Links in the Chain

By Abagail Nelson

Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD), together with the church in Latin America and the Caribbean, implements agricultural development programs, technical and business training programs, housing reconstruction programs, micro credit cooperatives, feeding and day care centers, schools and medical clinics. ERD raises, receives, and uses funds for the relief of all kinds of human suffering. We do nothing, however, if not in community. Without the funds of each individual donor, without the sweat and talents of its staff and volunteers, without the partners in churches and other organizations around the world, we would not exist. We are part of a larger body, a network of relationships.

In globalization, and in its potential twin — reconciliation — none of us exist alone. Even islands are part of underwater mountain chains, or are built by pieces of coral… link on link. No part of this Body can say to any other part of the Body, "I have no need of you."

No part of this Body can say to any other part of the Body, "I have no need of you."

In modern society — in modern urban society — it is easy to forget this interconnectedness because of our very specialized roles in the huge production chain, where we as Americans are often called "consumers" and are called upon to keep consuming to keep the great economy growing. The food on our plates, the clothes on our backs, however, always come from some source. There are people in the picking, treating, packing, and moving of all these things. We know that we as consumers are also individuals, and we must also understand that over-consumption can lead to obesity. These are things happening in our own culture, so I am not just speaking metaphorically.

As spiritual people, however, we must also understand that each action we take has effects that ripple throughout the chain, throughout our lives and around our world. And like a pebble in your shoe… the whole body hurts if one foot cannot move.

When I was about 20, I traveled as an exchange student to Ecuador. I chose Ecuador primarily because it was Spanish speaking, and I wanted to improve my language. I also had a friend who had done the same program, and gave the country high "ratings" for its beaches, mountains, and general political stability. While studying there, however, I started to understand more deeply the global community and my own particular role as an individual in this reality.

I saw that where I lived much of the coastal economy ran on shrimp, and I was fascinated by how much they knew about the U.S. (and how little we in turn knew about them). I was intrigued by this because shrimp to me had always just been something that I liked to eat, and mostly on "special" occasions. It was nothing I ever thought about. How was it, I wondered, that something so small — a luxury dinner to most New Yorkers — how could this be the bread and bone and obsession of so many people?

I later returned on a grant to follow the "shrimp trail" in what I liked to call its journey "from the water to the plate." In the process I lived with larva fishermen, and learned how to throw a net with the flick of my wrist. I slept in a temporary hut on the beach and discussed price-gouging with men who hawked shrimp in plastic buckets to packing plants early in the morning. I met activists who were desperate to stop the cutting of the mangrove forests, and talked with large shrimp farmers about frightening illnesses that could decimate their entire harvest. I can tell you that Red Lobster serves low-grade white shrimp that most restaurants reject, and why shrimp with "heads on" are considered delicacies in fine establishments. I worked with the government in helping design policy for coastal resource management, policies that had to balance the sometimes competing interests of all these parties… and hold them in tension.

A strangely quirky question I once had about shrimp turned me into a certifiable encyclopedia of not always useful knowledge. More than that, however, my journey into the world of shrimp helped me to enter in to a multitude of different points of view and understand each actor’s hidden importance to my own existence. I became more deeply committed to these webs of interrelatedness, and more dedicated to holding particular faces before me as I tried to reconcile their lives to mine: a life of choice, travel and privilege. I became a development economist interested in designing systems that help individuals sustain their own answers to the questions and competing demands that arise in their individual contexts — seeking social and economic justice — balance.

All these things are linked — my shrimp journey, their lives, my career, you here, and…. me… and they and them and we…. The question is: what kind of link in the chain will you or I be?

How do we reconcile to the other in the supply chain when this, our Body of humanity, is crying out with such suffering?

Henri Nowen, a Dutch theologian, once wrote:

"When we are willing to detach ourselves from making our own limited experience the criterion for our approach to others, we may be able to see that life is greater than our life, history is greater than our history, experience greater than our experience, and God greater than our God."

I do not think we should spend a lot of time feeling guilty for what we have had in the West… Instead of spending a lot of time on what my mother calls "navel gazing," I believe that God calls each of us to stretch ourselves to truly identify with another reality, no matter how foreign.

Instead of spending a lot of time on what my mother calls "navel gazing," I believe that God calls each of us to stretch ourselves to truly identify with another reality, no matter how foreign. It is in this stretching that we begin to enter in to a deeper understanding of the need for mutual change. And action always inevitably follows from this place of mutual transformation.

Walk in another’s shoes for awhile. See what the pebble feels like from his or her perspective. In this type of intercession, we redeem our own lives, and realize there but for God’s will sit I. When we mutually enter into another’s space, we become part of a transformation of grace.

In an ERD clinic in Honduras, I once held the hand of a man whose face ran with sores as he learned he didn’t have a skin condition but the end stages of HIV/AIDS. There was nothing I could do, but sit with him and pray. But that prayer was necessary to transform his sense of isolation and bring him into the center of our human family. As I touched him, I felt his arms tighten around me and he pulled me into something that was greater than us both, and redeeming.

It was not comfortable to be held by someone who smelled, and whose face ran with sores, a man who was dying. I felt like I was being swallowed into a cascade of grief and suffering.

But God does not call us to be comfortable. He calls us to be whole. In wholeness we learn that oppressive systems limit the oppressor as much as they do the oppressed — just as the great abolitionists showed us. In wholeness we reorder the priorities of our lives, our money, our purchases, our jobs, our consumptive systems, and live up to our promises, and our commitments. In wholeness, we use our gifts and talents so that there are no more victims.

God has his own economy. In God’s economy, one man redeemed the world by stretching out his arms and giving of himself a perfect sacrifice for us all. This was one man. Because of him, we know that we can be more than just consumers or producers, we can be extraordinarily capable and transformative beings, nurtured and challenged by our web of relationships. Because of this, we can dedicate ourselves to a profound change, we can forgive debt, we can eradicate smallpox, we CAN…. reorder whole systems.

Even islands are part of underwater mountain chains, or are built by pieces of coral… link on link…. Even the powerful need the weak.

Ed. Note: This essay was delivered at St. Mark’s Cathedral in Minneapolis, Minn., on July 31, 2003, at the Presiding Bishop’s Forum on Global Reconciliation.

Abagail Nelson is the director of Latin American Programs at Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD). She is a development economist and a financial analyst, and works with ERD’s partners and programs throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Abagail may be reached by email at anelson@er-d.org