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Extending the Table
Greetings from Israel
It is hard to believe but the second leg of my sabbatical has begun. I arrived in Israel on the 22nd and other than the normal bout of jet lag, all is going well. This week my reflections centers on the concepts of power. A few months back when a group from Greenblade gathered at Holy Cross Monastery we discussed how food has been used as a form of oppression. Here in Israel, power and control are very much a part of the social scene. The tension at the The Holy Sepulchre is a story of power and control between Christian religious. How, at the site of ressurection and Christianity's most holy of sites can the religious communities justify their inabilty to work together? This is quite a paradox in my mind.
The the issues of power and oppression go more deeply here, especially as we begin to scratch the surface of Israeli/Palestinian relations. Right now it appears the Israeli's have the power and use it to oppress the Palestinians who were, up until the end of the second World War the majority of the people in the area.
These discussions on power and oppression have had me thinking about my own life at home. As a white, educated male, I am aware of the power I innately hold in American society and now have begun asking, in what ways do I participate in the oppression of others? And one of the ways I am accutely aware is how I act and participate in the way I behave as a consumer.
This discussion goes well beyond food, it encompasses all areas of my life, from how I manage to obtain the food I eat, to the clothes I buy. I have to ask myself, how much do I participate in the Wal Mart effect? How much of the inexpensive things I consume do I buy cheaply at the expense of others? (i.e. produced through sweat shops and other means that create a labor pool working for far less than a living wage.)
Recently, I bought clothing at the short-lived Good For the Earth clothing kiosk in the Carousel Mall. I was all excited to buy organically made clothing, but then realized that wearing organic materials is only half the battle. I never thought to ask where and by whom they were made. . . are those who construct the clothing paid living wages or are these clothes produced in a third world country by people forced to work extremely long hours in order to eke out a meager exsistence.
I also now wonder how much of my food is brought to my local grocery store via the cheap labor of illegal aliens who are being exploited by the farming industry.
As I finish my entry this week, I now realize that the oppression I am witnessing here in Israel is overt and easily identified and easily condemned, but the oppression of consumerism, far more subtle, and far more easily justified when hidden from view.
Forgive us Father for we know not what we have done.
I buy most of my clothes secondhand for that very reason. I've decided that I'm much more comfortable giving my money to the Salvation Army (who has a sketchy gay rights record, but a otherwise stellar making-the-world-a-better-place record) than giving it to a MegaCorporation that may or may not be committing horrible human rights violations.
I don't know if any one person can combat each and every one of these small injustices: I've seen people so paralized with the fear that they would do something harmful that they do nothing at all. One of the things that I think Greenblade is all about is trying to find our best ways to tread lightly, to do minimal damage, while still keeping ourselves clothed and fed well enough to be the change we wish to be in the world.