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Mucu-Kindy
Sebastian was born to Erin and
Carlos on October 10th, 2009.
Erin Mucu-Kindy managed Plow Creek Farm's vegetable garden.
Erin was a full time member of Christian Peacemaker Teams . She has spent the summers relating with Plow Creek for several years and then asked Plow Creek to be her supporting home congregation, which we gladly agreed to do. Erin was baptized in nearby Bureau Creek on September 1, 2002 and became a member of Plow Creek Church. She continues to go to Colombia with CPT.
Erin married Carlos in February 2008.
Here is a paper she shared with us in January 2006:
Below you'll find one slow-growing fruit of my attempts to find the ties between the reality I know here in the US and the reality I know from my time in Colombia. (The seed of this article was started almost a year ago!) As I noted in my last message, that work has been a real challenge to me. This article is one of my attempts to put together some of those disparate parts. I hope it makes you uncomfortable, because I think we have reason to be.
My we more visibly express our unity in Christ.
Irene Erin
Erin Mucu-Kindy managed Plow Creek Farm's vegetable garden.
Erin was a full time member of Christian Peacemaker Teams . She has spent the summers relating with Plow Creek for several years and then asked Plow Creek to be her supporting home congregation, which we gladly agreed to do. Erin was baptized in nearby Bureau Creek on September 1, 2002 and became a member of Plow Creek Church. She continues to go to Colombia with CPT.
Erin married Carlos in February 2008.
Here is a paper she shared with us in January 2006:
Below you'll find one slow-growing fruit of my attempts to find the ties between the reality I know here in the US and the reality I know from my time in Colombia. (The seed of this article was started almost a year ago!) As I noted in my last message, that work has been a real challenge to me. This article is one of my attempts to put together some of those disparate parts. I hope it makes you uncomfortable, because I think we have reason to be.
My we more visibly express our unity in Christ.
Irene Erin
by Irene Erin Kindy
"Christ
has
no
body on
earth but ours, no hands but ours, no feet but ours. Ours are the eyes
through which the compassion of Christ looks out upon the world, ours
are the feet with which he goes about doing good, ours are the hands
with which he blesses his people." --St. Teresa of Liseau
In N. America we’re born as consumers. People with power in global economics want to link resources with consumers across the world. Colombia is a country full of resources: land, agricultural products, gold, oil, lumber, rivers for hydro-electric power, and the list continues. People with power want to create and reinforce the ties between this country of riches and their own nations through export and trade. Here's one example of that connection and its effect. When corn from N. America is exported and arrives into the port of Barrancabermeja, Colombia, local corn prices are forced so low that farmers there say it is hardly worth their while to harvest and sell their corn. The entrance of N. American corn into their local economy undercuts a mainstay of their livelihood. Usually the linking of distant consumers and resources benefits global companies at the expense of local farmers.
Another manifestation of the global economic system is the drug trade. In Colombia, some farmers have the choice to grow legitimate crops, such as corn, or to grow coca (the plant cocaine is made from) and make many times more money to support their families. The reason coca paste has a high retail value in Colombia is because there is high consumer demand in the U.S. and other places around the world. Despite the havoc caused by cocaine, it’s logical that farmers choose to grow a product with which they can make a living for their families.
The global economic system has chosen to hide and ignore the costs. North Americans are also trained to not see the costs, or to count them as inconsequential. Those costs in the global economic system that benefit our lives as consumers come via environmental and social destruction and they cost lives. In 1997 in the Northwest Chocó region of Colombia many small Afro-Colombian communities were invaded and chased from their home by paramilitaries mixed in with the Colombian military in what was called Operation Genesis. Some civilians were killed while others became internal refugees in larger towns of the region. Many of them lived for several years in a soccer stadium. As they talked with one another about what had happened to them, and why, it became clear to them that the massacres and assassinations they experienced had a land-based economic root. The Chocó is in an extremely resource rich area of Colombia. It is located where the continent of South America links with Central America and outside speculators would like to build an alternative to the Panama Canal through that region. It is an area forested with virgin timber where many rivers converge and the soil is rich for agricultural crops. The local people recognise the value these resources have in a global market and they recognise the way world-wide greed puts their lives at risk in their own homes.
Our identity is not only that of consumers. When we are re-born in Christ we join his Body. That Body is made up of people like these: Kathy, who flew across the country to spend time with her mom, who has cancer. Rosemary, who listens to mass on the radio as she prepares supper and worries about her son who attends school in town because the rural school lacks resources. Alan, who gives coats to the homeless then travels to sit with a widow whose husband was killed due to land speculation. Veronica and Lewis, who pray in all circumstances and had to feed their last corn crop to their chickens because the price was too low. Lois, who cares for an elderly woman with Alzheimer’s and drives her car across the state for counseling. Christians from Colombia and N. America, whether they recognize it or not, are bound together with others into the mystic union we call the Body of Christ. These people, and you and I, with our similarities and our differences are united in order to reflect the image of Christ himself to the world.
As active consumers we are economically linked across the globe and as committed church members we’re united in the Body of Christ. However, in the Body of Christ under the reign of global economics, destruction and exploitation are meted out to some members of the Body by other members. Instead, participation in the Body of Christ should be the visible manifestation of Christ to the world. Can these two opposing realities be reconciled or are we called to choose where our greater allegiance lies?
As Christians we must confront the parts of ourselves who prefer to be comfortable consumers rather than faithful parts of the Body of Christ. When we commit seriously to follow Jesus, changes are not optional. Fidelity to Christ and faithfulness to our sisters and brothers must mean deep change. What do those changes look like? We must each assess our own lives. For me it means I cannot live so lavishly; most N. American homes are two to six times the size of average homes in Colombia, and we often wish for more space! It means I need to learn to say "no" to some of the options laid out before me because they conform more to the global economic model of exploitation and over-consumption, than they do to the reality of the Body of Christ. As we affirm our union in Christ as more powerful for our daily lives than links of global economics only then will our hands and feet, our very actions and choices, show the face of Christ to the world.
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