I m excited to have this conversation with you about the radical economics and ministry of Jesus Christ. First, we ll be looking at some writers who have challenged the dominant narrative about our economic system and then we ll have group discussions on stories from the Gospel of Matthew and how the ideas in those stories apply to various social justice issues. Finally, we ll talk about healing and what role narrative plays in healing. In this workshop, we ll occasionally do some Image Theatre, which is a technique from Theatre of the Oppressed. Usually, this involves embodying what you are thinking or feeling by creating a sculpture with your body -example-. I encourage you to put on your incarnational theology hat and have fun with it! Opening Ritual For our opening ritual, I want you to meditate on a purchased, manufactured object that you have with you today. It could be your shirt, your phone, something in your purse...whatever. I ll give you a moment to pick your object. In Sunday School at Saint Mark s, we use a Montessori-style curriculum called Godly Play. After we tell the Bible story for that day to the kids, we wonder aloud about the story. Now, we re going to do a meditation in the style of Godly Play. So, take a moment to quiet your mind and focus it on the object you picked. Then, I ll start wondering. I wonder what this object means to you. I wonder where this object was purchased. I wonder how much it cost. I wonder what goes into determining how much this object is worth. I wonder about the journey of this object. Where was it made? How was it made? Who made it? How did it get to the store that sold it? I wonder what this object is made of. What materials came together in order for it to exist? What communities came together? I wonder if people, animals, or the environment were oppressed in order to create and sell this object.
I wonder about the motivations of those who sold the object. I wonder about your motivations for buying it. I wonder what this object means to you now. Let s do some image theatre. Take what you re feeling right now and embody it. Let s all stand up. Now, with your body and your chosen object, create a sculpture that represents how you feel. -show them my example- Does anyone want to share their thoughts on this activity? Thank you. You may be seated. I wanted to begin our time together by connecting our things back to people and relationships. Oppression begins with the body and the degradation of the body. It seems strange, but the objectification of objects leads to oppression of the environment and people. As scholar Sylvia Federici points out, we may seem more connected to each other during this time of globalization, but the distancing of production from reproduction and consumption has intensified. We are blind to the blood in the food we eat, the fossil fuels we use, the clothes we wear, and the computers with which we communicate. Commodities have stories, and erasure of narrative is erasure of what is sacred. This connects to a concept from Karl Marx: Commodity Fetishism. Commodity Fetishism "It is... precisely this finished form of the world of commodities the money form which conceals the social character of private labour and the social relations between the individual workers, by making those relations appear as relations between material objects, instead of revealing them plainly..." (Marx, 168-69). As soon as money is attached to an object, people tend to think that the object itself has value and not the labor that was required to produce the object. Money has the ability to make human relationships invisible. So with this in mind What is money? And what gives money power?
Have the audience raise their hand and answer the questions. Thank you. Next, I m going to tell you some stories about economics that may challenge the dominant narrative in our society. The Story of Economics In high school, you probably learned that the story of economics is this: first came barter, then came money because it s more convenient than barter, and then came debt. This is the story Adam Smith told. Makes sense, but there s no evidence to support this narrative. No economic system actually started with barter. Anthropologists and economists are still looking for that magical land of barter. The actual story is this: first came debt--people owing each other favors, then came money, and barter economies only pop up after the collapse of an economic system. The history of debt is the history of money. You could argue that all trade is barter and that money is a sort of veil obscuring that. BUT. When economies collapse, people don t abandon money--they abandon cash. Money is not a commodity--it is an abstract unit of measurement for debt. The real value of a unit of currency is not the value of an object, but the measure of one s trust in other human beings. Debt creates relationships. But debt is also used as justification for cruelty, violence, and oppression. To be in debt means to be guilty. For example, Thomas Jefferson suggested that the government encourage Native Americans to purchase goods on credit so that they would fall into debt and be forced to sell their land. All revolutions throughout history have had two demands: cancel the debt and redistribute the land. And I m sure this sounds familiar to you because... A lot of the language of Christianity comes from the language of ancient finance. Think of words like forgiveness and redemption. Original Sin can be thought of as a debt that was passed on through generations. Jesus paid the debt of mankind. Sounds like a revolution to me. I encourage you to read the book 5,000 Years of Debt by David Graeber. Fascinating stuff.
The Eucharist and the Market Sacred Economics by Charles Eisenstein As American Christians, there are two stories about hunger that are competing for our attention: the story of the market and the story of the Eucharist. Adam Smith is one of the most famous storytellers in economics. He said about the market, the invisible hand of the market guides economic activity so that the pursuit of self-interest by uncoordinated individuals miraculously works out to the benefit of all. Adam Smith thought that man, by nature, is selfish and self-centered. Our egos result in the production of goods that society wants. According to Adam Smith, consumption is the solution to suffering. At this point, I m thinking of Jesus in the desert with Satan, Man shall not live by bread alone. Jesus was concerned with a different kind of hunger, and that is the hunger for God. To Christians, Jesus is the bread of life and God is the food that consumes us. In the story of the Eucharist, the consumer is consumed and we become one with those who share our fate to live and die. If one person suffers, we all suffer. Jesus the Radical Economist Parable of the Talents Laborers in the Vineyard Jesus Cleanses the Temple Parable of the Unforgiving Servant Transition Image Theatre Activity For this activity, we re going to do a little moving around. Let s rise in body or spirit and think of an insight from your conversation that has stuck with you. Embody that insight and how it makes you feel. Make a sculpture with your body. I ll give you a moment to form your images. Now, look around the room and move towards other images that you feel attracted to so you form small groups. I ll let you do that now. Discuss why you felt attracted to each other. What were you embodying? I ll give you a couple minutes to talk. For our next activity, split up into three discussion groups, but if you can, try to stick with the people you just talked with.
Article Discussion Activity The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates Feminism and the Politics of the Commons by Sylvia Federici The Mountain by Eli Clare Discussion Question: How do we heal? (on a personal level and a societal level) How does Jesus heal? Transforming Traumatic Memory into Narrative Memory While on a walk in France, the author of this book, Susan Brison, was attacked from behind, severely beaten, raped, strangled to unconsciousness, and left for dead at the bottom of a ravine. She crawled out of the ravine when she regained consciousness, but after the assault, she felt like she had outlived herself. One can be alive after a traumatic event without having survived it. As she healed and reformed her sense of self, she had to grapple with the traumatic memories, and traumatic memories can be themselves traumatic--they re uncontrollable, intrusive, and somatic. Our society is haunted by the postmemories of trauma. An example of postmemory is rape culture. The memories of rape are everywhere and girls grow up with these memories. When sexual violence happens to them, they remember it because they anticipated it. Postmemory reaches into the future. The most debilitating postmemories, Brison writes, Are those instilled by silence. It is only by remembering and narrating the past--telling our stories and listening to others'--that we can participate in an ongoing, active construction of a narrative of liberation, not one that confines us to a limiting past, but one that forms a background from which a freely imagined--and desired--future can emerge. Trauma does more damage when it is transmitted through untold stories. Traumatic memory somehow gets defused in its transformation into narrative memory for both survivors and listeners in their retellings of stories that never make sense, so they must be endlessly told. The Wounded Healer Jesus story is a great mystery and it does not make sense, but the church tells his story again and again. Jesus appears before people after his resurrection with his wounds from the crucifixion and since then, the Jesus story has been an inexhaustible source of healing and inspiration. If economics is about relationships as we learned from David Graeber and Jesus, then I would argue that one of the most important relationships for our liberation is that of the storyteller and
the compassionate listener. Henri Nouwen says in his book, The Wounded Healer, Only by entering into communion with human suffering can relief be found. When we tell these stories and listen, really listen to these stories, like the story of where an object comes from, slave narratives, and stories of sexual violence, we resist. We say no, we won t let that happen again through political activism, changing our harmful behaviors, and spending our money in ways that lift up the oppressed. This is the message I want to leave you with tonight: As Emil Fackenheim writes, The truth is that to grasp the Holocaust whole-of-horror is not to comprehend or transcend it, but rather to say no to it, or resist it. The no of resistance is not the no of denial. It is the no of acknowledgement of what happened and refusal to let it happen again. ~Susan Brison, 64