Orangepekoe

Rarely do missionaries make the morning news, for these are the last people in the world that would make the sexy news criteria cut of today’s bland and boring market driven media.

However, I think the news media is struggling for any story they can get related to Haiti. Or they are trying to make sense of the stories out of North Korea and as a result, they gravitate toward missionary stories as an interpretative lens.

And what they are finding is that while most of the world has forgotten Haiti, specifically in this present time, the churches of North America have had Haiti in their  cross hairs for years. Not that it’s helped, but in many ways, not unlike medieval Europe, the church has provided the primary infrastructure for this country. But NOT the western churches, but the Haitian church leaders.

So, usually, in the case of colonialistic missionaries, when there is a national crisis, the western church missionaries who have been struggling for years in these countries get  boost in funding and they set things in action, for good or ill.

But it appears in Haiti that the western churches, especially in the case of the Baptist missionaries who are charged with kidnapping, the Haiti legal system was intact enough to remind these missionaries that colonialism is over and yes, help is appreciated, but don’t wear out their welcome.
Oh, did I mention that Haiti was one of the early sites of 19th century slave revolts?

I am wondering what is today’s missionary like. When I was growing up, today’s missionary tended to be the Christian who was either really far right wing or far left wing. The middle ground Christian tended to stay at home, mostly because they thought through the decision whether or not to be a mission too carefully and pragmatism and real life made the final decision.

Ultimately, you have to be rather ideological to become a missionary. I suppose, one can say, that in another life I too was a missionary (pragmatism led me to serve as a domestic missionary. I left my post after I could not pay my bills for three months. Loss of electricity and mounting therapy bills pushed me over the edge.

However, I loved those years, and I would do it again, but I wish I took that personal finance class! But one of the tricky things about being a missionary is negotiating your ideology with the indigenous people’s rights and traditions. I think that’s why most left leaning missionaries are more likely to do medical missions, where they leave behind their own ideology and offer help for the needs at hand, which are often medical or educational. I found as a person who was more affiliated with the right, that being a missionary was a challenge because the more you loved the people, the less you were interested in imposing any outside belief system on their already existing culture. Like in Dancing with Wolves, (and now Avatar) the alternative is to join the culture and adopted their belief system. Then, once within that culture, the missionary could offer assistance that is not imposing another belief system, but rather living out their own belief system as they act as a redemptive force.

Then, I said to myself, why don’t I do this within my own culture?

I went home after my missionary stint and found out something that most children never learn when they are growing up in that place fondly known as home, I learned why a prophet is not accepted in their own home. I learned exactly my place in society related to my home. It was complicated. I was loved and respected and great things were expected of me, my parents were leaders in our church community, I was well educated. However, my community was a community of immigrants, and most of my peers left home and never returned and half of the people who were the adults of my childhood were dead and the other were in the process of settling into nursing homes or repatriating to the homeland. So, the community look as it the pause button was perpetually selected and the buildings were decaying gently. In fact, I found that many the houses on my street were being purchased by the children of the original home owners who had left the street in the midst of the 1970s white flight.

What could a missionary do in a community like that? If I was really going to do something, I would start buying property. But I did not take that personal finance class, and I now live in an entirely different part of the country.

So, if I went home, and I found missionaries taking the children away, I suppose I would have them arrested too. But since I’m not there, I would not have noticed. The Haitians noticed when their children were being taken away. I know we’re looking at the Haitian crisis but I want to learn more about how the Haitian people have been living in this crisis. I hear stories of horror, but I also hear stories of hope and resilience, the kind that is not often seen here in the US. I think after 9/11 were are ready to learn  the lessons of how to live in the midst of pain and loss. And the people of the Gulf Coast and Haiti have a lot to each us. Perhaps they will send missionaries to our suburbs and trendy urban areas to teach us to love God and our neighbor.