Ran across some interesting articles in the BBC NEWS this morning.
I'm learning a ton about the roots of ethnic strife in China and all that's blazing hot and ugly in the streets these days; but that got me thinking about other instances of ethnic strife, and that got me searching for news from my adopted homelands--Hungary, Ukraine, Croatia, Romania, Bosnia, Serbia...Eastern Europe in general.
So I found this article on the Roma. Check it out at this link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8136812.stm
It gives an interesting snapshot on their ethnic and cultural history and does a graphic job of speaking to the kind of heavy-handed hate they've been trampled with through various European eras.
For centuries, the Roma people's nomadism has marked them as shifty, deceitful, lazy, suspicious, other. In fact, in the throw-down with the Turks in the Ottoman wars, other Europeans often branded them as Turkish spies. This sparked the first widespread Roma genocide in Europe in which the Roma people were viciously hunted, humiliated, and butchered. (The article mentions everything from head-shaving to ear-slicing to forced sterilization.)
It's a sordid history, one that doesn't get a lot of face time in high school and college history classes.
It's also a sordid reality that's just beginning to get face time in world news reports and political summits.
You should really read the whole article--it's a fast read, and I promise you'll learn something. (I did.)
Join me in perusing the worlds news for a bit--there are so many human stories we need to start investing in (our time, money, service, prayer, whatever). But it all starts with tuning in, listening to the story, and sharing it with your neighbors.
Thanks for reading.
Come back again soon.
7.11.2009
7.08.2009
FADED LEVIS AND TAILORED BLAZERS
I'm working in downtown Grand Rapids this summer, on South Division Avenue. The area is still developing, and I always find it an ironic juxtaposition to walk down Weston and see the fixed up facade and foundation of Rockwell's (a local bar and grille) smushed up right next to this torn up, forsaken, sagging space next door. The building is actually leaning and crumbling, as if a good kick in the bottom right corner would send it tumbling right down into dust.
Dust.
Each morning, I pass a few stony churches, a cheap motel, the friendly lime-vested security guard by the hospital, and a couple of ministries for the homeless and unemployed in Grand Rapids. I nod to the man slinking along in faded, tapered Levis and an 80s-style track jacket, plastic bag slung over one elbow.
Sometimes he nods. Usually he just walks on.
There's a couple of dudes and that one lady who hang out on the cement steps in front of the motel, smoking cigarettes early before the heat hits and their street gets busier.
I like mornings.
They feel right.
I also like my job. I work for an independent consultant who specializes in diversity, inclusion, and cultural competency--basically, he's working for social justice in the corporate sphere, and I get to write for him. I'm thankful for the job, and I'm learning a lot (more on that another day).
But some days, I head into the office to write for a bunch of our clients who are sealing and dealing, swapping and gambling on millions of bucks in corporate America and I wonder what the heck I'm doing. Because, despite the relevant and purposeful work that I think we're doing, that I think corporate America needs, it's just a world that doesn't jive with me.
Some days I can hardly stand it.
Some days I just want to scream--It doesn't matter!! Dust to dust, man! Your money, my pride, all of our foolishness--dust! The money makes me sick some days--it's just a bunch of arbitrary numbers and dirty coins and crumpled papers that we toss around, that we use to make some people powerful and some people powerless.
Not that money can't be used well. But most of the time it just seems like a gluttonous mess.
It just that my mornings make such an uncomfortable juxtaposition between the scraping by and the smooth sailing, by some people scrambling after coins in the street while others are bathing in riches, by some people people sporting goodwill track jackets and plastic bags and others tailored blazers and BlackBerrys.
It bugs me.
But I'm glad it does, because I'd be much more worried about my future if I didn't feel sick sometimes at that kind of weighty imbalance.
Instead, I've got an itch for a world that isn't so sadly comical. In that world, maybe the corporate gurus walk out of their offices someday and go take the dudes and that one lady on the street for lunch. In that world, these people might just start to care about each other. In that world, we might see the super-privileged begin to heave some of the heaviness off the underprivileged and the scale might just shift a bit closer to even. A bit.
It's my job to help make that world a reality.
Dust.
Each morning, I pass a few stony churches, a cheap motel, the friendly lime-vested security guard by the hospital, and a couple of ministries for the homeless and unemployed in Grand Rapids. I nod to the man slinking along in faded, tapered Levis and an 80s-style track jacket, plastic bag slung over one elbow.
Sometimes he nods. Usually he just walks on.
There's a couple of dudes and that one lady who hang out on the cement steps in front of the motel, smoking cigarettes early before the heat hits and their street gets busier.
I like mornings.
They feel right.
I also like my job. I work for an independent consultant who specializes in diversity, inclusion, and cultural competency--basically, he's working for social justice in the corporate sphere, and I get to write for him. I'm thankful for the job, and I'm learning a lot (more on that another day).
But some days, I head into the office to write for a bunch of our clients who are sealing and dealing, swapping and gambling on millions of bucks in corporate America and I wonder what the heck I'm doing. Because, despite the relevant and purposeful work that I think we're doing, that I think corporate America needs, it's just a world that doesn't jive with me.
Some days I can hardly stand it.
Some days I just want to scream--It doesn't matter!! Dust to dust, man! Your money, my pride, all of our foolishness--dust! The money makes me sick some days--it's just a bunch of arbitrary numbers and dirty coins and crumpled papers that we toss around, that we use to make some people powerful and some people powerless.
Not that money can't be used well. But most of the time it just seems like a gluttonous mess.
It just that my mornings make such an uncomfortable juxtaposition between the scraping by and the smooth sailing, by some people scrambling after coins in the street while others are bathing in riches, by some people people sporting goodwill track jackets and plastic bags and others tailored blazers and BlackBerrys.
It bugs me.
But I'm glad it does, because I'd be much more worried about my future if I didn't feel sick sometimes at that kind of weighty imbalance.
Instead, I've got an itch for a world that isn't so sadly comical. In that world, maybe the corporate gurus walk out of their offices someday and go take the dudes and that one lady on the street for lunch. In that world, these people might just start to care about each other. In that world, we might see the super-privileged begin to heave some of the heaviness off the underprivileged and the scale might just shift a bit closer to even. A bit.
It's my job to help make that world a reality.
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