A life less ordinary

At Kairos we are currently in the middle of a six part series called Hollywood and the Ancient Text. What the series does is take films and the Ancient Text (scripture) and bring them into dialogue with each other. This is the second year we have done this. We usually have a time during the message where we interact with each other and share our thoughts about the movie or scripture.

This past week JR talked about Maria Full of Grace. When this movie first came out I wasn't very eager to watch it because it is difficult for me to watch movies with strong thematic plot lines involving issues that I'm sensitive about. Maria Full of Grace is definitely one of those movies. For those of you who haven't seen it check out the link above.

Maria's story is one of tragedy and heartache. Forced to take employment at one of the few honest jobs in her town she spends her entire day de-thorning roses. She lives in social and economic oppression from the government with no hope of improving her situation. At least not legally. I don't want to give to much of the movie away, but basically she ends up working for the drug cartel in Columbia because it is an opportunity for her to earn enough money for her family. JR brought up a lot of good points during his talk. One I particularly thought about was how much I actually have with respect to others. Socially, politically, and economically. Living in a place like L.A. it is easy to look at the people with all the big houses and fancy cars and say. Look how hard my life is. I don't have 5 cars and my own private jet. Man does my life suck. It's easy for me to look in one direction when it comes to poverty. JR pointed out that 1.3 billion people live in desperate poverty (i.e. on a dollar a day) Then another 2 billion live on 2 dollars a day. He was sharing with us statistics not just about Columbia, but also about other countries like India and Kenya with respect to the United States. He also shared about groups and organizations that are helping to improve the situations of these people. It was encouraging to think that I could be a part of helping improve the life of my fellow man.

I have taken several trips to Haiti and have seen first hand the state of people who live in desperate poverty. I worked at an orphanage where the children were the result of deaths of parents or abandonment from violence or starvation. The gov't is always on the cusp of being overthrown and the people are kept in social, economic, and political oppression. I worked through an organization that helps people in 3rd world/developing countries. It was frustrating because no matter how much you gave and worked it felt like it wasn't enough. I would go back the next year and it seemed like everything I had done would be gone. The basic problem was that the people had no opportunities. No chance for making a life better for themselves or their children. They couldn't see the point of trying to make any improvement because nothing was going to change. Even though they would try to overthrow the government their mindset hadn't changed.

I was going home with a friend of mine later that evening and he was telling me what his solution would be to someone like Maria. He said he would tell her to go somewhere to the midwest maybe and find a good church / humanitarian organization that could help her. I didn't want to burst this person's bubble so I chose not to say anything negative about this solution. I didn't point out that there are billions of people in the same situation as Maria. We can't send them all to the midwest. It is difficult to see what the best way is to improve the condition of life for an individual let alone a country.

My friend Mike mentioned a legend about Prometheus who wanted to help man by giving him the tools he thought man needed to advance. But if man wasn't also given foresight and training the eventually it would lead to his destruction. Anyhoo that's enough of that. Have a good day and as always enjoy.