Hopeless Place
Its a cold winter morning...dogs sleeping...coffee in hand. Time to blog.
I want to share something that has really impacted me this week.
First, I must say that the songs that I post before each blog entry seem to reflect the way I feel about what I have written. The lyrics of this Rihanna song really stuck with me as I will write about what seems to be a hopeless world.
Ok. Here we go!
This week I pulled in to the almighty TIM HORTONS drive through. I have recently started investing in coffee. And with that investment also comes and investment in chewing gum. Coffee and gum....newest addiction.
So, I am in front of a turquoise blue minivan in the line up. A van of Indian men were in front of me ordering their coffee and they proceed to pull through to the next window.
In comes a young adult white male who felt offended that the minivan didn't let him cross the drive through before pulling forward.
My window was unrolled and this is what I heard/saw...
"You f*&%ing Packi's, go back to your home land and get the F*&% out of my Tim Hortons line up."
The younger male continued to walk past the back of their minivan and spat on the back of their vehicle.
Yes. This really happened. I sat there flabbergasted.
I continued to yell out my window..."Did I just seriously see you do that? And you think that is ok to do?"
He didn't respond to me. He just looked the other way and kept swearing under his breath.
Next incident.
I was at the Shell gas station on Harris Road. I had stopped for a quick fix of Pepsi! (Those of you who know me well know that my Pepsi addiction is strong :)
I went up to the till to pay for my soda, behind me walks up Mr. White haired middle aged man.
The lady says to me, "$1.12"
The man behind me responds, "Please..."
I look at him and here is what he said to the Indian lady who was behind the till...
"You are in our country and you need to play by our rules. When you ask for something you say please....this is how we do it in our country so you need to learn."
Once again, I was flabbergasted.
I turned around to him and said, "Did I really just hear you say that? Wow. So rude."
He continued to tell me how he was sick of Indians coming into our country and not learning our rules.
I needed to walk away before I got physically violent with him.
These two experiences made me think this...
Is this really the world we live in? Is this really what is happening in our very back yard? I felt so crushed. I felt so hurt that these were my fellow Canadians, my neighbours, my people....treating others with such distain.
My heart broke.
I listened to this song by Rihanna called, "Love in a Hopeless Place." It made me think of us as Christians, how we are meant to be separate, set apart and different from the rest of the world.
We are supposed to be set apart by our love....by our devotion to justice and mercy.....by our love for our neighbour far greater even than the love for our selves. We are meant to be the salt of the earth, the truth of the spirit, the hope of the nations for Christ.
I, one day, want to hear non Christians say...."We found love in a Hopeless place!"
My heart is just oozing a challenge....I challenge us to really really be the love in the hopeless place. To stand up and LOVE. To be set apart by grace and mercy!
And I say, "Oh Lord forgive them for they know not what they do."
Amen.
Well said Lori. I rise to your challenge!
ReplyDeleteHi Lori,
ReplyDeleteI stumbled across your blog through a mutual friend of ours and I have been reading here and there for the past few months. I must admit that at times I feel like I need to respond to mention some of the things that I notice. This most recent blog, in particular, brought up some questions. As I understand it, this blog entry is about human injustices that arise from that way that we treat one another. As you said, you were appalled by the way your fellow Canadians were treating others with disdain - as you should be. There are many races and nationalities to be celebrated in this world, but as the human race we could all benefit from having a little more compassion and empathy for our brothers and sisters of the earth. Which leads me to my point… human injustice is human injustice is human injustice, no matter what level it is on, no matter if we can see it in front of our faces or if it is miles away in another country.
Tim Horton’s coffee is not fair-trade. This means that the people who grow the coffee beans are not paid a living wage (the minimum income necessary to meet basic needs such as food, shelter, health and clothing) for their product. Tim Horton’s has launched a coffee partnership with their producers in Brazil, Columbia and the Trifinio Region claiming that by doing this they are helping to improve the livelihoods of these farmers. In reality, they are teaching their farmers how to produce more coffee beans in a shorter period of time. Of course, this only means that the farmers will make more money because they produce more beans (and in turn Tim Horton’s will sell more coffee because they have more beans! Convenient, no?), not because they are being paid fairly for them. A lot of people don’t even know that such a thing as fair-trade certification exists, but since you are interested in social justice I thought you might like to take that into consideration. Fair-trade certification is also important when buying things like chocolate and bananas to make sure that our fellow human beings are not being taken advantage of or treated inhumanely.
ReplyDeleteI would also encourage you to look at your plastic consumption. The majority of plastics that are used to make up soda bottles, like those used for Pepsi products, end up in the o
ReplyDeletecean or the landfill. Some are recycled, yes, but most are not. Wouldn’t it be better to not use them at all? These days Pepsi uses plant-based materials and food scraps to make their bottles, but they are not biodegradable and still contribute to pollution (see the Great Pacific Garbage Patch). Pepsi is also made largely from corn: caramel colour = corn, glucose/fructose = corn, natural colour = corn. So what? Well, we are using our land to grow fields and fields of corn to make a soft drink, when there are people in the world starving because they don’t have enough fruits and vegetables to sustain themselves. This is a disparity and a grave injustice to humanity.
On a side note, chewing gum is made with polyvinyl acetate (plastic)– a petroleum product (http://myplasticfreelife.com/2010/01/chewing-on-plastic-yum). We’re already wasting enough of our natural resources to access the non-renewable resource of fossil fuels, why waste that precious resource on chewing gum? Not to mention that the health and livelihoods of our fellow Canadians is jeopardized on a daily basis by the extraction of oil.
ReplyDeleteThis is not to say that anyone is bad for drinking coffee and Pepsi, using plastics or chewing gum. Certainly not. But it is a plea for us to look at the ways in which we ourselves contribute to injustice just by living our daily lives. And we don’t even think twice about it (as you said, we know not what we do). Similar to the way in which you were aghast at treatment of one Canadian by another, we should all be aghast at the way our North American lives negatively impact the lives of our fellow human beings around the world. We can choose to reduce our impact by choosing to only drink and eat fair-trade certified products, by opting to use reusable mugs and containers that we fill with things that our bodies need, like water, instead of supporting multi-national corporations that care nothing for the environment (despite their green marketing) or the people that are negatively affected by their products.
ReplyDeleteIt can be overwhelming and difficult to believe that you can make a difference on your own. After all, you are just one person. But one person becomes two people, then three, then ten, then a hundred and the snowball continues until you have a movement. We have to believe that a small group of concerned citizens can change the world. It is already happening, and that’s why we have such things as fair-trade and organic. Someone stood up and said “Enough!”. We have to learn how to love each other and our earth instead of taking advantage if we want to find peace and live in a sustainable world. This planet and our fellow human beings are not ours to destroy. After all, the earth does not belong to us, we belong to the earth.
ReplyDeleteI am a non-Christian, and through these movements I have found love in a Hopeless place.
I hope that you are well and I wish you nothing but love love love and joy.