "Discipline and Punish").  Knowledge, and particular Western, Scientific, Rational, knowledge, especially box-putting-into as forms of control.

Raised up against this I heard "Love your neighbor", and the question which prompted the Parable of the Good Samaritan: "Who is my neighbor?".  A story in response to a request for categories.

When I rose to speak, the examples of knowledge as category-making that sprang up were The Bechdel Test, and Brown v. Board.  Asking "can this movie/story imagine that half the world's population are complete people" is a useful question in understanding the ways that our world is unjust.  Asking "are Black people getting an equal education" is also a useful question in understanding justice and injustice.  But there are limitations to these questions.  They categorize, they box us in, and knowledge based on such categorizing is inherently also about a kind of control.  It may be useful but it is limited.  Compare "who is my neighbor", and the response via Parable, which among other things says "that person, right over there, who you are encountering, that is the person to whom you should show love.

The words that came to me at the end, and which I think were most directed at me in that moment were close to: "Understanding our world and its injustice is necessary, but insufficient, to live a life towards Justice, and Love".

I've been wondering for a while where to put the energy I have for social justice, or making life better for others, or whatever other words to use to say "I am concerned about the world and it's future and would like to improve it".  Along with the words that came at Meeting, I got a very strong sense that there are hungry people in my community right now.  They are near to me, and if I do not encounter them it is in part because I am choosing not to.  There are hungry people near me, and also a food bank where people work to help make sure that they're not as hungry.  That is a place I can go and help.