Can Planting Trees Be an Act of Social Justice?

Find out in my guest post today at Life Before the Bucket. And leave some commenting love. 

Daring to Dream

When I began my job as Plant With Purpose’s Grant Writer, I was relatively new to the International Development scene—microcredit and sustainability aren’t exactly staples of the Creative Writing major’s vocabulary. But in my time at Plant With Purpose, I’ve found the key to successful development programs isn’t based on knowledge or jargon. Success in the development world comes from being human and viewing others as such. 

I may not know a whole lot about development (although I’m learning), but I do know what it’s like to be human. I know what it’s like to feel hopeless and disempowered. I know what it’s like to not want to be overlooked or have my skills and talents disregarded. I don’t like to have things done for me, and the only way I actually change or grow or solve problems is when the problem solving approach is something completely unique to me. 

The people who’ve been most influential in my life—my mom, my best friends, college mentors—have all been people who help me unlock my gifts and talents, helping me become more fully who I was meant to be. 

That’s what Plant With Purpose does. Sure we work with communities to plant trees and apply sustainable agriculture techniques. We supply microloans and train church leaders to respond to the needs of their congregations and communities, but the most significant part of Plant with Purpose’s work is that the work or “development” being done isn’t Plant With Purpose’s work at all. It’s the communities’. Plant With Purpose takes a “community development approach.” In other words, we empower communities to start to take responsibility for the solutions to their own problems. 

Plant With Purpose views the farmers we work with as partners, not fix-it-projects or mere passengers on this development journey. Lasting change cannot occur unless people want to change—and more importantly—believe that they can change. You can’t actually force anyone to grow—just ask any mother of a teenager. That’s why Plant With Purpose conducts a Participatory Rural Appraisal before starting work in any community. During these appraisals the community decides what their greatest needs are and what needs to be done to solve them. Only if Plant With Purpose’s expertise aligns with the community’s needs do we begin to work with them. 

Plant With Purpose empowers hopeless communities to begin to dream again. The communities provide the vision and the dream; we provide the tools, training, and means to turn their dreams into reality.

About Plant With Purpose

Plant With Purpose reverses deforestation and poverty around the world by transforming the lives of the rural poor. Plant With Purpose has been breaking this vicious cycle since 1984 by changing it into a victorious cycle of environmental restoration, economic empowerment, and spiritual renewal in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Tanzania, Burundi, Mexico, and Thailand. 

Photo credit: Plant With Purpose

This post originally appeared on the Plant With Purpose blog and has been re-posted with permission.

2 Reasons I Returned to Church: How a Scoffer Experienced Christ through Prophecy

I never thought I would write about, much less champion, prophetic ministry. I've always been skeptical, cynical, pragmatic. 

For a long time, I didn't think God could, or would, speak to me. Doesn't He have better things to do?

I doubted the stories of prophecy and healing miracles I heard from friends in small groups, on email chains. I cringed suspiciously when churchgoers would explain, without a hint of doubt, how God had definitively and unmistakably spoken to them. 

I just wasn't buying it. 

Until I tasted, touched, and lived God's transformational, prophetic words in my own life. 

Rachel Held Evans recently posted 15 reasons why she left the church and a follow up 15 reasons why she returned.  I can boil the reasons behind my prodigal return down to two: 

Hope and a heart for justice. 

When I first visited the Vineyard Church that I now attend, I was struck by the heartbeat of justice that seemed to pulse through the congregation. At the time, I could have cared less about Jesus or daily devotionals or small group prayer time; but I cared deeply about serving the poor, fighting injustice, and living intentionally, compassionately. 

And that's what I saw in this church: men and women doing meaningful things--making friends with people who live outside, caring for the environment, learning how they could spend less money on themselves so that they could give more to those in need. 

I couldn't get enough. This passion for justice struck a chord so deep within me that I kept coming back. I keep coming back. 

The other thing I experienced in church was hope. 

It takes an immense amount of hope to work for social justice, to believe that things can change. 

In my church community, I found people who lived like there was a God who reconciles all things. They had hope for our world here and now. They had hope for me. 

They shared this hope with me through prophetic ministry. I know it sounds weird, or foreign, and you may be writing me off like I once did to the miracle junkies in my life. But please just give a minute to explain. 

The Vineyard Church describes the heart behind prophetic ministry, "We believe God speaks in many ways and often speaks to encourage people and release his heart to them and point them towards their destiny. Prophetic sounds a little mystical but is a way for followers of Jesus to give voice to what God is doing or wanting to do in the lives of others.  We believe that God works in us through a still small voice and if we listen that we can use the prophetic ministry to encourage others that God is working in and around their lives."

I don't really know how it works or why it works, but I do know that my church friends encouraged me to experience God--and I did. They opened my eyes to see God's face; they opened my ears to hear God's voice. 

I know not everyone can relate to this. There can be a lot of pain and confusion in feeling like you're on the outside. I also know that God loves you. That God wants to speak to you and be known by you. That just because you can't feel Him or see Him now, doesn't mean He's not there. 

My pastor once said, "Your area of deepest doubt can become an area of your deepest worship." 

So whatever it is you doubt the most, whatever it is that has made you leave the church or doubt the Church or your faith-filled friends, I'd encourage you to stay in it. Look for God even in your doubt, even in the places you are certain He won't show up.  

I pray today that you be given eyes to see and ears to hear Love Himself in your life--through whatever voice or vision or feeling that resonates with you. 

***

Curious about these visions? Tomorrow I’ll share more about a prophetic vision that continues to shape me, challenge me, and draw me closer to God. 

***

Do you have any experiences of doubt-turned-to-worship? I’d love to hear them. 

T.S. Tuesday: I Hope You Get Crushed

“To rest in your own suffering

Is evasion of suffering. We must learn to suffer more.” ~T.S. Eliot, Family Reunion

Yikes.

Photo courtesy of Plant With Purpose

I’ve been puzzling over this one for a while and haven’t come to any satisfying conclusions. I don’t understand how resting in suffering is evading suffering. Are we supposed to be dissatisfied in our suffering and search out more? I agree that we should learn to suffer more. That we should even welcome suffering. But does that mean we cannot rest in suffering or that we shouldn’t stay in suffering? Should our suffering point us somewhere else?

Along these lines, Ken Wytsma, the founder of the JusticeConference said on Friday night, to over 4,000 justice hopefuls, “I hope you get crushed.”

I. Hope. You. Get. Crushed.

He went on to describe how a seed needs to be crushed and buried before something life-giving can grow.

Sex slavery should crush you.

Lack of access to water should crush you.

War and rape and genocide should crush you.

Violence—physical and political and economic and structural—should crush you.

Should we rest in this crushing, this suffering? Do we stay and find comfort that our hearts and consciences are granted the sensitivity and empathy to be crushed in the first place? Or is this evading the very thing that is crushing us? Must we learn to suffer more?

Yes and no.

I think we should stay. I think we shouldn’t numb.

Photo courtesy of Plant With Purpose

But I also think we are called to leave. To sprout tendrils of hope and release roots of redemption. To take part in the very redemption—redeeming, revaluing, renewing—of our suffering for the sake of others.

In that way, let us not be content to rest in our suffering, but learn to suffer more for the sake that others might live, might hope, might be freed from even greater crushing.

What do you think this quote means? How do you take Eliot’s words? What do you think of my take on crushing and suffering? 

Sound Bites of Justice: Further Thoughts on Solidarity

I spent this last weekend up in Portland representing the organization I work for, Plant With Purpose, at the Justice Conference.

There was a lot of talking. Speakers and workshops and pre-conferences and exhibitors and videos.  I spouted out my Plant With Purpose elevator speech to hundreds of justice seekers, from the starry-eyed to the cynical--boiling down the complexity of poverty and injustice and environmental restoration and transformation and the stories of farmers like Gumersindo and Hoita and staff members like Graciela and Durbel and Lazare into a thirty second, digestible sound bite.

If you’ve followed this blog for long, you know I prefer the stories, the narratives, and posts longer than the recommended 750 words and with accompanying bullet points.

Some stories warrant more than a spiel.

I’m not criticizing the conference or the talking or the rhetoric. A sound bite of justice is certainly better than a sound bite of celebrity sex scandal or scorn.

But it makes me wonder, How do we move beyond the sound bites? Beyond the rhetoric?

How do we become more than words?

In a workshop I had the privilege to sit in on, one man said of the poor, “We don’t want your pity or your expertise or even your money…we want your heart.”

It’s tough to open our hearts to new issues and causes and plights. It’s tough to open our hearts to new and unfamiliar people. People who are different than us.

So we sound bite. We distance.

We talk like heroes, but we forget to listen.

I’m probably the guiltiest.

I talk like a hero, but I forget to listen.

I love words. I love stories. I love categorizing and documenting and analyzing.

But I can become distanced from the people these words are supposed to speak on behalf of.

I once told a friend that, as a writer, I feel called to be a voice for the voiceless. Instead of the appropriate admiration I expected, he scowled and muttered, “Just make sure you’re not speaking over them. Or for people who could be speaking for themselves.”

Zing.

I write grant proposals and emails and newsletters and appeals on behalf of people halfway around the world that I have never met on a weekly basis. 

Sometimes I’m tempted to concoct a catch phrase, an idyllic picture of desperation to entice people to give to move to act. To break out of the status quo.

What if talking like a hero brings in more money than admitting that I don’t really know the whole story?

What does solidarity with the poor look like in fundraising and marketing?

What if we earn more money, but rob the poor of their dignity? What if we rob them of the opportunity to tell their own story, with their own voice, in their own words?

What’s more loving?

This is a real question I wrestle with.

At the organization I work for, we strive to tell a different story than the third world hopelessness that breeds first world hero complexes.

Our sound bites are filled with heroes. But the heroes are the farmers with whom we partner, not us.

We are merely stewards of time and resources and—I hope—of words.

My boss, Scott Sabin, wrote an incredible article for Conversations called, How Not to be a Hero. He said, “Jesus is the hero. We are not called to save the world, or Haiti, or Tanzania, or even a single village. That has already been done. We have a savior.”

Our words and our witness and our fundraising won’t save anyone; yet I believe we are called to JOIN in the work of redemption and restoration that God is already doing. We are called to serve and act and speak in love and solidarity, as one family.

So how do we become more than words? How do we not talk over the poor? How do we give voice to the voiceless?

The first step, I think, is listening.

Sound bites are ideas distilled. And ideas matter. The messaging matters.

But our listening should drive our messaging. 

The very course of my life changed when I listened to the stories of new friends who happened to live in desperate conditions, who happened to be poor—and also happened to love Christian rap and melon shakes and Dora La Exploradora.

Today I need the reminder that before I am called to be a voice for the voiceless, I am called to be a listening ear to the voiceless. To create space for their voices—both in my heart and in the world around me.

I am called to be a steward of words.

I am reminded that first and foremost, solidarity is a posture of ears wide open. Eyes wide open. Lives wide open to the suffering of others. 

How’s that for a sound bite?

You Are Not Alone In This

When I look back on my experience of studying abroad, being exposed to poverty, and questioning my faith, I see a lot of anger, outbursts, and alienation. I attacked people who didn't understand my newfound obsession with recycling, fair trade, even Cuba. I didn't know how to communicate the burning burning burning urgency in my heart to DO SOMETHING about injustice.

I thought I was alone. No one knew what I was talking about. Everyone else was a materialistic hypocrite.

Turns out that was not quite healthy. Or true.

Ironically, my newly expanded global worldview led to an implosion of sorts. A narrowing of my world and my interests. Every relationship, every conversation, every action became solely about me: my thoughts, my anger, my doubts, my responsibility.

I thought it was up to me to single handedly save the world, which I quite obviously sucked at. I thought I was the first person to ever be confronted with this dilemma.

In the middle of this all out war on my friends' and families' sanity, I read a poem by Wendell Berry in his book, What are people for?, that actually made me feel quite foolish for wanting to do it all on my own. It was the kick in the pants that I needed and yet subsequently ignored as soon as I read it. (I told you I didn't exercise the healthiest coping mechanisms). Here are a few lines that stood out to me:

“Seeing the work that is to be done, who can help wanting to be the one to do it?

But one is afraid that there will be no rest until the work is finished and the house is in order, the farm is in order, the town is in order, and all loved ones are well.

But it is pride that lies awake in the night with its desire and its grief.

To work at this work alone is to fail. There is no help for it. Loneliness is its failure.

It is despair that sees the work failing in one’s own failure.

This despair is the awkwardest pride of all.”

I lived there, in that awkward pride, for a good couple of years, allowing my deep desire to serve and do good to divide and exclude instead of combine and include. I forgot I was supposed to be fighting against evil, oppression, alienation, and loneliness instead of my country, my social class, my friends, my family, myself.

When I began interning at a non profit called Plant With Purpose, where I now work, I was forced to remember that I was not alone in this fight against poverty.

Plant With Purpose has been around for over 25 years, partnering with the rural poor to overcome poverty. I know I latch onto some pretty unsound ideas from time to time (really, I really think I’m fat at 110 pounds?), but I would have had to have been monstrously dense or delusional to continue to believe that I had invented social justice and no one anywhere was doing anything of any value to end poverty.

It’s a lesson I’m still learning (not that I still think I invented social justice), but to work together. Learning that people are more important than ideologies. Learning that cooperation is more important than my beloved creativity. Learning that we are in this together.

Last night I watched the premiere of 58: The Film, a new campaign spearheaded by Compassion International to end extreme poverty. It’s a collaboration of ten Christian non profits working together to DO SOMETHING about poverty.

I admit I’m biased because I work at one of the ten organizations, but I think it’s pretty darn inspiring to see a group of organizations (competitors) joining together not to compete for donations or prove they have the best and most buzzwordy poverty alleviation strategies, but to motivate us all to reject not each other but our apathy. To embark on a radical rebellion against selfishness and competition when we’d rather rebel against our God-given responsibility to love our neighbors well.

It is the opposite of this awkward pride. It is an example of Wendell Berry’s “good work” that “finds the way between pride and despair.” By which, “we lose loneliness: we clasp the hands of those who go before us, and the hands of those who come after us.”

Thank you to everyone in my life who has reached out their hand to me and ushered me out of loneliness, pride, and despair, and into the good work we were created to do.