Free and Flying

Sitting in traffic may be one of the most irritating experiences ever. There is nothing more frustrating than knowing that a journey of 10 minutes is taking 30 to traverse. For two hours every morning and two hours every evening, the Highway 8 junction between Kitchener and Cambridge bogs down and vehicles of all kinds get trapped in the corridors of congestion. There is no other way for me to get from school to home and home to school. It kills me.

King Street out of Kitchener slides right into this express-way, a third lane that eventually merges into two. Every afternoon, I fly right past the two plugged up left lanes and take the clear one all the way to it's very end before I slip into that mobile mess. Each time, I wonder, "Why aren't more people popping into this lane to loosen up the stand-still?" In fact some drivers will come to a complete stop in that empty lane and signal their way into that sluggish pace long before they have to. Why?

Perhaps people are afraid that they will get to the end of the lane and no one will let them in. Or, maybe they think that other drivers will get ticked off when they see them by-passing the traffic jam. All I know is that when I sit in that stew, I feel frustrated and trapped. I could choose to merge prematurely and blend into the bane of the majority, but why would I when I still have a kilometre of highway that lets me fly?

Strangely, I feel the same way in class at times. Many of my peers are traveling along a lane of thought that states, "There is no truth. Everyone has their own truth; who is anyone to say that their truth is better than another's truth?" These were the words of one of my group presentation members the other morning. Hearing it, I just sat there, merging into her train of thought by my silence, signalling with my non-response that somehow I was in agreement with her conclusion. A little bit of death entered my soul in that moment. It's fingers cupped over my integrity and I felt trapped by my own lack of tenacity. I had come to a complete halt in the middle of an open line of discussion and joined the teaming masses of truth nay-sayers.

Five minutes after the discussion had moved on, I realized that I had to say what I really believed. Gently, I pulled myself back into the right lane and explained that I did believe in absolute truth. There is one truth that can be practiced in multiple ways, but there can not be multiple truths. Maybe it ticks people off. Maybe they won't let you in, but it's better than sitting at a stand-still when you could be free and flying.

To the River

"It's good to pull people out of the river when they're drowning, but it's also good to go upriver to see who's throwing them in the river."

Working with individuals after they have been abused, undervalued, and bullied has some merit. It is the same noble philosophy behind the parable of the starfish. There are thousands of life-sapped starfish lying on the shore. We can not save them all but we can make a difference for at least one, if not a few, by throwing it back into the ocean.

But what if we did take a stroll upriver and discovered why people are dying in rivers in the first place? What if the reason that the starfish are all gasping for breath on the sand is because some barge has contaminated their watery domain?

A 15-year old girl from a small town does not end up in jail, doing drugs, and dropping out of school because she is inherently flawed. She was born to a dad who wanted a son instead, a mom who shoots up instead of buying groceries, goes to a school with zero tolerance and zero alternatives for "kids like her", and tried a church that wanted her to look less like a boy and more like a lady.

A four year old Ayore child does not board buses by himself to sing and dance for .07 cents of his own volition. A 10 year old Ayore girl does not decide to sleep with an old man for $100 an hour. Their parents choose this for them but their choice is rooted in the harsh reality of poverty and marginalization that began when their culture was stripped away by the invasion of Europeans and corporations in search of petrol-gold.

A middle aged refugee claimant did not come to Canada because he wanted to steal our jobs and milk the system. He fled his home and left lucrative employment because he objected to how multinational companies were not only raping his country of mineral resources but they were committing the violation on the backs of children. Now, he ekes out an existence on the few hundred dollars that Ontario Works provides for his family of four each month.

People need to be pulled out of rivers and starfish should be thrown back into the sea, but there are reasons why they are drowning and dying. I was mad enough to go back for my Master of Social Work not because I want to forsake the individual but I want to understand the larger systems that are working against them...only to discover that I am a part of the larger system that oppresses and throws people into the river. As a white, middle-class Christian with money in my pocket and a car on the road, I am automatically associated with the injustice that I hate.

Acknowledging this association, it will not deter me or what I do, even if it does make my head and heart ache. I do not imagine that all of this can be remedied in this world, but God help me, I am going to walk upriver to find out why people are tossing other people into the river and do something about it.