I just finished reading Candice Millard's fascinating account of Theodore Roosevelt's expedition through the Brazilian wilderness in The River of Doubt. This book was especially interesting for me as my great great grandfather is Candido Mariano da Silva Rondon, the co-commander of the Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific expedition which put the Rio de Duvida, later renamed the Rio Roosevelt, on the map.
The author is a former writer and editor for National Geographic magazine and brings that adventurous spirit and knowledge into her writing. She did extensive research for the book into not only the history of the region but also the biology. But this information isn't just tossed into the book for the sake of trivia. Instead she weaves each piece of info into the story. For example, she discusses Roosevelt's foreign policy specifically as it relates to South America while, in the story, Roosevelt's ship is steaming toward Brazil. At other points she discusses fish as large as sharks in order to explain the type of psychological pressures the men were up against as they went along their journey. Also, when helpful for the story, she details relevant biographical information for the purpose of character development.
The story reads like a fiction novel though it is a well-documented and footnoted true story. The suspense involved makes it a page-turner that you don't want to put down. All in all, she fits a broad range of biography, history, and biology into a fascinating true story that reads like a suspense fiction. If you are into to nature, adventure travel, history, or even just quality books, this is the one for you.
I write this review as an introduction to get to my main point. I didn't know much about my great great grandfather, Rondon for short, until I read the book. Today he is national icon in Brazil. Kind of like a Lewis & Clark type of figure. He explored and surveyed more of the Amazon than anyone before him had and probably more than anyone since. To quote Millard about his life after the expedition,
"He was hounded by photographers and journalists, invited to meet the president of Brazil, asked to run for political office (an opportunity he repeatedly declined), and promoted first to brigadier general and then, near the end of his life, to marshal. In the 1920s, after meeting Rondon on a trip to Brazil, Albert Einstein nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize, and, in 1956, the Brazilian government renamed a territory of ninety-four thousand square miles -- nearly twice the size of England -- Rondonia in his honor."
But what stands out most to me, and this quality is referenced in the above quote by his nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize, is his work with the Amazon Indians. He was the first westerner to make contact with dozens of tribes. So isolated were some of them that these River dwelling people had never even conceived of the concept of a boat, nearly 2000 years after the time of Jesus' calmed the seas from one! Rondon had a love for the Indians who were treated as no more than objects by most of the westerners entering the territory.
A large part of his legacy is the founding of the National Indian Protection service, or FUNAI, in Brazil. His mission: peace. The difficulty: these Indians were not peaceful. He appeared to be a bit of a pacifist, but not at all out of cowardice. Rather it was on principle. This man who obtained the highest rank in the Brazilian Army, Field Marshal, had a quote : "Die if you must, but never kill." He knew peace could only be made between the two violent sides by standing in the gap and laying down your own life, if that's what it took.
In the decades that followed Rondon's death, however, the situation only got worse. The particular tribe mentioned most often in the book only got more bold and vicious in their attacks on outsiders while the oustiders themselves "shot Indians on site, dynamited their villages from the air, and left gifts of poisoned food on their trails." Despite Rondon's work, the Brazilian Indian population had dwindled from over 1 million to less than 200,000 during the span of his lifetime.
One passage in the book describes in detail a particular occasion when the members of FUNAI tried to make peace after Rondon's death:
"Steps toward pacification were slow and fearful on both sides, and when the moment of face-to-face contact finally arrived, it was fraught with emotion and heavy with the weight of two worlds colliding. This extraordinary meeting --the passing of gifts over what had seemed an unbridgeable divide -- was chronicled in the pages of National Geographic magazine the following year, as an unarmed serantista (FUNAI worker) risked his life to reach out to a tribe that could easily have killed him. Standing in the rough clearing that the serantistas had carved out of the forest as a place to leave gifts for the Indians, two terrified young men -- one a nearly naked warrior, the other representing the Brazilian government -- leaned forward, extended their right arms as far as they would reach, and exchanged gifts: a machete for a palm-frond headdress."
"After the exchange was completed in silence, a series of clicks echoed in the jungle as fifty Indian warriors who had stood ready to attack withdrew their arrows from their bows. 'In this manner,' the magazine reported, 'one of earth's last Stone Age peoples took their first fearful steps into a bewildering new world of men who know how to fly to the moon.'"
Sadly, as mentioned above, the brutal violence between the groups continued and this one small incident apparently had no large scale effect. But I think the story has to at least give us a little more than pause. When violence and injustice is perpetrated between peoples the cycle is hard to break. I think now of the Israeli/Palestinian situation or the American/Islamic situation. More violence will only spawn more violence.
As I've written elsewhere, the ends never justify the means. Each mean is an end in itself and each end is only the means to another end. God is the god of both the ends and the means. And as disciples of Christ, our only hope for reconciliation in this violent world is to follow the example of Jesus and submit ourselves to violence or potential violence. Only this laying down of life has the power to overcome evil and I think the above story is a great example of how that might be done in practice.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Saturday, July 14, 2007
#110 Quotes IX
"Boys, this is my church! And if you don't think Christ is down here on the waterfront, you've got another guess coming! Every morning when the hiring boss blows his whistle, Jesus stands alongside you in the shape-up. He sees why some of you get picked and some of you get passed over. He sees the family men worrying about getting the rent and getting food in the house for the wife and the kids. He sees you selling your souls to the mob for a day's pay."
--Father Barry in Kazan's 1954 film On the Waterfront in response to some of the longshoremen who tell him to go back to church instead of trying to rally them out of the abuse they are taking from the mob.
--Father Barry in Kazan's 1954 film On the Waterfront in response to some of the longshoremen who tell him to go back to church instead of trying to rally them out of the abuse they are taking from the mob.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
#109 Videos I
Andrew Sullivan points us to a video that shows us a concept that the Bush administration has never understood from day one. In fact, I don't think Hillary, Rudy, or Barack get it either. I think the only candidate that understands and truly believes the concept that Sen. Leahy points out in this video is Ron Paul. Check out his website on the issues and please consider voting for him.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
#108 A Model for Church
In Brian McLaren's book A Generous Orthodoxy he discusses the place that various Christian traditions have in his faith. Regarding the Anabaptist heritage he says this,
All this talk of invitation, sharing, and tables got me thinking about the noble goal of ecumenism, which seems to be the main goal of McLaren's book. Sadly, our experiments in this area so far have seemed to get us nowhere and our congregations, split down theological rather than geographic lines, are dividing faster than they can come multiply. In fact, ecumenism has become a para-church ministry altogether. It is a special topic at seminars and research institutes. We attempt to hold conferences on the subject, write books about the subject, and even go so far as to read the books of authors of other theological leanings in the hopes of getting at the root of the problem of the denominational church. Yet it appears we have gotten nowhere closer to our goal.
But what if we thought of that same language of invitation, sharing, and tables literally. What if we had a meal together. What if we reversed the current order of publicizing our theological boundary lines and by that declaring who we will and will not commune with and instead ate together and allowed that community to shape us as Christians. I'm not talking about sharing a meal with people of other religions, though there is a time and a place for that. What I am talking about is church and a new model for doing church.
In practice, this could look something like the following. Instead of waking up Sunday morning and driving to separate locations based on our different beliefs, let's wake up Sunday morning and drive to the same place to put into practice our common belief. This would not be done by music as there are so many different tastes from Independent contemporary to Catholic or Orthodox liturgy to Protestant hymn singing to African-American gospel. This would not be done through preaching, because while each tradition has varying degrees of Orthodoxy, each tradition also has varying degrees of valid disagreement and emphasis.
Instead, on a very practical level, it works something like the following. In a way it is a church planting model. A family, say my own, of Presbyterian, conservative, American, evangelical leaning would seek out families leaning otherwise in the time leading up to the feast. We invite, say, an Orthodox family, a Catholic family, an Anglican family, an Anabaptist family, and any others who accepted our invitation to our potluck.
At the same time we would be careful not to have too many families of one denominational breed at the gathering but rather seek out those who otherwise would be shunned first and foremost. Some examples of those groups include the Amish, fundamentalists, "Osteen-ites", and charismatics. Once we have garnered interest in such a gathering, we could then plan our meal for a specific date and get to know each other through the process of coordinating the epic potluck. The final result could be a gathering of anywhere from 2 to 20 or so families with diverse theological distinctives all affirming the Lordship of Christ.
What if, on the other hand, an overwhelming majority of like-minded Presbyterians were to be excited about this idea and want to join our meal? This seems like it would defeat the purpose and become just another majority powered church were certain groups were excluded. However, this instead becomes an brilliant opportunity for church planting. For these folks there task would be to start a new feast by seeking out others and coordinating a diverse group of saints for a potluck at their house or place of worship.
This is not to say that there is not a time for separating into more distinctive groups for purposes of administering the sacraments, worshiping through music, preaching and discussing doctrine, orthodoxy, and finer theological points. But it is to say that this should be an outgrowth of actual table fellowship, rather than table fellowship being an outgrowth of our distinctives, which is what it currently is. So with the table as our foundation we spread to our unique Christian communities and then out into the world.
So while thinkers and theologians, ecumenists and evangelicals, scholars and students think of ways in which we can come together as a church by glossing over our differences, preparing joint declarations, sending delegations, and writing treatises, I think we have a more simple effective solution staring us in the face: Eat a meal.
"...what excites me most is what can happen when Anabaptists are given a place at the table (a place they would hardly presume to take, so it must be offered them; they must be invited)-the table where post-liberals and post-evangelicals and catholic Catholics and generously orthodox Orthodox gather to share the treasures of their heritages. The exchange of treasures around that table can enrich us all, and without the Anabaptists there, the party is hardly worth having."
All this talk of invitation, sharing, and tables got me thinking about the noble goal of ecumenism, which seems to be the main goal of McLaren's book. Sadly, our experiments in this area so far have seemed to get us nowhere and our congregations, split down theological rather than geographic lines, are dividing faster than they can come multiply. In fact, ecumenism has become a para-church ministry altogether. It is a special topic at seminars and research institutes. We attempt to hold conferences on the subject, write books about the subject, and even go so far as to read the books of authors of other theological leanings in the hopes of getting at the root of the problem of the denominational church. Yet it appears we have gotten nowhere closer to our goal.
But what if we thought of that same language of invitation, sharing, and tables literally. What if we had a meal together. What if we reversed the current order of publicizing our theological boundary lines and by that declaring who we will and will not commune with and instead ate together and allowed that community to shape us as Christians. I'm not talking about sharing a meal with people of other religions, though there is a time and a place for that. What I am talking about is church and a new model for doing church.
In practice, this could look something like the following. Instead of waking up Sunday morning and driving to separate locations based on our different beliefs, let's wake up Sunday morning and drive to the same place to put into practice our common belief. This would not be done by music as there are so many different tastes from Independent contemporary to Catholic or Orthodox liturgy to Protestant hymn singing to African-American gospel. This would not be done through preaching, because while each tradition has varying degrees of Orthodoxy, each tradition also has varying degrees of valid disagreement and emphasis.
Instead, on a very practical level, it works something like the following. In a way it is a church planting model. A family, say my own, of Presbyterian, conservative, American, evangelical leaning would seek out families leaning otherwise in the time leading up to the feast. We invite, say, an Orthodox family, a Catholic family, an Anglican family, an Anabaptist family, and any others who accepted our invitation to our potluck.
At the same time we would be careful not to have too many families of one denominational breed at the gathering but rather seek out those who otherwise would be shunned first and foremost. Some examples of those groups include the Amish, fundamentalists, "Osteen-ites", and charismatics. Once we have garnered interest in such a gathering, we could then plan our meal for a specific date and get to know each other through the process of coordinating the epic potluck. The final result could be a gathering of anywhere from 2 to 20 or so families with diverse theological distinctives all affirming the Lordship of Christ.
What if, on the other hand, an overwhelming majority of like-minded Presbyterians were to be excited about this idea and want to join our meal? This seems like it would defeat the purpose and become just another majority powered church were certain groups were excluded. However, this instead becomes an brilliant opportunity for church planting. For these folks there task would be to start a new feast by seeking out others and coordinating a diverse group of saints for a potluck at their house or place of worship.
This is not to say that there is not a time for separating into more distinctive groups for purposes of administering the sacraments, worshiping through music, preaching and discussing doctrine, orthodoxy, and finer theological points. But it is to say that this should be an outgrowth of actual table fellowship, rather than table fellowship being an outgrowth of our distinctives, which is what it currently is. So with the table as our foundation we spread to our unique Christian communities and then out into the world.
So while thinkers and theologians, ecumenists and evangelicals, scholars and students think of ways in which we can come together as a church by glossing over our differences, preparing joint declarations, sending delegations, and writing treatises, I think we have a more simple effective solution staring us in the face: Eat a meal.
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