Rhythms of justice
It was the height of summer. For a couple of weeks the rain abated and as the sun shone I sat inside – like millions of my fellow countryfolk – and munched on some cake while watching a few exceptional people achieve sporting greatness. If only I could run like that, I thought to myself, while licking the last of the icing from my plate.
When it comes to justice most of us want to be Olympic athletes like our heroes, like Wilberforce, Ghandi, Mother Teresa or Nelson Mandela. But the problem is that deep down we know we’re just cake-munching fatties. Our spirit is willing but our flesh is very weak.
But here’s the thing. I got up from the TV, looked out of the window and decided to go for a run. When I say run, I mean jog…ish. And just down the road (I walked back). But I did it nonetheless.
We all want to be exceptional. But so often being exceptional feels beyond us, whereas ordinary we can do! Well I’ve got some good news. We don’t have to be Olympic athletes; we just need to put our trainers on.
Deeply ordinary Every day we live in rhythm. We sleep, get up and have breakfast. We go to work and then come home again (or for those of us who work from home we pull out the laptop and sit at the kitchen table, then pack it away again later).
The rhythms of our lives are the most ordinary, mundane realities we know. But they are also utterly sacred and profound. Our hearts beat in rhythm – our culture is based around the rhythm of the calendar, the cycles of the moon and the revolutions of the earth. These rhythms are some of the deepest patterns of our life; unnoticed and unexamined, they shape our experience in the most profound ways. For those of us involved in the character formation of young people, we would do well to observe the way in which our ordinary lives weave an identity that forcefully shapes our choices.
So what would happen if we built some new rhythms into our lives? Might this be a way of cultivating the kind of character formation we need if we are to really make justice an everyday part of our discipleship? And might it be ordinary enough that the non-exceptional people like me can begin to live it too?
I’ve been exploring four rhythms that I believe can help us. In different ways they use ordinary actions to unstitch the very deepest parts of our identity and enable the kind of character formation that will help us - and the young people we work with - build justice into everyday rhythms of change.
A rhythm of connection
We all live in a cocoon. On the whole we didn’t mean to. But years of consumer-culture, of being repeatedly told that life is all about whatever we want, has formed a protective shell. It keeps the reality of the world at bay. Inside, with all of our cosy comforts, we gradually suffocate.
Building a rhythm of connection is about breaking out of our cocoon and embracing the reality of the world. We do this with our head, our hearts, our bodies and our relationships.
Head What we know about the world informs our worldview. If we think, for example, that there is no poverty in Britain – poverty is just somewhere else – then discovering that millions of children in the UK live in poverty will change the way we see things. Finding ways to seek the factual truth about our world can help us face reality.
Suggested actions: • Spend five minutes watching international news each day. • Visit www.globalrichlist.com or www.miniature-earth.com to see yourself in relation to the rest of the world.
Heart How we feel about injustice really impacts our choices. We’ll say it’s wrong, but let’s be honest: compassion-fatigue can be real and difficult to beat. Finding ways to let the reality of the world get to our emotions is a very human part of breaking out of the cocoon.
Suggested actions: • Set up a prayer space and ask God to break your heart for the reality of people living in poverty. • Find stories of people suffering injustice to watch or read and allow them to get under your skin.
Body This is a really undervalued part of spiritual formation, but what we do with our bodies can really shape our experience of the world. It’s one thing to know in your head that a billion people will go to bed hungry tonight, or even to feel great sadness about that fact. But when we fast in solidarity then we experience that reality in our own flesh and partake in a much deeper kind of knowledge.
Suggested actions: • Sleep on the floor for a week in solidarity with the world’s 150 million street children. • Take Tearfund’s Water Challenge and live on only ten litres of water per week.
Relationships Breaking out of our cocoon can be as much about connecting with our next-door neighbours as it is about connecting with people on the other side of the world. We are too busy and too prejudiced to allow reality in. Allowing our relationships to cross boundaries can really open us up for change.
Suggested actions: • Bake a cake and take it round to some neighbours you’ve not spoken to before. • Spend some time with an elderly person who is lonely.
Recommended reading: The Irresistible Revolution, Shane Claiborne Generous Justice, Tim Keller Concrete Faith, Matt Wilson
A rhythm of advocacy
All around the world there are people whose voices are not being heard. Advocacy means speaking up on their behalf. Having practised a rhythm of connection and engaged with the reality of injustice in the world, speaking out becomes a natural next step. This can happen in loads of different ways.
It can be helpful to think of our spheres of influence and how we can bring a dose of cocoon-busting reality to the world around us, on behalf of the oppressed. We can think in terms of our personal sphere, our local sphere and our national sphere.
Personal The influence we have on those around us is much bigger than we think! Don’t believe me? Try filling a hall with hundreds of people and spraying perfume on the hands of just a few. If you get everyone to shake hands for 30 seconds then everyone present will be positively fragrant! Just talking to your friends can be a significant influence for change.
Suggested actions: • Get five friends to sign a justice-themed petition. • Organise a Hunger Banquet (where a few friends get a sumptuous spread and the rest get just rice).
Local Most of us just don’t realise the impact we can have at a local level in raising awareness of justice issues. Local media are always looking for a good story, particularly about young people who are doing something positive. Your local MP should be holding regular surgeries where you can raise issues important to your group (find your MP at www.theyworkforyou.com.
Suggested actions: • Lobby your local school or college to go Fairtrade. • Arrange to meet your local MP as a group.
National We live in one of the most open democracies on earth, whatever its failings. Compared to most nations, our ability to influence government decision-making is huge. Finding moments to join with others to make a big noise on behalf of those who aren’t getting listened to can lead to massive change.
Suggested actions: • Get 50 names on a justice-themed petition. • Write to your bank about their ethical policies.
Recommended reading: The Road to Peace, Henri Nouwen Lift the Label, David Westlake & Esther Stansfield The Good Campaigns Guide, Tess Kingham & Jim Coe
A rhythm of contentment
We don’t normally associate contentment with justice. Surely we need to be discontent with the way things are so we care enough to change it? But the spell of our consumer-culture has turned us into rampant gobblers of natural resources; our desire for more, more, and then some, makes for an unsustainable life. This leads to climate change which affects people in poverty far more than anyone else. It also fattens our souls and makes for stronger, more suffocating cocoons. Practising a rhythm of contentment can be truly liberating in a whole stack of ways.
Part of building a rhythm of contentment is simply about identifying those areas of our life where we are not content, and then directly challenging them. For example, I have a friend who likes to listen to music all of the time. Of course there’s nothing wrong with this in principle, but he acknowledges that for him it is a way of shutting out silence. So he decided to choose a single song and for a whole week listened to nothing other than that one song, once each day. This kind of action doesn’t bring justice or end poverty, but my friend knew that it challenged his need to consume music; by facing head-on the space that silence gave him he began to build a rhythm in his life which was ok with less. Less, in fact, turned out to be more.
For me it’s all about food. Despite the fact that a billion people will go to bed hungry tonight, I still insist on regularly stuffing my face with far more than it needs. Recently I took the rice and beans challenge: to live on only a small portion of rice and beans each day for a week. It was much harder than I thought it was going to be, but it helped me to cultivate contentment by challenging my incessant greed.
Suggested actions: • Spend a whole week wearing only unbranded clothes. • Give up TV or video games for a week.
Contentment is not just about our own character formation. It can also lead to real change in the lives of others. By actively reducing our consumption we can tone down our impact on climate change and the poorest, most vulnerable people it aggressively affects.
Suggested actions: • Fix something that’s broken instead of chucking it out. • Eat less meat (a major contributor to climate change). Try going veggie for a day a week.
Recommended reading: Consumer Detox, Mark Powley Less is More, Brian Draper L is for Lifestyle, Ruth Valerio
A rhythm of generosity
Have you ever found that it is sometimes harder to share your favourite jumper than to give away a fiver? We tend to think of generosity in terms of money. But generosity is much deeper than that; it is about the direction of our soul. Are we fundamentally oriented to ourselves or to others? Practising a rhythm of generosity involves finding ways to give of ourselves, whether that’s our energy, our time, our money, our attention, or whatever. We each have incredible power to bring hope and transformation into other people’s lives by being able to put their needs before ours. But it takes practice!
Start small Holding the door open for someone can seem like a truly insignificant action – certainly not one to end world poverty. Making it a habit, however, can help to form in us a deep rhythm of generosity. And that really can change the world.
Suggested actions: • Invite your friends round and cook up a big meal. • Go without a coffee from your favourite coffee shop and text-donate the money instead.
Push yourself Often giving our energy and focus is much harder than actually giving our money or time. Pushing ourselves to give more than we feel like doing is key to consistently building a rhythm of generosity.
Suggested actions: • Give a couple of hours each week to volunteer with a local charity. • Do some fundraising for a justice-related cause (check out Free2Play from Soul Action at www.soulaction.org).
All out There’s no formula for how to be generous. Should we sell all we have and give it to the poor, or invest it, multiply it, and do more good with the profits? I believe we each have to find our own path before God. But making generosity a deep rhythm is what matters.
Suggested actions: • If someone tells you they like something you own, offer it to them for free. • Use a budget builder tool to manage your spending and reduce it by ten per cent, or more! Give what you’ve saved away.
Life with soul
We are ordinary people who are part of an exceptional story. The precious, powerful, provocative truth that Jesus saves is not only true for our individual lives – it is true for the world as a whole, with all its unpredictable, precarious economic systems and dysfunctional, broken politics, its marginalised communities and bloated, over-fed consumer-cultures. Our exceptional God is re-making this world from all its brokenness into something new, where freedom, equality and hope are let loose.
Justice is the soul of our story. And living these rhythms is life with soul.
MATT VALLER headed up the team which launched Tearfund’s Rhythms
