I was returning from Berekely to Oakland on Tuesday and drove up Ashby and then down the 24 to downtown to get there. As I slowed at the light at Hiller Drive I was blessed with a surprisingly beautiful view of the bay all the way out through the Golden Gate Bridge. It's not that I didn't know that view was here...but it was as if I'd forgotten. The fog has been thick recently I told myself. Then I realized that I just don't ever see the bay. I live and work in East Oakland at the foot of the hills. So I don't usually see the bay, across to the city and up to Marin. My perspective is shaped by the space I live, work, and move in and through. I had to laugh at myself for it seems that in my busyness, concentration, and daily routine, I simply forget where I live, how amazingly beautiful it is and how diverse the landscape - both urban and natural - is. It got me thinking...
In reading some news articles since then I can't help but keep thinking about perspective...my lack of it even when I long for it. Our world is shrinking, Thomas Friedman would say it's flattening even faster through the forces of globalization. The slow food and green movements invite us to grab some perspective, to realize how much fossil fuel is used in order for us to drink the carbonated water from Northern Italy or to eat ripe tomatoes grown in Chile. I'm all for that. Yet our world has changed. Globalization has transformed everything. We need each other in order to produce, consume and move forward. Now I'm not a flag-waving capitalist, but when I read and studied Friedman's book The World Is Flat last year in a group my in-the-closet-socialist perspective was significanlty tweaked (except in terms of health care).
We can't choose to flee the fear of terrorists and Al-Qaeda by burying our heads in the sand of Isolationism like we did before Pear Harbor in the 40s. We can't simply keep ourselves safe from our 9/11-based fears of Islamic Fundamentalism by refusing residency to immigrants who may have used fake papers or guest workers who want to earn money picking the crops of the Central Valley when no one else is lining up to do it. We can't expect American Companies, in particular in Silicon Valley to thrive and excel if we refuse and radically limit the visas that we'll be given to tech workers and innovators from Bejing and Bangalore (among many other places). We can't rally around some fantasy-based monolingual vision of the righteous purity of the glory days of our past by insisting that English be our official language, while the majority of people living on our shared planet are not only bilingual but multi-lingual. We can't simply keep starting wars with whatever country or ethnic group seems to be a potential harbor or safeground for terrorist networks to work within and spread from...if so we'll soon be fighting not only in Iraq and Afghanistan but also in Indonesia, England, Germany and Spain. We can't base our decision-making merely on the repetitive choice of what is familar, not scary or threatening, or vote-getting.
It seems like we're losing perspective as a larger community, in terms of what we're afraid of, what and who we have faith in, and what foolishness we'll let be the foundation of our decision-making. Maybe it's like my loss of perspective living at the cross-section of the flatlands and the hills here in Oakland. I spend most of time in the place(s) that is and are familiar, comfortable and experientially rote. Of course my perspective is tweaked because it's limited by my repeated choice to walk (or drive) the same path and by necessity. But it doesn't have to be. In fact it can't stay that way. Why do we so often let the little picture, our short-term fears, or the details not only influence but shape our bigger persepective and larger world-view. It's like we're trying to find our way by looking at the pepples underneath or feet instead of looking ahead to where the path is going. As a person of faith practicing my own in the context of a Christian Community I find that often I'm frustrated with the church for losing perspective, for choosing the familiar, harkening back to supposed glory days out of fear of the changing world in which we are and a lack of faith that God will - and maybe already has - prepared ways for transformation, meaningful purpose, and new ways of being together in community. The church community seems to base her decision-making process on fear of the future, faith in some sort of vague dream of better days, times and things that can be preserved and re-discovered by keeping ourselves pure, untainted and stuck in the familiar of old hymns, cookie cutter liturgies and comfortable programming. Faith - according to the book of Hebrews - is "being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." (11:1) Or as Eugene Peterson translates it "The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It's our handle on what we can't see. The act of faith is what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the crowd." I'd much rather have faith and trust be the foundation of my decision-making than fear and the familiar.
I think about my
Here's some of the reading I've done these past days that influenced some of my thinking...
"A divisive declaration of official English" (SF Gate 6/6/7)
"Anger over visa provision in bill" (SF Gate 6/7/7)
"Immigration Bill survives in Senate" (SF Gate 6/7/7)
"Beyond Bush. What the world needs is an open, confident America" (Newsweek 6/11/7)
The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman
Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire by Morris Berrman
The Church in Transition by Tim Conder
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