Shopping at IKEA

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So I really like shopping at IKEA. If you visit my house that fact would be obvious since almost all my furniture, curtains, and decor come from IKEA. It’s not that I just really love assembling my own furniture or furnishing an entire room for the cost of just one item anywhere else, it’s the way the company respects its customers, its workers, and the environment.

I know that IKEA is a business and they do business very well. But while most businesses are cutting whatever corners they can to increase their profits, IKEA seems to go out of its way to provide amenities for its customers. Free childcare while you shop, nursing rooms, diaper dispensers in the bathrooms, bottle warmers, babyfood for sale, and free milk and cookies for kids in the afternoons (not to mention a fantastic cafeteria) – can you tell I’m a mom?. Sure they are all gimmicks, but it makes being there a pleasant experience.

But beyond that, IKEA has committed to being socially and environmentally responsible. As Emma and I ate lunch there today (she calls it the “meatball store”), I noticed that all of their trash cans (as opposed to recycle cans) were labeled “Landfill Waste.” I like that. Where else will you be reminded of the end result of what you are throwing away? But they also are committed to creating furniture from sustainable sources and not using unfair labor practices. You can read their environmental reports on their websites. I’m sure that they aren’t perfect, but its nice to see a company that cares about these things. A company that (as they put it) is committed to “low price but not at any price.” They say –

For more than 60 years IKEA has been working on ways of creating low prices – purchasing as inexpensively as possible, building our own stores, flat-packing furniture for customers to put together themselves.

But our ambition doesn´t stop there. We also want the products we sell to be free from hazardous substances. And we don´t want the wood in bookcases, tables or other products in the store to come from areas where forests are being devastated.

All IKEA suppliers must follow certain fundamental rules. Working conditions must be acceptable, child labor is not tolerated and suppliers must adopt a responsible attitude to the environment.

I am the first to admit that their furniture isn’t the nicest out there and easily shows wear and tear. It won’t last generations to be passed down as heirloom furniture. I hear a lot about buying stuff that will last or getting good used stuff. I see the logic there, but comparatively the ethical choice isn’t always so clear. So I buy cheap furniture at IKEA that was made in a socially and environmentally responsible way, but it won’t last forever. I could have bought really expensive hardwood antique furniture that was made from US companies barging into countries like Haiti and clearcutting their hardwood forests. Haiti still hasn’t recovered economically or environmentally from the US sanctioned rape of their land and resources. Give the bigger picture, which is the more ethical choice?

And so I shop at IKEA. I like supporting business practices I agree with. And where else can you get meatballs and gravalox for lunch?

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Cultural Imperialism, Contextualization, and Postcolonial Missions

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I have my Master’s in Intercultural Studies and Missions from Wheaton College – a very Evangelical institution. I was a bit of an oddball in the program as I went through it and would most likely not even begin to fit in now. I appreciate what I learned there and the paths of inquiry and questioning it led me down, but in many ways it didn’t seem to go far enough. I studied cultural anthropology, intercultural communication, linguistics and the like all within the framework of contextualizing the Gospel into other cultures. For many students in the program the whole concept of contextualization in the first place was “liberal and heretical.” For them the ends justified the means. Getting converts was worth whatever cultural cost had to be paid. (granted most of them actually thought that the way evangelicals did church was the way it had always been, so why syncretize the Gospel through such dubious means as contextualization?). But it wasn’t until later that I saw firsthand that the vestiges of cultural imperialism in the guise of Christian missionary work are alive and well in many areas of Christianity.

During my stint as a Children’s Ministries Director at a small Baptist church, I had the horrific experience of encountering one of the worst examples of Christian missionary cultural imperialism that I have ever seen. There was a family from another local area church (the super conservative and filthy rich one) that was doing the rounds of local churches to raise support to go be missionaries in Africa. They came to our church to do a special presentation during the Sunday school hour. That meant that somehow I got stuck with them coming to do a mini-presentation for the kids during the children’s church I led during the main service. The wife who was wearing a dress straight out of Little House on the Prairie didn’t say a word the entire morning, so we got to listen to the husband give the most racist missionary talk ever.

To give a bit of background, this family was white, very white and most of the kids in the children’s church were black. After giving a report on Africa straight from the World Book Encyclopedia, the “missionary” guy launched into the whole “white man’s burden” to go help the savages in Africa sort of thing. It was the whole “go convert the heathen” sort of missions work, but that wasn’t the worst of it. He talked about the Africans as if they were less than human. At one point he even said that the Africans do nothing but sit alongside the rode all day being lazy, but they like it if you give them peanuts. I am so not kidding, he actually said give them peanuts like they were some sort of animal at a zoo. I was so appalled and shocked I didn’t even know how to respond. I could tell that the kids were uncomfortable, but didn’t think that they could disagree with the adult missionary. So when they finished their talk about what they would be doing in Africa, I just asked them to leave and then I started in on damage control with the kids. I officially begged that our church not support them and was seriously stunned that missionaries like that were still being sent out as representatives of Christianity. I have no clue if they ended up actually making it to Africa and I hope to God they did not.

I react in horror to stories like those, but of course there are those who react in horror to any sort of missionary work no matter how culturally sensitive or contextual it is. But I am realizing that most of my perspectives for or against contextualization or missionary work in general have come from Western sources. I rarely hear indigenous perspectives on cultural encounters with Christianity. I instead hear selected reports from converts who have bought the Western Christian package in its entirety and I hear missionary reports that include only the success stories spun in such a way to keep the money coming (and yes I’ve written such reports). But encountering the whole postcolonial theological perspective is new to me. Not only are the methods of church and missions questioned, but the whole Western theological paradigm is deconstructed. I’m exploring how the pieces all fit together for me. Where does the line of imperialism lie? When is compassion and dialogue and contextual expressions of faith domineering and condescending, and when are they appropriate? How do I not place my cultural heritage at the center of my beliefs? I’m just beginning to struggle with how these questions play out in my life.

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Buy Bananas, Aid Terrorists

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From BBC news –

US banana firm must pay $25m fine
United Self Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) – file picture
Chiquita said it made “protection” payments after threats to staff
A US judge has confirmed a $25m (£12.5m) fine on banana company Chiquita for having given protection money to Colombian paramilitary groups.

In March, Chiquita pleaded guilty to paying $1.7m (£850,000) to the United Self Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC).

The firm said its only motive was the safety of its Colombian workers.

It agreed to pay the $25m to resolve an inquiry by the US justice department, a settlement that Judge Royce Lamberth has now authorised.

Prosecutors had said Chiquita Brands International paid the money between 1997 and 2004 to the AUC in return for “protection”.

The AUC, which is listed by the US and EU as a terrorist organisation, has carried out massacres and assassinations, although it is now engaged in a peace process in Colombia

Prosecutors said Chiquita also made payments to Colombia’s main left-wing rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).

The company’s former Colombian subsidiary operated in areas where there was a strong presence of both armed groups.

Chiquita, which has its headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio, said in March that it would pay the $25m fine as part of a settlement with the department of justice.

A three-year inquiry by US investigators began after Chiquita approached the department in 2003 to say its branch in Colombia had been making the payments after workers were threatened.

Chiquita has since sold the Colombian arm of its business.

Thousands of Colombians have died in four decades of conflict involving the Farc, the AUC and other armed groups.

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Struggle to Know

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I recently started reading Postcolonial Imagination & Feminist Theology by Kwok Pui-lan. The book is stretching me in many ways as it forces me to view my faith through an utterly foreign lens. It’s a good thing, but it can be a tad overwhelming at points. More on all that later. I just wanted to share tonight the words the author uses to open the first chapter. She writes –

I have been reflecting on my long intellectual journey to “struggle to know.” Why is knowing a struggle? It is a struggle because you have to spend years learning what others told you is important to know, before you acquire the credentials and qualifications to say something about yourself. It is a struggle because you have to affirm first that you have something important to say and that your experience counts.

I have no clue if this is something that white western men can understand experientially (if it is my apologies for negating your journey), but this is the story I have lived and that I have heard told to me by others. It’s the struggle women face when they attempt to have a voice or be a leader. When the world that is constructed for us looks one way, but our experiences and our self awareness reveal something else entirely, it is more than just difficult to find our place in that world. When all that we know about life, history, religion is slanted in a certain direction, to step up and use our voice is not such as easy thing. When to just be ourselves challenges all that is accepted, holy and dear in the world, it becomes all that much harder to speak out and attempt to make a difference. When we are mocked, labeled, and dismissed for believing that our experience counts, it truly is an ongoing struggle.

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Sippy Cup Exposé

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So to combine my mommy blogging and my rants on gender issues, I give you the Sippy Cup Exposé. I was looking at Emma’s sippy cups recently and noticed that we had a set of Playtex sippy cups that seriously played into gender stereotypes. The cups are pink and blue. The blue cup displays fish (in a school) undergoing academic pursuits. They are learning the ABC’s, looking at a globe, and using a ruler. The pink cup on the other hand has personified teacups, fruit, and flowers. WTF!

I am so sick of being faced with gender specific assumptions when I get anything for Emma. The whole pink and blue thing is everywhere – it’s hard to avoid exposing her to the idea that pink=girls and blue=boys. All the clothes are pink and purple covered in flowers, hearts, princesses, or ballet shoes. And now the sippy cups get involved too. So what does it matter that I let her use the blue=academic/intellectual cup? She knows that the pink one is for girls and so sees that girls are associated with tea parties and flowers while boys are associated with learning and school. I’m sure people will say that I’m overreacting and am too sensitive, but I’m just finding it really difficult to avoid imparting to my daughter oppressive gender roles. Does the world really have to promote cultural stereotypes on freaking sippy cups? This gets more annoying everyday…

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Pastor’s Wife

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I haven’t read the book pictured here, or the widely popular She Can’t Even Play the Piano. I throw away the denominational fliers I get for “pastor’s wives” retreats. When we started in this whole church planting adventure, the thing I was most horrified by was that I would be a pastor’s wife. Of course I was reacting to stereotypes and my limited experiences, but whatever a pastor’s wife was – that was not me.

I didn’t want my life, my personality, defined for me by others. I didn’t want to be merely what others expected me to be. I am myself and being a “pastor’s wife” should do nothing to change that. It helped that Mike and I are ministry partners doing this church planting thing together. I’m not just some invisible support beam that arranges the coffee behind my mask of unfaltering allegiance to every word that drips from my husband’s mouth. We plan together, make decisions together, and share responsibilities like preaching. As a person I am going to have questions and doubts and am not going to hide those because I am a pastor or pastor’s wife. When I think something is full of crap, I’m going to say that. I have no interest in being told what mold I’m supposed to be fitting into. I think the mold is stupid to begin with. (how’s that for a thoughtful critique).

But apparently, the struggle to maintain a personal identity is a major problem for many pastor’s wives. There are numerous books on how to be a good pastor’s wife (or at least on how not to go insane as one). Most of them focus on how to be yourself while being the person everyone expects you to be. Did they ever stop to think that it is because of whacked out advice like that that women are reading those sorts of books at all? And of course, everyone’s favorite go-to guy for sexist quotes, Mark Driscoll, has even suggested a few things that will help make a pastor’s wife’s life easier and less stressful. He writes –

“What can be done to help the pastors’ wife?

* She needs a clearly defined and guarded role.
* She needs some help with the kids and house.
* She needs some help getting to and from church on Sundays.
* She needs a designated parking place.
* She needs a handful of safe relationships with other godly women.
* She needs to choose her own friends and define her own relationships.
* She needs to see her first jobs as Christian, wife, and mother, not free hire for the church.”
http://www.theresurgence.com/md_blog_2007-07-17_death_by_ministry_part_10

Wow my own parking place at church, that would really make my life easier. And to be allowed (within my protected and guarded role) to choose my friends! What am I – a grown woman or a kindergartner? Maybe it would have helped if he had added to the list – “She needs to have a husband who doesn’t say that a pastor’s sexual sins are the fault of his wife not looking hot.” But that might be asking too much.

These books and this advice is so condescending it’s embarrassing. Sure the stereotypes and the expectations have caused problems, but I would think that allowing a women to be herself would be more useful than defining and restricting her role more. It’s a messed up system, the whole church culture is a messed up system. We’ve created this ultra-ritualized pageant where people are expected to act in certain roles. It would be amusing if it wasn’t so very sad. So do I have a point here? I don’t know. Just that I refuse to be labeled with any of the expectations of being a pastor’s wife. And that I feel sorry for the women who are confined by that role.

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Creativity and Language

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You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
that is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye.
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.

Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.

This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.

Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
Your hand to this table,
your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.

This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
which is round but not flat and has more colors
than we can see.

It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand.

Copyright © 1978 by Margaret Atwood.

I love that poem – the simplicity that hints at the vast complexity of language and knowledge. Teaching words to a child – naming the world and defining the boundaries. At this stage it feels like I am restricting Emma’s world. This word, this symbol, is this. Eye, hand, rain. The words are the thing itself. We struggle through this, this naming of things.

Emma – What happened to the mouse?
Me – The mice?
Emma – No, mouse.
Me – When there are more than one, they are called mice.
Emma – No, that’s not nice. Mouse.

Mice and Nice. We’re working on that one. The naming continues. Words are what she knows and there is power in words. I define the world for her, answer her “what is it?” question with a name – the right answer. Abstract words are harder. She knows saying please is associated with getting what she wants, but hasn’t quite realized that it isn’t a magical spell one casts that always results good things. She orders her world with the phrases she knows. She’s heard Dora when getting on a boat say “lifejackets – so we can be safe” enough times that as she played with her Noah’s Ark toy recently each animal had to put on a lifejacket before entering the ark. Words define, they set boundaries, they are secure.

But I see her from time to time breaking free of the constraints of language I have set for her. She is discovering the power to create with language – to be involved in her own process of naming. Tonight the space under the table became the realm of Puddleduck where the caped hero Gobbleguck attempted to escape from lions, tigers, dinosaurs and the mommy tickle monster. The world is not flat in reality, language does define and constrain, but there is still the power to create. Perhaps with just these nine colors we can create infinite shades.

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Organic Farming Delivers

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As summer winds down and I am harvesting insane amounts of organic heirloom tomatoes from my garden (and have the fruit flies in my home to prove it!), I came across this fascinating article. One of the most common objections to organic farming is that if everyone switched to organic farming then there would not be enough food in the world for everyone. The logic goes that it takes intensive farming using fertilizers and pesticides to produce enough food for people to eat. But a new study coming out of the University of Michigan proves that excuse wrong. The study shows that “organic farming can yield up to three times as much food on individual farms in developing countries, as low-intensive methods on the same land—according to new findings which refute the long-standing claim that organic farming methods cannot produce enough food to feed the global population.” Nice.

So why is this a good thing? As the article points out, “organic farming is important because conventional agriculture—which involves high-yielding plants, mechanized tillage, synthetic fertilizers and biocides—is so detrimental to the environment…For instance, fertilizer runoff from conventional agriculture is the chief culprit in creating dead zones—low oxygen areas where marine life cannot survive. Proponents of organic farming argue that conventional farming also causes soil erosion, greenhouse gas emission, increased pest resistance and loss of biodiversity.” Basically we are screwing over the world and our health with what have become common farming practices. Organic farming seeks sustainable and healthy methods of providing food. It cares for the environment, the consumers’ health, and the health and well-being of the farmer. (and yes, the health issues of the migrant farmer who makes $7000 a year with no health insurance who has to breath pesticides and fertilizers in mass quantities are a serious issue if you even remotely think life is precious and sacred).

So what’s the catch? Why aren’t people jumping on the organic bandwagon? I’m sure they don’t say – “because we enjoy destroying the environment, getting cancer, and killing migrant farmers” (at least I hope they don’t). No those issues are usually ignored in favor of – “because organic is inconvenient and expensive.” And boy does that reveal what our values really are.

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Racism in my Life

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I was having a discussion with friends recently about racism and our personal experiences with understanding race issues. All of us were white and everyone but me grew up in neighborhoods that were completely white as well. They all remembered the first time a non-white person moved into their neighborhood. I though grew up in Dallas where the majority of my classmates and most of my teachers were African-American. I then moved to Austin when I was 12 and encountered an even larger ethnic mix. We lived in a mostly Jewish neighborhood, but I had friends who were Korean, Russian, Egyptian, Brazilian, Indian, Mexican, and Iranian. The dividing lines in Austin were less racial and more economic and educational. Most of my friends had parents involved either with the University of Texas or in the lucrative computer technology boom. So I didn’t think much about racism until I had to deal with it head on in 8th grade.

Austin spent the majority of the 80’s and 90’s imposing forced integration on its school system. Kids from one sort of ethnic neighborhood were bused across town to go to school in neighborhoods that were generally of a different racial mix. So for Jr. High I got to catch the bus at 6AM to go to school in East Austin. My school also happened to be the Math and Science Academy to which I applied and joined. Those of us in the academy represented just about every race and nationality, but the kids in the regular classes who were from the local neighborhoods around the school were almost exclusively African-American. And these were very poor rough neighborhoods. Riding the bus through them we would frequently see drug deals taking place and the boys on the bus (Jr. High remember) would toss nickels to the prostitutes on the streets. It goes without saying there there was a lot of tension between the local students and the academy students. Teachers did their best to ignore it and never got involved in inter-racial fights – they valued their job too much. The principal was an African-American woman who also ran a night-club. Two of her husbands had mysteriously died from poisoning. She spoke every morning on the intercom about what a nice happy family we all were, but that did nothing to relieve the racial tension. We students thought she was a joke.

That tension came to a head for me in 8th grade. That year a local African-American girl named Kiva started attending the school. We never had classes together (I was in the academy, she wasn’t) but we passed each other in the hall. One day she noticed I was missing my left arm (it was harder to notice then because I wore a cosmetic prosthesis). She freaked out and started screaming. From that point on she would start screaming “it’s the one armed girl” every time she saw me and run away from me. It was Jr. High, so that was embarrassing, but then it got worse. She got over her fear of my arm and started harassing me. She would follow me around calling me names, throw my books down the stairs, and rip my folders and homework. She would open the courtyard doors during lunch and let her gang member friends in to harass and throw things at me. Teachers would witness this, but like I said, they would not get involved in inter-racial issues.

One day I was about to walk up the stairs and she came up behind me and told me she commanded me to walk up the stairs. I told her I didn’t want to and started walking away. She then told me that even though I was white and thought I was better than her because she was black, I really wasn’t because I was missing my arm. She was better than a handicapped person and so could tell me what to do. She then tried to make me give her my watch, and I said, “leave me alone bitch” and walked away.

Things came to a head one day when (in front of two watching teachers) she stabbed me with her pen and it drew blood. I had to tell my parents then. They were of course livid and called the school to complain. So both Kiva and I were sent to the principal to talk. I told her all that Kiva had done to me and then she asked Kiva why she did it. Kiva said because I called her a bitch. And so I got in trouble for using a curse word and not trying to be part of the big happy family. Kiva was asked to be nicer to me.

I had a hard time learning to deal with that sort of racial tension. I had friends from various racial backgrounds, but I didn’t know how to cope with being hated for being white, educated, relatively wealthy, and handicapped. I think it opened my eyes to a lot of the underlying issues behind racism and the systemic nature of the problem. But that didn’t mean I did anything to help heal racial relations. I left that school for the highly educated IB Academy high school, I went to a nearly all-white college, and now live in a homogeneously white Midwestern town. And I have conversations with friends about racism, but instead of learning from my Jr. High experience on how to tear down the walls that divide I’ve apparently only managed to build thicker walls. And I don’t know how to change that.

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Church Signs Once Again

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So I’ll put up a short post in my continuing series of rants on crummy church signs. Once again the local Baptist church has caught my attention with their sign. On one side it displays the evangelical pseudojoke – “And you think it’s hot here!” Cheezy, but I’ve heard it before. Then the other side reads – “Free trip to Heaven. Inquire inside.” Does anyone else find that just a tad creepy? Doesn’t exactly inspire confidence to make me want to go anywhere near that building. It’s a bit like a scuba place advertising “We’ll help you swim with the fishies.” True from a certain perspective, but creepy nonetheless.

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