February 19, 2008

Dear Friends:

I am writing a second letter this month because in light of world events at this moment the timing appears to be right.

I title this letter: “Behind the Gate: Dying or disappearing? Relating current world events to everyday life.”

A gated community in Hangzhou.

As I walk around Nanjing, I have noticed the same kind of “gated communities” here that I often saw in the Old City of Jerusalem. These are not the fancy and exclusive gated communities of the wealthy (although those gates exist here as well). The gates to which I am referring are the entrances to the communities of the poor.

There is a gate that when opened reveals an alleyway full of doors to rooms or apartments where people live. Sometimes there are entire neighborhoods behind the gates.

A traditional seller in southern China.

There are often clothes hanging up in the alley, children at play, life is being conducted as life is conducted everywhere in the world. It is noisy and messy, both in relationships and in the signs of poverty. Garbage is often abundant, and buildings are often dilapidated.

I have been privileged in the last four years to travel to a number of countries, including Israel/Palestine, Kosovo, the Republic of Ireland, and now China. As I observed these gates in China and made the connection with what I had observed in Jerusalem, I realized that two fundamental activities are going on in many of the countries that I have visited in the last four years.

One is that some of the countries are dying. The other is that some of the ways of life are disappearing. These gates are a reminder to me of the vibrancy of the cultures in these countries, which while often fossilized in poverty, stubbornly persist in the face of death or in the face of modernization.

I will elaborate, first to explain countries that are dying. I was the guest in the home of a Muslim family in Kosovo for a week in 2006. Their home was in a village outside of Pristina, a village that had been nearly destroyed by bombing in the war with Serbia in the last 1990s. Eastern Europe is one of most beautiful places I have ever visited—that landscape is amazing. The friend whose family I was staying with had been living in England for several years, and there were many young women who came to visit her while we stayed with her family. One of them asked me what I thought of their village. I said it was beautiful. She looked at me with astonishment and said, “This is ugly!” She swept her hand around her to indicate the ruins and the wounded landscape. I told her that I was looking beyond the poverty and beyond the scars of the war to the beautiful people and to the beauty of the creation that was obvious even with the painful reminders of war. She then understood what I was saying.

Kosovo looked to me like a developing nation or even a Third World country—and that is exactly correct—but the soul of the country is relentlessly beautiful. My friend told me that the country had not been fully developed before the war and that most of the infrastructure that had been put in place had been destroyed. I’m not sure that I had ever been in a war zone before.

She also told me that the status of Kosovo was undecided. This means at least two crucial things (1) People cannot get passports to leave, because it is not a country. And (2) companies will not invest money in the economy, and will not locate their businesses there because it is too risky. Microsoft is unlikely to build a branch plant in Kosovo because who knows what will happen tomorrow? Without investment dollars, there is no economy and nothing moves forward in development.

I realized that this must then be true of Palestine as well, another of the places which I have been privileged to visit. Palestinians themselves have told me that no one invests in their country because a final status has not been decided and so there is no money stimulating the economy.

An unresolved final status appears to lead to the road of death.

In the case of Kosovo, things may be changing. In an issue of Newsweek from January that I found on-line, it said Kosovo had little chance of receiving independence from Serbia. There is a whole history behind this statement, of course. The history of the Baltic states, of which Kosovo and Serbia are a part, is intriguing and heartbreaking. This morning on CNN on-line, I found another relevant piece of news: Kosovo has declared independence from Serbia. Perhaps the road to life has begun.

The second observation that I made above is that in some countries the ways of life are disappearing, or at least the traditional ways of life. In my other newsletter this month, I talked about how the Chinese traditional ways of life are disappearing. This phenomenon applies not only to China, however. I have observed this in other countries where there has been rapid development and modernization. The Republic of Ireland, for example.

In the Republic of Ireland there has been intensive investment by international companies over the past few years. As a result, there has been immense change—even in the landscape of the country. While little villages can still be found, they are becoming the exception and not the rule. A way of life is disappearing.

Modernization appears to lead to the disappearance of the traditional ways of life in a country.

I find that I’m glad to have come to China at the time between the ancient and the disappearing of the ancient. There are still glimpses of ancient China and gated communities, but they are fewer as development overtakes them. For me, the campus where I am located in Nanjing has been perfect. When I walk out of the front gate I am in modern China. When I walk out of the back gate, to me I am in ancient China. There are little alleyways with people selling goods out of what I assume to be their homes. The local tailor and his family live in the room where they make clothes.

I am more mindful now that the world is interrelated. It is a web; we all affect one another for the good and for the not so good. For me, it is important to remain aware of the big picture, because God created all of it, and all of the pieces fit together. And so it is with our ecosystem—anything that hurts one part of creation, hurts the other parts as well.

There is a difference between dying and disappearing. The dying has to do with having few choices and being powerless. The disappearing has to do with making choices—because there are choices to be made—and the power that comes with growing wealth. At least, that’s how I see it.

God is in all of this, weaving the stories together. My prayer is for all of us to remember that while we are to bloom where we are planted, we are also global citizens. It’s important to remember that for every action there is a reaction. I am responsible for myself and my own actions. And yet everything that I do affects other people and perhaps even the world. There is a bigger picture. I hope that perhaps this letter has helped bring some of that bigger picture to your attention in a new way and shed some light on perspectives that you might not otherwise have been aware of.

In Christ,

Debbie

The 2008 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 99