It's a Wonderful Life and Membership

The concept of embeddedness, turned into an economic concept by Karl Polanyi, is the idea that the economy and the society are inextricably linked. The economy is undergirded by social relations, and social relations are affected by the economy. The economic decisions we make are not done in some sort of void, but they affect all of us. I think we all understand this to an extent, but we don’t always factor it into our decisions. 

For example, this summer I was travelling in a van towards the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh. Around 6pm, we were nearing the capital and started to see throngs of people outside of large gated complexes. Many of them were dressed the same; many of them were women. We drove by countless 8-ton trucks serving as makeshift transports for these people, dozens in each one, standing shoulder to shoulder like packed sardines. We didn’t know what was going on. Later, we found out—we had been driving by at shift change at the garment factories. It was a sobering reminder of the embeddedness of the economy and the society. For, though we are not aware of it, our decisions affect these women, and affect the social landscape of Cambodia. Most of the time, we don't see the people with whom we are connected economically. Our desire to buy cheap, new sneakers has an effect that reaches around the world—we are supporting the jobs of retail workers in Canada, of transport workers, of garment workers in Cambodia. They depend on us, in the same way we depend on them. We depend on one another in this intricate dance. Though we may feel like these garment workers in Cambodia are the farthest thing from us, in fact we all depend on one another.

Low-quality photo snapped while driving past the factories

I like the term Wendell Berry uses for this interdependence. He calls it “membership.” Membership is the idea of being part of something bigger than ourselves; the idea that we have a responsibility for the good of the community, and that we belong to it. In his Port William novels and stories, Berry expands on this idea of membership in a community. In Jayber Crow, he writes: “There are moments when the heart is generous, and then it knows that for better or worse our lives are woven together here, one with one another and with the place and all the living things.” That is, we belong to one another.

Watching It’s a Wonderful Life, Frank Capra’s 1946 Christmas classic, I can’t help but think about this concept of membership. In this film, the young George Bailey is stuck in his small town, giving up his dreams of travel and college to help run his family business, resisting the local capitalist mogul in the process. Much of the first half of the movie is centred on George Bailey giving up his own dreams from a sense of duty: first, on the eve of his own round-the-world trip, he makes a last-minute to stay in the community to rescue the family business rather than let the selfish slum lord Mr. Potter take it over. He even gives his college savings to his little brother. Later, there is a bank run in the town and George and his new bride Mary offer their honeymoon savings to the townspeople to save them from selling their lives away to the almost comically-evil Mr. Potter. 

The height of the conflict in the movie comes when the family business is in danger of closing yet again (due to a silly mistake combined with Mr. Potter’s slimy ways), and Mr. Potter points out how big George’s life insurance policy is, claiming that “You’re worth more dead than alive.” Mr. Potter does not see the inherent worth of George as a human-- he only sees the bottom line. George, weighed down with the idea that he has let down his entire community, is driven to suicide. Thank goodness a hapless angel named Clarence steps in.

It’s a Wonderful Life is a film about membership. From the start, George Bailey has a strong sense of membership, and the responsibility therein. He has faith in the people of the town. Consider the bank run scene. The Bailey Building and Loan is filled with desperate people, and they are about to leave for Mr. Potter’s. He stops them with this speech (as only Jimmy Stewart can) : “Now listen...now listen to me. I-I beg of you not to do this thing. If Potter gets a hold of this Building and Loan, there'll never be another decent house built in this town.  He's already got charge of the bank. He's got the bus line. He's got the department stores. And now he's after us. Why? Well, it's very simple. Because we're cutting in on his business, that's why.  And because he wants to keep you living in his slums and paying the kind of rent he decides. Joe, you had one of those Potter houses, didn't you? Well, have you forgotten? Have you forgotten what he charged for that broken-down shack? Here, Ed. You know, you remember last year when things weren't going so well, you couldn't make your payments. You didn't lose your house, did you? Do you think Potter would have let you keep it? Ca-Can't you understand what's happening here? Don't you see what's happening? Potter isn't selling. Potter's buying. And why? Because we're panicky and he's not. That's why. He's picking up some bargains. Now, We-We can get through this thing all right. We-We've got to stick together, though. We've got to have faith in each other.” 

And of course, as everyone is offering their “Buts,” his wife jumps in, offering their honeymoon money. George and Mary Bailey don’t just say “We’ve got to stick together,” they show it through actions. They put themselves at the mercy of the town. They are members, after all. They know that their prosperity is tied up with the prosperity of the community. They know that if the community is going down, they’ll go down with it.

Throughout the whole movie, the Baileys confound Mr. Potter. His logic, his logic of independence and making money for himself at the expense of others, does not have room for the idea of membership that the Baileys know so well. 

I believe that our economic ideology and system (neoliberalism and capitalism) assume that we are more like Mr. Potter than we are like George Bailey. As we see in the alternate-reality part of It’s a Wonderful Life, the Mr. Potter option has obvious drawbacks. 

After all, as George Bailey passionately says to Mr. Potter: “Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you're talking about... they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, it is too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath?  Anyway, my father didn't think so. People were human beings to him, but to you, a warped, frustrated old man, they're cattle. Well, in my book, he died a much richer man than you'll ever be.” 

When I saw those garment workers in Cambodia loading onto trucks to go home after their shifts, it made me think of cattle trucks. I think our global economic system does treat people like cattle. I think we’re living in Mr. Potter’s world. But I want to live in George Bailey’s world. I want to be a responsible member.

The truth of Tacky the Penguin

I know it seems like I have not written here a lot, but if you knew how many posts were in the 'drafts' section of this blog you would see that on many occasions, I have used this platform as a blank page to rant about whatever is bothering me week after week. But for a change, I want to write something that has nothing to do with what's bothering me! I want to write in celebration of Tacky the Penguin.

I love to listen to podcasts as I walk, and recently I have been enjoying Bughouse Square with Eve Ewing, a podcast where the Chicago-based sociologist and poet revisits Studs Terkel's interviews. OK. Stay with me here. The past episode was on Studs Terkel's interview with Shel Silverstein. Ewing said something that I thought was really cool: "Young people shape our canons, because it's these early experiences of literature that shape our very understanding of who we are as readers, and what we're looking for." Ewing and children's book author Adam Mansbach then discuss the fact that our earliest literary influences are children's books. And I can say I look fondly on the books I read and that were read to me as a child-- from The Giving Tree to Love from Katie to Anne of Green Gables to Narnia. But one stands out in my mind. That book is Tacky the Penguin.

Tacky the Penguin is a picture book about a penguin named Tacky. Tacky lived with the other penguins (their names were Goodly, Lovely, Angel, Neatly and Perfect). The other penguins would greet each other politely (Tacky slapped them on the back), march in unison (Tacky marched to his own pattern), dived in the water smoothly (Tacky did cannonballs), and sang beautiful songs (Tacky sang 'How many toes does a fish have?' loudly). One day, hunters came!! All the penguins ran away, but Tacky didn't. Without giving away the whole story, I can tell you that Tacky's differences saved the day.

 

We used to have so much fun reading this in the Main household! It is a hilarious book, and of course we loved to sing HOW MANY TOES DOES A FISH HAVE as obnoxiously as possible. And looking back on it, I think this book is somehow emblematic of our family. That is, if I had to choose a book that represented the things I love about my family, this would be the one.

I used to be so frustrated at how abnormal my family seemed. I would often wish that we weren't different: that we weren't so Christian, that my parents weren't so old, that we weren't so poor (note: my parents aren't that old or that poor). And I would get embarrassed when these supposed differences were more evident-- I remember when my brother had a piano audition for university, and for some reason my whole family was there, dressed in rubber boots and raincoats because it was Nova Scotia and it was rainy, and it was pretty obvious that we were out of our element. I kept feeling like our voices were too loud or we were taking up too much space or something. But at the same time, I was loving being with them.

We normally pick a Christmas tree together every year, and on more than one occasion we have chosen a tree that does not conform to the ideal Christmas tree-- once when I was young we picked a pine tree so wide that it seemed like it filled the whole living room-- we could even hide underneath it!

When my brother got married, it was another example of my abnormal family. Martin and Candice's wedding was far from normal. It was big and fun and a little disorganized-- just like our imperfect, tacky family. Conforming to the norm never seemed to be a priority for my family, and at times I have been embarrassed or even ashamed of that. But mostly, I am happy that I have a family that relates more to Tacky the Penguin than to Goodly, Lovely, Angel, Neatly or Perfect.

In just a few months, there will be another member of the Main family. And it is my prayer that he or she (I just know it's going to be a she) will have the courage to be Tacky the Penguin: to unapologetically be herself, to spend more time developing good character than developing the appearance of good character, and, if it comes to it, to save the day.

Lunenburg and Truro, and hipster cafes

This morning, I read an article in the Globe and Mail about the transformation of Truro's old Normal College into the public library space. This afternoon, I read an article on CBC's website about the ongoing transformation of Lunenburg's old Bank of Montreal building into an investment firm. When I read the article about my hometown of Truro, I felt proud. I love the way that in Truro, old buildings are being repurposed for today's residents: for example, a few years ago, the old fire station became the Farmer's Market space. Meanwhile, in Lunenburg, the town is undergoing a transformation of its own. 

 Lunenburg's THING is cultural tourism. It sells an atmosphere, a feeling of small fishing villages that have all but disappeared. And the fact that these villages have all but disappeared only make it's appeal grow, as Jim Overton observed in his 1996 book on Newfoundland tourism Making a World of Difference: "It is even popular in some tourist literature to introduce the imminent demise of “the ‘Real’ Newfoundland,” making it even more urgent for tourists to ‘taste’ a way of life which is in jeopardy" (p. 117). When fishing and sea-based occupations became less lucrative, Lunenburg turned to tourism to survive, and it succeeded in this, selling this disappearing way of life and this heritage.

Wanda George of Mount Saint Vincent University has done some work on the town of Lunenburg, studying how tourism has affected the culture of the community. To summarize a 2005 journal article, tourism in Lunenburg has in fact served to mummify the local culture. The past is viewed with nostalgic and authentic, and anything resembling that past is seen as "the real" culture, even if it is viewed with the eyes of outsiders. Those who can sell the traditional culture, now suddenly valuable, are the ones who become successful. The ones who may have traditionally created the culture may be excluded from it.
This article demonstrates and argues that the commodification of rural resource-based culture at a specific point in time can signify the decay and eventual demise of that particular culture, and, moreover, it invokes the arrival of a new culture to displace it. This new culture is one that is fixated on tourism and based on a set of tertiary and commercial characteristics, one which is not based on the values and traditions of the previous culture in spite of commercialising those life ways into its economic product. Through commodification, the previous culture that evolved as a social construct
gives way to a new construct – a commodity for commercial exchange (p. 91).  

So what we have going on in this community is outsiders defining what the culture is. And so when I read about Garth Turner and how he visited once six years ago, decided he liked the area, and almost immediately bought property there, I see this process in play. From the article:

A lover of older buildings, he was worried about who might buy it and what they might do with it.
"I was kind of thinking, 'If I don't do it, this might turn into a pizza joint, a dollar store or, God forbid, another hipster café, and so maybe it has to have a more dignified use, so here we are," said Turner, a financial adviser and analyst whose previous careers have included work as a journalist and federal cabinet minister.
This was the point of the article when I got angry. You know, Nova Scotians, especially rural Nova Scotians, are quick to be accused of innate conservatism and of resistance to change. But this resistance to change is very sensible. We are not anti-innovation or anti-entrepreneur, but we are anti-some dude from Ontario "worried about who might buy" a historic building in the middle of our place. The residents of Lunenburg, I am sure, do not need this sort of paternalism. I thought about the contrast with Truro, where beautiful old buildings, and even some not-so-beautiful buildings, are transformed to become spaces that make the town a more pleasant place to live. Unlike Lunenburg, Truro is not burdened with trying to approximate what an old fishing town should be like. For Truro, which does not rely on tourism as much, there are no expectations to be quaint or charming. So it can be whatever it likes, and I quite like it: for years we had about five large chunks of the Berlin Wall jammed onto a vacant lot beside the Bargain Shop (they have been moved now). Truro just does its thing, and does not pay undo attention to whether outsiders accept its thing. Lunenburg does not have that luxury: an economy with a basis in tourism means that the tourists have the most say in what the town is like. Will a private investment firm bring any benefit to those who reside, year-round, in Lunenburg? Perhaps it will. 

So here is the paradox, which Garth Turner has so aptly illustrated: For primary-industry communities who can no longer rely on that primary industry, they may turn to tourism as a way to make ends meet. Instead of fish, Lunenburg now sells its culture. But this selling of culture, intended as a survival mechanism, is contributing to the death of the community. Garth Turner, attracted to Lunenburg partly because "people really honour their background and heritage," and meanwhile he is building a business which, as far as I can tell, will only help Lunenburg resemble Toronto. Who belongs in Lunenburg, now? Where are the profits of all this tourism going? And what's wrong with hipster cafes?

Confessions of a Christian Spinster

It seems like every single twenty-something female Christian blogger has to write a post on singleness, so here goes, friends.
Back in the day, spinster was just a term used to refer to an unmarried woman. Until pretty recently it was used on documents like marriage licenses. My mind goes right to Mary Bennett from BBC's 1995 Pride and Prejudice.

Anyway, sometimes in my experiences in the church as a single woman, I feel like people see me as a spinster. This is a lot different than how I see myself. You may think I am being paranoid. But no, as any single lady in the church can tell you, we get a lot of prying comments ("Any men in your life?"), well-meaning comments ("My grandson is your age..."), and just plain weird comments ("When are you going to give your parents a grandchild?"). And I like to think I have accomplished a lot of neat stuff in my life so far, but I get the underlying impression that none of it is as readily celebrated as marriage and starting a family. I don't blame my church family for this. After all, many people have experienced marriage and starting a family. It is a normal part of the life course and most people can relate to it and celebrate that joy. But we celebrate what we value, so the message that sometimes sends is: we value traditional marriage more than almost everything else.

Great pair of spinsters- the Baldwin sisters from the Waltons

Now, I don't want to say I think marriage and having children is a bad thing. Quite the opposite! It is normal and beautiful and good. I have had Pinterest boards based on weddings and my future household for ages. My favourite genre of literature and movies is "romantic love enduring despite hardship" (See: Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Sense and Sensibility, Life is Beautiful). Romantic love is good for us, I think, but also we cannot ignore what Jesus says about the cost of being a disciple: "If you want to be my disciple, you must, by comparison, hate everyone else—your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even your own life. Otherwise, you cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:26). 

This week in my house group we studied a part of the Sermon on the Mount. It was the part where Jesus was talking about fasting, and also the whole "you cannot serve both God and money" thing, and also the "do not be anxious" part. It's in Matthew 6, and I encourage you to look it up. One of the conclusions we came to was to hold loosely to the things we have, and to hold tightly to Jesus and our relationship with him. "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness." And the Luke 14:26 piece shows that the things we have to hold loosely to go beyond just possessions, but also include relationships. 

I want to encourage my fellow Christians to hold loosely to the ideal of traditional marriage and family. Not everyone is going to follow that life course and that's OK. In this age and culture we live in, there are so many options and opportunities for young women that don't include marriage, or maybe include marriage later in life. That doesn't mean every unmarried woman is a spinster. And I will be honest, I do long for marriage and family someday. But I am seeking first the kingdom of God (and that command isn't only for single people, by the way). I don't put conditions on God like "I will follow you if you will give me the desires of my heart." I trust God. I trust that God is giving me life that is more than I could imagine, that has a better story than even my favourite fairy tale, because my story is all wrapped up in God's story. I trust that in "seeking first the kingdom of God" (something I am still learning how to do), I will receive even more joy than on the happiest wedding day. I trust that God does not want me to be just a wife and a mother, in the same way that God doesn't want anybody to just be a wife and a mother-- he wants us to be part of his incredible plan of healing and restoring the world.

So, to the church: don't dream such small dreams of your single people! Marriage and family is great- but God's Kingdom is greater. After all,
"Then, after doing all those things,
    I will pour out my Spirit upon all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy.
    Your old men will dream dreams,
    and your young men will see visions. 
 In those days I will pour out my Spirit
    even on servants—men and women alike."
  Joel 2:28-29

And to all my single ladies: 
If you wrap all your hopes up in landing a significant other, you're gonna be disappointed in the same way Beyonce was disappointed by Jay-Z. Just ask Becca K.  But if you wrap your hopes up in Jesus, you will never be disappointed. 

The post-university transition

It started like this.

I was in my late adolescence and early adulthood, learning how to be an adult in the world. I was in university, a time of hope when I truly believed that there were great things ahead in life, and that I was meant to be part of something bigger. And I connected with a group of people and we all believed the same thing: the ‘something bigger’ was the Kingdom of God, and we were already a part of it, and there, on our university campus, we were to go about bringing the Kingdom of God. We were a bunch of midterm-wearied kids, our first time away from home, our first time learning how to be in community away from our parents, gently led by caring mentors. We had no idea what we were doing but we knew we loved Jesus, we were filled with the Holy Spirit, and we thought of ourselves as missionaries to our campus. We took the verse that says “outdo each other in love” and I think we really tried to do that, in our bumbling, novice way. We sang worship to Jesus in our living rooms and downtown on a Saturday night and even in the forest. We studied the Bible voraciously and in detail. We had a number of potlucks as we tried any way to introduce our friends to Jesus. Meanwhile we got to know Jesus better. We started praying for healing. We sacrificed a lot of our time and money for others. And we saw God provide for us in some amazing ways. It was hard, though, and we got a lot of stuff wrong, and missed a lot of stuff, and sometimes it was so overwhelming that I cried. We threw parties when our friends decided to follow Jesus. 

It was a time of tremendous personal and spiritual growth. Then, I graduated. I left. Others left, too. We had to think about jobs and grad school and moving on with our lives. I was sure that wherever we went, God was going to use us. God was going to do big things through us, and we were going to change the world. 

But then, I found, it was a lot harder to have that sort of enthusiasm, passion, and vision in a different environment. I lived in a few different cities: elsewhere in Canada, in my hometown, in Kenya, and now, here in Halifax. And I found warm communities that looked and felt a lot different than my university community. 

These past few weeks I have been taking a course on missions, and we watched a video of a person talking about how spiritual revivals had started in the past through concerted, united prayer. And I recalled how I had been so passionate for that. I remembered being certain that Jesus was at work and that I was a part of it, and that together we were all part of it. I realized I was no longer so certain. I still love Jesus—in fact I feel like the more I think about Jesus, the more I love him—but I had lost the hope and the love for my city and my community. My expectations have been too low these past few years. And I still am grappling with questions about community: Should all Christian communities have the same sort of intensity as our university fellowship? What does a community hoping together look like OUTSIDE the context of a university?

Lately I have been yearning for those days again. I miss everything. I miss living within a fifteen-minute walk of all my best friends. I miss living room worship. I miss coffee dates with mentors. I am writing this because I know I can’t be the only one. I know the transition between the intensity of university community and moving beyond that is hard. I am still figuring it out. How have you navigated that transition?