The conferences invites attendees with the assertion – “You are called out of the chaos of your crazy busy, constantly moving, overextended lives to a place grounded in the imagination of God.” I was asked to lead workshops on everyday justice issues as part of the conference and I appreciate the opportunity because it reflects to me a valuing of the idea that in truth everything is spiritual. I think that truth is something that most of us intellectually affirm, but which often doesn’t get translated into our day to day reality. We so narrowly define what it means to be spiritual that we end up constantly feeling disconnected from God because we can’t sustainably live what we have defined the spiritual life to be.

We all have of course heard of the mountaintop experiences – moments of spiritual connectedness that generally come from times of retreat or focused devotion. I don’t deny that those are spiritual moments, but the reality of life is that we cannot live constantly in those moments. And if we expect all spirituality to mirror the intensity of the mountaintop, we will inevitably be disappointed and feel far from God. We blame ourselves, or our church, or our culture for our distraction and disconnectedness, but perhaps the real problem is our definition of spirituality.

We have come to see spirituality as something set apart from the mundane aspects of everyday life and so become frustrated when our lives seem to get in the way of connecting to God. But God is not found in just the moments of devotion or prayer, or in the communal gathering for liturgy, or in voices lifted up in song. Those are all great tools for helping us concentrate on God, but God is the God over all creation, not just the systems the church has developed. A crazy busy world isn’t the antithesis of spirituality; it is simply a setting where spirituality can be manifest. Grounding ourselves in the imagination of God and redefining spirituality to include all aspects of life is what I think is needed to help us get over our constant struggle of feeling spiritually disconnected.

Embracing spirituality in the whole of life means understanding that even the acts that make our life crazy busy are spiritual acts. Waking up in the morning, making breakfast, and getting the kids off to school are spiritual acts. Rushing from meeting to meeting and facing project deadlines are spiritual acts. We are spiritual people in relationship with a spiritual God; everything we do therefore is a spiritual act. What matters then is if we are living our everyday life in a way that moves us closer to God or further from God. When we choose our clothes, or commute to work, or interact with our kids are we becoming more Christ-like and caring about the things God cares about or not?

Rethinking spirituality as an every moment of the day sort of thing opens us up to having God work in our lives in out of the box sorts of ways and moves us beyond the unsustainable “mountaintop experience” mentality. Embracing that we are always connected to God though is both comforting and infinitely more challenging. Everything being spiritual means we can’t shove God aside to just Sundays, or believe that God doesn’t care about what we eat or how we vote. Everything means everything. Sure, we still need times of reflection, communal worship, and retreat from the ordinary in order to help us refocus, but when every action of every day becomes a choice for God, our spiritual lives will unavoidably be transformed.

So I look forward to this conference where we will explore how to both take the time for rest and reflection as a spiritual practice and how to learn to see the world not as the enemy of spirituality but as instead the very place where our spirituality is developed and lived. It should truly be a time to leave behind the old paradigm of our crazy busy lives (in more ways than one) and discover a sustainable spirituality.

That's right – a free digital copy of Everyday Justice!

From midnight to midnight on Thursday April 22 (Earth Day) downloading Everyday Justice from Amazon will cost you nada. So there's no excuse to not find out simple everyday ways that you can care for our world and the people who inhabit it. And I know, not everyone has a Kindle. It doesn't matter, there are Kindle apps available for Macs, and PCs, and iphones, and BlackBerry's, and ipads. If you are reading this blog, you most likely own at least one of those. Remember – this is only a 24 hour deal, so seize the opportunity while it's hot.

So celebrate Earth Day and download your free Kindle copy of Everyday Justice.

In it, I list ten very tangible ways people can be aware of the injustices in the world and do something about them. The list includes ideas from the book, Everyday Justice, but it also expands to topics beyond the book. I've had a couple of people comment though that they wished the article included more links and resources of where to find ethically sourced items. If people are interested, I'd direct you to the Everyday Justice site where I link to online organizations and stores that seek to promote justice and carry ethical items. I've also been trying to compile a list of where in Austin one can find fairly traded and ethical goods. It's still being formed (and there is no way I could list all the coffee shops in town that serve fair trade), but here's the list for now. I know this only helps Austin friends, but it's a start -

In Austin
Austin Baby (S. Lamar) – baby items, personal care, and home goods
American Apparel (Guadalupe, S. Congress, Round Rock Outlets)- fairly made clothing
Central Market and select HEB stores (Lamar)- fair trade chocolate, sugar, teas, coffees, and spices
Costco (183) – select fair trade food items
Eco-Shoppe (Great Hills Tr)- environmentally friendly home goods, clothing, jewelry, and cleaning supplies
Ecowise (S. Congress) – home goods, cleaning supplies, clothing
Ten Thousand Villages (S. Congress) – all fair trade home goods, gifts, and select food items
UT Co-op (Guadalupe)- limited selection of fair trade logo wear
Wheatsville Co-op -(Guadalupe) fair trade food products, beauty supplies, and limited home goods
Whole Earth Provision Company (N.Lamar, SanAntonio, 290) – select fairly made clothing and shoes
Whole Foods (N. Lamar, 183) – fair trade food options, home goods, beauty products, and gifts
World Market(multiple locations) – limited selection of fairly traded food and gift items

Various Coffee shops and restaurants – like Austin Roasting Company, Kerbey Lane, Ruta Maya, Genuine Joes, Tacodeli, Cafe Pacha, Fair Bean Coffee, Terra Burger, Progress Coffee, Zhi Tea, Texas Coffee Traders

This Jesus always makes an appearance at Christmastime. We fight to win the war on Christmas making sure his name gets mentioned or his image displayed. We are more concerned with chanting his name as our mantra and forcing others to do the same than we are following a real person. But when Jesus is just there as decoration, or reminder of a past transaction, I feel as if we are denying the Incarnation. If the particularities of how Jesus lived and the way of life he called his followers to live are ignored in favor of a generic consumer-ready figurehead, then what was the point of God becoming flesh and dwelling among us? We could just as easily have created an idol that looks pretty and unassuming on the mantle without having to have had God go to all that trouble. Unless the Incarnation prompts us to do something other than create cheap plastic Jesus's for our own sake then I think we've missed the point of the whole thing.

In an interview about my book recently, I was asked why people who are saved and just living out their lives as good Christians should even bother complicating their lives by caring about justice. On one hand answering that question is part of why I wrote Everyday Justice. But at the same time, it amuses me that the faith tradition that taught me to pity and ridicule those that say "I'm a good person, why do I need to follow Jesus?" are now the one's saying "I've said a prayer to Jesus, why should I follow him?" Fully embracing the Incarnation means that we actually let it transform us – not just in some brief moment of salvation but in the entirety of our lives. A flesh and blood incarnate Jesus calls us to follow him in tangible flesh and blood ways. Plastic figures and cheezy slogans are insubstantial next to this incarnate God. This transformation makes us the hands and feet of Jesus in such a way that we can no longer ask why we should bother caring but instead accept that this is the only possible way we can live as true Christ followers. Incarnation isn't a cheap decoration that adorns the veneer of our lives, it's earthy and messy and complex and demanding. The incarnate Jesus grabs hold of our lives and wakes us up from our complacency.

Some days I honestly would prefer the mass-produced piece-of-plastic-crap Jesus I can idolize or ignore at whim while believing myself to be a "good Christian." I don't want to come face-to-face with the flesh and blood Jesus who demands I serve him in real flesh and blood ways. I fight it. I make excuses. I'm a miserable follower. But having woken up enough to start to see the Incarnate Jesus, I can't go back to sleep.

Christi Bowman commented -
“As an American is it possible to not be exploitative…which is where begging for mercy from Jesus everyday comes in…no matter what I do their are countless ways in which I am exploitative and don’t know it and some ways I am exploitative and as of yet have not found ways to discontinue being exploitative…I am responsible for the damage living my life causes those who have to pay the price. I live in Babylon…I am the oppressor! You can step out of the empire in a day but it takes a life time to get the empire out of you (Shane Claiborne)“

And Dave honestly stated–
“What worries me most about the whole issue of justice is that I kind of see “working for justice” as working against me. I can’t shake the feeling that when people cry out against the unjust, the people they’re crying out against are people who live just like me and my friends. This makes me extremely uneasy.”

I admit, it is scary and it makes me uneasy too. Basically I don’t want to have to hear that I am part of the problem – that it is my actions that are what are hurting other people. Because if I know the truth, then I have a choice to make. I can continue hurting others or I can make changes so that I stop. If I am a decent human being who isn’t afraid to be responsible for my actions, then I have no choice but to choose to change my actions. But of course, I don’t want to change because change is uncomfortable and hard. If I were being completely truthful, I’d say I’d rather remain in ignorance and not have to be responsible or change anything. But I know I can’t.

The truth about injustice makes many people so uneasy that instead of taking responsibility they start making excuses for why we don’t need to bother. (and Dave, I’m not saying this is you at all, just some stuff your statement prompted me to respond to) I hear a lot, especially from Christians in this Western individualized world, about how we in reality have no such communal responsibility. That our participation in culture can’t be faulted since that is just the air we breathe. That we need to care just about the individuals we encounter, especially our own friends and family. That there is no reason to be forced to feel guilty about someone we will never meet, systems we don’t control, or events that happened in the past. I understand how a lot of that is based in a mentality of fear and a serious aversion to change, but I’ve also come to see how such attitudes are unfortunately rooted in a culture (religion) of individualism. Our faith even is individualized – all about our personal relationship with God. We’ve lost the idea of being a communal body that cares for all of its members. And we’ve forgotten the idea of corporate sin – our ability to perpetrate sins on a communal level. In fact we are so used to sin being just about personal individual heart things that we assume that the purpose of anyone pointing out issues with our actions is just to make us feel bad about ourselves.

But that’s not the point.

The point of telling the stories of injustice is to help us start living as a community – to admit that we are part of that community and be willing to work with that community. To admit that we are part of Babylon and that like it or not we are involved in the oppression of others. And that if we want to build healthy communities where the needs of all members are respected, then we need to get over this idea that it’s all about just feeling guilty. Change doesn’t come about just because we feel bad. Change happens when we admit we are part of the problem and then do whatever we can to stop. Sure, feelings will be involved, but when we start caring more about how we feel than about the injustices themselves our priorities are seriously messed up. I have a hard time understanding how people can be more upset at me for making them feel guilty about eating chocolate tainted with child slavery than they are about the child slavery. I wish I could just tell them – “Stop making this all about you and just start working to make things better! Be a part of this global community and be responsible for your role in it.”

But it’s hard to challenge individualism and personalized conceptions of faith. It’s hard to admit we’ve done things wrong. And it’s hard to change. I get that this has to be a slow process. I get that we will never create a perfect world. I get that it is impossible to ever step fully outside of systems of oppression and exploitation. I get that we just have to do what we can. I’m all about finding everyday ways to seek justice. I’m all about doing whatever is doable where you are at. I understand it’s messy. I understand that crying out to Jesus for mercy is all we can do at times. But I’m sick of those that use all of those excuses and more to just do nothing. To abdicate responsibility. To wallow in guilt and inaction. To not live as a communal body.

Being part of the Kingdom of God is hard. It is uncomfortable. It takes work. It requires us to get over ourselves and not insist that the world should revolve around our desires. That’s not a popular message in a faith that has attracted followers based on the message that Christianity is all about the wonderful things Christ does for us. But nevertheless, it is what it means to be a part of the body of Christ, and hard or not, it’s how we are called to live.

Arthur asked –
I never did find a good answer to what happens when the big coffee growers quit paying even the token payment to the gatherers? Do they then starve because we refuse to support the corrupt corporations?

and mjb similarily asks -
"if we get too focused on buying local and not causing hardship to the environment by shipping over long distances, etc, are we taking away jobs from the poor in other countries who make the goods we import? "

This is why I think a balanced perspective is always needed. I think those of us that care about workers and the environment often are assumed to be anti-globalization. The whole idea of buying local or ethically when stated persuasively can have that effect. I do support the idea of buying locally, forming relationships with the people who grow your food and bringing community back into commerce. But I think it is naïve to think we can just pretend that we don’t live in a globalized world. If we turn inward and start thinking only locally, we will end up hurting people around the world.

The world has changed. Most countries worldwide have taken those first steps (or more accurately have been forcefully pushed) into industrialization. Through colonialism, the mandates of the IMF and World Bank, and greedy power-hungry leaders most countries around the world are now trying to compete in an economy designed to oppress them. Decisions have been made that have committed them to developing industry and exporting goods whether the average citizen living there wants to do that or not. The line has been crossed, there is truly no turning back. So while I support the concept of American’s buying locally and of everyone reducing our consumption, the fact of the matter is that people around the world still need jobs in order to survive in this brave new world we’ve forced them into. I don’t want to hurt them even more by protesting the existence of globalization and taking those jobs away from them. Globalization exists. Period. The real question is how we deal with it.

The point of stopping sweatshops or agricultural slavery isn’t to shut those operations down. The point it to improve them, to call them to higher ethical standards. And while on one hand stricter laws and oversight will have to be part of that process. The tightening of the belt and the taking of responsibility should not be passed onto the oppressed workers. Choosing to vote with our money for ethically produced goods shouldn’t result in non-ethical companies shutting their doors and getting rid of jobs. When they see that the public is demanding that they be responsible human beings, they will work to supply the public with what it wants. The idea is for jobs to be retained – just improved.

The truth is though that improvements will not occur just by letting the markets work as they do now. When the rich and powerful prevent the idea of a truly free market economy from ever occurring, there have to be deliberate steps taken to end oppression. Systems like fair trade help eliminate the injustices while retaining jobs. I am uneasy with the people (like Jeffrey Sachs) who say that oppressive working environments like sweatshops are just a necessary part of a country developing. That might have been truly in a pre-globalized world where a country was generally able to end that oppression generally because the religious groups stood up to industry. But it’s going to take the ethically minded in the powerful countries that are home to the oppressive industries to be the voice for the oppressed. The powerful will have to create systems like (fair trade) and make laws to protect workers around the world in order to end oppression this time. It won’t just self-correct. We have to be aware of globalization and work within it in order to ever improve things.

Jonathan asked –

to what aspect is Justice culturally relevant? or Universal? would an injustice in the US ever be seen as justice, or acceptable, in a different context?

This is a sticky question. It brings up the whole idea of cultural relativity. I agree that all cultures are different, but also believe that justice can transcend culture. That doesn't mean that there are absolute ways justice can always be applied, just that the idea of seeking to love the other in all things isn't limited by culture. But as Derrida rightly pointed out, whenever we start to codify justice we create injustice. Creating the absolute laws help us understand and promote justice, but they too can fail. There will always be exceptions to any blanket statement on justice – and there will be levels of injustices as well. That said, I don't think this should prevent us from taking stands for what we think is right or to seek to love people, but to realize that our actions sometimes will have to be creative and will always be messy.

Take child labor for instance. It is illegal in the United States and in many other countries. We fought hard in this country to get laws in place to protect children. And technically it is against the law to import any goods into the U.S. that have been made using child labor. I think most of us would agree that children shouldn't have to do work that is physically dangerous or that causes them developmental harm. In addition, most Americans would assert that children deserve to be children – to have time to play, be imaginative, and be educated. There may be some debate if the latter are rights per se, but most of us would agree that forcing a child to do work that stunts their growth is unjust.

This past week as the story emerged that in this tough economy children have started working alongside their migrant worker parents picking blueberries and tomatoes across the U.S. Around the world it is not uncommon for children to work alongside their parents in the fields. Heck, our school year is structured the way it is so that kids would be off to help their parents with the harvest. But to see pictures of 5 year old girls carrying large buckets of berries is hard. Not only is what she doing against the codified law of our country, she is not getting an education and is being exposed to dangerous pesticides. But she is working so her family can survive. Most children working in factories and fields around the world do so so that their family can put food on the table. Taking a stand for what is right in those situations is messy. One can't call the situation unjust, force her to return to school, and prosecute the field owners without causing more injustices along the way.

Imposing one idea of justice shouldn't cause more injustices, but sometimes in the short run, that is unfortunately what happens. Cultural habits or just what one has to do to survive in a culture clash with other culture's ideas of justice. I personally don't think we should ever excuse any injustice as inevitable or "just the way things are." But sometimes seeking justice in diverse cultural setting will require us to look at the bigger picture and not just the moment. I believing rescuing individual children from dangerous situations is the right thing to do across cultures, but it must be done alongside of actions that address why that child was in that situation to begin with. Imposing laws without understand doesn't help. Working for large scale healing can.

So we have to ask – if these families were being paid fair wages for their work, then perhaps they wouldn't have to choose to send their children to the fields. If the U.S. didn't impose harsh stipulations for foreign debt repayment perhaps children in other countries could leave the fields and go to school as well. Or if a religion wasn't teaching that women are inferior if the girls would get an education and not be cast aside to literally die in sweatshops or brothels. We must work within the systems, understanding them, asking the hard questions to see justice work across the board.

It was exciting to read all the comments about the ways people seek justice. And there were some really good questions raised as well. I'll be interacting with some of those during the upcoming week, so stay tuned for the continuing conversation.

If you are unfamiliar with the book, Everyday Justice explores how our daily actions (like what we eat or wear) connect us to people around the world. These daily actions can often though support systems of injustice that cheat and oppress people. Everyday Justice gives biblical support for why seeking justice for the oppressed is a faith issue and gives practical everyday suggestions for how we can choose to subvert systems of oppression and demonstrate love to others instead.

So if you are interested in discovering more about faith and justice, or are looking for practical everyday ways you can work for justice, Everyday Justice can be a valuable resource. And I'm giving away a copy here for my blog readers. All I ask is that you leave a comment below where you tell me either one practical thing you do to seek justice or post a question you have about justice. (I'll interact with them in later posts). Or if you really can't think of anything to say because you have no idea what justice is all about (and so really need to read the book) – just leave your name and say "I want the book." You have until Sunday Nov. 1 at midnight (Central) to leave a comment and the winner (based on some super scientific selection process involving my 4 year old) will be announced Monday morning.

Good luck and I look forward to reading your comments!

(and if you are interested in increasing your chances of winning, the same offer is up at everydayjustice.net)

***Update – Congrats to Elisha Murrell the winner!